The Puppeteer (13 page)

“And what the hell is he doing here?” Spadano was angry, very angry. “He could have been blown apart. Where’s Attilio?” Spadano walked towards the peasant who waited in immobile silence, his hand to his forehead.

The two men spoke but they were too far away for Trotti to hear anything they said.

The man pointed towards the copse. It was only then that Trotti, following the line of the outstretched hand, saw the car.

An Opel.

It had been driven across the grass and hidden beneath the trees.

Branches had been placed over the dull metalwork in an attempt to camouflage it.

Spadano turned away from the man and came running back. His face was taut and angry. “Attilio’s going to pay for this cock-up.” He took the cigar from his mouth to give a few brisk orders. “Anti-terrorist training, for God’s sake, and they can’t even do up their laces without having me there to hold their hands. Shit, it might be booby-trapped.”

Later, when the Carabinieri had been placed along the ditch at the edge of the field—Trotti found himself next to the peasant who muttered under his breath, and who repeatedly crossed himself—two men approached the Opel.

The man smelled of garlic. And goat.

It was his car, Trotti’s car. It looked normal, humdrum, reassuring.

One of the men carried a geiger counter.

Overhead a helicopter appeared.

Somewhere a grasshopper was chirping, but it forgot its song as the helicopter approached.

A man had crawled beneath the Opel. He stayed there, with only his legs visible. When he reemerged, he was grinning, his teeth white against the black grease. He called to the other man. One pointed at the trunk. The man with the counter spoke into his walkie-talkie.

He then came running back towards the ditch.

The officer approached the trunk of the car. He was no longer grinning. His hand touched the chrome lock.

Trotti heard the click distinctly.

S
IGNORA
B
ACCOLI INSISTED
upon accompanying Trotti down the gravel path to Villa Ondina. It was dark, stars had come out and on the far side of the lake, the fairy lights zigzagged up the side of the mountain.

“We see you so rarely, Signor Piero.” The woman smelled of the hot kitchen that she had just come from; under her arm, she held a casserole. “If I’d known you were intending to come, I would have prepared something special.”

“It’s not necessary, signora. I am with a friend—and we have just eaten at Guerino’s.”

“At Guerino’s.” She laughed mockingly. She wore an apron over her black dress. Thick woolen stockings came halfway up her legs and her open wooden shoes scraped on the gravel. “There’s always plenty of pasta for two hungry men, Signor Piero.” She lowered her voice as she shifted the weight of the casserole on her hip. “I heard about the young man.”

“Let me carry the saucepan for you, signora.”

“There has been talk in the village. I don’t like to gossip, as you know—and anyway we live outside the village, Ruggiero and I, and we prefer things that way. The grocer is a thief—and if we were a bit younger and if we had a car, we’d go into Salò or up to Riva to do the shopping. I’ve lived here all my life, Signor Piero, but the shopkeepers of Gardesana don’t believe in friendship, or loyalty—or anything. All my life—my father used
to grow lemons—and his father brought the soil over from the other side, ferried the earth across from the Veneto side in order to make the terraces—but that doesn’t concern the shopkeepers. All they believe in is money. They treat us in just the same way that they treat the visitors from Milan or the tourists. The tourists—the Germans—they’ve got money. But we haven’t. A war pension, Signor Piero—what’s a war pension for an old couple like us to live on?” She stopped walking. “Do you know how much Fratebene charges for his tomatoes—not local tomatoes, mind you, but tasteless imported ones?” She added contemptuously. “Common market.”

“What young man, Signora Baccoli?”

“Three thousand lire, Signor Piero. Common market tomatoes.”

“What young man, signora?”

She turned her head, the pale features just visible in the dark. “They say you were with him when he was shot.” She moved forward, the gravel scraping against the shoes. “There’s never been anything like that before. Not here.”

Trotti said nothing.

“Not even when the Duce was here. There was fighting—he went away to Milan—but there was never …” She lowered her voice. “There was never murder. Not in Gardesana.”

“You were here at the time of Mussolini?”

She gave a dry laugh—a sound like that of her shoes on the gravel. “I’m no longer a girl. I lived here throughout the war while Ruggiero was in Russia. That’s where he lost his fingers.” She raised her shoulders. “Frostbite.”

They had reached the front door of the Villa Ondina. From above the porch, the electric Madonna threw feeble rays against the surface of the wall, the climbing bougainvillea and clematis.

“And you saw Mussolini?”

“As near to me as you are now.” She nodded at the recollection. “He was a very big man—and very strong. But he was good. He cared about the village. Of course we didn’t see him very often—he was in the Villa and scarcely left it—but he cared about us. We knew that he was ill and he should never have left
his wife. A terrible thing, to leave her for that other woman, who was no better than a …” She looked up at the Madonna and Signora Baccoli repeated, “The Duce was a good man.”

“He lost the war.”

“He gave his life.” She shifted the weight of the casserole and Trotti opened the front door of the Villa Ondina. The woman entered the hall and made her way towards the kitchen. “Twenty minutes,” she called over her shoulder, “and the pasta will be ready.”

Pisanelli had already settled in.

He gave Trotti a grin. He sat in the empty dining room, his feet on a chair. He was still wearing his suede jacket and he had a glass in his hand.

“Make yourself feel at home, Pisanelli.”

The television screen was alive with the fuzzy image of an old Alberto Sordi film. The picture was grey and unsteady, coming from one of the private stations on the other side of the lake.

Beneath the grin, the face was taut and the eyes unhappy. He put his head back to acknowledge Trotti’s remark and drank some more wine.

Trotti went to the phone. In New York, she should now be back from lunch. He picked up the receiver and dialed—he knew the long number from memory but had to dial three times before getting a line.

A voice in English.

“Signora Trotti, per favore.” Trotti added in English, “Please.”

The distant secretary said something but Trotti did not understand.

Again he asked for Agnese. There was a moment of awkward hesitation and then somebody spoke in Italian—a woman’s voice with a strong American accent. “Signora Trotti is not yet back in the office.”

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is her husband.”

“I know.”

“Please.” He ran his hand across his forehead. “When she
gets in, would you kindly ask her to ring me back?” He gave the phone number. “Tell her that it’s important and I’m waiting for her call.”

The voice repeated the number and then hung up.

Trotti went upstairs and showered. The water was not hot yet and it ran slightly brown with rust. He let the water run over his body—the bruises had almost disappeared on his chest, but on his thigh a small patch of blue was turning yellow. Trotti rubbed himself dry on a towel and went into the bedroom. Enclosed space and floor polish. He opened the blinds and a smell of clover, grass and the cold water of the lake rose to his nostrils. He breathed deeply, taking in the air. Prompted perhaps by the smell, he remembered the weekend—it must have been in ’55 or earlier—when Agnese and he had come to the lake without telling anybody. They had walked around the villa on tiptoe. And holding hands. Trotti smiled to himself at the thought.

“Nearly thirty years ago,” he muttered.

A milky whiteness lit up the sky beyond the silhouette of Monte Baldo’s shoulder. Soon the moon would be rising over the lake and casting its silver reflection onto the gentle ripples across the surface.

A knock on the door. “Signor Piero, the food is ready.”

Trotti turned to look at the woman.

She stood there, hesitant, a hand lifted to her face, as if she had toothache. “It’s about that man.”

“Pisanelli?” Trotti shrugged apologetically. “I”m afraid that’s the way he is.”

The woman shook her head.

She had never approved of Trotti. She had always identified with the interests of Agnese’s family and had considered him as an intruder. For Signora Baccoli, the young mistress—so beautiful, so well educated—could have made a better match—a husband more like her, someone belonging to the same background, someone better than the dull policeman from the hills beyond the Po.

But Baccoli and her husband were pragmatists and the peasant woman realized where her interests lay. In the evening of her life,
she did not want to be thrown out of the little house that stood on the edge of the grounds of the Villa Ondina, overlooking the terraces of vines and tomatoes that ran down to the lakeside. Agnese’s parents were dead and Signora Baccoli—a tough, peasant woman who was always referred to as “la contadina”—knew that her two daughters were too busy to spare her much time or thought. She had always been severe with them when they were little, scolding them and threatening them with the harsh punishments of a retributive and cruel Christianity.

Signora Baccoli did not like Trotti—she never had. But she needed him.

An irony, then, that while the old woman—she never wore anything other than black—still admired Agnese and put her interests first, it was Trotti who had always refused Agnese’s pet project to sell the Villa and in so doing force the old couple to leave their house.

Trotti followed the woman out of the room.

“The man,” she said, “the man they murdered.”

“Well?”

She spoke in a whisper. “I’m not a person to gossip, Signor Piero. But you are a policeman and it is only right that you should know.”

Trotti felt a sudden sense of excitement. “Know what, signora?”

“It’s Pia—you know, my sister who lives in an apartment above the bakery. Perhaps she should have told the Carabinieri, but the man is from the south and his breath smells and you can’t trust them because they’re not like us.”

“Pia?” Trotti said. “What’s she done?”

“You know she used to work in the town hall?”

Trotti nodded.

“And you know she has insomnia, ever since she worked with Sindaco Fermi—the last mayor but one—who used to make her drink so much coffee?”

“Yes, yes,” Trotti said impatiently.

“The day he was shot …”

“Who?”

“The man who was shot at Guerino’s—well, Pia saw him. She told me at Mass on Sunday. She saw him when he arrived in Gardesana. It was early, before seven o’clock. She saw him when he arrived, when he got out of his car.”

“His car? What car?”

The woman shrugged. “Pia says that there were other men in the car.”

“What car, signora? Can you describe it?”

The face smiled. “Pia knows nothing about cars. And neither do I. But she told me that it was a big car—a German one.”

“A Mercedes?”

The woman shrugged. “A big car.”

S
IGNORA
B
ACCOLI HAD
set out the plates for supper in the kitchen. Already Pisanelli was placing his napkin on his knees.

“I thought you’d lost your appetite, Pisanelli.”

The contadina filled two plates and poured wine into the glasses.

“Drink, signore,” she said to Pisanelli and for a moment she placed her work-worn hand on the shoulder of his jacket. “It’s my husband’s wine. He made it himself—with the grapes from the vineyard.

Pisanelli drank and nodded his appreciation.

Trotti sat down in front of the food and the old woman left the kitchen. “I’ll prepare the guest room for your friend.”

They ate in silence. Pisanelli had not lost his appetite and the cannelloni was good—made with cream and parmesan cheese and spiced with pepper.

From time to time, Trotti looked at his watch.

Behind Pisanelli’s head there was a thermometer attached to the wall. Also on the wall, a colored photograph of Pope John XXIII.

Trotti said, “Maltese came here in the Mercedes.”

Pisanelli was sitting forward, slumped over his plate and traces of cream at the edge of his lips and on his mustache. The cuffs of his jacket were propped against the kitchen tablecloth. He raised his eyes—brown, intelligent eyes.

“How d’you know?”

“He was seen in the village—at seven o’clock.”

Pisanelli smiled. “At seven o’clock—then he couldn’t have followed you.”

“Precisely—I didn’t reach Gardesana until nearly eight.”

“Somebody must have told him.” Pisanelli grinned. “D’you talk in your sleep?”

Trotti glanced at him and the sheepish grin vanished. Pisanelli looked at his glass of wine. The top of his head and his forehead were completely bald.

“He came in a Mercedes—which means he came with his killers. He thought he was going to set me up—and instead the bullets were for him.”

“The killers were perhaps aiming for you, Commissario.”

Trotti shook his head. “They were professionals.”

Pisanelli wiped the smears of cream from his mouth. “Why would Maltese want to set you up?”

“Revenge, perhaps. Revenge for what happened to his father—and he held me responsible.” Trotti shrugged. “But I don’t think his father held me responsible. Like everybody else, I didn’t agree with Dell’Orto. I didn’t think there was any real evidence against Ramoverde.” Trotti pushed the empty plate away. “And I told Ramoverde that. Towards the end of the trial, I became—well, we grew to understand one another.”

“What was he like?”

“Self-assured, distant—but I’d like to think I got through to him. A strange friendship—it was as if he wanted someone to confide in—but didn’t dare. I had the impression that he knew a lot more than he let on.”