The Hit

by Nadia Dalbuono

  ‘Scamarcio, you have my backing, but we need Stasio to start talking. I can probably scrape together the funds for another day or two, but after that it will be difficult. We have to find this family, bring them home. Right now, we’re looking like a bunch of losers.’

  Scamarcio ground his teeth. Moia needed to come up with something soon.

  Ever since he’d heard about the suicide of Gianluca Manfredi, Scamarcio had been curious about the wife’s opinion. Were they looking at the actions of a love-sick fool or a thwarted careerist? Or was the answer more complex? It stressed Scamarcio that he was obliged to investigate the Manfredi angle with so much else going on, but he reminded himself that Manfredi could yet prove important. There were tangible connections to Proietti that could not be dismissed.

  Gianlunca Manfredi’s flat was surprisingly modest for a cabinet minister’s. He didn’t live in the parliament district or a luxury villa along the Via Appia, but in a modern 100-square-foot apartment in Aurelio.

  The furniture looked as if it had come from IKEA, and the décor was plain — white paint on the walls, very few paintings, a pale-tiled floor, chipped in a few places. Several photos of a boy and girl in graduation gear took pride of place above the fireplace.

  Manfredi’s wife was dressed conservatively in black, and looked exhausted. She was petite, with short, blonde hair and a slight stoop. She motioned Scamarcio tiredly to a sofa across from the fire. He was surprised to notice that the flame in the pellet stove was alight. It was at least 20 degrees outside.

  ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you in your time of mourning, Mrs Manfedi.’

  She waved the apology away. ‘It’s OK. It’s good to have a distraction.’

  ‘I’m investigating the disappearance of Micky Proietti’s wife and son.’

  She scratched at her forehead. ‘I don’t understand how that relates to Gianluca.’

  ‘Mrs Manfredi, I’m afraid I have some uncomfortable news.’

  She screwed up her face, and sat up straighter on the sofa, folding her hands in her lap. ‘What can be more uncomfortable than hearing that your husband of forty years is dead?’

  ‘I take your point. The reason for my visit is that your husband was connected to Micky Proietti.’

  How to frame this? He stopped, tried to think it through. ‘They were both having an affair with the same woman.’

  ‘Fiammetta di Bondi?’

  Scamarcio rubbed at the stubble on his chin. ‘You knew?’

  Mrs Manfredi sighed, and patted the corner of her eyes with a cotton handkerchief. ‘I’ve known for some time. A friend told me she’d heard there was something going on between them.’

  ‘You didn’t confront your husband about it?’

  She shrugged. ‘What was the point? Men will be men. Gianluca was a marvellous father to our children, maybe not such a marvellous husband. So he was having a bit on the side? She shrugged again. ‘He had his needs, and I, well … I wasn’t really into all that, so I can’t really blame him for straying.’

  This was the first time Scamarcio had heard a cheated wife speak like this. That it came from someone who looked so twinset-and-pearls conventional as Mrs Manfredi was more surprising still.

  ‘So you weren’t angry?’

  ‘A little bit, I guess, but anger is a destructive emotion. I decided to push all that to one side.’

  Scamarcio wished he could manage that.

  ‘But I was surprised,’ added Mrs Manfredi.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, Gianluca was hardly a looker.’

  ‘He was powerful.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. Max Romano had castrated him. He couldn’t stand him.’

  ‘Rich then?’ Scamarcio tried.

  ‘Do we look rich to you?’

  Scamarcio cast his eyes around the room. He didn’t want to offend. ‘Well, I must confess I’d expected something in a different part …’

  She interrupted him. ‘Neither Gianluca nor myself come from money. Gianluca worked his way up through politics the hard way. When he started to earn, most of what he made went on funding our children’s’ education in the US.’

  Scamarcio studied the photos above the fire. ‘Were these pictures taken recently?’

  She smiled, and the sadness left her eyes for a moment. ‘Last year. They’re twins. They both graduated from Harvard Law School last summer.’

  ‘You must be very proud.’

  She nodded tightly; she seemed scared that she might cry again. ‘I am, we were. Before Harvard they attended American high school for three years. We wanted to make sure their English was tip-top, that they stood a fighting chance. All that cost a lot of money. But it was worth every cent.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have preferred to keep them close by?’

  ‘Of course, but what future does this country have? Gianluca was convinced that if they stayed here, they’d stagnate like all the other young people who have no chance of finding work. He knew it would be very hard for us, but we had to do it. The fact that they’re the same age was a big help. If we’d had to send one of them alone, that would have been much tougher, it would have been so much more of a worry.’

  Scamarcio nodded. ‘It’s refreshing to meet people who don’t adhere to the materialism that the rest of Rome’s VIPs seem to.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because we’ve never known what it’s like to have money. Perhaps it’s easier to do without all those things if you’ve never had them in the first place.’

  There was something solid about this woman that appeared to be lacking in the other people he had encountered on this case, thought Scamarcio. ‘So, going back to Fiammetta di Bondi’s reasons for being with your husband …’

  Mrs Manfredi arched an eyebrow and shook her head. ‘I’ve been mulling it over, and I still can’t work it out. Maybe she was misled. Maybe she thought he was rich; maybe she thought he could take her places. But the affair went on quite a while, and I can’t help wondering why she hung around. Surely, after a time, she’d realise she wasn’t going to get anything from him.’

  Knowing what he did of di Bondi, it didn’t make sense to Scamarcio now, either.

  ‘Your husband told me they were going to move in together.’

  She grimaced. ‘You think she wanted that?’

  ‘Well, I asked her, and she said no, that she had no intention of moving in with him.’

  Mrs Manfred opened her palms as if to say, ‘I told you so.’

  Scamarcio took a breath and said: ‘Mrs Manfredi, I’m sorry to ask such a difficult question, but why do you think your husband killed himself?’

  She bit down on her bottom lip and pushed her fringe from her eyes, then said: ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘I don’t believe for one second that Gianluca killed himself.’

  ‘Why?’ Scamarcio leant in closer.

  ‘Because Gianluca was many things, but he certainly wasn’t selfish. He would never have done that to me or the children — he would never have left us in the lurch. He was a provider. He modelled himself on his father, who always made sure his family had food on the table, even when he went to bed hungry.’

  Scamarcio wondered at how different this picture of Gianluca Manfredi was from the one he had formed in Max Romano’s office.

  ‘But if Fiammetta di Bondi had led him to believe they had a life together, but had then let him down …’

  She frowned. ‘Oh, please. Gianluca was a 62-year-old man. He wasn’t naïve, and he wasn’t about to leave his family. He’d just booked us both a holiday to the Bahamas for Christmas. It would have been the first holiday we’d taken for ten years. Why would he do that if he was planning to leave?’

  Indeed, why would he? wondered Scamarcio. ‘Did you contact the police about your suspicions?’

  ‘It’s taken
some time for my thoughts to coalesce. It was all too much of a shock for me to think straight. I wanted to give myself some time for the dust to settle, then I was going to go down to the local station myself. You’ve saved me the trouble.’

  Mrs Manfredi had claimed that her husband had never suffered from depression, and that the fact the bathroom window was open when she found him was odd, as they’d been unable to unscrew the lock for the last few weeks and were about to get someone in to fix it. The Manfredis lived on the second floor, so a drop to the ground by an intruder was not out of the question, Scamarcio reasoned.

  When he’d spoken to Garramone, he’d said that a separate inquiry would need to be opened into the death of Gianluca Manfredi, but with a constant eye on the connections to Proietti. Scamarcio would be expected to be across both investigations.

  As Scamarcio walked to his desk, one image refused to leave him: the gold cufflinks that Manfredi was wearing the day they’d met. Those expensive cufflinks didn’t square with the picture Mrs Manfredi had painted of a parsimonious family man, intent on saving every cent for his children’s education. He needed to ask Mrs Manfredi about those cufflinks. He needed to make sense of them.

  Out of respect, he’d switched his mobile to silent when he’d been with Mrs Manfredi, and when he pulled it out to reset it, he noticed several missed calls from Moia that had come in over the last few minutes. He rang him back immediately, hoping to God he’d got somewhere.

  ‘Scamarcio, listen up,’ said the PI, wheezing down the line.

  ‘You OK? You sound terrible.’

  ‘Just been in a place with dogs. They really set me off.’

  ‘What place with dogs?’

  ‘Believe me, you don’t want to know.’

  Scamarcio rolled his eyes and started tapping his desk with a biro. ‘OK, Moia, spit it out then.’

  ‘So I went down to the slot-machine joints on Via Nago. Hung around for quite a while, lost a fair bit, then got chatting to a helpful lad who told me if I wanted some real fun, they were running a card game above a bakery on Via Don Carlo tonight. When I get there, it’s all low stakes, and pretty unexciting. My instincts are telling me it’s a dead end; that I need to try elsewhere. So I sit it out, but when the game is finished, I pull a guy aside and say I want to carry on; that I want a bit more chilli in my sauce. Glances are exchanged, then the guy tells me to head for Via Aprica and ask for Gino above the dry cleaners. When I get there, it’s all smoke and shadows, just like something out of the movies. I half-expected to see Al Pacino in the corner, sucking on a Havana. There were about ten men at the table, playing for scarily high stakes, and I know I’m in the right place now.’ Moia paused to wheeze again. ‘By the way, Scamarcio, you’re going to have to cover my losses.’

  Scamarcio grunted in the affirmative.

  ‘I picked up a few Calabrian accents, but it was impossible to really see the faces, it was too dark. But then I struck lucky, cos there’s a TV on in the corner, and it’s showing Sky TG24, and I notice that twat Proietti’s mugshot — they’re running his story yet again. So I think this is a gift from God, and I say: “Poor bastard — must be a nightmare living through that.” A few guys turn and look at the TV, and then a voice at the end of the table says, “That cunt got what he deserved” and then the room falls silent. Nobody says a word about it again. We all get on with the game, and I go on to lose one thousand.’

  ‘One thousand?’ Scamarcio almost screamed. A few colleagues turned to look at him.

  ‘Scamarcio, it’s high stakes. They wouldn’t have let me in there if I didn’t have cash to burn.’

  ‘Christ, Moia.’

  ‘You wanted a quick result, didn’t you?’

  ‘Am I getting one?’

  ‘Be patient, man. So around 7.00 am the game finally winds up, and we all shuffle out onto the street. I’ve already turned into a side road when I feel a hand on my shoulder. First thought is that they’ve made me and I’m about to be neutralised right there. Then this voice I recognise from the card table says: “Why did you mention Proietti? You looking for info? You a PI?” I try to deny it all, then I see that the guy is quite young, and doesn’t look or sound like a Calabrian heavy. So I say: “What makes you think that?” He says: “You wouldn’t have mentioned him otherwise.” We stand there for a few seconds, not quite sure what to make of each other, then I ask: “What’s it to you?” He says: “I’m trading info for cash.” I ask him if he’s in deep with the Calabrians, but he doesn’t take the bait. “Info for cash,” he just keeps saying, like he’s simple or something. By this point I’ve only got 300 left on me, but that seems OK for him, cos he grabs it straight away. Once he’s pocketed the dough, he pulls out a mobile phone. He fiddles about with it for a while, then shows me a video. It’s of a man in a carpark. He’s surrounded by four goons, looks like they’re threatening him. At one point, one of them pushes him and he falls onto the ground, and they start kicking him shitless. It looks like it’s going to get rough, then they just stop for some reason, shout at him, and leave — I couldn’t make out what was being said.’

  ‘This man they’re threatening?’

  ‘It’s Proietti, no doubt about it.’

  ‘And the other men?’

  ‘The audio is shit, so I don’t know about accents, but they look like heavies — southern heavies.’

  ‘I need to see the video, and I need to meet the guy who made it.’

  ‘Thought you’d say that. He wants another 500 for the trouble.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Sleeping on my couch. I had to promise him another 200 to stay put till I reached you.’

  ‘OK, Moia. Good work. Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘How about the patisserie on my road, Via Mattonato? They do good fresh cream brioche, get the filling just right — my guy doesn’t want to come anywhere near your place.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘See you there in twenty?’

  ‘See you then.’

  Moia already had a cream brioche in his hand when Scamarcio walked in. He noticed another lined up and ready to go on Moia’s plate. Sitting across from him was a young guy in a grey hooded sports top. He had shoulder-length, curly dark hair, grey-green eyes, and the palest skin Scamarcio had ever seen. It was almost translucent; he could make out a bluey skein of veins beneath. How could anyone live in Rome and be this pale? If they were casting for a new Twilight film, this chap would be a shoo-in for the lead.

  ‘Scamarcio, take a seat,’ said Moia, through a mouthful of pastry. ‘Meet Claudio,’ he said, keeping his piggy eyes on the second brioche as if he was worried Scamarcio was about to swipe it.

  Claudio just managed the faintest of nods. The boy looked exhausted. Well, they’ve been up all night, Scamarcio figured.

  Moia quickly finished the first brioche and wiped his fingers with a paper tissue. ‘Claudio, tell Scamarcio what you know. He’ll be wanting to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.’

  The boy tried to stifle a yawn, but failed. He took a sip from a glass of water, but made no sign of being about to speak.

  ‘You took that video?’ Scamarcio asked, rapidly losing patience.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘When?’

  Several moments of silence followed, and Scamarcio wondered if he’d ever hear the boy’s voice.

  ‘Three months ago now.’ The words barely rose above a whisper.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Out near Tor di Valle.’

  The old racetrack, and soon to be the new Roma training ground. Scamarcio wondered quickly about a connection to the soccer star Aconi, then dismissed it. ‘Why did you film it?’

  The boy closed his eyes and scratched at an eyelid. ‘I owed them money — I was looking for leverage.’

  ‘Who did you owe?’

  ‘It�
�s complicated, but if you’re looking for a simple answer: the Calabrians.’

  ‘The ’ndrangheta, the people who run the card games?’

  The boy nodded, emotionless.

  ‘Why did you think this would give you leverage?’

  ‘The guy they were threatening has a reputation, prestige. I was hoping to use the video to convince him to help me clear my debts.’

  ‘That’s bold.’

  ‘I didn’t have many options.’

  ‘Can I see the film now?’

  The boy pulled a white Samsung from his pocket and clicked the pad a few times before handing the phone across.

  Scamarcio pressed play. A man of average height was pushed up against the fender of a car and was surrounded by a ring of four heavily set thugs. They were all lit by the sodium of the street lamps. When the camera zoomed in, Scamarcio realised that Moia had been right: the cornered man was indeed Micky Proietti. The audio was impossible to decipher, but Scamarcio wondered if someone at the lab could fix that. The camera panned to the right to get a better look at the goons pressuring Proietti, and, as it did so, one of them knocked him to the ground. He fell onto his back and immediately swung his right arm across his face in an attempt to shield himself from blows. Scamarcio watched as the four gorillas started to kick Proietti while he was prone. Proietti jerked and squirmed into a foetal position, but the beating just went on and on. Scamarcio realised with disgust that he was actually enjoying watching this, and it wasn’t because he disliked Proietti. He pressed pause.

  ‘I still don’t understand why you happened to be in the carpark,’ he said, resuming his scrutiny of the deathly pale boy.

  ‘I’d followed them from the card game,’ said Claudio.

  ‘How come you were at the game, if you were in debt to them? Why did they let you keep on playing?’

  ‘It was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’d settled with the Calabrians cos you always settle with them first, but by that point I was in debt to someone else.’