Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1) (26 page)

I crawled out of bed the next day around noon, padded to the window and stood there for a while, watching the sky falling down on Milan. Big fat flakes, drifting on down to the street below. I liked snow, liked the way it made me feel. Quiet, slow, at peace. I took a long, hot shower and sat down over coffee to wrap my head back around the story. It took me a few hours, but by late afternoon I was ready to deliver it. I bundled up against the cold, took the stairs to the street and climbed up on the tram.

Dead Money Man Ran Secret Swiss Laundry

Swiss Lose Track of Ali Baba

CNI Milan has learned that Italian entrepreneur Luigi Goldoni was a key player in an international money-laundering operation uncovered by Swiss police earlier this week. Detailed records obtained by this newspaper document a series of “wealth management services” provided by Goldoni to a long list of clients, many of them Italian. Among these services were the laundering of proceeds from illegal activities in Italy and abroad.

CNI has learned that among the persons named in the Goldoni papers are an unknown number of American citizens. These names and accompanying records listing assets laundered by Goldoni & Co. were the focus of highly sensitive negotiations carried out between Mr Goldoni and United States Government tax authorities (see CNI’s exclusive interview). Following Mr Goldoni’s untimely death the documents in his possession were obtained by Mr Arturo Bellomo (aka ‘Ali Baba’), the well known Lugano investor and collector of modern art, who took Mr Goldoni’s place at the table.

It has since emerged that these secret negotiations have culminated in an extraordinary exchange: in return for Mr Goldoni’s files and an agreement to testify under oath, Mr Bellomo has been given immunity from prosecution by the United States. Swiss authorities contacted for this story have stated that Mr Bellomo’s current whereabouts are unknown, but he is thought to be traveling under an identity provided and protected by the United States Government.

“Fantastic,” said Johnny. “I love it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Leave it with me.” He pulled open a desk drawer, slipped the pages in and pushed it shut.

I dragged a chair to the window, grabbed a dose of fresh air and sat down. “So. What’s the story with the investor?”

There was a pause before he spoke. He didn’t look up. “What investor?”

“The Arab. The guy you met with in Rome.”

“No news yet, Pete.” Johnny rubbed his eyes, shuffled through the papers on his desk, found a fresh cigar and lit up. 

I sat by the window and watched the snow while he smoked. After a while I said, “Hey, Johnny—”

“What?”

“Anybody home?”

He got up, lumbered to the window and dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“It’s a funny thing about that story,” he said. “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves?”

“What’s funny about it?”

“We know who Ali Baba is, but the rest of them? I mean, who are they? We don’t have any names. It’s like … they’re a club, a secret club, just like the Masons.”

“
Porca puttana.
Bellomo? O’Sullivan? Ungaretti? Those aren’t names?” I shoved his hand off my shoulder.

“Come on, Pete. You know what I mean. Help me out here.” He rolled a sheet of paper into the machine and hit the return.

“Sorry, old man.” I turned back from the door. “You want a yellow brick road, you can build it yourself.”

He was already at it, bent over his desk in a cloud of smoke, whacking at the old Olivetti and coughing.

I raised my voice to cut through the clatter, “You seen Stazz?”

He shook his head. “Took the day off.”

The next morning I  crunched through the snow to the newsstand, bought a copy of
CNI
and moved on to the phone shop. I shuffled in, dug out the micro recorder and set it on the counter.

“What you got for me, Pescatore?” A smile spread over the young man’s face as he took it in hand and began to examine it. “Another antique?”

“I can’t get it to work. I’m hoping all it needs is a battery.”

“We’ll see.” He pried open a compartment, extracted a battery, popped in a new one and pressed a button. A voice, inaudible. He turned up the volume. Same voice, louder. He stopped it and ran it back to the beginning.

“Here you go.”

I took it and pressed
PLAY.

A woman’s voice. A sentence or two. Not a lot. I wound the tape back, held it close to my ear and played it back again. Aida. Aida’s voice.
Ciao, amore. Ho fatto i bagagli. Non vedo l’ora di partire. Vieni presto.
Message to Gigi from his wife:
I’m all packed, my love. I can’t wait. Come soon.

I stuffed the recorder back in my pocket, paid for the battery and carried the papers out into the cold. The café on the corner had a brand new neon sign in the window—
Shanghai Lady
. I wandered inside, gave Amy my order and thumped into a chair by the window. A couple minutes later she set a
cappuccino
and a
brioche
on the table and hustled back around the counter. I sat and soaked up the coffee with the pastry and began to flip through
CNI
. Johnny’s story was on the back pages. He’d done a job on my draft, sliced and diced it and layered in the usual crap and slant:

Mr Goldoni’s death was officially a suicide, but no one kills himself without a reason, and what possible reason could Goldoni have had? CNI has learned that Luigi Goldoni had worked out an agreement with the American government that gave him immunity from prosecution. He had agreed to testify in court, to reveal all he knew about Arturo ‘Ali Baba’ Bellomo, about his associates—the notorious ‘Forty Thieves’ rumored to be members of a secret Masonic lodge—and about the Swiss banks whose lucrative business lies wrapped in secrecy, protected by law and Swiss omertà.

CNI has published a list of their customers, but who knows the names of the Forty Thieves? Is it plausible they had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Luigi Goldoni? If threatened with exposure, who among them would have failed to react? Goldoni’s silence was in their best interest. Given these circumstances, is murder less likely than suicide? Why has Goldoni been buried already?

The dead man’s accountant has been questioned repeatedly, as has his secretary, who was apparently the last person to see him alive. Both have since been released, however, and charges have yet to be filed. Why? A human life has been taken. A good man has come to a tragic end. Why has no one been charged?

CNI readers can rest assured: We won’t stop digging until we find the truth.

Right. Righteous.

I threw down the paper and dug out the micro recorder, rewound the tape and listened again to the message from Aida. Something about it made no sense. You don’t dictate a message and have some secretary type it up. Not if you’re the man’s wife. You just call him. He’s not home, so you speak and your voice is recorded on tape.

Duh
. She’d left the message to Gigi on his answering machine.

I got up, flicked Amy a salute, left her a few coins and walked out and over the road. The tram stood waiting in the loop, its motor rumbling. I climbed aboard and sat listening to the city talking, to stories rising up from the streets and seeping into my bones. Under a cold gray sky we rolled down
Corso Sempione
to the park
,
around past the office of
Cronaca Nera Italiana
and into the
Via Vincenzo Monti
. The Cadorna rail station had a giant steel needle and thread out front that Eva once told me was an Oldenburg. I could take it or leave it. The tram rattled on through the center of the city, on past
La Scala
and up the
Via Manzoni
heading for the central station.

I climbed off a few blocks away and looked up the road to that colossal, magnificent, futile relic of Mussolini and his dreams of glory. Two stone lions spewed rivers of water into concrete basins framing towering arches. High above them, giant winged horses stood poised to haul Italy into the future. As I walked up the road, taking my time, I decided again that I liked it—a spectacular, delusional piece of the future mired forever in the past.

When I got there I strolled on in past the lions and through a weathered bronze door and down a long marbled hall to the ticket office. I took a number and stood waiting and watching other people wait, bought a round trip ticket and caught the next train to Lugano.

On the way up I read the story again. I wondered what Johnny had in mind when he promised to keep on digging. He’d written nothing at all about water on the lungs, the double autopsy, the lab in Locarno or the doc from Varese.  

I called ahead and got Joe to meet me up at the station. He drove me down to the lake, turned south and then up the hill to Gigi’s place. “She’s in there,” he said.

Julia’s green Mini sat out front in the street.

“Wait here,” I said. “Give me five minutes, then call me.” Joe nodded and cut the engine. “And Joe,” I said. “Don’t hang up.”

I climbed out and walked down the long stone path from the gate through the garden to the front door. No name, just a brass plate with a button. I pushed it.

She opened up. A smile, puzzled. “What a pleasant surprise.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well then you’d better come in. You’ll be wanting to tell me something.” She backed away from the door, turned and walked down the hall to the living room. I trailed her and watched as she opened a cupboard and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of whisky. On the low glass table in front of the couch lay a copy of
CNI
. Nothing for her to worry about. Johnny hadn’t mentioned her name.

“Ice? Water?”

“No, thanks.”

“You were in such a hurry, Pete. Up in the mountains.” She poured. “We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

“No.” I took a glass from her hand, sipped and walked to the window. Through the pines I could make out the lake below, the city curving along the shore and snow on the mountains against a ragged patch of blue. “Jules.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Tell me a story.”

“I’m too tired for all that. I’m going home.”

“To England? I thought the Swiss had filed charges.”

A quiet, harsh laugh, a dark light in her eyes. “For what? Suicide is not a crime. Not in Switzerland.”

“But you were there when it happened. Right up close.”

She didn’t flinch. A face of stone. ”What does it matter? My life is over.” A black smile creased her lips. “He did it all by himself, Pete.”

“Why do you smile whenever you lie?”

“Do I? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You were there, Jules. I think maybe you helped him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Good question.” I reached into my pocket. Phone. Earrings. Microrecorder. I fingered the recorder, pulled it out and pushed
PLAY
.

In the silence Aida’s voice filled the room.

Pale, trembling, Julia said nothing.

“You want to hear it again?”

“No.” She reached for her glass, took a sip and set it back on the table. “I heard it once. That was enough. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“So tell me what happened. And skip the smile.”

The whippoorwill was back and calling my name. I reached for the phone, dug it out and took the call. It didn’t last long. “Thanks for calling. See you.” I tapped the screen and slipped the phone in a pocket.

“I had it all worked out,” she said. She pulled her legs up beneath her, drank and sat staring into the empty glass. “A new life in Kansas, or wherever Billy Bob was planning to send us. Mexico. Canada. I didn’t care. As long as we were together.”

“Go on.”

“Aren’t you going to take notes?”

“Why bother, Jules? You said yourself there’s been no crime.”

She took a long, slow breath, buried her face in her hands for moment, and began to speak. “I left the office early that night, drove to Gigi’s and let myself in. I set about cooking, lit the candles on the table, put the champagne on ice. I was so excited I couldn’t keep still. He called to say he was running late, but he told me not to worry, he would be along soon.”

“What time did he call?”

“I don’t know. Seven?” She poured herself another drink. “I had nothing to do. I was in the living room, and then for some god-awful reason I got up and went into the study. I saw the red light blinking on the answering machine. I didn’t think twice, I just pressed the button, like I always had, prepared to take his messages.”

“And you heard it.”

Julia nodded, her eyes blank, staring into the cold stone past. “Aida. His wife.” She spat a laugh into her glass. “His widow.”

She sank into silence. I left her there for a while, then broke it. “Did Sarge call you?”

It took her forever to surface. “I called him. I said Gigi had asked for the gun and could he bring it round back to the kitchen.”

“The gun.”

A slow nod.

“So. Sarge comes in through the garden, hands you the gun at the kitchen door—”

“He wanted to know where Gigi was. He didn’t want to leave it with me.” She got up from the sofa, set off towards the door, stopped short when her gaze fell on me. “But he did. Leave it.”

“What about Gigi? What time did he get there?”

“Late. It was very late. I didn’t think he was going to come. I thought perhaps he had already gone. Run away with her.”

“With Aida?”

She nodded. “She was so much older, it can’t have been love. I couldn’t fathom what he saw in her.”

“Or why he chose her again, at the end.” I kept my eyes on her face, watching, waiting for a crack in the stone.

“He wanted me to give him the briefcase.” She barked a laugh. “He was desperate. He knew I had it. He knew I had taken it.”

“Where was it?”

“At the station, in a locker. I could have given it to him, if I’d felt like it.”

“But you didn’t. Feel like it.”

She was shaking her head, eyes dull, darkness bleeding into them. “It was his decision. And then he lied again, of course. He said he’d take me with him, just liked we’d planned. Said all I had to do was give him the briefcase and everything would be all right.”

“Was he by himself, or was somebody with him?”

“Nobody with him. Just me.”

“And you said no.”

“I said it was too late.
E’ troppo tardi, amore mio
. Much. Too. Late.”

“Where was the gun?”

“In the kitchen, on the table.”

“And where were you?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Both of you?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

A thin smile before she turned away. I followed her to the door and down the hall to the kitchen. I didn’t see her pick it up. She whirled to face me with the long steel blade, her eyes alive and her voice lit with fury. “Stay where you are. Right there.”

I stood very still, eyes on her face. On the smile.

“Be a good boy, Pete. Listen carefully. Here comes the good bit.”

I raised my hands and backed away.

“Over there.” She waved the knife, pointing to the wall beside the kitchen door.

I shuffled towards the wall. “And then what, Jules? What happened?”

“I picked up the gun from the table. It was heavy. I held it out to him. I said
here, my love. Take it. My life is over
.”

“Did he? Did he take the gun, Jules?”

“Shut up. He was a fool, Pete. What kind of man would run away with his wife?” A soft laugh turned shrill and broke off.

The knife in her hand. “Arms to the side, hands flat on the wall.”

I backed up, felt the damp and the cold beneath my hands. Nowhere to go. The knife out of my reach, edging in closer.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Not an inch, or you’ll lose an eye.” The tip of the knife at my forehead, just above the eyes. A slow smile formed. “
Bang!
”

I jumped out of my skin. The knife clattered to the tiles.

“You’re dead,” she said, and laughed.

I sank to the floor, shaking.

She laughed again. It was an odd sound, a hollow yelping.

“You shot him. Jules—”

“It’s all right, Pete. It doesn’t matter.” The smile slithered into her face again. “Everyone thinks it was suicide.”