Kill the Father

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “As far as that goes, human beings have always abused their fellow man. Luckily, our intellect allows us to make choices. And I’m protecting myself from colon cancer.”

  “But not from lung cancer, the way you smoke.”

  “You have to die of something.”

  “Why are you so comfortable with luxury?”

  “For a while I was reasonably well off,” Dante replied. “My father sued everyone and their brother when he was finally able to prove that he hadn’t murdered me. He won every case, and he was also reimbursed for wrongful imprisonment by the state, as well as for what happened to him in prison.”

  “He got sick?”

  “He was raped and stabbed.”

  Colomba suddenly lost interest in her food. “Oh, fuck.”

  “That’s what happens to child molesters. He was in the high security wing of the prison, but there was a foul-up while he was on his way to a meeting . . . My father is convinced that the whole thing was organized by one of the officers who hated him, but he was never able to prove it. Still, he survived.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “He’ll turn seventy this year. We don’t talk much. We were never really able to reestablish a relationship after I got back. We were a couple of strangers, and strangers we’ve remained, though we try to be kind to each other. I think he blames me for having ruined his life. In his way, he has a point.” Dante pushed the plate away, and a waiter hurried over to take it away. He hadn’t eaten much at all. “When I became an adult, he gave me some money, mostly, I think, to get me out from underfoot. For a while I didn’t need to work. I traveled. When I wasn’t checked into some clinic, I wanted to enjoy myself.”

  “Five stars, like this one?”

  “Even better, and lots of airy staterooms aboard ocean liners, since the idea of boarding a plane makes me feel like dying.” Dante smiled. “I’ve never been able to hold on to money. And when I was broke, I had to come up with a line of work.”

  “You didn’t pick an easy one.”

  “I didn’t go to college, and I can’t work indoors. It was this or become a lifeguard.”

  The waiter asked if they’d like some coffee. Dante said no for both of them; then they went out into the garden, where smoking was allowed. The trees were illuminated by hidden lights, and the loudspeakers played music at a low volume. The tables were occupied by a clientele that Colomba decided was for the most part non-Italian. They found two armchairs half-hidden behind the bushes and sat down. Dante ordered two Moscow Mules, his favorite cocktail: vodka, ginger ale, lime, and a slice of cucumber. They came in copper mugs full of crushed ice, and with two straws. Colomba took just one sip and found it vaguely acid but refreshing.

  “Well, CC?” asked Dante. “Are you throwing in the towel?”

  “No. But enough of the past for now. Let’s focus on the Maugeri kidnapping. That’s a fresh trail, unlike yours, which is ancient history.”

  “We’ll be looking for other points of contact.”

  “All I need is a snag, Dante. Something that tells me Maugeri didn’t murder his wife. At that point . . . whether it’s your old kidnapper or some copycat, I’ll at least know that we aren’t just making it all up. Of course, if they find the child in the meantime, we can all go home.”

  “That’s not going to happen, CC.” Dante slurped the last of his glass, then poked his straws into Colomba’s. “Since you’re not going to finish it . . .”

  “Anything that surfaces about the Maugeris will be sent to me in real time by Rovere. We’ll line it up with what we already know.”

  “And what’s in it for him that’s worth risking his career over? Aside from making De Angelis come off like an ass?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Dante lit yet another cigarette. “I read the transcripts of the first interviews. There’s nothing that can be helpful to us. Friends and relatives were asked only whether Maugeri confided in them and whether they know where the child might be.”

  “Let’s just imagine it’s neither the Father nor some copycat. That it’s a normal kidnapping . . .”

  Dante raised an eyebrow. “Normal?”

  “One of the kind you’ve worked on in the past. What would you do at this point?”

  “I’d try to find the answer that’s been buzzing in my mind ever since I took that walk up at the mountain meadows.”

  “What question is that?”

  “Why did Maugeri’s wife go up onto Monte Cavo with the boy? She did it of her own free will; no one forced her to go up there. The kidnapper made an appointment, and she went, leaving her cell phone behind and waiting for her husband to fall asleep. Why? What convinced her?”

  “Extortion? Some physical threat?”

  “Or else a lover who offered to help her run away from a violent and abusive husband. Or a friend whose shoulder she was crying on. In any case, she must have confided in someone. Even if she did it in a hushed voice.”

  “You’ve read the witness list. Who’s the most likely candidate?”

  Dante stubbed out his cigarette butt and waved to the waiter to bring him another cocktail. “Sisters always know everything.”

  3

  Colomba called Giulia Balestri at breakfast the next day, after getting Rovere’s okay. She tried to seem official without making any specific claims, to avoid giving De Angelis any pretexts. “I’ve been working on your sister’s case, and there are a couple of things I’d like to clear up with you,” she said.

  “Are there any new developments?”

  “I’m afraid not. When can we meet?”

  “Come before lunch, if you don’t mind.”

  “Thank you.”

  Colomba hung up, feeling sorry for the woman, who over the phone had sounded like someone who expects only bad news.

  Outside the door she found a stack of newspapers, and she read half of them while listening to the radio, until Dante emerged from his bedroom in a coal black dressing gown, with a cadaverous face. “Are you done making a ruckus? It’s practically dawn,” he said.

  “It’s ten in the morning. Get moving.”

  Dante looked with austere disapproval at her cup of caffe latte. “Did you know that milk in coffee produces an indigestible formation of casein?”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear . . . I called Giulia Balestri.”

  “Who?”

  “The dead woman’s sister.”

  “Ah.”

  “She’s expecting us.”

  Dante slithered over to the espresso machine before answering. “She’s expecting you. I don’t know how to do cop work. No offense.”

  “I’ll do the cop work. You’ll stand by and watch and give me intelligent suggestions.”

  Dante started two espressos at the same time. “CC . . . that’s not my line of work. I’m not good with people.”

  “You’re good at observing them.”

  “From a distance. Emotional displays make me uncomfortable.”

  “Poor boy.”

  “You can’t force me.”

  Colomba smiled and said nothing. Dante went to get dressed.

  An hour later, Giulia Balestri opened the door in response to Colomba’s ring. “I’m Deputy Captain Caselli. I called you earlier.”

  Balestri nodded. She was thirty-six, she wore Rasta hair extensions, and she had a rotund body. She was wearing a lounging suit and slippers. “Take a chair.”

  “If you can come downstairs, a colleague of mine, Signor Torre, would like to meet you.”

  “Why don’t you ask him up?”

  “It’s a long story. Please.”

  “All right.” Balestri went to put on a pair of shoes.

  Colomba peered around at the cheaply furnished apartment, with a small boy’s toys scattered everywhere. Outside the bathroom were a pair of men’s flip-flops with a tropical pattern. A happy little family, she thought.

  “We’ll have to hurry, because in an hour I need to go pick up the boy at schoo
l,” said Balestri, as if she’d just read her mind. She’d put on a lemon yellow cardigan.

  “How old is your son?” Colomba asked and regretted it instantly; that was none of her business.

  “Seven and a half, a year older than Luca.” Her face twisted anxiously. “There really is no news?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  The other woman tried to read Colomba’s expression: unsuccessfully. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Signora . . . we really don’t know. It’s better just to hope for the best.”

  “But how can he still be alive? With no one to feed him . . .”

  “Maybe someone’s taking care of him, signora.”

  “A friend of that son of a bitch of a brother-in-law of mine?”

  Colomba said nothing. Downstairs, at the front door, they found Dante, who was waiting for them with a grim expression, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette.

  “This is Signor Torre,” said Colomba.

  “My condolences,” he muttered without looking Giulia in the face.

  Giulia saw that Dante’s left hand was covered with a heavy black glove. “What do you want to ask me? I’ve already said everything I know.”

  “There are details, private ones, we’d like to ask you about.”

  “About my sister? Like what?”

  “Like whether she had a lover,” Dante muttered again.

  Giulia felt the anger rise. “How dare you?”

  “Dante, what the fuck!” Colomba snapped.

  “You were the one who insisted on me coming.”

  Colomba rolled her eyes. “Signora, forgive my partner’s lack of tact, but . . . I need you to answer the question.”

  Giulia crossed her arms. “My sister had nothing to do with anyone who wasn’t her husband, though God only knows why. You know he beat her, right?”

  “Yes,” said Colomba. “That’s why we wondered whether she might have—”

  “You wondered wrong.”

  “Why didn’t she leave him?”

  “Because she was in love with him. With that maniac. She always told me that the day he touched their boy, she’d take off running, but she never did . . . She never got the chance,” she corrected herself.

  “Were you aware that the boy wasn’t well?” asked Dante.

  This time Giulia didn’t lose her temper. “How do you know that?”

  “I looked at the pictures.”

  “You’re right, he’d turned gloomy and he never spoke. When I kept him, he always seemed like he was on another planet.”

  “Especially in the past year, isn’t that right?” asked Dante.

  Giulia scrutinized him again, thinking to herself that he was the world’s strangest policeman. “Yes.”

  “And had your sister noticed?” asked Colomba.

  “She had.” Giulia shook her head in disgust. “But as far as her husband was concerned, the boy was perfectly normal. And he didn’t want to hear a word about it.”

  “Did she ever talk to a specialist?”

  “No. Stefano didn’t want her to.”

  But there was a certain lack of conviction, and Dante noticed it. “Did she do it in secret?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But there was a doctor who wanted to examine him.”

  “His pediatrician?” asked Dante, whose eyes had turned hard and bright as glass. It seemed to Colomba that the air was crackling around his head, so great was his concentration.

  “No. This was a new doctor, who called my sister to make an appointment.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “It must have been two weeks ago.”

  “And where had they met?”

  “During a visit to the local health clinic. Something to do with school.”

  Dante looked over at Colomba, who spoke up again. “Do you know if they ever met?”

  “No. I don’t know,” she whispered. “I forgot to ask.” A tear rolled down her right cheek. She wiped it away with her sleeve. “You think you’re going to have all the time in the world . . .” Her lips quivered, and more tears rolled. “Forgive me.” She turned and walked a few steps away.

  “She’s crying,” Dante said in a low voice to Colomba.

  “Well, her sister was murdered . . . It’s a common reaction.”

  “That’s why I usually let my lawyer handle this kind of thing.”

  Giulia vigorously blew her nose and came back, her eyes red. “You were saying?”

  “Do you remember this doctor’s name? Or whether your sister might have written down his number?” asked Colomba.

  “I only know that he called her on her cell phone. She was just coming by to have an espresso before opening her store back up for the afternoon. Why do you think it’s important?”

  “We don’t know whether or not it is,” Colomba said hurriedly.

  “Do you think my brother-in-law had an accomplice? Or that it wasn’t him?”

  “We have to explore all the possibilities. Aside from this doctor, did your sister meet anyone else recently? New acquaintances? Did your nephew have any new friends?” she asked.

  “Not as far as I know. And, like I told your colleagues, she hadn’t received any threats and she’d never noticed anyone hanging around her apartment. Neither had I.” She turned to stare at Colomba again. “The only real dangerous one was already living with her.”

  “Thanks for your help, signora.”

  Giulia took a step forward to face off with Colomba with burning eyes. “He won’t get away with it, that son of a bitch. Do you understand me?”

  “Think about your nephew. He comes before anything else,” said Colomba, meeting her glare.

  “My nephew is dead,” said Giulia. Then she turned and ran back inside.

  Colomba sighed and leaned against the wall next to Dante.

  “Is it always this tough?” he asked.

  “Even worse. What do you think?”

  “I think that next time I’m not coming, even if you tie me up.”

  “Aside from that?”

  “She feels guilty about having failed to protect her sister from her brother-in-law when it was still possible. She’d like it if another murderer emerged, because that would relieve her conscience. But she doesn’t believe it.”

  Colomba made a face. “She wouldn’t dream up a false story.”

  “No. The first snag, CC.”

  “It doesn’t even come close.”

  “So are we just going to ignore it?”

  “You have no idea how much I’d like to. Come on, get in.”

  Colomba had rented a minivan with a sunroof, hoping Dante might feel more comfortable and not force her to drive two miles an hour. She’d been wrong, but the car did have a modern hands-free calling system, so she could talk while driving.

  She used it to call the principal of the Maugeri boy’s school. He wasn’t surprised to hear from her, seeing that he’d been interviewed repeatedly in the past few days, and Colomba didn’t even have to think up an excuse: all she had to do was state her rank.

  The principal remembered the child’s doctor’s appointment. It had formed part of a preventive medicine program being run out of the local health clinic. “Weight, height, chest measurement . . . nothing invasive,” he said.

  “Did the doctors remain in touch with the families?” asked Colomba.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Was there also a psychological evaluation of the children?” Dante inquired, leaning toward the microphone in the central rearview mirror.

  “Absolutely not. To many families, psychologists are still strictly doctors for lunatics.”

  “Could you give me the phone number of the local health clinic?” asked Colomba.

  “Just a minute, let me go look for it.”

  He found it, but it didn’t do any good. The head physician refused to answer any questions at all, invoking his patients’ right to privacy.

  Colomba could have forced his hand by identifying her
self, but there was a risk that the doctor might demand some official document or complain to the district attorney’s office, and that would open a can of worms. So she decided to reach out for a favor from Tirelli, who knew enough cops in Rome to obtain the objective with just a few phone calls.

  Tirelli met them at 6 p.m. at the hotel bar.

  “You’re treating yourself well,” he said, sitting down at the table where a silver teapot sat for Colomba and, next to it, a Moscow Mule for Dante.

  Colomba pointed at Dante. “He’s paying. Dante Torre.”

  “You’re earning more than I do in that case,” commented Tirelli as he shook hands.

  “I’m a guest. I’m old friends with one of the owners,” said Dante.

  Colomba bit into a cookie from the three-section tray. “He brought back the man’s crazy daughter.”

  “She wasn’t crazy,” said Dante in an irritated voice. “And it’s not a very accurate term, in any case.”

  “Bipo-o-o-o-o-olar,” she said, drawling out the o mockingly.

  “My compliments.” Perhaps because of the strangeness of the situation, Tirelli was putting on even more pretentious airs than usual and sat as stiff as a stick. “Can I ask where she was?”

  “At the apartment of a junkie friend of hers, with an incipient case of scabies and a strong desire to come home.”

  “Otherwise you would have left her there?”

  Dante shrugged his shoulders: he hated talking about his work with strangers. “I have a deep and abiding respect for the liberty of other people. Whether or not they’re bipolar. You can imagine why. Why the interest?”

  Tirelli smiled, displaying teeth tinged yellow from licorice. “Because I’ve heard a lot about you, Signor Torre. And I’m wondering why you got Caselli involved in this idiotic quest.”

  “It was me who got him involved,” Colomba admitted.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” said Dante.

  “But why, by all that’s holy? Half the district attorney’s office is investigating the Maugeri case, and you’re on medical leave. Do you think they’re getting it all wrong? That the boy is still alive?”

  “Right now, I don’t think anything. That’s why I’m investigating.”