by Jeff Carson
“How’s this big shake-up going to play out for you?”
She scoffed and put her head down, forking another chunk of pizza into her mouth.
“What? You aren’t expecting to be moved up?” he asked. “You don’t have your sights set higher?”
She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I do. We’ll see how things play out.”
“What position does Valerio hold?”
She pointed her fork at Wolf, then touched her nose with her index finger. “He is a maggiore. A major. If Valerio moves up to colonnello, it will likely shift a lot of others up in rank, opening a spot for an officer. But I am young, and I am a woman. I don’t think I have a realistic chance.” She looked at the table, her eyes unfocused. “But I am by far the best candidate in the entire station.”
“Good luck,” he said. “I hope you can beat out Tito.”
She paused mid-fork and glared at Wolf.
Wolf smiled and held up his hands.
They ate in silence for the rest of the meal, and he thought of home. He had to get Sheriff Burton on the phone. Not being there in the days following the fight with Connell, and Connell spreading lies, was proving to be a PR nightmare.
Entrusting his future to the Derek-Connell-influenced minds of others was killing Wolf inside, especially since he’d lived his entire life not caring what others thought. Now, his whole future hinged on what others thought.
“Thinking about home? Seems like you have much the same situation going on,” Lia said.
He sat back in the chair and wiped his mouth. “Yeah, it’s a bit more complicated, but essentially the same thing.”
“More complicated?” She scoffed. “I don’t believe it. Nothing is more complicated than Italian bureaucracy. Nothing.”
He set his napkin on the plate and sat forward, putting his elbows on the table. She matched the move, leaning forward conspiratorially.
“Let’s say you and Tito were up for the same job promotion.”
She shrugged. “That’s not a stretch. He probably is up for the same promotion. His father is a very powerful man.”
“Okay, okay. But how about if you knew a secret about him.”
“A secret?” She scrunched her face. “Like, what?”
“A secret only you knew about him. One you couldn’t prove but you knew to be true. One that would quash his promotion if it were known.”
“I do know a secret about Tito. He is an idiot. It would be very bad for him to be promoted.”
He leaned back and squiggled his right hand in the air to the waiter.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. What do you mean? A secret? I don’t get it.”
He leaned forward onto his elbows again. “What if you knew he was a murderer?”
“A murderer?” She leaned back and laughed out loud at the ceiling, a high-pitched natural lilt that drew the longing eye of every single man in the room. She looked again at Wolf.
Wolf hadn’t moved.
“Okay,” she said. “And how would I know that?”
“What if he’d tried to kill you? What if he’d attacked you, and tried with all his might to kill you, but you’d got away?”
“Then, yes, that would be very bad,” she said, confused.
She looked at the plate in front of her, then started with realization. “Oh my God. This man you got in a fight with, he tried to kill you?”
Wolf took a sip of his second Coke and nodded.
“And you haven’t told anyone?”
Wolf shrugged. “The opportunity never presented itself.”
“Madonna,” she whispered.
“Why is everything about Madonna with you Italians? You guys don’t like taking the Lord’s name in vain?”
She looked straight at Wolf. “You have to tell someone. It must be eating you up inside.”
“Can we have a look at that police report now?” Wolf leaned back, letting the waiter clear the plates and drop the check.
Lia pulled it from her bag. It was a thick red paper folder with a half-inch of neatly stacked papers inside. She exhaled, swiped a smattering of crumbs on the floor and opened it up. The top of the first page had an ornate swords-and-shield letterhead. Underneath the logo was a series of cells with boxes, some checked.
The police report was foreign in every aspect to Wolf. He recognized his brother’s name, Johnathan Dennis Wolf. Apart from that, he may as well have been looking at a schematic for a nuclear bomb.
She turned the first page over and looked at the second, then turned back to the first page again. “I will translate.”
“Who wrote this? Was this Rossi?”
“No, a different officer.”
They spent the next twenty minutes going through the written report sentence by sentence. It was mundane, and it was biased. Biased, Wolf thought, because it was written from the point of view of a group of cops called in to investigate a suicide of an unknown foreigner.
The report was written with conviction and little skepticism about the cause of death. An American had been found on the ground, strangled by hanging. The superintendent had called it in on Sunday on the advice of the woman who lived above, who was a troubled young woman.
She was self-described as dating the man, and was concerned that he hadn’t return her calls or shown up for a date on Saturday night. She reported hearing a crash on early Saturday morning, which was most likely the chandelier dropping to the floor. She then knocked and tried to enter the apartment; there was no answer and it was locked from the inside. This, coupled with observations by the coroner on scene, determined the time of death to be early Saturday morning, just after one o’clock. The woman reported neither hearing nor seeing anyone else in the apartment with John that early morning, or leaving the apartment. Drugs were found on the scene, and close examination of the nostrils indicated the victim had used drugs.
And that was that.
Nothing jumped out at Wolf as any different from what he had heard from Rossi, Lia, the superintendent, or Cristina.
Wolf spent another ten minutes clarifying the wording Lia used, not wanting anything lost in translation. The clarification process didn’t tell him anything. Nonetheless, something was nagging him. A subliminal whisper was telling him something he couldn’t yet understand.
Lia looked at her watch and got up.
“We have to go. Marino awaits.”
They went out to the street and got in the Alfa Romeo.
“I’ll need to be in on that conversation,” he said as he looked at his watch. Two o’clock. “I’m at the end of my rope.”
Chapter 36
Marino sat on his leather throne inside his office, shouting loudly into the phone. There was a roiling stream of cigarette smoke rising from the ashtray, adding to the choking haze in the hot and bright room. As his skin and throat itched from the humid stench of sweat and tobacco, Wolf wondered once again why the window was closed.
Marino twisted, raised an eyebrow and a finger, motioned to the two chairs against the wall, then finished his conversation. He gently lowered the phone and then rocked back.
“Mr. Wolf, Officer Parente,” he said, extinguishing his cigarette. Almost. It sat smoldering. “I am sorry to hear about all of the developments of your brother’s case, Mr. Wolf.”
He tented his fingers against the bottom of his nose. “I was shocked, to say the least,” he said. “I … I do not know how to, uh ... what to say? I know it must be difficult to hear these things about your brother. Especially being a police officer.” He gestured to Wolf.
Wolf shifted forward, tilting his head, and took a breath to speak.
“But I don’t like what you did this morning, Mr. Wolf.” Marino’s voice raised in volume. “You put one of my best in a bad situation. He trusted you.” He stood up and walked halfway around his desk, sitting one buttock on top.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir,” Wolf said.
“You don’t?” Marino folded his hands on his leg and stared motionless.
> Wolf waited.
Marino glanced at Lia, then back to Wolf.
“We’ve had some interesting developments in the last couple hours. We almost had all of north Italia going on a wild turkey chase looking for this white truck of yours. A hunch from an American ... consulente.”
“That wasn’t a hunch, I saw—”
“We found the truck.” Marino spoke loudly, holding up his index finger again. “Without having to call a national search, Mr. Wolf. National search orders have to come from me.” He pecked his chest with his finger. “So Officer Rossi took every action he could to keep me out of this cowboy show. I am in debt to him for that. And do you know why that is, Mr. Wolf?”
Sergeant. “No.”
“They stopped the truck in question at the Trieste border within the last hour.” He held up a piece of paper between his thumb and index finger. “The truck was searched thoroughly, by human and by dog, just like many of the shipments that go through that border. There was nothing but the parts listed on the manifest prepared by the employee my officers harassed this morning at the Osservatorio di Merate!”
“It was the wrong truck then, or they moved the goods off the truck.” Wolf said. “I know what I saw, and I saw a truck loaded with cocaine and stolen electronics.”
Marino chuckled, yanked a cigarette from the pack sitting on the desk, lit it, and dismounted in a highhanded pirouette.
“Ah, yes! The brilliant piece of detective work you did last night. I hear you broke into the osservatorio and saw some interesting things.”
“Yes,” Wolf said. “I did see some interesting things.”
“Did you? Well, let me tell you a few interesting things. You were trespassing. Trespassing illegally in a foreign country. As my guest in this country,” he gestured wide with his arms, “you cannot come strutting into Italy, and doing as you please. If you would have been caught, you would be in jail right now and there would be nothing I could do to get you out.”
“If I would have been caught I’d be dead like my brother right now. Because I was shot at. How can you turn a blind eye to this? You’ve got a pub fronting as a legitimate business, going around murdering people, smuggling stolen electronics and drugs! If you don’t care about that, then what the hell do you care about?”
Marino snapped his head toward Wolf and gave him a dangerous smile.
“Don’t test me, Mr. Wolf. I am warning you.”
Wolf took a deep breath. “I know what I did was ... unorthodox, and I could have put you in a compromising position.” Wolf clenched his teeth. “I apologize. I was acting on a hunch. A hunch I should have talked to you guys about first, I admit. But I swear I saw what I saw.”
“And I will take your observations under consideration and proceed accordingly, Mr. Wolf. But just because you have a flight to catch back home doesn’t mean we can cut corners and ignore laws in this country. So, you are going to have to make a decision right now, Mr. Wolf. You have to trust me, and trust Detective Rossi, and trust Officer Parente and the rest of the carabinieri to follow up with this case. The proper way.”
Wolf exhaled and put his elbows on his knees.
Marino’s expression melted to sympathy, and he flopped down in the chair with a grunt. “Look at this from-a my point of view. I have hard evidence that a man used a pipe to beat another man’s head, killing him with much anger. I have fingerprints, in blood, on the weapon. I have evidence that both men were taking drugs. We all know what drugs can do to men. It can bring out otherwise hidden rages in a person.
“I have evidence that a man hanged himself from his ceiling. I have evidence he died of strangulation. Putting those two pieces of evidence together tells me that I have evidence this man killed himself. There was no one else in the apartment at the time. We have a testimony from the upstairs neighbor that she did not hear anything at all. If there were men inside, she would have heard, would she not? The door to your brother’s apartment was locked from the inside, keys still in the door. All of the evidence points to no one being in the apartment that night.
“And then,” he gestured to Wolf, “we have a brother who doesn’t want to believe the evidence that is staring him in the face.”
Wolf didn’t move. “You guys dismissed this case from the beginning. You haven’t given it enough attention. There’s more to it. You didn’t even perform an autopsy, which probably would have told you that the bruise on his head was not after death, but before death. You would have found out that my brother doesn’t take drugs. There wouldn’t have been any drugs in his system.”
A tinge of doubt crept into Wolf’s mind with the last statement—doubt that had stuck him like a barbed thorn, burrowing deeper with time—but he kept his poker face. “If you had followed up on the receipt in my brother’s pocket, you would have seen that he was at a pub the night he died. A pub owned by some shady individuals who are either current or former gang members. The kind of guys you want to look into further. Guys that I now know are smuggling drugs. It’s not a stretch to figure out where the cocaine found at John’s and at Dr. Rosenwald’s came from.
“There wasn’t even an investigation into the night of his death. Who was he with? What exactly was he doing? Where were the people he was with? These questions didn’t come up for your investigators?”
Marino inhaled deeply on his cigarette, and let the question hang.
“Mr. Wolf, it looked like a suicide.” He swiped his hands together and held them up, a gesture Wolf was becoming intimately familiar with.
“Not to me.”
Marino took another drag and swiveled in his chair. Smoke seeped from his nostrils as he sat for a few seconds, and then he stood up. “I will have my men look into it further. Parente will help,” he said. “You have my word. Now, I need you to go home and let us do our job.”
Wolf shook his head and looked to the dirty tile floor.
Marino sat on the edge of his desk. “You will let us do our job. I do not want to have to take you into custody, Mr. Wolf. But I will not have you going around breaking into property and conducting an investigation by yourself. How would you like it if this happened in your town? How would you deal with it?”
Wolf looked at Lia, who gave him a sympathetic sideways glance. He narrowed his eyes and stared back at the floor, coming to a lucid conclusion. “All right. I have your word you will look further into the pub owner and the observatory employee?” He stood up.
Marino put his cigarette in his mouth and stood, hands out to his sides.
“You have my word.”
Wolf exhaled, looking to the ceiling, a resigned look on his face. “Okay. I’ll take the next day and get my brother’s things in order. Then I’ll be leaving on Sunday morning.” He looked back down to Lia, who sat obediently. “Is it possible to get a ride to the airport on Sunday morning from Officer Parente? Rather than take the train again?”
“If it is her day off. You will have to arrange that with her.”
“I’m on duty Sunday, sir,” she said.
“Then Lia will take you to the airport in the morning. You two can arrange it. Now if you will excuse Officer Parente and myself, we need to speak about something.”
Wolf shook Marino’s hand and opened the door.
“Deputy Wolf,” Marino called.
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry. Good luck to you and your family.”
Wolf nodded and closed the door.
In the room outside a few officers pecked at their cream-colored keyboards. The air was stagnant, hot and damp, and all the windows were shut for reasons Wolf could not fathom.
Rossi looked up from his desk and hurried over. “David, I’m so sorry. Did you hear about the truck?”
“Hi, Rossi. Yes, I did. They must have been spooked and changed their plans.”
Rossi shook his head. “I’m sorry. I was going to let you guys know about it, but I was just inside Marino’s office myself. I didn’t have a chance to call. Then I saw you
enter his office just now.”
“No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
Lia came out of Marino’s office, almost running into Wolf.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the truck, Valerio?” she hissed, closing the door.
“I was just telling David, I didn’t know about it until just now, then I had to talk to Marino. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you when you came in here.”
She shook her head in disgust, looking back at Marino’s office.
“Anyway, thank you, Valerio, for everything.” Wolf held out his hand and stood tall.
Rossi straightened and shook it. “You are welcome, Sergeant Wolf. I wish you and your family the best of luck.”
“I would really appreciate it if you looked into this further after I leave.”
“David, I am going to look into this personally. I’ve already spoken to Marino about it. If they are running a smuggling operation, I will get the evidence needed to bring them in. Then we can find out if they are behind your brother’s murder, once and for all.”
Wolf fetched his brother’s computer from Paulo, said his goodbyes, and made his way to the stairs, giving one final wave to Valerio, who was dialing his desk phone. Valerio stopped and put the receiver to his chest. “Goodbye, David. Do not worry.” Rossi narrowed his eyes.
Wolf nodded. He wasn’t worried at all.
…
Lia glanced at Wolf for the twentieth time of the car ride. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m thinking I let my brother down.” He looked at the hordes of Friday-afternoon lakeshore walkers whizzing by.
“We will …” She let her sentence die.
Wolf glanced in the side mirror as they swept around a traffic circle. Another carabinieri Alfa Romeo cruiser trailed them.
He looked at her and nodded. “I appreciate it. I really do.”
They pulled up to the courtyard of his brother’s apartment building. He unbuckled his belt and climbed out.
“What are you going to do for the next couple of days?” She leaned over the seat, looking up at him with those vivid eyes.
