by TG Wolff
Closed door. The room was colder than the rest of the house. It must have been closed off, but dust had not taken up residence. A twin bed was pushed against one wall. A dresser, a chair, and a chest suitable for Blackbeard’s quarters. Hugo’s room.
The lock on the chest was familiar. I used to pick them for fun. Wham. Bam. Open ma’am. Inside were all the mementos you’d expect a good boy to have in his bedroom. Skin mags. Five mail envelopes filled with bodies in compromising positions. Two guns. Three knives of varying blades and lengths. A small collection of wicked throwing stars.
I spared a minute for under his bed—nada—but under his mattress was the key to a PO box, clearly marked for the absentminded blackmailer. An educated guess. The dresser was nothing but clothes. Good-quality clothes.
Last closed door. The bedroom Mama had shared with Papa. Their wedded room was fresh as a daisy, like the couple had just left for the day. In fact, if I didn’t know Mama slept in the bedroom next to the bath, I would have thought she still used this room. And maybe she still did. The rocking chair next to the window held a sweater in progress. A glass with water sat on a coaster in front of a radio.
At the end of the hall was a door to the rear yard. The green thumb had been at work here. A garden rivaling the size of the house bathed in the morning sun. A cat daintily stepped across the rows, unconcerned with my presence. The beauty Mama Franzetti infused in her home ended about fifty feet from the house. Beyond, nature ruled.
If Hugo was in his late twenties, Mama Franzetti would be in her fifties or sixties. Nah. She looked more like seventies. A good seventies but still seventies. Grandmama Franzetti?
Beyond the garden, the wind ran through the grass, providing a fleeting image of a path. Of course, I followed it. Down a shallow valley, not far but completely hidden from the house, was a small wooden structure. Smaller than a garage, larger than a shed. No windows. The same rookie-class lock held the door shut. This one took an extra two minutes. Weather had taken its toll.
Light from the morning cut a swath across storage and work space. The only feet inside this shack recently were of the arachnoid variety. No electricity. There was an oil lamp on the work bench. No light. There was a modern camping lantern. Batteries dead.
Hugo must have inherited his grandmother’s propensity for neatness. Simple metal shelving ran along two walls. The third had a workshop-styled wood bench with a few tools sitting out. Salvaged kitchen cabinets were shoved under the bench and hung on the wall above. I opened one of the doors. My eyes were adjusting but it was still hard to make out distinct shapes. Half the cabinets were empty. The others contained crystal and porcelain, tablets and phones, jewelry.
“You just have your fingers in everything, don’t you Hugo?”
I left the heavy air of the shack, coughing up a lung. Dust two inches thick. A license plate expired in November.
I didn’t like where this was going.
I kept following the path. Could there be another treasure trove? The land rolled down to a stream lined with trees and growth. The path followed the contours of the earth but stayed determinedly aimed for the stream.
“Diamond? Diamond?”
My name was clear but far from strong. If the wind had been blowing the other direction, I wouldn’t have heard Carlo. Guess he’d given up on Celina.
“Down here. Follow the path.” I shouted, wondering if he could hear me upwind. He crested the ridge and waved, relief on his face.
“Did you search the shed?” He thumbed back over his shoulder.
I briefed him on my findings. “What did Mama have to say?”
“Grandmother. Signora Franzetti hasn’t seen Hugo since last May. She didn’t know the exact day. He had a job in Rome and came home when he could.”
I snorted.
“The last time he visited, he stayed for three days. She remembered because he rarely stayed more than overnight. He was always needed in Rome.”
We continued down the path. To the untrained eye, we would just be a handsome couple enjoying a pretty morning, talking about the foibles and idiosyncrasies of life.
Carlo shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you think Hugo killed Rubchinsky?”
“Hugo was into blackmail and robbery. What connection could he have to Gavriil? Why would he kill him? It could have been an accident, like the police said. A guy like Hugo would run. Or—”
“Or, it could have been the job he told his grandmother about. A hit. And, where is he? His grandmother has convinced herself he’s working hard at a job only a man of Hugo’s talents could do.”
Suddenly remembering the fake badge on my breast, I ripped the plastic off and shoved it in my pocket. “Who did you tell her I was with?”
“Tax collection.” He chuckled. “I told her you were a training officer from the United States and I would get fired and she would go to jail if we didn’t clear up Hugo’s tax bill.”
“Death and taxes. The only certainties in life.”
“Where are we going, Diamond?”
“Wherever this path goes. Have you noticed the ruts?”
“Si, from tires. But they are old.”
I nodded. “Maybe Hugo had another store house.”
As we neared the stream, the thick line of foliage had an opening about ten feet wide. Low branches on either side hung limply from their bows and the brush between had been torn out. I scanned left and right as I entered the denser woods. Carlo mirrored my movement.
We saw it at the same time. A flat panel, grime over a bright yellow, with the license plate in question.
Carlo took the driver’s side, I covered the passenger. In the filtered light, the body was difficult to see. Dressed in black, it was nearly upside down on the passenger side.
Carlo and I did what needed doing.
God damn it. I had the messy side.
The vic was male. Gunshot wound to the left temple. The driver’s window wasn’t broken so the door must have been open at the time of the shot. The momentum took him into the passenger seat but, to get into the position he was, someone pushed him the rest of the way.
“Keys still in the ignition.” Carlo worked from his angle, retrieving the wallet. “It’s him.”
I opened the glove box. Latex gloves, thank you very much. A knife. Vehicle information. Box of condoms. Five balled up papers—parking tickets. A metal snap told me Carlo worked the trunk. I came up for air then did a quick dive into the back seat. Empty.
“Diamond.” The tote bag yawed wide as Carlo held one handle, showing off neat bundles of euros. In his other hand, pinched between his thumb and index finger, was my husband’s smiling face. “Two thousand euros hidden in the well where a tire would go.”
My hands curled into claws and then fists. A raw, unadulterated need to tear and destroy and rend had me returning to the dead man and planting my boot in his shoulder. “You worthless fuck. You waste of life.” My leather boot punctuated each word.
Carlo flicked off the safety and handed me his gun.
In a thunderstorm of acid rain, words of hate and disgust were screamed in an insane rant from a voice I didn’t recognize as my own. Every goddamn shell Carlo had went into the corpse of man and car. Then I turned my fury to the heavens. “This is your plan? This is your fucking omnipotent plan? You let a piece of shit like this end a man like Gavriil? And you’re supposed to be great?” I ended the conversation with a single-finger salute and stalked out the way we came. “Take the bag. Pull the car around. We’re taking it all.”
“Where are we going next?”
This Little Piggy Went to the Bank
Hansel and Gretel blindfolded and high on sugar crack could have followed Hugo Franzetti’s trail. He had set up a PO box at a mailing store in the larger town near his grandmother’s house. Carlo flirted with the girl who’d worked there for only a month and did not know Hugo from Hansel. He walked out with a stack of envelopes and the girl’s phone number.
The payout: sixty envelopes with one hundred to one thousand euros each.
Stop number two was Hugo’s apartment in Rome. It wasn’t in a prominent neighborhood where we would have been noticed if we strong armed our way in. It didn’t matter. There was no need for huffin’ and puffin’ or blowin’ anything down. Mama Franzetti gave us a key. When we’d gone back for the deep sweep, she’d cried on Carlo’s shoulder and asked us to bring her grandson home.
Mama Franzetti might have looked like a country mouse, but she knew what the cock was doing in the hen house.
Hugo’s building was built before the living were born. The trials and tribulations of its occupants were steeped into the plaster walls and periodically painted over to make room for new ones. Hugo lived on the top floor. The three flights in the narrow stairwell had me resting my hand on the butt of the borrowed gun.
Hugo’s apartment was a single, large room divided into distinct areas: kitchen, living, painting, playing. The walls held unframed pencil sketches of a baby, the neighborhood, and animals. A small collection of baby toys sat in a box on a sunny yellow blanket. Three doors opened off the main room: bedroom, bathroom, and terrace.
“I got the computer.” Carlo beelined for the IKEA-style desk. The desktop sat on the floor beneath, kept company by a milk carton filled with paper. “The password is taped to the screen.”
“Nice of him.” The space was lived in. A peek in the fridge said this apartment was inhabited by the living. “This isn’t Hugo’s place.”
Carlo thumbed through a stack of mail on the desk. “All of these have Hugo’s name.”
“He’s been dead for a year.”
Heavy footfalls in the hall alerted us seconds before someone put a key in the door. I sprinted to a position behind the door, drawing my weapon in route. Carlo turned off the computer screen and flattened himself on the floor behind the couch.
The door opened, a body entered. I planted said body against the hard plaster while blistering Italian filled the room. Carlo was on his feet, shouting at the woman. She was tall, nearly as tall as me, but there was nothing to her. Dixon had felt the same when I took down his trespassing ass.
This was a girl.
“It’s a kid. What the hell, Carlo?”
Carlo waved at me to shut up. I guess two pissed off women was more than his Roman ass could handle. I tried to pick up their conversation. Not understanding Italian was getting to be a blister on my butt.
“Her name is Valentina. Hugo lets her live here.” Carlo raised a brow to me as he took a firm grip on her upper arm and escorted her to her couch.
“Ask her when she saw him last.”
“I speak English.” She spoke well, with a slightly British accent.
“Thank God.”
Valentina curled into herself, knees to her chest, arms binding her legs. She was in her late teens or early twenties, but her eyes were older. Much older.
Different country. Same story.
I fetched a bottle of pastel-colored soda from her refrigerator and set it on the table next to her. “Hugo was your friend. He let you live here when you needed a place.”
Valentina nodded.
“But the last time you saw him was almost a year ago. Haven’t you wondered where he’s been?” I kept my voice soft, casual. Nonthreatening. Her eyes widened, impressed with my psychic powers. “Tell us about him, about the last time you saw him.”
She shrugged, rubbing her cheek against her knees.
“Hugo was into some bad things, right? He was good to you,” dramatic pause, “but he stole, he cheated.”
“I told him not to do it. I told him I’d get the money another way.” Valentina began opening her posture, and her mouth. “He was the only one nice to me. The only one who cared. Not even my brother would help me. Hugo said he would get the money but wouldn’t tell me how. I begged him not to do anything wrong. We could find another way. He’s not coming back, is he? I wish he would have listened.”
“So, do I,” I said before I realized it was aloud. “What did you need money for?”
She dropped her head, forehead to knees. I gave her the moment she needed to find her strength. When she lifted her head, there was pain in her eyes. “I had a boyfriend. I thought we would marry and…I found out I was pregnant…then my family.” She shrugged, speaking volumes about heartbreak and betrayal with the small gesture. “Hugo.” She wiped a tear before it could fall. “He was good to me. I didn’t want to be pregnant and I found a man, but Hugo wouldn’t let me go. He had heard things. He said we would go out of the country to a real doctor.” Another shrug, this time with shame. “Real doctors are expensive. He told me not to worry, but I did.”
“Tell me about the last time you saw him or spoke to him.”
“He had his own business and worked, what is the expression, odd jobs for the money. It was the middle of the day. He said he finished a job and was going to stay with his nonna for a few days. When he came home, he’d have the money we needed.” She lifted her head, her eyes were glassy with tears. “He never came home. I called his nonna, but she said he had left days before. She thought he was here, in Roma. I didn’t hear from him again.”
“Do you know anything about this job or who hired him?” I moved onto the couch, not touching but close. “How did they find Hugo?”
“Why? It doesn’t matter anymore.”
How easy it was to believe. For as big as the world was we lived in, we forgot how small it was. I came here for justice for Gavriil. Now it was justice for Francisco Thelan and Mama Franzetti and this woman, Valentina. Pawns and victims in some asshat’s game.
“This goes far beyond you and Hugo. Help me find the bastards and I’ll make them pay.”
Valentina stared questioningly into my eyes. I filled my answering gaze with every ounce of determination, tenacity, and grit I had. She lost the contest, turning to the computer. Her body followed. She didn’t show surprise at finding the computer on. She just turned on the screen and opened the file system for Carlo’s inspection. While he worked, I went through her kitchen and began cooking. Nothing fancy, but I found working in the kitchen relaxed people. I needed Valentina cooperative, not afraid.
Under other circumstances, Valentina would have been a college co-ed, learning to live on her own. Instead, she sat at her tiny kitchenette and started talking. She talked and talked and talked, to the point I wondered if this girl had anybody in her life she could confide in. Honestly, she was pouring out her heart to a woman who plastered her against a wall and held her at gunpoint. Stockholm Syndrome much?
With her salary from a small shop and the money in Hugo’s account, she’d been getting by. Afraid of losing the apartment, Valentina told the landlord she and Hugo were married, and he had joined the military. Her daughter, who was still with the sitter, had Hugo’s name on her birth certificate. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, Valentina had been keeping Hugo alive. She paid the rent and Hugo’s bills—including the PO box and a safe deposit box.
“This box at the bank,” Carlo said. “Do you know where the key is? It would be small, different from a house key.” He followed Valentina’s gaze to a kitchen drawer.
“I haven’t thrown anything away. I didn’t know he wasn’t coming back. Do you think…” Valentina hesitated. “Do you think they knew where he lived? If you found me, could they?”
I didn’t believe in bullshitting youth. If anyone needed to hear the truth, it was someone who hadn’t experienced enough to tell fact from fiction. “They could, but I don’t see it happening. Hugo was a loose end, a thread back to them. They think they took care of it when they killed him a year ago. They didn’t care if he had a grandmother, wife and baby then. They won’t now.”
Valentina blinked rapidly. It just got real for her. It was one thing to say Hugo hadn’t been back or she hadn’t heard from him. It was another to say he was dead. Time for a change of topic.
�
�If you could do anything, be anything, what would you do?”
The blinking ended as a slow smile emerged. “Art school. I would like to teach art to children.”
Yeah, seemed about right.
“What do you think is in it?” Carlo asked as we approached our next stop on our Tour de Hugo Franzetti. The corner building was three stories high and built of a sandy-colored stone. The ground floor was the neighborhood bank and keeper of Hugo Franzetti’s deposit box. Unpredictable, right? Hugo was a small-time thief and blackmailer, but he put his valuables in a bank.
“Hugo wasn’t sloppy. He ran his operations as a business. So where are his ledgers, his list of customers? It wasn’t in the computer and not in the apartment. We took that place apart, Carlo, and it wasn’t there.” We found some cash and more dirty pictures in a hole in the wall. Valentina had been surprised at the find and more shocked when we left the cash. “He has a little black book and we need to find it.”
Carlo and I entered the bank and went directly to a very pregnant woman sitting behind a desk. He produced the key and requested access to the box. They chatted as she led us past the tellers and back into a vault room. The sharp scent of metal tainted the still air. Taking the key from Carlo, she opened a two-inch-by-four-inch door and slid out a drawer eighteen inches long. She carried it to a table in an adjacent room and instructed us to press a button on the wall when we were finished. Without ceremony, she left us.
“Let’s see what we have.” Carlo opened the hinged top. The glossy backside of pictures completely covered the opening. “It’s too heavy for just paper.” He used care to remove the top layer and revealed a trove of loot. “Rings, watches, bracelets.”
I flipped through the pictures, and that’s all they were. Dirty pictures. “What about a notebook or log?”
“I am still on the surface, wait, I think—”
The crash of the door reverberated in the small space. Our preggo banker filled the doorway, her head at an odd angle due to the gun pressed to it. There was a lot of Italian yammering but no translation was needed. We were being robbed. “Oh, fuck me.”