A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery)

by Aaron Elkins

  "And Ugo Scoccimarro, of course. And I think I mentioned it to Tony Whitehead . . ."

  The pen stopped. He glanced up at me under lifted eyebrows.

  ". . . and Calvin Boyer—he works with me in Seattle. He's here in connection with the show."

  "I see." The notebook was snapped closed and put away. "Perhaps we go about this the wrong way. Is there anyone in Bologna you forgot to tell? It would make not so long a list."

  I wasn't in the mood for Antuono's arid wit. "Well, why the hell would I keep it a secret?" I said. "Why should I think anyone would try to kill me, let alone blow up an entire planeload of people, just to get to me?"

  `No, no, they are not such monsters as that. You were carrying a time bomb, dottore. It has been disarmed. The detonation was set for eleven thirty-five."

  "At which time the plane would have been over the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea."

  "Yes, but that would have been your fault, not theirs."

  "My—I don't understand."

  "Your reservation was on Alisarda flight number 217, no? You were to leave at noon."

  I shook my head. "No, I changed that to a ten-fifteen flight."

  "Yes, but when did you change it?"

  I realized what he was driving at. I had called the airport at 9:15, after my bags had been in the lobby for almost an hour. Then I'd gone quickly back to the hotel—no more than a three-minute walk—to get them. If someone had put a bomb in the duffel bag, which someone had, it had been done between 8:30 and 9:15, at which time "Mr. Marchetti" had believed that I was booked on the noon flight—half an hour

  after detonation.

  "The taxi," I murmured. "He ordered a taxi for me. At eleven-twenty. The bomb would have gone off while I was on my way to the airport."

  "Yes, that's what it was designed for. It's not a subtle device; it had no chance at all of getting through airport security—a point in your favor with Captain Lepido, by the way. Also, it was not large. It was what is called an antipersonnel bomb, capable of demolishing the inside of a taxi, yes; of bringing down an airplane, highly unlikely. So you see, we are not dealing with a monster after all. It was you alone he was after."

  "He was willing to sacrifice the cab driver."

  "One person, not hundreds."

  "Well, that's very comforting, Colonel. I can't tell you how much better I feel knowing that."

  He allowed himself a wry smile. "Signor Norgren, I have a favor to ask you. I think it might be helpful if the person who tried to kill you were to believe he succeeded. It would be safer for you if he thought you were, ah, out of the way, and it would perhaps be useful to the police in apprehending him."

  "All right. What's the favor?"

  "As I said. To pretend you are killed, at least insofar as Bologna is concerned. For a few days only. Go to Sicily and do your business, but no telephone calls back to Bologna, no contact of any kind."

  "I don't get it. You said the Sicilian Mafia is involved. If I go to Sicily and do my business, they're likely to find out I'm alive, aren't they?"

  "Not the people that matter. They're here in Bologna."

  "But you told—"

  "I told you the Sicilian Mafia is behind the thefts. They are. But those concerned are now here." Even in that tiny, secure room, with no one else around, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Things come to a head; we will very soon have those paintings back. The arrangements have already been made " He held up a finger. "I speak in confidence."

  Arrangements had been made, and word of my survival might somehow spoil them, so would I kindly shut up, stop poking around, and play dead; that was what he was telling me. Still, I dearly wanted to see those paintings back, too. So if it would help, I would go along with it even if I didn't like it.

  "All right," I said tentatively, "but I'd like to let my friends know I'm all right. I wouldn't want them, to hear I'd been killed."

  He waved his hands. "No, no, no, don't worry, they won't think so I will see to it that the newspapers and the television report only that a taxi was blown up on its way to the airport, resulting in the death of the passenger, but that his name is being withheld until his family is notified. I will say that terrorists are believed responsible. To your friends, it will mean nothing. To the people who planned it, it will mean everything."

  I nodded. "Okay."

  "There is one more thing. I hope I am correct in thinking that you will go directly home from Sicily, that you are not returning to Bologna?"

  The back of my neck prickled. Since coming there, I had been beaten up by thugs and run down by a car; I had very nearly been blown up; I had been told that things would be better if I were dead, or failing that, if I could at least have the good grace to act as if I were. Now I was being given the carabinieri version of a get-out-of-town-by-sunset-and-don't-come-back speech.

  "Are you telling me not to come back here?" I said hotly.

  "I merely ask the question. You will admit my work has not been made simpler by your presence."

  It was hard to argue with that. "There aren't any direct flights from Sicily to Seattle," I told him. "I'm coming back Sunday night at ten o'clock and I'm getting the first plane Monday morning—six-thirty, I think. I've already booked a room for Sunday night at the Europa. They're holding the rest of my luggage." I didn't feel I had to tell him about Anne and Amsterdam.

  "You arrive at ten at night and you leave at six-thirty the next morning?"

  "Yes," I said. "You have to admit, even I couldn't screw things up too much in that amount of time." You wouldn't guess it, but I was feeling pretty surly.

  He nodded and rose. "That will be acceptable. If you make your statement to Captain Lepido now, you can still be on the noon plane."

  "Fine." God forbid that my continued existence in Bologna should complicate his life any more than necessary.

  As we were going out the door he put a hand on my arm. "A word of advice?"

  I paused.

  "When you get your luggage from the Europa. . . ?"

  "Yes?"

  "Look inside."

  Chapter 15

  Ugo Scoccimarro's frank, happy face was enough to expunge most of the morbid thoughts with which I'd been occupying myself on the flight from Bologna, and any gloomy remnants were blotted out by his exuberant Mediterranean bear hug of a greeting. This was not Clara Gozzi's discreet northern version, but the full Sicilian treatment: bone-cracking embrace, thunderous back-pummeling, noisy kiss on each cheek. And no slack mouthing at the empty air for Ugo, either. When he kissed you, he kissed you. The sensation was something like getting your cheek caught in a vacuum cleaner.

  I hugged him in return. Seeing Ugo always made me feel that the world wasn't such a complicated place after all, that there was still room for simple pleasures, simple motives— maybe even simple explanations to complicated-seeming things, although I was starting to doubt it.

  With a cupped hand he gently patted the side of my face where some bruising was still visible. "You're all right now?" he asked in his broad Italian. "It doesn't hurt?"

  "Not at all." I'd called a few days ago to fill him in on what had happened.

  "And Max? He's better?"

  "A little. It'll take time, though."

  "Ah, Cristoforo, if only I didn't ask the two of you to come get a drink with me, to walk with me to the station. If only—"

  "Forget it, Ugo; it's not your fault. They were after Max. If they didn't get him then, they would've gotten him some other time."

  On the other hand, some other time I might not have been with him to absorb a great deal of gratuitous punishment. But this I dismissed as an unworthy thought. I clapped Ugo on the back. "I'm glad to see you," I said honestly.

  "And I you. Look, here's Maria."

  "Chris, hello!" Ugo's wife called in English, and I received an embrace as openhearted if not quite as suffocating as Ugo's. "You poor man!"

  An animated, wiry woman a year or two older than Ugo, Mary Massey had been an
accountant employed by the Americans at the Sigonella Air Force base when she'd met him at a St. Agatha's Day party in Catania. A few months later they were married, Mary for the first time, the widowed Ugo for the second.

  It was a relationship of opposites: Mary's father was an American master sergeant from Pennsylvania, her mother an Italian bookkeeper from Messina, up the coast from Catania. Mary had spent eleven years in Philadelphia. Well read, well traveled, she had two college degrees (one American, one Italian), an inquisitive, intelligent mind, and a sometimes biting sense of humor. Ugo, as blunt as a watermelon, had left school in the fourth grade; had never been north of Naples or had the least desire to do so until Mary began dragging him off on yearly vacations; and still possessed, as far as I could tell, a world view better suited to the simple olive-grower he once was than to the business titan and international art collector he'd become.

  The marriage shouldn't have lasted a year, but somehow they had clicked. Ugo, with plenty of native intelligence and his own rough charm, tolerated and actually seemed to enjoy Mary's barbed wit, and Mary was equally broad-minded about Ugo's Neanderthal opinions. When they didn't agree, which was all the time, they laughed and went on to the next subject. It had worked for them for six years, and from the look of them as we walked to the parking area—Ugo's hefty arm tenderly encircling Mary's fragile shoulders, Mary leaning into him—they were still going strong.

  The airport was on the Plain of Catania, some distance south of the city. For the first few miles Ugo drove through a string of small villages and decaying stone farmhouses overlooking rocky land that would have seemed untillable if not for the evidence of scraggly rows of grapevines or stunted olive trees. The dark, small people with their creased faces; the hard land; the unadorned, whitewashed buildings made it seem like another world from Bologna. If not for the occasional caffè and tabaccheria signs in the villages, I would have thought we were in the Greek islands.

  It was a sunny day, the first after two days of rain, and there were knots of women sitting outside to gossip and enjoy the warmth. Fashions hadn't changed much down here. Most of them wore the same black dresses and black shawls that I'd seen in photographs from their grandmothers' generation. And all but a few of them had their chairs turned away from the street so that they faced the blank white walls of the buildings a few feet behind them. It seemed odd to me, and I commented on it.

  Ugo laughed. "You don't find that in Catania or Palermo. These villages—they're centuries behind. The women keep their eyes away from the streets, the cars, so that they don't catch the eye of a man even accidentally. Quaint, don't you think?"

  "Oppressive, don't you think?" Mary said in English, then translated for Ugo's benefit.

  He shrugged. "The old ways. There's a lot to be said for them. At least the women didn't talk back." With another rumbling laugh he reached across and squeezed Mary's knee.

  The open country gradually gave way to the sprawling southern reaches of Catania. Ugo went screeching through the twisting, narrow streets at the death-defying speed with which everyone down here seemed to drive, even in the city. It seemed a dreary place, with long rows of dark, low tenements and a lot of garbage in the streets. Many of the buildings were made of a repellent muddy-purple stone. These, I knew from my Michelin, were built from the lava with which Mt. Etna sporadically engulfed the city. Several times on the drive I had seen the conical volcano looming to the north, an elongated pancake of steam trailing from its peak.

  Twice I watched in surprise as small, three-wheeled automobiles were pushed over the sidewalk and through what appeared to be the double front doors of ground-floor apartments. Another time I saw one of the cars through a window, standing in the middle of what was unmistakably the kitchen. A few feet away an aproned woman was chopping vegetables at the sink.

  When I remarked on this, Ugo shrugged again, but didn't smile this time. "Eh, it's an old city. The apartment buildings don't have garages."

  "Why not leave the cars out on the street?"

  Ugo grumbled something unintelligible, and pressed the accelerator even farther down. My question hadn't pleased him.

  "You can't leave a car out all night in Catania," Mary said. "At least not around here. It's not such a great idea in our neighborhood, either. The car might still be there in the morning, but forget about hubcaps and mirrors. Ugo, do you remember what happened to Silvia?" She turned to look at me over her shoulder. "I have a cousin who parked one of those little cars in front of a restaurant and went in to eat. Five big men came along, picked it up, and simply ran off with it. She actually saw them do it, but she couldn't catch them."

  Ugo pouted. "Any big city has a little crime. New York is worse." Down went his foot on the accelerator.

  I resolved to ask no more questions about curious native customs.

  There is no quick way through or around Catania. One must wind through the heart of the city to get to the other side. This we did, and after a while the dismal streets broadened into clean, pleasant avenues, and the neighborhoods took on an affluent sheen. We stopped for a few minutes near the Via Etnea, a posh commercial street that might have been in Rome or Paris, so I could buy some socks and underwear. The ones I'd started out with were being held in Bologna along with my duffel bag as material evidence. These purchases naturally required some explanation. Ugo and Mary were shocked, of course, and insisted on going over the same ground I'd covered with Antuono a few hours before. To equally little avail.

  A few miles north of the city we finally pulled into a seaside neighborhood of handsome villas and small apartment buildings, and parked in an unpaved alley bordered on both sides by eight-foot stucco walls topped with broken glass.

  "We'll leave the car here," Ugo said. "We're going out for dinner later. "

  Half a dozen boys of nine or ten trotted up. Cigarettes dangled from several of the small mouths. Ugo gave one of the smokers, a hot-eyed kid wearing a torn Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, a 1,000-lire note.

  "Protection money," Mary told me. "They watch the car. The Mafiosi begin early here."

  Ugo scowled at her. "Very funny," he muttered. "See, I'm laughing. I'm going inside to get the pictures ready for Cristoforo."

  He unlocked a tall, spiked gate in one of the walls and stalked down a path through a sparsely planted rock garden toward the house, a modern, boxlike three-story structure painted pale blue.

  "Oh-oh, now I've made him mad," Mary said with no sign of repentance. "I'll have to be good for the rest of the day." As usual, when Ugo wasn't there, she spoke English to me.

  She closed the gate behind us and shook it to make sure it was locked. As we followed a few yards behind Ugo a startlingly large bulldog gallumphed out from behind a corner of the house and made fearsomely for her, spittle drooling from its dewlaps and lovelight shining in its eyes.

  "Hello, Adamo, how are you, dog?" she said, tugging hard on both its ears and accepting with apparent enjoyment a slobbering show of affection. "Say hello to Christopher."

  I gingerly patted the monstrous head and tried without success to avoid the frantic wet-mop of a tongue. "More protection?" I asked.

  Ugo, who had paused a few feet ahead of us, made the connection to "protezione" and answered in Italian. "Yes," he allowed, "there's some theft around here."

  "Some theft?" Mary echoed. "You have to nail everything down if you want to keep it." To me she said: "We've been lucky, but twice last year they robbed the neighbors across the way."

  Ugo, never one to stay in a snit for very long, burst out laughing. "After the first one," he told me, "they got a watchdog, a big expensive Doberman. They thought that would take care of the problem. So what happened? Well, the next time the crooks came, along with everything else they stole the dog."

  Adamo, who had calmed down enough to notice Ugo, waddled amiably over to him. Ugo knelt, grasped its flaccid chops, and fondly rocked the big head from side to side. "But nobody would steal you, would they? You're too ugly to steal, aren't you?"
The dog grinned and wagged its stump of a tail.

  Mary put one hand in the crook of Ugo's elbow and one in mine. "Come on, let's go in. Chris has had quite a day. I'm sure he'd like to relax and have a drink."

  True enough, but I didn't get much time to relax. Their housekeeper had barely set down three glasses of a sweet, musky marsala, and Mary had just begun to ask polite questions about the show, when Ugo started fidgeting. He crossed his right leg over his left. He reversed them. He uncrossed them and tapped his toes restlessly against the tiled floor. He pulled up his shirt cuff to look with ostentatious anxiety at his watch. He sighed.

  "Is something bothering you, love?" Mary asked. "You have an itch in an indiscreet place, perhaps? Would you like to be excused?"

  "No, no. It's just the time. It's after four o'clock, and the light won't be good much longer. I want Cristoforo to see the paintings before it goes."

  "Of course. I'd like that." Not that I thought for a minute that it had anything to do with the light. Ugo was like a big kid; he just couldn't wait any longer to show off his picture gallery. And I was happy to oblige; I'd rather look at old paintings than drink wine anyway. Especially when I know the wine will still be there when I come back. I put my glass down on a marble-topped sidetable. I'd been flattered to see that Ugo felt comfortable enough with me to serve the marsala in big, square tumblers instead of the stemmed wine glasses he found too dainty for his yeoman's hands.

  Mary stood up. "I'll leave the two of you to it, then. Don't forget about the time up there, We have early dinner reservations: eight o'clock."

  Ugo sprang out of his chair, grabbed the bottle by the neck, and tucked it under an arm. "Bring your glass," he told me. "We'll have a toast."

  I complied. Looking at old paintings while drinking wine was even better.

  I assumed we were going to spend a leisurely hour or two in his top-floor gallery, but instead he led me on a double-time tramp through it, allowing only hurried pauses in front of the four paintings he was lending us for the exhibit, and another stop before the Boursse he would be selling to the museum.