Typical Italian bombast, thought Poldi, who was all too familiar with such effusions. Even so, Enzo’s statement stirred something within her—something in the dust that had settled on her depression. It was a little something too easily overlooked. At once, as if this alarming little something had just grazed the nerve beneath it, her old crown started throbbing again.
Poldi’s attention had strayed. The return of her toothache jolted her back to reality. Startled, she peered over the newspaper at the hotel terrace, where Sean Torso was sitting.
Or rather, where he had been sitting.
The American’s disappearance unleashed a string of Bavarian expletives.
Poldi’s pal Cher was nowhere to be seen either, nor were Russo and Rampulla. Still cursing her unprofessional aberration, she broke cover and stole into the hotel garden for a better view of the terrace, but there was no sign of Torso, Russo or Rampulla, either outside or in. Poldi stood there for a moment, amazed that she had—let’s be honest—fucked things up.
Uttering another barrage of imprecations, she returned to the street, where she might well have worked herself up into a towering rage if someone hadn’t caught her by the arm.
“Well, well, what a nice surprise!”
It was Doris and the German deliziosi, who were obviously on their way back from the nearby Teatro Greco. Poldi was virtually corralled.
“What are you doing here? Why are you swearing like that? Are you in need of help?”
There was no escape. Poldi was treated to a concentrated dose of solicitude and Dorisness. Long time no see, how was she, their educational tour was nearly over, they’d seen so many (very tatty) Greek and Roman temples, what was she doing here, wouldn’t she like to come and have a nice salad with them, meals at the hotel were so terribly expensive.
As usual when she encountered a Doris or Doris’s ilk, Poldi was at a loss for words. Dorises simply knocked the stuffing out of her. What was more, she could say goodbye to her camouflage.
“No time,” she blurted out. “Things to do.”
She tried to escape, but a Doris is not to be eluded so easily.
“There’s always time,” Doris said firmly. “First we’ll have a nice Mediterranean salad, and then we’ll give you a detailed description of our tour. It’ll interest you.”
She took Poldi’s arm and towed her back towards the Corso Umberto. Flanked by the other retired schoolteachers, Poldi felt as if she was under arrest.
“God help me,” she muttered under her breath.
And her prayer was promptly answered.
“Excuse me, ladies!”
A powerful voice from behind them. A voice that could have parted the waves or carved a roast. A calm, sonorous voice that silenced any objection and promptly sent cold shivers down Poldi’s spine. A male hand grabbed her other arm and spun her round. Sean Torso smiled at her, but without a hint of warmth.
“There you are. I thought we’d lost each other.”
Torso spoke in English, but Doris immediately let go of Poldi as if she’d scalded herself—to Poldi’s regret. She even tried to take Doris’s hand, but the woman had already stepped back out of reach.
Sean Torso, or whatever his real name was, continued to hang on to Poldi’s arm. He bared his teeth at Doris and the deliziosi.
“Ladies,” he said in English, “I’m really sorry, but I must deprive you of this charming lady’s company.”
“No,” Poldi croaked in German, “he musn’t!”
Doris had recovered her composure by now. “No problem,” she told Poldi hurriedly, “we’re bound to see each other at Valérie’s. We don’t leave till the day after tomorrow.”
Poldi went weak at the knees. “Please don’t go!” she squeaked, but the deliziosi seemed overawed by Sean Torso’s sheer presence or the triskelion tattoo on his forearm.
A subdued chorus of bye-byes, and Poldi was obliged to watch Doris and her tour party beat a hasty retreat.
Sean Torso continued to hold her tight.
“Come along,” he said sharply in English. “Keep your trap shut and don’t try to run. I’ll find you anyway.”
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“No, you’re the Hedgehog! You want to kill me the way you tried to with the car—kill me like Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara. Heeel—”
Poldi’s cry died in her throat, stifled by Torso’s vise-like grip.
“Stop that! If I’d wanted to kill you, I’ve had plenty better opportunities.”
Without further explanation, he switched his smile back on and dragged my Auntie Poldi across the piazza to a side street leading off the Corso Umberto.
Poldi reacted at last, or rather, her body took over. Not so young any more and the worse for boozing, arthritis and toothache, it tripped the main switch, flooded itself with adrenaline, engaged autopilot and activated an age-old genetic programme that always works in case of doubt: flight!
With the agility and strength of a pouncing leopardess, Poldi twisted free of Torso’s grip, hit the disconcerted man in the face with her bulging handbag and ran for her life.
“Aiiiuuutooo!!!” she yelled across the Corso. “Muuurder!!! Heeelp!!!”
13
Tells of hares and hedgehogs, of the flight reflex, scent sprays and dirty deals. Poldi turns into a gazelle and runs into a trap. She feeds Montana with the choicest part of a pauro and realises that rivalry sometimes blinds one to details. A “bighead” makes her an offer she really can’t refuse, but since she prefers to play by her own rules, soon afterwards she herself makes another “bighead” an offer he can’t refuse.
“Wow,” I said, interrupting the dramatic pause for effect that Poldi had inserted at this point in her story.
“Is that all you can say?”
“Am I supposed to get gooseflesh?”
“Meaning what?”
“Oh, you know, Poldi, it’s all a bit obvious. You keep hitting me with these cliffhangers, but we’re sitting here on the sofa, all nice and comfy, so I know everything turned out all right in the end. I mean, it really is a bit—”
“Go ahead.”
I squirmed. “Don’t take offence, but hey . . . leopardess? Seriously?”
“Don’t you want to hear any more? Shall I stop? Okay, I’ll stop. Let’s just go on drinking in silence. I’m good at keeping mum when I have to. Back in the ashram I kept mum for days on end, even when I was having sex.”
“Listen, Poldi, I didn’t mean it like—”
“Maybe it’s just that you can’t stand the suspense. Is it too much for your nerves? Like to take a break and go for a smoke upstairs with your friend Etna? You’re looking tired. Maybe you’d sooner lie down. Nobody’s forcing you to listen night after night to your daft old auntie’s adventures, which an anal, uptight type like you would never have. And why not? Because you don’t have the guts to try. Because you’re scared of failure.”
“Really?”
“That’s what I told Quentin when we were both living in that commune on Sunset Boulevard. He was still a youngster in those days, Quentin was, and so shy. He did nothing all day but read paperbacks—you know, pulp fiction. ‘Quentin,’ I told him, ‘only mistakes make good stories.’ Without mistakes you’ve nothing to tell. Mistakes prove you’ve tried, at least. Ultimately, success is merely the end product of a series of failures ‘from dusk till dawn,’ I told him. And Quentin took that on board.”
“Okay, okay.” I sighed. “So what happened next?”
Poldi drained her glass with a serene expression.
“Please, Poldi,” I begged her contritely.
She emitted an ungracious snort. “Yes, well, I ran for my life. But then . . . all I’ll say is, it was like the Grimm Brothers’ hare-and-hedgehog story.”
Poldi practically flew across the Corso Umberto in the direction of Porta Catania. She resembled a gazelle in flight mode, an unstoppable projectile—or so I imagine. She felt neither her age nor her wei
ght nor her painful knee. Anaesthetised from wig to foot by adrenaline and mortal fear, she zigzagged through the crowds of tourists in search of the nearest mustachioed policeman, at whose uniformed breast she could hurl herself.
“Muuurder!!! Heeelp!!!”
In her agitation, alas, she shouted it in German. The cosmopolitan strollers and even the German families shrank away, grabbed their children and handbags, and stared after her, shaking their heads. They probably thought she was a lunatic or mistook her for a street artist who would soon go round with her hat, and both alternatives were better avoided. Nobody stopped my Auntie Poldi, but nobody offered her help or protection, possibly because she made such an intimidating sight as she sprinted along, yelling at the top of her voice. Still, she seemed to have given Sean Torso the slip.
She had made it all the way along the Corso by the time she ran out of breath and adrenaline.
And saw Vito Montana coming towards her.
Her first thought was that he was a hallucination, but he was thoroughly real. He put out his arms and caught hold of her. And yes, it really was him, her commissario, with his muscular arms and his familiar smell. A haven in distress and the essence of Sicily, all in one. Vito Montana, the man she loved.
“Vito! The murderer . . . he’s here. He’s trying to . . .”
“It’s all right, Poldi. Calm down.”
Yes, everything was fine. She felt safe at last.
Until she heard the voice behind her.
“Hot damn, she was fast!”
Turning, Poldi saw Sean Torso standing there.
“Just in time, Montana,” he went on breathlessly, in Italian. “I almost lost her.”
“Well, how d’you like that?” Poldi broke off triumphantly.
I was genuinely thrown.
“Wow, go on, Poldi. No messing!”
“It was hare versus hedgehogs. That’s exactly how I felt, like the hare and the hedgehogs—”
“Yes, yes, get on with it!”
“You’ve no idea what I was feeling at that moment. Mortal terror, total exhaustion, knee-ache, betrayal, suspicion, thirst—the works. A sort of emotional pizza capricciosa, know what I mean? It was an emotional extreme, and I know a thing or two about emotions and extremes.”
“Poldi!”
“All I knew was, the moment of truth had struck.”
“Your last moment, you mean.”
“No, Dottore, I don’t mean that, because I gathered this much: those hedgehogs weren’t going to bump me off in the middle of the Corso.”
Poldi would still have preferred to make a run for it, but her last reserves of strength had dissipated in Montana’s arms. She simply didn’t have enough left to emulate a leopardess, gazelle or projectile, especially as the commissario was continuing to hold her in an iron grip. The hedgehogs had tricked the hare.
“Don’t believe a word he says, Vito,” Poldi managed to gasp. “He murdered Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara.”
“Take it easy, Poldi,” said Montana. And, to Sean Torso, “What about Russo?”
“Gone, of course, what else? Your lady friend really screwed things up again.”
Montana uttered a monosyllabic oath. Then he did something very Sicilian, something that upset my aunt more than anything else: he glanced at his watch and said, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m famished.”
“Vito, believe me, he’s the killer!”
Montana looked at her. “Look at me, Poldi. Do you trust me?”
“No.”
He sighed. “What about some food, though? A beer, maybe?”
Poldi was going to say no, but her body, which knew better, reluctantly acquiesced.
“That’s more like it.” Montana took Poldi’s unresisting arm and headed for a small trattoria in a side street off the Corso, where he shepherded her to a table in the farthest corner.
The pretty proprietress greeted Montana with a kiss on both cheeks and an expression that aroused a flicker of jealousy in Poldi, but the three ice-cold beers she deposited on the table aroused a flicker of vitality in her.
After Poldi had downed Montana’s beer as well as her own and felt her animal spirits revive a little, she eyed the men sitting silently across the table from her. Sean Torso made no secret of his dislike. He looked about as good-natured as King Kong deprived of Fay Wray.
“I—” Montana began, but Poldi cut him short.
“No, let’s not start with you.” She looked at Torso. “Who are you?”
“This is—” Montana started to introduce the American, but Torso broke in.
“I’m Sean Torso. Let’s leave it at that.”
“That’s just an anagram of ‘Etnarosso,’” said Poldi. “In other words, the last and only clue to her murderer Madame Sahara was able to give. She unmasked you, mister, and so have I. You killed her, and Elisa Puglisi too, probably. D’you hear, Vito? I don’t care what this man has told you, he’s a murderer. Got your handcuffs with you?”
“Bullshit,” Torso growled. “Sure, the name’s an anagram. It seemed relevant to this operation. I like anagrams, but to be absolutely clear: I didn’t kill Madame Sahara.”
“Bill—I mean, er . . . Sean and I have known each other since my time in Rome with the special anti-Mafia unit,” Montana put in. “Sean belongs to an FBI team covering organised crime in Italy.”
“And that’ll have to be enough for you,” said Torso.
“Oh yeah?” Poldi picked up his untouched glass and knocked that back as well. This third beer dispelled the last of her fear and made room for something that suited my Auntie Poldi much better. “I’ll tell you something, buddy,” she snarled at the American, “that certainly won’t do me. I want some explanations. From both of you!”
“Let’s eat something first,” Montana said with deliberate bonhomie, beckoning the proprietress. “After all, we’re in Sicily.”
Poldi had never seen her commissario so nervous. Without glancing at the menu, he ordered a few starters, two more beers and a Coke. Meanwhile, Poldi and Torso continued their ocular duel. They eyeballed each other, but without exploding.
“You’ve been nothing but trouble,” Torso began angrily. “You keep sticking your oar in. Operation Etnarosso would have been over long ago if it wasn’t for you. Now everything’s in the balance. I could puke!”
“What Sean means to say is—” Montana began, but that was as far as he got.
Torso ignored him. “I should have put you out of circulation right at the start,” he went on, his jaw muscles working rhythmically. “But you know what really makes me sick?”
Poldi could hardly wait to hear.
“The fact that we need you.”
“Let’s discuss it after the starters,” Montana put in.
But Poldi wasn’t finished yet.
“I want to know one thing first, Vito. Do you really intend to marry Alessia and move to Milan?”
“Well . . .” Montana cleared his throat sheepishly. “Well, um . . . no. We did discuss it, yes, but I . . . well, no. I don’t know if it would have been a good idea, because . . . oh, it doesn’t matter. And as for Milan . . .”
“Well, Vito?”
“I made that up.”
“Why?” Poldi demanded in her iciest tone of voice.
“Madonna, to eliminate you from the game!” he blurted out. “I tried everything, but you’re like a dog with a bone, so I had to bring up some bigger guns to blight your interest in the case. Your life was in danger, after all.”
“So now you do believe that someone tried to kill me?”
“I realised that all along, Poldi. Believe me, it was only for your own g—”
He got no further. Poldi had slapped his face—hard.
“Good” was all she said. “That settles that.”
And then the antipasti came.
Montana’s left cheek was on fire, but he bore the slap with composure. Having swallowed the last morsel, he dabbed his lips with his napkin.
�
��Sean’s team investigates Cosa Nostra activities extending from Sicily to the United States. He has spent the last three months undercover, shadowing Cosa Nostra bosses who are making money out of water here in Sicily. A great deal of money.”
“I heard about it. The lake at Caltagirone.”
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Torso. “Etnarosso was a criminal enterprise that hadn’t shown up on many people’s radar. We knew Cosa Nostra and Oceanica were in cahoots, but we still hadn’t found an evidential link. Until I fingered Elisa Puglisi.”
“And the poor thing had to die before she could give you the name of the missing link?” said Poldi.
“Wrong. She was the missing link. Elisa Puglisi worked for the water Mafia. She camouflaged and coordinated the whole business. We can prove that.”
“Oh? So why was she murdered?”
“That we don’t know.”
“And Madame Sahara?”
“We suspect she was one of Puglisi’s sources of information and laundered money for the Mafia.”
“That’s only a working hypothesis,” Montana said. “We still haven’t found the money, and all the ‘donors’ in her appointments diary flatly deny paying her more than the usual fee.”
“Doesn’t sound too convincing.”
“We’d have made a lot more progress if you hadn’t kept getting in our way,” Torso growled.
“Know what you sound like, Mr. Torso, or whatever you like to call yourself? Like a loud-mouthed schoolboy who goes boo-hoo as soon as a girl slaps his face.” She said that in English. The next word was in Bavarian: “Bighead!”
Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna Page 23
