Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1) (6 page)

Sarge held up a fist, jammed out a forefinger and a thumb, raised the barrel to his temple.

“Now,” I said.

Sarge pulled the trigger, pulled himself up out of the chair. A faint smile flickered and he was gone.

Not bad, Sarge. Too bad you got the timing wrong. You left out too many years.  

I finished off the wine and when the fire was dead I climbed the stairs. In the old room down at the end of the hall I crept across the hard wood floor, pulled off my clothes and climbed into bed. In the darkness I drifted into the past, sank with Eva to the bottom of the lake. I was trapped there with her, fighting for air when I heard her voice, whispering, shaking me, waking me up. “Pete, Pete. You won’t believe it.”

I rolled over, forced my eyes open and looked up at her. Anastasia. “What?”

“I’m in love.” She giggled.

“I don’t believe it.” I sat up. She was looking a little worse for wear.

“See?” She laughed. “I get your attention.”

I threw back the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face and shook the lake from my brain. When I came back out she was sitting on the bed, Billy Bob’s briefcase on her knees.

I sat down beside her, sent a hand to her chin, lifted it and looked into her eyes. “Sweetheart. Darling. Tell me no lies.”

She nodded. “I never lie, Pete. I can’t help it.”

“I won’t ask how you got this.” I lowered my gaze to the leather case.

“Good. I have it now. Are you happy?”

“Where is Billy Bob?”

“Asleep.”

“What happens when he wakes up?”

“Billy?” She pressed a handkerchief to her lips. “He won’t remember.”

“Was there something to remember?”

“You ask many questions.” She stood. “He is drunk. Very drunk.”

“Good. I’ll tell him I locked it in the Merc for safekeeping.” I reached for the briefcase.

She slapped her hands on it, shook her head. “You promised me dinner.”

“You were late.”

“Yes,” she said, lifting a hand to cover a yawn. “And I must tell you something. From Johnny.”

“What is it?”

“Something about autopsy.” She lay back on the bed.

“What about it?”

“I forget.”

She got up, slipped out of her clothes and climbed in under the sheets. I tucked her in, kissed her goodnight and turned back to the briefcase.

She slept for three or four hours but it was early still when I woke her. She moaned, climbed out of bed and wrapped herself in a sheet. I sat on a chair by the door and let her shower and dress in silence.

“You are quiet this morning, Peter.” She tilted her head. “Something is wrong?”

I pointed to the briefcase on the dresser.

She looked at it, then back at me. “What is problem?”

“It’s locked.”

She took a long, slow breath. “This is surprise?”

“It’s a very strange lock,” I said. I reached for the case and pulled it onto my lap. There was a little glass plate about the size of a stamp hidden under the grip. Shiny brass snaps but no place for a key. No visible hinges. “It won’t open.”

“So, Mr Pescatore.” Her voice had sunk into the tundra. “How would you like to die?”

“Quickly,” I said. “And—“

Her eyes froze over. “Yes?” 

“I don’t do pain.”

She took the case from my hands and walked out.

“Stazz—“

I let her go. Down below a door slammed. A moment later a car door thumped shut and the old diesel engine coughed and kicked in. I stepped out onto the balcony just in time to see the Shark slip away.    

Still and gray in the morning light, the lake was a mirror of the leaden sky. I took a deep breath. Something in the air drifting in off the water, like the smell of iron before a thunderstorm. A story.

Gigi Goldoni owed people money. Like Billy Bob said, somebody owes you, you don’t just show up and shoot him. You talk to him. You negotiate. He makes a token payment to show good faith, and you wait. What else can you do? You’re hoping luck will come his way and he’ll pay you what he owes. Then maybe one day you get tired of waiting. You decide it’s time to do something about it.

Maybe that’s what happened. There were plenty of suckers stuck with shares even Gigi couldn’t sell. I remembered a few of them, from a shareholder meeting at the Villa one night. And the names? There was a library somewhere in Lugano. Maybe they had a file, a clipping from the good old days that could help me put names to the faces.

I trundled down the stairs and found Renata in the kitchen. She had thrown on a bathrobe but hadn’t stopped to look in a mirror. She was feeding her children, the baby girl in a high chair, applesauce all over her face. The boy, a little older, sat on the floor, playing with little yellow bricks, building walls. She had a family now. Must have got started right after I left.

I dropped to a crouch beside the boy. “What are you building?”

“Castle,” he said. I picked up a brick. He grabbed it from my hand.

“Pete,” said Renata. She didn’t look up. “You must forget what I said.”

I stood up, stooped and leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. A bruise had blossomed around an eye and closed it. I blew a hard breath. “Bastard.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t say anything. Just go. Go home, Pete. Leave us alone.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

“Good.” She raised her sore eyes and looked into mine. “Promise me, Pete.”

I nodded and raised a finger to my lips. I would not say a word.

“Sarge around?”

She shook her head. “He left early.” She wiped a soft rag across her daughter’s mouth. The boy stuck a finger in his nose and cackled. Renata pulled the finger out and lifted the little girl into her arms.

“Did he say where he was going?”

She shot a look at me. “No.”

“You can’t let him slap you around, Renata.”

She nodded. The look in her eyes said she knew that already but hadn’t found a way to make him stop. “I made coffee.”

There were ways to put an end to that kind of thing. Renata was smart. She would find a way. Maybe she already had.

Sarge’s mother appeared, took over the kids and carried them away. Renata followed and came back with coffee, poured it and slipped quietly into a chair. “What do you want?”

“I’m chasing a story,” I said, and leaned across the table to look into her eyes. Dark eyes, shot with pain. “I always knew Sarge did Gigi’s books,” I said, “but last night the
grappa
in him talked and he told me how it worked. Cash for shares, shares for cash.”

Her eyes flared wide. “What took you so long?”

“I’m slow,” I said. “But I need some names. Investors.”

“I can’t give you any names.”

“How much did Gigi owe you?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor.

“You think Sarge had something to do with it?”

She knew what I meant. The fear again. “Please, Pete. Just go home. Leave us alone.”

“Who was it, Renata?”

She stood up, shivering, shaking her head. “Please, that’s all I know.” She pressed her lips together. “He frightens me.”

“Sarge? Or somebody else?”

“Go home.”

I bent to kiss her cheek. She pulled away. “The children, Pete. They’re not stupid. They see everything. And they talk.”

“So do I.”

She didn’t answer. I leaned in again and kissed her bruise, straightened up and said, “I’ll come by later to pick up my things.” I walked away to the door.

“Don’t,” she moaned. “Don’t come back.”

I shut the door behind me. 

Billy Bob’s maroon Merc took me back up the lakefront road to Lugano. It wasn’t a long drive and traffic was light. Across the lake the casino sat like a tombstone, damp and cold. I felt the night come back, a memory of me and Gigi at the roulette wheel. He had a system, he said.
Forget the numbers, you just play the colors, black calls black, red calls red, and you double your bet each time you lose. If zero comes up after black, you bet on red and vice versa.
He showed me, stood by my side while I made a few bets. Then I made a mistake and was just about to double the bet when his hand flew out and he grabbed my wrist and said
Stop. Now. Walk away from the table.

Maybe that’s what he did. Played and lost and lost again and decided to walk away from it all.

Birdcall. The whippoorwill. I flicked a look at the screen and punched a button. “Hey, Stazz. What’s up?”

“I had heart attack at border.” Her voice was still a few degrees below zero.

“What, they stop you?”

“No. I took the road to border but guards were searching cars. I turn back to Lugano.”

“What you do with the briefcase?”

“Don’t worry. Safe.”

“Sure, baby, but where is it? We need to open it.”

“Call me when you have good plan.” She hung up.

Ten minutes later I heard the bird again. I took the call but had to slam the phone down and grab the wheel as the Merc took the curve a little too fast. 

“Pete?” Anastasia, calling out to me. She called again, louder. “Pete? Are you there?”

I picked up. “Sorry. I’m in the car.”

“Johnny wants to talk.”

“Johnny can wait. Got a question for you.”

“Hang.” She put me on hold. Johnny’s kid Mario had programmed the music. Industrial noise with a stuttering beat, guaranteed to drive me crazy. I set the phone on the seat beside me and drifted off into plans for the day. 

A few minutes later I heard her yelling and snatched the phone from the seat. “Sorry, Stazz. You ready?”

“At your service, Mr. Pescatore.”

“Get on the net and do a search for Gigi Goldoni, his investors. And while you’re at it, see if you can find out who owns the casino, the one in Campione.”

“Campione.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Campione own the casino. It is not private.”

“Oh. OK, so forget it.” A Porsche whizzed past, crowding the center line. I jammed a hand on the horn. “Another thing.”

“Pete! Are you all right? What happen?”

“Nothing, Stazz. I’m fine. Listen, what kind of handguns the Swiss army use?”

“SIG Sauer P220 series, 9 millimeter.”

“That was fast.”

“Johnny talked to Switzerland.”

“Yeah? So do me a favor, tell Johnny you got America on the line.”

I heard mumbling in the background before he came on and said hello with a cough. When the hacking was done he said, “I got a couple things.”

“SIG Sauer, by any chance?”

“For example. That’s what killed your friend Goldoni. Swiss crime scene guys are on it. Matter of time before they trace it.”

“Registered owner is a man named Sergio Ungaretti. Goldoni’s accountant.”

“You know that for sure?”

“He told me and the cops he lost track of it. But I hear Gigi owed him a boatload of money.”

“You think—“

“The bean-counter did it? No clue, Johnny. And it’s too soon to guess.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line while he chewed on a cigar, lit up and wheezed.

“What else you got, boss?”

“I hear the doc’s heading up to the lab this weekend. For the autopsy.”

“What, the guy from Varese?” I slowed for another curve and swerved as an Alfa Romeo flew by. “Already?”

“It’s the same guy they called to the scene when they found him and he already said it was suicide. If it comes back official, the cops drop the case and your friend's six feet under.” Johnny coughed again.

“So, what, you killing the story?”

“Hell no, Pete. It’s just—we need a good angle and we don’t have much time.” He broke for another cough and came back with instructions. “If I’m right, you need to go to the funeral. See who shows up.”

“Right. Hang on. Stoplights.” I slowed to a stop at the lights and sat staring out at the lake. Choppy. A wind in from the east. The lights changed and I picked up the phone again as the Hotel Royale flowed by on the left. “Hey, Johnny? You got the Shark back, right?”

“Yeah, but what’s with the bolshie? She’s been spitting fire all morning.”

“How should I know?” I thought about it. “Maybe she woke up in the wrong bed.”

I hung up and swung around the corner and up into the parking garage, let the Merc roll down the spiral ramp and wheeled around into an empty slot. Then I popped the trunk, pocketed the keys and climbed the stairs back up to the world.

Twenty minutes later I walked in the door of the public library. Stairs took me up to a cool, well-lit room where they kept old copies of the local papers.

“They will all be on the internet soon,” said a woman at the counter. White hair, blue-gray suit, a stone dragon crumbling into dust. “In a year or two we will close.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “And what will you do with all this?” I swept an arm around the room, taking in her universe and everything in it.

A hand flew up to her lips. “Shshshsh!” In a whisper she added, “How may I help you?”

I leaned toward her and whispered back, “I’m a gourmet chef and I need to go through the
Corriere
, the local food section. I’m told there are wonderful local recipes that make good use of
sbrinz.
”

The librarian nodded, warily.

“Risotto, for instance,“ I said, pushing on. “Quiche, cheeseburgers, that sort of thing. Is there an index? Otherwise, you know, it takes forever to find what you need.”

The woman looked over her spectacles at me. I could hear her bullshit radar beeping and saw the little blue lights flashing in her eyes. “Follow me.”

She pressed her lips into a thin smile, turned and walked off. I trailed her over brown linoleum into a room filled with gray metal filing cabinets and two or three tables with microfilm readers. They had the
Corriere del Ticino
going all the way back to the nineteen forties. Far enough, I figured.

I worked through the index until I found the name of the company Gigi rode to an IPO. I wrote down the reference and spooled through the films. There—a photograph. Gigi in the middle, Billy Bob on his left, Tommy O’Sullivan on his right. With them stood the kid who had founded the company, bald and happy. They were standing outside the NASDAQ exchange. Tommy had a bottle of champagne in his fist and was grinning like an idiot, drunk with riches. And there, just behind Gigi and the kid, stood a man who looked like Dr. Zhivago. Silver hair greased and plastered back from his forehead, dark glasses, square jaw.

It was him, and I knew him. He was one of Gigi’s big-shot investors and had come to a meeting at the Villa Sofia. We’d poured millions into high-flying start-ups, and it was my job to serve up the party line. Zhivago asked what each one was worth and what I thought their chances were, so I said we had a few nags on the track, but the others were true blue thoroughbreds,
bound for glory, every one
.

He looked right through me. I wasn’t lying, not exactly, but Zhivago was a gambler and he knew the odds. He just smiled and turned away. It was the smile that got to me. There was no trace of warmth or amusement, just a row of bad teeth and a flash of gold.

I surfaced from the past and spent another hour with the microfilm. I found a clip I hadn’t seen, a puff piece on the start-ups in Gigi’s portfolio. And Gigi himself.
Lugano’s leading business angel
. A brief note stated he’d been named a director of
PharLap Properties, Vanuatu
. Where the hell was that? I made a note of the name, turned off the viewer and found my own way out.

Sarge’s line was busy so I picked up a paper and stopped for coffee at the pizzeria down the street from his office. The barman saw me and said, “
Corretto
?”

I nodded and climbed up on a stool. He turned to the espresso machine and reached for a bottle on the shelf above him. I thumbed a text to Anastasia, put down the phone and opened the paper. Gigi had drifted off the front page in favor of a story about the big Swiss banks caught up in a battle to keep their secrets safe. The waiter set the coffee on the bar in front of me, slid me the sugar and the bottle of grappa.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you cook?”

“I work the bar.”

“At home, I mean. Do you cook for yourself, for your friends. Your girlfriend.”

“Once in a while.” He didn’t seem to mind me nosing around. “Why?”

“I need a recipe for
sbrinz
.”