Conspiracy in Kiev

assistant, Stephano DiPetri, knew enough to ignore him.

The dead woman was on the floor of the living room, her arms and legs a tangle, a robe half on, half off, the upper part of it caked with blood. Her face was blue from strangulation, her eyes frozen wide in the pain of her death. Her throat looked as if it had been perforated with a butcher’s knife.

Lt. Rizzo walked to the next room. There, a man, who appeared to have been a musician, had been shot to death while sleeping. He had a couple of guitars by the bed, a collection of sheet music, and the inevitable marijuana paraphernalia, none of which was going to be much use to him now.

The first and second bullets had passed through him. The third had blown apart his skull. Nasty splatter. A crime scene pick-four: Skin, hair, tissues, bone in every direction.

It wasn’t pretty.

The pillow and the worn mattress had caught most of the blood, which was good for the cleanup squad. But his left eye was ruptured and half out of his head, which would make their task messier. And at least the remains of the bullets had already been recovered. That was another good part.

The really grisly detail, aside from the homicides themselves, had been the discovery. For a solid day, starting at two in the afternoon, the dead man’s clock radio had blasted some vile American music.

The downstairs neighbors, after a sleepless night and much pounding on the ceiling, indignantly phoned the proprietario over the excessive noise. The landlord had raised the portiera, the deaf-as-a-haddock old Signora Massiella.

Signora Massiella had used her passkey to enter the apartment. She had pushed the door open. The door had stopped against the dead woman on the floor.

Then she screamed and fled, crossing herself several times as she ran. She called the police. The carabinieri arrived and then summoned the homicide people, which included Lt. Rizzo. Rizzo brought in his attitude, of which he had plenty.

Rizzo stood at the foot of the bed, surveying the death scene and not feeling much compassion. He glanced at the disgraceful film poster above the body, one that turned immorality drug addiction into a joke.

Cheech and Chong. The Corsican Brothers. Who was kidding whom? If one of these potheads wanted to meet some real Corsican brothers, Rizzo could arrange it. And as for this dead guy being a singer-musician, well, Sinatra and Pavarotti had been singers. Gino Paoli was a singer. The current pop star Zucherro was a singer. This guy was just a dead guy.

Nearby, detectives went through drawers. They found enough illicit pharmaceuticals and “head” equipment to equip a small store.

Rizzo had an opinion: victims like these brought such things upon themselves. So why then should he, Lt. Rizzo, have to spend his life sorting out a mess like this? Elsewhere in Rome there were good God-fearing local people who were also victims, good Italian working people who battled every day against immigrants and street thugs. Those genti deserved his attention more than this international trash, didn’t they?

A young policeman with chubby cheeks stood next to the lieutenant. His name was Quinzani. In his squad room it was frequently said that Quinzani looked like a hamster in a police uniform. He was of the municipal police and not the homicide brigade. This was his first serious crime scene, and up until now, everyone made fun of him.

He was frightened not just of his boss and the hardened old bastardi of the homicide brigade, but he was also scared stiff just of being there. “Signor Lieutenant?” the young man asked.

Rizzo’s thoughts were far away at the moment. He liked to tell people that his distant cousin had been police commissioner and then mayor in Philadelphia. It was a good story and played well with his fellow cops, usually accompanied by one of his diatribes about the scheming American government and their outlaw intelligence services that operated across Europe. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Rizzo, despite his likings for Americans personally, loathed anything to do with the US government.

Then again, on a recent trip to America, Gian Antonio Rizzo had had himself photographed in front of the mural of the world famous Frank Rizzo at the Italian market in South Philly. And if you asked him, the two paesani had a strong facial resemblance! Aside from that, like many excellent stories, this one had no basis in truth.

His thoughts drifted further, and he wondered what his mistress, Sophie, a nice young French woman in her late thirties, was doing. Sophie worked in a dress store near the Piazza San Marco, dealing with pretty feminine things and cultivated customers, while he was engaged in this muck.

“Signor Lieutenant? Scusi?” young Quinzani repeated.

“Cosa che?” snapped the lieutenant, breaking out of his reverie.

“Guardi, signor Lieutenant, per favor,” the young policeman said. “I found this.”

“Dove?” he asked. Where?

“In an envelope. Behind some books,” the young man said, “in the living room.”

A hand covered in a surgical glove extended three passports to the lieutenant, plus a thick handful of Euros and dollars.

Rizzo looked around for DiPetri. The man was gone, as usual, leaving Rizzo to the mercy of this overanxious young laddie. Rizzo eyed the passports and the money.

“Let me see this,” Rizzo said.

He put the money in his pocket for safekeeping. He would turn it over at headquarters. Or maybe he’d take Sophie out to dinner. He’d decide later.

Then he looked at the passports: an American one and two Canadian ones.

The lieutenant didn’t grasp the significance at first.

Then he opened the top one. The picture showed the woman who lay dead on the floor. Her name on the passport was Angelina Mercoli. Then he opened the next one, issued in Ottawa in 2006. Same woman, different picture. Now her name was Diana Gilberti. A trend emerged. He looked at the third. Now the dead girl had born in Toronto and her name was Lana Bissoni.

He looked at the passports, at their bindings and their printing. Good fakes but fakes nonetheless. Probably good enough to cross a porous border. Not good enough for entry into the United States, Japan, or China but workable for almost anywhere in Europe. Once you got into a country of the European Union you could travel freely to any other, with a handful of exceptions like Great Britain. Such as Italy, where they were now.

He grunted as young Quinzani looked over his shoulder.

He closed the passports, then looked down. He drew a breath. His blood pressure must have been three hundred over two hundred right at that moment, he reasoned. He was going to have to learn to calm down, or he’d have a stroke and Sophie would end up with some young punk her own age who didn’t deserve her.

He focused: first this had looked like a drug hit or some snap of jealousy among lowlifes. But now there were fake passports. No way Rizzo was going to be able to sweep this one away.

This case was going to be a pain. What was this city coming to anyway? Rome was starting to remind him of the wide-open city of the seventies where the loathsome Red Brigades and their criminal friends had the whole country in fear.

Rizzo looked back to Quinzani. He gave the young man a nod and was suddenly back on his game. “What’s happening with the old woman downstairs?” Rizzo asked. “That old deaf woman who lives by the elevator and always has her door open? Was that her name? La portiera?”

“Massiella,” Quinzani answered.

“Are they talking to the old vacca? Did she see anything? Does she remember anyone enter yesterday morning?”

“She says she doesn’t always have her hearing aid in,” Quinzani said. “She’s very frightened. She says these people had a lot of visitors she didn’t like, but she never asked questions.”

“Altro che!” Rizzo answered. “Of course. That’s always our job, eh? To ask the bloody questions?”

“Si, signor Lieutenant.”

Rizzo thought for a moment. “Is there anyone in particular she remembers?”

“No, signor Lieutenant.”

“No. Of course not,” he fumed. He thought further. “All right. Good work for now. Maybe you’ll have my job someday soon because I’m old and senile.”

“Si, signor Lieutenant.”