Kill the Angel

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “I can fend for myself from here on,” he objected.

  “No. No, you can’t, okay?” She pushed him up the stairs to the suite, then she drew her handgun. “Get away from the door.”

  “Wait, do you seriously think that—”

  “Get away!”

  Dante obeyed. Colomba unlocked the magnetic door and pulled it open, her lungs reduced to the size of two fists, her respiration twisted down to a thin thread scratching her throat. Holding her pistol in both hands, she lunged into the room, pulling up short at the sight of the chaos that reigned. There was clothing scattered everywhere and empty bottles of Cristal littering the carpeting, as well as a little dish with cocaine residue and rolled-up banknotes.

  Santiago emerged from Dante’s room, completely naked, with a switchblade knife in his fist. “What the fuck are you two doing here?”

  Dante and Colomba exchanged a glance: they’d totally forgotten about the arrangement with him. Luckily, there was another suite unoccupied, and Dante took it over, moving some of his things there, especially his computers. While he did the moving, Santiago shut himself up in the bedroom, irritated by the intrusion.

  Colomba checked out the new suite, which was different from Dante’s old suite only in the color of some of the furniture, then she started to roll down the shutters. “You don’t leave this room unless I come with you. Don’t even call for room service, okay?”

  “Do I have to stay here in the dark?”

  “You can turn the light on, but you can’t raise the shutters. If it bothers you too much, then just take another vial,” she said brusquely.

  By now the suite was in partial darkness. Colomba’s face was illuminated only by a shaft of light.

  “Do you really think that Giltine could come here?” asked Dante.

  “She could, or else another nutjob like Andreas. Anyone. So keep an eye out for the staff.”

  “I’ve known them for two years!”

  “And how many people knew Andreas as a harmless writer of crazy conspiracy stories?” Colomba pulled her handgun out of her belt and snapped out the clip. “This gun has two safeties, okay? One is operated by these two little levers—”

  “CC, I know it’s going to sound weird coming from me, but you’d really better calm down.”

  “You need to be capable of taking care of yourself even when I’m not here.”

  “Can you picture me with a gun in my hand? Me?”

  Colomba hesitated while Dante’s words penetrated the cloud of anxiety and pain that enveloped her. “All right, as you prefer.” She put the gun back in the holster.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” asked Dante.

  She tried to find a kind tone in which to say it, but it wasn’t entirely successful. “It’s a thing between us uniforms, Dante. Sorry.”

  She left the hotel, summoned a taxi, and rode over to Guarneri’s ex-wife’s apartment on the left bank of the Tiber, in the Ostiense neighborhood. The entrance was being guarded by police officers, while a dozen or so Carabinieri squad cards lined the street, their rooftop flashers blinking. There were also a couple of police squad cars, but from their location, Colomba understood that they weren’t operating: the investigation was in the hands of the Carabinieri cousins. The policemen, on the other hand, crowded the stairs of the ugly 1960s-era apartment house, all the way up to the door of Guarneri’s ex-wife’s apartment. They pushed and shoved to get a glimpse, arguing with the Carabinieri, who wanted to get them out from underfoot. At the head of the line of cops were Alberti and Esposito, and Esposito was getting ready to trade punches with the sentinel standing guard. Then they caught sight of Colomba and ran to greet her, shoving their way through the throng.

  “We need to talk, Deputy Chief,” said Esposito when they were face-to-face.

  “Not now.”

  Esposito continued blocking her way. “I really have to insist. When?”

  “This evening at Dante’s,” said Colomba, then she stepped rudely aside and addressed the sentinel. “I’m Deputy Chief Caselli. Get me Assistant District Attorney Treves.” The Carabinieri waved her through.

  The Scientific Investigation Squad, better known as SIS, had been working in the apartment for several hours now, and there were numbers and folders on the marble living room floor. Martina was lying on the sofa, her chest and throat riddled with knife wounds. Her blouse was in tatters; there were cuts on her cheeks and defensive wounds on her hands. There was blood on the sofa, on the wall, and even on the ceiling; a large puddle of blood had oozed along the floor until it reached Guarneri, sprawled on his back with his regulation handgun still in his right hand. He had a bullet hole over one ear and a kitchen knife on the floor next to him, encrusted with blood and bone fragments.

  Colomba had never seen a more perfect textbook case of murder-suicide, but she didn’t believe it for so much as a second. A monster was stalking the earth and would stop at nothing in order to complete its mission of revenge against those who had imprisoned it and tortured it.

  Created it.

  A good-looking man in his early forties, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, walked toward her; he was wearing translucent shoe covers.

  “Deputy Police Chief Caselli?” he said, putting the cigarette in the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’m Assistant District Attorney Treves.” He shook hands with her.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get here,” Colomba murmured, concentrating on keeping herself from starting to yell.

  Treves noticed how uncomfortable she was. “Maybe we should move to another room. What do you say?”

  She nodded without managing to get out a word. They went into the master bedroom. The bed was still made. Martina hadn’t had a chance to use it. And neither had her ex-husband.

  “You were his superior officer before your suspension,” said Treves, half-closing the door. “Did you know that Guarneri’s marital problems were so serious?”

  “No. It hadn’t even occurred to me.”

  “Is there anything that makes you suspect it might be something other than what it appears at first glance?”

  “Did the SIS find anything that didn’t add up?”

  Treves smiled apologetically. “No, not yet. How about you?”

  Colomba realized that he didn’t trust her. That was inevitable, considering her suspension. Or was he imagining something else? “I only saw the scene for a minute. And I don’t think I was capable of examining it with my colleague’s corpse on the floor.”

  Treves nodded. “What were your relations with the Guarneri family?”

  “I only knew the inspector. He and his wife divorced a long time before we started working together.”

  “But you know his son, Pao, right?”

  Colomba understood that it was an important question, but she didn’t understand why. “Guarneri brought him in to see the office once. Has anything happened to him?” Her heart started to race.

  “The child was locked in his bedroom with the key on the outside. The grandparents found him when they came to check because no one was answering the phone. He’s all right. Except he won’t open his mouth. He won’t speak, he won’t drink, he won’t eat, and when the doctor tried to check his throat, he practically threw a hysterical fit. The doctor wanted to give him a sedative, but I asked him to wait until you got here, Deputy Chief.”

  “For what reason?”

  “The child won’t speak, but he can write.” Treves handed Colomba a sheet of checked notebook paper. On it was Colomba’s name, written dozens of times in a childish hand. Also a series of “heeeelp” and “pleeeeease” with lots of exclamation marks. Colomba felt as if she could hear the boy’s voice and shuddered.

  “Do you have an explanation?” asked Treves.

  Colomba remained impassive. “No,” she said. “Do you?”

  “Well, then, let’s see if the child will confide in you. If nothing else, we’ll understand why he wants to see you so badly.”

  She
and the magistrate made their way through the crowd of uniforms and went up to the grandparents’ apartment two stories up, where Paolino, aka Pao, was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a glass of milk he hadn’t touched. He had his fists clenched on either side of his beet-red face, and his eyes were filled with tears. Colomba thought that, more than grieving for the deaths of his parents, he seemed to be making an effort worthy of Atlas.

  “He hasn’t eaten a thing,” said the worried grandmother.

  “Go right ahead,” Treves told Colomba. “You try talking to him.”

  Colomba awkwardly went over to the child, squatting down to his level. Pao looked up at her, his pupils cranked down to pinheads, his jaw clenched.

  “Ciao, Paolino. I’m Colomba Caselli. I know that you wanted to see me.”

  The little boy’s pained expression broke into an immense smile of relief, and he threw his arms around her, holding her tight. Then he shoved her away immediately, using both hands and feet, and emitting a shriek of pure horror.

  Colomba lost her balance and fell on her ass, while something hard scurried tumbling down her back and then hurried frantically toward the edge of the carpet. Before it could get there, Treves grabbed a phone book from the credenza and hurled it at the thing, then he and Colomba both jumped on it with all their weight, stamping and shouting.

  When they decided it was safe to check, they found what Pao had held in his mouth for a whole day, silently praying he could perform his task without collapsing, sitting in his bed all night long without being able to cry or swallow.

  It was still moving, even though its inch-long body was badly mauled.

  It was a yellow scorpion.

  11

  The scorpion was a Deathstalker, and the venom from its stinger could kill a human being or make her very, very sick. It also had another interesting characteristic: in total darkness, it remained motionless, especially if confined in a warm, moist environment, such as a mouth. When Pao spat it out, though, the shock of the change had made it furious. If Colomba hadn’t fallen, the stinger at the tip of its tail would have hit her flesh instead of the hook of her bra.

  The hour that followed was decidedly chaotic. Pao drank every drop of three glasses of milk, alternating with bouts of hysterical sobbing, and he told the investigators about a woman without a face. Colomba did nothing to change the magistrate’s mind when he predictably assumed that the child had had a nightmare. It was the woman without a face who had told him to call Colomba, why, of course it was. There was still the question of what an African scorpion was doing there, but that was a matter for the Forest Rangers.

  Just when Colomba thought she’d managed to avoid him, she found herself face-to-face with Santini. Gray whiskers dirtied his skinny cheeks, and he looked as if he’d slept in his clothes.

  Together they left the apartment, and Colomba prepared for open combat. But Santini limited himself to walking silently beside her until they arrived at a bar and tobacco shop. Flashing his badge, he evicted a couple sitting at a table, then took their place, inviting Colomba to sit down beside him. He ordered a grappa for each of them.

  “I don’t like grappa,” said Colomba.

  “Well, tonight you’re drinking it,” he replied. He raised the shot glass. “To Alfonso. Who had the bad luck to work with you.”

  Colomba took the smallest sip of the grappa, and the aromatic alcohol immediately wafted into her nostrils. “You knew him?”

  “Before I moved over to the Central Investigative Service, he reported to me on the Mobile Squad. He wasn’t much, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. Because someone murdered him, right? And the reason he was murdered is because you kept investigating the attack, and you dragged him into it with you.”

  “They killed him because he did his duty. And that’s the only reason.”

  Santini ordered another grappa. “It’s the usual discussion, the one we’re having now,” he finally said. “You think that the work we do means going around righting wrongs, while I believe it’s quiiiite another matter.” He banged the empty glass on the table, and Colomba realized that he was drunk. Stinking drunk. She hadn’t noticed it before because Santini hid it well. He didn’t slur his words, and he didn’t sway or stagger. “We and the cousins hold this country together, Caselli. We keep it from turning into more of a pigsty than it already is. Are we perfect? No, we’re not. We get things tangled up, and we lie and we steal just like everyone else, but we’re a barrier against what’s worse than us. Only you . . . you no longer believe in it. You’ve lost your faith.”

  “If I only knew what was behind it all, Santini—”

  “No. We’ve been here before. I listened to you, and I gambled away my career and one of my legs. This time I don’t want to know anything more about it.” He shook his head, great exaggerated loops back and forth. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re in the middle of the investigation that’s going to save the world, and I promise I won’t get in your way. I know nothing, and I’m really good at knowing nothing. But if you try to drag anyone else in the squad into it, I swear as God is my witness that I’ll wreck your little red wagon.” He stared at her, his eyes glowering and bloodshot. “I know how, Caselli.”

  “Is Curcio in agreement?”

  “Curcio doesn’t know a damn thing.” He snickered drunkenly. “At least that’s what he wants us to believe. And he doesn’t talk about it. He knows his place, unlike you.”

  “Maybe you’d better go get some sleep.”

  “Maybe you’d better go and leave me here,” he said, ordering another grappa.

  So Colomba went. When she got back to the hotel, she discovered that Dante had gone out, leaving a note that told her not to worry.

  Of course, Colomba did worry, and she would have been even more worried than she was if she’d known where he’d gone.

  12

  Rebibbia Prison is one and it is four, but unless you’re an inmate or a correctional officer, you might not know that. The complex contains four units where the convicts are subdivided by sex, age, and sentence. There’s also a soccer field that you can see, directly inside the front gate, about a hundred yards from the buildings. It was onto this field, in almost complete darkness, that the German was escorted out, handcuffs on his wrists, flanked by a platoon of correctional officers in riot gear.

  Whether or not the German actually came from Germany was something that the Italian authorities hadn’t been able to determine a full year after his arrest. They did know that he was the Father’s last living accomplice, at least among those who had worked with him in the seventies. They also knew that he was probably in his early sixties and that, at some point in his past, he’d received numerous injuries from firearms and knives.

  Aside from that, absolute zero. His fingerprints didn’t match any found in the full array of police databases, and neither did his DNA. No one had come forward to identify him as a relative; there was no record of his ever having held a job or served in the military. At his criminal trial, he’d refused to say a word; he’d neither admitted to nor denied any of the charges brought against him—which ranged from multiple kidnapping to first-degree murder—and all further investigations had run aground in the morass of false identities that seemed to date back to the mists of time.

  The German was an enigma.

  The men in the Mobile Operating Group, or the MOGs, as they were known, seated the German in a plastic chair next to one of the goals and handcuffed him to the goalpost very politely: it wasn’t only the other convicts who were afraid of the German. After the third brawl that ended with permanent damage to his attackers—he was never the one who started anything—he’d been put in solitary confinement, and there he remained, a condition that didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. Those who’d had the singular experience of bunking with him, however briefly, later remarked that it had been like living with a ghost whose eyes you felt on the back of your neck anytime you turned away.

  The MOGs back
ed away to the opposing side of the field, where they massed, as if defending the goal, and only at that point did a small group of officers in civilian clothing come forward. In their midst was Dante, visibly ill at ease.

  “Is there any news about who he really is?” Dante asked the officer on his right, a plump-cheeked youngster, in a low voice.

  “Zero. That big animal is every bit as much a mystery as the day he was arrested. You’re probably the one who knows him best.”

  “I’ve only met him three times in my life,” said Dante. Nightmares not included.

  Dante slowly walked over to the unoccupied chair, followed the whole way by the gaze of the German, which never wavered from him. Dante collapsed into the chair and lowered his head to his knees for a few seconds.

  “Are you all right, Signor Torre?” asked the officer from before.

  “Yes, yes. Please, now just do as we agreed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Dante pointed to the German while remaining bent over. “If he wanted to rip my head off, he would already have done it. Go on.”

  “You have thirty minutes, Signor Torre.” The officer nodded to his colleagues, and they backed away, vanishing into the darkness at the edge of the field.

  Dante took a deep breath. He had chosen not to numb himself with Xanax before the meeting, but now he was wishing he had. He was in a prison, for the love of God, and he was sitting across from the bogeyman of his childhood and a considerable part of his adolescence. “This is all the privacy I can afford you,” he told the German. “I don’t have any idea whether, as we’re speaking, there’s a spy satellite overhead or a directional microphone trained on us, but I can assure you that whatever you might tell me today, I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

  The German flashed him a smile that looked like a crack in a wall. “Not even to your friend the policewoman?” he said in a voice just as calm as his manner. This wasn’t the first time he’d ever spoken, but it was such a rare occurrence that the guards at the far end of the field elbowed each other, though they’d been unable to make out the words.