by Grace Brophy
After mass, he went to Il Duomo for a pizza—“I’m hypoglycemic,” he offered in explanation, “so I have to eat often. I couldn’t wait until nine or ten at night for my dinner. Rita and I agreed to meet there at six-thirty.”
“When she didn’t show up, why didn’t you notify her family or the police?” Cenni asked.
“At first I was worried,” he acknowledged, pausing to run his tongue over his upper lip. “But Rita was really uncomfortable about the dinner with her family. That’s why she’d invited me along, as a bodyguard,” he added with a self-deprecating smile. “I figured she’d decided to skip the dinner and was taking the easy way out by not showing up.”
“Then it wasn’t you who told her family that she was one of the processionists?”
“Little Rita, in the procession! Who told you that?” The image of the diminutive Rita carrying a heavy cross up the steep incline to San Ruffino appeared to amuse him, and for the first time since they’d arrived at the apartment Cenni saw him relax.
“And after the procession, what did you do?”
“I followed the processionists up toward San Ruffino. I had planned to attend the service but the church was too crowded, so I went home. I didn’t go out again that evening. I heard about her death the next morning from my landlord, a little before ten, when I went out for a coffee.”
Cenni threw his head back and laughed, causing the timid Canadian to wince. The grocer had known about the murder before the questore. “Que Paese!” What a country, Cenni uttered aloud and laughed again.
When he’d stopped laughing, he asked to see Williams’s soggiorno.
“I didn’t know I needed one,” Williams stammered and pointed to the passport that was displayed prominently on the plastic coffee table. Cenni picked it up and began flipping through its pages.
“I thought your name was John Williams?” Cenni said impatiently. “It says here John Williams Campbell.”
“My mother’s maiden name was Williams. I never got along with my father and I decided to stop using his name when he died. That was five years ago.” Again the tic!
Cenni thanked him for his help, told him not to leave Assisi without permission, and to secure his last request, pocketed Williams’s passport. At the door, he turned unexpectedly, “Signor Williams, were you aware that Rita Minelli was pregnant?”
“No . . . I don’t . . . didn’t . . .” he replied, stumbling over his words.
Cenni had known the Canadian’s answer even before he’d asked the question. He’d just wanted to see if the tic would return. It had!
So, Batori was right. Rita Minelli was pregnant. Now to find the father, he said to himself.
The Canadian boyfriend, as he was now known to the police, waited five minutes after they’d left before getting up from the couch, waiting to be sure that the fat policeman wasn’t coming back.
He’d hidden his nerves rather well, he thought, although he’d been afraid that his legs would collapse under him if he stood to say goodbye. He hadn’t offered to shake hands either, afraid his hand might tremble. He was pleased that he’d thought about the passport in advance and had had it ready for them, but not so pleased that they had taken it away with them. All in all, though, he thought he had performed rather well. He deserved a coffee, perhaps at the Bar Sensi. Matteo was in at 5:00.
23
IT WAS AFTER 11:00 when Cenni walked through his front door, nearly twelve hours after he’d received the questore’s first call about the murdered American. He was tired, hungry, and frustrated, but mostly frustrated. Even before removing his jacket, he cut himself a long chunk of salami and carried it, a paring knife, and a corkscrew into the sitting room, where he opened a bottle of Sagrantino—the strongest wine he could find—and poured the deep garnet-colored liquid into his largest glass, a beer mug decorated with harp and leprechaun that Piero had purchased in Ireland on his last holiday. It’s probably a misdemeanor in France to drink wine from a beer mug, he mused, particularly if it’s the quality of a Rosso d’Arquata, but he was less interested in capturing the wine experience than in drowning his frustrations. “The hell with the French!” he said out loud before taking a large swig of wine. It had been a lousy day.
The questore, Carlo Togni, who was often reasonable about the demands he made on those who worked for him, and more so with Cenni, his senior commissario, whom he regarded as something of a prodigy, was the source of Cenni’s frustrations. They got on reasonably well so long as they kept their discussions focused on policing and away from politics. Togni had great ambitions, and in Italy the single most effective way to achieve great ambitions is through relationships, so he spent the better part of his days cultivating relationships and left the legwork to his subordinates. But in the murder investigation of Rita Minelli, Togni was afraid that the relationships might be getting away from him.
In his first call to Cenni, shortly before 11:00 in the morning, when he was still concerned that the American’s murder might have some connection to terrorism, he’d offered his favorite commissario whatever assistance he would need to find the murderer at once. In the second call, at 2:00 in the afternoon, after Cenni had convinced him that Minelli’s murder had nothing to do with the Brigate Rosse, Al Qaeda, ETA, or the IRA, the questore had suggested that perhaps Cenni should tread lightly with the count. “Remember, he’s a friend of the PM.” The third call, at 4:00, was a gentle but firm reminder that the Casatis “are the victims here.” The last call, which came sometime after 8:00, to his office, and which Cenni surmised was in response to pressure from higher up, was an ungentle demand that the commissario meet him at 10:00 the following morning. “I want to know more about this Croatian woman,” he’d said. And in case Cenni hadn’t got the message, he added, “You know who I mean, the woman who found the body, the same woman who’d threatened the victim.”
The day that his twin brother lost an election in secondary school to the very unpopular son of the school’s principal, Cenni had learned that justice in any society is subordinate to the vicissitudes of politics. He had applied that lesson when he’d first joined the Polizia di Stato by putting aside his personal sense of justice and adopting Cicero’s less perfect but more workable one, “Justice consists in doing injury to no man.” Umberto Casati had important friends, and Cenni lacked the power to indict any member of the Casati family for Rita Minelli’s murder if a decision had already been made higher up that they’re the victims here. But before he’d agree to arrest someone whom he thought to be innocent, he’d resign. It needn’t come to that, though; it never had before. He had his own ways of applying political pressure to the questore. He poured the last of the Sagrantino into his mug and remembering the Irish toast that Piero had taught him, raised his glass in salute. “Slainte!” he said, to no one in particular.
After Rachel had jumped from the bed, Cenni turned on his side, closed his eyes once more, and tried to sleep. But the thought of the old woman in Gubbio had evoked other memories. The thugs who had murdered the old woman had done more than just steal her money. They had robbed her of dignity at the moment of her dying. With a piece of coal from her fireplace, they had drawn a handlebar mustache on her upper lip and large clown freckles on her cheeks. He felt the same hot anger now as he had then: an irrational anger perhaps, but it had kept him going day and night for three weeks until he’d found her killers.
He was standing once again in the Casati mausoleum looking down at Rita Minelli’s body, the shiny white legs with the coarse dark hairs on the upper thighs in stark contrast to the elegantly clothed upper body, her pants and stockings bunched up together at her ankles. The grandmother of a friend of his had worn her stockings in just such a way, rolled down around her ankles. He remembered his friend’s mortification whenever she’d come shuffling out of her room at the back of the house, an old woman without elegance or shame, too lazy to roll up her stockings. A cold hard anger had been growing within him all day at the Casati family for their complete disregard
of Rita, first in life and then in death, and at the smug righteousness even Amelia Casati exuded that Rita had been nothing more than a nuisance, a family inconvenience. In her last moment of life, the murderer (and Cenni was sure that the rape had been staged) had robbed Rita Minelli of grace and dignity. His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was sure to give him fitful dreams: For Rita Minelli, he would seek perfect justice.
Book Three
* * *
Easter Sunday
* * *
1
HE WOKE AT 6:00 on Easter Sunday, the same time he awoke every morning, to the insistent buzzing of his clock radio and to an even more insistent dream of Sophie Orlic. He pushed down the snooze alarm and rolled over, dragging the pillow with him. Just another moment, he thought, and she’d have said yes. He lay there for another five minutes, eyes shut, pillow wrapped tightly around his head, trying to recapture that final instant of bliss, but the woman of his dreams, all sweet enchantment, had vanished, replaced by the watchful staring eyes of his prime suspect.
The best part of the day is early morning, but not when you’re chasing a Sagrantino hangover. Cenni got out of bed gingerly, afraid to wake the sleeping giant, and padded from bedroom to sitting room to bathroom, eyes averted from the early morning light that streamed into all the corners of the sitting room, illuminating the kitty litter that Rachel distributed into all the corners of his life. Maria Sotto, his cleaning lady of ten years and a former ally against his mother (who would rearrange his furniture any time she managed to get the key), had changed sides after the arrival of Rachel, claiming that the apartment now resembled a beach house in Sardinia. She hated cats, as did his mother, but for different reasons. Maria was allergic to cat dander and sniffed and sneezed her way through the apartment twice a week, but for an extra five euros she suffered the inconvenience. His mother was allergic to independence of any sort; cats, in particular, offended her sense of importance and control. Her current lapdog, a Pekinese named Cara Mia, had first gone to obedience school before joining his mother’s household. Cenni smiled. Rachel might not fetch tennis balls on demand, but she sure as hell could take Cara Mia if push came to shove.
He put the coffee on to boil, kissed Rachel, who just happened to be sitting on the kitchen table, and reflected on the coming day. Piero, together with Sergeant Antolini, would walk the streets of Assisi (an impossible job on Easter Sunday, he was sure to hear later from Piero) to determine if any of the growing number of suspects had been seen going to or coming from the cemetery. As a bonus, perhaps the sergeant would take Piero’s mind off his manifold sufferings; this week it was postnasal drip. And Elena! In a moment of guilt he’d given her the day off. Piero was dogged, but Elena had flair. He needed them both on the case full-time. Half-holiday was a reasonable compromise, he decided; he’d give her a call, bring her in at noon. Dealing with Togni was the biggest problem of his day, but he’d already decided how to handle that Artful Dodger. His day had begun; the hangover could wait.
A man of fixed habit, Cenni emerged from his apartment building most mornings at five minutes after 7:00, into the Piazza IV November, the medieval heart of Perugia. On good days, he would take his time as he strolled south-ward toward Piazza Italia, often stopping at the Fontana Maggiore (the sublime work of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano) to view the allegory that extolled the virtues of punishment, a large lion thrashing a cub. Keeps me honest, he’d told Piero when the inspector had asked why he liked it so much. But on this particular Sunday he found himself too distracted to give the great fountain or the little lion more than a cursory glance.
At Piazza Italia, he began his steep descent into the bowels of the medieval city, emerging finally into daylight and the urban sprawl that surrounds Perugia. And then, by way of another series of subterranean escalators and stairways, he entered the largest underground car park in Umbria. A few years back, a prominently placed bureaucrat (with a brother-in-law in the building trade), had decided to move police headquarters from Perugia Centro to the suburbs, a few hundred yards from the football stadium. Cenni had threatened to quit, maybe get a transfer, join the caribinieri. “I like the uniforms— women love the red stripe,” he’d told the questore. He was kidding, of course, although not about the red stripe, but Carlo had taken him seriously. He now received a handsome stipend to pay his garage fees, large enough to lease a doublewide space in the only section of the gigantic car park that guaranteed twenty-four hour security.
He loved his car. His grandmother had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday in 1980. It was already eight years old then, a 1972 Alpine BMW with black leather seats and a lustrous silvery pearl finish. The interior still had its original seat covers, worn to a buttery softness, but the exterior paint had been renewed many times since. Every four years, on the car’s anniversary, he took a vacation to Germany and his car went to the BMW factory in Bavaria for a new paint job and any other work that Bruno, his German mechanic, deemed necessary to keep it in its pristine condition. Chiara had once suggested that he loved the car more than he did her. “You don’t let anyone smoke in your car,” she’d said, “but you don’t mind if they smoke around me, and I have asthma.” She’d particularly hated the engine’s death rattle when they were stopped at red lights. Only his grandmother, who had her own issues with cars, had an appreciation of the delicate nature of a finely tuned instrument with a double-mouth Weber carburetor, differential pinion block, and oil radiator. She alone of women seemed to understand that the beauty of a car is how it performs on the open road.
Cenni knocked his shoes against the cement wall facing his car, then cleaned them on a pad that he kept in his trunk before getting behind the wheel. He now spent most of his days (and nights) in the suburban version of the fortified medieval tower, a two-story cement bunker surrounded by one-story concrete barriers. In the case of their particular bunker, its architect (the wife of the aforesaid bureaucrat) had given it a splash of personality: It was painted flamingo pink with pea green window frames.
On a normal day and in normal traffic, it took Cenni fifteen minutes to drive from his parking garage to this deconstructionist version of hell—when a football game was letting in or letting out it took a maddening two hours—but in neither case did the drive offer the pleasures of the open road or an opportunity to test Bruno’s precision tuning. On Cenni’s last birthday, his fortieth, he’d decided that it was time to act his age, to trade up for a more conservative model. The car dealer, one of the many along Ponte San Giovanni, and a strong advocate of automatic gearshifting (“Helps in traffic jams, Dottore”), had looked at him blankly when the subject of Weber carburetors was introduced. Differential pinion blocks and oil radiators never even came up. Cenni drove away somewhat relieved to discover that he and Bruno were joined together unto death.
2
HE SIGNED IN at the front desk, then started up the stairs, two steps at a time. He met no one. Those who pull duty on Easter Sunday always find ways to be with their families. The audacious get friends to sign them in; the timid come into the office, display themselves in the cafeteria, then disappear. He could easily do the same, leave after his conference with the questore, but this new case was a godsend, the perfect excuse not to appear at his mother’s for dinner. Renato would be there. He hadn’t seen his brother since Christmas and had yet to congratulate him on his recent appointment. He was now “His Excellency, the Bishop of Urbino,” as his mother had mentioned three times yesterday, the second-youngest bishop in the Italian church, which generally preferred its bureaucrats seasoned and wrinkled.
They had been born sixty minutes apart, forty years ago, perhaps the only time they were that long apart until their eighteenth birthday. On that day, they had escaped the guests at one of their mother’s drawing-room events: the count of this, the duchess of that, the inevitable principessa, who was invited to all his mother’s parties, where she did her grocery shopping, slipping hors d’oeuvres into her extralarge pockets. The twins had a lot
to celebrate that year. They’d both been accepted by the University of Bologna, to the law college. Alex had taken the lead in everything from the time they were children, even to selecting their university. He had planned and Renato had listened. They would get law degrees, fight corruption, perhaps run for public office.
Later that same night they were celebrating in a disco in Torgiano. He was drinking heavily, beer fortified by shots of whiskey from his friends, and was drunk. Renato was being particularly quiet. He had been sitting across from Alex, nursing the same beer for over an hour, but now he was trying to tell Alex something over the thundering music. It was a Bee Gee’s song. Alex thought he’d heard Renato say that he was not going to Bologna, that he was going to Rome, to be a priest. He had laughed out loud, and Renato had responded with an awkward smile. Then Renato said it again. They stared at each other, Renato’s face distorted through a haze of smoke and alcohol. The beerglass that Alex was holding slipped from his hand and shattered into tiny pieces. Slivers of glass and warm beer sprayed them both, the avowed atheist and the future bishop of Urbino. One of the slivers lodged in the fleshy part of Alex’s hand. It was still working its way out.
Cenni’s office was on the top floor, a few doors down from the questore’s, a distinct disadvantage since Carlo Togni loved to talk, and he particularly loved talking to his senior commissario, whom he regarded as his protégé when things were going well and his nemesis when they were not. Either way, he too frequently interrupted Cenni during working hours for one of his general gossips. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether one was for or against crime, Togni also had a small office in the city center, in the Palazzo dei Priori, where he spent most days cultivating relationships, doing lunch with his political brethren. His decision to visit the suburbs on Easter Sunday did not augur well for Cenni’s day.
