The Lion of Justice (3 page)

I could vaguely see in the fading light that the waiter was smiling. I reached for my wallet, but he shook his head.

“I don’t need money.” Then he added, “Nor does Luigi. We just wanted to see the
signora
smile.”

I forced a smile, although I didn’t see much of a reason to rejoice, knowing that David had been dining at Il Tre Canton with a mean Russian.

“Was that Russian also mean to my man? How were they behaving?”

“Well, it was a busy night, and Luigi didn’t have much time to focus on them, but he knows they didn’t laugh. They just spoke in that hissing language. I remember—I mean, Luigi remembers that your man said
nyet
,
nyet
many times. Everyone here understands that word.”

I thanked the waiter again, and he said I’d always be welcome. Then he went back inside. The dog from the restaurant was now barking at me from inside a dark-blue Ford, and the drizzle was slowly soaking my hair and my canvas sneakers. My car windows were fogged up. What had made the waiter change his mind? Did he come up with this story about Luigi, or did he get the information from someone else? The mean Russian sounded like a villain from a spy movie. Was that the person David had been fleeing from, or did he flee with him?

I was back in a world where no one could be trusted. I’d assumed David was one of the few people who wasn’t out to scam me, but I was wrong. Here I was, in a strange land, surrounded by people who spoke a language I hadn’t mastered. And what had Mike Virtue told us about the various, far-reaching tentacles of the Italian mafia? Some of them worked closely with the Russian mafia, and it seemed their governments were in on it, seeing how Berlusconi and Putin had been so brotherly toward each other. David claimed he’d come to Tuscany under the guise of a tourist with aspirations of becoming a novelist. It was growing clear that all I had seen was yet another role.

Even as a kid I had been comfortable with darkness, but it was unsettling to drive along an unfamiliar road in the pouring rain. I slowed at the bends because I didn’t trust the tread on my old Punto’s tires. There was no one else on the road, making it a perfect time for an accident without any witnesses. I was relieved when I made it back to Montemassi.

The rain was coming down so hard that I parked as close to David’s apartment as I could. I was surprised to see a light on in the kitchen. Was David back? I could feel the light sparkling within me, too. I opened the door carefully.

“Hello?”

There was no answer. I went into the kitchen, but it was empty. Had David come and gone? There were no dishes in the sink. I peered into the fridge, but it was exactly as I’d left it. I was certain I hadn’t turned the lights on when I left. I called out to David again while checking the bathroom, but nobody was there.

Stepping into the living room, I could smell something was wrong before I even turned the lights on. It smelled like sweat, urine, and gunpowder. I flipped the lights on. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first. But when I stepped forward, I saw a man’s body draped over the sofa by the window, his back to me, his face buried in pillows. His curly black hair had a bloody, gaping hole, and blood had soaked into the sofa and trickled onto the floor. The gunpowder smell indicated that the shooting was recent. The body was still, and I didn’t need to get any closer to know the man was dead.

3

The dead man was not David. Whoever was on the sofa was short and slender like a teenager. His hair was long and naturally curly. He wore white cotton pants and a brown leather jacket with no shoes.

I backed out of the living room and into the kitchen. I found three plastic bags under the sink and slipped two of them on my feet. I wrapped the third bag over my right hand and crept quietly into the bedroom and turned on the lights. I checked under the twin bed and found a thin rolled-up rug. I took gloves from my suitcase, put them on, and pinned my hair under a scarf. The apartment would be covered in fingerprints, mine and David’s. As far as I knew, my prints were not recorded anywhere else than at the security academy, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure. I packed my things quickly. As soon as I was far enough from Montemassi, I’d call in an anonymous tip. Luckily Italy hadn’t phased out phone booths yet.

My curiosity forced me to return to the body. It was still warm and limber. I turned the man’s head carefully, knowing I could be making the situation worse for myself by tampering with evidence, but I had to see if I knew him. The exit wound had left his face almost entirely intact. His brown eyes were wide open, and his now gray lips and small dark mustache looked like a sketch—lifeless and inhuman. He looked like he could’ve been twenty-five or forty. A small golden cross hung from his neck. It had failed to protect the man’s life, but perhaps it would protect his soul.

I let his head fall back onto the pillows and was glad for the plastic bags on my feet, because there was urine all over the floor. I felt for his wallet but couldn’t find it in his pockets. He didn’t wear a watch or any rings. His bare feet were covered in curly black hair.

I scanned the room for his shoes and a potential murder weapon. Why were his shoes gone? What sort of shoes could’ve revealed his identity? Were they custom-made? The way he was lying on the sofa didn’t reveal whether one of his legs was shorter than the other, but if that was the case, it could’ve indicated that he had shoes with special thicker soles.

The room showed no signs of a struggle. What did that mean? Had the room been cleaned right after the man was shot, or had he given in without protest? The way he lay on the sofa was also curious, as if he’d been sleeping and someone had surprised him. The man could have shot himself if his arm had been flexible enough. Then again, hardly anyone who committed suicide would shoot himself in the back of the head, and he couldn’t hide the weapon afterward.

There was a commotion outside the kitchen. I tiptoed into the kitchen and looked out the window. A familiar-looking old man was sweeping the street, although it was an odd time for it. A black-and-white cat was following the man closely. Suddenly it turned toward me, narrowed its eyes, and hopped onto the windowsill. I moved away from the window so I wouldn’t be seen. Maybe the man was waiting nearby to see how I reacted. I hadn’t figured out whether the body had been left there for me to discover or whether someone was trying to frame David. Or maybe David had done it. Daniel Lanotte, the renter, could have disappeared, and only I knew who the real renter was. Maybe David assumed I would never tell on him. Or he could be lying somewhere just as dead as the man on his sofa.

I needed to know what David was hiding in the hutch, but there was no more time for messing around with small knives, so I took a small hatchet and a crowbar from the cleaning closet. I felt bad for breaking such a beautiful piece of furniture, but I had to do it. I hacked away at the hutch and pulled the pieces apart with the crowbar.

The top drawer held a big envelope sealed with red varnish. The paper was thick and white. I removed the top drawer and looked into the drawer underneath it. I assumed I would find a gun, but instead there was a brass kaleidoscope. Why the hell would David have hidden one of these? I was jumping to conclusions—it could have belonged to the owner of the house, too, but if not, it may have been used to hide all sorts of things, from microfilms to drugs.

The village church bells rang at ten thirty. If I left now, I could still find a place to stay in a nearby village. I took a moment to think about what to do with the objects and decided to take them along. Whoever had killed the man had not thought the hutch contained anything important, so I was a step ahead of them. I hid the kaleidoscope and the envelope among my dirty clothes and tried calling David again. A phone rang in the living room.

I hadn’t looked for David’s phone in the apartment, assuming I couldn’t reach him. I walked back into the living room, and once the ringtone went silent, I called David again. The sound was coming from the sofa. I approached the body carefully, realizing I had only attempted to look for his wallet in his pants, but I hadn’t checked his jacket. The phone would be there or under him.

I wasn’t sure of what to do now—my head was a mess. I had to get out of the house right away. I cleared the call history from my phone and realized anyone looking at the dead man’s phone would see my number. I couldn’t take the risk of being found out. My heartbeat was probably heard over at the fortress, and my hands were shaking hard as I went through the dead man’s pockets. The phone was in his breast pocket, right against his heart. I turned the sound off, then slipped it into my bag. I had to get rid of it as soon as I found out which numbers had been calling.

I bowed at the corpse apologetically, then grabbed a bright-yellow tulip from a vase and placed it on the body, near the head. I had no idea whether the body had been occupied by a friend or foe. I zipped my luggage and carried it outside.

The apartment keys would connect me to this Montemassi apartment and the dead body, so once outside, I locked the door, slid the keys into an envelope, and dropped it through the mail slot. I walked to my Punto and started the engine, then headed straight out of the village.

I drove to Roccastrada, then headed east, looking for the highway leading to Siena and Florence. I remembered David telling me about a restaurant in Civitella Marittima that was inside a bed-and-breakfast. Hopefully, someone was still awake there, but if it came to it, I could always sleep inside the car.

The valley smelled of thyme, and although the stars were aligned just as they were in Finland, the world felt askew. I tried not to think about the dead man. It wasn’t the first time I had had to shut out unpleasant thoughts. It was a skill I had to master.

The streets of Civitella Marittima were steep and winding. I had no idea what the bed-and-breakfast was called, and I didn’t spot any signs for it. I went to the gas station below the village, but it was closed. I parked my car on the hillside and walked until I found a brightly lit bar that was alive and noisy. There were about ten Middle Eastern men inside, hunched over their coffee, and I could feel them all staring. I asked the bartender if he spoke any English.

“Just a little,” he said, looking awkward.

“Bed-and-breakfast?” I pressed my hands together and placed them against my cheek, then cocked my head. The man got it before I had to add a fake snore.

“
Dormire
! Alessandro, Locanda nel Cassero.” He grabbed me by the arm and walked me out of the café, gesturing uphill. I had to walk straight and then right. I decided to scout the place and ensure they had a room and a parking spot for the car. I found a building that looked like a restaurant, but the door was locked. The sign indicated that the kitchen closed over an hour earlier.

I knew that restaurant staff didn’t just take off after closing. I knocked on the window nearest the door. No reply. I knocked on the next window. Again, nothing. Houses nearby were connected with each other, so if I wanted to get to the other side of the building, I’d have to walk all the way around the block. The sign on the door listed some phone numbers for people looking for a room after hours, so I grabbed my cell phone.

Then the restaurant door opened, and a fluffy black cat sneaked out. I rushed to the door and shoved my foot between the door and the frame. The young lady who’d let the cat out was startled. I asked her in English whether they had any vacancies, and I was in luck. She lifted up two fingers with a nod. I didn’t ask what the price was and said I’d take one. A staircase lined with wrought iron handrails took me to the door along the outer wall.

When I managed to drag my luggage to the room, I fell on the twin bed from sheer exhaustion and lay there motionless until I fell asleep. I woke up with a start when the church bells rang at two in the morning. My clothes felt stuffy, and the flavor of truffles in my mouth was too pungent. I opened my luggage to find my toothbrush, and the kaleidoscope fell onto the floor. I raised it to my eye and looked through it. It was just a regular kaleidoscope, which meant that I had to take it apart before I’d cross any borders; I didn’t want to attract drug-sniffing dogs or customs officials.

As soon as I had brushed my teeth and washed my face, I was wide awake. I looked out the window to see the same fluffy cat; he was lying in the plaza in front of the restaurant, as if he owned the entire village. There was nobody else around. The other window opened to the valley and the mountains, and I could see little lights glimmer in the villages below. To cap it off, my room had a painting of Guidoriccio riding a horse, urging me to conquer the village. I just wanted to leave it behind.

I took David’s phone out of my bag. There were no new calls or messages, and when I checked the most recent calls, all I saw was my number. David deleted information regularly. The incoming call list was almost empty but revealed an Italian number in addition to mine, so I wrote it down. I’d call it from a phone booth. None of the numbers in the list had been answered. I couldn’t help but curse at how smart and careful David had been.

The phone was an unfamiliar Samsung, and on top of that, David had chosen to use it in Italian, so it took me a while to locate the text message folder. Again, the only content was from me. I shut my eyes in embarrassment, seeing my lovey-dovey messages. David had saved them, although they clearly didn’t mean anything to him, considering he took off without a word. Maybe he wanted to frame me for the murder. I didn’t want to believe that. David must have been going through something he didn’t want to let me in on. The voice in my head was doing its best to convince me that David had had no other choice. Maybe someone had wanted to fool the police by switching two bodies, and David was dead in the apartment of the barefoot man.

I located the address book: only four numbers. The first was for Lusis. I tapped on it and saw my own number. It made sense;
l
ū
šis
was Lithuanian for lynx, and we used to call each other by lynx-related names. When David had contacted me from Spain to let me know he had survived the boat explosion, he’d asked me to e-mail him at the address [email protected]. The address was no longer in use.

The other three numbers were also named after animals: Hund, Kassi, and Cavallo. Dog in Swedish, cats in Estonian, horse in Italian. I tried to figure out the logic. Maybe they referred to the caller’s nationality? Then again, mine didn’t. Based on the country codes of the numbers, the dog and the horse were Italian and the cat was Finnish. I wrote down these numbers on two separate pieces of paper and put them in my phone before I tried to sleep again. I tossed and turned until I heard the bells ring at four. After that, it was sweet, dreamless darkness.

I woke up around eight to sounds from the plaza. A man was yelling in a language I didn’t recognize, and another man responded in Italian. Car doors slammed. The scent of fresh espresso and bread wafted up to my window. Just the cure for what was ailing me. I got dressed; locked David’s phone, papers, and kaleidoscope in my bag; and walked down for breakfast, which was served on the terrace outside. There was only an elderly German couple and that same fluffy black cat from the night before. He was friendly, jumping on my table as soon as I sat down. He purred, and it reminded me of my childhood friend, the lynx named Frida. This cat’s purr sounded just as low and powerful as hers. The waiter came over to take my order and didn’t shoo the cat away, seeing that I enjoyed his company.

After breakfast I took a walk, wondering whether I should call the police from a phone booth in this small village where people usually remember strangers. It might be a better idea to drive all the way to Siena. I saw a sign for Locanda. I thought I had been careless and not spotted it on the way in, but then I remembered a truck had been parked there as I was driving up.

I sat on a bench and looked to the east at the rolling hills, down the valley, and far off toward Monte Amiata, southeast of the village. I didn’t understand how locals were able to pass each other on the narrow roads leading up to their houses or how their hand brakes could hold while parked on such steep inclines. I could hear the soft rumble of traffic on the road leading from Grossetto to Siena. It was warm enough for a T-shirt, but dark clouds were approaching from Amiata. Swallows were making swift swoops in front of me and seemed to enjoy flying just for flying’s sake. A large rose bush blossomed in a nearby yard, and the purple sea of plum blossoms shimmered a few hundred yards away. Despite all the beauty, this place may as well have been a desert or a barren moonscape, as it was whipped constantly by hard winds. I had already once thought David had died, and I’d taken one day at a time, turning those days away from me like stones and clumsily climbing to bed in the evenings, thankful like an alcoholic for each sober day. But now he had left me without a word.

I knew my rationalizations by heart. Someone had forced David to go. Someone had told him I’d be killed if he didn’t do as he was told. In truth, he knew my profession was dangerous, and I wasn’t scared easily. I was used to taking care of myself.