Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1) (23 page)

“Got it,” I said. “So. Just so we know what we’re talking about—” I drew him a picture with my take on the story, put him on the scene the night Gigi died.

Thursday night, the last night of his life, Gigi calls Sarge, asks him for a favor. Could he bring him his gun, the Swiss army pistol, and ammunition. Sarge wants to know why, Gigi says he’s frightened, needs to protect himself. Sarge agrees, retrieves the SIG Sauer from the cabinet and runs it over to Gigi’s house. He parks, walks around the back, takes the path through the garden to the kitchen door and knocks. Julia comes to the door, takes it, asks him to stay with her. Sarge refuses, takes off back down the garden path. Sees Tommy O and the boys arrive, dragging Gigi in from the street.

“Have I got that right, Sarge?”

“Close enough. I didn’t want to give the gun to Julia but I didn’t want to hang around either. So I left. I was on my way out when I heard a shot and ran back inside.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you run the other way?”

“It’s my gun, Pete. I’m responsible.”

“OK. So you ran back to the kitchen, found Julia and Gigi.”

“With a hole in his head and her sitting there, screaming. She couldn’t stop screaming.”

“And then what, Sarge?”

“Tommy picked up the gun.”

“Tommy—”

“Wrapped Gigi’s hand around it.”

“Which hand?”

“Right.”

“Great. And this is the story you’re telling the cops?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Hey, it’s your life. And I can quote you, right?” I hung up and walked down the hall to the hack room and wrote up the end of the story.

Tommy O and the boys drag Gigi to the kitchen. The boys set him up and pin him against the wall. Tommy O folds the gun into Gigi’s hand, slips the finger on the trigger. Ready. Aim. Fire. Sarge hears the shot, comes running back, finds Julia there, out of her mind and screaming.

Sleep played hard to get that night. Over and over I ran through the scenes. They ran in a loop behind my eyes, shape-shifting every time. I started with Gigi at the hotel sauna.

A bench, a bucket and a rag, steam and the smell of sulfur in the air. Gigi Goldoni’s strapped on his back to a bench slanting upwards, his head at the low end. Freddie fills the bucket from the hotel jacuzzi and carries it to Tommy O, who soaks the rag and slaps it over Gigi’s mouth and nose. Max picks up the bucket, pours water over the rag. Gigi breathes in, chokes, sucks in water, gags, swallows, sucks in, starts to jerk. They tear off the rag, haul him to his feet and get him breathing again.

One more time. Again and again until he breaks. It doesn’t take long.

So. “The briefcase, Gigi. We need the documents. All of them.”

He nods. He’s hidden it. He’ll take them there, hand it over.

They clean him up, get him dressed, march him outside to the fern gray Jag. Tommy O takes the wheel, Max and Freddie frame Gigi in the back. They drive a while, it’s not so far, to the tall iron gates of the Villa Sofia. Head down, exhausted, Gigi leads the way to the office, up the stairs, gets the ladder from the storeroom, climbs it, up through the hatch to the roof terrace. Pulls away the tiles. There. The safe. Twist the knob. Right, left, right again. Simple. Door opens up, he reaches in.

Nothing. It’s empty.

“And this is what, Pescatore?” Johnny dropped the pages on his desk and kicked the door shut. “You writing movies again or what?”

He flicked his Zippo, lit up and thumped into the chair behind the ancient Olivetti.

I looked up at him from the sofa. “It’s how I work, Johnny. I can’t make sense of it until I see it.”

“So what do you see?”

“Goldoni shot himself in the head.”

“Why?”

“They took him to the sauna at the hotel—it’s a nice little five-star torture chamber—and poured water down his throat until he just about croaked. It’s called waterboarding.”

“Waterboarding?”

“Enhanced interrogation, whatever. All the rage these days,” I said, and lowered my feet to the floor.

“How would you know?”

“Trust me, Johnny, you feel like you’re dying. And you’ll do anything to never, ever go there again.”

“Such as—“

“The briefcase, Johnny. The docs. The evidence. If he didn’t hand it over, it was back to the sauna.”

“You got any proof? Or is it just a movie?”

“They found water in his lungs, Johnny.” I pushed myself to my feet. “The pathologist found water in Gigi’s lungs.”

“Since when?”

“I spoke to the woman from the lab in Locarno. She did a digital autopsy—the high-tech thing—the day before Cassano drove up from Varese and cut him up the old-fashioned way.”

A frown folded his brow. “Two autopsies?”

I held up two fingers and gave him the rundown while he smoked in silence. Swiss digital scans and slides, low-tech Italian hatchet job. Both had found water in Gigi’s lungs. But Cassano left it out of the official report.

Johnny heaved a sigh. “So?”

I picked up a stack of papers from his desk, flipped through them until I got to the names, the name account held by Dr. Cassano. I scratched out the five thousand and wrote in the news I’d got from Sarge: Fifty thousand Swiss francs, transferred to the account just a couple days after Gigi died.  

“Look at this, Johnny.” I jabbed a finger at the name. “Cassano is family. Bellomo paid him off. Paid him to cut the connection.”

“Slow down. What connection?”

“To the hotel. The water in the lungs – there’s sulfur, chlorine, it’s a six-lane highway leads straight to Bellomo. He paid Cassano to leave it out.”

“
Porca miseria
.” Johnny wasn’t happy. “Forget Cassano. You got a story already—Gigi’s Magic Money Machine.”

“Laundry.”

“Whatever. It’s a terrific story, all we ever need.”

“Forget Cassano?” I sagged and fell back on the sofa. “What do you want, Johnny?”

His eyes narrowed. “Who murdered Gigi Goldoni?”

“Nobody.” I sat up, leaned forward, punching the air with my hands. “Gigi Goldoni wasn’t murdered. They boarded him, but it didn’t kill him. It was pain that scared him, Johnny. Pure terror. He killed himself rather than go through it again.”

“In my book that’s murder. Even if he pulled the trigger himself, it’s still murder.”

It was no use. Whatever I said, Johnny heard something different. I got up and marched to the door.

“Come on, Pete. The suicide thing, nobody believes it.”

“What’s there to believe? It’s true—”

His voice rose up over mine. “What about the bricks? The yellow brick road.” His eyes lit up and he began to sing. “Follow the yellow brick road—”

Anger erupted from my gut and I stomped back to his desk. “The Masons again? What about the Vatican, Johnny? You’re forgetting the zombies.”

“Relax, Pescatore.” He laughed, retrieved his cigar, puffed and waved it in my face. “They love you in Rome.”

The phone on his desk began to ring. Johnny slapped a fat hand on the receiver, picked up and coughed a hello.

For a couple of minutes he scribbled notes and then hung up and said, “We just got sued. Again.”

“Hoo-ray.” The blood was still pounding in my head. “Who is it this time?”

“Everybody on the list. The one you and the Bolshie put up on the site.”

“Too bad. They can’t sue us for telling the truth.”

“The truth?” He sat down again, rolled a sheet of paper into the Olivetti and punched out a line. “The closer you get, the more they scream.”

“But they can’t get blood from a stone, Johnny.”

He puffed for a moment, sighed and said, “Listen, Pete. Do me a favor.” He looked up from the page. “Go back and write something I can sell.”

“Such as?”

“Up to you.” He followed a fresh cloud of smoke with a cough and said, “It’s the new investor. He likes your style. The Vatican connection, that kind of thing. He thinks you’re the greatest thing since bread.”

My jaw dropped open and snapped shut again. “Sliced, Johnny. Sliced bread.”

Johnny frowned. I gave up. “What do they want?”

“Sit down.”

I trudged back to the sofa.

He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the desk and smoked while he told me the story.

He’d flown to Rome and gone out to lunch with Beppe Lombardi, the editor in chief, and two of the reporters based in Rome. Like Johnny, they all owned a piece of the business. Business, however, was not going well.
CNI
Rome
had been taken to court for suggesting in print that some big-name blowhard was in fact a made man. And even if the charges were totally bogus, the hassle with the lawyers was eating up time.

I yanked up my sleeve and took a look at my watch. “And time is money.”

“Easy, Pescatore. I’m getting there.”

“Good, cause I’m on deadline. Got a movie needs a rewrite.”

“So shut up and listen. Couple days ago Lombardi gets a call, this guy wants a piece of the business.”

“You told me already.”

“Yeah but listen—I met him.”

“The Arab?”

“He came to the office in Rome. He’s real. And the money is, too, in the bank by tomorrow.”

“I believe it.” Right. Where had I heard that line before? “So, what, it’s a done deal?”

“Just about.” He pushed his glasses up on his forehead, grabbed a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. When he was done he said, “Lombardi wants to talk to you.”

“Me?”

“You. He says you already have everything. All you have to do is put it together. Connect the dots and paint the picture.”

“What picture?”

“How should I know? Do me a favor, Pete. Talk to him. That’s all I ask.”

“When?”

He dug into a pocket and pulled out a Hamilton, flipped open the lid and consulted the dial. “This afternoon.”

“Can I see that?”

Johnny handed me the watch. An old railroad watch, a beautiful hand made time machine. “OK, Johnny, I’ll talk to him.”
I handed him his watch, snatched the script from his desk and walked out.

Halfway down the corridor a familiar tune popped into my head. I began to whistle and the words came up and I sang out softly,
Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.

In the hack room I collapsed onto a chair, leaned back and stared at the wall. Where had I heard it? The old lady. Aida. And someone else, whistling—
Tommy O.

I went back to looking hard at the wall and kept on staring until I couldn’t see straight. I got up and paced and sat down again. There was no way around it. I had to lay it out cold. The truth. What happened and why.

I had no idea.

Two hours later I had a page that looked like a sky full of stars. I’d mapped one constellation after another, but the only one that made any sense was the one I already had. No Masons. No murder. Just a man without hope at the end of his road.  

“
Porca puttana, Pescatore
.” Johnny bashed in the door to the hack room. “Why the hell don’t you answer your phone?”

“Search me.”

“Come on, I’ve got Rome on the line.” He lumbered off.  I scrambled to my feet and hustled after him. He made a hard left into Anastasia’s office, bellied up to the desk and hit the speaker phone. “OK, we’re here.”

“Pescatore?”

“Speaking,” I said.

“Beppe Lombardi. I run the
CNI
office in Rome.”

“Good to meet you.”

“I hear the Swiss police have picked up two people in the Goldoni case.” A pause. “Ungaretti—“

“Sergio?”

“Sergio. Yes.” Static. Papers shuffling. “And the other one is English, a woman.”

“Witherspoon, Julia.”

“Precisely. I understand you know them.”

“I do, but …” I took a deep breath. “What are the charges?”

“Nothing, yet. They’re looking at assisted suicide, but the laws on suicide are changing, so—” He didn’t spell it out. The air grew heavy with dire implications.

Johnny leaned into the speaker. “So how do you want to play it? Pescatore says he knows what happened.”

“Johnny—” I flipped him the bird.

“Ungaretti and the woman—” said Rome, “are clearly scapegoats. The Swiss are putting the story to sleep.”

“Got it,” said Johnny. “We pour gas on the fire.”

“Pescatore?” Lombardi’s voice crackled through the speaker.

“I’m here.”

“You did great with the names and the secret accounts, the money laundering, how it all works. Now we need something big. Blow it up.”

“Blow it up?”

“Make some noise. You know what I mean.”

“Vatican zombies?”

“Shut up, Pete.” Johnny sliced a hand across his throat.

“Can you say that again?” Lombardi’s voice echoed through the room. “I missed it.”

“Forget it,” I said. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“You need to make the connection.”

“What connection?”

“Even if Goldoni shot himself, the question is, who made him do it?”

“Nobody,” I said. “He’d been tortured once and he didn’t want to go through it again.
Punto
.”

Silence for a moment, and Lombardi again, “Tell me more.”

I pushed a loud sigh toward the speakerphone. “What do you know about Arturo Bellomo?”

“Not much. Rich. Art collector, right? Big man in Switzerland. What about him?” A pause. “Don’t tell me. He’s the one who tortured Goldoni?”

“I think so. Bellomo, Tommy O’Sullivan and a couple of goons.”

“
Perfetto.
Uh, are they Masons, by any chance?”

Anger flared up and the blood was pounding in my head and the words were burning and falling off my tongue. “Well they must be, right? And what would you say if I told you they were Jewish? And commies, both of them.”

“Is that so?” Rome was interested.

“
Basta!
” Johnny was on his feet.

“Oh,” I said, raising my voice. “And there’s something else you should know, help you sell a few papers.”

“I’m listening.”

“Witherspoon’s a dyke, Ungaretti’s a tranny, O’Sullivan’s a fag and they’re all coked up to the gills all the time. So how about this—
Drug Crazed Perverts Snuff Mob Money Man
. That do it for you?” 

Silence from Rome. Lombardi was considering it. After a while he said, “Didn’t you just say they were Jewish?”

Ma, vaffa …
I threw up my hands and whirled away from the desk.