by Jeff Carson
Wolf took a sip of wine. “In a perfect world, I guess.”
Rossi studied his expression. “What is your job at home? Are you an officer? A captain? How do you say?”
“I’m a deputy sergeant for the Sheriff’s Department. We’re a small department, in a small county in the state of Colorado.”
“Deputy sergeant.” Rossi emphasized each syllable, scrutinizing the words. “I’m not familiar with your ranking system. Who’s your immediate superior?”
“The sheriff. We’re a little unconventional with our simplistic ranks. We have deputies, sergeant deputies, who act as undersheriffs, and then the sheriff.”
Rossi nodded and took another bite. “Do you wish to be sheriff some day?” he asked.
“My father was the sheriff when he was killed in the line of duty.” Wolf took a deep breath and rolled some spaghetti. “I would very much like to be sheriff.”
The table went quiet again. All concentrated on their plates, except for Rossi, who stared at Wolf.
“I, too, lost my father,” Rossi whispered. “A few years ago. It was his time. He had a long life. Your father was taken from you at a younger age. It must have been difficult.”
Wolf nodded. “I’m sorry about your father,” he deflected. “I heard about it from Lia on the way up here.” He stopped himself, suddenly self-conscious of his conversation with Lia on the way up. Like they had gone behind Rossi’s back in some way.
“Yes. My father was a good, hardworking man. At least, that’s the way I remember him. He and my mother split when I was a child. He helped my brother’s family and my family tremendously after his death. He was never around, really. We had no idea he had amassed such wealth. He never taught us about how to invest or save the way he did. He just quietly did it himself. It was a surprise for the entire family to get such a large inheritance.” He raised his hands and looked around. “It gave us this. And gave my brother a place to call his own in Liguria, as well.”
Rossi’s eyes glistened as he pushed his pasta in an aimless circle on the plate. Maria rubbed his back and gently set her head on his shoulder.
Lia reached to Wolf’s leg under the table and gave it a soft squeeze, looking at him. She pulled her hand away, rolled her eyes and resumed rolling her spaghetti on her fork. She looked up suddenly. “I’m not vicious!”
Hearty laughter evaporated the tension. Rossi’s two boys joined in, giggling and staring wide-eyed at Lia.
When they had finished dinner, Wolf tried unsuccessfully to help Maria clear the dishes and clean up. Rossi pulled him to the back porch instead, where they sat on the patio overlooking the lights of Lecco, sipping a local grappa served by Rossi’s wife. Wolf was so tired he felt like he was observing reality from another dimension.
When Maria walked back into the house Wolf threw the tiny bag of white powder from Matthew Rosenwald’s apartment on the table in front of Rossi.
Rossi picked it up and thumbed it in the dim light. “It looks just like the one that I found in your brother’s apartment. The same size and look of the bag.”
“I don’t know what to make of the whole cocaine thing,” Wolf said. “I’m not sure if this is even cocaine. You’ll need to test it. But I don’t think my brother did drugs. He may have experimented in the past, but he never really did drugs. I know what people act like when they do drugs, and my brother didn’t. I need to find this Matthew guy. And something’s off about that Cezar guy at the pub, and Vlad at the observatory. They are both holding something back. Something’s off about those two.”
Rossi took a sip and furrowed his brow. “What if Matthew was supplying your brother with these drugs?”
“I guess it looks that way. But looks can be deceiving. Then there is the belt. That wasn’t my brother’s belt that was found around his neck. There are only two things that can mean—either he stole a belt and hanged himself with it, or someone strung him up with it ... or more accurately, smacked him on the head and strangled him, then tried to make it look like a suicide, and did a poor job of it, because the chandelier couldn’t hold his body weight.” Wolf glared into the dark. “That’s what happened, and I’m sure of it. And it would take at least two people to string up John from that chandelier. There’s no way one person could have done it.” He stood and went to the patio railing, gazing at the city below.
Valerio sipped his grappa and kept his seat. “I think there needs to be more evidence. And until then, I don’t see what we can do. There is no nametag on that belt. There’s no way to find out whose it is, other than finding fingerprints, which we’ll check. But it’s been handled by more than a few people by now.
“Secondly, we cannot bring in this Vlad character for questioning because he was sweating profusely as you spoke to him. We cannot arrest the bar owner for being rude to the carabinieri and a foreigner coming into his pub to question him.” He sighed heavily. “I do think that it is strange that this Matthew fellow left town immediately after your brother’s death, though. So, I think we need to find him. Paulo is working on it. He will look at the phone records and find Rosenwald’s phone, and who knows what else he can uncover. That boy is marvelously talented.”
Wolf yawned uncontrollably once again and nodded his head.
Lia stood up. “You need to get some sleep, David.”
“Yes, you need sleep,” Rossi declared, standing up. “We will know more tomorrow.”
“We need to go over the police report,” Wolf said, sitting back down. “And I don’t know how the hell to read Italian, so I’m going to need your help.” An unstoppable yawn stretched his face again.
Lia stood in front of Wolf and placed her hand gently on his. “You need sleep.”
Rossi looked down at Wolf. “David. Please. It doesn’t do you any good not to rest. We still have all day tomorrow.”
Wolf sat forward. “And if I need your help Saturday? What if I need more time?”
“Then you will have our help on Saturday as well,” Rossi answered.
Wolf sat back on the metal chair. They were right. If they went over the police report now, he probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Every cell in his body screamed for sleep. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They said goodbye to the Rossis and climbed in the Alfa Romeo.
“Sleep now,” she said in a motherly tone. She turned the key and pulled out of the gate with less speed than Wolf was accustomed to in her passenger seat.
“What do you think? Do you really think my brother killed himself?”
“I think ... I think we will find out. I think you need sleep. Go to sleep.”
He tilted the seat back and lost consciousness.
Chapter 28
A light brushing on his cheek pulled him from a dreamless sleep.
“Yep?” He popped his eyes wide open.
“We are here.” Lia’s face filled his view. She was close, tilting her head sideways to the same angle as his, her hair dangling across her face.
Wolf lay still. Without thinking he reached up and brushed her hair behind her ear.
She narrowed her eyes slowly with a short-lived smile that turned to a hard gaze. Her lips parted and she exhaled loudly. Her warm breath caressed his face.
He reached and pulled her head close. There was zero resistance. Zero hesitation.
Lia’s mouth gently connected with his, her tongue diving with eager swirls that tasted of sweet saliva and red wine. Her breaths now came hard out of her nose, vividly audible over the soft Italian music that played on the radio. She reached between them and yanked hard on the emergency brake with a loud crank, then groped at his crotch hungrily with the same hand as she moved closer.
He reached his right hand between her thighs and shifted closer to her.
Then she ripped free and pushed his hand away.
“No, sorry. Sorry, I ... we cannot do this,” she said, straightening and putting her hands on the steering wheel. “Sorry.” She sat, looking forward out the windshield.
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Wolf looked at her. “Okay, uh ... okay.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I will pick you up first thing tomorrow, okay?” She looked at him with pleading eyes.
“Yeah, sure.” He shifted himself upright, and then struggled with the seat-reclining lever. “See you tomorrow at eight?”
“Okay then.”
“Bye.”
He got out and stood up, suddenly lightheaded, with absolutely no clue where he was. He looked forward and craned back his neck to see the strange building in front of him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. Turning quickly, he reached to knock on the window to stop her, to tell her she’d dropped him off at the wrong place, but she had already peeled off up the road. She turned a corner and the rev of the engine faded into the quiet night. Then he saw his brother’s apartment building across the street.
Jesus. Goodnight.
Chapter 29
Wolf’s watch showed 10:25 p.m. when he entered his brother’s apartment.
He stepped out on the balcony and took a look below at the piazza. It was filled with chatter, billowing smoke, rising food aromas, and clusters of young people. Thursday night.
“Hi.” A voice startled him from above. Cristina was looking down, exhaling smoke from a cigarette.
“Hi,” he said. “Do you mind if I come up and have one of those?” Surprisingly, or not surprisingly after the wake-up call he’d just gotten, he felt wide-awake.
“Sure, come on up.”
He went upstairs and knocked.
“Come in!”
She was still on the balcony, and she motioned for Wolf to join her outside. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she stood in sweat pants and a T-shirt. Her eyes were swollen with dark circles underneath. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a Marlboro.
The cigarette was lighter and a little bit thicker in his fingers than he remembered. He brought it up to his mouth, catching a brief scent of Lia on his hand, and lit it.
The second drag hit him with a harder buzz than he was expecting, so he reached for the balcony railing and looked over the edge. Fighting through the lightheadedness, he enjoyed half of the first cigarette he’d had in years, then had a sudden overwhelming urge to put it out, so he mashed it into her overflowing ashtray.
She leaned on the railing next to him and smiled. “Didn’t want a cigarette, after all?”
Wolf laughed. “It’s been a long time. It was a little stronger than I expected.”
They stood in silence for a moment, observing the bustle of the piazza below.
“So did you find anything out today?” she asked.
“Maybe. We went to the pub my brother was at on Saturday night, the Albastru Pub. You ever been there? It’s Romanian.”
“Yes, I’ve been there.” She shifted upright. “John used to go there a lot. I went once. I do not like the place.”
“Why?”
“The guys that work there. I know their type from home. A few of them have tattoos that are the symbol of gangs from where I come from.” She looked at Wolf then took a drag. “Bad gangs.”
Wolf thought of the ink on the freakishly tall man’s hand. “Yeah, I saw tattoos. What kind of gangs? What do they do?”
“They would go around town, beating people that owned small shops, and make them pay not to be beaten in the future. They would sell drugs. Sometimes they would kill people. I think even policemen were scared of them. I learned to stay away from those types of men. There were many disappearances of girls my age growing up. Not where I lived, but close by, in the city. They were made to be prostitutes and often shipped off to other countries.” She took a long drag. “I told John that he needed to be careful there, and not to mess with anyone there. He laughed and said he wouldn’t, but I told him I was serious. That they weren’t the types of guys you wanted to mess with.” She took another drag. “He said he liked the beer.”
“Did you ever meet the Romanian guy from the observatory that Matthew works with? His name is Vlad. That’s his last name.”
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t met anyone but Matthew from the observatory.”
“Did John ever say anything about the bar? Like he suspected anything else going on there? Like any crime? Drugs?”
She looked at him. “No, not that I can remember. Why? You think they killed him?”
Wolf just shrugged. They stood quietly for another few seconds, then he looked at her. “You holding up all right?”
She exhaled and her bottom lip quivered. A tear ran down her cheek and she wiped it quickly.
He gave her a hug and let his emotions run free for a few seconds, staring out at the orange rooftops with blurring vision.
Somewhere out in those tight streets, a man, or men, were going about their lives, thinking they’d gotten away with framing his brother for suicide. They had something coming to them. They had someone coming for them. He pulled away and wiped his eyes. “Can I use your scooter?”
She laughed. “Well, I kind of need it to get to work. Do you need a ride somewhere tomorrow?”
“No, I mean, right now.”
“Oh.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve and dried her eyes. “I guess, yes. What are you going to do?”
“I have to go check on something.”
Chapter 30
The 50 cc engine Italian scooter screamed underneath him as he rounded a dark corner on the two-lane road. The tiny light bobbed and bounced, illuminating rows of corn on either side of the street and clouds of swirling insects. Thankfully, there was little traffic at this late hour in the countryside near the Merate Observatory.
As Wolf passed the gate they’d entered before, he cut the engine. The sudden silence was deafening after listening to the strain of the tiny engine for more than twenty minutes. He turned and coasted onto a dirt road that lined the south side of the property and pushed the scooter to a dark pocket underneath a tree next to the fence.
The engine ticked and hissed as he propped it on the center kickstand with such ease that it was like manhandling a child’s bicycle. He was ridiculously large for the thing, but it had gotten him here.
The observatory hunkered in the dark, with the telescope dome peeking over the top of a pine tree in the near distance. From Wolf’s view through the wrought-iron security fence, he saw a bright light from within the back of the property shining up on the damp air and surrounding trees.
There was no movement or sound, save the scooter’s cooling engine and the millions of crickets singing in the cornfields behind him.
He reached in the pack and dug out two leather jackets, a heavy hooded sweatshirt, a pair of pants, and a pair of jeans he had borrowed from John’s closet. He folded one of the leather jackets like an accordion, then hauled up and draped it length-wise across the spikes on the fence, pulling it down hard on each individual spike to seat it. He repeated the process with each article of clothing.
He pulled, sagging down with extended arms, then propelled himself over with one silent fluid move. A squish pierced the air as he landed on the damp interior lawn on the other side.
Running low and fast, he reached the edge of the southernmost building, crept to the rear, and took refuge behind a broad-leaved bush. He peeked around the corner and saw vivid white light pouring out onto the rear lawn from above two doors that were propped open.
Wolf now clearly heard voices. A heated argument was ensuing between two men, in a language that wasn’t Italian. It was more Germanic, harsh sounding.
The first man was tall and lanky, with a spiked hairdo. Cezar. His face was in and out of deep shadow, but the body was unmistakable. The second man was unmistakable as well. Vlad. They were quarreling in Romanian.
Suddenly, a loud slap pierced the silence, and Wolf raised his eyebrows. Vlad was pleading in a crouch, and Cezar was shuffling toward him with a raised hand.
Wolf’s pulse accelerated at the unmistakable sight of a pistol in Cezar’s hand, pointed straight at V
lad’s head. Wolf was unarmed, and he decided at that moment that confrontation was out of the question. Avoiding detection had just become a high priority.
Wolf watched the action unfold. Both men were momentarily frozen in their theatrical poses. Then Cezar shuffled his feet closer, apparently seriously considering the repercussions of shooting Vlad or not shooting Vlad. Vlad hunched down further, apparently hoping the few inches of distance would save him from certain death.
Cezar abruptly relaxed his posture, put the pistol in the back of his pants, and turned and walked away. He stopped a few feet away and stooped over.
Wolf narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t noticed until now that a box-shaped moving truck was parked, rear facing and wide open. The interior was pitch black due to the angle of the lights.
Cezar was rummaging through things inside of it, speaking in a nonchalant tone. A few seconds later, they both walked swiftly into the building. Then there were two loud clacks and the doors slowly swung shut.
The lights went off, plunging the property into total darkness. Wolf hunched down with the sudden change. Past experience told him it would be about thirty minutes for his night vision to fully develop after exposing his eyes to that much light. However, waiting was not an option.
There was no noise coming from within the observatory. No conversation. Wolf realized that Vlad and Cezar had entered the building to take care of something—something that would take long enough to justify shutting off the light, but not so long that they would risk leaving the truck open. There wasn’t going to be a better opportunity. Now or never, he thought.
He sprinted to the side of the truck, stopping with his back pressed to the aluminum exterior, then peeked around the corner. Blood pumped hard in his ears, his breath fast, yet controlled. A fresh taste of the earlier cigarette pumped out of his lungs.
