Hunting Truffles

by Dick Rosano

  With Tomaso bowing backward toward the door, the others followed suit, never once lowering their hands, and repeating apologies for disturbing the policeman. When they worked their way back into the office, Tomaso looked at Francesco, who merely offered a nod of success, and the four walked out to the truck.

  “He'll never report that to Mussino,” said Tomaso confidently. “He's too confused to sort it out.”

  Paolo, whose love of baseball made him a fan of the legendary routine of comedians Abbott and Costello, “Who's on First,” couldn't help but smile at how easy it was to wreak havoc with someone's ability to reason.

  They boarded the truck and sped away, but went only a safe distance before Tomaso pulled onto the grassy shoulder to watch what Francesco was doing. Paolo and Stefano craned their necks from the back of the truck to watch also.

  Francesco tapped the keyboard of Alfonso's laptop and the program sprang into action. He keyed in Alfonso's cell phone, crossing his fingers that the person who stole it had the phone on. GPS tracking could work without activating the phone, but that way was easier and faster.

  After a few minutes, the results displayed on the screen. It was a small town west of Torino, called Bordanecchia, about one hour's drive from their current location.

  “I'll take the A21 around Torino,” said Tomaso, “then head west on A32.”

  “Sure, that tracks the location of the phone. I'll keep this tuned in so we can use the GPS to zero in on the phone,” added Francesco.

  “Aren't you forgetting something?” came Paolo's voice from the back of the truck.

  Francesco and Tomaso looked at each other for the answer.

  “He's right,” injected Stefano. “There are three ladies back in Alba who won't be happy about being left out of this.”

  Tomaso wanted to object, that this was no adventure for women, but he knew Stefano was right. Francesco placed a quick call to Nicki and told them where to meet the men. Lucia offered her car since she was the only local, and the women quickly drove to the meeting point.

  On their way through Alba before heading west, the men swung off the road and waved as they passed Lucia's car. It roared to life and screeched onto the roadway as Lucia showed that Italian women could handle a car just as well as the men.

  “Hmmm,” Stefano muttered from the back of the truck. And, looking at Paolo bumping along next to him on the metal flatbed, he added, “You've got a lot of woman to manage there!”

  Chapter 57

  Bordanecchia

  They made it to Bordanecchia in little over an hour, a distance covered faster than the advisable speeds on the internet. As Francesco zoomed in on the map to get better detail on the exact location of the phone, Tomaso slowed the truck and listened for instructions. Lucia backed off on her speed too, but seemed restless to cover more ground.

  “Here,” then Francesco paused, and pointed, “no, turn left,” each word spoken with great concentration. They had departed the paved roads and were now winding down dirt trails that were only slightly rutted from automobile tires. The trees closed in on both sides of the truck and blocked the last rays of light from the setting sun. Everyone seemed to sense the same thing, that unless they found that phone soon, it would be too dark to finish this tonight. They also knew that the battery on Alfonso's phone might soon give out and they, too, would be left in the dark.

  “Piano, piano,” Francesco said, “Slowly, slowly,” holding up his left hand as if to signal his meaning to Tomaso.

  Suddenly, Tomaso slammed on the brakes and Lucia nearly ran into the truck. Francesco had been staring at the computer screen on his lap and, with his head bowed, almost flew forward into the windshield. He looked first at his father, then ahead.

  Tomaso's headlights illuminated a circle of trucks, tents, and wagons gathered in a clearing in the woods. There was a fire burning in the middle and a number of people standing or sitting around it. The unexpected approach of the truck and car drew these people's attention, a small crowd that didn't expect to be disturbed in their campsite.

  The men stepped out of the truck and the women left their car to join them. The people around the fire remained at attention, but three broke free to see who their visitors were.

  “They're Zingari,” whispered Lucia. “Gypsies. There are a few tribes like this in northern Italy. I've heard of them but I never travel this far from the city, so I've never met any.”

  Zingari are members of a loose diaspora called Romani, gypsies who live outside the populated areas of many countries, mostly in Europe, and about whom many stories are told.

  “Are they dangerous?” asked Paolo. He was intrigued but also a bit put off. There were no Zingari in Tuscany and this reminder brought on pangs of homesickness, as Paolo suddenly longed for the quiet agrarian life of Sinalunga.

  “No, they're not dangerous,” Lucia assured him. “But many dark stories are told of their lifestyle.”

  “None true,” added Tomaso. He had spent a long life in northern Italy and, unlike young Lucia, Tomaso had had the opportunity to meet many Zingari in the past. Some he counted as decent folks, some even friends, although the Zingari never wanted to spend enough time around a city to actually maintain friendships with mainstream people.

  Two men and a woman approached them. Without offering his hand, the first one spoke in guarded tones.

  “Why have you come into our home?”

  “We are looking for something,” Tomaso said. As the oldest of the group, he felt it best to take charge.

  “And what are you looking for?”

  Tomaso introduced himself and the others. He briefly summarized the events of the last few days, leaving out the part about Alfonso's death. He correctly assumed that bringing the subject of murder into this conversation would shut down the exchange.

  “So,” said the Zingari, “you've come to find your truffles?” He and his companions laughed at the ridiculous comment.

  “No,” said Tomaso evenly. “We've come because we are looking for a friend's cell phone. Because it was taken from him and we believe that, where the cell phone is, the truffles might be found.”

  The Zingari looked at Tomaso with a more studied look.

  “You think we stole something?” It was a charge often leveled at Zingari, people who were frequently blamed by civilians and government officials for anything they couldn't otherwise explain.

  “No,” Tomaso said, looking for the right words. “But maybe you found something,” he added, never wavering in his eye contact with the Zingari.

  Finally, the Zingari offered his hand.

  “I am Pongo. This is Calvi,” indicating the man next to him, “and she is Marita. We have stolen nothing, but we did find this,” and he pulled Alfonso's cell phone from his pocket.

  With that gesture, Dolce bounded up to the man and sniffed his hand. Zingari don't keep dogs but are not afraid of them either. So Pongo didn't flinch, but wondered what the dog was smelling.

  “Could I see that?” asked Francesco, reaching for the phone. He took it from Pongo while Dolce continued his inspection. With a soft “ruff,” and a nod of his head, Dolce communicated to Tomaso that he smelled truffles.

  “What's he doing?” asked Marita about the dog's behavior.

  Tomaso wanted to smile, but restrained himself. “He smells truffles. He is un cano da tartufo.”

  Pongo relaxed a bit and decided to speak openly. He said that he and his friends helped a woman move a truck that, apparently, was broken down on the crest of a hill not far from their camp. Yes, the truck might have been holding truffles, he admitted. She had come to them on Sunday, two days ago, said she needed to have her truck fixed and would they be able to do that. She offered 100 euros just to bring her truck down the mountain.

  Calvi added that the woman was not from this region and they didn't think she had any friends in Alba or elsewhere in Piedmont. It was clear that she wanted their help because she didn't want anyone in the local towns to know her or what she
was doing.

  Marita said that the woman was not at all friendly, but the Zingari were ready to help her for a fee. She didn't have to explain, but Tomaso knew that these tribes made their living not by stealing from other Italians, but by earning money on the margins of society. Driving a truck a few hours would be a simple and incidental way of picking up some extra euros.

  As they exchanged details, the Zingari said the woman told them where to meet her, deep in the woods off a main road in Piedmont. She was there at the appointed time, where Calvi and Marita quickly figured out that one of distributor wires on her truck had burned out. They replaced it with some wire they had in their own car, and Calvi took the wheel while Marita drove her car back down the mountain.

  “Then,” Marita continued, “the woman said since she had driven her own car to this place she couldn't drive both her car and the truck.”

  “Right,” said Lucia, “she drove to the broken down truck to meet you. She had her own car.

  “So I drove the truck,” said Calvi, “and in tandem we drove around Alba, past Torino, and gathered up at Bordanecchia.”

  “We left the truck where she instructed and we climbed into Marita's car and returned to our camp.”

  The Zingari said they didn't know the woman's name.

  “How is it you still have the phone?” asked Paolo.

  “That was part of our fee,” responded Pongo.

  “And what about the truffles?” asked Lucia.

  “Do we look like great chefs?” asked Marita. “What would we do with those?”

  Pongo offered a bit more detail. “She asked how she could get back to A32, the highway that heads across the border into France.”

  Tomaso and the others looked at each other.

  “She's taking the truffles into France?” It was more of a question than a statement from Paolo. It certainly seemed that way, but Tomaso was doubtful and laughed at the irony. The French have always boasted that their black Périgord truffles are superior to Alba's white truffle. So why smuggle Italy's finest into a land that is too smug to accept the Tuber magnatum?

  Tomaso thanked Pongo and the others for their time, then waved for his companions to follow him back to the truck.

  Chapter 58

  Passing the Border into France

  “There are no truffles here. That's plain to see,” Tomaso told them.

  “But how do you know?” asked Paolo. “What about searching their trucks?”

  Tomaso looked at his young apprentice with fading pride, but Lucia stepped in to rescue Paolo.

  “Dolce is trained to find truffles. If there was a cache of tartufi at that campsite, he would have been over there in a second.”

  Paolo recognized his mistake, and nodded his head in acquiescence.

  “Let's go,” said Tomaso.

  “Where?” asked Rita.

  “We're going to follow the trail. Up A32 and then we'll let Dolce do the rest.”

  As they boarded their vehicles, Paolo wondered whether this dog could actually sniff out a truckload of truffles from a distance, but he decided to keep quiet rather than risk showing off his ignorance once again.

  Bordanecchia is not far from the French border, and the town of Modane lay straight ahead. With the creation of the European Union and the later establishment of the Schengen treaty to manage customs between the countries, not every road had border controls. This was true of A32, which turned into France's N543 after the border, but not every road was totally outside of control. Everyone in the truck and following car knew that they might be challenged by French officials at any point.

  Tomaso passed over the border and kept his vigilance up. Francesco, with no computer to monitor anymore, surveilled the countryside and tried to pick up signs that Lidia had passed through the area. Neither of them, nor the other men and women trailing behind, had any idea what to look for. Lidia could be hours ahead, or miles away, but they were hoping to get lucky.

  Nightfall had come, but they continued on. Coming around a bend, Tomaso saw a lighted building up ahead on the left of the roadway. A uniformed man stepped into the light cast by a tall lamppost, and indicated for Tomaso to stop the truck.

  Tomaso told the guard that they were tourists, an extended family from Alba, and they wanted to visit Modane for the night. It was late and he asked the guard for hotel suggestions.

  The guard looked skeptical at first, and shone his flashlight into each of the vehicles. After a brief series of questions, he offered some hotel suggestions, admitting that he was a local and, therefore, not used to finding hotels in his home city.

  “We might also want to find some of your famous truffles here,” said Tomaso with a glint in his eye. He hoped this might pry some additional information out of the guard. Tomaso was estimating that this soldier would know little about truffles, and that he wouldn't even know that the Périgord truffles are harvested in spring, not fall. But the ploy was worth a try.

  The guard flinched, just a bit, just enough to telegraph to Tomaso that there was more information to be had here.

  “Have you seen anyone transporting truffles through here?” he asked directly.

  The guard breathed deeply and looked away.

  “Because,” Tomaso said, drawing himself up to his full height and taking on an official air of an authority figure, “if truffles had been transported over the border, anyone who knows of this must notify the authorities.”

  The guard looked at Tomaso but couldn't decide whether he was from the Italian government. Finally, he admitted that a lady had driven a truck through this spot, about two hours earlier, and she had truffles on board. The guard made up some excuse about not understanding that this was illegal – a weak excuse, but an attempt to defend his actions.

  “She couldn't have had much,” he lied, and carefully avoided mentioning that he had accepted a pocketful of the white diamonds in exchange for letting her go.

  After his admission, the guard pleaded with Tomaso not to say anything to the authorities, and he even offered his illicit handful of truffles in payment. But Tomaso signaled no.

  “It's okay. Your information is worth the truffles. Keep them,” he said as he started to drive away.

  Observing all this from the back of the truck, Stefano couldn't restrain his culinary instincts. As the truck began to roll down the road, with the guard still standing with his hands stretched out before him offering the truffles, Stefano called out, “Don't cook them. Just shave them onto pasta.” before the truck was out of earshot.

  As Lucia's car rolled past the guard, Rita shouted out the window, “They're terrific on an omelet, too!”

  A few miles later, Tomaso pulled the truck to a halt and got out. Addressing the men in the back and the women in the following car, he said, “It's late. Night has overtaken us and we're not going to find Lidia this evening. I suggest we drive on to Modane, get some rooms, and begin again tomorrow.”

  All agreed. They were weary and not sure of success at this hour anyway. And suddenly, they all began to feel extremely hungry.

  Chapter 59

  Dinner in Modane

  The guard's hotel suggestions were not overly helpful, but Lucia had a few ideas. When they pulled up to the hotel she recommended and got out, Paolo shot her a glance. Lucia picked up his thought, but with a flip of her eyebrows and a knowing smile, she dismissed him.

  Without bags or clean clothes, they must have been a motley crew checking into the hotel. The clerk scanned the crowd and tried to figure out how many rooms to assign. Even the new guests seemed confused at first.

  “I know we get one,” said Rita taking the first key offered and pulling Stefano by the hand toward the steps.

  Nicki reached for the second key, but stepped forward before Francesco could read her intentions. She didn't look back as she ascended the steps, leaving Francesco behind, coming to the realization that Nicki was now lost to him.

  Paolo knew that no one in the room was related to him or to Lucia,
but he respected Tomaso and didn't want to insult him. The two men looked at each other for a moment until Lucia settled the matter.

  Reaching for the clerk's next offered key, she took Paolo's hand and nodded to Tomaso, accepting his pardon though it hadn't yet been offered.

  Tomaso shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the clerk, who offered him the last key. Tomaso turned to his wayward son, hooked his thumb in the direction of the stairs and started up. Before leaving the lobby, though, he asked the clerk for restaurant suggestions.

  “It's getting late,” the clerk said, consulting the clock on the wall, “but Le Tagine is very good and it's just around the corner.”

  Waving everyone off to their rooms, Tomaso instructed them to meet back in the lobby in ten minutes. Then, as if suddenly recalling a matter too long forgotten, Tomaso opened the front door to the hotel, whistled, and Dolce bounded in.

  The clerk gulped and blurted out, “But, signore…” to which Tomaso offered only a friendly wave, thanking the man as he and Dolce bounded up the steps before the clerk could intervene.

  Soon reconvened in the lobby, the group waved to the clerk and headed out for a long-awaited meal.

  Le Tagine bridged the gap between simplicity and elegance, as did the choice of menu items. Rita's natural attraction to food drew her into a lengthy analysis of the dishes described, and Stefano's hunger overcame his longing for something Italian, preferably with truffles.

  The wine arrived in a label-less carafe and platters of appetizers followed. Between appreciative bites and Rita's ongoing monologue about the merits of French cooking, there was much discussion about all the recent events. Alfonso's death darkened some of the conversation, as did the lingering concern about violence playing a role in their pursuit, but the excitement of the road, meeting the Zingari, and closing in on the truffles made for avid table talk.

  “The Zingari are good people,” Tomaso said, “but they live on the margins of society. It's no wonder they got involved with something like this.”