The Last Enemy (25 page)

“I swear, Dottore, I had no idea that anyone was inside. I asked Guilio repeatedly what time the last of the staff left. He swore to me—to all of us—that there was never anyone inside after midnight. I don’t think he even checked!” she cried, weeping down the front of her jacket. He gave her his handkerchief, which she had used to wipe her eyes and nose before conscientiously returning it to him, holding it out by its dry hem. He dropped it into the trash when she wasn’t looking and handed her a roll of paper towels that the cleaning people had left on top of the file cabinet.

“She was younger than me, by a whole year,” she cried. “She must have suffered horribly! Burns over ninety percent of her body. It’ll haunt me forever.” Cenni knew she’d forget soon enough, but he didn’t tell her that.

“Seven brothers and sisters. She sent money home every month. I wanted to send them money, but my grandfather wouldn’t let me. He says I must forget that it happened.
You
mustn’t talk about it, ever, to anyone! You’re worse than your mother!
He yelled at me my first night at home.” She looked up at Cenni with soulful eyes. “My parents killed themselves and an old woman who lived below them, while making a bomb. I was only two at the time. My grandfather still blames my mother.”

Cenni had agreed with her—reparation must be made and the best reparation was to send money to the girl’s family—but anonymously, he had urged. “Spending five or ten years in prison won’t help the seven brothers and sisters, and it won’t bring her back. Atonement is better than punishment.” He had been rather amazed at his capacity for sopping up tears and casting forth aphorisms. She had insisted on making a statement, even if he would never use it.
It would soothe her battered
soul
, she’d said. The little lamb had a distinct flair for the melodramatic.

Concerning the murder of Rita, Paola insisted that what she’d told the police on Saturday was the truth, except that she wasn’t alone during her walk, she was with Guilio Montoni. At the end of their walk, close to five, they had stopped for a coffee at a café at the top of Assisi and, afterward, they’d gone in his car to the top of Mount Subascio, where he’d wanted to have sex and she’d wanted to talk. They had a huge blow-up, which ended with her returning his ring. Maybe because they were making so much noise, a family of wild boar had attacked the car. Guilio had never seen
cinghiale
before. He’d been scared to death and furious at the same time—they broke the radiator of his Porsche. A park ranger heard the noise and helped Paola to chase them off. “Three of them were babies, still spotted,” she said, smiling through her tears. After they’d made a statement to the ranger, they drove back to Assisi and Guilio took his car to the garage below Santa Chiara for repair. It was already five minutes to 7:00, and she went directly to the Piazza to wait for her grandparents.

She added that Giulio had called her the following day— Saturday about noon—when he’d heard about Rita’s murder. He wanted to see her but she had refused. She never wanted to see him again! She had no idea where Giulio was between 7:00 and 8:00 on Good Friday, but she very much doubted that he’d visited the cemetery or that he could have killed Rita. “Wouldn’t have the nerve,” she said scornfully. “Besides he didn’t even know what she looked like.”

Candy from a baby, Cenni said to himself after Paola Casati had signed her statement and left. Not even that. He doubted that a robust one-year-old would let go of a sweet as quickly as Paola Casati had stammered out a full confession. Guilt is a policeman’s best friend, he reminded himself, and smiled at his own banality. He patted the signed statement that he had in his pocket with some satisfaction.
Obtained illegally, and not for use against the impetuous Paola, but
it might have its uses!

And now to the boyfriend (
scusi
, Paola, ex-boyfriend), Cenni said to himself as he walked down the deserted hallway toward the interrogation room. Guilio Montoni had bragged, yelled, threatened, bleated, whined, and wept, catalogued in that order in the report that Elena had handed to him over an hour ago, shortly after she had delivered Montoni to the police station in Perugia. He’d had an hour alone in the interrogation room to think and sweat. With any luck, he was scared shitless by now.

He wouldn’t lead off with McDonald’s. Montoni would know that a commissario stationed in the Perugia Questura would have nothing to do with the Rome investigation. Cenni was strongly inclined to agree with Paola that Montoni was not involved in Minelli’s death. He was certain that Minelli had been killed before seven o’clock, and probably before sunset, which on Good Friday was at 6:32. According to Paola, Montoni had been with her between 4:00 and 7:00.

Guilio Montoni might walk away from this one, as he had in Rome, but the least Cenni could do was send a message to the Minister of the Interior that Perugia was not now and never would be the PM’s territory. It appeared from what Montoni had told Paola on Good Friday that he had planned the McDonald’s bombing to shock his parents into noticing him and not in support of any political belief, although bombing a McDonald’s for political belief was beyond Cenni’s comprehension. If McDonald’s and fast food had become the symbol of a world going to hell, then the world had better get on with it as there was little chance at this point of changing direction.

The young man sitting in the interrogation room bore no resemblance to the punk described by the café owner to Piero. The blonde swathe of hair was gone, dyed back to its natural color, over the weekend no doubt, after Montoni had heard about the American’s murder. He had gotten rid of the lip ring as well, which was a good thing as he was chewing rather vigorously on his bottom lip when Cenni entered the room. The boy’s nerves were shot. It would have served him better to let Cenni begin, but his arrogance, which seemed to be his telling characteristic, took over.

“Do you know who I am?” he started off, as he had with Elena, his rich and very important parents his first and last defense, and offense.

“
Certo
. You’re the son of the Minister of the Interior. Now let’s get down to this business of murder and where you were on Good Friday.”

14

A COLD BEER would go a long way to improving his foul mood, Alex decided as he rummaged through the refrigerator. But his mother had been visiting again. Nothing but yogurt, orange juice—the red kind that he hated—and
aqua gazzata
. Damn Maria! He’d have to speak to her again about hiding the key from his mother.

A long day! And for lunch, a disgustingly stale panini from one of the vending machines in the basement. It was a wonder that any of the machines were still vending. All five of them had large dents in their fronts and sides, from violent kicks, some of them his. And then, one begging telephone call after another, calling in favors, sitting on friends, two calls to Renato to remind him of his promise to use his contacts. He hated begging and understood why Minelli had despised her mother’s doctor.
Cold bastard!
was mild to what he would have called him.

None of the calls had panned out as he had hoped. The archives in Rome had no record of the Gentileschi document that he’d found in the Casati library. Artemisia was off the hook, for now! Umberto Casati’s finances had taken a leap into the black a few weeks back. Wildcatting in oil futures. Renato had gotten nowhere in his inquiries, blocked at every step, although he did confirm that Umberto Casati was Opus Dei.
Be
very careful, Alex
, his brother had warned before hanging up.

John Costa, Minelli’s New York lawyer, had provided some interesting information. Rita had called him a week before her death asking that he draw up a new will in John Williams’s favor, disinheriting the uncle. The lawyer was sure that she had called from her uncle’s house, as he’d returned the call immediately afterward to confirm the mailing address. Anyone in the house could have listened in on the extension, Cenni reasoned. Her money was to go to Williams, unconditionally, with the request that he care for her child should anything happen to her. Alex was liking Rita more each day.

Whether Williams would ever see the money was another question. The lawyer had mailed the will to Minelli for execution but it hadn’t yet arrived, or if it had, someone had disposed of it. The lawyers would now have a go at it. It was no longer a police matter.

Of course, this gave the Canadian an additional motive for murder, but the priest who’d heard Williams’s confession on Good Friday had called Elena just that afternoon (after speaking to his superior) to acknowledge having second thoughts about what he could or could not reveal. Nothing of what Williams had confessed, he stated emphatically, but he could verify that Williams had been to confession. First in line on Good Friday, at 4:30, he had assured Elena.

The few thousands that Rita had left to a cousin in New Jersey were hardly worth killing over, not that it mattered anyway, as the cousin had never left New Jersey. And the Italian director that she’d met on the plane, the longest shot of all, had been in the hospital recovering from surgery for piles. Hardly a director anyway, just an over-the-hill film editor trying to score.
Anna Magnani.
Hard to believe that little Rita would have fallen for that one!

Still no signs of Rita’s “Gianni.” The parish in New York had provided a list of visiting priests over a period of three months, nine in all. Elena was still checking them out. And then the interviews. Paola Casati crying down his front. Nice kid! And that shit Montoni, playing at politics to get attention. The girl that he’d murdered was worth a thousand of his kind. Montoni would walk on that one, and from all the other mishaps in his life, so long as his family had power and money. Not a thing Alex could do about it, other than to give him an uncomfortable hour or two.

He lay down on his bed fully dressed. Rest his head for a minute . . . then boil some water for pasta. Too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep. Sophie! Something wrong there. Maybe Carlo is right! No! Has to be Fulvio, proven twice over, first by Greci with his reds, greens, and yellows—Christ, the man’s a bore!—and then by the sergeant. Great find that . . . the scarf in the dumpster . . . knot of fringe missing on one end! Send it off to Rome for comparison. Get the thread back from Batori. Questore . . . Batori? He settled his head deeper into the pillow.

Sergeant Antolini . . . good legs . . . lace panties . . . nervy little thing, taking chances like that! Lucky Piero! Always complaining! His eyelids fluttered . . . five more minutes . . . a black snake coiled around her neck . . . looking out a window. Sun-bright hair tied back with a striped ribbon.

He reaches out and recoils. The right hand is a fingerless stump . . . the index finger hanging off by a threaded clot of blood. She turns, and he stares into the face of a child, a delicate oval of perfection with bright glass blue eyes, veined in red. He watches in horror as the veins elongate and become red watery streaks running down the porcelain face onto a white party dress. The child is in his arms—he’s running down a dark cobbled alleyway, his lungs on fire. He hears the wild thumping of her heart and the pounding footfalls behind. Trapped! The child begins to cry, a whimper at first, then louder, insistently—a loud ringing in his ears. It stops, and he sinks back into the soft folds of sleep. It begins again.

He opens his eyes, half-awake, half-asleep, and sees the reflection of the moon against the glass. The time is projected in large red numbers on the ceiling. He shivers in a cold sweat and wipes his brow. It’s after 11:00 and the heat’s gone off. He reaches for the still-ringing phone.
“Pronto, si . . . si . . . si, Carlo.
Ho capito, domani alle otto.”

15

SERGEANT ANTOLINI WATCHED, half-asleep, as the early morning light played with the shadows on the walls, glinting warmly upon the moss-green coverlet on her bed. She wanted to bask in the warmth and contentment of this state before fully waking but a rising current of excitement quarreled with her languor, urging her to open her eyes fully, to put substance to the half-formed objects of her dreams. And then she remembered yesterday and sat up with a start. The commissario (Alessandro, she murmured) had come out of nowhere to find her rooting through the police dumpster! Half-dressed, too!

The evening before she had arrived home late and gone immediately to her room, refusing the
pappardelle con la lepre
that her mother insisted on warming up. “I feel a cold coming on,” she had lied, ignoring her mother’s nagging concern. For some fifteen minutes, she struck various poses in front of the closet mirror, her uniform jacket buttoned up to her chin as it had been when
he
had discovered her in the dumpster. Front, profile, and finally, from the rear. Were the lace edges of her panties discernible through her hose? “Short legs,” she sighed wistfully, but they appeared longer when contrasted against the dark blue police jacket. She colored when she remembered Easter Sunday. Was it only two days ago that she had seriously considered Piero’s proposal that they see each other exclusively? Genine is too particular, she frequently overheard her mother tell friends. Maybe her mother was right. Most of her high school friends were married, or engaged. Twenty-four on her last birthday. She peered anxiously in the mirror looking for lines.

It’s true that she’d been ticked off when Piero didn’t call again after their first date but that was nothing more than wounded pride. With most of the men she dated, she was the one who cried off. She took a small piece of the Easter bunny that was sitting on her dresser and sucked on it. Piero is sweet! Good-looking too, although in a pallid, freckled sort of way. And they had laughed a lot on their first date. She did so love a good laugh. But he talked too much, and always about food or football. On Sunday, she had wanted to pinch him, just to get a word in edgewise. He could stand to lose twenty pounds, and he complains too much. But they did have police work in common, and their nagging mothers. Ugh, two nagging mothers.