White Shotgun (38 page)

“Did he say anything at all?”

“He said, ‘This is crazy.’ ”

“What was he doing when you found him yesterday?”

“Like his dad said, he went back to the old neighborhood. He was in the
contrada
headquarters, eating soup.”

“Eating soup?”

“They have a kitchen set up. I guess there’s always a mama or two around.”

“Well that’s okay, then,” I say.

“Wish I could say that’s true. When I found him, he was high as a kite.”

“That’s disappointing. My talk with him had no effect.”

“When you were sixteen, did you have a clue?”

I take off the worn-out courthouse heels I wore to see the Commissario, letting them drop one by one to the floor.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here. We might as well go home.”

Sterling looks at me with clear eyes. “You understand there’s not a real good chance of rescuing Giovanni from himself.”

“I’m not going to let him just go down.”

“Poor ole Ana. The Invasion of Normandy, all by her own self.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Aw, come on.”

Sterling is lying across the sweet-pea bed with his hands behind his head, wearing nothing but undershorts. The heat of the afternoon funnels through the small arched window like a flamethrower.

“Come on, now.” He pats the sheets. “Come on over here.”

This is a welcome change. I take off my skirt and flop beside him in just my camisole and bikini. Sterling slips an arm under my neck, and I roll against his shoulder, finally safe in protected territory. We are quiet. I breathe the living smell of his body.

“Sterling, the Commissario is dirty.”

“All right.”

“You knew that?”

He shrugs. “What’d he do?”

“He gave himself away. In the meeting with Nicosa. He’s telling us Sofri was killed in retaliation for the mafia bozos being shot from his window. But the only way you could know that is from the ballistics report. And the ballistics report hasn’t been released. Not even internally.”

“Are you sure?”

“Inspector Martini told me. I saw her in the police station on the way out. I asked if she’d seen the ballistics report on the shootings in the Campo, and she was surprised, said nobody has, the lab is days away from even letting the detectives know the results. The only one with access to a preliminary finding is the Commissario.”

Sterling thinks about it. “He saw the report that said the shots came from Sofri’s apartment, makes a call, and sets him up for a retaliation kill. Because the Commissario is a
cominato
. A made man.”

“That’s why he won’t involve the FBI or Rome,” I say.

“He’s trying to contain it.”

“Two mafia guys are killed in his piazza. On his watch. He’s responsible. They own him. Everybody is owned by somebody around here. Half the time they themselves don’t even know who. Look at it! Giovanni’s a soldier in the bank of cocaine. Cecilia pays bribes. Everyone in this family is owned. And here I come, like you say, the Normandy invasion, waving the flag of liberation. What a joke.”

“Let’s go after the bastard,” Sterling says. “Let’s take him down.”

“With what proof? We have no evidence to tie him to the mafias.”

We stare up at the beamed ceiling.

Sterling says, “I really miss baseball. I bet it’s the All-Star Game.”

I laugh out loud and snuggle close. His fingers begin tracing circles on my back and are just finding their way under the silk strap of the camisole when my U.S. cell phone goes off. The screen says Los Angeles.

“It’s Mike Donnato.”

“What is it with that guy?” Sterling mutters.

“Mike? You’re on speaker.”

“Hi, guys. I thought you’d want to know.”

“We always want to know.” I smile over at Sterling, who rolls his eyes.

“I’ve got something on Spectra.”

“The chemical company?”

“Yes,” says Donnato. “Where Nicosa’s company has an account. I’ve been looking for a common denominator between Nicosa, sodium hydroxide, and your sister.”

“We know Cecilia’s remains aren’t in the tank of lye,” I say. “She’s been kidnapped, and we have proof of life.” I fill him in on the ransom call, and Sofri’s murder in retribution for the shootings in the piazza.

When I am finished, Donnato tells us what
he’s
got.

“Remember I said to follow the lye? I put Spectra into my computer,” he says. “I typed in ‘Spectra Chemical Company,’ and ‘under surveillance’ comes up, entered by an agent in Pittsburgh, meaning the Bureau is already onto them. I pull up what the case agent wrote. He’s been monitoring a ’Ndrangheta connection that moves cocaine concealed in bulk cargo on container ships from Colombia through Naples to Pittsburgh—then from Kentucky to Ohio and on to Chicago.”

“Is this container ship connected to anything else?”

“That’s what I’m onto,” Donnato says. “I’m going to our Field Intelligence Group and checking with other agency partners in the intelligence community.”

“Good to spread the net.”

“I’m hoping that DEA or ATF has more information on Spectra, how it connects to the drug route to Chicago, and if Nicosa is somewhere in the mix. I’ll see what I can weave together.”

By the time we hang up, Sterling has left the bed and pulled on jeans.

“Let’s go find your nephew,” he says. “I don’t like leaving an open fire unattended.”

We find Giovanni in plain sight, sitting on the steps of the Fontebranda fountain in the Oca district. Silken green and white crowned goose banners still festoon the alleyways, perennially jammed with a slow-moving river of tourists. A duo of street guitarists competes with radios and the waves of sound pouring into the heads of every teenager through an ear bud of some kind. They all have something in their mouths as well—baby pacifiers from the Palio, a cigarette, or someone else’s tongue. Giovanni is sitting thigh to thigh with a slightly older girl who sports choppy bangs and streaks of crimson in her black hair. She is inordinately thin, with a devil tattoo crawling up one leg toward the crotch of a torn miniskirt. I recognize her as the waitress from the photos taken by the detective who trailed Giovanni to her apartment.

“I want you to meet Zabrina,” Giovanni says. “She has something to say.” He nudges her.
“È giusto. Andare avanti.”

The girl raises heavy-lidded eyes. Her movements are dreamy to the point of narcolepsy. We wait until even Sterling can’t wait anymore.

“You have something to tell us, darlin’?”

“I know where Giovanni’s mother is. I saw her.”

THIRTY-FIVE

For fifty euros and a gelato she agrees to come with us, moving out of the range of eyes and ears in the Oca district, staying with the crowds, through the clogged commercial center, past McDonald’s and the post office, to the flat residential neighborhoods as they steadily grow darker, streetlights dimmer and more sparse. The closer we get to the edge of the city, the quicker we pick up the pace, Giovanni keeping up with the crutch.

Explaining that her boyfriend, Yuri, has just moved out, Zabrina nestles seductively between Giovanni and Sterling, filling out the image of the vamp she cultivates—ripped leggings under the miniskirt, big gold-tone earrings, and multiple strands of plastic beads. Her lips are matte red, her eyes rimmed with black, the pupils enlarged. She tramples along in silver heels like some kind of gypsy rock star.

Sterling steers us toward the bus station. The kiosk is closed, but one bus is lighted and idling near a concrete island, exactly where I had landed from Rome. In the distance the wine bar in the Medici fortress where Zabrina and Giovanni met is still lighted and alive. Sterling and I don’t have to speak to confirm the intuition both of us have had since leaving Oca: that we are being followed.

Sterling orders the kids to get on the bus.

Giovanni objects. “You have to buy a ticket.”

“Then buy the tickets.”

“To where?”

“Doesn’t matter where. Just do it, fast.”

And Giovanni does. When we first met, at this spot, he was late. Irresponsible, even spoiled. The difference is that at that time he had still been whole—he could take for granted his mother’s steady presence, that his parents would be the center of his world forever. Picking up his American aunt had been just one of his many important obligations, including a flurry of calls to his customers in the bank of cocaine, the moment we got into the car. He bounded like a retriever then, never out of breath. Now he is willing to take orders, careful not to twist the leg or tweak the arm as he turns from an automated ticket machine. There is no way back to being that uninjured sixteen-year-old.

“Where do we go?” Zabrina asks as we hustle up the groaning steps of the bus.

“Just for a ride,” I assure her.

“Where?”

“Monteriggioni,” Giovanni answers. “Not far.”

“Why?” she asks, showing a suspicious streak that we will have to negotiate.

“Do you have other plans?” Sterling wonders, keeping her moving toward the rear.

She blinks at him with her kohl-rimmed eyes. “What kind of plans?”

Although we are the only passengers, the four of us have squeezed into the very last row, where we can see anyone who comes on board. The doors close and the bus moves out. You can feel the heat of the engine through the seats. Already Zabrina has a crush on Sterling, and it is easy to see why. He is the type of man who looks great even in yellow LED transit lighting, while everyone else appears tubercular. At ten-thirty p.m., on a local bus to nowhere, he is alert and protective, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the darkened countryside—which must appear to a young excitable girl as sexy indifference.

Mind you, if she were an asset we were working through the Bureau, things would be entirely different. We would still be back at the field office, filling out permission forms, and no encounter would have taken place without a remote team recording every word. But here in the back of the bus, there are no rules. We can get information out of Zabrina by any means.

“Why you kidnap me? I think maybe I should be scared.”

“You are free to go, any time.”

“In the nowhere? In the night?” she says haughtily. “What is that?”

“We need for you to tell us exactly where you saw Signora Nicosa,” Sterling says nicely. “And we don’t want anyone else to hear.”

“Oh, sure.”

Giovanni assures her this is true.

“I want a cigarette.”

“You can’t smoke on the bus.”

“Who cares?”

“It will draw attention.”

She stands, swaying with the movement. “I get off.”

“Why are you such a bitch all of a sudden?” Giovanni snaps. “You’re the one who came looking for me.”

Hanging on to a strap, Zabrina bends over in pain. A tremor passes through her body.

“I am scared.” She catches her breath. “I am looking for Giovanni and everyone knows I am
—una straniera.
”

“A stranger,” Giovanni explains. “When she entered the Oca district and was asking for me, naturally people are suspicious.”

This is a surprise. “I thought
he
was looking for
you.
”

“No, no,” says Zabrina. “We don’t really know each other. I search to speak to Giovanni, to tell him where his mother is. Because I hear his name from …”

“Around,” Giovanni interjects, as if we couldn’t guess it was through other druggies in the
contrada
.

“You went looking for him?”

“That’s a dangerous game so close to Palio,” Sterling drawls. “Is why I scared.”

She fidgets with her earrings. Sterling eases her into a seat and she sits with obvious relief. But the effort to speak English is too hard, and she begs Giovanni to translate.

“I am from Calabria,” she continues emotionally in Italian. “The poorest place in Italy. It is not like the north. The countryside is not like here. There it is very rocky and hard to grow things. The mafias—Camorra and ’Ndrangheta—they are a way of life. No family is untouched, and don’t get me wrong, the women are just as bad. They will be on the cell phone warning their sons what’s going on in the village or if someone has a grudge against them—because they are proud of their sons, they help them climb the ladder. Everyone sees people murdered in the streets, even little children. You can’t get out.

“It sucks for everyone. But if you’re poor, what do you do? My mother used to sew. She made lace and towels and things like that. It brought in a little money. In Calabria, the way to make money is drugs. You sell a little, you do a little. Then you become a courier. My mother was a courier. Yes, of course I am angry. She was a middle-aged woman taking drugs into the United States. I wish she’d been caught because now she is dead—one of those murdered in the street. A guy goes by on a motorbike and
poom poom poom
, at the market, in front of everyone. There were protests at the funeral and everyone got upset. A mother! It was in the news.