by Ben Pastor
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe I’m telling the truth, or that she is in Verona?”
“There is no other wife. You’re making it up to make me admit to something I have not committed, I know your type.”
“I doubt very much you know my type.” Bora showed her a piece of paper. “A civil marriage certificate. It just came in. See for yourself.”
Claretta clutched her elbows, as if she were cold. She made no effort to reach for the paper, or to look at it. “Put it away,” she said. “I don’t want to read anything. Put it away.”
Bora did. “Now tell me the truth, because I’ll find out on my own sooner or later.”
“I’d rather speak to Inspector Guidi. Why isn’t he here?”
“Because he has other things to attend to. Tell me if your husband was being blackmailed about his first marriage, and I promise I’ll send Guidi tomorrow.”
Claretta lowered her head. The rows of blond curls cascaded on her forehead with a girlish, perhaps studied effect, but she was really pale. “I’ve told you a hundred times, Major. I know nothing of my husband’s business. You’re wasting your time.”
“Wasting time is something I never do. If you don’t collaborate with me regarding Olga Masi, I assure you I will endeavour to prove your guilt, and at this point it wouldn’t take much.”
“Please leave me alone. I’m not feeling well.”
Bora stepped to the door, and opened it. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll leave.”
“You don’t understand!” Claretta bent over, locking her arms together. “I’m sick,” she moaned. “My head is spinning.”
“I’ll call you a physician.”
“Just leave me alone!”
Bora started out of the door, asking for the warden.
“Wait, wait.” She spoke with her head in her hands, swaying slightly from side to side. “I don’t want to see anyone else. Ask me again.”
Bora closed the door, and stood with his back to it. “I have two questions. Did you know about Olga Masi, and did anyone blackmail you?”
For a good minute there was no answer, then Claretta dug her hands into her hair, lifting the curls from her temples, a world-weary gesture Bora had seen actresses make in bad movies.
“Here’s all I know, Major. On the night of the day when Vittorio died, I found a typewritten note under the door of my flat. Four lines telling me Vittorio had another wife up north. If I wished to avoid a scandal, I’d have to deposit five thousand lire in a waste basket by the train station. At first I thought it was a very bad and cruel joke, because people knew Vittorio had money. I didn’t take the note seriously. When I found a second one in the mailbox the following day, I burned it in the fireplace as I’d done with the first. The third day I didn’t even bother to open the envelope.”
“Did you burn this one as well?”
“Yes.”
“You should have shown it to the police.”
“Why? If it was a bad practical joke, they’d do nothing about it. If it was true, why should I tell the police there was another wife somewhere? Anyway, by the third day after Vittorio’s death they started watching my flat, so they wouldn’t believe anything I had to say.”
“It may be because you lie so often.”
Claretta turned her childish white face to him. “And what’s wrong with it? Everyone lies, and if you tell the truth, no one believes you anyway. I’m alone now, and I must take care of myself. What do I care what others think? Whether my marriage is valid or not, I get to keep the jewels and furs Vittorio gave me. They’re plenty, you know. And if I ever get out of here, Verona has seen the last of me.” She leaned forward in the chair, and the flimsy frock showed to advantage the wealth of her breast.
Clumsily Bora rummaged in his tunic for cigarettes.
“Besides, Major, they tell me I’m an attractive woman. If that’s true, I should not waste the only gift I have. When Vittorio and I went to Venice in 1940 I was introduced to Blasetti, the film director. He told me I have magic eyes and look like Clara Calamai. He told me he knows Calamai personally, and that if you put us side by side you’d think we’re sisters. Therefore, I have some confidence I might succeed in motion pictures if I put my mind to it.” Because Bora had just succeeded in finding the pack, Claretta said, “May I have a cigarette, too?”
Bora obliged her, and left the room.
In the hallway, the warden told him Inspector Guidi was on the phone.
“You may use my office, Major.”
Guidi reported that De Rosa had just called. “He said he’d tried to get hold of you and couldn’t. He made it very clear that’s the only reason why he would even speak to me. He’s in a tizzy, and claims there’s no time to lose.”
“Why?” Bora squashed the cigarette in the warden’s ashtray. “What happened?”
“Apparently one of the plain-clothes men De Rosa assigned to watch Claretta’s flat noticed a suspicious character in the neighbourhood two nights ago.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man. The subject rang her doorbell twice, and when no answer came, he paused to observe her balcony and windows from the other side of the street, and then left quickly. The plain-clothes man was not allowed to leave his post, but worked it out so that he’d be back and free for action last night. He waited in a distant doorway, and the same scene played itself out. Ringing, no response, looking up at the windows. By the time the plain-clothes man approached, the other had already turned tail and was gone.”
“Did De Rosa give you a physical description of the suspect?”
“Between the late hour and the blackout, all we know is that he seemed young and of medium build. Hardly enough to do anything with, but De Rosa made me swear I’d inform you.”
Bora knew by the pain awakening in his body that he’d let his guard down for the first time since going on patrol. Fever added malaise to pain. He said, “Just in case, I’m staying in Verona. Join me as soon as you can. You’ll find me at Colonel Habermehl’s. Here’s the address.”
That evening, Colonel Habermehl faced the oak liquor cabinet with a fond expression. Drink gave him a perennial rubicund cheer, and for all that he’d managed to keep his career in harness thus far, he was no good whatsoever after three in the afternoon. The blood stagnating in the minute vessels all over his face would trick him one of these days, by his own admission.
“Hell, a stroke is the way I’m going,” he said tonight. “There are worse ways. ‘Hit a rogue more than once’ says Paul Joseph – so, here’s a third shot of poison!” And then, “Something’s up, Martin, you’re not fooling me. Have a cognac and tell me what it’s about. I opened a Napoleon I brought from France, and I’ll be insulted if you refuse.”
Bora had no intention of refusing. He let Habermehl pour him a double shot in the paunchy glass, and emptied it at once. “It’s nothing, Herr Oberst. I’m not sleeping well. The usual worries at work.”
“I think you’re catching a seasonal disease, whatcha-macall it…”
“Influenza, in German and Italian alike.”
“There, influenza. Well, cheers anyhow. ‘Believe in the future. Only then can you be a victor’, blah blah… What news from home?”
“They’re all well.”
“Your wife?”
“She’s well.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Last autumn.” Bora helped himself to another cognac, which he partly drank.
“Last autumn, on furlough from Russia? And that’s all? I was right. You should have got yourself airlifted to Germany after the accident. It’s better when they see you right away, when there’s a serious accident. Women get all mushy then.”
Bora put down the cognac. He had nothing to answer Habermehl, and it was fortunate that Guidi’s arrival was announced next. “Tonight we might be able to secure Clara Lisi’s blackmailer,” he said quickly. “And he in turn might lead us to the assassin.”
Habermehl d
owned a fresh drink. “Well, good luck. Too bad your wife didn’t see you when you were laid low. Now it’ll take some convincing to make her see she’s lucky you’re alive.”
As if he needed the reminder. Bora walked out of the parlour, into an elegant waiting room where Guidi introduced the plain-clothes man to him.
“I had a public notice posted on Claretta’s door, Major. I will explain while we drive there.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes. But please, we have no proof this man has anything to do with the matter, and in any case we don’t want to kill a potential witness.”
Bora showed the latched holster. “You must think I have nothing to do other than going around shooting. I do not intend to open fire, but you’ll never find me unarmed.” With an unexpected grin, he added, “Wouldn’t Yanez behave the same way?”
“Yanez?” Guidi thought he had not heard right.
“Of course.” Bora preceded Guidi in the street. “Just because I’m from Saxony, it doesn’t mean I only read Karl May as a boy. Once I went through the Old Shat-terhand and Winnetou tales, I fairly devoured the adventure novels of your great Salgari, during my summers in Rome. I can’t tell you how many times I smoked my nth cigarette, à la Yanez, while I was in Poland. Of course, this was before many other things happened.”
If Guidi expected to hear more, he was disappointed. Bora only said, “Make sure your safety catch is off, Guidi.”
The plain-clothes man was a blond, heavy-set man with a boxer’s mug and the unlikely name of Stella. Asked by Guidi to report, he flipped through his notebook with a saliva-sleek thumb.
“It went like this. Both nights the suspect showed up between six and seven. The first night it was twenty past six, and last night twenty to seven. He walked from the cross-street on the right, rang the bell, looked up at the house front, and left the same way. I could have stopped him last night, except that a German truck was coming down the Corso.” He glanced at Bora, who kept his peace. “That must have startled him. He’d cleared out by the time I made it across the street.”
Bora asked Stella to draw an approximate map of the city block, and to mark on it the movements of the unknown man. “Did you notice any accomplices? Vehicles?”
“I heard no sound of engines. But he could have been dropped from a car at a distance, or else used a bicycle.”
Bora studied the map. “Where’s the best place to wait unseen?”
“There’s an alley down from the front door, on the left. You can’t see much after curfew. If the moon doesn’t come out tonight, it’ll be tough. If you want, I’ll come along.”
“No,” Bora said.
“Yes,” Guidi said, preventing with a gesture further objection from Bora. “We need a third party, Major.”
“I meant to use German soldiers.”
Stella ripped the map from his notebook and gave it to Guidi. “Better not. The movements of German troops are closely watched. If they’re noticed anywhere in the neighbourhood, it’s likely that no one will show up.”
From his seat near the liquor cabinet, Habermehl overheard the Italian conversation without understanding a word. But in the fifteen years he’d known him, he had learned that Bora acted most sure of himself whenever he had the least reason for it.
“Martin made an enormous mistake when he got married,” Bora’s stepfather had told Habermehl at Christmas-time last year. “This marriage of his won’t survive the War.”
The street by Claretta’s house stretched dark, and whatever moon there was, the passing clouds hid completely.
Bora had parked the BMW in the alley, lights off. Without smoking, hardly speaking at all, he and Guidi waited in the front seat. It was freezing cold outside and inside, but they kept the windows rolled down to avoid fogging up the glass. Guidi had the impression that Bora was trembling, which was unlike him to say the least.
“What is it, Guidi? What are you looking at?”
“I’m looking at nothing. I’m waiting, as you are.”
Bora apologized. A moment later he took off his cap. Although he turned his face to the side window, Guidi could see – no, he could not quite see, only make out by the broken light through the clouds – that he was wiping his face and neck.
“Guidi, I haven’t told you the incidental details I learned from the midwife. But if we’re to visit Zanella’s wife before long, you might as well hear them.”
“Do they add anything to the investigation?”
“They don’t. But aside from insisting that Lisi ordered her to go on with the abortion – I did tell you that – she said the girl was frightened. That they were both scared, in fact. It was a full moon, and according to the midwife, every abortion she performed with a full moon came to some kind of grief.”
“Poppycock.”
Bora lay back against the seat. “I am merely supplying you with the incidentals. She said the foetus moved for some time, but was dead by the time the placenta came out.”
Guidi, whose notions of obstetrics were those of any bachelor, limited himself to a nod. On the other side of the street, against the darkened façade of Claretta’s house, the piece of paper posted on the door was the only thing visible. Stella was lost to view in a recess, but undoubtedly waiting. “Anything else, Major?”
“She declared she never did know the name of the girl. It’s safe to assume it was the Zanella girl. All the midwife claims to know is that the girl’s father was in the army.”
“Not a particularly helpful hint these days.”
“No, and the midwife admitted it wasn’t the first time Lisi had brought her girls in trouble. He’d wait down in the car every time, and usually drove them off himself. But usually the girls were in the first trimester, and things went well with them. If you can say that under the circumstances.”
Guidi’s feet were stiff with cold. He wiggled them in his shoes, and blew on his thin-gloved hands. “What about the other midwife?”
“Thankfully she left town at the end of August. I’ve heard more about abortions than I care to know.”
Suddenly alert, Guidi hunched forward. “Look.” The notice Guidi had posted on Claretta’s door was nothing but an announcement of changes to the tramway schedule, but the intent was to attract attention. So far the dimly white stain of the leaflet had stood out in the dark, but now it was blotted out as if something, or someone, had come in front of it.
“He’s here, Guidi.”
“Maybe.”
A pale triangle of asphalt came into view where a gap between roof edges allowed an incipient skinny moon to cast light on it. The human figure had emerged from the dark of the houses into the pale triangle, and was now facing the posted notice. It was far too dark to read, and Guidi had purposely chosen a faded, badly printed specimen. The wavering, quickly extinguished flicker of a match came and went in the breeze, followed by another, and a third one.
“He’s trying to figure out if it says anything about Claretta. Let’s go.”
Bora and Guidi silently left the car, and slipped out of the alley. Guidi followed the wall to reach a wholly dark spot from which he could cross the pavement and reach the opposite street corner. From where he stood, the stranger’s hand gathered to protect the tremulous glare of the match was red and translucent like raw flesh.
As for Bora, by habit he unlatched the holster as he approached Claretta’s door nearly in a straight line. The wind was against him, and covered his booted footfalls. He understood from the wind-borne faint tinkle that the stranger, disappointed in the notice, was ringing the doorbell. Three short rings, like a signal. From the corner of his eye Bora realized Guidi had turned the street corner. The night swallowed him up. Nothing was visible on the left side. The electric doorbell rang three more times, deep in the body of the dark building.
Guidi was already too far to hear the bell. Noiselessly he walked to the end of the narrow street, where he set himself to wait again. The moon blinked and was sealed over by clouds. Liar moon, Bora t
hought, taking another step forward. He was conscious of the pain in his left leg, as one participates in someone else’s suffering, intellectually. Tension offered him a temporary stay from physical distress, and within it he moved carefully, secure. It was just a matter of moments before Stella approached the stranger. The rest would follow quickly and to a good end, with Guidi barring the way out.
Holding his breath, Guidi was counting the passage of seconds.
Bora perceived motion to his left.
And at that instant, without warning, the air-raid siren let out a loud, tearing wail. It spiralled to a deafening pitch from a nearby building. Bora cursed in the uproar.
Whether he was on to the ambush or not, the stranger dodged at the same time that Stella lunged for him. There was a brief scuffle, a close-range shot impossible to hear in the noise, like a fiery silent burst.
Bora stopped thinking. He pursued and tackled the running shadow from behind, and the weight of his tall body knocked the stranger over. Stella groaned on the pavement as the men stumbled over him. “He’s got a gun, Major!” And Stella’s moving about made Bora lose hold of the adversary. Blindly he struggled against an arching, kicking body full of elbows and bony angles. Impeded by the greatcoat, Bora used his size to gain an advantage, but it wasn’t enough. He struck with his right fist in frustration, and still the stranger slipped from under him with the benefit of two sound legs. Bora wouldn’t let him go. He kept after him, as if the godawful noise didn’t mean bombs might be falling at any minute. Pain and the dizziness of fever had disappeared as if a sponge had wiped them off. Chasing the stranger down the street where Guidi had gone before, Bora no longer felt his body. “He’s armed, Guidi!” But not even Bora could hear what he was shouting. From a few feet away, a bright-tongued shot blasted out of the dark, missing him. Bora returned fire this time, aiming low.
Pausing to take some kind of aim was enough to break the spell. Agony sliced through him with the terrifying ease of a razor. Bora, who’d just thrown his dead weight forward not to lose his prey, blacked out for a moment, even as he collided full force against him. In falling, he brought him down, and lost him again.
