For All the Gold in the World (11 page)

“And so?” I prodded him.

“Maybe it's time to find a solution that makes everyone happy,” he replied, staring Beniamino right in the eyes.

He immediately understood the armed robber's line of thought. “In other words, we're supposed to help you get out of this situation unscathed.”

“If you want Fecchio to compensate poor Luigina's son,” Gigliola butted in, “you're still going to have to render him harmless in one way or another.”

“There's one small problem you're overlooking,” said Rossini. “Fecchio and his accomplices have to pay for the housekeeper's murder. Someone's going to have to die. And if it's true, as Kevin claims, that there's a recording of Gastone's confession, then there's a chance of it coming out and the cops coming after you for it.”

Spezzafumo leapt to his feet. “You three are completely out of your minds,” he shouted. “You think you're the law, but you're a bunch of nobodies.”

“Sit down!” the widow ordered. Nick the Goldsmith obeyed without blinking. Max and I exchanged a look. The woman wasn't the supporting character we'd taken her for.

Gigliola asked me for a cigarette and took a couple of puffs and then started talking to me like a seasoned underworld kingpin at a summit meeting with other colleagues of the same rank. “Kevin Fecchio tortured and murdered my husband. If he wanted to avenge his brother's death, he should have taken it out on Nicola and his boys—the ones who actually murdered him—not on Gastone. So I have every right to retaliate against him and his confederates. But I'm willing to renounce any and all satisfaction because I believe that Lara's present and future are more important. And I'm willing to welcome Sergio into my home and raise him as if he were the son I always hoped for.

“What's more, Nicola Spezzafumo will give you his word that we'll quit the business, along with Denis and Giacomo.

“In exchange for our goodwill, you'll convince Fecchio to renounce any further action against us. After all, he's risking a life sentence, too.

“In terms of money, we can kick in with what's left from the sale of the villa and Nicola can put in thirty or forty thousand euros. More or less a hundred eighty thousand.”

Silence fell over Siro Ballan's living room. The inconsolable widow had shown her true face. She'd even changed her tone of voice, her posture, her glance.

“You've been the boss the whole time,” I stated, awestruck.

“But I'm not proud of that fact, not now,” she confessed. “We made a mistake that destroyed our lives and dragged us right to the brink of a precipice.”

“Why did you try to get us involved, through Spezzafumo, while pretending to be opposed to any further investigation?”

The woman made a face. “I simply didn't want to expose myself the way I was forced to do today,” she explained. “It's been two years of pure hell, lived in grief, apprehension, and regret. Gastone wanted to shut down operations entirely after Maicol Fecchio's murder. I was opposed, and I had my way. Gold is cursed.”

Bullshit. That woman was a pretty skillful manipulator; her technique was to feign sincere regret for her mistakes. I'd fallen for it before but now her words just left me cold.

I had only one last, overriding question. “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to take care of Sergio?”

“So, are you interested in the proposal?”

I shook my head in disappointment. “I just wanted to understand whether for once a shred of truth had passed your lips or if it was just part of your usual playacting.”

“I'm not acting, I'm just trying to survive.”

Nick the Goldsmith started to get impatient. “Well then, what have you decided?”

Max stubbornly insisted on seeing his bluff. “We only care about the kid. It'll be the way events play out that'll decree your fate.”

It was the widow who showed her cards. “I don't understand why you're being so stubborn,” she said. “It's obvious that if something happens to us, something'll happen to you, too.”

We acted surprised. “What do you mean?”

“If they arrest us we'll do our best to stave off a life sentence without parole by tossing them anything that can give us bargaining power; of course we'll give them your names. It's news to nobody that law enforcement has been interested in putting Signor Rossini behind bars for years now.

“But if Fecchio wants to seek out justice himself and causes us any harm, we're going to consider you responsible.”

“That sounds very much like a threat,” I told my friends.

“Heavens,” the fat man added. “I would never have expected it, but we're dealing with two eminently respectable criminal minds here.”

Beniamino was in no mood for irony. “We've done you the considerable courtesy of apprising you of the situation, even though we had no obligation to do so, since you're not our clients. In the course of this meeting, you've insulted us and threatened us.

“In accordance with our rules, right now I should pull out my gun and make you swallow every word you just uttered. But we're good-hearted people and we're going to give you a second chance; because we brought you bad news today, you got scared, and all the bullshit you just spouted is the product of ill-advised improvisation. So we invite you to think carefully, because we're not going to give you a third chance.”

“Improvisation only makes sense in jazz,” I muttered for no particular reason. Maybe because I'd have rather spent that time with Cora, instead of sitting in Siro Ballan's living room.

Spezzafumo and the widow left and we sat in silence, thinking, smoking cigarettes and sipping little glasses of liquor.

Civilians often have no idea that the inner workings of the underworld are so twisted that criminals turn to violence because it may be the only way to find a simple solution. Especially for minds like that of Nick the Goldsmith. Gigliola Pescarotto herself was hardly a genius, though she was certainly more clever than he was. It couldn't have been complicated for her to put together that gang and dominate that group of men. The problem was that the losers would drag the winners down into ruin with them. It was all apparently so absurd, but there actually was a sense to the logic that had led to the clash between those two gangs of armed robbers, albeit a horrendously perverse one.

Greed and contempt for human life on the one hand, and on the other a deranged and exaggerated idea of justice and property. An explosive blend, and we'd just relit the fuse.

“Maybe it wouldn't have been a terrible idea to get rid of Spezzafumo,” Max muttered.

Old Rossini ran his hand over his forehead. “The worst idea imaginable, if you ask me, though it's no good hoping that Spezzafumo is just going to go away. He's one of those losers who survive because they're not afraid of going to prison and they think they're too clever to be killed. A soldier. It's no accident that he gets his marching orders from that witch, the widow Oddo.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“What we've been talking about doing for quite some time now: hunt down Fecchio's accomplices,” Beniamino replied. “We need to know all the pieces on the board if we want to figure out if there's a solution.”

“What if we don't find one?”

“We'll board the
Sylvie
and leave the party. And every month we'll send a little money to the boy.”

Right. We were the only ones with nothing to lose. And we were the only ones who would keep our word, whatever the cost, and look after Sergio. Someone needed to come out the other end of that horrible mess.

Tracking down Kevin's mysterious partners wasn't going to be easy. These were people with no connections to the underworld, without criminal records. To join the goldsmith in that undertaking meant that they'd been through the same things. An armed robbery, one of their family members murdered. They felt sure they were on the side of the angels and they'd be an endless source of problems, right up to the very end.

A
farmer noticed the car parked, one of its doors open, by the side of a canal and gave the alarm. The fire department scuba team took a couple of hours to find the corpse tangled in the vegetation on the bottom.

The news of Kevin Fecchio's death flooded the entire region. All the media outlets discussed it, especially the many local TV broadcasters who almost immediately subscribed to the theory of a suicide. The portrait that was offered to local public opinion was that of a healthy country boy with solid Venetian roots who had been devastated by a twist of fate and found himself struggling beneath the weight of a terrible tragedy.

The thing that drove him to it was identified as the total lack of justice for the murder of Maicol. No one had been arrested, tried, and sentenced. And Kevin, who had fought so hard for the rights of citizens to self-defense, hadn't been able to contain the grief and regret that had devoured him.

The local journalists didn't mince words when it came to the authorities or to his wife, who was guilty of having abandoned him, and depriving him of his children's love. They called her a whore, and there was no appealing that judgment.

The autopsy revealed nothing out of the ordinary that might point to other theories. The considerable quantity of alcohol found in his stomach had no scientific explanation but journalists and columnists had no doubt that it had helped him screw up the necessary courage.

We were the only ones who were convinced that Kevin Fecchio hadn't intentionally thrown himself into that miserable little river. Truth be told, Nicola Spezzafumo must have shared our views because he hurried to see us, swearing that he'd had nothing to do with it and announcing he'd be suddenly heading off on an overseas vacation.

A multitude of citizens attended the funeral. The church, which had stated, through the person of the bishop, that there could be no doubt that the dearly departed had been the victim of a tragic accident, had organized a service befitting a prominent member of the community.

A gigantic lie had become an official truth with all the blessings.

We'd blended in with the mourners and were studying the faces of the men in search of the slightest clue that might point us in the right direction. I worked my way into the knot of law-and-order proponents, now orphaned of one of their most outspoken leaders, and listened to muttered comments that proved worthless.

A cathartic burst of applause greeted the coffin when it emerged into the open air.

“I don't want to see anyone clapping their hands at my funeral,” Max muttered.

“They won't,” I reassured him. “You've made your wishes clear.”

Each of knew the last wishes of the others, since there was no way to know in advance the order of departure. They faithfully reflected what and who we were, and they all had in common the absence of a service of any kind, and cremation. To tiptoe off the stage as light as cinders. In part because there's nothing worse than a half-deserted graveside.

The crowd began to scatter and the bars started filling up. It was almost noon and most of the orders were for white wine or spritzes.

Max asked the waiter to mix equal parts Aperol and Campari for his spritz. The man nodded, his grimace that of someone who's heard it all in his lifetime and thinks that just one more can't make things any worse.

Beniamino ordered a fine Sauvignon. “I'm sick and tired of this ritual of the spritz,” he said. “Frankly, it doesn't seem good enough to go crazy over.”

Max was in agreement. “There's better, no doubt. And really, we ought to go back to the classic ‘ombra' of wine or else to more serious aperitifs, in terms of alcohol, too.”

Rossini pointed at the fat man's glass. “Then why do you drink it?”

“It's another lost battle and I've just decided to fit in,” he replied, his voice serious. “That way, I have something in common with all these nice people.”

The old bandit looked at me. “When he starts theorizing about even the stupidest things, I can't stand him.”

“He just can't bring himself to admit that he can't live without it,” I explained. “The same thing happens to me, anyway. It's cool, it's light, and I don't care if it's fashionable.”

“You'll never take me alive,” Beniamino reiterated.

We'd have gone on discussing this relevant, crucial topic for a good long time if we hadn't been distracted by a fight that broke out among a group of customers. Sante Zanella, Kevin's childhood friend, was ready to rearrange the facial features of a compatriot who had suggested that the deceased had been “a bit of drunk.”

Many others intervened to calm things down, and we took advantage of the opportunity to observe Sante from up close. We'd already ruled him out as an accomplice in the Oddo home invasion, but he was one of the two people closest to Fecchio, and it was hard to believe that he was entirely in the dark.

The other man apologized, trotting out the old theory that any Venetian is liable to have one drink too many in his own defense. And it was then that Sante supplied us with a very interesting piece of information: The “misfortune” had occurred on a Wednesday. Kevin, however, liked to drink a glass or two on Friday and Saturday night, since he wouldn't have to go in to work the next morning. He would never, ever allow his employees to see him working off a hangover. That was one of Maicol's rules and he would never have betrayed his brother's memory.

And to Sante, this was proof that his friend's death was a suicide, the suicide note that Kevin hadn't managed to write.

The others all fell silent and at that moment I would have loved to tell them that actually, the abundance of alcohol in Fecchio's stomach was proof that he'd been murdered by his accomplices. The very same people with whom he'd planned and carried out a home invasion that involved grand larceny and, worse, double homicide.