by David Downie
“Which bunker?” De Filippo snapped.
“The bunker left over from the war, sir, I don’t know what the official name is. This one is small, an anti-aircraft machine gun nest. There are others higher up on that ridge.” Gianni pointed at a thick plume of smoke rising from what looked like a reinforced concrete fortress half a mile away, perched above a bluff and apparently inaccessible from below.
Daria raised a carefully plucked eyebrow and spoke to De Filippo in a conspiratorial undertone. “Has anyone been up there yet?”
“What for?”
“To see if it’s squatted by bums,” she said, sketching in the air with one elegant, long-fingered hand. “To see if the bag was dragged from there after the victim was cut into parts. To do a thorough job,” she added, “as you have such a fine reputation for doing, Gigi.”
Her irony was not lost on De Filippo. He jerked his head and grimaced, his moustache pulling away from a set of large, yellow teeth. Two of the other three Carabinieri strolled over. De Filippo asked them in an offhand way to check where the path went and look around the machine gun nest, if in fact there was such a thing up there, as Sergeant Giannini claimed. “Take Giannini with you,” De Filippo added, smirking. “He’s a great mountaineer. See if he can get up to that big bunker on the ridge where the fire is burning.”
The Carabinieri swaggered off, followed reluctantly by Sergeant Giannini. He turned to smile at Daria before saluting the marshal of the Carabinieri. As if on stage, De Filippo stepped back a pace, allowing the commissioner to walk abreast of him along the edge of the asphalt to the spot where the pathologist and photographer waited. She recognized both. Bozzo and Brignole. They were known at DIGOS as Oliver and Hardy. Emilio Bozzo, the pathologist, based in Genoa at the main mortuary, was wiry and tall. Pino Brignole was short and stocky and could have been Osvaldo Morbido’s brother. Both looked tired, hot, badly shaven, and pale. The stench here, closer to the ruptured bag, was revolting.
“Off the record,” Bozzo said to Daria, “my guess is the subject has been dead at least a week.” He shook Daria’s hand. It was firm and dry. His was limp and damp. “I’d also guess he was dead long before anyone cut him up,” Bozzo added, pausing to gauge the effect of his words. “But I may be wrong. I may also find that one of the sectioned limbs comes from another body, and the head too, so you may have two or three victims or more.”
Daria winced and glanced away. “Junk? Dope? Gunshot wounds? Torture? Human trafficking?”
Bozzo shook his head. “I don’t know, I can’t tell yet without opening the bag to the bottom and pulling out all the pieces. He’s pretty far gone, if he’s a he and not a she, and if the two or three main parts are even from the same corpse. It’s pretty bad. Like botched autopsies tossed together in a salad.”
Daria winced again at the image and tapped a finger on her fleshy lips, wondering how much to reveal to Bozzo and how to get him on her side. “At first glance,” she said conspiratorially, “what I see reminds me of the dissection lab at Yale. In Padua they could never get enough corpses. The Church...” Her voice trailed off as she waited for a signal from him. Was he a fervent Catholic or on the political right? She did not think so. But these days, you never knew how anyone might react to criticism of the Church.
Bozzo nodded grimly. “Same thing in Genoa,” he whispered. “No bodies available. Only the unclaimed vagrants go to science. Luckily things have changed now. You no longer have to go abroad to learn dissection. And there are always the monkeys. Lots of monkeys.”
“Well, you see, progress does exist,” she remarked, relieved to confirm Bozzo had no reactionary bias. “Unless you object to animal-based dissection,” she added.
“Some of us seem more like great apes than humans,” Bozzo remarked sardonically. “Except the apes are not nearly as vicious and destructive.”
“Call me?”
“Sure,” he said, extending his limp, damp hand again.
“And send me the high-resolution images?” she continued, turning to the silent, reluctant Pino Brignole. It wasn’t a question.
The photographer glanced at the Carabinieri, waited for De Filippo’s acquiescing shrug, then nodded his agreement. Bozzo and Brignole began to shuffle toward their unmarked stripper, a dented white Fiat compact at least five years old.
Her mind trotting ahead of them, Daria had an inspiration. Leaving De Filippo behind and out of earshot, she walked alongside Emilio Bozzo and spoke in a casual undertone, opening the car door for him. “Isn’t it unusual for you to be out here, at a crime scene?”
Bozzo looked blearily into her large hazel-green eyes. “As unusual as it is for you to be out here.”
“There is no such thing as usual or unusual anymore,” she remarked. “It’s like the climate.”
“Exactly. So, you heard about the others?” Bozzo paused, waiting for her nod. It came. He began talking again. “Same M. O. each time. When you get three bags of mixed rotting meat on one morning,” he mused, his voice wavering now with genuine emotion, “and the morning happens to be April 23rd, the anniversary of the start of the Insurrection of Genoa in 1945, and the bags are in commemorative sites from our glorious Fascist past or near a Nazi bunker like this one, well, if you’re like me, you get into your car and you drive out in the stinking heat to take a look at the mess and you’re not surprised to see Commissario Daria Vinci show up sooner or later and start asking questions.” Bozzo sighed, but Daria remained silent. “Have you been to the other sites already?” he inquired.
Daria batted her eyes with a nodding affirmative. “I got the call for the first one at 5:00 a.m.,” she said. “The one in Nervi, where they’re doing the sewer repairs in the piazza in front of the commemorative plaque. The other call came in afterwards, for the bag at Villa Migone. This is the last.”
“For now,” Emilio Bozzo said, interrupting. “And this was supposed to be a long weekend?” He glanced around suspiciously, beckoning her to lean closer. “Everything is closed,” he whispered, “schools, universities, administrative offices, small businesses, clinics, even the cemetery and crematorium and morgue are theoretically closed, but we, we have to work in this stinking heat.” Bozzo appeared to have exhausted himself. She felt sorry for him.
“They knew I was booked onto the 6:10 a.m. express train to Rome,” Daria whispered back, trying to sound empathetic. “My mother was expecting to see me. I never have time for her and she’s nearly ninety. My brothers,” she paused and sighed, splaying her hands, the thought of her siblings filling her with frustration. “They do nothing. The Vice Questor was smarter than we are,” she added, forcing herself to lighten up. Daria laughed quietly. “He already left on vacation last night. He must be on a beach in Morocco by now, laughing and living it up. We’re down to a skeleton crew.”
“Bad comparison,” Emilio Bozzo said, smiling at the unintentional pun despite himself. “If it’s any consolation,” he continued, “it must be even hotter and drier down in Morocco. Ruggieri goes south while all of Africa is leaving, heading our way. God bless them.” He straightened himself. “I’m not sure how we missed each other earlier,” he added, mopping his brow and trying to sound upbeat. “At the other crime scenes, I mean.” He looked dejected again. “What’s the point?” he wondered out loud. “The war ended over seventy-five years ago. Can’t we let go of the past?”
Daria shut the car door. The white Fiat pulled out and drove slowly downhill toward the coast with Brignole, the photographer, at the wheel, a swirling police light suction-cupped to the roof.
Glancing around the turnout, taking in the scene again as she made her way back to the glinting gray Alfa Romeo, Daria stopped and stared at the mud and wrinkled her prominent, sculpted nose before burying it in a handkerchief and blowing louder than anyone, including the Carabinieri, expected. They started and turned. “Gigi,” she said, “any idea why there’s all this mud in a drought? It has
n’t rained in months.”
Marshal De Filippo stepped up from where he had been lurking behind her. “There’s a spring back there,” he pointed. “By the path to the bunker. It feeds the creek in the bottom of the valley. The farmers say it never runs dry. I’ll bet that’s why the Germans built the bunker here.”
Daria pretended to agree. “Yes, you’re certainly right. Or maybe the choice of the site had something to do with the need to fire anti-aircraft guns at RAF and USAF bombers coming down the valley, trying to blow up the railroad viaducts at Recco and Rapallo and crush the Nazi-Fascist regime so that we might live in democratic freedom?” She watched his uncomprehending face darken as the irony penetrated and spread. She let it go. “Any usable tire tracks, footprints, or signs of dragging?”
De Filippo shrugged as only a southern Italian can, a legacy of tragedy, fatigue, fatalism, and pointlessness distilled into the simplest of human gestures. “Commissario, without wishing to be indelicate,” he said, his syllables and double consonants tripping and melting into each other, “I must tell you this spot is used day and night by men who need to ease and relieve themselves urgently, and young couples equally in need of satisfying their passions. There are dozens, hundreds, of footprints and tire tracks here. Some are more or less fresh. We will make a few casts and we have the photographs. But…” He left the thought dangling.
“Those look like delivery truck tire marks, for instance, don’t they?” Daria motioned.
“Could be.”
Either he knew something she did not or was playing the usual Carabinieri-versus–Polizia di Stato game, Daria realized. “Do you think you might take casts of them?”
“Certainly,” he said. “Anything to please il commissario.”
Daria strained to remain polite. “Any sign anyone tried to cover their movements?”
“Yes,” he said. “Naturally. There’s nothing around the bag other than the boar and dog tracks. Whoever it was, he knew what he was doing.”
“Very good,” Daria said, certain now De Filippo knew nothing of the other bodies and bags found that morning, or was purposely misleading her. She prepared herself for the sham of the share request. It always felt like begging. “I would be most appreciative if you could email me your report as soon as it is convenient, and keep me up to date.” She watched De Filippo eye her again. They bowed slightly to each other. “One last thing,” Daria said, swiveling. “Was he a black man, by chance?”
De Filippo sucked his large, yellow teeth and let the weight of his arms fall on the submachine gun slung around his neck. “The skin is blackened by decomposition, as you can see, but we think he was North African. He had a cappuccino complexion once upon a time, not a black African skin color. We think this corpse belonged to an illegal immigrant, possibly Moroccan or Algerian or Tunisian.”
“Or Libyan?”
“Or Libyan,” De Filippo acknowledged. “But not Egyptian, it’s not the right racial type.”
“So, you knew him?”
“If it’s the man the people in the farmhouse think it is. Everyone around here has a pet African they feed.” He paused to chuckle. “We took him in more than once last winter.”
“But you let him go?”
De Filippo shrugged again, then turned and signaled to the ambulance crew. Sweating and cursing from under their protective plastic overalls and face masks, they began lifting the body parts and removing the bag, using a stretcher so as not to further tear the plastic. Daria saluted. Her parting words to Luigi De Filippo were inaudible. She had lost her voice.
Four
Sliding into the cool interior of the specially equipped Alfa Romeo Giulia sports sedan, Daria Vinci surreptitiously glanced at herself in the wing mirror. With deft treatment each morning, her taut, angular features, high cheekbones, and what some called a patrician nose, made her appear younger than her forty-nine years—and less mannish. Not that anyone seemed to notice or take interest except predators like Gigi De Filippo. Am I destined to be an old maid, she wondered? The term itself seemed impossibly old, obsolete, and out of date.
Popping a mint in her wide, sensuous mouth, Daria bit it and took a melancholy breath, cleared her throat, then leaned forward from the back seat and into the real world. “Okay, Osvaldo,” she said as evenly as she could, “let’s go. I’m sorry to be sitting back here like a capo but I need to study this file.” Daria exhaled, filling the passenger compartment with the scent of mint candy. Then she leaned back again, realizing just how hot and tired she felt. “Why does this guy’s name ring a bell?” she asked Lieutenant Morbido absentmindedly, waving the file like a fan. “Joseph Gary? Joseph Gary Baldi?”
Osvaldo Morbido grunted. “Bannon, the elections in March, 2018, Signor Gary met the Stephen Bannon entourage and entertained them and exponents of several extreme right-wing political groups at his villa near Santa Margherita. It was in all the papers.”
“That’s it,” she said. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Because it was over in a flash, like lightning striking a cemetery, and it was the Questor himself who attended the meeting, not you.” Morbido glanced meaningfully at her in the mirror. “Speaking of the Questor,” Morbido continued, “HQ has confirmed it was the same delivery van that dropped the first two bags of body parts. The vehicle was picked up by the security cameras in both locations. The name on the van and the tire marks were also the same. So, it stands to reason, it probably dropped this bag, too.”
Daria nodded, drumming her lips with her fingers, an unconscious nervous tick that alarmed her whenever she realized she was in its grip. “The van was from and found where, and in what condition—torched, I assume?”
Morbido shook his large, jowly head. “Found in the alley by the public rest rooms next to the Rapallo train station at approximately 6:45 a.m. Time of drop-off unknown. The door had been forced and the ignition hot wired. It was easy to steal—a fifteen-year-old clapped-out red Fiat Ducato bakery delivery van, already stolen twice. It’s unmarked except for the name of the business. There are wear marks on two tires, the ones you spotted at Villa Migone and in Nervi in the mud and dust, and Gigi De Filippo missed. Otherwise it’s undamaged. So far, no prints, no DNA, and no traces of blood, just lots of flour and crumbs. They must’ve worn sterile outfits and gloves and wiped everything down. The body parts were in waterproof, sealed plastic bags.”
Daria absorbed Morbido’s shorthand report but felt unsatisfied. “Anything else?”
Morbido grinned. He looked like a purple jack-o’-lantern. “Just something essential, a bombshell sure to delight the Questor.” He paused to eye her. “The bakery’s delivery list from yesterday was written on a sheet of butcher paper on a clipboard. Scrawled across the list with the baker’s grease pencil that’s always attached to the clipboard was a handwritten message in capital letters.”
Daria leaned forward. “And what does the message say?”
“It says JUSTICE ALWAYS PREVAILS, in capital letters. And then it’s repeated in what I am guessing must be Latin: Jus Stat.”
Daria emitted an unladylike grunt. “Well, let’s hope they’re right,” she blurted. “That’s the kind of wishful thinking carved on the facades of administrative buildings.” She paused and touched a finger to her lips, then caught herself. “The rest of the Latin motto is missing. Hora fugit,” she said sententiously, “Jus stat.”
“If you say so,” Morbido muttered skeptically, looking and sounding increasingly like a bulldog or bullfrog. Daria laughed out loud, a light, silly laugh, imagining Osvaldo Morbido, the tough lieutenant, as the Frog Prince and Churchill rolled into one large, croaking mass of flesh. “That means time flies, justice remains?” he asked, blushing at her laughter and wondering if he should feel offended. Morbido watched warily as she nodded. “So, the stolen vehicle is a bakery van, like I was saying, from Quarto dei Mille, in the eastern outskirts of Genoa.”
&
nbsp; “Osvaldo, for goodness’ sake, I have been here long enough to know where Quarto dei Mille is.” Daria spoke more emphatically than she meant to, interrupting him with another burst of laughter.
As a Roman with an American mother, Daria Vinci knew she would always be a foreign interloper in the eyes of local Ligurians. No matter what their political stripe, most Riviera natives were traditionalists and regionalists. They spoke incomprehensible dialects, ate peculiar foods seasoned with strange herbs, and had the chippie sense of injustice the ancient Ligurians, a conquered nation, had always felt. They even looked like the descendants of the short, wiry, Celtic tribal peoples the ancient Romans had defeated over two thousand years ago. The words “hidebound,” “quarrelsome,” and “ornery” sprang to mind. Daria banished them. Certainly, she said to herself, Osvaldo Morbido was the opposite of at least half the stereotypes, and he could not be more Genoese. Perhaps he was an import of recent centuries, say, only five or six hundred years ago?
“It goes without saying, commissario,” Morbido croaked, “that you know Quarto. And everyone in the world knows who Giuseppe Garibaldi’s famous Mille were—our great freedom fighters, patriots, and heroes, most of them Genoese or otherwise Ligurian.”
“I also happen to know,” Daria added in her most conciliatory tone, “the year that Giuseppe Garibaldi and his thousand patriots left from Quarto to unify Italy. What was it, 1860, sometime in the spring?”
“They embarked on May 5th and 6th,” Morbido said with unabashed pride, raising a finger and rising to Daria’s bait. “Without Genoa’s contribution to the independence movement, the country would never have been freed from foreign oppression then—or later, for that matter, during the Second World War. It was the Red Shirts who unified Italy and then the reds of Genoa who drove out Mussolini and the Black Shirts.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror, his face flushed, realizing too late that she had roused and riled him on purpose.
