City of War (47 page)

What few pedestrians there were looked us over quickly then moved on. I saw only one other powered vehicle, a Vespa, sitting on the sidewalk outside a bocce court. Two men were engaged in a cutthroat game while several others sat on benches smoking and offering advice.

Julien told us to wait, and he crossed the square and entered a building. A few minutes later, he came out with a uniformed policeman. “What’s going on?” asked Eddie quietly.

When Julien and the cop crossed back to us, he explained. “I’m required to check in with the local authorities when I show property outside Bonifacio. Usually, it’s just a formality, but when Lieutenant Santini heard you were from California, he wanted to meet you. He has a sister in San Francisco. Oh, by the way, he says this year’s festival is going to be spectacular, and he wants to invite us to attend as his guests.”

Unlike everyone else we’d seen, this guy couldn’t stop grinning and bowing. He also spoke a local combination of French and Italian I’d never heard before. I understood most of it, but I let Julien translate. “His sister’s name is Yvette Santini, and he wants to know if you’ve met her.”

“Jesus,” said Eddie, “doesn’t he know there’s like a million people in San Fran?”

“Look around,” I said. “What do you think?” I turned to Julien. “Tell him we’ll have to take a rain check on the festival, and that we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Yvette. But if he’d like to give us a message for her, we’ll do our best to see she gets it.”

Julien translated, and I thought the guy was going to kiss us.

Julien shook his head. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. He’s going to have somebody put together a basket of her favorite breads and cheeses.”

“That’ll be great.” I smiled and shook the lieutenant’s hand, which sent him into another frenzy of bowing. I looked at Julien. “Now ask him where we can find our artist.”

Julien looked like I’d slapped him. “I think it’s wiser to be discreet. Wander around. Let me show you some apartments. That’s supposed to be what we’re here for.”

“We don’t have time to go house to house, and if we leave empty-handed, we won’t get back. The man at the top of the hill will make sure of that. Now ask him.”

Julien was perspiring. He started talking, then stopped, cleared his throat and began again. I listened to him rattle off a paragraph, and it didn’t have anything to do with Tiziano Bruzzi. Rather than argue, I took out the copy of the photograph and opened it.

Julien wasn’t happy, but instead of the usual reaction, Lieutenant Santini burst out laughing. Then he shot out a stream of sentences, punctuated by more laughter, and pointed in the general direction of the church. When he’d finished, even though I’d gotten it, I waited for Julien’s translation.

“There was an incident. Tiziano took off all his clothes, including his diaper, and climbed the bell tower. He’d done crazy things before, so no one got particularly upset until…how do you say it…he pissed on the mayor.”

We laughed, and that was the lieutenant’s cue to go into another gale.

I looked at Eddie. “High places and urination. Must be the mountain air.”

He ignored me and said to Julien, “What happened then?”

“They called his brother, and while he was trying to talk him down, he pissed on him too.”

Now
that
was funny.

“Some men who work for Gaetano finally took him away. No one has seen him since.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“A month.”

Tiziano was the meal ticket, so he wouldn’t be in outside care. Hood might be dead, but the art hustle still worked. All
you needed were connections, and Bruzzi had plenty. Not to mention leverage over important people. No, Tiziano was nearby, probably at the top of the hill.

“Ask the lieutenant if we can see his studio.”

Santini was more than happy to accommodate.

“I can’t believe he laughs so openly about Bruzzi,” Julien said as we followed Santini across the square.

“I can. You live next door to evil, you’re happy when it has a bad day.”

I’m in pretty good shape, but I was gasping by the time we climbed the mile and a half up the steep dirt footpath. Tiziano’s studio was literally the last house in town, a tiny cottage perched on a rough slab only a quarter mile below the citadel. It was old but well-kept, with wide windows and a rusty bicycle chained to the wooden fence out front.

Lieutenant Santini worked the padlock on the door and pushed it open. I was prepared for a mess, but the place was neat and smelled of nothing more than paint and linseed oil.

“The lieutenant says that Gaetano paid a woman to look after his brother and keep the place clean. She takes care of other troubled people too—the ones without families—and now she doesn’t know what she’s going to do, because this was the only income she had.”

I reached in my pocket and came out with cash. I peeled off ten C-notes and handed them to the cop. He took them like they were on fire.

“Tell him to give it to the woman.”

Julien shook his head. “It’s too much.”

“She had a good year. Tell him.”

It took a little while, but Julien finally got through to him. I guessed there wasn’t much charity going on in Apollonica. The lieutenant started thanking me, but I held up my hand and gave him another hundred. “This is for you,” I said. “For your trouble.”

Julien didn’t have to translate that.

I walked to the back windows and pushed them open. The footpath continued up toward the winery, with the incline steepening even further so that the pope’s former hideout seemed to be suspended over the town. “Where are the grapes?” I asked in French.

Santini answered in kind. “When you came over the bridge, there was a turnoff. It leads along the water and around the mountain. Beyond, the land is different.” He made a gesture that indicated flatter.

There were a few unfinished paintings scattered about, but none I recognized. Tiziano was good, though. Very good. His colors were rich, and his images exploded off the canvas. Supposedly, there is some creativity in all of us, but in most cases, including mine, it’s locked up pretty tight.

I found the spot where Kim had taken Tiziano’s picture. I also saw where she had taken the photographs of the paintings. I looked at the cop and used my French. “There was a young woman. Kim York. Tall. Long hair. She would have come here to see Tiziano.”

The lieutenant nodded vigorously. “Many times. Always with other men.”

“Any Americans?”

“Yes, one.”

Truman.

The scream was so loud, so shrill and so full of terror that I was halfway out the door before the second one came. Thirty feet down the hill, a full-grown hyena had its jaws clamped around the neck of a crying child and was trying to break into a lope as it dragged the struggling bundle up the path. Behind them, a young woman was giving chase, screaming from some deep, primal place.

When she got alongside the big beast, she began beating on it with her fists. The hyena turned, dropped the toddler and snarled at her. When she tried to grab the child, the animal leaped and hit her with its head, and she stumbled backward and fell. Its immediate problem solved, the hyena picked up the child and started back up.

I reached it before it oriented itself, and I kicked it in the ribs as hard as I could. I saw the surprise in its yellow eyes, but even though I had jolted it, it didn’t let go of the baby. Instinctively, the animal moved far enough away to keep me from making another run. But not far enough that I couldn’t smell the fear excretions from its anal glands.

Eddie, Julien and Lieutenant Santini had now reached us and were fanned out between the animal and the winery beyond. The hyena stood stock-still and, one-by-one, eyed those standing between it and escape. The child had gone limp. I hoped only from shock.

Santini had his gun out, a MAB 9mm, which is just slightly less accurate than throwing rocks. Even a direct hit probably wasn’t going to kill the animal, but it might shock it into dropping its prize. I waited for him to fire, but he didn’t.

“Jesus Christ, shoot!” Eddie yelled.

Santini didn’t need to be able to speak English to know what to do, but nothing happened. Sensing the danger, the hyena began to move laterally away from us.

I looked at the lieutenant, saw the perspiration on his forehead and immediately understood. It was okay to get a laugh at the bully’s expense every once in a while, but killing one of Bruzzi’s prized hyenas was another matter. I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time one had come to town, and I wondered how many children the citizens of Apollonica surrendered each year.

I moved quickly toward Santini and took the gun out of his hand. He didn’t put up a fight. I aimed at the hyena’s rear hip where the bullet would shock it but not jeopardize the child and squeezed the trigger. The MAB hardly moved in my hand, and the sound wasn’t any louder than a clap.

The shot went low, kicking up dust as it skidded under the animal. Nice fucking gun. I elevated quickly and fired again. This time I heard a whump, and the hyena let out a bloodcurdling scream and left the ground with all four feet, dropping the kid.

Eddie ran forward, scooped up the child and kept going
like he’d just recovered a fumble. The hyena started for him, and I fired again. There are shots you brag about because you made every calculation. And then there is out of your ass.

I was just hoping to distract it. Instead, the bullet went in its right eye, rattled around its brain and exited through its throat. The hyena ran three strides dead, then dropped like a bag of wet sand.

For the first time, I was aware that other people, probably hearing the commotion, had come out of their homes and were gathering around us. Two of them were young men wearing red
tortils
. The older of the two had a spider with four legs tattooed on his left forearm. Both stared at the dead hyena, then at me.

The younger, shorter man seemed more unsure of himself, so I concentrated on him. Very slowly, he took a knife out of his hip pocket, held it at his side and flicked it open.

I’d been here before, so I raised the lieutenant’s gun and pointed it straight at his face. He didn’t blink, but his hand tightened on the knife. I told Santini that it was up to Dumb and Dumber, but I wasn’t going to be cut.

Santini shouted something, and after taking enough time so we all knew they were the coolest of the cool, the men began walking away.

“Give my regards to Tino,” I said.

The man with the tattoo turned, stopped and stared. Then, with great deliberation, he continued on.

Behind me, Santini muttered something that sounded like “fucking Americans,” but I could have been just hearing things.

Julien and I both had some medical training, but his was a lot more recent. As he examined the boy, the kid suddenly let out a scream almost as loud as the hyena’s and began twisting and turning and reaching for his mother. In Beverly Hills, you’d call your lawyer, then a backup lawyer, then the ambulance. In Apollonica, the last I saw of mother and
son, they were walking back down the hill. The woman had opened her shirt, and the kid was having lunch.

When we left Lieutenant Santini, he was trying to organize a burial party and not having much luck. Apparently, the descendants of Napoleon wanted no part of Bruzzi’s dead pet. Yvette’s basket didn’t make an appearance either.

39

Pradas and Poof

The road around the mountain started out rough, then turned into a smoothly paved ribbon of blacktop. It followed the gorge for a couple of miles, then forked at a 45° angle. The left fork was gravel and descended toward the river. We stayed right with the pavement and half a mile later appeared to be heading into an impenetrable wall of rock. However, as we got closer, an eye-of-the-needle pass appeared, so narrow and so deep that the sun didn’t hit its floor.

Inside the pass, a shallow lake of standing water had turned the hard clay shoulder into a thick brown soup that had migrated onto the road. Julien had to slow down enough to keep from hydroplaning but still maintain enough speed to avoid becoming stuck. It was a choppy ride, and the BMW’s wipers had to work overtime as waves of muck swept over the windshield.

When we reached the other side, the road was dry again, and the terrain became less severe. I was also immediately aware that the climate had changed. The cool, arid air of Apollonica had been replaced by a moist breeze that was easily fifteen degrees warmer than where we’d been. Then I saw why.

We had entered a lush valley completely encircled by towering peaks, which had the effect of creating its own ecosystem. Except for the pass, I could see no other way in or out, so the basin was protected from most extreme weather. Looking up and to my right, I could see the back of Bruzzi’s fortress, but instead of the steep drop of the front, here the land sloped gently downward, providing his hundreds of acres of vineyard with natural drainage.

“I know this part of the country pretty well,” Julien said, “but somebody had to show me this.”

“It explains how he can be in the wine business in such an inhospitable place.”

“Like another planet,” said Eddie, then he leaned across the seat and pointed. “Ever see anything like that except at a nuke plant or San Quentin?”

Bordering the vineyard, a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped with coiled razor wire ran off to a horizon line, dotted at regular intervals by security cameras affixed to the top of twenty-five-foot poles. I motioned for Julien to pull over. I got out and walked up to the wire. Ten yards inside the first fence, there was another, identical one, creating a kind of no-man’s-land between the road and Bruzzi’s grapes. The warmth and conviviality one usually associates with wine-growing had been replaced by a malevolent starkness.

“All this scene needs is a guy running from a crop duster,” said Eddie.

About thirty feet further down the line, something on the inside of the fence caught my eye. It was about eight feet up, and as I walked toward it, I presumed the swarm of black flies hovering over it was scavenging the viscera of a bird that had lost its bearings and flown into the chain link.