BELLA MAFIA (46 page)

She searched for the car keys, without replying.

"I'll come to Rome, to Turkey, wherever you want."

She put the keys in the ignition and started the car. When she turned to him, it was as if she were a stranger. He was desperate to keep her with him a few moments longer.

"I read today that you and your sister-in-law are starting up the business again. You must promise me to take care, great care, and if you ever need me . . . Look, let me give you my card; this is my direct line, any hour of the day or night. And this is my home phone number."

He was talking fast, scribbling his number on the card. He handed it to her through the window, and her hand felt icy to his touch. She didn't look at the card but slipped it into her pocket.

"You have been very kind, but I think it best if we forget this ever happened. Good night."

She drove off fast, and he stood like a lost soul, completely devastated. Around his feet were the plastic flowers.

Sophia entered the house soundlessly and had crept to the foot of the stairs when Teresa came out of the study.

"Where in God's name have you been?"

"Out. I needed some air."

"You've been gone hours; it's half past two in the morning."

Sophia paused on the staircase, looking down at Teresa. "You are not my jailer. If I want to go out for some air, then I will."

"No, you won't."

Sophia snapped, "What did you say?"

"I said from now on you tell me where you are going, is that understood?"

Sophia kept her voice low, but the anger was all there. "Just who do you think you're talking to? What right have you to speak to me as if I were a child?"

"Right now, every right. Where did you go?"

"I went for a drive, and this you will really love, I had a brandy—no, two brandies—with Commissario Pirelli. You want to make something of that?"

"Did you tell him anything?"

Sophia threw her coat off. "I was sitting in my car, and he came up and asked me if I would like a drink because he had some information. He was going to come here tomorrow, so rather than have him in the house with your precious Moreno, I agreed to have a drink. They have the gun that killed my babies. They also believe that whoever killed my sons also shot Paul Carolla; it's the same man, the one he was asking about when he first came here. Paul Carolla's own son, Luka. . . . And they are about to make an arrest, which leaves that creature upstairs in the clear."

Teresa sighed with relief. "You think he was telling you the truth?"

"Why would he lie? Here, he gave me this card; call him for yourself. We all are going to Rome tomorrow, and thanks to what he told me, I, for one, will feel a lot better about leaving Moreno here with Mama."

"And you never mentioned Moreno?"

"I did not mention Moreno, I said not a word about the gun, I said nothing. . . . Now, would it be all right if I went to bed? I'm tired; it's been a long day."

"I'll come to Rome with you tomorrow."

Sophia was on the stairs. She didn't even turn. "Fine, what do you want me to do, applaud? Good night." A few minutes later Teresa crept carefully into her own bedroom. Rosa was fast asleep, lying on her belly, her arms splayed out. Teresa climbed into bed and pulled the duvet around her. But she couldn't sleep; the arguments and disagreements were getting harder to handle. Perhaps the trip would help them get on a better footing. At least Johnny Moreno had turned out to be just what he had told them; it meant he would be easier to get rid of. As soon as she sold the pearls, she would pay him off. A few more days, and they would be ready to sell everything; a few more days, she told herself, and it would all be over.

Pirelli had lit a fire under the overworked and harassed Inspector Giulio Mincelli. Accusations were flying about inadequate reports and loss of evidence. Pirelli's eyebrows, famed for telegraphing his moods, were permanently in a single line: danger zone.

He had no verification of the exact times of the Luciano deaths, so he could not ascertain if a killer could have been in both places, the Villa Rivera and the San Lorenzo restaurant. But the major and most frustrating of all his problems was that there was still no trace of the only suspect to date, Luka Carolla.

The gun Luka had left at the monastery was definitely the one used to kill both the Luciano children and the Paluso child, but there was no confirmation of its use at the restaurant. However, with the evidence that was mounting against him, the hunt for Luka had to be stepped up.

The morning paper ran yet another article accusing the police of doing nothing to find the killer of the jail cleaner's son. The Palermo chief walked in unannounced, carrying the paper.

"You read this?" He tossed the newspaper on the table, took his horn-rimmed glasses from their case, and looked over the many photographs pinned on the wall. "That the wall of death everyone's talking about?"

Pirelli shrugged, waited for the chief to spew out whatever he had come in for. The chief continued. "You serious about this Luka Carolla character? You really think it's feasible that he's involved in every one of these?"

Pirelli nodded. "I think he's psychotic, very dangerous, kills indiscriminately. We know he was not alone at the San Lorenzo, but I'm certain he was involved. And we have the weapon, his weapon, the magnum."

The shiny-suited figure remained firmly planted in front of the bulletin board. "A few officers are getting pissed off about your using the forensic and ballistics teams at all hours, giving them no time for any other cases. There's a backlog building up. . . . You've got Ancora, the young what's 'is name, Bruno di Mazzo, and now Mincelli and his men working alongside you. That's more than ten men. How long is this going to go on for? If you know your suspect, haul him in."

"I'm trying. Believe me, I'm trying. We just can't get a trace on him."

"I gathered that, so I've called a press conference this afternoon. We'll have to give them something, and you must have enough to—"

"We've got the warrants, but we can't find the bastard."

"You need that boy picked up fast. So we'll get all the help we can and try to flush him out."

Pirelli was getting uptight. "Every uniformed man's got the composite, every hotel, hospital, we've had men—"

"I know, I know how many men, Joe, and you've found no trace. So we'll pull out all the stops and try to flush him out. That includes the prisons; see if there's anyone inside who can help, and we'll make a deal. This city is a sewer, Joe, and it's getting clogged up. You can't have much more time; I'm sorry, but I need my men back."

"You canceled all leaves?"

"I did, and it's not gone down well. You wanted to go back to Milan for the weekend? Get your wife to come here; we can't afford the time."

"Okay," said Pirelli, "but I'm still not sure about the press."

"You're not sure, Joe, if he's even still in Sicily, right? We're going to the press."

"I hear you. It would help me if you could put pressure on in the States; someone somewhere must have a recent photograph of him. He lived there for more than ten years."

"I'll see what I can do. Look, I don't want this to sound like I'm running you down. Far from it. You're doing one hell of a job, and I wish you could be here permanently; but the sole reason we were able to get you was that we were short of men, and you're taking up even more of them. The security for the trial, which, in case you are not aware, is still going strong, is using all the extra men I shipped in. I know the Paluso case is connected to all the others, and I know why you need everyone, but as I said, the gutters are overflowing. We have to move on."

Pirelli had begun making notes for the press conference when Bruno rushed in.

"This was on Mincelli's desk, came in three days ago. I don't know what the hell is going on with him. It's from the St. Sebastian Hospital, the medical report on Giorgio Carolla. As soon as I got it, I went over to main records. There's a passport application in Giorgio Carolla's name, dated January 25, 1974, plus a copy of his birth certificate. I checked back; when the application went in, Giorgio Carolla was already dead. But now we've got a passport number; the U.S. must be able to track him down. Reason we got no trace of Luka Carolla is he was never registered. And we're out by several years; Giorgio was older than Luka. Giorgio was born in 1959, Luka in '62 or '63. All Carolla did when he adopted Luka and so far there's no legal documentation of that either, was to use his dead son's papers."

Pirelli beamed. The intercom light flicked on for his call, but he didn't notice it. "Okay, let's start over again. Get back to New York; tell them we're out by maybe three or four years. Now they've got to be able to give us something, school—Christ, kid had to go to school, didn't he? Get them to check all the schools around Carolla's known addresses. We've got to trace someone who knows him, maybe get a more recent photograph."

Pirelli finally noticed the flashing light on the intercom and picked up the call. There was more good news. After weeks of inquiries, Pirelli's friend had come up with a radiologist from the old Holy Nazareth Hospital who remembered a child being brought into the X-ray department, one fitting the description of the boy now known as Luka Carolla.

Pirelli left the office early to meet the radiologist. As he waited for the elderly Signora Brunelli in the small, neat apartment, he wondered if this was a waste of time. What good would anything he learned be to him in the present situation? He lit a cigarette and searched for an ashtray; he finally dropped the match into a dolphin-shaped bowl.

Signora Brunelli walked painfully slowly into the room. After he had helped her sit down, she asked why he was so interested in a patient she had seen more than fifteen years ago. With total honesty he told her that he didn't really know; it was just that anything he could find out about the young man he was trying to trace might, in the long run, help his investigation.

Signora Brunelli stared at the faded photograph of the orphans that Brother Thomas had given him. Her hands shook as she took out a magnifying glass and studied the picture for a considerable time, moving the glass from one face to the next.

"The boy ringed with red, the blond child—I am sure he is the one I x-rayed."

Pirelli nodded as he took the photograph back. "It was, as you so rightly said, a long time ago. You must have had hundreds, if not thousands, of patients. Do you remember them all?"

"No, no, of course not, but sometimes children stay in your mind longer, particularly children in that little boy's condition. Also, and possibly the reason I recall him, is that he had swallowed a . . ." She pursed her lips as she tried to remember, then nodded her head. "Yes, it was some kind of locket. They had tried to take it from him, and he had swallowed it. It showed up clearly on the x-ray. We were worried that it might cause a stoppage of his bowels, but there was no need to operate." "What condition was he in?"

Again she pursed her lips. "It was a long time ago. ... I had to do a number of X rays. . . . Skull, he had a fractured skull, the type of injury caused by consistent ..." She demonstrated a motion like a karate blow. "I also remember his shoulder, his left shoulder, was dislocated, and the arm broken. You know, a child's bones are very supple, but there were complications because his injuries had been left unattended for so long a time."

"You have an exceptional memory, signora."

"Thank you. It is just that this child was so pitiful. He had been sexually abused, tormented, I would say. It was horrifying, he was not more than five or six years old, and his body was skeleton thin, covered with scars and bruises." She shook her head. Even now, all these years later, the memory disgusted her, upset her.

Pirelli remained silent for a moment before asking if she had spoken to the boy. She looked at him in surprise.

"Oh, no, Commissario Pirelli. The child was dumb. I may be wrong, of course, but I am sure the boy was a mute."

It was an incredible coincidence. As Pirelli drove back to headquarters, the engine of his Fiat began to make strange noises. He kept on driving but used the back streets in case he broke down. The car chugged and chuffed, and smoke began pouring out of the engine.

He stopped and lifted the hood, then realized that not fifteen yards away down the back street was a small repair and car rental shop.

Pirelli wandered across to a mechanic who was working under an old Fiat. Showing his ID, he asked if the mechanic could drop everything and fix his car for him. The man turned out to be the owner, and as he slid from underneath the car, he asked Pirelli if there was any word on his own car.

Pirelli, puzzled, looked at him. The owner persisted. "It's been five days. Haven't you traced it yet?"

Pirelli shook his head. "I'm not with traffic. What's the problem? Stolen, was it?"

"Yeah, five days late back from rental. I sent in a report, but I've heard nothing. American, and he's not at the address he put down."