Chapter Seven
When Sam arrived at the rental apartment, it was shuttered, and no one answered when he rang the bell. On the balcony next door sat a woman, the same woman who had sat there twenty years earlier, the neighbourhood bugle. If anyone knew something, it would be her. She was, and had been then, like a fat speckled toad on a lily pad, taking up residence on the narrow balcony that caught a little bit of shade on that side of the building in weather so hot that one hoped, prayed, and got ready to sell their soul for a mere cross-draft.
The woman was buying a packet of Marlboros, just as she had done so many cigarettes ago, from a man who stood under her balcony. He took money from a basket that had been lowered down to him on a cord, and put the packet in the basket, which the woman hauled back up.
Sam called up, “Signora, buona sera. I’m looking for Carla Cremini, her family rents out the apartment next to yours?”
“I know La Cremini. What do you want with her, Padre? She’s not a real Christian, you know. She’s a Christmas and Easter faker.” The woman leered, displaying a magnificent set of gaps where front teeth had once been. “I know you. You’re that boy of hers. Not so skinny anymore. I remember you. I never forget a face. I’ve seen you on TV. What happened to you? Showbiz make you see the evil of your ways?”
“Carla came here today. To see about the heater?”
“What about the heater?”
“The water heater. It’s on the blink.”
“Nothing at all wrong with the neighbour’s water heater,” said the woman.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. They have the damn thing running day and night with all the showers they take. Must be the dirtiest bunch of kids in the world. And I can tell you the last hot shower was taken at 7:30 this morning because that’s when the roar of the heater woke me up. After that they all left. To go to the language school I guess. And let me tell you, when they finally get their Italian good and properly learnt, I’m gonna tell them exactly where to go.”
“You’re sure Carla wasn’t here?”
“Listen, Padre. I would have seen her if she’d been here. She attracts a lot of attention. I’m telling you. There was no Carla.”
Sam walked back to the Cremini place. He reached out to ring the bell then stopped. The outer door was open, just a crack. He pushed it open all the way and went inside. There was silence and it bothered him. Carla liked noise. She always had to fill the silence, with singing or talking, or the radio or TV blasting away. A yowl in the distance startled Sam. A stray cat. He went soundlessly through the downstairs hallway and back up to the suite. The door was open there too, and the food still on the table, the way he’d left it. The white room was empty, no Carla.
He was sure he had closed the door. He wondered if gypsies or junkies had broken in. He had a good look around, opened Carla’s chest of drawers. There was jewellery in a small carved box and her laptop was still there. It didn’t look as though anything had been taken. He started for the stairs to go back down to close the main door. All the ground floor doors had been closed as well, but now the living room door was ajar. He pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the room.
He didn’t notice her at first. She was in the armchair closest to the door, its back facing him. He just saw the top of her head.
“Carla?” He came around to the front of the armchair. Carla was seated upright, her eyes wide open and staring ahead, her clothes ripped and torso exposed, smeared with blood. Somebody had sat her corpse up, posed in a bad imitation of the living Carla.
He felt a churning in his stomach, the bile rising in his throat. He wanted to take her, bring her back from the dead, clean her up, anything but leave her there like that, but police sirens were already wailing in nearby streets, moving closer. How could they have been alerted so quickly?
His mind whizzed back to teenage years and all the late nights, officially prohibited, but quietly tolerated by Carla’s parents, and the dovecote at the top of the palazzo that he and Carla had always used for late night clandestine entrances and exits. He ran back up the stairs taking them three at a time.
He got to the last floor and the door to the dovecote. He tried the handle but it was sealed shut with disuse. He leaned against it hard and shoved until it gave way, a gust of baking heat and stinking dusty wood meeting him head on. He clattered up the narrow wooden steps and all the way to the top. There were no birds these days. Its openings had been glassed in, closed off and modernized.
He unlatched the little door and scuttled out onto the roof. Making his way to the gutter at the edge, he was able to lean out just far enough to see Marta La Stella and her boys coming through the front door. As soon as they were inside, he climbed down the same wisteria trunk, ran along the top of the same back wall and jumped down into a tiny side entry where the same restaurant still received deliveries after all these years. He rounded the corner onto the street and ran.
Sam found Sara Porretta’s brass name plate and leaned on the button.
A tinny voice answered and Sam identified himself. The door clicked open. Sam rode the antiquated wrought iron elevator up to the top floor. Sara was already standing in the open doorway, her expression telling him to hurry. She put her hand on his arm as he stepped inside.
Her tone was solemn. “The police were here this morning, dear.”
“That was fast. How did they…?”
“It was your friend Marta who spoke to me. You must have mentioned us to her.”
“Yeah. I guess I did,” he said.
“This murdered girl…” Sara began.
He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with me.”
She nodded, pensive. “Are you all right, dear?”
“I will be all right. When it all blows over.”
“I don’t have anyone at the moment. Come into my studio and sit down for a few minutes, dear Sam.”
He took a step forward.
She stared down at the floor and looked up at him. “There’s… something. It looks like… blood… on your shoe.” Her voice wavered.
“It is blood. I was near a body. I know that sounds bad.”
“Yes, it does.”
Sam’s shoe had left a trail of small red smears on Sara’s white marble floor.
“Take them off, leave them there then come into the studio and sit down.” She looked tired now, older than her years. “What’s going on, Samuele?”
“Have you seen the news?”
“I’ve stopped watching the news. I’m weary of dining with death.”
“You know that Walter’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry. In fact, I’d been expecting to see you here sooner. That news was very quick to reach me. You know… Florence now deprived of the presence of Walter Montefalcone. It’s as if someone had demolished the statue of the David. I can’t imagine it.”
“I dream about him all the time. He won’t leave me alone.”
“It’s only natural, dear. Tell me about this body.”
“There are two bodies.”
Sam could hear Sara’s sharp intake of breath.
Sam kept his voice low. “The second is Carla Cremini. She was murdered too and not nicely.”
Sara’s face blanched. “She was your friend. I remember her you mentioning her.”
“I’m not sure what this is, but it’s starting to feel personal.”
“The police think it’s you. It’s not you, of course. Is it?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ve done enough killing. You know that. We talked about it. Somebody wants to get to me.”
“My dear Sam.”
“I’m trying not to feel like an animal in a trap, but it’s happening.” He was quiet for a bit then said, “Did you know that Walter had become afraid of heights?”
“As long as I knew your father, he was nothing less than adventurous.”
“I don’t want to involve you in that. In any of this. In fact, it was a mistake to come
here. I should go.”
Sara’s tone grew harsher. “Sit down. You want to tell me something else. I can see it in your face.”
He sat down again, hesitated then said, “I’m having the vertigo again. That terrible feeling I had when I was a kid, like the world is about to end. I’ve been feeling it from the moment I set foot in the villa again.”
“Walter’s death will be a watershed for you. We talked about this. What do you want to do?”
“Hypnosis doesn’t work on me.”
“No, dear.”
Sara had her bifocals in her hand and was pressing them against her chin, thinking hard, impossible to read. Sam waited for her to speak and when she did her tone was hushed. “How badly do you want to remember?”
Sam couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I want to be able to walk into my own house without hyperventilating.”
“I might have something that will help.” She went to her desk and opened a series of small drawers until she found an envelope. She opened it up and slid out a tiny square, then put on her glasses and stared at it. “This is it. It should have a Buddha on it.”
She held it up on her palm for Sam to have a better look.
“It does,” he said. “What is it?”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head.
“Lysurgic Acid, dear.”
“Sara,” said Sam. “You surprise me.”
“I was young once, too. Oh well, maybe just youngish when this stuff came out. It works differently on different people but can be useful. There was a time when people in my profession were experimenting a lot. Swinging from the treetops, you might say.”
“And did you swing too?”
“I would never tell you if I had. It’s fresh. I always keep a little on hand for cases… well… like yours. It’s unorthodox I know but sometimes it works.” She put the square back in the envelope and handed it to him. “Tuck it away safely, Samuele. It’s not legal yet.”
Sam put it in his breast pocket. “Thank you, Sara. I think. I better go.”
“Be very careful.” She stood on her tip toes and kissed him on both cheeks.
He gripped her shoulders. It was like holding a tiny, fragile bird. “Whatever anyone says to you, it wasn’t me.”
Walter’s properties included half a dozen apartments scattered around town, and one in Sam’s name. Sam had used it from time to time, put up guests he didn’t want to spend time with, and even tried living there, but found it oppressively swank, so like half the Florentines, he’d handed it over to an agency that rented it out to foreigners. The police would probably look for him there.
He’d found himself another place after the Legion, more appropriate to his needs. At one time in his life, a much younger life, he’d imagined himself living in something huge, palatial, glistening, and stylish. It was Sara Porretta who pointed out that needs change, and sometimes beyond recognition. He had continued going to her even after coming back from the Legion, because after the lives he'd taken, it was right to talk to somebody about it.
She had told him, “Your future inheritance, dear Sam, is like a great big flashy zoot suit. It doesn’t fit you. You swim in it. It makes you look like a clown. You prefer a nice tight pair of jeans. Which would be your tiny apartment. What do you call it? The Hole? Yes? And you feel guilty about what you've done. About killing people? Good and right. And you feel guilty about having more than the rest of humanity? Of course you do. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. A little healthy guilt can do wonders for a person.”
His entitlement, the burden of Le Falde and all the other properties, needed to be balanced out with something humbler. “The Hole” was an airless workshop space burrowed in near Via San Jacopo, and on paper, it was the property of one Mephisto Smith, a resident of London.
Mephisto Smith was Ethiopian by birth, christened with another unpronounceable name forty-two years ago. At Aubagne, the Legion’s recruiting centre, men shed their names with the urgency of snakes shedding skins to crawl into tighter crevices, and a new name and passport were given to the recruits once they were deemed fit. The officer that day, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, had assigned the name Mephisto Smith to the young black Christian from Addis Abbaba, and helped to push him toward a career as the devil incarnate.
Monsieur Smith was now a bodyguard to Eurocrats in Brussels and beyond. Sam and Mephisto had become indentured to each other in the years they’d spent watching each other's backs in the Earth’s choicest battle zones. They’d both emerged alive, and it still seemed like a miracle. In London, just off Soho Square, there was a similar “Hole,” in Samuele Montefalcone's name, inhabited by Mephisto when he wasn't on a job. A little security measure for all their small unholy wars.
Sam dug into his pocket, found the key and turned it five times in the lock at the bottom of the bandoni. The aluminum shutters clattered and screeched as he yanked them up. He opened the frosted glass door on the inside, switched on the light and wheeled the bike into the dank workshop space. He parked it up against the wall next to his squashed bug green Kawasaki Motorcross, then he pulled the bandoni back down again.
The place was dim and private, its only source of light and air a chimney-sized courtyard around which the three rooms were clustered. The first room was a workshop where he kept his two motorbikes, climbing and parachuting gear. There was a workbench, tools, soldering equipment, two electric elements for cooking, a microwave oven and a small fridge. The second room was strictly for dressing and sleeping, with a double bunk bed, in case Mephisto or another Legionnaire buddy should happen through. Off the bedroom was a tiny bathroom with a sink, toilet, shower head, and drain in the centre of the floor. All the rooms were military in their stark neatness.
In the bedroom, Sam stripped off all his clothes again, threw them on the lower bunk, then went into the bathroom and stood under the shower for the second time that afternoon. He stayed wet to cool off, then shaved, scraping away the stubble in a slow ceremony. He pulled on cargo pants with plenty of hidden pockets. For the battle ahead, it was best to travel light.
Smoothing the knots in his hair in front of the bathroom mirror, he could almost hear Walter over his shoulder, saying, “Grooming, my dear boy, and fine togs. Never let on to the world that you feel wretched. The world is simply not interested. The world only wants to know you when you’re groomed, stylishly dressed and charming.”
Sam whispered to the memory, “Ti prego, Walter, vaffanculo. Non è il momento.”
A large modern Wenge wardrobe filled one wall of the bedroom. He opened its sliding door and grabbed a knapsack then went to the back wall of the room and ran a hand over the book-filled shelves. Gripping the edge with his fingertips, he swung the whole unit open and went into the last room, his play room, the nerve centre.
Sam kept his babies here, his technology, detection toys, military gadgets and a few pretty little weapons. He sat down at the desk, opened the MacBook and went into his email account. When he sent his message to [email protected], doubt was already burning into his certainty.
He closed the laptop, took a charged phone and some hardware from the metal shelving, a handful of Euros in fives and twenties from a drawer in the filing cabinet, and put the smaller things, cash, French passport, Swiss army knife, into his trouser pockets, and the larger things, binoculars, change of clothes, and a bottle of water, into the knapsack. He transferred Sara’s envelope into his shirt pocket, then he switched off the lights and lay down on the bed.
Walter came to him almost immediately, looking slightly battered, the walking dead. Hurry, figliolo. They’re closing in. You just don’t see it. Don’t be a fool.
Sam replied, “I need to sleep, Walter.”
Nonsense. You can sleep when you’re kaput. Which will be sooner than you think if you don’t get a move on.
“Leave me alone.”
Confess.
“Confess what?”
That you miss me
.
“I miss you, Walter. Now go away.”
Walter assumed an offended expression, turned on his heel, and marched away like a Prussian general.
It was just before dawn when Sam woke.
He got the Kawasaki ready, rolled it out onto the sidewalk, locked up, then put on his helmet.
Chapter Eight
Sam rode through the familiar terrain of far-off barely remembered seaside summers, of Etruscan tombs and caves and tidal pools to explore with whoever was around but mostly by himself. He curved back and forth between his and the oncoming lane and turned the word Velathri around his tongue as he’d always done along this road, tasting its ancient stony strangeness, metallic and raw.
Velathri. Etruscan for Volterra.
He couldn’t stop imagining Katia as the famous bust of the Etruscan woman with a headdress and earrings, breasts bared. Those ancient men and women, married and single, took lovers openly, had few inhibitions or boundaries. As a boy, when driving along this particular road with his parents, he had always been bombarded by antiquity. He had mulled over the nature of things, the Etruscans, the Romans, and Galileo, the same Galileo who was rumoured to have visited his villa. Galileo who had lived a lie for so much of his life.
And what kind of lie was his fantasy of life with Katia? The Katia who had a husband she’d neglected to mention? Was it possible to not be crushed by it? Sam’s mind was presenting him with a confused collage. Emmie in a pool of blood, Carla upright in that armchair, lifeless staring eyes. Katia with her faceless spouse, making love.
The Volterrana road ribboned into the distant hills, cleaved by the long blue shadows of early morning. Cypress trees stood sentinel on the hilltops, but there was nothing to watch for. There was almost no one on the road.
A little further along, Sam became aware of the sound of sirens, distant but moving closer. He peered into his rear-view mirror until he saw a convoy of Carabinieri, blue lights flashing, still tiny specks. Even if they weren’t for him, they’d soon be breathing down his neck.
Galileo's Room (Noir Florentine Book 1) Page 9