Dying on the Vine

Franco stared at him. “Where’d you get that idea?”

“I . . . I’m not sure . . .”

“That’s what Rocco thought,” John said. “He mentioned it in class.”

“Well, he was wrong,” Nico said. “Jesus, babbo’d never let us get away with cremating him. Are you kidding me?” He made the wrist-wobbling gesture that Italians use where Americans might say, “No way.”

“But Nola was, wasn’t she?” Gideon asked. “The mortician, Cippollini, said it was set for yesterday.”

Franco’s mouth turned down. “That’s Cesare’s doing. She would have preferred otherwise, I’m sure, but it wasn’t up to us.”

“Well, could I see your father’s remains? Would you object? Would you be willing to authorize it, Franco?”

Franco didn’t look happy about it. “I don’t like to do it, to disturb his bones.”

“Get real, Franco,” Luca said. “We’re trying to clear his name here. I don’t think he’d mind having his bones poked at if it would help.”

“Well, what exactly would you be looking for, Gideon?” Franco was unconvinced.

“I don’t really know. It’s impossible to say. Anything I can find that might be pertinent.”

Franco shook his head. “I really don’t . . .”

“Oh, Franco, for Christ’s sake—” Luca began.

“Yes, yes, but you know, these things take time. I’m not sure it can be arranged before you leave, Gideon.”

“It will take no time at all,” Quadrelli said, joining in on the pressure on Franco. “Pietro is no’ buried, they no’ need picks and shovels. They are in a vault in the crypt. To turn a key and open the door is all that is necessary. I will call signor Cippollini myself.”

Franco reluctantly gave in. “You would treat them with respect, Gideon?”

“Of course.”

“Very well. Call signor Cippollini, Severo. Tell him he has my permission.”

“If you could do that right now, I’d appreciate it,” Gideon said. “As Franco said, we’ll only be here another couple of days.”

Quadrelli promptly hauled out his phone. He spoke in rapid Italian, nodding at Gideon and making a circle with his thumb and forefinger at one point to indicate it was a go. He hung up, pleased with himself.

“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He will have the remains ready for you. But he makes a request. He says please not to bring this time the entire police force with you.”

FOURTEEN

WITH no memorial service under way at Onoranze Funebri Cippollini, Gideon and John were not required to go around to the back door this time. Signor Cippollini, wearing what seemed to be the same tightly fitting black suit and pretty much the same hassled demeanor, distractedly ushered them in through the front entrance, took them through the church-like chapel with its faux stained-glass Gothic windows, and into the strangely cheery, brightly colored workroom. On a flatbed, wheeled table lay something quite different from Nola’s child-size cardboard box. Pietro’s casket was the full-size item and made for the long haul, rather than for a single incendiary appearance. Constructed of ebony or something like it, it was elegantly traditional in style, with ornate brass handles and carrying rods, an arched, carved lid, and, on the side, a plastic-coated black-and-white studio photograph of Pietro as a young man, along with his name—Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu—and dates—1953–2011—incised in flowing gilt script. It all was clean and gleaming, as if it had gotten a coat of furniture oil that morning, which it probably had.

Cippollini himself unlocked and opened the coffin’s upper panel—the lid was in two parts, Dutch-door style, as if in preparation for an open-casket display—which Gideon very much doubted had taken place. The broken, gaping, lichen-blackened skull was nothing the mourners would have cared to look at, but it was reverently placed, face up, at the center of an immaculate, satin pillow. The rest of the bones were neatly hidden beneath a padded white coverlet, equally spotless. Cippollini stood admiringly before his creation for a few seconds, then opened the lower lid as well, and, with a bullfighter’s flourish, removed the coverlet to reveal the earthly remains of Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu in their totality.

Their condition came as something of a surprise. Dr. Bosco’s report had listed the trauma, all right, but when he’d written “multiple fractures,” Gideon had taken him to mean that the skeleton as a whole had suffered many breaks, not that each named bone was broken into separate pieces. But unlike Nola’s bones, which were cracked and splintered but mostly in one piece, these were shattered. The most cursory of glances showed him three pieces of the left scapula alone.

That got him thinking. Why the difference? Two bodies undergoing exactly the same terrible fall and impacting on the very same rocky scree—why should the injuries to their bones look so different? Could they be the results of “taphonomic” changes—natural postmortem changes that had occurred as a result of lying out in the open for almost an entire year? No, they’d lain right up against each other and endured exactly the same weather conditions and animal depredations for exactly the same length of time. He could come up with only one answer, but it seemed too bizarre to . . . He tucked the question away for later, when he had time for solitary cogitation.

Despite his trade, it was clear that Mr. Cippollini had little knowledge of skeletal anatomy. Either that, or his penchant for symmetry outweighed his care for anatomical precision. The bones of the legs and pelvis, which were among the few that were unbroken, were in place (although he’d gotten the left and right tibias and fibulas confused), but just about everything from the hips up was arranged strictly for show. “Matching” pieces of scapula and ribs were placed on either side with no regard for what had gone where in the living body. The “spinal column” consisted of vertebrae, whole and in chunks, that tapered beautifully down from skull to pelvis—in complete defiance of nature’s way. At their bottom, between the hipbones, was the broken sacrum, misarranged, but at least in the right general area.

Cippollini was quite proud of the totality of his efforts and even more of the quality of the coffin. Gideon couldn’t follow it all, but he understood enough to learn that the exterior wood was ebony, the interior wood was mahogany, the soft interior fabric was arranged and sewn in a French-fold design, and the mattress was his own patented invention, the Eternal Rest Adaptable Couch.

“Well, next time I need a coffin I’ll sure know where to come,” John said, but of course he said it in English and with a smile, so Cippollini happily nodded along with him. Encouraged, he began to get into the finer points of the wood molding, but Gideon politely told him that they were pressed for time and needed to get on with it.

“Once again, for the sake of decency, I have cleaned the bones,” Cippollini told him. “Would you like me to take them out of the casket for you?”

“No, thank you.”

“If you let me know when you’re done, I will put them back.”

“I can do that for you,” Gideon said.

“No, signore, I want to be positive that they are in their natural order, as close as possible to the way God made them.”

“Well, then, you better let him do it,” John said to Gideon. “You might not get ’em right.”

When Cippollini left, they stood looking at the remains. Gideon found the whole thing creepy, and not only because of the misplaced bones. He’d looked at his share of newly exhumed burials, and many of them had been skeletonized, but always before: the coffin fabric on which they lay had been gray and mottled with age, and stained with the effluents of decomposing tissue. It was anything but pretty, but it was as it should be. But Pietro’s bones lay on brilliantly white bedding—French folded, no less—and while it made things less nasty (as did the pre- cleaning), it just didn’t seem right. It was as if he were looking at a wax museum exhibit or a dubious reliquary purportedly containing the toe bones of an obscure saint, and not at what was left of a once-living human being

“Well, let’s get them laid out on the table,” he said. “Forget about the order for now. We’ll just—hey, wait a minute . . .” He was doing a double take at the bone he’d just picked up; the third rib on the right-hand side. “Damn, now that’s really funny. . . .”