Jeff Carson - Foreign Deceit

They spent the next twenty minutes going through the written report sentence by sentence. It was mundane, and it was biased. Biased, Wolf thought, because it was written from the point of view of a group of cops called in to investigate a suicide of an unknown foreigner.

The report was written with conviction and little skepticism to the cause of death. An American was found on the ground, strangled by hanging. The superintendent had called it in on Sunday at the advice of the woman who lived above him, who was concerned.

She was self-described as dating the man, and was concerned he didn’t return her calls or show up for a date on Saturday night. She reported hearing a crash on Friday night, which was most likely the chandelier dropping to the floor. She then knocked and tried to enter the apartment, there was no answer and it was locked from the inside. This, coupled with observations by the coroner on scene, determined time of death to be early Saturday morning around one o’clock. The woman didn’t report hearing or seeing anyone else in the apartment with him that early morning. Drugs were found on the scene, and close examination of the nostrils indicated drugs were used by the victim.

And that was that.

Nothing jumped out at Wolf as any different from what he had heard from Rossi, Lia, the superintendent, or Cristina.

Wolf spent another ten minutes clarifying the wording Lia used, not wanting anything lost in translation. The clarification process didn’t tell him anything. Nonetheless, something was nagging at his subconscious mind. A subliminal whisper was telling him he was missing something.

Lia looked at her watch and got up.

“We have to go. Marino awaits.”

They went out to the street and got in the Alfa Romeo.

“I’ll need to be in on that conversation,” he looked at his watch. Two o’clock. “I’m at the end of my rope.”

Marino’s office was bright and hot. He sat in his leather throne, shouting loudly, with a roiling mass of cigarette smoke engulfing his shadowed form. The humid stench of sweat and tobacco was itchy to Wolf’s skin and throat.

Marino twisted in his chair, raised an eyebrow and a finger, motioned to the two chairs against the wall, then finished his conversation. He gently lowered the phone and dropped it from his fingers in place for the last inch. Sighing, he sat rocking back deeply in his chair.

“Mr. Wolf, officer Parente,” he said, extinguishing his cigarette. Almost. It sat smoldering in a wobbling stream. “I am sorry to hear about all of the developments of your brother’s case Mr. Wolf.”

He tented his fingers against the bottom of his nose. “I was shocked to say the least. I,” he said, “I do not know how to, uh…what to say. I know it must be difficult to hear these things about your brother. Especially being a police officer yourself.” He gestured to Wolf.

Wolf shifted forward, tilting his head, and took a breath to speak.

“But I don’t like what you did this morning, Officer Wolf.” Marino’s voice raised in volume. “You put one of my best policemen in a a bad situation. He trusted you.” He stood up and walked halfway around his desk, sitting one buttock on top.

“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir.”

“You don’t?” Marino folded his hands on his leg and stared motionless for five seconds.

Wolf waited again.

Marino glanced sideways at Lia, then back to Wolf.

“We’ve had some interesting developments in the last couple hours. We almost had all of north Italia going on a wild…turkey chase looking for this white truck of yours. A hunch from an American…consulente.”

“That wasn’t a hunch, I saw-”

“We found the truck,” he spoke loudly, holding up his index finger again. “Without having to call a national search, Officer Wolf. National search orders have to come from me.” He pecked his chest with his finger. “So officer Rossi took every action he could to keep me out of this cowboy show. I am in debt to him for that. And do you know why that eez Officer Wolf?”

Sergeant . “No.”

“They stopped the truck in question at the Trieste border within the last hour.” He held up a piece of paper between his thumb and index finger. “The truck was searched thoroughly, by human and by dog — much like many of the shipments that go through that border. There was nothing but the parts listed on the manifest prepared by the employee my officers harassed this morning at the Osservatorio di Merate!” His face flashed to a bright crimson, veins bulged in his temples.

“It was the wrong truck then,” Wolf said. “I know what I saw, and I saw a truck loaded with cocaine and stolen electronics.”

Marino began to chuckle, yanked a cigarette from the pack sitting on the desk, lit it, and dismounted in a high handed pirouette.

“Ah, yes! The brilliant piece of detective work you did last night! I hear you broke into the observatory grounds and saw some interesting things!”

“Yeah. I did see some interesting things.”

“Did you? Well, let me tell you a few interesting things. You were trespassing. Trespassing illegally in a foreign country. As my guest in our country,” he gestured wide with his arms, “you cannot come strutting into Italy on your horse and play cowboy, doing as you please. If you would have been caught, you would be in jail right now and there would be nothing I could do to get you out.”

“If I would have been caught I’d be dead like my brother right now. Because I was shot at! How are you turning a blind eye to this? You’ve got a pub fronting as a legitimate business, going around murdering people, smuggling stolen electronics and drugs! If you don’t care about that, then what the hell do you care about?”

Marino snapped his head to Wolf and let the silence hang for a beat.

“Don’t test me Officer Wolf. I am warning you.” Marino looked at the door, and back to Wolf for effect.

Wolf calmed himself with a deep breath. “I know what I did was out of line, and I could have put you in a very compromising position. But I haven’t tried to make you or your department look bad on purpose. I was acting on a hunch. A hunch I should have talked to you guys about first, I admit,” he said. “But I swear I saw what I saw.”

“And I will take your observations under consideration and proceed accordingly in due time, Officer Wolf. Just because you have a flight to catch back home doesn’t mean we can cut corners and ignore laws in this country. There is no evidence to go on here. Nothing! So, you are going to have to make a decision right now, Officer Wolf. You have to trust me, and trust officer Rossi, and trust officer Parente here, and the rest of our very capable Caribinieri to follow up with this case in due time, the proper way.”

Wolf exhaled hard and leaned his elbows on his knees.

Marino’s expression melted to sympathy, and he flopped down in the chair with a grunt. “Look at this from my point of view. I have hard, undeniable evidence that a man used a pipe to beat another man’s skull in, killing him in cold rage. I have fingerprints, usable fingerprints, in blood , on the weapon. I have evidence that both men were taking drugs. We all know what drugs can do to human beings. It can bring out otherwise hidden rages in a person.

“I have evidence that a man hung himself from his ceiling. I have evidence he died of strangulation. Putting those two pieces of evidence together tells me that I have evidence this man killed himself. There was no one else in the apartment at the time. We have a testimony from the upstairs neighbor that she did not hear anything at all. If there were men inside, she would have heard, would she not? The door to your brother’s apartment was locked from the inside, keys still in the door. All of the evidence points to no one being in the apartment that night.