“You have had two phone calls, ‘urgent,’ it says.”
“Did they leave a name?”
She looked at the note. “They will call again at four o’clock.”
Above the desk, clocks displayed the time in a dozen cities from New York to Tokyo. When I found the one that said “Bologna,” it showed five minutes to four. As I entered the room, the phone rang and I picked it up.
“It’s Brother Angelo,” said the voice.
“Y
OU HAVE GOT ONE HELL
of a nerve!” I yelled angrily.
“Don’t hang up—”
“Why should I listen to you? The last time I did, you tried to kill me!”
“No, I didn’t—”
“Does the Vatican know you carry a knife?” I demanded.
“I want to explain—”
“Surely a knife is not standard equipment for Dominican monks, is it?”
“I wasn’t going to use it.” The voice was the same but more hesitant, even nervous.
“Not to kill me maybe but to force me over the parapet. Isn’t that breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments?”
“That was not my intention either. You must listen to me—” The voice went up and, angry as I was, I noticed that the accent on the English words was less noticeable now. There was still that Italian inflection but it sounded different. “I want you to meet me and I’ll explain everything.”
“Meet you! You must think I’m crazy! First, you phone me, tell me you’re a Dominican monk, say you have important information about a murder, ask me to meet you then you try to kill me in two different ways. Neither of them works so now you want to try again!”
“You’ll understand if you’ll only listen to me.” His tone was almost pleading.
“Go ahead then, explain.”
“Not on the phone. It’s too dangerous.”
I couldn’t believe him. “You think this is dangerous? What about cathedrals? What about bell tower platforms and parapets? Now
they
are dangerous!”
“It is much more important to talk now.” There was a slight tremor in his voice.
“Important to who?” I demanded. My grammar always suffers when I am under stress. To me.
“I take back what I said about you thinking I’m crazy! You must be the one who’s crazy! You mean you want me to meet you?
“Yes.”
“When?” I asked, knowing that I had not the least intention of doing any such thing.
“This evening.”
I laughed. “After dark, I suppose?”
“No, about seven.”
“You really are crazy—”
“Anywhere—I’ll meet you anywhere.” His voice quivered slightly. He was certainly a good actor, but I had no desire to play the corpse in one of his melodramas.
“Not in a cathedral,” I said, recalling Thomas à Becket.
“Anywhere,” he repeated.
“Give me one good reason why I should,” I suggested, just digging for clues but still firm about avoiding the murderous Brother Angelo at all costs.
“I can tell you about Pellegrini and the three chefs.”
That stopped me in midbreath.
“What about them?” I asked the question before I could stop myself.
“Not on the telephone, I told you. Where can we meet? Anywhere …”
“All right,” I found myself saying, leaving my better judgment laying there in fragments. “In front of the Questura.”
I heard a swift gasp. “The police headquarters! There are guards in front!”
“I know. They can guard me.”
Silence. That’s stymied him, I thought. He won’t go for that.
“All right,” he said abruptly. “Seven o’clock.”
He hung up. I stood there, looking stupidly at the dead phone in my hand.
In many of the detective stories I’ve read, when the investigator goes to keep a dubious rendezvous with a suspicious character, he shows up very early to look over the area. I was there by five o’clock, standing across the street and studying the Questura building.
Somewhere inside, Captain Cataldo was probably pondering the Pellegrini case, reviewing evidence, and studying forensic reports. I tried to remember the view from his office window. Did it look this way? If he saw me talking to a figure in the robes of a Dominican monk, he’d be down in a flash. It was not likely that the person I was going to meet would be wearing that disguise again, though. Maybe he would be a mailman this time. Instinctively, I looked for mailmen but none were in sight. All I could see were the two guards in front of the building. I didn’t want to be too paranoid but I did watch them for a minute or two. They passed the inspection.
The passersby all looked harmless. Nobody was loitering. No one stood with a face behind a newspaper. A man and a woman got out of a taxi and went into the building. A
furgoncini
passed me—these three-wheeled bicycles are still used for local, light deliveries. A big blue bus stopped, not at its marked stopping place because that was filled with cars. I watched passengers get off, and they all scurried in various directions. I watched passengers getting on and there was no one left behind. Nothing suspicious. No monks.
Two men stood in front of the Questura building, arguing but not loud enough for me to hear them from across the street. I didn’t need to, for it was like watching a mime contest. The gestures used by Italians are known all over the world. They use them mainly to emphasize meanings or feelings but also to express a thought that is better not put into words.
One of the two across the street was now rubbing the back of one hand horizontally under his chin, to and fro. It means, I couldn’t care less, nothing to do with me. The other tapped the side of his nose—a gesture that has been adopted by many other nations to imply secrecy or information withheld. The response to this was a closing of both eyes and a slight raising of the head. This means, I did all I could. It’s out of my hands. I watched them use a whole repertoire of others. Some I recognized, some I didn’t, and yet others probably passed unnoticed by my unaccustomed eye. Finally they went into the building, and I wondered how many of those gestures would be brought out in a courtroom to help seal the verdict of the jury.
I looked in all directions for a little while longer. There was no other sidewalk entertainment to match that, and all appeared peaceful and unthreatening. Fleetingly placated, I walked along to the corner and across the Piazza Verdi where I knew several restaurants could be found. Whatever I was going to face, I would face it on a full stomach. The. Albergo Solferino was one of the few eating places that were open this early. It was near the Teatro Municipale and evidently catered to people working there and audiences before and after performances.
It was a pleasant place with an array of tempting antipasti just inside the door so that you had to walk past it to reach your table. Paintings and photos adorned the ocher walls, and I noticed that the same man was smiling and waving in many of the photos. “Our former mayor,” explained the waiter when he handed me the menu. “He still eats here.” Judging from the hammer and sickle flag fluttering prominently, all the photos were taken during the period when Bologna was the bastion of Communism in Italy.
The antipasto table proved to be irresistible and I sampled the green gnocchi filled with gorgonzola, some salmon mousse, a few garlic shrimp, and some mushrooms stuffed with truffles. The veal scallopine with fresh asparagus made an admirable main course and a bowl of fresh cherries completed the meal. A bottle of Sangiovese was smooth and ruby red—then I remembered that the name means the blood of Jove; I really didn’t want any mentions of blood as I contemplated the coming encounter.
I had stretched out the meal with a cup of espresso and I returned to the Questura where I stood again, across the street and ten minutes early. Italian cities are slowly coming to life at seven o’clock but it is still too early for the crowds. Some were leaving offices and shops, and the flow of buses, cars, and taxis was thickening. In front of the Questura, all looked calm and peaceful. Long may it continue, I thought fervently.
At seven-fifteen. I was ready to conclude that it had all been some kind of hoax. I was taking one last look up and down the street before leaving my post when I saw him. The brown robes of a Dominican monk with the cowl pulled up around the head and face. He paused in front of one of the guards outside the Questura, then walked along until he was in front of the other. He stopped and surveyed the surroundings.
He made no move as he saw me approaching from across the street. I dodged a bus seeking a place to stop. A taxi blared its horn, then I reached the sidewalk. I stayed a few paces away from him. The nearer of the two guards was about the same distance.
“If you have something to say, say it,” I invited.
He stood there immobile. His hands were hidden inside his robes and I kept a sharp eye on them. His face was a pale blur inside the cowl that was drawn well forward. The proximity of the guard seemed to intimidate him, which was just what I wanted. His head turned marginally in that direction then back to me. He came a few steps closer.
“I didn’t try to kill you,” he said. It was almost comical in the way he was trying to speak so I could hear him but keep his words from being heard by the guard.
“What did you want to do? Scare me away?”
“Of course not.” He was very definite. It baffled me.
“Why then?”
“The buffalo were stampeded to kill Pellegrini. If they had killed you too, that would have made it look like an obvious accident. If they had killed Pellegrini only then any suspicion would have fallen on you.”
Again I had that nagging feeling that the voice should be telling me something about its owner but I could not determine what it was. The accent was back, Italian surely … but something about it was not quite right.
“What about the incident at the duomo?”
“That was to make it look as if Pellegrini’s death in his house was an accident. All the other attempts would appear to be against you.”
“You mean Pellegrini’s death was not an accident?” I raised my voice in incredulity at this revelation, and he glanced apprehensively at the guard but his eyes still looked straight ahead. “Who killed him?” I asked.
The cowl twitched and pasty features were partially revealed, but before I could see more a nervous convulsion went through the robed frame. He seemed to be looking past me and I turned. I had an ephemeral thought that it was the oldest trick in the book, but then I saw a black car with the window down and a face looking out directly at us.
I was about to dive for the pavement, having seen enough gangster movies to know about drive-by shootings but by then I was aware of “Brother Angelo” running past me on sandaled feet. I heard him gasp—it sounded like fear. My gaze swung to the car but the ugly snout of a weapon had not appeared. The face was still there though, and observing the robed figure racing towards a bus that had stopped by a rank of motorscooters as the only available place. He flung himself inside just as the door snapped shut.
The face moved back to me. I promptly made a dash into the Questura.
Captain Cataldo was out, I was told by a stern-faced woman police officer. Would I like to talk to someone else? I didn’t think so. It would be too long an explanation. Suddenly, I remembered that I had in my pocket the list of everything I had eaten at Pellegrini’s birthday party. I handed it over, asking that she be sure the captain received it.
She read it suspiciously, looked at me for clarification. “He asked me for it,” I explained. She looked at it again and I realized that it did look like a shopping list. “It’s for a case he’s working on,” I told her and when that got no reaction, I added, “A murder case.” That worked. She put it in a huge official-looking envelope with a large red tassel attached which she used to wind around the large buttons.
When I asked if there was a back exit, her suspicions returned but I told her my car was out there. She said the front entrance was the only one for the public. I was wondering how long I could hang around before being arrested for loitering in a police station when a group came along. Two men were uniformed and three more were in plain clothes. Two of the latter were handcuffed together. They went outside and I followed, staying as close as I could. The two handcuffed men seemed remarkably friendly and chatted away to one another.
I walked along with them, smiling at the nearest to make it look as if I was with them. He looked puzzled, as if trying to place me, and then smiled back. We went to the next block and up the steps of a large building with massive columns. The words chopped in stone on the front proclaimed it to be the law courts. We all went inside.
I had to lose my protectors then, but I talked with a lady at a desk and stretched out my request to talk to Captain Cataldo, making a show of not understanding her directions to a building on the next block. The long Italian lunch from noon to four o’clock meant that many of the hard-working defenders of the law working here were only now leaving their offices. I scanned all the faces within my vision then mingled with a bunch of chattering men and women leaving. The taxi queue was short and the brief wait uneventful.
H
OW WAS YOUR BUSINESS
meeting yesterday?” I asked Francesca. “Successful, I hope?”
It was the following morning and we were in the limo heading for the church where the funeral service was to be held. I had spent a quiet evening and eaten in the hotel dining room, surrounded by German tourists. A change in rooms was the only precaution I had taken, though I had considered changing hotels.
“Yes,” Francesca said. “The woman wanted three girls.”
I wanted to ask the obvious question but did not. Francesca smiled sweetly and asked, “How was your visit to San Pietro? By the way, don’t you think that’s a good name for a restaurant owned by a chef they call the hermit?”
“I didn’t learn much. Bernardo is convinced that none of the food he served that night could have been harmful.”
“How does he account for three people having hallucinations from it?” she wanted to know.
“You would make a good interrogator,” I told her. “A swift, direct query like that.”