“Let me save you the trouble. We have already checked. The Nicosa Family company has an account with Spectra on average of two to three hundred euros per month.”
“All right, then I guess we do.”
“But you don’t
“Not for us. I don’t keep track of every supplier.”
“And you’ve never met this man, Falassi?”
Nicosa rubs his temples. The darkness beneath his eyes grows deeper.
“What are you telling me? This driver comes here and sees my wife? Is he some maniac who is obsessed with women?”
The Commissario folds his hands. He wears a gold ring made from a Roman coin.
“How has your marriage been recently?”
“Fine.”
“Have you and your wife been fighting?”
“Why is that your business?”
The Commissario answers Nicosa with blank button eyes:
“Did you kill her?”
Nicosa returns the look with equanimity. “You are crazy.”
“Did you get Falassi to dispose of the body? In the acid bath in the woods?”
Inch by inch, Nicosa’s face goes scarlet.
I touch his wrist. “He’s trying to provoke you.”
Like any good cop, the Commissario waits patiently. For a moment, they stare each other down.
Nicosa breaks free of my touch and waves the chief off.
“Talk to my lawyers.”
The Commissario gets up from the table. Ignoring his host, he turns to me.
“It is a pleasure,
Taking long halting steps, he walks toward the car. The driver comes to attention and opens the door.
Donnato asks if there is a common denominator.
I am speaking to him in Los Angeles from my hideout in the far corner of the pool. Pine boughs sway above me, while he’s looking out at a view of the bland cityscape that might as well be a painted backdrop; it never moves, never changes, only smolders.
“Common denominator between what?”
“Just doodling,” he says. “Staring at the old yellow pad.”
“What does the yellow pad say?”
“It says
“Angry. Evasive.”
“Evasive,” echoes Donnato. I imagine him nodding, tasseled loafers up on the desk, toes ticking back and forth. “We ask, what is Nicosa hiding? Where is the mafia drug connection Rizzio keeps talking about?”
“I don’t know, but the Commissario is trying to connect him to the chemical company that makes sodium hydroxide. It’s called Spectra.”
“Is lye used in manufacturing coffee?”
“Nicosa says no. But he does buy other stuff from Spectra.”
“Is this Mr. Commissario actually trying to make the case that Nicosa adds sodium hydroxide to his regular order, and keeps it in the middle of a forest, on the off chance he might need it to get rid of his wife?”
“They’re blood enemies. The Commissario is looking to destroy him. But Nicosa did know about the crime scene. He knows more than he’s letting on,” I say, feeling a flicker of excitement. “He knew it was the site of an ancient Etruscan mill.”
“Twenty-five years in the FBI tells me your sister’s disappearance has nothing to do with some ancient-ass old mill,” Donnato says. “We have to take this in another direction.”
“Where?”
“Follow the trail of the lye.”
I can’t bring myself to admit to him that’s what Sterling said from the beginning.
THE SOUTH — LA FAMIGLIA
TWENTY-EIGHT
Zabrina Tursi did the math. They had to get to Calabria before dark. The word was out; people would already be showing up. They had to leave right now.
Her current boyfriend, Yuri Kosta, was in the shower. There was no tub in the bathroom, just a showerhead and a drain. The tiny curtain was useless. The tile floor would flood, but nobody used the sponge mop Zabrina had stolen from the janitor to push the dirty water into the drain. She had obsessed about confronting her two roommates, but in the end she just gave up. The place smelled like a sewer. The toilet and sink were always damp with mildew. If you left something in there, like a towel, it would never dry. That’s why they had clothes racks on the balcony, next to the rosemary plants, which were a gift from someone’s deluded parents.
It was a nice building in a calm neighborhood outside the walls, as Sterling and I had discovered that blazing day when we attempted to find her, so nice that you had to be buzzed in. It rented monthly, mostly to students at the Universita di Siena, but also to musicians who came for the jazz festival and even a few professors. It was a middle-class paradise. They had two bedrooms and only one other roommate, a thirty-two-year-old American named Simon Lawrence, who came from a wealthy family in Chicago and claimed to be studying to become the conductor of a symphony orchestra. He would walk around singing scores. Instead of a newspaper, he read music, and he was good on the guitar. They were all addicts. The place was dirty and the furniture dilapidated, but you would not have guessed it was a shooting gallery, where partygoers and white-collar professionals showed up for ten-euro hits, unless you caught sight, in the one-couch living room, of the odd metal cap containing remnants of blood, cocaine, and heroin.
The kitchen, though, was always tidy. If they got it together to prepare a meal, it would be the traditional pasta,
Zabrina wiped the oilcloth on the kitchen table and checked the clock again. It was three minutes later. The shower was still going — just like their money, down the drain. They were two months behind on the rent and mooching off Simon’s personal food cabinet. He was a nice guy, but he had a habit to support, and living in paradise isn’t free. They were going to get kicked out, she knew it, but she couldn’t deal with that right now. Right now they were broke and crashing.
Zabrina went into their bedroom, sat on the mattress on the floor, and fished a lipstick mirror from her bag.
