Quadrelli sighed. His fat-padded shoulders sagged. “If you come with me,
“Absolutely,” Rocco said.
Ten minutes later, Martignetti was back with two thick folders. “Well done, Tonino,” Rocco said. “So what did you think of that whole routine of his?”
Martignetti stroked his chin and pondered. “After due consideration,” he said, “I think he just might have something to hide.”
Rocco smiled. “Well, enough for today. You can start digging into that paperwork tomorrow morning.” He got up and took a long, luxurious stretch. “What would you say to a Cinzano before we head back?”
“I’d say, lead me to it.”
NINETEEN
JULIE peered doubtfully up at the time-eaten marble street plaque affixed to the corner of an old building. “Via del Bicchieraia,” she read aloud. “This is it.”
“Nah, can’t be,” John said.
The other two in their party, Marti Lau and Gideon, had to agree with him. More alley than street, barely two car widths wide, lacking sidewalks, and bordered by moldering eighteenth-century, three-story apartment houses faced with peeling stucco that showed their rubble-stone construction, Via del Bicchieraia didn’t look like a street that housed the best restaurant in Tuscany.
It was only two blocks long, overshadowed at one end by the stark “tower of a hundred holes,” the grim, thirteenth-century Romanesque bell tower of the Church of Santa Maria della Pieve, so called because of the eight forbidding stories of mullioned windows that encircled it. At the other end it was closed off by an old apartment building on a cross street. With the looming tower and the leaning buildings, it was doubtful if the sun ever made it all the way to the street itself.
“Well, he said it was here,” Gideon said. “Number twenty-three. Let’s have a look.”
They had to watch their step because there was no sidewalk; the irregular, stone-block pavement was uneven; and they had to negotiate around cars that were parked along the sides, jammed up against the walls of the buildings. When a small panel truck came down the street, they had to hurry to get around a parked car and flatten themselves against a wall.
“If two cars come along from opposite directions, it’s every man for himself,” John muttered.
But they were lucky, making it without incident to number twenty-three, the address Luca had given them. It was a storefront, its two windows partially covered by warped, gray shutters that surely hadn’t been repainted in this century, and maybe not in the last. No menu outside—not even a chalkboard—no stickers indicating acceptable credit cards, nothing but a couple of barely legible words painted in fading green directly on the stone lintel above the door: La Cucina di Nonna Natalia
“This is it, all right,” Marti said.
“Well, he did say it wasn’t very impressive,” Gideon said.
“He got that right,” said John.
“Or very welcoming,” Julie said. “Do you think maybe it’d be better to wait for them?” She glanced up the street for Luca and Linda, who were parking the winery van in an underground lot a few blocks away. “They should only be another minute.”
At that moment, though, two automobiles did turn onto the street from opposite ends, and that decided them. Something had to give. Gideon pulled the door open—predictably, the hinges squealed—and in they went.
The aromas were wonderful; homey and warm, but with something subtle about them that was hard to pin down. The restaurant itself was less wonderful, a narrow room, only two tables wide, with an aisle down the middle. The walls held a single row of shelving on which bottles of red wine were sporadically displayed, the flooring was of much-worn tiles of cheap, wood-veneered plywood, and the tablecloths (which were white linen or cotton in almost every eating place in Italy) were red-and-white-checked plastic, the kind you found in cheap Italian chains in America. The diners, mostly older people, didn’t seem to be bothered by their shabby surroundings. They were eating happily and with gusto. Even for an Italian restaurant, the noise level was high. There was lots of laughter and the frequent clinking of glasses.
“You know, I like this place,” Gideon announced. “It’s, I don’t know . . .”
“Real?” said Julie, laughing.
“That’s it.”
An overweight woman came heavily forward to greet them. Other than wearing a scowl instead of a smile, she was an Italian version of Aunt Jemima: a white kitchen towel was wrapped bandanna-like around her head, and a white, stained apron covered a shapeless red-and-white-checked housedress that matched the tablecloths.
“You came here to eat?” she somewhat suspiciously asked in Italian.
“No, to buy car,” Marti said, but only to herself.
“Yes, please, signora,” said Gideon, the designated Italian-speaker.
“
“Yes.”
“Not many Americans like this food.”
“We’d like very much to try it.”
“Dinner costs fifty euros. Including wine and mineral water.” It was delivered more like a warning than an information bulletin.
“That’s fine,” Gideon said.
“
She appeared to be of two minds about whether or not to let them come in any farther, but finally she nodded with a sigh. “All right, follow me.”
“There’ll be six of us altogether,” Gideon told her. “Our friends are on the way.”
This was met with a shrug. She led them through an archway to a smaller, extremely plain room that held only two tables, both unoccupied, and began to shove them together. Gideon and John jumped to assist, receiving no thanks for their efforts. “She’s not exactly thrilled to see us, is she?” Julie whispered to Gideon. “I’m getting a little uncomfortable.”
“How long until your friends come?” the woman asked.
“They’ll be here any minute.”
She grunted and moved off.
“Perhaps we could have some wine while we wait?” Gideon called.
Another nod.
“White wine for me,” said Marti, who had enough Italian to manage that much.
“No white wine. Only red. You want white wine, you have to go someplace else. Plenty of other restaurants in Arezzo.”
Marti didn’t understand it all, but Gideon did. He was ready to go find one of the other restaurants, but he didn’t want to disappoint Luca. But his tone was sharp: “Please bring us menus to look at while we wait. The special menus.”
“No menus.”
“No menus? How will we know what to order?”
It appeared that Gideon wasn’t the only one who was annoyed. Clearly, the woman had had it with them, and her voice went up a few decibels. “Hey. You go to the symphony, to the opera?”
“What? Yes.” But he stared at her, wondering if he’d misunderstood.
She stared fiercely back at him. “And when you go to the symphony, do you tell the conductor what to play?”
“I . . .”
“No, you trust that he knows what he is doing. You put yourself in his hands.”
“Signora—”
But whatever he was about to say was cut off by a burst of booming, full-throated laughter—only Luca
