do. But always, underneath, is the deep tone of parting — just when we have begun.
Dennis Rizzio rolls in like a tank, using every threat of prosecution in the legal arsenal to put the squeeze play on Nicosa. He finally agrees to provide information on ’Ndrangheta’s drug routes into the United States in exchange for immunity on the cocaine smuggling charges. In the court of Rizzio, Nicosa’s defiance of the Puppet in Giovanni’s hospital room on behalf of his son was an act of renunciation that absolved him of moral sin. It is win-win for Rizzio. Tasked to infiltrate the mafias, he busted their trade network and came up with a four-star informant. To his credit, the big guy made a big point with SAC Robert Galloway of my role. By the time I receive the call from Donnato that they need my deposition in the conspiracy trial of former FBI deputy director Peter Abbott, I am ready to go home.
Sterling and I say our good-byes to Chris at the Walkabout, with a toast to Muriel Barrett in absentia. Metropolitan Police Inspector Reilly picked her up at her partner Sheila’s cottage in Surrey, and mediated a deal between the British anti-mafia task force and the Italian authorities in which the “sodden old cow,” as Chris put it, would cooperate in providing information on ’Ndrangheta’s bank of cocaine. Muriel will not be prosecuted in Italy as long as she never returns to that country. Banishment somehow seems an appropriate punishment for a crime that happened in a medieval town. The worst part is that her cloud paintings will most likely end up for sale beside the stale cakes in the deranged landlady’s half-dark mercato.
When the bar is littered with empty shot glasses and drained pints, a text comes in on my cell with a link to photographs. The source is Proibito. Untraceable. The photographs show Falassi’s dump site, where we discovered the vat of lye. Instead of an orderly crime scene, marked with tape, tents set up to protect the evidence, and someone standing guard, everything has been torched. Nothing is left of the water tower, the shack, and the half- burned house but piles of charred timber and curled metal. A deliberately set circle of fire has reduced every bit of organic matter to charcoal.
The human remains are lost, never to be identified. Whatever evidence the Chef might have left that could lead to his bosses — records of payment, bank statements or weapons — is gone. Every trace of Falassi’s crimes has been systematically eradicated.
Chris, Sterling, and I huddle around the tiny screen.
“Who did this? The police or the mafias?” “Flip a coin.”
“How long ago?”
“Hard to tell. We could go down there …” “Something still might be recoverable.” “I’m gonna bet,” Sterling says, “that no bone fragments, nothing from the vat, ever made it to the lab in Rome. The story that it was animal remains is a flat-out lie.” Chris leans on the bar. “Whoever did this had knowledge, access, and means. So did whoever sent Ana the pictures. Who do you think that could be?” I have been balancing the cell phone in my palm as if the weight of it could give me the answer. “Let me take a shot.” I punch in a number. Inspector Martini answers. Her voice is noncommittal.
“Are you at work?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Just wanted you to know I’m going home soon.” “Oh,” she says. “That’s too bad. I hope you enjoyed your time in Italy.” “It’s hard to leave such a beautiful country. But luckily I have pictures to remind me.” “I’m glad you will go with good memories,” she replies. “Thanks for all your help. Kisses to your daughter.”
The two men are watching as I click off the phone.
“It was her. Martini sent the photos. She must have been at the site with the police when they ‘found out’ it was torched.” Chris and Sterling nod, not at all surprised.
“I knew the Commissario was dirty,” I say. “Now he’s succeeded in obliterating the entire investigation. Not only has he wiped out the evidence, but also he’s got Falassi, the only witness, and he could be dead by now, who knows?” “He doesn’t have Falassi, love,” says Chris. “We do.” • •
Instead of heading through the gates of the abbey, we continue a hundred yards up the road and turn into Aleandro and Antonella’s driveway.
“What are we doing here?” I ask.
“The witness is inside,” Sterling says.
“Falassi?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The whole time? After you told me he was taken into custody by the provincial police?” “Yup.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” “You had no need to know.”
I stifle the exasperation as Sterling removes three handguns from the trunk of Chris’s Fiat and hands one to me. We go up to the front door of the red-tile-roofed house. It is late and we awaken Aleandro, who appears wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. They exchange words in Italian, and we go down to the basement.
The room has a shiny new deadlock. Aleandro opens the door and turns on the light. We enter with weapons drawn. Inside it is stifling. There are no windows and nothing in the room but the canister where the olive oil is stored, a chair, and a cot, where Marcello Falassi is sleeping naked.
He does not offer any resistance.
Aleandro tells him it is time. When he puts on jeans and a maroon rayon shirt, he no longer looks like a brute who drives a truck and disposes of bodies, who turns his house into a toxic dump where his wife and mother limp around in the chemical waste of his crimes. All cleaned up — shaved, hair cut short — he looks like a witness, and that is what he will be.
When we had returned to Siena after discovering the vat of lye, between the time I made contact with Dennis Rizzio and when he notified the provincial police, Sterling and Chris had gone back to the campsite to stake out Falassi. Not trusting anyone, even me, they had taken Falassi prisoner for his own protection. While I was slavishly operating within protocol, Sterling was executing the independent covert action necessary to prevent the one link we had to the mafias’ chain of command from escaping, or being compromised by corrupt authorities.
Sterling and Chris had brought Falassi to Aleandro, whose anger at the disappearance of his uncle had been so palpable when we sat at the dining room table. For many years, Aleandro had been waiting for a better day, when the politics were right, to expose the lot of them. He promised Sterling he would hide the witness until the time came to present him to the world. Falassi agreed to become pentito — a penitent who confesses and is therefore forgiven by the Catholic state. For this he would recount everything he had witnessed. The bodies that were brought to be disintegrated. The ones who brought them. And those in charge.
“You were playing me,” I tell Sterling as we handcuff the witness and march him to the car.
“Protecting assets.”
“Chris knew.”
“Course he knew. He was there.” “You trust him, but not me?” “This ain’t about that,” Sterling says.
“What’d you think? I’d leak it to the FBI?” Sterling stops and turns toward me in the chilly night.
“I was protecting you from being put in a compromising position.” “I would not have told Rizzio if it compromised the mission.
There’s a lot of things I don’t tell him, but I tell you everything.” “Okay!” says Sterling, raising his hands in defense.
We put Falassi in the backseat with Chris. We get into the car.
“You know exactly what I’m saying.” I slam the door.
“Kittens!” scolds Chris. “Play nicely. There’s a witness here.” I doubt Falassi is interested in anything except hiding from the mafias for the rest of his life. He agreed to testify that he had taken care of Aleandro’s uncle’s body, and to state that it was the Commissario who gave the order for arrest and disposal. I am hopeful that the momentum of his confessions will encourage Inspector Martini to come forward and identify the Commissario as the one who ordered his police goons to torch the campsite.
I noticed that the only other object in Falassi’s basement room was a Bible.
A few days later Sterling gets the call from Oryx. A Russian billionaire is arriving in London and needs body-
