Cold Tuscan Stone (6 page)

“I came as quickly as I could.” Canopo joined the tall, silent figure. He looked up at the man's face, waiting for him to speak.

The man remained silent, gazing out over the ruins below, his slight frown showing concern or distraction. A long leather coat was his only concession to the cold wind that raced along the street. Canopo decided that sheer size must keep the man from noticing the temperature, like a bear hunkered down in a frozen forest. He wore no hat. His gloveless hands were placed on the edge of the wall as if he were about to make a speech to an invisible crowd gathered below. There was no offer of a handshake, or any other acknowledgement that a shivering Canopo now stood a few feet from him.

“Canopo,” he finally said. Was it a statement or a question? He continued after a pause. “
Mio caro
Canopo, we've had a problem. The police have discovered our storage shed and confiscated everything.” Canopo tried not to show fear, but he could not prevent taking a short breath. The man continued. “So we've lost most of our stock. This will set us back months….Come over here so I don't have to raise my voice.”

Canopo scanned the empty street. “But there's no one—”

“Come here.”

Canopo found himself standing next to the man, both of them now blankly staring at the stones far below their eyes. There was still enough light to make out the structures laid out by the Romans, those remnants that had not been carted off over the centuries. A wide arc of stone seats lay between them and a tower of Corinthian columns, all that was left of the theater's stage. Only the outline of its semicircle was visible, cut into the side of the hill. Grass that grew among the stones was turning brown in the fall cold, matching leaves which had blown into small piles around the stage. Far off to the left a few cars were leaving a large parking area, one of several such spaces found outside the walls of what had always been and still was a pedestrian city. Canopo watched their red tail lights disappear around the distant edge of the wall.

“What are we to think?” The man continued to focus on the stones below.

“I don't understand.” Canopo's voice faltered.

“It seems very unlikely that the cops just stumbled on it,
mio caro
Canopo. And there were only a few of us who knew its location. We have no reason to suspect the other members of the organization, so it has come down to one of us.” He shifted his eyes from the stones to Canopo. “I know that
I
never told anyone about the shed.” He swung around, and his finger shot out to punch Canopo in the chest three times, one for each word. “That leaves you.”

“I never said anything to the police or anyone else, I swear.” Despite the wintry air, he could feel himself beginning to sweat. “Why would I do it? What would be in it for me?”

“Money? You should be doing pretty well. You get a regular salary from the store, you're paid well for our little operation, and now it seems you're on the police payroll as well. Whatever the reasons, it doesn't matter now.” He lifted his head and glanced quickly up and down the street.

“What are you—” Canopo's voice froze.

Abruptly the man reached down and seized Canopo under his arms. The strong hands pressed in, squeezing a groaning breath from Canopo's lungs as he stared up in shock. An instant later he realized that his feet were no longer touching the stone pavement. He pulled his hands from his pockets as he felt himself being lifted above the top of the wall. Canopo's fingers clawed at the face, trying to hold fast to something, anything, that could save him. Suddenly all he felt was the frozen air rushing past him. He was cursing the cold when he hit the stone.

***

“Did you see that, Herb?”

“What should I be seeing, Shirley, I'm opening the car?” The man in a Nike jacket glanced up and saw a strange look on his wife's face. “What is it?”

“A man, at least I think it was a man, just fell from the top of the wall, way over there.”

He squinted through his glasses. “Are you sure? It's pretty dark.”

“I'm not sure. No, I am sure. What else could it have been?”

“Somebody throwing a sack of garbage? It is Italy, you know. They throw garbage all over the place. Remember Naples last week? This isn't Davenport.”

“Herb, nobody would be throwing garbage down on the Roman ruins.”

“I wouldn't count on it.” He opened the passenger door of the rental car. “Come on, Shirley, I don't want to be on these roads when it's too dark. They're dangerous enough with these Italian drivers.”

***

His walk through the quiet streets of the historic center surrounded Rick with the richness of Volterra's culture. He regretted that Erica wasn't with him now, explaining all the art and architecture, putting everything in context as only a good art history professor can. He rounded the corner and entered the city's main square, deserted except for a few people scurrying across its stone pavement. A strong gust of wind swirled through the piazza like a New Mexico dust devil, causing Rick to pull up his collar and hurry toward the police station. After mounting some steps, he entered the building and found himself in a large, bleak waiting room. It was flanked on one side by a classic, long, scuffed reception desk which must be a requirement in police stations worldwide. This one, at least, was wood, perhaps in deference to the age of the building. Various men and women, some in uniform, walked through the room looking busy. Rick approached the desk and asked for Commissario Conti. The uniformed man took his name and added it to a list on a clip board in front of him.

“The Commissario has been detained.” He pointed to the equally long and scuffed bench at one side of the room. “He has asked you to please wait,” he added, before going back to his papers.

The bench was hard, and became even harder the longer Rick sat. Fortunately he was not bored; the people circulating through the room kept up his interest, including several sitting with him on the bench. He thought of Grandma Montoya who loved people watching: give her a place to sit where people streamed by and she could not be happier. Periodically a policeman would appear to call out a name, and when someone popped up from the bench he would lead them through the doors into the heart of the building. Feeding the cycle, others came through the main doors to check in at the desk and take their place on the bench until their turn came. Many carried papers, and Rick supposed that they were working their way through the Italian bureaucracy to get some permit or perhaps pay a fine. He tried to analyze the people who sat with him, concluding that they were not wealthy or well connected. Anyone with money would have found some way to avoid the bureaucracy, or at the very least to skip waiting in line. It was not unlike encounters with the state bureaucracy in New Mexico, but here the language was Italian, not Spanish.

He checked his phone, saw that he had been sitting for a half hour, and wondered if he should inquire at the desk about Conti. Just at that moment the desk sergeant answered the phone. When he heard the voice his body stiffened slightly and he glanced over at Rick while nodding at the unseeing person on the other end of the line. After hanging up he looked back at Rick and smiled, again nodding slightly.

Twenty minutes later Rick was the only occupant of the bench, like the worst player on the basketball team. He glanced up and saw a man in his sixties appear at the doorway and walk to the desk. The color of his baggy suit matched his thinning hair, and he walked as if his feet hurt. Must be another pensioner needing a permit of one sort or another. The sergeant, now on his feet, silently pointed to Rick with his chin and the new arrival strode to the bench. Rick stood up and shook the man's hand.

“Signor Montoya? Conti.
Piacere
. I very much regret that you have been kept waiting. Unfortunately it could not be avoided. Please come to my office.” Already annoyed by the wait, Rick was now disturbed by the thin smile on the Commissario's face as they shook hands. Was Conti late on purpose, to show who was in charge? If the man got his enjoyment from such games, this could become a tedious exercise. Rick murmured an answer about not minding the wait and followed the man through the door, then along a wide corridor with doors off it at regular intervals. At its end was Conti's office. The policeman motioned Rick to sit in a chair in front of the desk. Rick was expecting to be offered a coffee, but no offer was forthcoming.

“An unfortunate accident delayed me, Signor Montoya.” Conti settled into his institutional metal chair, leaning back with a slight squeak. “A man jumped to his death from a high wall at the north side of the city.” He looked at Rick as if waiting for him to answer.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Rick said, for lack of anything more profound.

Conti continued to gaze at Rick for several seconds before speaking again. “Signor Montoya, I spoke to the man's employer.” Another pause. “It seems that you were the last person to see the dead man before his fall.”

“Canopo?” Rick immediately remembered the encounter outside the shoe shop and the man rushing off down the street.

“That is correct. Signor Landi said that you had left his store to visit their workshop. We checked, and apparently neither of you arrived there. Can you tell me what happened?” Conti eased his chair back and folded his hands over his stomach, but kept his eyes on Rick. The chair gave another squeak.

“We were together only briefly,” Rick began, trying to recall the details while gathering his thoughts. But they were difficult to gather. He had spent barely ten minutes with Canopo, but in that time they had somehow connected, like two strangers in a foreign land. “After we left the shop we went into a bar on the street and had coffee. As we were leaving he stopped to talk to someone, and—”

“Who was that person?”

“I have no idea. It was a man, I'm sure of that.”

“Did you hear any of the conversation?”

“No, Commissario, Canopo stepped away from me and spoke to him at the entrance to a shoe store. When he finished the conversation and came back, he asked to postpone the visit to the workshop until tomorrow, since something had come up. Then he rushed off.”

“What did the man look like?”

“I didn't really see much of him. He mostly had his back to me, and was inside the entrance to the shop.”

“Did Canopo leave with this man?”

“No, after he gave me his excuses and hurried off, I didn't see the other man.”

“Which way did Canopo go?”

“Down the street, away from the shop, I think that would be—”

“I know. It would be toward where his body was found. What did you talk to him about?”

“Nothing of any importance. The weather. He complained about the cold, being from Sicily, I remember that. And a bit about my purchasing Etruscan artifacts.” Conti's eyebrow raised. “Well, not artifacts, just Etruscan art that the store sells.”

“Did he appear upset? Disturbed by anything?”

“Not at all. He was very friendly and talkative in the bar. But after he talked to this man, he seemed in a hurry. Nothing more than that. I assumed it was something to do with his work.” Rick's chair was as hard as the bench, and he shifted in it to gain a bit of comfort. “There is something else I remember he said when we were in the bar.” Conti leaned forward slightly, but waited for Rick to continue. “He compared the Sicilians and the Tuscans, saying there are good and bad people in both places. Said the Tuscans can be just as bad but think they're better, something like that. I found it strange.”

Conti's face showed puzzlement. Was he wondering if Rick was making this all up? He nodded and swiveled in his chair, stretching out his legs, all the while keeping his eyes on Rick. “Where did you go after he walked away?”

“I had an hour or so to kill before our appointment,” Rick answered, immediately regretting his choice of words. “So I walked around the center of town for a while before coming here. My last stop before coming here was the big park.”

“The archeological park, the highest point of the city.”

“It seemed that way. If I have time during my stay I want to explore that castle. It is very impressive.”

Conti frowned and then his mouth turned upward to form that half smile Rick had seen in the waiting room. “Obviously you are not aware, Signor Montoya. That castle is a federal prison.” This was the first change in the man's expression since they had sat down. “Did you talk to anyone as you walked the streets?”

Rick understood the inference of the question but he tried not to show it. “I spoke to no one. Do you suspect foul play, Commissario?”

Conti hesitated before answering. “It does seem strange that the man would take his own life. And thanks to the cold weather, the streets of the city were deserted, including, it appears, those near the scene of the accident. So we have no witnesses to the fall, though we are still trying to find anyone who might have been in the area. I had hoped you could be of help.” He noticed Rick's expression and added, “Of course what you told me will help in completing the picture.” He bent forward and placed his forearms on the desk. “But you have not come here to discuss the death of someone you just met. We should be talking about your undercover work, should we not?”

Rick detected an edge of sarcasm in the man's voice when he said the word “undercover.” Beppo had told him that the local police would not be happy about the ministry's encroachment on their turf, so Conti's tone was to be expected. Rick thought about how his father would have reacted, and he opted for the diplomatic.

“Commissario, I know that the ministry very much appreciates your cooperation in this matter. And I will be keeping you apprised of my progress and look forward to your suggestions.” Conti's expression did not waver. So much for diplomacy. Rick pulled his leather notebook from his pocket, opened it and reviewed the local people who Beppo had given him to contact. Conti listened carefully but without comment, until Rick mentioned Arnolfo Zerbino, the museum curator.