The Death of an Irish Consul (19 page)

“It’s only a matter of time,” said McGarr.

Foster howled.

The little man opened the door as if he would rush in to mop the floor, but Falchi stayed him, then asked, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“No,” said Foster and waited until he could breathe more easily. “I don’t see why I should. But, if it makes you happy, I’ll say it’s been delightful hearing your
friend grasp at straws in French. It’s a pleasant change from Italian.”

“I need a drink,” said McGarr. He felt foolish, having hypothesized the collusion of Foster and Battagliatti here where Falchi had heard him. And it seemed as if Foster hadn’t laughed so much at what he was saying but rather at the foolish spectacle McGarr had made of himself.

And Foster laughed him right out of the office.

McGarr, Noreen, O’Shaughnessy, McKeon, and Ward dined at the Excelsior that night. Although they ordered
cacciúcco
, a rich fish stew like bouillabaisse, and drank Moscadello, a soft, sweet, golden sparkling wine that McGarr enjoyed, he was preoccupied throughout the meal and hardly ate. Twice the maître d’ asked him if he found the dish satisfactory.

And later that night, he couldn’t sleep. True, it was hot, but really no hotter than the other nights they had spent in Siena. He got out of bed and padded into the sitting room of the suite. There he switched on a table lamp and raised the blind of the balcony to a height at which he could duck under it.

On the balcony, he looked out over Siena. The festive atmosphere of the Palio was still present, and even though it was 2:30 many tourists still strolled along the piazza and past the air-conditioned café on the corner. He could see people standing at the marble bar drinking tall glasses of yellow or green iced concoctions. That made McGarr himself want one very much
indeed, but he was at once too lazy to put on his clothes and too involved in thinking about this case to want to talk, and had a long-standing rule that he would not take a drink in order to make himself fall asleep. That smacked too much of alcoholism to him, and, whenever he had tried it, the results next day had been disastrous.

A cool breeze smelling of the country was blowing off the hills now.

McGarr eased himself against the iron railing of the balcony and folded his arms. He was wearing only pajamas, and his feet were bare.

McGarr thought about Battagliatti. What did McGarr know about him?

First, Battagliatti had appeared much too gay at the party in London. What was it he had said about the victim? McGarr searched his memory. Ah, yes—“Some would say the victim invited the crime, that some imbalance obtained in his personality that begged for an untoward act to be done to him.” By that standard McGarr supposed Cummings
had
begged for his murder. He had stepped into a tight circle of friends, all of whom had loved Enna Ricasoli in some way, and had stolen her from them. Then, not walling her away, he had teased at least Battagliatti and Rattei over a nearly thirty-year period, letting them take his wife to dinner, allowing Rattei to make love to her, making no secret of his own bisexuality, perhaps even inviting Battagliatti and Pavoni and Zingiale to his home to witness all of that.

And Battagliatti was growing older now. It looked as if he was losing his grip on the younger members of his party, that he would never get the chance to rule all of Italy. Never one whom his party members loved for himself, Battagliatti would probably have to pass the rest of his life alone, with some money (that much was certain), but most probably friendless. Was that the reason he had panicked and shot at Rattei—that his soul’s companion was at last free and seemed to prefer his own company to that of the handsome rival and he wouldn’t tolerate any change in the situation?

McGarr then wondered if Battagliatti had any family, any brothers or sisters, nieces or nephews, who might take care of one of the grand old men of Italian politics, a national hero.

Ducking under the blind, McGarr walked to the coffee table where he pulled Battagliatti’s dossier out of his briefcase. There, among the photos and news clippings that Falchi had hurriedly assembled, was his family history.

Battagliatti’s father had been a
contadíno
with a small farm near Montalcino that was taken by the government after World War I as a storage area for old tanks and armored personnel carriers. Whereas the settlement seemed generous, the old man felt cheated, and indeed he was, since the land was never used for the stated purpose, and a year later was sold at private auction to the director of mines, Mussolini’s brother-in-law’s uncle, who promptly established a highly
profitable zinc mine there. Battagliatti himself, a university student at the time, was outraged. He was arrested and spent eight months in jail for assaulting the director.

He had two brothers who had fought and died alongside him during the Second World War, and a sister who lived on the site of his father’s former farm. A modest house had been built in the cavity of the excavation site and given to Battagliatti by his Communist supporters as a symbol of government collusion in schemes of capitalist exploitation. His sister was older than he and a spinster.

McGarr glanced through the balcony and down into the streets where the cafés were. Again he quelled the urge to get himself a drink.

Instead, he kept pawing through the mass of documents Falchi had supplied. Everything had been arranged chronologically, starting with Battagliatti’s birth certificate and baptismal picture and running through early school diplomas, pictures of his first communion, confirmation, graduation from secondary school, and his first university picture. Then there was all the information concerning his assault on the director of mines, his prison term, his statement upon getting out that he would work for the establishment of social justice in Italy. The Fascist press interpreted that as meaning he had learned the true purpose of the present government and been converted to their cause. In that picture he looked drawn, more like a confused
child than the future leader of the Italian Communist party.

McGarr turned the page and looked down at Enna Ricasoli sitting next to Battagliatti on the steps of the university mensa on Via Giovanni Dupre. Her beauty was startling. After a while, McGarr realized that the man sitting directly in back of her was Enrico Rattei. He was looking down into her hair. Was she leaning against his leg? McGarr wondered.

Then McGarr read of Battagliatti’s exile from Italy, his role in the Russian Comintern—most of it speculation by the Fascist police and press and therefore not very flattering—his return as a freedom fighter, and after the war his early work building the Communist party in Tuscany, later in Umbria, and finally in Emilia-Romagna.

The succeeding pictures were all of a type. They showed him at different stages in his life, dressed in the same double-breasted gray suit, the style of which changed only slightly in accordance with popular tastes. He was either shaking hands with well-wishers and officials or on a platform or in a radio or television studio speaking to his electorate.

Quickly, McGarr began flipping through these. But first one, then another, then a third recent picture stopped McGarr. He even stood and lifted the dossier to place it directly under the table lamp. In each of those pictures Battagliatti was wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses, the like of which McGarr had tried
on in the lost-and-found closet of the Avis operation at the Heathrow Airport in London. This was only the second time in his life McGarr had ever seen glasses like these. They had thick chrome-steel frames that ran, high and low, around the lenses, more like goggles—aviator’s goggles!—than glasses. The lenses were rounded like head lamps to deflect the glare. In all, the effect was frightening. In each, Battagliatti looked more like a bug-eyed monster, some creature from another planet, than a small man. McGarr speculated that the glasses had been made especially for him, and the glasses in the lost-and-found carton had been equipped with prescription lenses which were traceable.

McGarr folded the three pictures and placed them in his pocket secretary. He then dressed quickly and went down to the café for several drinks.

There he met Liam O’Shaughnessy, who said, “Couldn’t sleep. I’ve got that little tyke on my mind.”

“Battagliatti?”

O’Shaughnessy nodded.

“Then take a look at these.” McGarr handed him the pictures.

O’Shaughnessy smiled. “I’ll fly back to London tomorrow. Too bad so many of us touched them.” He then glanced at McGarr, who nodded. The Galwayman, elated now, kept speaking. “They’ve got to be prescription. Otherwise, I suspect he’s blind as a bat. Well, this time make sure you’re carrying a shooter, and make sure Falchi or somebody official is present.
He may be small, but he’s dangerous, he is.”

But several things were still bothering McGarr and he remained silent. First, he felt the same deflation he had experienced when he had cracked Foster’s story. Something was amiss here. If Battagliatti had dropped those glasses he would either have gone back himself or sent somebody else for them. Doubtless prescription lenses, they were far too readily traceable to him.

Next, Rattei’s knowing the make and caliber of Battagliatti’s weapon still bothered him. Through Falchi, McGarr had learned that was not public information. In fact, that Battagliatti saw fit even to carry a gun came as a shock to his close associates. That simply wasn’t like him. The automatic itself was an unusual weapon. In the past McGarr had noted how small men were wont to carry large-caliber weapons, the diameter of the barrel seeming to vary inversely with the stature of the man. That gun was more like one a woman would use. How did Rattei come by the information and what did it mean?

The last thing that bothered McGarr was the man who was reading a
Sera
in the shadows near the corner of the tall bar. McGarr could remember seeing him not just in Siena but in Livorno, too, and—he racked his memory—
yes
, in London just today, or—McGarr checked his watch—yesterday. It was now 3:14
A.M
.

McGarr ordered another round of Chartreuse drinks and asked the barman for a telephone token. He called
Falchi’s house and was surprised that the number answered immediately. It was Falchi himself, who explained, “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me too,” said McGarr. “I’ll buy you a drink. It’s just around the corner.”

Twenty minutes later the carabinieri commandant arrived dressed in his street clothes.

During that time McGarr and O’Shaughnessy kept talking while McGarr noted every aspect of the man’s appearance, which had been so devised as to fit in most anywhere. For instance, the suit was some dark gray material with a darker pattern running through it that looked almost Parisian, but it could also have been something an old, middle-class Sienese would wear, or, say, a white-collar Englishman who had met with moderate success. The black bluchers were trim and well made, but the heels were just slightly too large. This could be vanity, but it was also an Italian preference. But Italian-style shoes were sold in Paris and London too. Likewise, the man’s face was regular and clean shaven. He had slicked his hair back as older men in most European countries did when beginning to bald. McGarr himself had worn his hair like that. A gray summer fedora was on the table in front of him. He was drinking coffee, and
that
was a mistake. He was the only person in the crowded café who had ordered a stimulant. Obviously, he was still at work.

“Who’s that?” McGarr asked Falchi after he had joined them for a time.

“Don’t know.”

“Can you find out?”

“Certainly.”

The man didn’t move, and a few minutes later Falchi made a call.

NEARLY TWELVE HOURS LATER
, McGarr was sitting in the Palazzo Ricasoli. The back of the tall chair concealed him from anybody who might suddenly enter the room from the hallway.

Enna Ricasoli had thrown open the windows of the room. She was standing in front of him, hands on the sills, looking out onto the Piazza del Campo. McGarr himself could see the Mangia bell tower. The clock read 2:45. Francesco Battagliatti was due to arrive at the palazzo for lunch. The day was cool and dry, a relief welcomed by all.

“What are your plans?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. Everything has made me so confused. First, Colin’s death, then Enrico’s involvement
in it, then Francesco’s strange behavior. Do you know he wants to marry me?”

“No.”

“He insists on it. Now, right away, so soon after Colin’s death. It’s unthinkable, unseemly, but he’s like a crazed person. One can’t talk to him any longer. I wish——I wish that business with the police and Enrico would clear up. It’s made him so strange.”

“It will,” said McGarr. He could hear loud talking in the hall, orders being given. He imagined Battagliatti had arrived. “You just stand right where you are, ma’am, and don’t move when your friend enters the room,” he advised.

“Why so?” The sun had caught in her hair, as it had during the Palio when her husband had been killed. She was dressed in black, and the plain suit became her tall and trim figure. One earring, just a gold band, glinted where her hair had been drawn into a bun at the back of her neck.

“You’ll see.” McGarr reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses no different from those Francesco Battagliatti had left aboard the rented helicopter in London. It had taken the Florentine police and Falchi, who was in the next room monitoring the conversation by means of a microphone that McGarr wore under his coat, all morning to find Battagliatti’s optician. The prescriptions of the lenses matched those of the glasses O’Shaughnessy had picked up at Heathrow and returned with only an hour
before. McGarr then removed his Walther from its shoulder holster and placed it in his lap. He covered it and his right hand with a newspaper.

Enna Cummings’s eyes were wide now. “Please, no violence. No violence again. Not to Francesco, too. I don’t think I can stand any more violence.”

“Don’t worry. There isn’t going to be any if I can help it. Just act as if I’m not here.”

But she couldn’t. When Battagliatti opened the door and stepped into the room, saying, “Enna, my darling—how are you today?” her eyes were still wide with fright. “What’s wrong, what’s the matter?” Battagliatti looked around.

There in back of him in the chair and smiling was McGarr with the bizarre flight glasses wrapping his face.

Battagliatti’s hand jumped for his lapel and he pulled out his small pistol.

Not before Enna Cummings had grabbed for the gun, which fired into the ceiling. “Don’t!” she screamed.

“Where’d he get those? I’ll kill him, the meddler!”

“Just like you killed Hitchcock and Browne, like you had Colin Cummings killed?”

Battagliatti fought with her to lower the gun.

McGarr could hear Falchi and his carabinieri in the next room scrambling to get out the door of that room and into the hallway.

That was when the door leading to the hall burst open and Enrico Rattei appeared in it. He too had a gun in his hand.

Before McGarr had time either to call out or to turn his own automatic on Rattei, Il Condottiere squeezed off a shot that struck Battagliatti right in the throat. The force of the slug lifted the little man right off his feet and dropped him on his back.

O’Shaughnessy appeared behind Rattei and promptly relieved him of his weapon.

Hands to his throat, Battagliatti lay on his back on the floor blinking up at Enna Ricasoli and McGarr. In spite of the helpless and pitiable look on his face as he tried to gasp for breath through the blood, McGarr saw that his eyes seemed calm. He was a man who had seen much and had doubtless experienced the deaths of many others.

The air stank of gunpowder and scorched blood.

McGarr then wondered if Rattei’s hitting him there in the voice box was just a wild or lucky shot. Rattei’s dossier mentioned that he was a championship quality marksman with most weapons. Carlo Falchi had told McGarr only a few minutes before that the man who had been following McGarr worked for Rattei.

“Francesco, Francesco,” Enna Ricasoli Cummings was saying. “Why did it have to be like this?” Like McGarr, she was kneeling by his side.

“That’s enough, Enna,” Rattei said. All his features were animated, but most especially his eyes. They were coal black and fierce. “Get away from him.”

McGarr turned to Battagliatti. “You can still blink. Help is coming, but I don’t think you’re going to make
it.” In a similar situation, McGarr wouldn’t want anybody lying to him. “Did you have Cummings killed?”

Battagliatti just looked at him.

“How about the others?”

Again the little man stared straight into his eyes.

“Did you think Rattei was behind Cummings’s murder? Is that why you began carrying this gun? Is that why you shot at him in Pisa? Did you think he was trying to get rid of all rivals?”

Battagliatti blinked once.

McGarr picked up the gold-plated .22-caliber automatic. It looked like an expensive child’s toy or a cigarette lighter.

“Do you know how these glasses got to Heathrow?”

Battagliatti blinked.

“Were they planted there?” But Battagliatti didn’t blink again. His eyes had glassed. McGarr felt for his pulse. He was dead.

McGarr turned and looked at Rattei, who, although still being held by O’Shaughnessy, looked proud and self-satisfied. The corners of his mouth just below his moustache had creased in a cruel, superior smile.

Enna Ricasoli Cummings was sobbing now, rocking on her knees, her head in her lap. Suddenly she raised her body and turned to Rattei. Her face was streaming with tears. “You’re really a dreadful person, Enrico. Blood-thirsty and cruel.”

“Well, if I am, you had a part in making me that way, Enna.”

“This is so awful, so horrible. I never want to see you again. Never.”

“Why? Because after all these years I’ve finally triumphed? Remember that he had shot at me before and had a gun in his hand too. And not just any ordinary gun either. Take note of the gun, Mr. McGarr. You’ll find it very interesting.”

McGarr looked down at the automatic and wondered yet again how Rattei could possibly know so much about it.

But Enna Ricasoli Cummings was on her feet now. “Do you call
this
a triumph? You must be ill, depraved.” She had to grasp the mantel to keep from falling. “I’m tired of killing and
men
. Colin was so gentle, so trusting, so——” She began sobbing again. Her servants had pushed into the room and now surrounded her, helping her into a chair.

McGarr slid the little automatic into his pocket and started toward the door. O’Shaughnessy and Falchi had Rattei in the hall now. McGarr shut the door behind him.

Rattei was saying, “It was self-defense. You saw so yourself. I’ve got a license to carry the gun which is signed by a cabinet minister himself. He would have shot me, had he been quicker.”

Falchi replied, “But you must come to my office to fill out a report and make a statement. It’s a matter of form, signor.”

McGarr gestured to O’Shaughnessy and the two of
them walked down the hall toward the stairs.

“But why did Rattei go to the trouble of framing himself?” O’Shaughnessy asked him as they started across the sunny piazza toward carabinieri headquarters.

McGarr hunched his shoulders. “So the world would know that Enrico Rattei’s vow was binding, perhaps. And maybe to put Battagliatti—that nothing of a little man—in his place, to show him that he had neither the cunning nor the strength of will to dare to compete with”—McGarr waved his hand and trilled—“Il Condottiere Rattei.”

“Sounds like some explanation a little boy would give for beating up the kid next door.”

McGarr was then reminded of what Rattei had said at his villa—that a person is happiest who fulfills his boyhood ambitions. Surely to a northern European the swagger and bluster of Latin males always seemed childish and absurd. It had nothing to do with real worth. “I’m sure we’ll never really know. He’s a smart one and daring. He’s given us only the implication that he engineered the whole dirty business. Unless——”

“The gun?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“If it is the Slea Head murder weapon, then he must have had it pinched from Battagliatti at some point or other. Maybe we can get a line on it.”

Less than twenty minutes later, McGarr and O’Shaughnessy were deep in the basement archives of carabinieri headquarters. Falchi had placed his entire
clerical staff at McGarr’s disposal, and the chief inspector had six men sifting through theft reports beginning a day before the Hitchcock murder, or June 18, and running back at least a year. In particular, he had them looking for the surname Battagliatti in the vicinity of Chiusdino and the report of a housebreak. McGarr figured that if Battagliatti’s staff had been surprised when it heard the party chairman had been carrying a gun of late, then the gun could not have been stolen from his car or traveling bags. The carabinieri fired the gun twice into sand. The barrel markings on the bullets were the same as those on the bullets taken from Hitchcock’s and Browne’s skulls. It was the murder weapon.

But after an hour passed, McGarr grew anxious. He wanted to talk to Battagliatti’s sister before the news of her brother’s death reached her on the family farm, which was, coincidentally, in Chiusdino and quite close to Enrico Rattei’s villa. Thus, he and O’Shaughnessy hopped into the Alfa rent-a-car and drove to the little town in the hills at speeds that made the Galwayman cringe.

At the Chiusdino barracks, McGarr explained what he wanted to the seniormost official present. He was an utterly bald old man near retirement. With a toothpick in his mouth, he was sitting, as though in state, at a massive oaken desk. His complexion was so golden that the shadows beneath his chin seemed green. Also, his eyebrows were auburn and a shade McGarr could not quite credit as real. O’Shaughnessy seemed unable
to look at anything else. They were wide and bushy, and the commandant used them histrionically, raising one and lowering the other when McGarr made his request for directions to the Battagliatti farm, repeating the process when McGarr also asked for information concerning possible thefts there during the past year, then knitting both before saying he didn’t think he could help the Irishmen, and finally stretching both very far when they agreed to share a small glass of cognac with him at the café across the street.

There, after much preliminary conversation, in which the policeman ascertained McGarr’s background and at last placed him as the very same McGarr who had run the Italian Interpol operation for over five years, to whom, it turned out, he had had occasion to telephone once, and whom he admired, along with the great mass of his compatriots, for arresting the leaders of the drug rings which “had corrupted and debased the young people of Naples.” He then repeated the old chestnut which alters Byron’s quote to “See Naples and die.” Finally, he said, “Why bother with records? I don’t trifle with such things. Scribbling on paper is the pastime of schoolteachers, priests, and other idlers. I keep all of my records here.” He tapped his golden cranium with a finger. “And have been for over thirty years. Chiusdino to Siena to Sovicili to Massa Maritima is my beat. Nothing escapes me.”

O’Shaughnessy and McGarr looked at him hard. Their patience was wearing thin.

“For instance, on—let’s see—the eleventh of December last year, Maria, who is Francesco’s sister, called me to say——” He broke off and looked at their empty glasses. “Would you care for another small cognac, gentlemen?” He raised his eyebrows nearly onto his forehead.

“After,” McGarr said,
“after,”
in a way that impressed upon Commandant Alfori the urgency of the request.

Alfori straightened up and glanced at McGarr as though the Irishman had offended his sensibilities. “——to say her house had been broken into while she was in Siena shopping. Of course, I went right over there. One doesn’t ignore the needs of so important a personage.”

“What was missing? In particular,” asked O’Shaughnessy, who, having caught the barman’s eye, gestured to the brandy bottle which was then placed on their table.

“A coin collection, their silver, an antique clock, some small pieces of crystal, the old bicycle that Signor Battagliatti had been wont to race with when he was much younger, some fowling pieces, a rifle, and some other small arms. Nothing much, really. Il Signor is a true Communist. He lives very simply.”

“Including a gold-plated Baretta special, twenty-two caliber?” asked McGarr.

The phone in the café was ringing.

“Yes—I think so. Wait.” Alfori tapped his forehead
and arched his right eyebrow. “Yes, and not only was it stolen, but later, just about a week ago, it was recovered in a stolen automobile near the Communist party headquarters in Siena.”

The phone call was for McGarr. Falchi’s men had found a Chiusdino barracks report and a later
avviso
deleting the gun from the original bill of particulars stolen.

When McGarr returned to the table, Alfori asked, “Do you want the serial numbers of the gun?” as though he could recall them from memory.

“Don’t need them now, signor”—McGarr put his hand in his sport coat pocket and pulled out Battagliatti’s handgun, which he had again pinched, this time from the lab staff, and would only turn in on threat of arrest—“since I’ve got the gun itself. Have you ever been to Ireland?”

“Why, no.” Alfori motioned toward McGarr’s cognac glass with the neck of the bottle.

McGarr stayed him. “We’ve got to run, but perhaps you’ll soon get the opportunity of visiting us in our country—all expenses paid, of course. Then we can share another drink together.”

O’Shaughnessy was paying the barman.

“I didn’t realize your inquiry was so important. If I had, certainly I would have expedited your request.” Alfori stood. “Where are you going now?”