Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1) (21 page)

Time to go. I slipped off the stool and hobbled back down the hall to the lobby. A pale blonde stood at the desk, biting her lip, trouble in her eyes.

“Pescatore,” I said. “I’m checking out.”

“Certainly, sir. May I have your name?”

I paused. Not worth it. “Pescatore.”

“Room number?”

“Executive suite, near the sauna.”

“Thank you.” The blonde leaned at her screen, tapped a few keys.

“Piero.” The voice spooked me. I whirled and found myself staring into Ali Baba’s cold gold smile. At his side stood a man I hadn’t seen before. Close-cropped white hair, a face scraped and furrowed, granite gray eyes.

“Thank you for everything, Piero.” Arturo Bellomo offered his hand. “
Arrivederci
.”

“Sure,” I said. We shook hands. “See you around?”

“You never know.”

I watched them go.

“Mr. Pescatore?”

I turned back to the blonde at the desk. She bent, rummaged around below the counter and handed me a large padded envelope. “For you. It just arrived.”

I flipped the envelope over. A logo and an address in Locarno, a set of initials written beneath it. H.K. Hong Kong? No. Heidi Kirsch. I tore it open, reached in, scanned the pages. Autopsy report, photographs. In color. Gigi. I stared at one. Numb. something wrong. I flipped back to the photograph. A bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

I leaned into the counter to steady myself, stuffed everything back in the envelope and closed it.

The phone rang. The blonde took the call, looked up with a smile for me and said, “Your driver is here, Mr Pescatore.”

Driver? I folded my face into a frown. “Tell him I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

She relayed the message, put down the phone and propped up her smile.

“Mind if I make a couple of calls?”

“Certainly, sir.” She lifted the phone and set it on the counter in front of me. I picked up and dialed Johnny, gave him the rundown of the last few hours. He listened and filled in a few blanks for me. Anastasia, he said, had made it back safely and was working up a story from the files on the card.

“Sounds great,” I said. “I’ll catch up when I get there.”

“Make it soon,” said Johnny. “Maybe Joe can run you up to the station.”

“Terrific,” I said.

I made a couple more calls. Doctor Kirsch wasn't in so I left her a message, hung up and punched in the other number. Anastasia picked up and said, “Story, Peter. You have deadline.”

“Good to hear your voice,” I said. “Thought I’d let you know I survived.”

“Yes,” she said. “Story?”

“I’m working on it.” I hung up, waved goodbye to the blonde and set out for the door. A cop in uniform pulled it open and ushered me out into the cold.

And there he was. Joe. He led me to the taxi and opened the door for me, tramped back around to the driver’s side and thumped in behind the wheel.

“Just as a matter of curiosity—” I said.

He released the brake and pulled away down the pebbled drive. “Tell me.”

“How long have you been a cop?”

He thought about it. “I drive a taxi.”

“But you work for the police.”

“I drive. I keep my eyes open. I listen.” He clamped his mouth shut.

“Right. Take me to the station?”

“Certainly.”

On the way he delivered the latest news. The police had picked up Ungaretti again, who was talking, said Joe, spilling another version of the night Gigi died.
Sarge got the call at three in the morning. Gigi had sounded very upset, said he needed protection and could he borrow the gun. Sarge had grabbed the SIG Sauer, driven to the house, delivered the loaded gun to Gigi and was back at the gate when he heard the shot. He rushed back to the house and into the kitchen. That’s where he found her, found Julia there with Gigi in her arms.

“Any charges? Ungaretti? The English woman?”

“Nothing yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Suicide is not a crime. Not in Switzerland.”

“Not even if Ungaretti helped him?”

“Depends.”

“On what? He delivers a gun, with ammunition, to a desperate man in the middle of the night. The man takes the gun, shoots himself in the head.” I rolled down the window, sucked a breath of cold air. “Sounds more like a plan than help to me.”

Joe shrugged. “It’s not my decision.”

“Right.” I rolled up the window. “Who else is in custody? Tommy O’Sullivan?”

“The Irishman? Yes.” He’d been taken away in a green and white van. “We will ask him some questions.”

We
. The man is a cop. He doesn’t just work for them, he
is
them. “You see the boss man, too?"

A quick nod and a grunt. "Mr. Bellomo was accompanied by a federal agent."

“A Fed? What, American?”

“No, no. Swiss. Somebody from up north. Bern, maybe Zurich. Swiss federal police. From the anti money-laundering squad.”

I made a note to find out who he was. “What about the guy in cowboy boots?”

“Cowboy boots?”

“Big Yank in a suit, a lawyer from Texas.”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Decker. We know who he is.”

“And?”

He clammed up. Not something he was ready to talk about. I closed my eyes. Smoke. Julia.
Damn.
I jammed a hand down between the seat and the backrest, slid it sideways. There. Pack of cigarettes. I snatched it, flipped the lid open, snuck a look. Cigarettes. Tape. I took a breath. Done.

“Thanks, Joe. Keep in touch.”

On board the train I found a seat and scribbled in my head all the way to Milan. I was trying to work out the terms of the deal that saw the briefcase delivered to Billy Bob Decker. The man had made me look like a fool. I closed my eyes. Darth Vader handed me a cap and bells.

And Gigi? I opened my eyes and pulled the report from the brown envelope. I read through it and stared again at the photographs. Single shot in the forehead. Blew his brains out the back of his head. The cover note from Heidi read:
Water in his lungs when he died. Call me when you can.
A cell phone number. Swiss.

My call rolled over to the answering service. I said I’d call back.

An hour or so later I eased myself down from the train to the platform at Milan central station. Thousands of people tramping up and down and none of them there to meet me. I lifted my gaze to a monumental billboard that had skinny kids posing in their underwear. What were they selling? Some sort of sex. Hard to tell what kind. Kiddie porn? My gaze dropped away and fell to the pavement underfoot. Marble mosaics worn smooth down the years. I pushed out through the crowd at the head of the tracks and on down a set of long switchback ramps and out into the night.

Milan. The smell of it. The feel of it. The air heavy with rain and diesel fumes. Blurred light from the old hotels and soaring steel and glass towers looking down on the station. Sirens. Taxis. Rumbling trams.

I hauled myself up on the Number 1 and slumped down onto the hard wooden bench for the long ride home.

I woke to faint light creeping in through the curtains, rolled over and buried my head under a pillow. Friday. A week since the news of Gigi’s death. Three weeks since the last time I'd seen him.
Big money, Pete. You come back to Lugano and we make big money like you never seen.
He'd given me the key to the Villa Sofia and pressed Eva’s earrings into my hand, sent me scuttling back into the past.

I shook off the night and the memories, crawled out of bed and thumped over the bare wood floor to the shower. Twenty minutes later I opened the door, found Red sitting there and a note from Tina on the mat. I said hello and scratched him for a while and then he and I trundled down the stairs, out and up the street. At the corner we turned and ran into the FIAT, still sitting where I'd parked it, a burnt-out wreck. I roped Red to a café chair and pushed in the door to join the usual suspects from the neighborhood. Three or four guys from North Africa sat watching a screen that hung from the ceiling in the corner by the window. An old man sat reading the pink sports rag.

A new face behind the bar. I walked up and introduced myself.

Her name was Amy, she said. “Happy to meet you.”

“Likewise,” I said. “Amy?”

“Chinese name. You are American, yes?”

“How can you tell?”

“I asked.” Another smile and a nod toward the street. “Your car, Mr Pete. I’m so sorry.”

So she knew me already, knew the FIAT was mine. “Did Franco tell you what happened?”

A merchant seaman run aground in Milan, Franco had run the bar for more than twenty years. “What did he tell you?”

“He said you left the car out front of the café. All the time. Not good for business.”

“What?” What the hell was she saying. “So he set it on fire? Franco torched my car?”

A squawk burst from her throat and flapped around the cafe. “No, no, no.”

“Where is he? Where’s Franco?”

“Gone away.” She was shaking her head, put a finger to her lips. “I don’t know where.”

“Fantastic. Bastard sets fire to my car and disappears. Great.”

“I’m sorry. Can I get you something?”

“Coffee.
Corretto
.”

Amy turned and snagged a bottle from the shelf, pulled a shot of coffee from the machine, poured in a splash of
grappa
and set it down in front of me.

I drank and said, “So. The café is yours?”

“Yes. Mine now. Mr Franco gave me a good price.”

“What are you going to call it?”

“I don’t know. Lady from Shanghai.”

“That’s you.”

A big smile and a nod from Amy. She disappeared and came back with a bowl of water for the dog, stepped outside and set it on the asphalt under the chair. Red sniffed and began to lap it up.

I dug out the note from Tina and read it. A friend had run a background check on Bellomo. Born in Palermo just after the war. Mother Sicilian, father nameless but said to be a soldier in the U.S. Army. The child’s name in the registry of births was
Bonasera
,
Antonio
. As a young man he'd sailed for America, to the mother’s family in New Jersey where they came to call him
Tony Bones
. He split his time between New York and the home country, keeping a hand in the family business. In the eighties the eyes of the world had turned to the courtroom bunker in Palermo and the crowd of honorable men behind bars. Tony Bones had thought it wise to disappear. He surfaced again in the nineteen nineties, in Switzerland. A quiet man, he had acquired a high-end hotel in Lugano and a reputation as a patron of the arts. He went by the name of
Bellomo, Arturo
but in time had earned himself a new name and fame as a man of legendary wealth:
Ali Baba
.

A frown crumpled my face. Something about the name was wrong. Ali Baba was an honest man who’d stumbled by chance upon a hoard of treasure hidden away by the Forty Thieves. Who were boiled in oil, so the story goes, by Ali Baba’s wife.

Ali Baba. Last seen settling into a limo with a white-haired Swiss Fed in a suit and a poker-faced driver at the wheel.

I stuffed the note back in a pocket and strode to the cash register. Amy rang up the bill, took a note and handed me the change.

“
Zai jian
,” said Amy. “Bye-bye.”

I waved, turned away and pushed out the door. Red yelped a couple times, dancing backwards, tangling his leash in the legs of the chair. I dropped to a crouch and loosed the knot. Over the road the Number 1 tram stood in the loop at the end of the line, its driver smoking in the road. I grabbed Red by the collar and hauled him to the newsstand, bought a
Corriere della Sera
and
Repubblica
,
Milano Finanza
and the pale yellow pages of
Cronaca Nera Italiana
.

Red and I crossed the road and climbed up on the tram. I sat down and watched him while he sniffed his way around the car, bounded back to me, rounded on himself and settled at my feet.

The driver dropped his cigarette butt in the gutter, hopped up, plopped down behind the controls and shut the doors. The tram shuddered and began to roll. I sat back with the papers, took them one at a time. The
Corriere
headline jumped out at me:
Sicilian Tragedy. 300 Bodies Fished from the Sea.
Refugees. They'd run from guns and gas in the desert to the port of Tripoli, paid a fortune there for a place on a ship to the promised land.
Poor devils jumped when the tub caught fire off the coast of Lampedusa. Men, women, children. Drowned.

Same story, different day. Again and again and again.

There was nothing on Goldoni. Nothing from Lugano about the raid on the hotel. No news of Tommy O or the boys. And nothing on Ali Baba.

I gave up and flipped to sports. FC Inter was up against Rome on Saturday. I frowned and read on. Something. I had a flash of Mario.
Damn
. I’d promised him tickets to the game.

I turned to
Cronaca Nera Italiana
. Like everybody else we had the boat people story all over the front page, but Johnny had plugged in a photo of Gigi and promised a follow-up story soon. My story.

A bell clanged five or six times, followed by a flurry of Milanese curses. Some cretin had left his car on the tracks. The tram driver clanged and kept on cursing and the passengers all sat mumbling until the culprit came scrambling out of a bar, jumped in his car and screeched away. The tram jerked forward and as it rumbled on I sank back into the story.

Gigi Goldoni. I could make a good case he’d been running a laundry up in Lugano for Italians with excess filthy cash. And? He’d died of a gunshot wound to the head, but I still didn't know who'd pulled the trigger. I had photos of the body and a cover note from Heidi K.
Water in the lungs. Call me when you can.

So, what? He was dead when they shot him? Drowned?

Water, water everywhere.

The sauna. The hose. The smell of sulfur in the air. The rag over my mouth. Choking. Drowning. Spitting out whatever they wanted to hear. 

Maybe that was it—maybe they’d choked the man, poured buckets of water down his throat, kicked him in the gut until he puked and left him to drown in the hotel jacuzzi.

The old brick wall slid into view. I jumped up, grabbed the dog and bounded down the aisle to the door. The tram doors slapped open. I clambered down the steps and ran over the road, sat Red at the door and plunged into the café.

“Coffee,” I said. “
Corretto
.” Another shot of
grappa
to calm my nerves.

Ten minutes later I rolled into the haze from Johnny’s
toscani
, set Red loose and hustled down the hall to the hack room. Anastasia was there, hunched over a table with the morning papers and pages from the printer.

“You owe me story.” She didn't look up.

“Good to see you too,” I said. “Is this stuff from the camera?”

“Yeah,“ said Johnny, behind my back. “Mario came in and printed everything out.” He took me by the arm, gave me a hug. “Good to see you, Pete. Good to see you alive.”

“You heard the story.”

“Parts of it. Hear you had a hell of a bobsled ride.” He was laughing.

“Damn near broke my neck. Stazz here spill the beans?”

“No beans," she said. "Johnny talk to Joe.”

I raised a look to the boss. “You could have told me he was a cop,” I said.

“Informer,” said Johnny. “Not a real cop.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “What else do you hear?”

“Stazz put up a story on the site this morning. Swiss police shut down the hotel, seized all the property, made some arrests.”

“That’s right,” I said. “They got Tommy O and the two guys that drowned me.”

“You drowned?”

“Later, Johnny.” I waved it off. “Thing is, Bellomo walked.”

“So I hear,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

“Long story. I’ll write it up.”

“And they took the woman,” said Anastasia. She looked up at me. “English.”

“Julia? They arrested her?”

“Picked her up for questioning. No word yet on charges.” Johnny reached for his Zippo, flicked it and coughed. “Joe said he’d call when he hears something.”

“English,” said Anastasia. “You sleep with her?”

“She was Gigi’s lover, Stazz. Not mine.”

“She chop off his fingers. English love.”

“He was already dead.”

“She did it for you. Love in her eyes when she look at you.”

“I doubt it.”

“I saw it,” she said. “In Davos at the cabin. Desperate.”

“She chopped off his fingers?” Johnny pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “You left that part out, Stazz.”

“Very smart plan of Mr Pescatore. Too bad no success.”

I threw out a hand in her direction. “Your plan, on the other hand—”

“My plan was perfect. I said we talk to Aida.”

“Stazz—”

“What? Aida open the briefcase. Where is it now? You have it? No. So you owe me story.”

“Hey, Johnny?” I said. “Am I missing something? Logic, maybe? Does it make any sense to you, what she just said?”

Johnny puffed and thought about it. “I’ll get us some coffee.” His chair scraped the floor and he lumbered off.

Anastasia tilted her head at me, a faint smile curling her lips.

I reached for a printout. “Where’s Tex?”

“I don’t know. Dallas?” She turned back to the papers in her hand. “Your friend, not mine.”

“Right.” I gave up. “So what you got? Photographs?”

“Files.”

“From the memory card?”

“Yes,” she said. “This is bomb. You need helmet.”

“Great.” I took off my jacket, hung it over a chair and sat down.

She looked up, tapped her finger on a stack of printouts. “Your friend Goldoni has many clients. Many Italians. Famous.” She pushed the papers across the desk.

I dropped my gaze to the page. A chart. Names. Accounts. Amounts. I ran a finger down the list.
Boom
! A big name fashion house from Milan—two hundred million through Gigi’s machine. A racetrack hero and a movie star, a famous surgeon, high-profile lawyers and businessmen. And politicians, what else? Big names. The biggest. National and local party leaders. Talk show regulars, even a priest.

“
Miiinchia,”
I said.

“You can say that again.” Johnny set a cup of coffee beside me. “We’ll go with the list first, get it out on the news.”

“On the site?”

“No, we need to sell papers, so we print first in Rome. Stazz can post the story later.”

Anastasia snorted and shot a hard glare at him. Johnny rolled his eyes.

“What about the Swiss?”

“Nothing on the net,” said Stazz.

“The Swiss will deny it, the Italians will sue us.”

“Not us, Pete. You.” Johnny clapped a hand on my shoulder. “It’s your story, Pescatore. Your documents.”

“Meaning?”

He dropped his gaze to the floor.

“You crapping out on me, Johnny?”

“No way.” Defensive, offended, and refusing to look at me. “It's just—“ He examined the ceiling, studied the cracks. “What if they're fake? We need to be sure.”

“So call Ungaretti. He works at the
Banca del Gran San Bernardo
. He can check the accounts.”

“He’s not answering his phone.” He slumped into a chair beside me, lit his
mezzo toscano
one more time and puffed in silence.

“So where are we, Johnny?”

No answer.

Anastasia looked up from her work. She shrugged and tossed a nod at the smoker. Johnny pushed his glasses up on his forehead, heaved a long sigh that turned into a cough and finally said, “There’s something you should know. Both of you.”