White Shotgun (28 page)

But it wasn’t always so. Aleandro, we discover, is retired from a long career as an electrical inspector for a government agency, which explains the pleasant home and sense of tranquillity. He is done with it. He has always kept chickens and rabbits, always had olive trees, an organic vegetable garden and grapes, but now, he is proud to say, he and his wife are self-sustaining.

Their olive operation may not be as grand as what Sterling had in mind—it consists of a single windowless basement room, away from light and heat, with sacks full of chemical pellets, curing barrels, and a stainless-steel tank in which they store the oil, which is pressed at a community mill. All of this is fascinating—especially the discussion in Italian of how the Spaniards brought olives to Texas—and I am more than ready to leave, but somehow, by mental telepathy, before she went to finish the chickens, Aleandro and Antonella have agreed that we are not going anywhere until we’ve had something to eat.

We are shepherded upstairs and seated at a heavy dining room table with a white lace runner. Behind us is a dark wood cupboard jammed with glassware. Antonella comes through the brick archway of the kitchen, carrying a welcome carafe of water. The kitchen has a vaulted wooden ceiling that mocks older Tuscan architecture. I am antsy and uncomfortable. They are talking a blue streak that I can’t understand, and I am wondering if this will turn into a tedious lunch. I just want to get back to Zabrina, hoping she can shed light on Giovanni and his dealings, if she has anything to say that might factor into Nicosa’s alleged drug connection and Cecilia’s abduction.

No, it isn’t lunch. Antonella returns with the coffee and then bread and preserves made with fruit from their orchard—the most full-bodied, jewel-like jelly I have ever tasted. Unknown to me, the conversation around the dining room table has taken a much darker turn than Spanish olives. Sterling has been asking questions, that much I can tell. After a point, Aleandro’s powerful hand curls into a heavy fist. His wife’s eyes are downcast. They can only be talking about the mafias.

When we are shown to the door, we are given a gift—a recycled Sprite bottle containing their precious homemade olive oil, emerald as a mossy stream. Sterling and Aleandro shake hands and then embrace with such force it almost makes me cry. Something powerful has taken place between them.

When we are back on the road and walking toward the abbey, Sterling is hyper. He tells me that the Calabreses heard through town gossip that Cecilia is missing.

“He gave us a lead where she might be. First and foremost, you don’t have to come. I can handle it solo, spare you the upset.”

“Whatever in hell it is you’re talking about, I’m coming.”

Olives, as Sterling well knows, are cured in sodium hydroxide. It reduces the bitterness, and if you soak them long enough, it will turn green olives black. He had a hunch they might be doing it the same way in Italy, and he was right. Aleandro has the pellets in his basement; he knows all about the chemical and who supplies it and where it’s stored.

Another name for sodium hydroxide is lye.

At Sterling’s empathetic prodding, Aleandro had disclosed that he, too, has a relative who is one of the “disappeared”—an uncle who also worked as an electrical inspector for the government. The uncle submitted a poor report on a water plant and did not come home from work one night. The police did nothing. Aleandro’s family did nothing. They don’t speak of it; five years later, they are still afraid.

All over the world, from Mexico to Albania, criminal networks dispose of victims using lye. It is a caustic metallic base used in manufacturing all kinds of corrosive products, like paint strippers. When pure pellets of sodium hydroxide are combined with water and heat, a reaction occurs that chews up the chemical bonds that normally keep tissues intact. The corpse dissolves into a pinkish liquid, occasionally leaving bone husks that are as fragile as cicada shells.

Aleandro had given Sterling directions to his own supplier of fertilizer and chemicals, including industrial lye. The company is called Spectra and is headquartered in Milan, but the local distributor operates out of a town nearby called Monte San Stefano.

MONTE SAN STEFANO, ITALY

TWENTY-SIX

Monte San Stefano is an hour to the south—halfway to Rome. From the turnoff it is slow going on a two-lane road that coils through clay hills, only to discover that Monte San Stefano barely exists. There is a shoe outlet and a truffle museum, both closed for lunch. Inquiries at a gas station five kilometers past yield zero results, until the nice lady behind the counter asks to see the grimy paper on which Aleandro carefully printed the address, and recognizes the name of Marcello Falassi—a truck driver who makes deliveries for Spectra.

“She said he lives a couple of kilometers back that way,” Sterling explains as we exit the store. “When we see a big white house, we turn left and keep going east.”

“How far?”

“Until we come to an old barn. The turnout is across the road. We drive until we see a red fence, and there’s the house.”

I realize that Sterling had orchestrated the outing to Aleandro’s farm not to indulge in nostalgia for growing olives in Texas, but because he believes Cecilia is already dead. That she was taken by the mob, shot within a couple of days, and her body has already been reduced to God knows what. The quicker we find the remains, the quicker we can track the bad guys.

Sterling insists it’s a simple idea—deduction 101—to trace the supply route of the lye back to the mafiosi. Plausible, maybe; a long shot, definitely. In my opinion, we don’t know enough to commit to chasing some delivery man all over Tuscany. As we get into the car, it is hard to stifle my impatience. I want to go back to Siena and investigate properly. Why am I listening to him? I am the trained Bureau specialist. If I don’t actually say it, that is what I’m thinking, and at this moment I would be just as glad to drop the burden of Sterling’s shell-shocked emotions, get back on the phone with my coolheaded FBI partner, Mike Donnato, and find Cecilia, unencumbered.

“Do you really think this is worth it?” I ask. “We’re spending an entire day on a very shaky lead. The guy who drives a chemical truck? He’s going to know where the bodies are buried? We should go back to Siena and nail that girl, Zabrina.”

“The guy who drives a truck gets orders from somewhere.” Sterling climbs behind the wheel.

“Yes, a manifest from an office in Milan—”

Sterling slams the door. “Stop nagging.”

It stops me, all right. Like a bucket of ice water.

“We’re arguing an investigative approach,” I say unsteadily. “Back and forth. Your ideas, my ideas.”

“I know what an argument is, honey.”

“It’s how we do it in the Bureau. Maximize the options.”

“We do it the same way in my shop.”

“Where? In a bunker in Iraq?”

I regret it immediately.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That was stupid. I didn’t mean it.” He pulls over and stops.

“Up ahead, that’s the big white house. That’s the road where we turn. If you want to go back to Siena, we keep on going straight.”

“I don’t like the word
nagging
,” I say quietly.

He exhales with exasperation. “What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to me like a professional. I’m talking to you like a professional—”

“You’re gonna tell me how to talk, now?”

“I’m not taking orders from you.”

“Nobody’s giving orders. The FBI is playing you. Can’t you see that? And meanwhile, the mafia has Cecilia.”

“I see that.”

“Seems to me, professionally speaking, whatever drug business your nephew or his father have been into is a sidebar. It might connect, might not. We tried following the investigator’s report and ended up at an apartment with nobody home. With the kidnap, our objective has changed. First and foremost, we need to find Cecilia, dead or alive. This Marcello Falassi, who delivers the chemicals, he might know something about that, or lead us to someone who does.”

Sterling is watching my face. He wants to know if I can really hear it.
Dead or alive. Alive or dead
.

“Make the turn to Falassi’s place,” I say.

He hesitates.

“I mean it. Go.”

The road is a whispering tunnel of green. There are no other cars. We arrive at a crossroads, make a guess, and keep heading east, coming out to ripe farmland dotted with rolls of hay, and the low-pitched clanging of hundreds of tin bells. A herd of sheep is crossing, guided only by a white dog. Two by two, docile as a class of kindergartners, they go out one gate, across the asphalt, and into the neighboring field. The dog stands on a rise and barks, the sheep stream past, and the bells are like a living wall of sound. There are no humans in sight. Even when the herd has disappeared, the dog continues to bark at our car. As soon as we creep past, he goes.

It sobers me. Simple equations that I never really understood. Dogs and sheep. Farmland and sun. Build your fortress on the highest ground. Not for the first time since I’ve been in Italy, the external world—the wild-eyed horses in the Palio, this troubled man beside me in the car—seems extraordinarily vivid, while my own self feels distant from the experience, more and more transparent. Is that what a career in the black box of the Bureau does to you? Numbs the senses, as well as the soul?

Marcello Falassi lives in a powder-blue trailer on the dark side of the road, the only structure for several kilometers. We have seen many low-income houses cheerfully surrounded by sunflowers and artichoke plants, but this one has nothing to say for itself, except bales of wire in the front yard. I suppose nothing grows because of the damp, sunless location. But when we pass a dead dove splayed out on the walkway, I wonder if something else is at play.

Signora Falassi opens the door. She is a depressed-looking, spectacularly overweight person about fifty with a mane of artificially jet-black curls, wearing a pale lavender blouse and matching slacks. Her mouth pulls tight into a wary expression as she affirms that her husband is a driver for Spectra.

“Perchè lei vuole sapere?” Why do you want to know?

We stand on the steps looking earnest while Sterling explains in Italian that we are an American couple who just bought a farm in the area and were told Signore Falassi is the one to talk to about getting the chemicals we need to cure olives.

“Non è a casa. Guida la sua strada.”

“Can you tell us where he is? Maybe we can catch him.”

The woman says to follow her, but she can hardly walk, toddling slowly down a narrow hallway by hanging on to the walls. I glimpse a kitchen and an ancient
nonna
taking something out of the oven that smells of rancid lamb fat. A few steps farther, and we enter a tiny sloping room crammed with boxes of files. A camp bed is buried under stacks of newspapers and indistinguishable clothing. Hollowed out of this dark rat’s nest is a corner desk with a laptop computer under a brilliant light.

Signora Falassi lowers herself to a wooden chair with a painful sigh.

“Sorry if we are bothering you,” Sterling says in Italian.

She waves her hand. No bother. It’s just her feet, and she lifts them up for our inspection—a pair of deformed stumps in rubber thongs. They look like pictures I have seen of leprosy. The toes curl sideways and the skin has erupted in permanent red welts.

Falassi’s delivery schedule spurts out of the printer.

“She says he’s making a drop at the feed store in San Piero,” Sterling says. “It’s close by; we can catch him.”

“Ask how we get to San Piero,” I say, not taking my eyes from the feet.

She begins to give directions, but it turns into a shouting match with the old lady—Falassi’s mother, listening from the kitchen—who knows a better way to go. Not getting her point across, the
nonna
shuffles into the office, screeching and jabbing, while Sterling smiles and holds up his cell phone, indicating,
Thank you very much; we’ll use the GPS
.

I don’t think they understand, but they do calm down, and then a long exchange continues among the three of them in Italian. I can’t stop staring at the old lady’s feet. She, too, is wearing rubber thongs, and her welts go up to the ankles. It looks like both women have been burned by a caustic substance.

“What was that all about?” I say when we are back in the car.

Sterling drives with an eye on the blinking GPS.

“They said there was an accident. The husband used to keep chemicals behind the house. The wife and mother are out in the yard one day, and they notice their shoes are melting. There’s a leak coming from one of the barrels. They didn’t even feel it at first. Corrosive substances dissolve the nerve endings, along with the skin. That’s the good news, I guess.”

“Did Falassi want to do damage, or did he just screw up?”

“He screwed up. The wife says she has no use for him. She’s disabled now, stuck in the house with his mother, and he’s never home, yadda yadda yadda. But she got some money out of Spectra after the accident, so she’s going on a pilgrimage to Fatima.”

“And never coming back?”

“The mother’s going with her.”

“Gotta love it.”