“At the moment we can’t rule out anything. Could you explain to me exactly what it is you do?”
“ENT was created in 2002 by a group of shareholders and owns nightclubs, arcades, and betting parlors. I own ten percent. I bought my stake in late 2004 from the widow of the previous shareholder, Sandro Corona, who had died a couple of months before that.”
“Corona was the manager when there was trouble with the finance police?”
Ajello shrugged his shoulders. “No big deal—a fine for tax evasion. Slot machines had just become legal. During an inspection they found some that weren’t properly wired into the tax system.”
“Which meant people could play them without paying taxes,” Corvu clarified.
Ajello made a little face of disgust, as if mentioning tax evasion was the equivalent of uttering a vulgarity. “Shall we say revenue that wasn’t in the books?”
“Who are the shareholders who hold the other ninety percent?”
“I don’t know them and I don’t think they want to be known, otherwise they wouldn’t use a trust. I’m only in touch with their trust manager.”
Sure, and without just cause no judge would force a trust company to reveal the names of its partners. And there’s no link between ENT and Camarà’s killing.
“All right. Now let’s talk about the night Camarà was murdered. You were at the Bella Blu, weren’t you?”
“Yes, there was a private party in one of rooms. I arrived at the club about one thirty. I let the party guests in the back and took them to the room they’d booked.”
“You came from another club?”
“Yes, we have a nightclub in Perugia where there was another private party. It was a birthday party for someone I know. I stayed there until he blew out the candles on the cake at midnight and then I slipped away.”
“And you made it to Rome in an hour and a half?”
“I travel on the company plane. I couldn’t do without it given the number of clubs in different cities I have to visit in one evening.”
“And later?”
“Later, about two thirty, I heard shouts. I rushed outside and found the American standing there. Camarà was lying in a pool of blood. Then I called the police.”
Corvu had nothing more to ask him. He nodded to one of the photos on the desk. “A fine young man, that—my compliments.”
Ajello smiled at the photo with evident pride. “Yes, it was actually Fabio who introduced me to Camarà; he was his bodybuilding trainer at the gym.”
While he was on his way out, passing the secretary, Corvu saw a light on the phone come on. It was Ajello’s private line.
. . . .
The south wind had veered to the southwest and huge black clouds were filling the sky. It was still afternoon, but the shops had already switched on their lights. Balistreri took the bus to Casilino 900. Marius Hagi was waiting for him at the entrance. He was alone, which was the deal they’d made with his lawyer, Morandi.
Hagi was wearing a gray flannel shirt, corduroy pants, and a black wool sweater. Despite the cold and damp he wore neither a coat nor a hat. He still had that cough. It seemed to have gotten worse.
Balistreri held out his hand.
“Good afternoon,” Hagi said, but he didn’t shake. His attitude wasn’t hostile but neither was it friendly.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Hagi—as you know you’re under no obligation to talk. I wanted to have a little informal chat and take a tour of the camp with you.”
Casilino 900 had existed for more than thirty years and housed about seven hundred people, mostly women and children: Romanians, Macedonians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Montenegrins. They went in the main gate. A police car was parked outside. Between the shipping containers and makeshift huts that served as residences, the camp’s unpaved roads were full of muddy puddles and strewn with garbage.
As far as the eye could see there were laundry lines, and old rusted out cars. There was no running water or gas supply. Some of the huts had dubious looking electrical cables hanging off of them. Candlelight flickered from others, dangerously close to plastic and other flammable materials. Port-a-potties were the only toilets, and they gave off a smell of sewage and chemicals. Hagi and Balistreri walked among the huts. Children and adults were selling all kinds of items, probably the profits of dumpster diving and picking pockets. A group of children were playing a game of soccer. They shouted and laughed as they chased the ball around the puddles.
Beyond the confines of the camp, Balistreri could see the dump where the remains of Samantha Rossi’s tortured body had been found. Behind the dump at the time had been a small unofficial squatters’ camp, since cleared, where the three Romanians had been discovered with Samantha’s bracelet.
Hagi caught Balistreri looking in that direction.
“You’ll release them after a few years for good behavior. In my day in Romania they would have been impaled.”
Balistreri wanted to tell Hagi that there might be more such animals among the men Hagi was protecting, but he was there to talk about Nadia, not Samantha Rossi.
“We try to be a civilized country, Mr. Hagi.” He said it without much conviction, a conditioned reflex of the institution he represented.
“Look, Balistreri, the severity of justice is a measure of civilization. You’re not civilized—just cowardly. Your tolerance is based on the need for home healthcare aides, prostitutes, and people to pick the tomatoes in your fields. If immigrants weren’t of use to you, you’d take any immigrants who stepped out of line and nail them to crosses along the road, just like they used to do in ancient Rome.”
While Hagi led him through the huts, Balistreri noticed that dozens of eyes were watching them. Word must have gotten around that a policeman was visiting.
Hagi noticed, too. “You’re safe here, don’t worry,” he said
“Because I’m with you?”
“No, because no one’s stupid enough to lay hands on a policeman inside the camp.”
At that moment an old Roma woman came up with two steaming tin mugs. She offered them to Hagi and Balistreri. They thanked her and sipped the tea. Hagi smoked continuously, lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the last one, despite the fact that he was wracked by coughing. His thin face was pale, but his black eyes were dark coals below his thick eyebrows. The circles under his eyes accentuated his Mephistophelian appearance.
They stopped near a trailer that looked a little better maintained than the rest. Someone had written the number 27 on it with a marker.
“This is where Adrian and Giorgi live,” Hagi said.
Behind the trailer a motocross bike was chained to a bench. The inside was bare, but relatively clean. Hagi and Balistreri sat down on the only two chairs, which were set around a rusty table.
“Your good little boys will be released tomorrow, Mr. Hagi.”
“If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to tell you something.”
Balistreri lit his fourth cigarette of the day. “Be happy to hear it.”
Hagi began to tell his story, interspersed with bouts of harsh coughing. “I’m forty-six years of age. I was born in Galati near the Black Sea. My brother, Marcel, and I were already orphans by the time I was twelve and he was sixteen. We moved to Costanta on the Black Sea, where we both found work in the port. We slept at the port inside a warehouse. We were, as you would say, good little boys.”
“But you managed to put that difficult childhood behind you.”
“No, it got worse. My brother was a great soccer goalie. In early 1978 he was hired by a first-division team in Bucharest. They gave him a small salary that allowed him to take care of me. He hired the team’s accountant to teach me math. One day in May 1978, in the national championship final, Marcel saved a penalty kick. His team won the championship, and they beat the team that was managed by Ceausescu’s son.”
Hagi paused, overtaken by yet another bout of heavy coughing. When he had finished, he continued.
“Two bastards fr
om the secret police came to the room where we lived and broke Marcel’s fingers one by one. Then Marcel did something crazy. He went to the police and reported them. A few days later, when I came in, the room was turned upside down, blood all over the place. They’d cut off his hands. Marcel had bled to death on the floor.”
Hagi stopped to light another cigarette, then went on with his story. “I was saved by pure luck. Some friends of mine knew a guy in Krakow, so I went there. I was nineteen, and I met Alina. More luck. She was only sixteen and an orphan, living with her uncle, a priest who’d worked with Wojtyla and ran an orphanage. When the pope invited him to Rome six months later, Alina and I got married and came with him. We arrived in April 1979, and Alina got a job right away through her uncle.”
“And with your knowledge of Eastern Europe you became a businessman.”
“I knew very little about anything, but immediately discovered that Italians like Eastern European girls a lot. They would set off for Warsaw, Belgrade, and Budapest with suitcases full of nylons, jeans, and beauty products. I used my contacts with friends in Poland and started to organize these pleasure trips. There was nothing illegal about it—I simply put two parties together to their mutual satisfaction. Then I opened bars and restaurants. I became a wealthy immigrant and respected member of the community.”
“Italy has been good to you. Have you been happy here?”
Hagi thought for a moment.
“Italy’s made me rich, but it’s made me unhappy. It took the thing I loved the most. Alina died in 1983, when she was only twenty.”
Balistreri had read all about it in his file. A moped accident. But a moped accident was one of the most common causes of death for a young person in Rome. Why did Hagi blame Italy for his wife’s death?
“Cardinal Lato, who helped you come here, filed a report. He claimed Alina was running away from you when she had the accident.”
Something gleamed behind Hagi dark eyes. “Alina was like a daughter to him. He was crazy with grief.”
“In his statement, Cardinal Lato said that you beat her.”
Again that slight shudder like the shock wave of a distant earthquake. Then Hagi replied coldly. “The statement was withdrawn of his own free will after a month, when Monsignor Lato calmed down and reason prevailed over grief. And now enough about that—it’s all beside the point.”
“All right. What happened to you after your wife died?”
“I went on with my business activities for six years, but I had no enthusiasm for them. Then in 1989, when Romania was freed from that monster, Ceausescu, I sold everything I had in Italy and went back there. I used my savings to purchase property that’s now worth more than ten times what I paid. I’ve got bars, restaurants, real estate agencies, and travel agencies in Bucharest. I go there twice a year.”
“You sold everything you had in Italy?”
“I still have the little house where I live, some apartments, the Bar Biliardo, and the travel agency Marius Travel. I use them to provide employment and a place to stay to my fellow Romanians. I help young people settle into the community, and I give a hand to the Roma that you herd into these camps and treat like animals.”
“Do you know a Deputy Captain Colajacono?” Balistreri asked.
Hagi grimaced and suffered a bout of coughing. He immediately lit another cigarette.
“I know who he is. Everyone in here’s acquainted with him, some of them to their own cost.”
“You’ve never met him?”
“Once, here in the camp. They were carrying out a search and found a working moped in the middle of the scrap heaps of cars, and he wanted to know who’d stolen it. It was Adrian’s moped. He’d bought it with cash from a scrap dealer. That was what he rode before he got the motocross bike that’s parked outside.”
“What happened?”
“I told Adrian to explain that it was his. He and Giorgi went outside. I watched and listened from this window here. Colajacono and another guy brought them into the trailer, and I hid in the back. Colajacono wanted to see the registration, but of course Adrian didn’t have it. Then the other policeman said it was stolen. They threatened to confiscate it and arrest Adrian.”
“Do you remember what this policeman looked like?”
“Short, fat, and balding. He asked Adrian to hand over the keys to the moped and Adrian said ‘Like hell I will,’ and the guy smacked him on the shoulder with a rubber nightstick. Then they beat both of them. They took the keys and confiscated the moped. They never filed charges or anything. Adrian found the moped busted into pieces outside the camp. That’s the closest I’ve come to meeting Colajacono.”
“Colajacono’s the man who took the Iordanescu girl’s missing persons report about Nadia.”
Hagi seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. He said nothing.
“Yesterday I asked you whether you had an opinion about Nadia’s disappearance. Do you think Mircea is capable of doing something stupid?”
A light flashed in Marius Hagi’s eyes. “My employees know not to get out of line like that. They know I’d be furious.”
You happen to be a benefactor of the destitute, but it’s not wise to rub you the wrong way.
“I’d like to ask you one last thing about your wife Alina.”
Hagi stared at him in silence. He said nothing. In the end he got up. The conversation was over.
. . . .
Coppola went by streetcar. He was early for his appointment with Sandro Corona’s widow. He used the time to look in the elegant district’s shop windows and lingered in front of a shoe store. There were several extremely nice pairs with high heels that were well disguised. He looked at the price tags and turned pale. And yet the shop was full of people trying shoes on and making purchases. The most he could have afforded were the heels alone.
The glass reflected a passing face. He had a fleeting feeling of unease. He continued his stroll, stopping in front of other windows. Nothing came to mind. It was only just before he arrived at the front door of Mrs. Corona’s apartment building that he placed the face. It was the boy who had been sitting in a corner of the streetcar.
He sent Balistreri a text message, informing him that he was being followed.
The concierge in Corona’s widow’s building was the suspicious type. Coppola had to show his badge.
“Did her husband live here with her?” he asked the concierge when she was finally satisfied.
“No, she bought the apartment six months ago. Her husband was already dead.”
“Does she live by herself?”
The concierge looked at him askance. “I mind my own business. But yes, she lives by herself.”
Ornella Corona was a deluxe model, just like the costly apartment she’d bought. She was younger than he’d pictured. Her late husband had been nearly sixty. She looked thirty-five at the most. She had manicured nails and her toned legs were discreetly displayed in black leggings. But her eyes were bored and distant. The photos on the wall featured a younger version of her on the catwalk, modeling clothes by Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior. She was clearly used to the finer things in life.
She showed Coppola into a living room full of expensive furniture. “Would you like something to drink? An aperitif? Grapefruit juice?”
Coppola went for the juice. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he was certain she was aware of it. Luckily she sat down, sipping a grapefruit juice. “What can I do for you, officer?”
“A young man was killed at the Bella Blu, a nightclub run by ENT.”
“I know all about it. I knew Camarà from my gym. I take spinning classes there.”
Coppola was surprised. “You knew Camarà?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly know him. I knew who he was. Then a few days ago I read that he’d been stabbed during a fight outside the Bella Blu.”
“Did you know he worked there?”
Ornella Corona had a way of crossing and uncrossing her legs that was distracting, to s
ay the least. Her wristwatch kept attracting his attention, too—its black face was a winking feminine eye with long eyelashes.
“He wasn’t working when my husband was there. Then in late 2004 I sold my ENT stake. I haven’t had anything to do with the Bella Blu since.”
“You sold the shares to Mr. Ajello?”
She made a face. “Yes, that’s right.”
“And you bought this apartment with that money?”
She was paying attention to Coppola for the first time. She thought about it, then made up her mind. “I suppose it’s pointless to ask you how you know that I just bought this apartment. But what does this have to do with Camarà’s death?”
“To be honest, I don’t think it has anything to do with it. Forget I mentioned it. Would you rule out the possibility that your husband knew Camarà?”
“I absolutely would rule it out,” she said. “Can’t you tell me why you’re asking these questions about me and my husband? Perhaps I could be of help if I knew what was going on.”
I can’t think straight. Come on, Coppola, buck up and don’t make a mess of it.
“We’re just looking into Camarà’s place of work, where the crime took place.”
“But I read that there was a fight with a customer.”
“There was some kind of fight. It might have been a previous employee at the Bella Blu, though. Did your husband ever mention anyone violent there?”
“Well, there was the bartender, Pierre. I think he’s done time,” she admitted readily. She got up to pour herself some more grapefruit juice and Coppola found himself with his eyes inches from her round, tight rear end.
“I think my husband would have left ENT anyway, even if he hadn’t had that accident.” She turned around and caught him staring.
“He would have left ENT anyway, even if he hadn’t had that accident,” Coppola repeated. He was blushing. He felt like a thirteen-year-old who’d been discovered leafing through a Playboy.
She continued. “He wasn’t earning enough to make it worth the trouble, including the trouble with the other shareholders.”
The Deliverance of Evil Page 23
