“That’s why she’s the way she is,” says the wrestler.
“I stopped wondering about these things a long time ago. And so should you, Sasha.”
Maksim has spoken with finality, and the wrestler understands that the time for discussions is over. There was a time when there were laws among thieves. The most important one forbade men like Maksim from doing business with men like Sasha. But the old days are dust, and the old laws are worth less than dust. Sasha will use Maksim’s masters against his enemies, and Maksim will use him to protect his masters’ interests.
So it’s decided.
The wrestler goes back to looking at the sea with eyes that have turned sad, and the other man reads in them the answer that he was waiting for.
Two hundred yards away, the Mute Girl is watching the scene through a pair of binoculars specially treated not to reflect sunlight. She’s stretched out on the sand. She’s an athletic woman in her early thirties, petite, broad-shouldered, who doesn’t much resemble the girl who never wept in the Box. She wears her hair cut short, and her skin is reddened by the wind.
The men standing guard don’t see her, but she sees them, and she sees Sasha’s expression change. She realizes that he’s just sold her.
She realizes that now she has to run.
1
Colomba, backpack slung over her shoulder, was waiting with growing irritation next to the Re di Roma metro stop when a frying pan–silver coupé pulled up awkwardly a few yards away from her. Colomba thought the car needed a good paint job until she realized that its strange hue was due to a complete lack of color aside from the two green side strips. Only when the two gull-wing doors swung out and up did she recognize the model. It was a DeLorean DMC-12, the car from Back to the Future, with its original unpainted stainless-steel finish. At the wheel, of course, was Dante.
“Hop in, Marty McFly!” he shouted. He was dressed like an explorer in mourning; all he needed was a safari hat.
Colomba didn’t move, and it was only then that she understood why Dante had insisted on going in his car instead of renting one. “Take it back where you found it. I don’t want to be a laughingstock.”
“No, you’ll be the envy of everyone who sees you, actually. There are only six thousand working specimens of this vehicle on the planet. And I own one of them.”
“Have you been keeping it in one of your time capsules?”
“How did you figure that out?”
“Just a hunch.” Colomba walked around the car, examining it with a critical eye.
“It’s all perfectly in compliance with applicable laws, Madame Policewoman,” said Dante. “Xenon headlights, a brand-new stereo, air-conditioning, seat belts. I even converted the doors to automatic openers. And it runs on liquefied petroleum gas.”
“Wait, you bought a car like this to convert it?”
“Do you have any idea what a gas guzzler it is normally?”
Dante opened the trunk for her. She tossed in her backpack and shut the trunk. Then she went to the driver’s side. “Move over.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dante indignantly.
“Train, impossible; airplane, you can’t tolerate it; the least worst choice was taking your car to Germany. But I’ve seen how you park, and I’m not letting you drive. Get out.”
He grumbled but complied, and Colomba got into the driver’s seat. All things considered, getting behind the wheel felt good, even though she didn’t much like the automatic transmission. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator, and the car shot out from under her seat. “Not bad,” she said. “How fast does it go?”
“Too fast,” Dante replied, suddenly looking sick.
° ° °
Before getting onto the highway, they stopped at a gas station, where Alberti was waiting for them, pretending to wash the windshield of his car. Dante took care of filling up the tank while Colomba went over to the policeman.
“Wow,” Alberti said. “Does it go back in time, too?”
“With Dante, that happens every day.”
“It might not be the best thing when it comes to passing unnoticed, but I’d love to take a spin in it.”
“Some other time. Find anything new about the dead people on the train?”
“We’re gathering what information we can find. But for right now I’ve got nothing to give you.”
“Okay, Dante and I are going away for a few days.”
“Where are you heading?”
“To Germany. If Giltine exists, maybe she’s also responsible for a mess that happened in Berlin two years ago. If I find anything good, it might turn out to be useful.” Colomba had updated the Amigos on everything she knew. At this point, it made no sense to keep the details to herself: they were all in it together.
“And what if you find nothing?”
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping. And at least up there, I won’t have Spinelli and the task force underfoot.”
Alberti’s freckles became more visible. “The big bosses are furious, Deputy Chief,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Santini tore Esposito a new one just because he went with you to see the security guard’s widow.”
“I know. He called me, too, a bunch of times.” But the only call Colomba had answered was from an unusually formal and rigid Curcio, whom she had assured that she was about to leave on a lengthy holiday. Where that holiday would take her, she hadn’t specified.
She put a hand on Alberti’s shoulder. “Massimo, do you know why I brought you over to the Mobile Squad even though you weren’t ready?”
“I wasn’t ready?” he asked in astonishment.
“Do I really need to tell you that?”
Alberti shook his head, red as a beet.
“Because I trust you,” said Colomba. “Esposito can’t even remember what it means to be a good cop, and Guarneri . . . I don’t know, I think he should just be getting more sex. But I know you’ll always try to do the right thing.”
“And are you really sure that continuing to investigate is the right thing?”
“Yes. At least until we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that we’re getting it all wrong and this is nothing but a combination of coincidences. Dante and I aren’t taking our cell phones with us, so no phone calls and no texts. Use email if you need to get me anything urgent. But the best thing would actually be if we didn’t communicate at all. I don’t know who can read the emails or listen in on us.”
“Shouldn’t we all be on the same side?”
“Maybe we are.” But I’ve stopped believing it, she added mentally.
On an impulse, she gave him Leo’s business card; she still had it with her, even though she’d memorized the number. That night she’d spent a couple of hours texting with him, like a teenage girl. She’d even sent him a picture that she immediately regretted. “If you find yourself in trouble, or if you think the task force has it in for you, then call this friend of mine. He’s Deputy Chief Bonaccorso, in the NOA. He was at the Islamic center with us. Maybe you saw us talk.”
“Sort of like Jason Statham but with hair?”
“If he’s muscular and has a face you want to slap, then you’ve got the right guy. I don’t know if he can help you, but that’s all I’ve got. Use Snapchat.”
“Okay, I hope I won’t need to.” Alberti pocketed the business card and handed her a CD in a plastic bag. “I put together a compilation for your trip.”
“Your music?”
“Yes, all new pieces.”
“That’s so nice, thank you,” said Colomba, hoping she sounded sincere. Then she said a hasty farewell and got into the DeLorean.
“What’s that?” asked Dante, looking at the CD she’d dropped in his lap.
“Alberti’s latest effort,” said Colomba, trying to keep a straight face.
Dante lowered the window and launched the CD like a Frisbee as they went around the first curve. He managed to sail it straight into an open dumpster. “Too bad, something must have gone wrong with the ma
stering.” Then he plugged an MP3 into the stereo and started playing “The Power of Love” so loud that people walking past on the sidewalk turned to look. Colomba turned down the volume, cringing with embarrassment and seriously considering throwing Dante out the window, too. During the drive, they alternated vintage music with conversations that focused intensely on Giltine and her nature, but none of the hypotheses seemed to fully fit.
“So let’s say she really does have a single target and that she’s carrying out massacres to conceal the designated victim,” said Colomba. “But how does she pick these targets?”
“Maybe someone pays her.”
“I’ve known paid killers, Dante. They worked for Mafia crime families, but the most trouble they went to was waiting outside the victim’s house with an AK-47. And if they didn’t want to get caught, then they’d dissolve the corpse in a drum full of acid.”
“There are higher-level killers.”
“You mean like Carlos the Jackal? He carried out terror attacks for the highest bidder, but he was anything but discreet. Anyway, let’s say you wanted to rub out an adversary or a troublesome witness. Would you wait for months while Giltine finds the ideal scapegoat and manipulates them?”
“Not very convenient.”
“And that’s not considering the problem of the territory. A professional killer playing away from home is much more likely to make mistakes. Then there’s the uproar in the mass media. Most Mafiosi don’t give a damn about wiping out large numbers of people if they need to, but they know that the state will be forced to respond, and quickly.”
“So what’s left is personal motivation. She must have some purpose for which she’d be willing to risk it all.”
“Do you really think she’s doing it all on her own? Maybe she has an accomplice somewhere, even if we’ve never found any evidence of one.”
“From the way she works, from the way she plans things out, I see a sole operator guided by a patient, precise mind. Someone who never gets worked up and who always figures out her adversaries’ weak points.”
“A monster. But you talk about her as if you’ve fallen under her spell.”
“She scares me, CC. I’m scared of what she could still do. And it scares me to think that she might have someone even worse working against her.”
A shiver ran down Colomba’s back, because she thought the same thing, and she turned up the volume on “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Though it was one of her favorite songs, it failed to take her mind off the topic. She knew that going to Berlin in search of traces of Giltine two years after the nightclub fire was a risky move, but what alternatives did she have? Dredging the sea in Greece or looking for a bar in Stockholm where a man might have tried to pick Giltine up? Or else continuing to stick her nose into the train investigation, well aware that she was being watched the whole time? At least in Berlin, she and Dante knew of a specific location where Giltine had appeared—that is, if they could rely on the information posted on a website called Der Brave Inspektor that had a photo of a seventy-year-old Jim Morrison look-alike on its home page.
° ° °
“I alerted the journalist,” Dante said at the third rest area where he’d forced her to stop so he could stretch his legs. After he’d been in any car for a while, even his own, he seemed to go into a sort of frenzy. He grew agitated, he scratched himself, he started sighing loudly, and he kept adjusting the position of his seat. In the last phase, he lowered the window entirely and stuck his head out.
“You mean the wanker?” asked Colomba as they stood in the parking lot and she bit into a greasy cold slice of pizza.
Dante rolled his eyes. “Would you be so kind as to refrain from denigrating our only useful contact?”
“That he’s useful remains to be seen.”
“Listen, he’s not the asshole you take him for. In Germany, he’s a minor celebrity in the field of these mysterious crimes, and his books sell large numbers. Plus, he speaks English. He’s eager to meet with us, even though I haven’t told him what it’s about. I made an appointment with him for tomorrow outside the Starbucks at the Sony Center.”
“Great, I’ve always wanted to try their coffee.”
“You say that just to get my goat, don’t you?” Dante stubbed out his umpteenth cigarette. “Do you want me to give you some help driving? After all, you don’t have to park on the highway.”
“What have you consumed today?”
“Only some Xanax. And some Modafinil.”
“Alcohol?”
“Strictly under the legal limit.”
Colomba shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder how you’ve managed to survive this long.”
He flashed his grin. “I try to steer clear of bad company.”
2
The Giudecca is the archipelago of islands to the south of the historical center of Venice. As the crow flies, it’s very close to St. Mark’s Square, but to get there, you have to cross the canal of the same name, and that makes it a much less heavily touristed location. Roberto Pennelli’s apartment was in the sestiere of Santa Croce, near the Ponte degli Scalzi. This type of apartment is called, locally, a porta sola, which means a small suite with an entrance all its own and a little garden where you can eat when the weather’s nice. Pennelli lived there with Daria, a chubby brunette whom he called his girlfriend when he was in a good mood; there’s no need to linger over the things he called her when, as was far too often the case, he was in a bad mood. He also had a wife in Mestre who kept his two children from him, letting him see them only once a week.
The man went outside to smoke a cigarette while Daria finished cleaning up the dining room. He thought again and again about the woman who claimed to call herself Sandrine Poupin. He wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake by asking her for money in exchange for his silence, if he wouldn’t have been smarter to just report her to the police and be done with it. She wasn’t a terrorist, that much he was sure of. When he checked passports, he could smell a terrorist, or so he liked to tell himself. But that she might be a woman on the run from the law seemed even stranger to him. She didn’t seem like the kind who scared easily. And then there was that heavy makeup she used, as if trying to conceal something about her identity.
Maybe she was sick. That would explain a lot of things, especially her attitude. Someone with a skin disease who’d come to get treatment from one of those doctors for whom you had to take out a second mortgage just to get an office visit. Still, that wouldn’t explain the fake ID.
Daria stuck her head out the door. “There’s a woman to see you,” she said in the tone of someone who suspects betrayal.
Pennelli hated the way she checked up on him and stuck her nose into his business. She assumed that he had sex with all the female customers he picked up in his water taxi, whereas in the whole time they’d been together, it had happened only twice, and there was no way she could have known about it either time. So it was only her cracked little head, that’s all it was. “At this time of night?” he asked in an irritated voice. “Who is it?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Daria went back to the dining room while Pennelli went to the front door, expecting to find a colleague or one of his faithful customers with some emergency on their hands.
Instead, it was the fake Sandrine, with a raincoat buttoned up to her throat and the usual streetwalker’s makeup. Pennelli immediately saw red. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, heading straight at her with every intention of kicking her out of his house with some real rough treatment, but he never even laid a finger on her. The woman hit him on the side of the neck with something small and hard, and Pennelli fell to the floor like a side of beef, incapable of moving his legs.
Giltine stepped around him and moved silently toward the dining room, where Daria was tidying up. She grabbed Daria’s neck from behind, leveraging her forearm to stop the blood flow, and the woman was unconscious in scant seconds. Giltine laid her down on the floor, then went back to the front
hall, where she grabbed Pennelli, who was laboriously trying to get back to his feet. She hit him again with the yawara at the very same spot, and this time the man passed out. A yawara is a small wooden club that can be hidden in your palm, with two semi-spherical knobs that project on either side of your hand. It’s impossible to identify it as a weapon, especially if you disguise it as a broom handle. But if you know how to use one, it can break bones and strike pressure points. Giltine knew how to use one.
She dragged Pennelli into the dining room, then tied him and Daria up with duct tape, shoved a sock into each of their mouths, and sealed their lips with more tape. Last of all, she propped them up in seated positions against the sofa, so they could see her. After a while, they opened their eyes almost simultaneously, staring at her as she removed her raincoat and trousers, till she was clad only in greasy stained bandages. The quiet evening at home had just turned into a horror movie, the kind where the monster enters the house in sheep’s clothing only to reveal its true nature once it’s too late. And the true nature of the woman who had entered their house was that of a mummy who reeked of disinfectant.
“Now you know who I am,” she told Pennelli, then went into the kitchen. She came back with a knife used to clean fish and a camp stove that had sat unused for years.
She could start her work.
3
Dante and Colomba crossed the Austrian border at ten o’clock that evening and decided to stay outside of Innsbruck, in a quaint Tyrolean hotel with a wooden roof and balconies adorned with purple geraniums. It had been the balconies that convinced Dante: despite the frequent stops, he’d suffered greatly during the trip and would never be able to lock himself up in a hotel room. Already, he’d traveled the last few miles with his head stuck out the window, indifferent to the cold, and Colomba had caught him secretly snorting a ground-up pill that had flattened his affect for a couple of hours.
Kill the Angel Page 26
