by April Smith
Signora Falassi opens the door. She is a depressed-looking, spectacularly overweight person about fifty with a mane of artificially jet-black curls, wearing a pale lavender blouse and matching slacks. Her mouth pulls tight into a wary expression as she affirms that her husband is a driver for Spectra.
“Perchè lei vuole sapere?” Why do you want to know?
We stand on the steps looking earnest while Sterling explains in Italian that we are an American couple who just bought a farm in the area and were told Signore Falassi is the one to talk to about getting the chemicals we need to cure olives.
“Non è a casa. Guida la sua strada.”
“Can you tell us where he is? Maybe we can catch him.”
The woman says to follow her, but she can hardly walk, toddling slowly down a narrow hallway by hanging on to the walls. I glimpse a kitchen and an ancient nonna taking something out of the oven that smells of rancid lamb fat. A few steps farther, and we enter a tiny sloping room crammed with boxes of files. A camp bed is buried under stacks of newspapers and indistinguishable clothing. Hollowed out of this dark rat’s nest is a corner desk with a laptop computer under a brilliant light.
Signora Falassi lowers herself to a wooden chair with a painful sigh.
“Sorry if we are bothering you,” Sterling says in Italian.
She waves her hand. No bother. It’s just her feet, and she lifts them up for our inspection — a pair of deformed stumps in rubber thongs. They look like pictures I have seen of leprosy. The toes curl sideways and the skin has erupted in permanent red welts.
Falassi’s delivery schedule spurts out of the printer.
“She says he’s making a drop at the feed store in San Piero,” Sterling says. “It’s close by; we can catch him.”
“Ask how we get to San Piero,” I say, not taking my eyes from the feet.
She begins to give directions, but it turns into a shouting match with the old lady — Falassi’s mother, listening from the kitchen — who knows a better way to go. Not getting her point across, the nonna shuffles into the office, screeching and jabbing, while Sterling smiles and holds up his cell phone, indicating, Thank you very much; we’ll use the GPS.
I don’t think they understand, but they do calm down, and then a long exchange continues among the three of them in Italian. I can’t stop staring at the old lady’s feet. She, too, is wearing rubber thongs, and her welts go up to the ankles. It looks like both women have been burned by a caustic substance.
“What was that all about?” I say when we are back in the car.
Sterling drives with an eye on the blinking GPS.
“They said there was an accident. The husband used to keep chemicals behind the house. The wife and mother are out in the yard one day, and they notice their shoes are melting. There’s a leak coming from one of the barrels. They didn’t even feel it at first. Corrosive substances dissolve the nerve endings, along with the skin. That’s the good news, I guess.”
“Did Falassi want to do damage, or did he just screw up?”
“He screwed up. The wife says she has no use for him. She’s disabled now, stuck in the house with his mother, and he’s never home, yadda yadda yadda. But she got some money out of Spectra after the accident, so she’s going on a pilgrimage to Fatima.”
“And never coming back?”
“The mother’s going with her.”
“Gotta love it.”
We arrive at San Piero as the feed store is closing. The entire town is closed for dinner and will reopen around eight p.m. The manager says Falassi left a few minutes ago, but we can catch him on the road, pointing the opposite way from which we have come. The chemical delivery man does not seem in a hurry to get home for that roast lamb dinner.
We jump back in the car and Sterling jams it. After several tense, silent minutes of wondering if we are in fact going in the right direction, we sight the silver Spectra van and slow down to tourist speed, keeping a distance. He continues for several kilometers and then turns off to the right.
We slide past and pull over. Sterling checks the GPS.
“Where does that road go?” I ask.
“Looks like it ends in the middle of a damn forest.”
We swing around and make the turn onto a short dirt spur — bumpy but passable. We take it slowly, stopping at an iron gate about a hundred meters in. It’s chain-locked to vehicles, but obviously the van has just passed through. There is no other way out and the tread marks are fresh. We leave our car and hop over the gate. It is late in the day. Steamy afternoon sun languishes in the high grass and dusty pines. Not a motor, not a chirp, only ambient leafy rustling. We are definitely in the middle of a damn forest.
The road is old, maybe thousands of years old, worn into the landscape. The light beneath the canopy of needle clusters is wavering and soft. We trek along easily on well-used tracks. Between the tracks, tufts of lavender and daisies run wild. The air becomes lighter and perfumed — the trees break and we find ourselves in an enchanted valley, the kind of spot that calls out for habitation, with its own human-friendly microclimate sheltered by the hills. There is a long-neglected olive grove and the remains of a stream. A meadow of irises where two pure white Tuscan Chianina cows and a tawny calf are grazing.
The road takes a turn, past four worn gravestones, and goes downhill. The grassy median that grew between the tire tracks in the sun disappears as we enter thick oak woods. As in a fairy tale, the signs are warning us that we have crossed into an unfavorable realm. The foliage has grown spikes — juniper, gorse, and forbidding nettles. The air has cooled; motionless and buzzing with gnats. The tire tracks continue around what seems to be a hillock, but on second look we see that it’s an old stone wall splattered with mustard-colored fungus and buried under eons of dead foliage.
“You know what this is?” Sterling says. “It’s an ancient mill.”
“Where?”
“There’s the embankment. There’s the dry streambed. Lord, that must be the millstone,” he says of a round flint-colored boulder. “This is incredibly old.” Sterling wipes the sweat above his lips with a bandanna.
“There’s the van.”
Spots of red and silver are shining through the brush. We climb across the streambed, cracking dead branches like rifle shots.
“He’ll hear us.”
“Better that he does,” Sterling says.
We come to an old Tuscan-style house. The Spectra van is parked nearby. The house is nothing but a shell; a while ago there was a serious fire. The roof is half caved in and the wooden supports all charred. A caper bush has taken root in the walls and pried out the stones.
Sterling calls, “Signore Falassi?”
No answer. We walk to the other side of the ruins. A black and white Australian sheepdog trots around the corner and regards us with curious brown eyes. Sterling pets him and talks to him, and he follows us willingly, past a table and chair, a cache of gallon water bottles, burned tin cans, a tank of gas.
“There’s your sodium hydroxide.” Sterling points to bags of pellets like the ones we saw stacked in Aleandro’s basement, piled against a prefab shack.
There is another structure, a small wooden water tower on stilts. I climb a walkway to a platform built around it. Meanwhile Sterling has found a chest containing goggles and gloves. He has noticed a hose leading from the gas tank to a circle of jets beneath the tower. Sticking his head under, he sees that the bottom is made of firebrick.
“Looks like they fire this thing up.”
“Why would they?”
Now I’m on the platform, maybe ten feet off the ground. The dog is right behind me, nose in my butt. I find a tarp secured over the top of the tank with grommets. Just like your backyard hot tub. I open it and look inside. The wooden tower is lined with a steel vat that holds hundreds of gallons of sickly pink sludge, a living thing, a bubbling mix of water and lye that seems to have the power to suck you in. The chemical reaction caused by the jets below still radiates venomous
heat, released when the top was lifted. There are teeth and a fragment of vertebrae floating in the strawberry-colored stew.
“What’s the matter?” Sterling calls.
“Look at this.”
Sterling lopes up the walkway and glances into the tank. Beside us the dog is barking frantically — not taking a breath — the same message over and over.
“That’s our guy,” I say.
“I’ll talk to him,” says Sterling, slowly making his way back down.
A stocky laborer wearing a filthy jumpsuit has stepped out of the woods. He has dark curly hair and a round, sooty face.
“Non muovere! Chi cazzo sono?” he shouts.
Sterling stops and speaks calmly in Italian.
“We are very sorry for the intrusion. We mean no harm.”
The man raises a.45-caliber handgun and aims at Sterling’s chest, continuing to yell that we have invaded his place.
“Tell him we got lost,” I say. “We’re American tourists—”
Sterling does. Falassi continues to rant. His face is red with sweat and fear. Sterling has been caught in the middle of the site with no options. An iron pry bar rests up against the shack, way out of reach.
“This is a suckface situation in hell,” Sterling says.
Right next to me the dog is barking incessantly.
Falassi raises the gun with both hands and sights it.
I scoop up the dog under the belly and hold him over the tank.
“Tell him I’ll kill his fucking dog.”
The dog weighs fifty pounds and is struggling with all his might.
“Put the gun down or we’ll dump your dog,” Sterling shouts in Italian. “We’ll throw him in! We’ll do it, I promise you!”
The dog is whipping back and forth, all four legs cycling in midair. His body is warm, and I smell pine in his fur. I brace my back, but my fingers are slipping. He’s strong, he’s desperate, he licks my face, saying all he wants to do is to be let go. Another second and he’ll worm out of my arms.
“Put the gun down!”
Falassi stares in disbelief, and then his peasant face goes dumb and grief-stricken.
“No!” he cries. “Non farlo!” Don’t do it!
I grit my teeth, muscles aching, continuing to hold the squirming animal over the poisonous sludge.
“How long will it take for his body to dissolve? Ever do it while they’re still alive? Put down the gun or the dog goes now!”
Falassi cries, “Arete!” and tosses the gun, sobbing, “Per favore!”
Sterling picks up the weapon.
“Good choice. Nobody gets hurt.”
I put the dog down on the platform. Sterling tosses the gun into the tank, where it sinks with a caustic hiss. My legs are trembling.
“We are tourists,” Sterling repeats as I climb off and we back away. “We made a mistake. And now we are going back to America. We are leaving.”
Our goal is to get out of there with no further violence and no reason for pursuit. We keep murmuring how sorry we are as we slip past Falassi, who has become a tearful penitent, down on his knees in the resinous dust, begging the dog to come. Unfortunately, the dog wants to go with us. We have to speak harshly to him, and throw sticks, until he finally turns back.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“It isn’t her,” Sterling keeps saying.
We run all the way back to the car, through the oak forest and past the meadow. Sterling’s shirt is soaked, but he is scarcely breathing hard. I am out of shape and tasting the exertion. When we finally stop, my whole body begins to quiver. I have to lean against the iron gate and force down the revulsion.
“How do you know it isn’t her?”
“Those bones looked real old,” he says.
“You don’t know that! You don’t know if they’re human, or what human bones even look like when they’ve been in acid for who knows how long, and neither do I.”
“I’ve seen it before,” Sterling says somberly. “In mass graves in Rwanda.”
“There’s no comparison!”
“I know how you feel,” he continues gently. “She’s your sister.”
“Don’t be so condescending.”
“What in hell are you talkin’ about?”
Sterling takes a long look back down the empty road. I hear a sound like steel ball bearings rolling over each other and realize he is grinding his teeth.
“What if Falassi didn’t buy our story?” I snap.
He starts shouting. “First of all, shut the fuck up! If it’s all too much, go sit in the car.”
He looks like a madman. The dirty bandanna, the sweat, the bristled jaw working, the bright eyes darting. He looks like a man who has in fact just parachuted in from a slaughter. But then it passes. I force myself to look at the treetops until my tears of shock and nausea are gone.
“Here’s what we know,” I say carefully. “The ruins in the forest are a crime scene. Whether it’s her or not”—I can’t say Cecilia—“the remains could provide evidence against the mob. We have to secure it. We have to take Falassi into custody. He is a witness and a potential informant. In the U.S., federal agents would be all over this within the hour. But here — who do we reach out to?”
Sterling wipes a palm across his forehead. He is past the episode. He does not apologize, which is not in his nature, either. Maybe he has not been aware of where he is or what he said. A few years ago I was involved in a shooting incident in Los Angeles. Afterward, I was told about things I had done of which I had no memory.
“Who does the crime scene belong to, legally?” he asks. “The tank, all of it?”
“The Italian authorities.”
“Do we trust them?”
“No.”
“What about the Americans?”
“You mean the FBI? I don’t trust Rizzio, either. But it’s my duty,” I say, kicking at the dust. “I have to tell him what we found. Then it’s his call to involve the Italians.”
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know how much independence he has over here. If he’s supposed to call headquarters before he takes a piss, it could be days.”
Sterling takes out his cell phone. “I’ll handle it.”
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Chris.”
The plan is for Sterling and Chris to stake out the witness, Falassi. They will secrete themselves at the mouth of the dirt road and follow him. According to the GPS, it is the only way out of the site. The long evening passes slowly, and there is no sign of Falassi. Chris arrives after dark with a trunk piled with sniper rifles, automatic weapons, and camouflage gear. In a country that bans guns, someone had to commit a crime in order to import all that firepower — hide it in a shipment or pay off a customs official.
“Do those weapons belong to Oryx?”
“Of course not. I tripped over ’em, taking out the trash.”
I leave the surveillance to them and drive back to the abbey, where the embassy switchboard is able to put the call through to Dennis Rizzio at home. As expected, he says that with no jurisdiction, we are bound to turn the crime scene over to the provincial police. It is their responsibility to link the forensic evidence from the vat with the “disappeared.” I explain to Rizzio that since the Commissario has already suppressed evidence during the attack on Giovanni, he might not be the best person to handle this important evidence.
“I’m in contact with the director of the crime lab in Rome. I’ll make sure this stays on track,” Dennis assures me.
Not at all assured, I leave a voice message for Mike Donnato at the Los Angeles field office.
I am not surprised that Sterling and Chris have not returned by morning. Waiting until the Italian police show up to arrest Falassi could easily take all day. From the mirrored armoire in the sweet-pea bedroom I remove Cecilia’s wrap skirt (“When it is this hot, the only thing to wear is linen”), holding it in my hands for a long time, studying the minute stitches along the hem, the h
and-sewn buttonholes where the ties pass through, the weave of the oatmeal fabric.
The small arched window is filled with the light of daybreak. I stand there in my underwear and contemplate the vast breathing of everything outside that is alive, while, at the same time, aware of a chill penetrating the soles of my feet from the enduring cold of the inert clay tiles. In some deep place, I have begun to say my good-byes to Cecilia.
I had hoped, when this case began, to find what had been missing from my childhood in the insipid suburbs of Southern California, dominated by a grandfather too angry and narcissistic to even see me, except as an object of scorn. Even so, Cecilia was an unexpected discovery — driven, vibrant, brave, skilled at her profession, a little bit crazy — but fun. The rare kind of person who picks up the burdens; suddenly you don’t have to carry responsibility for everything.
Maybe losing her before loving her is a blessing. Like a caustic substance, the kidnap case has seared those nerve endings away. I reflect on how much easier it is to play the role of law enforcer than that of sister. I don’t know when the pain will start kicking in, but I’m certain Cecilia’s loss will leave nothing of this venture into family; the tentative bonds with Giovanni, and certainly with Nicosa, will dissolve as inevitably as those fragments of life melting in a vat of acid.
As promised, Cecilia’s skirt is cool and light. I wish my guilt in wearing it could be as weightless. Giovanni, eating breakfast in the kitchen, says Nicosa is working in his office.
“Where’s his office?”
“In the tower. Top floor.”
I was not even aware that the twelve-sided bell tower was used for living space. While a five-year-old could pick the lock on the main quarters, no high-tech toy has been unexploited to protect Nicosa’s solitude. Entry is gained with fingerprint recognition or a special bypass code that appears on a screen when you identify yourself through the intercom. A second code is required to pass through the vestibule air lock, where cameras and motion sensors watch every move. An automated voice says in Italian that you have thirty seconds to step inside the glass elevator or an alarm will sound.
