Dying on the Vine

TWENTY-ONE

“HOW do you know they haven’t been missing for weeks, or months?” Gideon asked.

Rocco shook his head. “Nah. Look, the whole place was covered in dust an inch thick. All except the desk, which was squeaky clean where the stuff had been. You could see the outlines—even the mouse—just like somebody drew them right on the wood.”

“So what’s your hypothesis? Why take them?”

“Obviously, to keep something on the computer from coming out.”

“Okay, but why take the printer, the mouse?”

“Because if they’d left the printer and the mouse, we’d know right away they took the computer, wouldn’t we?”

“We do know they took the computer.”

“Yeah, but only because they forgot about—or didn’t have time to look for—the manuals.” He paused, holding up the spoon he’d been using to scoop up his beef stew. “Hey, what did I tell you: is the food here good, or what?”

They were having lunch at Il Cernacchino, an out-of-the-way eating place on an out-of-the way street a block from the Piazza Signoria, that fully lived up to Rocco’s “mom and pop” description. (“Hole-in-the-wall” would have been equally apt.) No more than fifteen feet wide and twenty feet deep, Il Cernacchino had two levels, with a window-side eating bar and stools on the ground floor along with three small tables, and another five tables squeezed together in the minuscule loft above. Behind a cafeteria-type counter at the back of the ground floor were Mom and Pop in person, smilingly ladling out soups and stews, deftly whipping up panini, and looking as if there was nothing in the world they could possibly have been happier doing.

The panino that Gideon was in the process of demolishing was indeed mouth-wateringly good, although it had taken Rocco to overcome his initial reservations. A hot chicken-liver panino? But Rocco was right; the panino con i fegatini was wonderful, a five-napkin affair, dripping with olive oil, but well worth the risks to his shirt. They each had a glass of rough, anonymous red wine as well—vino a bicchiere, €3,00—that would probably have delighted old Pietro, but would never have made it on the lunch table of today’s Villa Antica, not with Franco in charge. But for what they were eating, nothing could have suited better.

But Gideon chewed almost absentmindedly. The news about Cesare’s death was still sinking in. “Rocco, does the family know yet? I’m heading back to the villa right after lunch. Would you like me to tell them?”

“No, Tonino will do it. He’s on his way there now.”

A few more slowly masticated mouthfuls, and then Gideon asked, “Did the medico have any preliminary opinion? Accidental overdose? Suicide? Murder?”

“All he could say was there wasn’t anything to indicate violence or that anyone forced the dope into him.”

“Which doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”

“Which was what he said. What’s your take, Gid?”

“Personally? I think he was murdered, one way or another. Whatever it was he had on his computer that made someone nervous, Cesare himself had to have known about it too. So they both had to go. I don’t see that there’s much doubt about it.”

The spoon stopped on its way to Rocco’s mouth. “I’m surprised. I mean, it’s not that I don’t think you’re right—we’re looking at murder here, I can feel it in my bones—but that’s not exactly your style.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, hell, you haven’t even seen the body. Where are all the qualifiers, the tend tos, the in most cases, the—”

“I’m not speaking as a scientist here, Rocco. I’m not giving an expert opinion; I’m just giving an opinion. I’m talking to you, not to the court.”

“Fair enough, and I agree with you, but based on what, really?”

Gideon put the panino down and snatched another handful of napkins from the dispenser to wipe his fingers. “You’ve got a newly reopened murder investigation going into the deaths of two people. One day after the investigation starts—two days after the stepson brings a gazillion-dollar suit based on the murders—said stepson, who also happens to be your number-one suspect in the case—dies of an overdose. His computer and its contents are seen no more. It all has to be related, Rocco, and to suppose that his death was a mere inadvertence seems to be stretching coincidence to its limits. There must have been dozens of times in the past he could have died from an overdose—but he didn’t. Kind of provocative, wouldn’t you say, that it happens right now?”

“Well, maybe, but, you know, that suit throws a new angle into things. Maybe it’s not all related. Even if it’s a murder, it might not tie back to the old murders. Maybe it strictly has to do with the suit. A lot of people, that whole family, stand to lose a ton of money. Especially Franco. I’m not sure we’re not confusing things by balling everything up into one package.”

“I don’t agree. There wouldn’t be any suit if there hadn’t been any murders, would there? No, it’s all tied together.”

“You think Cesare had something to do with the murders?”

“Something? I do, yes.”

“I can’t see why.”

“Because of what we’ve been talking about. Because he’s dead and his computer was stolen.”

“Man, I’m trying to follow you here. Are you saying you think it was Cesare that killed them?”

“No, I’m just saying there’s a connection. Maybe he knew who did kill them. Maybe he knew something that could incriminate the killer. Maybe he did kill them. Maybe it was something else. But one way or another, it’s all tied together. They’re too close together, especially in time.”

“I don’t know. Coincidences do happen, you know. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a word for them.” He laughed, struck funny after the fact by what he’d said. “Hey, you know what Woody Allen said about time? ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.’”

Gideon smiled abstractedly, then murmured: “Within any set or set of sets, the probability that the components of a series of improbable events are unrelated is inversely correlated with the frequency of occurrence of such events.”

Rocco just looked at him for a long, penetrating five seconds before he spoke. “No shit,” he said.

Gideon burst out laughing. “I saw it written up that way in a journal once. It’s an academic-speak translation of something an old professor of mine came up with, and I quote: ‘When you got too much monkey business going on, too many unrelated things happening all over the place at the same time, to the same people, in the same context; buddy, you can bet your life there’s something funny going on and they ain’t so unrelated after all.’”

It didn’t sound as good to his ears as it did when it had been said with Abe Goldstein’s Yiddish accent, but he believed it wholeheartedly, and he had often put it to good use in his forensic work. He smiled, remembering his friend and mentor. “The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business, he called it.”

“Yeah, well, okay, maybe there’s something to that, but let’s focus on just one event for a minute. Cesare. If someone did kill him by getting an overdose into him, I can’t see how we’re ever going to prove it, even to ourselves, can you?”

“Not really.”

Rocco finished his stew, wiped his mouth, and sat contemplatively back with his wineglass. “You know, when you think about it, what do we really have in the whole damn case that’s solid? Not a whole hell of a lot. We have exactly one definite murder that we’re convinced of, and that’s Nola’s. But that’s based on your theory about the way people tend to fall off cliffs, not on anything anybody would call hard evidence.” He waited for an argument from Gideon, but got none.

“I agree with you, Rocco. Hard evidence it’s not.”

“And then there’s Cesare. We just said ourselves he’s kind of a gray area—maybe somebody killed him, maybe not. And the same goes for Pietro.”

“Rocco, Pietro was shot and thrown off a cliff.”

“Yeah, after he was dead. Weeks after, from what you said. That’s weird, but it doesn’t mean he was murdered in the first place.”

“Well, why would somebody shoot him and throw him off a cliff later on if he hadn’t been?”

“Why would someone shoot him and throw him off a cliff later on if he had been?”

Gideon laughed; Julie had said the same thing the previous night. “You’ve got a point there, Rocco. I sure don’t have an answer. It’s all pretty equivocal, isn’t it?” He carefully downed the one remaining chunk of his panino and applied some more napkins to his fingers and his chin. As far as he could tell, his shirt had made it through unspotted.

Rocco, gazing mournfully out the arched window, sighed. “Was it really only last Tuesday—ah, how fondly I remember—that I had this nice, clear murder-suicide all tied up in a neat little package with not one loose string in sight. Well done, Gardella; case closed, on to the next one. And then you come on the scene, and suddenly it’s totally screwed up. It’s all fuzzy, nothing is clear-cut, everything is as equivocal as hell.”

“I hear that a lot,” Gideon said pleasantly. “I don’t know why that is.”

Rocco’s answering grumble was unintelligible, but then he yawned and laughed. “Oh, hey, I got some of the death-scene photos from today with me. Wanna have a look at ’em before I take off?” He was unwinding the string from the little buttons of a large-sized envelope, the kind used for internal office communications.

“Why would I not?” Gideon said, reaching out his hand. “The perfect ending to a perfect meal.”

They were a dozen or so full-color shots, about five by eight. Sipping his wine, Gideon went quickly through them, moving each viewed picture to the rear of the pack as he finished with it. The body, the surroundings, looked both pathetic and squalid, as they somehow always did in crime-scene photos, even when no overt violence was involved. Maybe it was something about the cameras they used.

The last one was a slightly out-of-focus close-up of the nightstand, and on that one he paused. “I see the snuff kit,” he said, “but what’s the other stuff? Are those Kleenex?”

“Tissues, yeah. And some pens, a toenail clipper, key ring—”

“A bottle of some kind . . .” He peered at the photo. “Oh, it’s cough medicine. Giorniquilla.”

“You got good eyes. Can you actually read that?”

“No, but I saw him gulping it down it down the other day.” He shrugged and handed the wad of photos back.

Rocco seemed disappointed. “That’s it? You didn’t see anything else?”

He laughed. “I didn’t see anything, Rocco. You should be glad. I haven’t screwed up one single thing. Well, nothing that wasn’t already screwed up before.”

Rocco was grinning as he rewound the string to close the folder. “Thank God for small favors.”

• • •

WHEN Gideon arrived back at Villa Antica, he went to look for Nico and Franco (Luca was at his class) to express his condolences. He found them with Quadrelli in the rear of the garden in the shade of the cypresses at the base of the ancient wall, where they’d pulled together a few of the folding lawn chairs that were scattered about, and they half-heartedly welcomed him to join them.

“Only for a minute,” he said, remaining standing.

They didn’t seem to be in need of much in the way of consoling, but when they learned he’d just come from talking to Rocco, they made him sit down and pumped him with questions. Gideon answered them as well as he could, keeping to Rocco’s suggestion that he be honest with them . . . but not to the extent of raising the possibility that he’d been murdered. He didn’t, and neither did they.

“So terrible about the poor boy,” said Quadrelli after Gideon ran out of information.

“Terrible,” Franco agreed. “A wasted life. It could have been so different.”

Their remarks notwithstanding, they both seemed distinctly undisturbed by the event, even complacent. It didn’t surprise Gideon. Not only had no love been lost there, but with Cesare dead and gone, the suit that was hanging over their heads was dead and gone too. Who else was there to challenge the will? As far as they were concerned, there was no downside to Cesare’s death; it was all upside.

These were ungenerous thoughts to have about these people, his friends, on whose freely given hospitality he was currently living. But there was no getting around it.

Only Nico, sitting there shaking his head, showed anything close to emotion. “I did my best to turn him around. I never stopped trying. It wasn’t enough.”

“We know you did,” Franco said. “No one could have tried harder. But when it came to Cesare . . .” He finished with one of those says-it-all Italianate shrugs: Even with the best of intentions not every problem can be solved; life is what it is; what can one do?; one can only try; it was bound from the beginning to end this way.

Quadrelli nodded gravely “Ad incunabulum,” he observed.

Gideon suspected he was trying for ab incunabulis. From the cradle. His Latin was as shaky as his English.

“The thing is, you know,” Nico said, “he was just here, right in the conference room, talking to us, a couple of days ago. It’s hard to believe he can be dead.”

How many times had Gideon heard similar thoughts expressed? But he was alive only yesterday; how can he be dead today? As if death was a gradual phenomenon. It wasn’t. Half-dead was a figure of speech, no more. Death itself—not the illness or infirmity that might precede it—was an instantaneous phenomenon. The light was on; the light went off. The brain was getting blood from the heart; the brain wasn’t getting blood from the heart. The end.

“Talking to us,” Franco said with a snort. “That was some talk.”

“At least he was honest,” Nico said, but with little conviction.

• • •

A little later, during the predinner wine and apéritif hour on the terrace, Gideon joined Julie, John, and Marti. There, over a glass of 2004 Villa Antica Cabernet he sat for half an hour for more questions, many hypotheses, and no answers.