Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

by Mario Giordano

  Torso went pale with anger.

  Poldi smiled broadly at him and Montana in turn. “Why did Madame Sahara write ‘Etnarosso’ on her hand?”

  “She didn’t,” said Montana. “According to forensics, the word was scrawled on her hand post-mortem. We haven’t been entirely idle either, Poldi.”

  Poldi ignored this. It simply didn’t make sense.

  “You mean the murderer laid a false trail, but why? I mean, if I’ve understood you correctly, Etnarosso is at the bottom of all this. Why should the murderer lay a false trail that isn’t a false trail at all? Hello?”

  Montana sighed. “As I said—”

  “The missing link is missing, I know.”

  As though on cue, they were brought their fish. The missing link between starters and sweets, so to speak, it was a pauro, a magnificent sea bream grilled and served simply with olive oil, lemon juice and parsley—the usual thing in Sicily, where a really good fish isn’t spoiled with sauces and overly pungent spices or garnishes.

  The proprietress prepared to fillet the pauro herself, but Poldi forestalled her. Taking her knife, she carefully removed a juicy cheek from just in front of the gills, then balanced it on her fork and proffered it to Montana.

  Montana got the message. With a smile, he opened his mouth and obediently allowed my aunt to pop the choice morsel into his mouth. It should be explained that in Sicily the cheek, being the tenderest and sweetest part of the entire fish, is always given to one’s lover. Feeding someone a fish cheek was on a par with holding hands, according to my Auntie Poldi’s scale of intimacy, which had no upper limit.

  Torso grunted disapprovingly and shovelled half the pauro onto his plate, hacked it up with his fork and proceeded to devour it with his left hand in his lap, American fashion.

  “I hate this country,” he growled between mouthfuls. “My parents were immigrants from Ragusa, and I was assigned to this team because I speak passable Italian. I love my job, but I really hate Sicily. Always fish, fish, fish. Everyone talks about food, but they can’t produce a decent burger. Know what they call a hamburger here?”

  “A panino,” Poldi said with a grin.

  “Yeah, a panino. A bread roll. Jesus, doesn’t that say it all? Shitty country!”

  Poldi wouldn’t leave it at that. There were more important matters at stake.

  “Let’s assume what you’ve told me makes some sense. Where do the Avola brothers come into it?”

  “They don’t,” said Montana. “Their only concern is the reservoir below the vineyard.”

  “But why did Achille say he’d killed Madame Sahara?”

  “He honestly thought it was his brother Carmelo, and that he owed him because of the donated kidney.”

  “And what motive would Carmelo have had?”

  “The evil eye,” Montana said coolly. “Carmelo Avola owns a small reproduction-furniture factory in Trecastagni. You know, hulking great pieces for the sitting room with ball-and-claw feet and thick brocade upholstery. The business did well for years, but it’s been going downhill ever since the euro crisis. It’s expensive handmade furniture, produced solely for the Sicilian market. Nobody wants stuff like that abroad. Like many other people, Carmelo went to Madame Sahara to ask for advice—maybe a little witchcraft as well—but things went from bad to worse. After that, Carmelo spread the word that Madame Sahara had put the evil eye on him—that she was intent on ruining him. He evidently became obsessed with the idea.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I certainly am. Anyway, it seems Achille took the matter seriously, because the day before her death Madame Sahara had a violent row with Carmelo. He really threatened her, apparently.”

  Sean Torso looked at his watch and gestured impatiently to Montana to get to the point at last.

  Poldi was relieved to sense that, despite their years of cooperation, the two men were not bosom pals. Montana was looking increasingly annoyed with his American colleague and seemed to find him a nuisance, and Poldi was beginning to understand why. “He’s feeling small,” she thought in surprise. “My strong, handsome Vito is feeling small, and he hates it. Sean Torso is Vito’s Doris.”

  Rivalry between men can have a motivating and stimulating effect, as Poldi knew from pleasurable experience, especially with policemen, but it could also be poison to a successful murder inquiry. So what was the best antidote? Logically, an entirely impartial, utterly objective, thoroughly incorruptible and single-minded female detective who still had her wits about her.

  “Anyway,” Montana went on irritably, “it wasn’t either of them. Achille was seen in a bar in Trecastagni at the time in question, and this chimes with the location info from his mobile phone server. Yes, Poldi, no need to look like that. He left you and went off to have a nightcap, and Carmelo was in bed with his wife at his home in Trecastagni.”

  “Maybe she’s lying. Women who love their husbands sometimes do.”

  “Listen, Poldi. If the two murders are connected, the brothers had no motive for killing Elisa Puglisi. That case has a totally different dimension.”

  “And we could have cleared up both of them if you hadn’t kept getting in our way,” Torso began again, polishing his plate with a piece of bread. “Carmelo Avola was my door to Etnarosso’s back room. Three goddam months of undercover work as a hydrologist. I was that close!” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together. “To my target, I mean. And then you came along. My target got jumpy and drew in his horns.”

  He was starting to get on Poldi’s nerves, but she had sunk her fifth beer by now and eaten well, so she was once more in command of herself.

  “Which brings us back to point number one,” she said in an altogether calm and professional tone. “Namely, why you need me in spite of everything.”

  Torso and Montana glanced at each other.

  “And then you blew my cover with your hysterics,” Torso went on. “That rules me out permanently. Game over. But—and I really don’t like to say this—you’re still in it.”

  The identity of Torso’s principal target was beginning to dawn on Poldi, but she wanted to hear it from Montana.

  “Well, Vito, why do you need me?”

  Montana hesitated. Looking at him, Poldi could see that the whole subject stuck in his craw.

  “To get at Russo,” he said with a sigh. “Russo is the boss behind Etnarosso.”

  “No!” Signora Cocuzza said.

  “No!” Padre Paolo chimed in.

  Poldi just nodded.

  Torre Archirafi’s little café bar was closed on Thursdays, so they had the place to themselves.

  It was nearly noon, my Auntie Poldi’s favourite time of day. Outside, families were setting out on their passeggiata. The weather was still warm, and Etna was still huffing at regular intervals in the distance. For the first time, however, a light breeze blowing over from the mainland was ruffling waves and hairdos, soothing frayed tempers and lightening hearts a little. Through the window Poldi could see workmen dismantling the boardwalks, cabins and shacks on the promenade. It meant that the vacation season was officially over.

  Poldi, the padre and the sad signora were sitting in air-conditioned gloom at a table beside the cash register. The long counter and the display cabinets, cool and empty and highly polished, were dreaming of the gelati, granitas, almond milk, cassatas, cornetti, babàs al rum, almond pastries, millefeuilles and strawberry tartlets that would once more, from tomorrow, waft their scent of vanilla and promise of paradise as far as the piazza.

  “Because the world keeps on turning,” Poldi reflected a trifle sadly, and briefly became engrossed in the question of whether it might have been a special fragrance that had lured so many invaders and immigrants to Sicily. Like a great, big, sticky, captivating, irresistible orchid, Sicily emits a scent that whispers, “Come! I’m your Eden, your Atlantis, your Eldorado, your heart’s desire. Come and melt into me.”

  Poldi realised at that moment that she would never again go back to
Munich, because she had reached her fragrant Eden long ago. She would dissolve there and become part of Sicily—indeed, she was well on the way to doing so.

  “Donna Poldina?”

  The padre and sad Signora Cocuzza were waiting impatiently for her to go on.

  “Sorry, my dears.” She paused for a moment. “I always knew it, but now it’s rubber-stamped by the FBI and official: Russo is a capo mafioso, and he turned off my water. Sean Torso made an undercover attempt to get close to him, posing as a hydrologist. He tried initially to gain an entrée to Russo through the Avola brothers, hoping to become a kind of confidant of his and gather more evidence.”

  “It all sounds very complicated,” the padre said sceptically.

  “And was doomed to fail from the outset, of course. Russo is a fox who can scent a cop from three miles away with the wind blowing in the wrong direction—just like me, by the way—especially when the cop is conceited and stupid enough not to remove his FBI graduation ring. What a figuraccia! Me, I’ve got a sixth sense where policemen and lies are concerned. Russo and the mago managed to fool me with their cock-and-bull stories, but Sean Torso never stood an earthly chance.”

  “And now they propose to use you as their secret weapon,” Signora Cocuzza said, half horrified, half admiring.

  “As a Trojan horse, more like. Torso expects me to flirt with Russo and gain his trust, hoping that over time I’ll be able to supply him with evidence.”

  “So you and Russo are to . . .”

  “No, that was never suggested, but I can go as far as I think fit.”

  “And Montana expects this of you?”

  “He doesn’t like it one bit, naturally, but his hands seem to be tied. It’s Torso’s plan.”

  “Then Montana is a damned coward!” the padre said. “You surely can’t lend yourself to such a sordid scheme, Donna Poldina.”

  Poldi shrugged her shoulders a trifle coquettishly. “Oh, I admit it’s not without a certain appeal.”

  “You can’t be serious, Donna Poldina!” whispered Signora Cocuzza.

  Poldi gave the other two a searching stare and kept them waiting for a reply.

  “No, of course not, what do you think! I don’t say I’m not attracted by such an undercover mission—my talents lie in that direction, of course—but do I look as if I would let myself be used by the first bighead that comes along, even if he is from the FBI? Torso has messed up, and now I’m supposed to save his ass. I can’t even be certain he won’t drop me like a hot potato if a better opportunity presents itself. Besides, I don’t believe we’ll solve Madame Sahara’s murder this way. No, my dears, I’ve other plans. If I play the game, I’ll play it according to my rules.”

  Rules which she promptly explained to her team. At her request, Signora Cocuzza handed over her evaluation of the appointments diary, which Poldi had still not forwarded to Montana.

  “I knew we could count on you, Signora Cocuzza!”

  It turned out that the sad signora had not only laid out a well-arranged Excel table but produced a regular dossier on most of Madame Sahara’s clients, complete with contact dates, connections and cross-references. Poldi realised at once that it disclosed some patterns that had certainly escaped Montana’s notice so far.

  “You’re a genius, my dear,” Poldi said when she saw, for example, that many names had one thing in common: the Avola brothers, neurotic Dottore Enzo, Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara herself—all were, or had been, members of the Five Star Movement, but other clients not numbered among the suspects, or dead, also belonged to that party of protest.

  “Then there are these sums of money. Undisclosed Five Star party donations, all of them,” Poldi surmised. “No wonder the cash has never come to light anywhere.”

  The signora nodded. “I thought that too.”

  She had discovered, with the aid of a few mouse clicks, that Elisa Puglisi and Carmelo Avola had stood for the Five Star chairmanship in Catania Province. Puglisi had ultimately won the election.

  “That was like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Poldi. “A corrupt district attorney employed by the water Mafia became chair of a party dedicated to the protection of water resources.”

  “Maybe that’s why she met her death,” Padre Paolo put in, every inch the Sicilian Sherlock Holmes.

  “Or maybe not. There could have been some quite different reason,” Poldi muttered, refocusing her attention on the signora’s dossier.

  An unmistakable signal: genius at work. A breathless hush, tense expectancy, nerves on edge. Even the café’s air conditioning seemed to hum a little more softly so as not to disturb my aunt. All she said from time to time were things like, “My, look at that!” or “Who’d have thought it!” in German.

  “What do ‘Cyclops’ and ‘Maxlove’ mean?” she asked the signora when she came across those words, which appeared on their own at the foot of the table.

  “Heaven knows,” Padre Paolo put in. “They were handwritten on the diary’s inside cover. I noticed them while I was photocopying the contents.”

  “They sound like racehorse names,” hazarded the sad signora.

  Although Poldi thought this rather far-fetched, she was puzzled by the two mysterious words, which she had originally overlooked. They might be wholly insignificant, but she fed them into the Internet as search items and was surprised when they yielded an immediate and definitive result.

  “Oh!” the sad signora exclaimed.

  “I’ll be damned,” said the padre.

  “Not horse names, maybe,” Poldi said with a grin, “but something to do with stallions.”

  “Cyclops” and “Maxlove” turned out to be pheromone sprays for men obtainable in various strengths online. Although their actual effect on women was not clinically proven, they were advertised as being guaranteed to render any man irresistible.

  “Who would use such stuff?” Signora Cocuzza whispered, sounding not entirely uninterested.

  “Adulterers like Dottore Carbonaro, of course,” growled Padre Paolo. “In order to hook young girls.”

  “No,” Poldi said. “He’s well heeled, he needs no pheromones. Sprays like these are used by only one type of man.”

  She produced the little shard of clay with the Greek inscription, the one she’d found in the vineyard, and put it on the table. Outis, it read. No one.

  “Stuff like this is only used by a nobody who’d like to be a Cyclops,” said Poldi. “A narcissist with a mind like a sewer and the willy of a hedgehog.”

  She closed her laptop, took out her mobile and dialled a number.

  “Poldi!” Russo’s delighted voice answered after the second ring. “You called at last!”

  “I’ll be at your office an hour from now” was all Poldi said. “And you can keep your pants on.” She rang off.

  “Nothing beats straight talking,” she told her team contentedly. “Sex or skulduggery, the same applies.”

  Just under an hour later, my Auntie Poldi entered the lobby of Piante Russo, Russo’s palm and potted plant empire, and gave her name to the receptionist.

  This time she wasn’t shown out by security or chased away by Hans and Franz. On the contrary, Russo came to fetch her in person. He kissed her on both cheeks like an old friend and escorted her at once to his office, whose small size and spartan decor she found surprising.

  An old desk with a PC and stacks of papers and folders. Some filing cabinets and pictures on the wall, photos of his children, a Madonna, and a big map of Sicily bristling with pins of various colours. Facing the desk a shabby leather sofa and a coffee table already set with two espresso cups, a coffee pot, sugar and a plate of biscuits. The room’s only decorative feature was a floor vase filled with white camellias. And that’s what it smelt of: coffee, dusty files and white blossoms. In spite of the surprisingly unpretentious and puritanical atmosphere, it was also redolent of something else—power. One thing was quite clear: this man had no ego problems; he needed no pheromone sprays.

&n
bsp; “No phone calls, no interruptions,” Russo told his secretary. Closing the door, he watched Poldi sit down at one end of the sofa, cross her legs and unceremoniously pour herself some coffee.

  “Where are those dogs of yours, Signor Russo? I almost miss being savaged.” She injected a touch of ambiguity into her voice and held his gaze.

  “Hans and Franz are out on the grounds somewhere, playing. Shall I call them? I’m sure they’d love to see you again.”

  Poldi made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t miss them as much as all that.”

  Russo looked irresolute. Obviously trying to assess the situation, he sat down behind his desk instead of joining Poldi on the sofa.

  “Well, what can I do for you, Donna Poldina?”

  Poldi refused to be hurried. She calmly continued to stir sugar into her espresso, then drank it in little, dainty sips before replying.

  “We Germans have an awful habit. We always skip long preambles and come straight to the point. It’s almost inevitable that intercultural problems will arise.”

  Russo said nothing.

  “I’ll offer you a deal, Signor Russo. A dirty deal from my angle, but I have my reasons.”

  She paused and waited until Russo silently nodded to her to continue. He made a calm, almost sleepy impression, but Poldi saw that his eyes were wide awake and alert.

  “I know all about you and Etnarosso,” she went on. “I could even prove it to a certain extent, but I don’t have to, as you’ll see in a minute. I’m sick of being lied to by you and your informant Rampulla, so let’s not beat about the bush.”

  “By all means. Let’s talk turkey, Donna Poldina.”

  Poldi put her coffee cup down and squared her shoulders. “Did you have Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara murdered?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “No, I don’t believe you did. If someone like you employs a hit man, you can be sure the bodies are never found. What’s more, murders like that have to pay off in some way, whereas the deaths of Elisa Puglisi and Madame Sahara have brought you nothing but headaches, right?”