Dying on the Vine

“Exactly. Well, with some qualifications. If it’s from a low height—ten, twenty feet—they won’t have time to change their alignment, so a lot of times they hit with their hands or forearms, trying to protect their heads. Or suicides might land head down on purpose. Otherwise, yes, they almost always land on their feet. And this one very definitely did. You’re frowning.”

“Yeah, I’m frowning,” Rocco said. “I got a problem with this.”

“Which is?”

“Which is, you seem awful sure of yourself, but when I listen to the words, what I hear is ‘tends to’ and ‘almost always’ and ‘most often.’ That doesn’t exactly convince the hell out of me, and it wouldn’t convince a court either, you know what I mean?”

“I do, and it’s a good point. But in this particular case there’s no almost always. I know she landed on her feet . . . and I know it from her skull.”

John and Rocco puzzled over this—Rocco was talking to himself—as they made their way through the great square that fronted the church’s beautifully maintained facade. The piazza itself, however, had seen better days. For more than three centuries the grand event of the Florentine year, the Palio dei Cocchi, had been held here. Now it was a scruffy lawn area, more sandy dirt than grass, on which they had to pick their way between the young and not-so-young backpackers who sprawled, picnicked, and slept, oblivious to the many pedestrians using it as a shortcut.

Beside one of the two stone obelisks that had once marked the turning points for Palio’s chariot races, John paused, eyes narrowed, and leveled a finger at Gideon. “I know you, Doc. If you’re waiting for us to go, like, ‘Whoa! How the hell can you tell somebody landed on their feet from their skull?’ forget it.”

Gideon laughed. “Actually, that would be very much appreciated. I’m not getting paid for this, you know, so how about at least giving me some enjoyment out of it?”

From Rocco, a threatening growl. “How about just telling us?”

“You guys sure know how to take the fun out of it, but okay. Do you—”

“Damn it,” Rocco interrupted, “I really better get out of here. Tell me about it when you call. This is Via del Moro, you turn here. Jesus, Carlotta’s gonna kill me.” He jabbed a finger at Gideon. “No mumbo jumbo. Just facts.” He started off, moving fast.

“Hey, Rocco!” Gideon called after him.

Rocco slowed without turning. “What?”

“So how many carabinieri does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Now he turned around and grinned. “Four. One to climb up on the chair and three to turn the chair.”

SEVEN

“SO, okay,” John said relatively patiently as they turned the corner. “How do you know from her skull that she landed on her feet?”

“Well, you remember that basilar ring fracture in her skull?”

“Where the bottom got all pushed in?”

“Mm-hm. Well, there aren’t many ways you can cave in the skull base like that, but impacting on your feet after a two-hundred-foot drop is one of them. The force is so great that it not only fractures your lower limbs, it drives the spinal column up into your brain—”

John grimaced. “Yeesh.”

“—taking the bottom of the skull partway with it, because the vertebrae are wider than the opening of the foramen magnum. It’s also likely, by the way, to drive the leg bones, the femurs, up into the pelvis and punch holes through it on either side—which also happened here—and to crush and dislocate . . . well, you get the idea.”

“I do,” John said thoughtfully. “And so you think—tell me if I have this right—in a nutshell, you figure she had to have been shot after she fell and not before, because no way could she be alive, let alone conscious, after taking a .32 ACP slug right through the middle of her head.”

“Let’s just say it would be highly unusual.”

“But what could be the point? I still don’t understand that. I mean, okay, say she was alive when she went over the edge, she’d be dead as hell once she hit the bottom, right? All those injuries she had?”

“Oh, definitely. There would have been massive internal damage, organs torn from their moorings, probably a snapped spine. And the basilar ring fracture alone—”

“Okay, then, so why shoot her?”

Gideon shrugged. “John, I honestly don’t have an answer for you, but don’t you think this is all starting to get just a little circular? Anyway”—he pointed over John’s shoulder—“we’re here. Let’s go in.”

• • •

L’OSTERIA di Giovanni was in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century palazzo, relatively modest by Florentine standards. Through the modern glass doors they could see a dining room that managed to be both trendy (well-lit, with abstract art on the walls, and widely spaced, white-clothed tables) and yet distinctly Tuscan (honey-colored, roughly plastered walls, red terra-cotta floor tiles, ancient stone accents peeking through the plaster here and there). At this early hour (by Italian standards), there were few diners.

At the door they were spotted from the rear of the restaurant by a rotund, jolly fellow in a grubby green T- shirt, who came toward them at a trot. This rumpled, convivial personage turned out to be Giovanni himself, who seemed pleased to find that they were Americans, but spoke little English himself and turned them over to the part-Asian hostess. (“This my daughter, Caterina,” he told them.”She speak French too.”) Caterina led them to a table in an interior room. This space was cozier and more traditional—an old copper-hooded fireplace with a family crest, stone pillars anchoring the ceiling arches, tables closer together so it was almost like communal dining. More crowded too, and the noise level suggested the diners had been at it long enough to down a few glasses of wine.

“Your waiter will be Bruno. I hope you enjoy.”

Within seconds the busy, balding, smiling Bruno was bobbing at their side—“Buona sera, signori . . .”—setting down ice-frosted flutes of pale, sparkling wine and a fragrant, red-and-white cloth-covered basket. “Complimenti della casa,” he declared. John peeled back the cloth to have a peek. “Chicken McNuggets?” he crowed, as incredulously delighted as a kid finding a live, saddled pony waiting for him in the middle of his backyard.

The ingratiating smile dropped off Bruno’s face. He drew himself up. “Is no’ Chicken McNug’,” he told John, oozing grievance. “Is coccolini. Special pasta. Fry.”

“Okay, amico, no problemo. But they look like, mismo like, Chicken McNuggets, chicken mcnuggo, pollo mcnuggeti, that’s all. Capisce?” John’s forays into foreign languages were rare, but when they occurred they were always surprising, usually multilingual, and, at least to Gideon, highly entertaining.

Bruno stood even taller and frowned even harder. “I speak English. Is no’ necessary—”

“Grazie, Bruno,” Gideon said. “Sembrano deliziosi.”

Bruno huffed something and stomped off.

“Well, they do,” John moped. “What’s the big deal? What’s so terrible about Chicken McNuggets?”

“Can’t think of a thing. What do these taste like?”

John tried one and lit up. “Not bad! Greasy, salty, crunchy . . . wow. We better finish ’em before Marti gets here, though,” he said, reaching for another.

Marti Lau, John’s wife, was a nutritionist at a Seattle hospital, and although she knew better than to try to impose on her husband the same saltless, fatless, sugarless, meatless regimen she inflicted on her captive clientele, John, an enthusiastic trencherman, found it more enjoyable to do his cheeseburger-chomping and milkshake-slurping when she wasn’t around. She herself lived by dietary rules almost as stringent (she permitted herself cheese and dairy products—sparingly) as the super-healthy regimen she imposed on her hospital population and looked it: a five-foot-ten beanpole, healthy as a horse, and, other than her dietary strictures, a lively, funny, laid-back woman who was a terrific fit for John.

Gideon tucked in too and helped the morsel down with a swig of the wine, a fizzy, lemony prosecco. “They