Black August

by Timothy Williams

  “A quarter of an hour.”

  “Where’s Pisanelli?”

  Boatti shrugged. He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned to reveal hair on a fleshy, pale chest, and a pair of jeans that had been ironed with a crease. Saxone loafers.

  Trotti clicked his tongue in irritation.

  Boatti grinned. “My first autopsy.”

  “Hope you enjoy it.”

  “You don’t sound excited, Trotti.”

  “Dottor Bottone is a zombie.”

  “He’s supposed to do a good job.”

  “That’s how he’s become a zombie.”

  Boatti reassured himself with forced laughter.

  They stepped through the sliding doors of the main entrance, where they were met by the cold, antiseptic smell of the building. Trotti glanced at Boatti and silently wished that Pisanelli was with him. “The article in the Provincia—did you write it, Boatti?”

  “What article?”

  “Beatrice, the missing woman—and the enquiry being made by Maiocchi and Trotti.”

  Boatti shook his head. “I never got to talk to Commissario Maiocchi—I was having lunch with you.” He buttoned his shirt. “Remember? Slow food?”

  The two men went down the three flights of stairs into the basement. Their shoes were almost silent on the rubber floor. Boatti walked briskly, slightly in front of Trotti, as if to convince himself that standing in on an autopsy was just another journalistic task.

  “I’d never seen somebody who’d been murdered,” Boatti said, trying to keep a lightness in his voice. “Before Rosanna.”

  “I’ve seen too many.”

  “It’ll soon be over, Commissario, won’t it?” Boatti grinned. “How long does an autopsy last?”

  Trotti brushed past him. “Depends on how sharp the blades are.”

  Not bothering to knock, he pushed open the doors of the morgue, letting the rubber barriers swish against the floor.

  “Ah, Commissario.”

  Dr. Bottone stood up as Trotti entered the room. Light twinkled in the steel frames of his round glasses. He held out his hand, which Trotti shook without enthusiasm. The hand was cold and dry. Dr. Bottone smelled of formaldehyde and coffee.

  Trotti looked at the row of empty chairs. “Commissario Merenda’s not here?”

  It was a small, windowless laboratory. Most of the floor space was taken up by two tables, made of dull, glinting steel, each with a perforated surface. At the end of each table was a sink. Above each table hung a stainless basin attached to a weighing scale. Trotti could feel his belly lurching, almost out of control. Despite the cool air, sweat continued to trickle down his back.

  Overhead, the banks of neon lights gave off a shadowless whiteness. Dr. Bottone had not yet switched on the long-armed directional lamp that was set directly above the steel tables.

  Dr. Bottone smiled his thin smile. “How is the little girl?”

  “Little girl?”

  “Your daughter, Signor Commissario.”

  “Little girl? Pioppi’s nearly thirty years old and she’s expecting a child any day. Perhaps even today.”

  “You see?”

  Trotti shook his head. “See what?”

  “You were always too worried about her. Your daughter’s a healthy girl—a healthy woman. I told you, Commissario, that there’s a limit to what a parent can do for his child.” He turned his narrow head towards Boatti.

  “Signor Boatti is a journalist,” Trotti said. “And a friend. He’s writing a book about police work.”

  “How exciting,” Dr. Bottone remarked. “Glad to have you along.” Behind the round glasses, the eyes carefully scrutinized the journalist. “Very glad.” Dr. Bottone showed a thin smile.

  Trotti released a repressed sigh. “Ready when you are, Dottor Bottone.”

  The doctor nudged at the rim of his glasses. “We’ll be needing a formal recognition of the body.”

  Trotti shook his head. “I’m just standing in—Merenda’s in charge.”

  “Then that leaves just Commissario Merenda and whoever he’s found to identify the body.” The doctor picked up his mug—ever since a year spent at a university in Maryland, Dr. Bottone drank his coffee American style, diluted and tasteless—from where he had placed it on the table. He glanced at his watch. “I’d like to start in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “I hope Merenda can get here by then.”

  “Have I got time to make a phone call, doctor?”

  The coffee mug carried the word Orioles in blue letters.

  “Ten minutes.” Dr. Bottone opened and closed the fingers of his left hand twice. “I don’t want to start any later than eleven o’clock. I hope to leave by one o’clock.” He raised his shoulders in humility. “Even doctors need to get away for the Ferragosto.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Leaving Boatti in the chill of the morgue, Trotti hurried through the door and took the stairs two at a time, breathing deeply. Despite the August heat he ran all the way to the hospital entrance.

  29: Old Mortality

  The hospital porter was whistling the aria, “A Te, O Cara,” from I Puritani. He had his hands in his pockets and stared out at the sparse morning traffic. He had taken off his serge jacket but still wore the peaked cap.

  The city was almost empty. There were a couple of telephones at the main entrance to the hospital but they were both out of order. Trotti ran across the road, relieved to see that the Bar Goliardico had not closed for Ferragosto.

  He entered the familiar bar. The smell of roasted coffee and lemons reminded him of his colleague Ciuffi. He had never been back since her death.

  A te, o cara.

  Two men, both in the navy blue uniform of the ENEL, were playing on the pinball table. One of them wore the company cap on the back of his head and a cigarette hung from his lips. They had placed their toolboxes on the top of the pinball table. Electronic beeping and the slightly forced laughter of the men.

  Trotti went to the telephone. It was one of the new type, requiring a phone card. He bought a card from a boy behind the counter and pressed it into the slit. Trotti swore under his breath; he had to insert the card three times before the machine recognized the validity of the magnetic strip.

  Trotti dialed and waited impatiently.

  “Pronto?”

  “Signor Beltoni?”

  “Who?”

  “Signor Beltoni, please.”

  “I’m not sure . . .”

  “Please. It’s urgent.” Trotti ran his hand across his forehead. He was sweating.

  There was the sound of footsteps and then muffled movement as the receiver was picked up on the far end of the line. “Pronto?”

  “This is Trotti.”

  “Christ, you had no call to beat the shit out of me. I’m covered in bruises, Trotti—covered.”

  “Beltoni, ring me back on this number. Use an outside line—ring me back straight away on thirty-four thirty-eight two five. I’m in a hurry.”

  “I’m not dressed yet.”

  “Ring me back immediately, Beltoni.”

  Trotti hung up and went to the bar. Outside, in the almost deserted streets, the yellow buses rumbled past the Policlinico. The teenage barman prepared an espresso coffee; Trotti put three spoonfuls of sugar into the cup, and then drank, feeling the scalding liquid course down his throat.

  He was spooning the brown, part-dissolved sugar into his mouth when the phone rang. Leaving the cup on the zinc bar, he picked up the receiver.

  “Beltoni, I’m sorry about last night.”

  “There was no need to beat me up.”

  “It was your idea to kick out at Pisanelli.”

  “That’s what you wanted.”

  “Overreacting, Beltoni.” Trotti paused. “Are you hurt?”

>   “Who was the other man in the car?”

  “A journalist—he’s writing a book. Pisanelli and I wanted to give him a bit of excitement. Bit of local color.”

  “There was no call to thump me in the back. If he wants color, I can show him the bruises.”

  “Where the hell d’you get that money from, Beltoni?”

  “It’s not my money.”

  “Then what were you doing with it—a million lire?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “You’re a free man just as long as you’re useful to me.”

  “Commissario, you once did me a favor. I’m grateful. But I don’t work for you.”

  “Be careful, Beltoni, or you go inside.” Trotti laughed humorlessly. “You told Commissario Gabbiani?”

  “I don’t work for you, Trotti, and there’s nothing you can do to me. I’ve paid my way. I’m protected.”

  “Protected just so long as it suits me, Beltoni.” Trotti did not hide his impatience. “Did you tell Gabbiani that Pisanelli and I asked you a few questions?”

  “That’s what you told me to do, isn’t it?”

  “When?”

  “I left a message on his answering machine.”

  “What time, Beltoni?”

  “What’s wrong with you, Trotti, for Christ’s sake? You’re getting old.”

  “When did you phone Commissario Gabbiani?”

  A slight hesitation. “Before crawling into bed. That’s what you told me to do.”

  “You told no one else?”

  “After the way your friend Pisanelli knocked me about, I wanted to lie down in peace. I just want to be left alone. I just hope that my balls are going to grow back into place.”

  “The questore knows.”

  “You can tell Pisanelli to start wearing steel Y-fronts, Trotti.”

  “How did the questore know that I was at the Bar Vittorio Emmanuele?”

  “Sooner or later, I’m going to rip Pisanelli’s balls off.”

  “You didn’t inform the questore?”

  “I was in bed until five minutes ago.”

  “How did the questore know?”

  “Perhaps you ought to be a bit more discreet, Commissario, when you beat law-abiding citizens up in the middle of the street.”

  Trotti glanced at his watch. “I want to see you.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “At twelve thirty. In the small bar opposite your place. The dopo lavoro.”

  “Leave me alone, Trotti.”

  “Twelve thirty—that gives you over an hour to get washed and cleaned. You smell like a goat.”

  Trotti hung up. He was still sweating.

  30: Poison

  “Thank God,” Trotti said under his breath, catching sight of Pisanelli, huddled in his suede jacket and sitting beside Boatti.

  Merenda, too, had arrived, accompanied by Signorina Amadeo, the young procuratore from Rome. Both nodded as Trotti entered the chill air of the morgue. The woman wore a silk scarf in red, white and green. Her pretty face was pale. Pearl earrings.

  “Please sit down.” Dr. Bottone gestured to a spare seat in the row of hard chairs placed against the walls of glazed tiling. “You’d like some coffee, Commissario Trotti? Or perhaps something a bit stronger? You look as if you’ve got a cold coming on.”

  “Just had a coffee, thanks.” Trotti glanced at his watch. “It is nearly five minutes past eleven . . .”

  “I’ve some cognac in my drawer. For medicinal purposes, you understand.” Bottone glanced at Merenda and winked awkwardly.

  There was another man. He was wearing a grey suit, a blue shirt and bow tie.

  “You know Signor Belloni?”

  Trotti frowned.

  The man stood up and holding out his hand, shook Trotti’s. He gave a small, sad smile. “Rosanna’s uncle,” he said quietly and sat down again. He was well groomed, with thick white hair and long, thin fingers. The skin of his face was wrinkled from too much exposure to the sun. Signor Belloni was about sixty-five years old and looked healthy. He had pale eyelashes.

  Trotti turned back to Bottone. “What have you been able to find out about Signorina Belloni?” He crossed his arms against his chest.

  Bottone opened the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and took out an opaque medicine bottle. It was half-full. The label bore the legend Poison. Crossbones and skull. “You’re sure you wouldn’t . . . ?”

  “Neither Pisanelli nor I is thirsty,” Trotti said.

  “Not for your thirst, Commissario.” He held up a finger.

  Boatti gave Dr. Bottone a crooked smile.

  “Tell me what you’ve found out about the body.”

  “Signorina Belloni?” Bottone poured the cognac into a plastic cup which he held out for Boatti. He then turned around, and pulled a wooden stool towards him. He was wearing loose cotton trousers and white leather and wood clogs. Because of the chill air, he also wore a cardigan. His white lab coat and cap hung from a hook on the back of the corridor door. Dr. Bottone had a thin, intelligent face. His skin was waxy, and was pulled tight across the bones of his skull.

  Boatti drank in one gulp, throwing his head back. He smiled; tears appeared at the corners of his eyes.

  Trotti could feel the sweat beneath his shirt drying in the cold air. “You now have established time of death?”

  “You will recall that I was not called to the scene of the crime.” Bottone sounded slightly aggrieved. “I have Anselmi’s report to go on.”

  “And?”

  “As usual, Dottor Anselmi has done a professional job.” Bottone spoke in the direction of the young procuratore. “Anal or vaginal reading of body temperature is subtracted from the normal body heat of thirty-seven degrees centigrade. You then divide that by one point five and you get a rough idea of the number of hours the person’s been dead. Obviously, it’s rough and ready—and once the body’s reached the environmental heat, there’s not much you can learn.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that you have to work with other parameters.”

  “Rigor mortis?”

  “Anselmi put the time of death at somewhere between eleven o’clock on Saturday night and late Sunday afternoon. This would be reasonable. I didn’t get to see the woman until several hours after Anselmi, when she was brought in here.” He gestured with his thumb towards the grey metal door in the far wall, and beyond it to the mortuary lockers. “There were still slight signs of rigor mortis. As you know, when the weather is warm—as it has been for the last few days—the process of rigor mortis is speeded up.”

  Trotti nodded.

  “Anselmi seems to have taken the heat factor into consideration. All things considered, I’d go along with Anselmi’s theory.”

  “Sometime during the day on Sunday?”

  Dr. Bottone said, “Saturday or Sunday up to about nine o’clock.”

  “And lividity?”

  An irritated smile. “Always in a hurry, Commissario.”

  “I imagine you’ve had time to look at the body.”

  Dr. Bottone stood up and went to the wall phone. “Bring me number two, Leopoldi. I’ll be starting the autopsy in five minutes.” As he placed the receiver back in its cradle, he said over his shoulder, “Postmortem lividity would appear to coincide with the photos I have.”

  “Indicating?”

  “The body, once it fell face down to the ground, was not moved.”

  Trotti glanced at Merenda, who had gotten up and now stood with his hip against a wall table, near a camera. The camera had elongated bellows and was attached to a vertical steel rod. Merenda stood with his arms crossed, a notebook in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other. Like Trotti, he was not dressed for the chill air of the laboratory. His face had acquired a yellowish tinge in the bright neon light.

&n
bsp; Merenda caught Trotti’s glance. The glint of his teeth. “Don’t quite see why you’re sitting in on this, Piero.” His voice was flat. “You or Tenente Pisanelli. Since when has Pisanelli been working for you?”

  “Signorina Belloni was a friend of the family.”

  Merenda nodded thoughtfully.

  Dr. Bottone raised his shoulders. “I have no more than glanced at the cadaver. In a few minutes, while taking a much closer look, it’ll . . .”

  “In your opinion, once the body fell to the ground, it remained there until it was discovered by Signor Boatti?”

  The woman procuratore, who until now had not moved, turned her head and looked at Boatti.

  “Any opinion I may have, Commissario Trotti, is based on little more than a superficial glance. However, I can say . . .”

  Dr. Bottone was interrupted by the arrival of a young assistant. He wore a white lab coat that set off the dark skin and regular features of the boyish face. The assistant walked with a spring in his step. He shook hands with Trotti, Pisanelli, Commissario Merenda, Signor Belloni and Boatti. He nodded cheerfully towards the woman, a twinkle in his eye. He then crossed the room and opened the door to the morgue.

  Dr. Bottone went to the sink and scrubbed his hands before putting on his white coat and the round cap.

  Trotti glanced through the open door of the morgue, down the long walls of stainless steel lockers. He bit his lip. He could feel the sweet coffee lying on his belly.

  “Sure you don’t care for some medicine? This isn’t the first autopsy you’ve sat in on . . . a little cognac can go a long way in soothing the nerves.”

  “I’ll stick to my aniseed sweets.”

  Each locker was large enough to contain a wheeled stretcher.

  In a matter-of-fact voice, Bottone said, “Shouldn’t take more than forty minutes. I don’t envisage any real difficulties. Perhaps you’d all like to put on a mask now.”

  Pisanelli, without taking his eyes off the doctor, whispered, “Smug bastard,” and Trotti winced at the smell of cognac on his breath.

  “I could do with one of your cigarettes, Pisanelli.”