Kill the Angel

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “Like I already explained to the magistrate, I didn’t know anything. It was just one of Dante’s hunches.”

  “Another one. What a coincidence,” Curcio said icily.

  Colomba licked her chapped lips and improvised. “He saw something on the computer before he destroyed it with his car, a map of Rome. But it was so generic that we went to check things out before raising the alarm.”

  “Do you realize what this story sounds like, Colomba?”

  Sure, I realize, Colomba thought. A complete concoction. But the truth was even more of a mess. “Forgive me. Can I have an espresso? I’ve got a headache that’s killing me.”

  Curcio had one brought, along with a prepackaged pastry that Colomba didn’t open. “I’m not questioning you now, Colomba. I’m just trying to figure out what was going through your head when you decided not to trust me,” he said after a while.

  Colomba toyed with the plastic wrapping around the pastry. “Would you have believed me if I’d come to tell you that I suspected that both Faouzi and Youssef were nothing more than scapegoats?”

  “Scapegoats for whom?”

  For an angel.

  “Faouzi spoke of a woman before he was killed. A woman he was afraid of.”

  “Maybe that was their contact with the caliphate.”

  “They really weren’t members of ISIS.”

  Curcio had to concentrate to keep from swearing out loud. “Colomba . . . by now, belonging to ISIS is strictly a formality. All you have to do is say you’re a member; it’s a terrorist-franchising operation. Then, if you actually do something, the others will claim it as an ISIS attack. It doesn’t really matter whether it was a pair of nuts or two devout believers recruited after years of prayer. After all, we have Faouzi’s fingerprints on the scene of his accomplice’s murder. We’ve confiscated suspicious sums of money at Faouzi’s home. Do you really think someone planted all this evidence?”

  As she listened to Curcio, Colomba felt as if she’d been caught red-handed in a foolish delusion. Everything she’d believed so fervently looked unrealistic to her when confronted with the harsh reality of events. “I don’t know.”

  “What strikes me as more probable is that a terrorist killed a friend of his, then the night watchman at a company’s headquarters, and the Jewish owner of that company, who was most likely the target in the first place, after hooking himself up to a suicide belt that, luckily, in part due to your efforts, he decided not to set off.”

  “Faouzi was forced to do what he did. He told me so before the NOA shot him.”

  “Forced to do it by the mysterious woman. Who may exist only in his head.”

  “A woman like the one who called in to report him just two minutes after his photograph was put out on the Web,” said Colomba.

  “These are just things that happen, Deputy Chief. Just as it happens from time to time that a colleague has a crisis and is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.” Curcio shook his head. “But it’s my fault for putting you back on the front lines. I made that mistake, and I take full responsibility.”

  “To the intelligence agencies, I’m a traitor; to you, I’m out of my mind,” said Colomba flatly, her eyes as dull as the bottom of a wine bottle. “No one thinks I just did my duty.”

  Curcio tugged at his nonexistent mustache. “I’ve put your team up for an honorable citation. If there were any abuses, it certainly wasn’t their fault.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Your administrative suspension has been transformed, at your request, into extended leave for health reasons. In my report, I’ll make reference to the fact that you suffer from undiagnosed post-traumatic syndrome, exacerbated by the shootout you were caught in with Hossein.”

  Colomba clenched her teeth. “My head’s screwed on perfectly tight, thanks.”

  Curcio heaved a deep sigh. “Colomba, do you realize that this is your only chance at avoiding criminal charges?”

  “Criminal charges for what? For having tracked down two terrorists?”

  “Farid Youssef was killed, at the very most, an hour before you got there. Are your sure that if you’d told us what you knew, the task force might not have gotten there first?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  “What about the death of the chief executive at CRT? Are you certain about that one, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Spinelli has her doubts. If the secretary hadn’t survived, she’d have already issued a warrant of preventive custody in prison. But you know what the worst thing is? That you keep on insisting that you acted directly on your own responsibility to keep from wasting time, but I believe there was a very different reason behind what you did.”

  Colomba said nothing, too exhausted to articulate a thought.

  “You don’t trust us. You don’t trust law enforcement, because Torre has filled your head with bullshit.”

  “That’s not right,” Colomba murmured, knowing that she was lying, at least in part.

  “It doesn’t make any difference. Six months on leave, at the end of which you can come in for a physical and psychological evaluation, and then you’ll be reassigned.”

  “Reassigned . . .”

  “It’s the only way, Colomba.”

  It was then that Colomba realized, even through the exhaustion that enveloped her, that her career was over once and for all. If they even ever allowed her to return to active duty, then Spinelli’s dream of seeing her stuck behind a desk, maybe even stamping passports, would finally come true. Or, why not, in some training center somewhere, teaching penguins how to take a fingerprint.

  “Colomba,” said Curcio, and she realized that she’d been lost in her own thoughts and had failed to notice that her boss had extended his hand to put an end to the meeting. They shook hands hastily, almost fearfully. “Before going home, drop by the HR office to take care of the matter. The papers are all ready. And turn in your badge, please,” said Curcio.

  “Are you afraid I’ll make improper use of it?”

  “Let me just say I see no need to run that risk.”

  Colomba laid her badge down on the desk. She didn’t throw it against the wall, and she didn’t slam the door on her way out.

  Both things cost her considerable effort.

  17

  Things had gone much more smoothly for Dante. He, too, had been questioned by the magistrate and by the intelligence agencies, but in part due to his lawyer and friend Roberto Minutillo, he’d been treated with courtesy and detained on one of the balconies outside the district attorney’s office.

  In spite of his exhaustion, he had managed to get down in a formal deposition a version that cleared both him and Colomba, which nobody had believed in the slightest. Minutillo had objected vociferously to the fact that he had been detained at all, when he had only performed “his duty as a good citizen.” At three in the morning, he had been released and sent back to his hotel. After a few hours’ sleep, he’d purchased a new cell phone and gone over to the Mobile Squad offices to get news of Colomba, screeching at the sentinel until Esposito and Guarneri came downstairs. They’d led him to a table in the rear courtyard, next to the overflowing ashtrays where police officers went to get a smoke. He stayed there for a long time, with the two Amigos taking turns coming down to check on him.

  “What’s happening to Colomba?” Dante asked toward evening, when the two cops sat down with him to chat. “Is she going to be fired?”

  “They can’t do that unless she’s convicted of something serious,” said Esposito.

  “Too bad,” said Dante. “She’s wasted in this job.”

  Esposito stole a cigarette out of Dante’s pack. “Do you really think those two sons of bitches were innocent?”

  “One of the two was a rapist, so innocent he certainly wasn’t, and the other killed two people. But they weren’t terrorists. They were manipulated and used.”

  “And you know this thanks to your paranormal powers?”

  “O
nly thanks to my profound understanding of the human psyche.”

  Guarneri shook his head. “I’ll grant you that you’re good at reading . . . what do you call them again?”

  “Micromovements.”

  “Still, human beings can’t be broken down into a chart. They’re unpredictable.”

  “Not as unpredictable as you think,” and Dante grinned his grin. “I’m right ninety percent of the time.”

  “Baboom,” said Esposito.

  Dante shrugged. “I can give you a demonstration.”

  “Are you going to do one of your tricks?” Guarneri asked, his eyes gleaming.

  “If you have a deck of cards.”

  “I think I have one of those decks that the U.S. Army distributed in Iraq,” said Esposito.

  “That will do fine.”

  Esposito disappeared and came back ten minutes later with a deck of cards in the plastic wrapping. “I had to empty a drawer. I even found a copy of my house keys that I thought I’d lost.”

  “So you see, some good came of it.” Dante tore open the plastic wrapping by slamming the pack down on the table. “Brand-new. Excellent.”

  “Listen, these are the original cards, not the Italian replicas,” said Esposito. “Handle with care.”

  “You could have sold them on eBay. You’d have made some serious money. What’s an inspector’s salary, anyway?”

  “We’re not going to tell you, we don’t want to have to watch you cry,” said Guarneri.

  Dante took the glove off his bad hand. “I need both hands. By now you guys are used to it, right?”

  “No problem,” said Guarneri, looking at it the way he’d been unable to do in Musta’s apartment. He discovered that the bad hand wasn’t missing fingers, the way he’d thought; they were twisted and folded over on themselves and half the size they ought to have been. Only thumb and forefinger were almost normal, and Dante could move them, though they had no fingernails. The whole hand was covered with an intricate network of scars.

  Guarneri shook his head. “But why did the Father only hit you on your left hand, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Because that was the less useful one, since I was right-handed. And he never hit me.” Dante used both his hands to pick two cards: the ace of spades with Saddam Hussein and the ace of clubs with Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s second son and the head of internal security forces. “We really ought to have a more attractive queen, but we’ll settle for what we can get,” he said, picking the card with the queen of hearts, alias Barzan Abd al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid al-Tikrit, the Republican Guard commander. “No doubt about it, we’re a little macabre: all three of them are dead. Not that I’m sorry for them.”

  “Didn’t you say that the Father tortured you?” asked Esposito, who was stuck on the previous topic.

  “He told me to punish myself with a club. He never touched me. I think, because my memories of the silo are somewhat defective.” Dante lined up the three cards and lit a cigarette. “We’re ready.”

  Esposito scoffed derisively. “Don’t tell me you’re going to play a round of three-card monte.”

  “Exactly. Here we have the aces, and here is the queeennnn,” Dante concluded in the voice of a sideshow tout, turning them over and then skillfully sliding them from one hand to the other. “Which one of you wants to give it a shot?”

  “I do,” said Esposito, and he touched the card in the middle. It was the right one. “But do you seriously think you can trick me at this game?”

  “This time we’re playing for real; the first time was just a test,” said Dante, turning the cards over much more quickly. In spite of his maimed hand, he was very fast. Esposito realized, however, that the card with the “queen” had an edge smeared with ashes. Dante had dropped a little ash from the cigarette clamped between his lips. “And we need to decide what stakes we’re playing for.”

  “Ten euros?” Guarneri was enjoying himself.

  “Phooey. I’m getting close to the poverty line, but I haven’t sunk that low yet.” Dante smiled a little smile. “Pharmaceutical stimulants confiscated by customs agents?”

  “You’re already plenty excitable,” said Esposito. The trace of ashes was almost imperceptible, but from where he was sitting, it was clearly evident. “How about a question?”

  Dante laid out the three cards, facedown. “A question?”

  “If I guess the card, you have to answer honestly.”

  “Interesting. Okay. Which is it?”

  “The first on the left, from where I’m sitting.”

  Dante turned it over, and it was the correct one. He put on a baffled expression. “How did you do it?”

  Esposito smiled triumphantly. “Do you know how many three-card monte games I’ve broken up?”

  “Fire away with your question.”

  “What’s going on between you and the deputy chief?”

  “Esposito, you’re a dog,” Guarneri scolded him through laughter.

  “A deal is a deal.” Dante scratched his head with his good hand. “Nothing at all. Good friends, let’s say. Even though we haven’t seen much of each other lately.”

  “Are you telling the truth?”

  “I’m a man of my word. Give me another chance.” He shuffled again, even faster this time. “Interesting choice of questions. Are you romantically interested in your boss?”

  “I’m a married man, buddy,” said Esposito with some embarrassment.

  “And you’d be the first married man ever to cheat on his wife, I guess,” Dante said sarcastically. “Your choice.”

  Esposito looked for the dirty edge. “On the left, once again.”

  He was right. Dante shook his head, crestfallen. “How the fuck . . . I’m coming off like a fool here. Maybe I should have tried this on someone else.”

  “Now I get another question.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s this story I hear that some relative of yours has been calling you? I know that Deputy Chief Caselli did a search for him.”

  “A guy called me a few months ago and told me he was my brother, acting as if he knew my real identity. For a while I sort of toyed around with the idea that it was the truth. I hoped it was, too,” Dante replied lightheartedly.

  “But it turns out?” asked Guarneri.

  Dante remained impassive. “Another hope dashed, as far as I can tell. I was wrong. Just like when I decided to play this game with you.”

  Esposito laughed. “You said that you’d show me why you’re infallible at reading other people’s minds. But it seems to me that it’s the other way around so far.”

  Dante shuffled in a hurry, then laid out the cards again. The one with the dirty edge had moved to the center now.

  “Let’s not do this, come on. I feel bad beating you so easily,” said Esposito.

  “Then let’s raise the stakes. A hundred euros.”

  Esposito smiled greedily. “Look, I’ll expect you to pay.”

  “If I lose.”

  “You’re a witness, Guarneri,” said Esposito, and turned over the middle card. It was Saddam Hussein, the ace of spades. “Now, how the fuck . . .”

  “Try the others.”

  Esposito tried them. None of the three was the queen.

  “He took you for a sucker,” said Guarneri, bent over with laughter.

  Dante pulled out the queen from where she had been tucked under his glove, over on the side of the table. “I cleaned the edge of the right card and got ash on this one. It wasn’t an accident the first time, either.”

  “That’s cheating!” said Esposito, clearly irritated.

  “What, are you saying that forgetting to tell me there was a marked card isn’t cheating?” said Dante, lighting another cigarette. “You wanted to come off looking like a shrewd operator, but since you were uneasy about my hand, you never looked too closely. You just figured that it made me clumsier than I actually am. So I took advantage of the fact.” Dante fanned out the cards with his bad hand, then put the glov
e back on. “You see? Human beings are much, much less complex than they think they are. It’s more or less a straightforward matter to say what they’ll do.”

  “You’re a human being yourself, though,” said Esposito, his irritation growing.

  “I don’t always feel like one.” Dante put the cards back into a deck and handed it over. “A hundred euros, please.”

  “Like hell.”

  “I knew this would happen, too . . . What is it?” he asked as he saw a uniformed officer come over and whisper into Esposito’s ear.

  “The deputy chief is coming out,” he replied.

  Dante leaped to his feet. “Do you mind if I speak to her?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Dante ran over to the front entrance. After a short time, Colomba walked past the guardhouse, waving wearily to the sentinel. She was still wearing the clothes from the day before, and Dante understood that they had never let her go get some rest. She practically ran into him. “Dante . . . what are you doing here?”

  “I was waiting for you. How did they treat you? Did they give you anything to eat?”

  “I’m fine, I’m just tired. I’m going home,” she said in a flat voice.

  Dante walked backward ahead of her so he could look her in the face. “Just tell me when we’ll see each other again. Because leads go cold, you know.”

  Colomba froze to a halt. “What do you think you’re talking about?”

  “The investigation. We’ve lost a battle, not the war.”

  “Have you lost your mind? There is no investigation, do you want to get that through your skull?”