Nighthawks

by Lambert Nagle

  She shook her head.

  ‘Renzo Bianconi is a distinguished officer from our Naples office and he’s going to split his time between there and here to begin with. He’ll be on rotation and will be helping out di Mascio and Connor for now. He reports directly to me. Any questions?’ Elisabetta started to say something, but must have thought better of it.

  Stephen felt it best to keep out of her way for a while so slipped out of the office to double-check all the panel beaters and car body repair workshops in Rome. Not one had repaired or resprayed a white Fiat. He was visiting the last garage on his list, head down, deep in thought.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  He looked up to see Elisabetta was standing beside her car.

  ‘If you insist on going off pursuing leads without talking to me first why did you join the art unit? We’re meant to be a team.’

  Stephen’s gaze was steady.

  ‘Because you’d say no.’

  ‘You’re damn right I would.’ Elisabetta shook her head and sighed. ‘Maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong place,’ she added, with a nonchalant shrug.

  ‘If you know something I don’t,’ Stephen looked straight back at her.

  ‘If the accident happened between Rome and Naples and the driver did a runner, there’s a fifty per cent chance he took it to a garage down south. Somewhere where they don’t ask too many questions.’

  ‘That’s just it. I think I’ve found it. By accident. I just wanted to be sure. Down south as you said. And thanks. I promise I’ll keep you up to speed with what I’m doing from now on.’

  Elisabetta nodded and opened the passenger door of her car.

  ‘Okay. Want a lift?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for the offer,’ Stephen said as he slipped into the passenger seat.

  Elisabetta glanced over at him. ‘I didn’t come here to have a go at you. I wanted to get your advice.’

  Stephen nodded. ‘Hit me with it.’

  ‘It’s here,’ Elisabetta said, reaching into her bag. She handed the letter over, started the engine and drove off. Stephen scanned the contents. It was a letter from the Vatican Museums, politely refusing Elisabetta’s request to take a sample of the Euphronios krater in their possession.

  ‘Why would they say no if they had nothing to hide?’ Stephen said.

  ‘That’s what I thought. I called them, saying that I understood that the krater was extremely delicate. Instead of taking a sample, could I come down and take another look at it? I was put on hold for ten minutes. Then they told me some rubbish that it wasn’t available to view because it was undergoing restoration. Before I had a chance to say anything they’d hung up.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on there do you think?’ Stephen said.

  ‘I don’t know but something’s not right. Someone there knows where that krater came from and when,’ Elisabetta said.

  ‘McCarthy must be keeping secrets. Maybe they made him sign a gagging order?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past them to put a non-disclosure clause in his contract. I spoke to my contact. It turns out McCarthy was fired from his job. He’d been accused of stealing deities from the Vatican. An anonymous whistleblower in the gallery tipped them off. They raided his home and found a dozen figurines that didn’t belong to him.’

  ‘On the face of it that sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?’ Stephen was curious now.

  ‘He wasn’t given the opportunity to explain. He was fired on the spot. Not even allowed to collect his things. And the irony was he was the one who had catalogued the figurines in the first place. Before his time nobody else even knew they existed,’ Elisabetta said.

  ‘But he crossed a line. He took them home. Even if he was planning on returning them.’ Stephen responded.

  ‘He just wanted them to be admired, according to my source who knew him. The pieces they made such a song and dance about went straight back into storage.’

  ‘I’m surprised. I thought you’d be on the side of the law on this one,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Normally I would be, but I think it’s a disproportionate response. It wasn’t even an internal enquiry. They employed a private investigation agency to go after him.’

  ‘That’s the kind of dirty trick that a corporate company would do so they wouldn’t have to pay out any entitlements due,’ Stephen said.

  ‘And you’d only do that if you really wanted to get rid of somebody. My contact thinks there was more to it.’

  ‘The question is why? Could the new management be more compliant than McCarthy was and were prepared to keep quiet about the provenance of some of their recent acquisitions?’

  ‘You don’t mess with the most powerful church in the world,’ Elisabetta warned, locking her gaze with Stephen, who felt at that moment the weight of the task he’d taken on.

  A young mother balanced a briefcase, a bag of shopping and a baby in a buggy in the entranceway of an apartment block. Struggling with the key to the mailbox which refused to budge, she gave it a firm tap and across the floor spilled a pile of bills addressed to Giulia and Renzo Bianconi.

  A neighbour clearing her own letter box reached down to help.

  ‘Thank you so much. I have butterfingers today,’ Giulia said, her face flushed with embarrassment. As if on cue, her baby girl made a cooing sound. The older woman’s face lit up.

  ‘You’re blessed,’ she said, before turning abruptly and disappearing up the stairs. As the sound of her footsteps receded, Giulia shuffled the letters and tore open a bank statement addressed to the joint account holders. At the sight of the words “rent arrears” and “eviction,” she became agitated, clumsily shoving all the letters into her briefcase. She pressed the lift call button. The baby started to cry.

  The buggy took up all the space in the tiny, cramped hallway. There were shelves crammed into every horizontal surface. On the back of the front door hung a makeshift coat rack, laden with scarves and bags. Although it was tidy enough, the one-bedroom apartment was bursting at the seams. The tiny kitchen had no more than two feet of bench space. The mother put her baby, who was fractious and tired, into her high-chair.

  ‘There, there, dinner’s coming right up,’ she said, as she took a labelled plastic container from the fridge-freezer and popped it into the microwave to defrost. The baby was impatient, thumping her chubby fists onto the tray table.

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. The woman got up and opened it and before she could say anything a legal document was thrust into her hand.

  ‘Giulia Bianconi?’

  ‘What the?’

  The man’s foot wedged itself between the door and the door frame. Giulia, desperate to keep him out, stamped on the intruder's foot. He swore loudly and squirmed, but kept his foot firmly in place. The baby wailed in loud sobs. Giulia gave one last shove, but then seemed to crumple under the pressure, as though the fight wasn't worth it. She hurried away to her baby. The bailiff stepped inside the apartment, his two accomplices following behind him, one of whom nearly tripped over the buggy.

  Giulia spooned food into her baby’s mouth, her hands shaking. She started to sing in a sweet voice to try to comfort her child.

  ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.’

  She interrupted her song.

  ‘You can take the TV and the sound system but leave me the fridge and microwave. Otherwise, I won’t be able to feed my baby.’ The man stared at her.

  ‘You should have thought of that before you racked up all these debts,’ the bailiff said. ‘I’m just doing my job.’ Ten minutes was all it took to clear the apartment.

  ‘That sofa you're sitting on. Has it got a fire safety label attached to it?’

  Giulia got up and looked underneath.

  ‘I think so. Yes, there it is. We’re very safety conscious because of the baby.’

  ‘Good,’ the bailiff said. ‘We’ll have that as well. Move your stuff, will you? I haven't got all day. I’m double-parked. And ta
lking of cars, hand over your keys. Where’s it parked?’

  ‘What car? It was stolen, involved in an accident and written off. If you don’t believe me, ask my husband when he comes back.’

  ‘I don’t have time for that today. He can call this number,’ the bailiff said, handing Giulia a business card. ‘Unless you can prove that it’s a write-off, we’re still going to chase you for it.’

  By the time the men left, Giulia and her baby were sitting on the bare floor. She got up and looked around at the emptied flat. They had left her a mattress, clothes, the buggy and the baby’s cot. She started to cry. Just then the key turned in the lock and Renzo, who was drunk, lurched forward.

  ‘What have you done?’ Giulia whispered. ‘Please don’t wake her. You owe me that at least.’

  He looked away.

  ‘I’ve texted Mamma, and she said to bring the baby over straight after work tomorrow,’ Giulia said.

  ‘I’ll find the money somehow, pay everything back. Then we can make a fresh start.’

  ‘I can’t do this anymore, Renzo.’

  ‘I just got a new job, that’s why I was out celebrating.’

  ‘I’m happy for you. But in the meantime, where are me and Ava supposed to sleep?’ Giulia passed Renzo the bailiff’s business card. ‘How about sorting this one out? He’s going to chase you for the money owed on the car.’

  Renzo stared at the card, then shoved it in his pocket.

  ‘It’s more of a promotion. To the carabinieri in Rome, working with the art unit. When you add up the extra allowances, my take-home pay will be up twenty per cent,’ Renzo said.

  ‘Seriously? You were going to take a job in Rome without asking me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you in case I didn’t get it. I’m doing it for us. And Ava.’

  ‘There’s six months left on the lease. We can’t afford to give our notice. And how are we going to find a comparable place in Rome. Apartments are twice the price. Then there’s the cost of living.’

  ‘They’ll cover the moving expenses and any other relocation fees. As soon as I get the first month’s salary, I can start to pay back everything we owe.’

  ‘Renzo, that’s what you always say. And I bet, before you’ve had a few drinks you mean it,’ Giulia said, shaking her head. ‘But the thing is, Rome has slot machines and every other temptation under the sun for people like you.’

  ‘You’ll be safe at your parents, so I don’t have to worry about you, and I’ll be up there sending as much money back as I can.’

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That you’ll get counselling for your gambling habit.’

  Renzo paced around the room, like a caged tiger in a small enclosure.

  ‘I promise,’ he said without conviction.

  ‘Or I’ll call it quits,’ Guilia said, staring straight at him. Renzo let out a barely perceptible sigh.

  Michael McCarthy stood on his balcony looking out onto the square below, turning a bronze figurine over and over in his hand. It was a Lars Familiaris, no more than six inches high, similar to the one in the photograph Stephen had asked him to identify. In a museum it would be dwarfed by bigger and flashier sculptures and earn no more than a cursory glance from a passerby.

  But this tiny bronze statue of a male dancer, standing en pointe, holding a bowl in his left hand and a drinking horn in his right, was the reason he stood there today, his whole life flashing by before him. It was an odd sensation when he wasn’t the one who was dying. Or not yet.

  When he’d been a humble priest back in Boston, almost forty years ago now, a black stretch limo would pull up outside his church in Allston every Sunday at precisely five to ten. Out would spill the entire Russo entourage, who piled into the church and occupied the front three pews. Nobody else would dare to sit there. Giuseppe Russo was a well-known mafia boss with a large family and just as many hangers-on. They ruled the neighbourhood with baseball bats and guns as well as patronage and favours. They were hard people to say no to.

  One day after mass, Giuseppe himself had cornered him.

  ‘In your sermons, you talk about how painters in Italy featured Jesus in every single painting. I take it you like art, right?’

  It had seemed a straightforward enough question. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You like art because you know how to look at it. Me? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing. I know jack shit about paintings, begging your forgiveness, Father. I was kicked out of school at fifteen. But Maria, my wife, she wants me to fill the house with beautiful artworks. I want you on the payroll as my art advisor.’

  McCarthy had been offered an opportunity to show someone who dealt in death that art was transformative. If he could give a mafia boss a conscience it would be worth it, he reckoned.

  ‘What are you interested in?’ he’d asked

  ‘Old stuff in churches. Like they have everywhere in Italy.’

  ‘We could make a start right here. There’s plenty to see in Boston. Then New York…’

  Giuseppe gave a little chuckle. ‘So I persuaded you,’ he’d said.

  The patriarch had found his weak spot and exploited it ever since. How stupid he’d been not to realise, until now, that he’d sold himself for thirty pieces of silver and that there was no going back.

  In the square below, a taxi hooted its horn. McCarthy snapped out of his reverie, hurrying inside his apartment and hastily locking the balcony doors behind him.

  Chapter 10

  Boston, USA

  * * *

  Michael McCarthy tiptoed into the bedroom where Giuseppe Russo, or the shell of him, was propped up at an angle on an improvised hospital bed. His mouth and nose were covered by a transparent plastic mask attached to various tubes, which wound across his body towards a ventilator. The only sound, the rhythmic hiss of the machine. A nurse, dressed in grey scrubs, was monitoring the old man’s vital signs.

  McCarthy took the old man’s hand in his and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Are you ready, Signor Russo?’

  Giuseppe’s eyelids flew up and down.

  ‘Do you want me to write down your confession?’

  ‘Not if you can hear me,’ Giuseppe said, his voice hoarse and barely audible.

  ‘I can hear you fine. May we have a few minutes alone together?’ McCarthy asked, turning to the nurse. ‘I’ll call you if anything on the monitor changes.’

  ‘As you wish,’ she said, looking at her patient. ‘I’ll be right outside.’

  Once she’d closed the door behind her with a little click, Giuseppe indicated that McCarthy should come closer. He shuffled forward until his ear was an inch from the plastic mask.

  ‘Don’t write anything,’ Giuseppe whispered. ‘Bugs. Cameras.’

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘My loving son. I had to pay off his lipreader.’ The old man wheezed painfully.

  McCarthy was on the point of calling the nurse back when he realised it was laughter.

  ‘Now, to business.’

  McCarthy understood the old man’s impatience. A personality as big as a house striving to flee his frail and failing body. McCarthy stood, hung the purple stole around his neck, put on the biretta, and opened the little travel case, all neatly packed for the last rites to speed the deserving soul to heaven. Moving deftly, he spread a small white cloth on the nightstand, placed two candles on it and lit them, put the crucifix between them, and a glass he filled with holy water. Dipping the head of the little aspergillum into it, he sprinkled the bed, muttering the familiar prayers and finally asked,

  ‘Do you wish to confess your sins?’

  ‘I do, Father. Closer.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I’ve ordered many killings in my time. Sometimes of rivals. Sometimes not. These guys. Nearly all of them had families.’

  McCarthy had heard all this before.

  ‘But that’s nothing compared with the ones who died from d
rugs. They were only kids, Father and I killed them. God won’t forgive me for that will he?’

  A bead of sweat pricked the back of McCarthy’s neck, part the strain of bending, part the sensation that he and Giuseppe were being watched and listened to by someone hardly feet away from the bed.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Giuseppe was suddenly speaking louder and more urgently. His eyes were feverish. McCarthy held his hand as he went on.

  ‘You must do what you believe is right. It’s not too late.’

  ‘I’m sorry Father, it is for me.’ Giuseppe shook his head. ‘That’s why I need your help,’ he whispered.

  McCarthy’s job was to give absolution, to shepherd his parishioner into the next world. It was hardly the moment to ask what it was that so troubled Giuseppe that he could do no more than make an oblique reference to it.

  ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘I have something for you. Over there.’ A skeletal finger pointed to a chair, where a large plastic bag with an oblong object inside it, was propped up. McCarthy walked over and peered in. It was a painting, depicting the story of St Jerome and the lion, a favourite of Renaissance artists. ‘It’s from an artist’s workshop. No attribution. Needs cleaning. All the paperwork you need to take it out of the country is there.’ Giuseppe stopped mid-sentence and chuckled. Or at least made an attempt. ‘Hey Father, I bet you didn’t even think I knew words like attribution or artist’s workshop, did you? That’s all thanks to you.’

  McCarthy squeezed Giuseppe’s hand.

  ‘You were a quick learner.’

  Giuseppe looked directly at the priest. ‘Be careful when you turn it over and remove the frame.’

  If there was one thing McCarthy had taught the old man, it was that the back of a painting could tell you its entire life story—it was where galleries and exhibitors placed their stamps; owners put their waxed seals and signatures, all clues to a picture’s provenance, providing you could decipher their coded messages.

  As they made eye contact, the Monsignor nodded. ‘You are too generous.’ And then, the old man passed him a note. McCarthy could make out a name: Restauratori di Belle Arti and an address, just outside the centre of Rome.