White Shotgun

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.”

We arrive at San Piero as the feed store is closing. The entire town is closed for dinner and will reopen around eight p.m. The manager says Falassi left a few minutes ago, but we can catch him on the road, pointing the opposite way from which we have come. The chemical delivery man does not seem in a hurry to get home for that roast lamb dinner.

We jump back in the car and Sterling jams it. After several tense, silent minutes of wondering if we are in fact going in the right direction, we sight the silver Spectra van and slow down to tourist speed, keeping a distance. He continues for several kilometers and then turns off to the right.

We slide past and pull over. Sterling checks the GPS.

“Where does that road go?” I ask.

“Looks like it ends in the middle of a damn forest.”

We swing around and make the turn onto a short dirt spur — bumpy but passable. We take it slowly, stopping at an iron gate about a hundred meters in. It’s chain-locked to vehicles, but obviously the van has just passed through. There is no other way out and the tread marks are fresh. We leave our car and hop over the gate. It is late in the day. Steamy afternoon sun languishes in the high grass and dusty pines. Not a motor, not a chirp, only ambient leafy rustling. We are definitely in the middle of a damn forest.

The road is old, maybe thousands of years old, worn into the landscape. The light beneath the canopy of needle clusters is wavering and soft. We trek along easily on well-used tracks. Between the tracks, tufts of lavender and daisies run wild. The air becomes lighter and perfumed — the trees break and we find ourselves in an enchanted valley, the kind of spot that calls out for habitation, with its own human-friendly microclimate sheltered by the hills. There is a long-neglected olive grove and the remains of a stream. A meadow of irises where two pure white Tuscan Chianina cows and a tawny calf are grazing.

The road takes a turn, past four worn gravestones, and goes downhill. The grassy median that grew between the tire tracks in the sun disappears as we enter thick oak woods. As in a fairy tale, the signs are warning us that we have crossed into an unfavorable realm. The foliage has grown spikes — juniper, gorse, and forbidding nettles. The air has cooled; motionless and buzzing with gnats. The tire tracks continue around what seems to be a hillock, but on second look we see that it’s an old stone wall splattered with mustard-colored fungus and buried under eons of dead foliage.

“You know what this is?” Sterling says. “It’s an ancient mill.”

“Where?”

“There’s the embankment. There’s the dry streambed. Lord, that must be the millstone,” he says of a round flint-colored boulder. “This is incredibly old.” Sterling wipes the sweat above his lips with a bandanna.

“There’s the van.”

Spots of red and silver are shining through the brush. We climb across the streambed, cracking dead branches like rifle shots.

“He’ll hear us.”

“Better that he does,” Sterling says.

We come to an old Tuscan-style house. The Spectra van is parked nearby. The house is nothing but a shell; a while ago there was a serious fire. The roof is half caved in and the wooden supports all charred. A caper bush has taken root in the walls and pried out the stones.

Sterling calls, “Signore Falassi?”

No answer. We walk to the other side of the ruins. A black and white Australian sheepdog trots around the corner and regards us with curious brown eyes. Sterling pets him and talks to him, and he follows us willingly, past a table and chair, a cache of gallon water bottles, burned tin cans, a tank of gas.

“There’s your sodium hydroxide.” Sterling points to bags of pellets like the ones we saw stacked in Aleandro’s basement, piled against a prefab shack.

There is another structure, a small wooden water tower on stilts. I climb a walkway to a platform built around it. Meanwhile Sterling has found a chest containing goggles and gloves. He has noticed a hose leading from the gas tank to a circle of jets beneath the tower. Sticking his head under, he sees that the bottom is made of firebrick.

“Looks like they fire this thing up.”

“Why would they?”

Now I’m on the platform, maybe ten feet off the ground. The dog is right behind me, nose in my butt. I find a tarp secured over the top of the tank with grommets. Just like your backyard hot tub. I open it and look inside. The wooden tower is lined with a steel vat that holds hundreds of gallons of sickly pink sludge, a living thing, a bubbling mix of water and lye that seems to have the power to suck you in. The chemical reaction caused by the jets below still radiates venomous heat, released when the top was lifted. There are teeth and a fragment of vertebrae floating in the strawberry-colored stew.

“What’s the matter?” Sterling calls.

“Look at this.”

Sterling lopes up the walkway and glances into the tank. Beside us the dog is barking frantically — not taking a breath — the same message over and over.

“That’s our guy,” I say.

“I’ll talk to him,” says Sterling, slowly making his way back down.

A stocky laborer wearing a filthy jumpsuit has stepped out of the woods. He has dark curly hair and a round, sooty face.

“Non muovere! Chi cazzo sono?” he shouts.

Sterling stops and speaks calmly in Italian.

“We are very sorry for the intrusion. We mean no harm.”

The man raises a.45-caliber handgun and aims at Sterling’s chest, continuing to yell that we have invaded his place.

“Tell him we got lost,” I say. “We’re American tourists—”

Sterling does. Falassi continues to rant. His face is red with sweat and fear. Sterling has been caught in the middle of the site with no options. An iron pry bar rests up against the shack, way out of reach.

“This is a suckface situation in hell,” Sterling says.

Right next to me the dog is barking incessantly.

Falassi raises the gun with both hands and sights it.

I scoop up the dog under the belly and hold him over the tank.

“Tell him I’ll kill his fucking dog.”

The dog weighs fifty pounds and is struggling with all his might.

“Put the gun down or we’ll dump your dog,” Sterling shouts in Italian. “We’ll throw him in! We’ll do it, I promise you!”

The dog is whipping back and forth, all four legs cycling in midair. His body is warm, and I smell pine in his fur. I brace my back, but my fingers are slipping. He’s strong, he’s desperate, he licks my face, saying all he wants to do is to be let go. Another second and he’ll worm out of my arms.

“Put the gun down!”

Falassi stares in disbelief, and then his peasant face goes dumb and grief-stricken.

“No!” he cries. “Non farlo!” Don’t do it!

I grit my teeth, muscles aching, continuing to hold the squirming animal over the poisonous sludge.

“How long will it take for his body to dissolve? Ever do it while they’re still alive? Put down the gun or the dog goes now!”

Falassi cries, “Arete!” and tosses the gun, sobbing, “Per favore!”

Sterling picks up the weapon.

“Good choice. Nobody gets hurt.”

I put the dog down on the platform. Sterling tosses the gun into the tank, where it sinks with a caustic hiss. My legs are trembling.

“We are tourists,” Sterling repeats as I climb off and we back away. “We made a mistake. And now we are going back to America. We are leaving.”

Our goal is to get out of there with no further violence and no reason for pursuit. We keep murmuring how sorry we are as we slip past Falassi, who has become a tearful penitent, down on his knees in the resinous dust, begging the dog to come. Unfortunately, the dog wants to go with us. We have to speak harshly to him, and throw sticks, until he finally turns back.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“It isn’t her,” Sterling keeps saying.

We run all the way back to the car, through the oak forest and past the meadow. Sterling’s shirt is soaked, but he is scarcely breathing hard. I am out of shape and tasting the exertion. When we finally stop, my whole body begins to quiver. I have to lean against the iron gate and force down the revulsion.

“How do you know it isn’t her?”

“Those bones looked real old,” he says.

“You don’t know that! You don’t know if they’re human, or what human bones even look like when they’ve been in acid for who knows how long, and neither do I.”

“I’ve seen it before,” Sterling says somberly. “In mass graves in Rwanda.”

“There’s no comparison!”

“I know how you feel,” he continues gently. “She’s your sister.”

“Don’t be so condescending.”

“What in hell are you talkin’ about?”

Sterling takes a long look back down the empty road. I hear a sound like steel ball bearings rolling over each other and realize he is grinding his teeth.

“What if Falassi didn’t buy our story?” I snap.

He starts shouting. “First of all, shut the fuck up! If it’s all too much, go sit in the car.”

He looks like a madman. The dirty bandanna, the sweat, the bristled jaw working, the bright eyes darting. He looks like a man who has in fact just parachuted in from a slaughter. But then it passes. I force myself to look at the treetops until my tears of shock and nausea are gone.

“Here’s what we know,” I say carefully. “The ruins in the forest are a crime scene. Whether it’s her or not”—I can’t say Cecilia—“the remains could provide evidence against the mob. We have to secure it. We have to take Falassi into custody. He is a witness and a potential informant. In the U.S., federal agents would be all over this within the hour. But here — who do we reach out to?”

Sterling wipes a palm across his forehead. He is past the episode. He does not apologize, which is not in his nature, either. Maybe he has not been aware of where he is or what he said. A few years ago I was involved in a shooting incident in Los Angeles. Afterward, I was told about things I had done of which I had no memory.

“Who does the crime scene belong to, legally?” he asks. “The tank, all of it?”

“The Italian authorities.”

“Do we trust them?”

“No.”

“What about the Americans?”

“You mean the FBI? I don’t trust Rizzio, either. But it’s my duty,” I say, kicking at the dust. “I have to tell him what we found. Then it’s his call to involve the Italians.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know how much independence he has over here. If he’s supposed to call headquarters before he takes a piss, it could be days.”

Sterling takes out his cell phone. “I’ll handle it.”

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Chris.”

The plan is for Sterling and Chris to stake out the witness, Falassi. They will secrete themselves at the mouth of the dirt road and follow him. According to the GPS, it is the only way out of the site. The long evening passes slowly, and there is no sign of Falassi. Chris arrives after dark with a trunk piled with sniper rifles, automatic weapons, and camouflage gear. In a country that bans guns, someone had to commit a crime in order to import all that firepower — hide it in a shipment or pay off a customs official.

“Do those weapons belong to Oryx?”

“Of course not. I tripped over ’em, taking out the trash.”

I leave the surveillance to them and drive back to the abbey, where the embassy switchboard is able to put the call through to Dennis Rizzio at home. As expected, he says that with no jurisdiction, we are bound to turn the crime scene over to the provincial police. It is their responsibility to link the forensic evidence from the vat with the “disappeared.” I explain to Rizzio that since the Commissario has already suppressed evidence during the attack on Giovanni, he might not be the best person to handle this important evidence.

“I’m in contact with the director of the crime lab in Rome. I’ll make sure this stays on track,” Dennis assures me.

Not at all assured, I leave a voice message for Mike Donnato at the Los Angeles field office.

I am not surprised that Sterling and Chris have not returned by morning. Waiting until the Italian police show up to arrest Falassi could easily take all day. From the mirrored armoire in the sweet-pea bedroom I remove Cecilia’s wrap skirt (“When it is this hot, the only thing to wear is linen”), holding it in my hands for a long time, studying the minute stitches along the hem, the hand-sewn buttonholes where the ties pass through, the weave of the oatmeal fabric.

The small arched window is filled with the light of daybreak. I stand there in my underwear and contemplate the vast breathing of everything outside that is alive, while, at the same time, aware of a chill penetrating the soles of my feet from the enduring cold of the inert clay tiles. In some deep place, I have begun to say my good-byes to Cecilia.

I had hoped, when this case began, to find what had been missing from my childhood in the insipid suburbs of Southern California, dominated by a grandfather too angry and narcissistic to even see me, except as an object of scorn. Even so, Cecilia was an unexpected discovery — driven, vibrant, brave, skilled at her profession, a little bit crazy — but fun. The rare kind of person who picks up the burdens; suddenly you don’t have to carry responsibility for everything.

Maybe losing her before loving her is a blessing. Like a caustic substance, the kidnap case has seared those nerve endings away. I reflect on how much easier it is to play the role of law enforcer than that of sister. I don’t know when the pain will start kicking in, but I’m certain Cecilia’s loss will leave nothing of this venture into family; the tentative bonds with Giovanni, and certainly with Nicosa, will dissolve as inevitably as those fragments of life melting in a vat of acid.

As promised, Cecilia’s skirt is cool and light. I wish my guilt in wearing it could be as weightless. Giovanni, eating breakfast in the kitchen, says Nicosa is working in his office.

“Where’s his office?”

“In the tower. Top floor.”

I was not even aware that the twelve-sided bell tower was used for living space. While a five-year-old could pick the lock on the main quarters, no high-tech toy has been unexploited to protect Nicosa’s solitude. Entry is gained with fingerprint recognition or a special bypass code that appears on a screen when you identify yourself through the intercom. A second code is required to pass through the vestibule air lock, where cameras and motion sensors watch every move. An automated voice says in Italian that you have thirty seconds to step inside the glass elevator or an alarm will sound.

As you ascend, you are stunned to realize that you are passing through a vertical museum of Renaissance and prehistoric art. Inside the romantic tower is a secret, world-class private collection. Nicosa has created six stories of gallery space filled with artifacts, statuary, and paintings. There is one whole room of thirteenth-century Sienese Madonnas with gold-leaf haloes — all exactly alike, with the same swanlike faces and slanted eyes — and a steel vault that holds who knows what other priceless treasures.

When the elevator doors open at the top, you stumble into a circular space enclosed by twelve arched windows — three hundred and sixty degrees of mountains and sky. Looking out, you can see nothing in any direction but green fields, slanting olive groves, rustic stone houses, and cypress trees. Towns like balls of dust caught in the spires of distant hills.

Nicosa’s desk is a curving command center of burnished cherry-wood and chrome. There is a seating area of black leather couches, and, of course, a full kitchen, featuring a sleek top-of-the-line Nicosa Family espresso machine. With all those spouts and armatures, it looks like a robot from Mars, and probably costs as much as I make in a month. The refrigerator is stocked. Once you’re up here with the falcons, why leave?

“I can see why you’re not in the market for a new security system.”

“Now you understand.”

The coffee king sets down two small white cups, just as they should be, in their saucers, accompanied by a lemon twist. He is wearing jeans, sandals, and a short-sleeved sport shirt, but he hasn’t shaved. The room is tempered by constant breezes crisscrossing between the windows with the hot breath of baked clay and pine.

“There is something you need to know,” I tell him. “It may concern Cecilia.”

“What is it?”

He sits on a curved leather chair that is as thin as a corn chip. His dark eyes are rheumy and distrustful. I wonder if seeing me in Cecilia’s clothes is upsetting to him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yesterday I was near Monte San Stefano with my friend, Sterling. We went down a road and found the ruins of an old mill. He’s there now, guarding the site.”

“That’s a very old mill,” Nicosa says.

“You know it?”

He nods. “The original foundation goes back to the Etruscan era. I have a clay pot from there.”

“A man named Marcello Falassi has a place in the ruins. He’s a deliveryman for the Spectra Chemical Company. We saw his van. He confronted us, and he was aggressive, but we were able to leave without incident. While we were there, we found a vat filled with lye. In the lye there were fragments of bones, possibly human. The provincial police are on the way.”

“How do you know they were human? That’s often the way farmers dispose of dead animals.”

“It’s also how the mafias dispose of victims.”

Nicosa starts laughing.

“I didn’t want to believe it, either,” I add quickly. “And maybe it’s not Cecilia; it could be another one of the disappeared—”

“Of course it isn’t her!”

He stands up and his arms fly out in exasperation, and I think maybe he’ll turn into a raven and fly out the tower window.

“Why come here and give me a heart attack?”

“Because you’re her husband. You should know before the police get there.”

Nicosa blows air through his teeth like the steam from the coffee-maker.

“Be calm.”

“I am calm,” Nicosa says, clenching his fists.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Madonna! You will never understand Italy. They want my money. They take my wife because they want my money! They don’t want to kill her; they want to make an exchange. This country is sick. We are on the downturn and people are desperate. They take the money and give her back. Why? So they can kidnap her again! Because now they know you’ll pay. You don’t think it happens?”

Nicosa is on his feet, gesticulating against the sky, a grand performance — whether to convince himself or me, I can’t tell.

“I’m afraid they didn’t want Cecilia. I’m afraid they took the wrong person.”

“What wrong person?”

“Do Cecilia and I look alike?”

“There is a definite resemblance.”

“They wanted me, but they took Cecilia.”

“What is this?” Nicosa’s face squinches up with distaste. “They don’t want my wife? They want an American?”

I tell him about the attack in London. That I witnessed a mob reprisal shooting outside a restaurant in South Kensington, that the killers got away with my picture on their cell phone, and that the word went out to the terrorist networks. Someone in Siena thought he saw me, so they sent in their crack team of knuckleheads. Being knuckleheads from the south, they didn’t recognize the biggest socialite in the north, Cecilia Nicosa, but the woman in church looked enough like the blurry image on the cell phone that they snatched her instead.

Nicosa isn’t laughing now. He already sees the end of it. Or maybe my bleak expression worries him, because he folds back onto the leather chair and stares with mouth slack.

“But once they realize they have the wrong person — her instead of you — they’ll still want ransom,” he says weakly. “Why not? These people aren’t stupid.”

“Nicoli,” I say gently, “are you aware that your wife has been paying pizzo?”

“Why would she do that?”

“To keep her clinics open.”

“It doesn’t make sense. If she’s paying bribes, they would leave her alone.”

I wait. “But you know she’s been paying, don’t you?”

“It’s one of those things,” he says finally. “Like a love affair. You wonder. You suspect. Words do not need to be said because they won’t change the outcome.”

“She takes a terrible risk by dealing with a criminal network.”

“She is an independent woman. I can’t speak for her.”

“What about you? What is your involvement?”

“I pay pizzo, too.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Anything you can tell me will be in confidence. I’m only interested in getting Cecilia back.”

“I have nothing to tell you. The question is, will they still ask for ransom money?”

“It depends on their motivation. If they are out for money, yes. If it was their intention to kidnap an FBI agent, and they wound up with a do-gooding socialite … If they haven’t already, they may just kill her.”

My head is splitting. Vertigo from the sweeping view is getting to me, yet I can’t help glancing out the tower openings, the way you’re compelled to look at exactly what you do not want to see. The highway accident. The dead mouse in the shower.

He sees me looking unhappily out the window. “What is it?”

“The police.”

Far away in the storybook countryside a white car with official markings can be seen gathering steam as it navigates the curving road leading up to the abbey.

“Why are they coming here?”

“They must have already been to the crime scene. I told the FBI legat in Rome about the remains. It was his obligation to inform the Italian police.”

Nicosa stares wordlessly at the approaching unit.

“Do you want me to bring them up here?”

He snaps out of it. “Absolutely not!”

We take the elevator down.

When the police car slips into the courtyard of the abbey, Nicosa and I are already waiting on the front steps, side by side. I am dry-eyed but can’t help fearing we are now into a murder investigation. Cecilia’s skirt flutters around my knees. If Nicosa finds it at all painful to discover his wife’s sister in her place beside him, he gives no sign. He has his game face on.

The driver gets out and opens the back door. The Commissario emerges. I had not expected he would show up himself, and from the curses streaming under Nicosa’s breath, neither had he.

The chief of police draws his elongated body out of the car and squares off against the opposition. He is wearing a funereal black suit and tie, putting Nicosa at a disadvantage, unshaven and in jeans. On the other hand, this is Nicosa’s territory; his castle. The Commissario slips on sunglasses with a self-conscious flourish, peering around at the ruins of the thirteenth-century church and the stone façade of the family quarters. I find myself on Nicosa’s side, hoping the grandeur of the abbey reminds the Commissario that he is nothing but a public servant; a commoner.

He comes toward us with that uneven stride. The two shake hands and greet each other formally. The meeting takes place at the wooden table beneath the loggia where I first saw Nicosa the day I arrived. I remember my nerves being on edge in anticipation of meeting Cecilia, and her husband’s cool, impeccable sexuality. Now she has vanished, and he looks like a guilty man on the run; sleepless and defensive. The two men take wicker chairs. The accompanying officer waits by the car. I am dispatched to fetch water.

When I return with a bottle and glasses, the conversation is about Il Palio — polite enough, since both Torre and Oca were among the losers. By now I have picked up enough Italian to understand they agree that the judges were suckers of dicks. But when they turn to the business at hand, I request that they continue in English.

The Commissario looks at me with flat brown eyes.

“Your representative from the FBI, Signore Rizzio, was kind enough to call my office and share information about the discovery of remains near Monte San Stefano. We appreciate the cooperation of the Americans.”

“Have you recovered the evidence?” I ask.

“Our team has just arrived.”

“Are they human remains?”

“It’s possible, but we won’t know for certain until the lab report.”

“Do we know how many bodies might have been dumped?”

“We will inform your office in Rome as soon as we have results.”

“Thank you. As Inspector Martini explained, I am extremely concerned about my sister.”

“I gave you my word that her case has the highest priority, which is one of the reasons I am here.”

The Commissario turns to Nicosa. His moves are unhurried, forcing us to wait for his consideration. I can’t believe Nicosa knows about Cecilia’s affair with this charming operator. If so, there is no way he could remain civil.

“I am sorry that we need to discuss this,” the Commissario says.

“Why? It is a gruesome thing, but it does not concern me.”

“We believe otherwise.”

“Really?”

“Perhaps. Would Signorina Grey mind describing the man who attacked her and her companion in the woods?”

“His name is Marcello Falassi, and he drives a van for the Spectra Chemical Company.”

“A physical description, please?”

“Mid-forties, overweight, black hair, sloppy—”

The Commissario looks puzzled. “Sciatto,” Nicosa translates.

“Low intelligence, probably psychopathic, lives with his wife and mother but his only attachment seems to be to a dog. A loyal soldier.”

The Commissario nods. “We have been looking for this man. He is known as the Chef, Il Capocuòco, a notorious criminal hired by the mafias to dispose of their victims. Congratulations, Signorina Grey. You have made an important discovery that will lead to many convictions.” He addresses Nicosa. “Is this someone you know?”

“No, I don’t know him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why? Are you saying this thug took Cecilia?”

“I am curious, because Falassi is also the local distributor for Spectra, the manufacturer of fertilizer and industrial chemicals, which services most customers in the province, including you.”

“For what?”

The Commissario swallows water and takes his time.

“Landscaping? Gardening? Processing coffee? Do you or your company buy chemicals from Spectra?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to ask my production manager.”

“Let me save you the trouble. We have already checked. The Nicosa Family company has an account with Spectra on average of two to three hundred euros per month.”

“All right, then I guess we do.”

“But you don’t know? That is a significant amount of money.”

“Not for us. I don’t keep track of every supplier.”

“And you’ve never met this man, Falassi?”

Nicosa rubs his temples. The darkness beneath his eyes grows deeper.

“What are you telling me? This driver comes here and sees my wife? Is he some maniac who is obsessed with women?”

The Commissario folds his hands. He wears a gold ring made from a Roman coin.

“How has your marriage been recently?”

“Fine.”

“Have you and your wife been fighting?”

“Why is that your business?”

The Commissario answers Nicosa with blank button eyes:

“Did you kill her?”

Nicosa returns the look with equanimity. “You are crazy.”

“Did you get Falassi to dispose of the body? In the acid bath in the woods?”

Inch by inch, Nicosa’s face goes scarlet.

I touch his wrist. “He’s trying to provoke you.”

He’s trying to bury you.

Like any good cop, the Commissario waits patiently. For a moment, they stare each other down.

Nicosa breaks free of my touch and waves the chief off.

“Talk to my lawyers.”

The Commissario gets up from the table. Ignoring his host, he turns to me.

“It is a pleasure, signorina.” He shakes my hand with cold, bony fingers. “Call my office anytime.”

Taking long halting steps, he walks toward the car. The driver comes to attention and opens the door.

Donnato asks if there is a common denominator.

I am speaking to him in Los Angeles from my hideout in the far corner of the pool. Pine boughs sway above me, while he’s looking out at a view of the bland cityscape that might as well be a painted backdrop; it never moves, never changes, only smolders.

“Common denominator between what?”

“Just doodling,” he says. “Staring at the old yellow pad.”

“What does the yellow pad say?”

“It says coffee — vat — sister. I’ve been thinking about what you’re telling me. The vat of lye. Human remains. We’re looking for your sister. She could be in there. She could not. It could be someone else they murdered. The Commissario makes a visit. Lays down the gauntlet to the coffee king. Nicosa is behaving — how?”

“Angry. Evasive.”

“Evasive,” echoes Donnato. I imagine him nodding, tasseled loafers up on the desk, toes ticking back and forth. “We ask, what is Nicosa hiding? Where is the mafia drug connection Rizzio keeps talking about?”

“I don’t know, but the Commissario is trying to connect him to the chemical company that makes sodium hydroxide. It’s called Spectra.”

“Is lye used in manufacturing coffee?”

“Nicosa says no. But he does buy other stuff from Spectra.”

“Is this Mr. Commissario actually trying to make the case that Nicosa adds sodium hydroxide to his regular order, and keeps it in the middle of a forest, on the off chance he might need it to get rid of his wife?”

“They’re blood enemies. The Commissario is looking to destroy him. But Nicosa did know about the crime scene. He knows more than he’s letting on,” I say, feeling a flicker of excitement. “He knew it was the site of an ancient Etruscan mill.”

“Twenty-five years in the FBI tells me your sister’s disappearance has nothing to do with some ancient-ass old mill,” Donnato says. “We have to take this in another direction.”

“Where?”

“Follow the trail of the lye.”

I can’t bring myself to admit to him that’s what Sterling said from the beginning.