April Smith - White Shotgun

When the bar is littered with empty shot glasses and drained pints, a text comes in on my cell with a link to photographs. The source is Proibito. Untraceable. The photographs show Falassi’s dump site, where we discovered the vat of lye. Instead of an orderly crime scene, marked with tape, tents set up to protect the evidence, and someone standing guard, everything has been torched. Nothing is left of the water tower, the shack, and the half-burned house but piles of charred timber and curled metal. A deliberately set circle of fire has reduced every bit of organic matter to charcoal.

The human remains are lost, never to be identified. Whatever evidence the Chef might have left that could lead to his bosses — records of payment, bank statements or weapons — is gone. Every trace of Falassi’s crimes has been systematically eradicated.

Chris, Sterling, and I huddle around the tiny screen.

“Who did this? The police or the mafias?” “Flip a coin.”

“How long ago?”

“Hard to tell. We could go down there …” “Something still might be recoverable.” “I’m gonna bet,” Sterling says, “that no bone fragments, nothing from the vat, ever made it to the lab in Rome. The story that it was animal remains is a flat-out lie.” Chris leans on the bar. “Whoever did this had knowledge, access, and means. So did whoever sent Ana the pictures. Who do you think that could be?” I have been balancing the cell phone in my palm as if the weight of it could give me the answer. “Let me take a shot.” I punch in a number. Inspector Martini answers. Her voice is noncommittal.

“Are you at work?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Just wanted you to know I’m going home soon.” “Oh,” she says. “That’s too bad. I hope you enjoyed your time in Italy.” “It’s hard to leave such a beautiful country. But luckily I have pictures to remind me.” “I’m glad you will go with good memories,” she replies. “Thanks for all your help. Kisses to your daughter.” “Prègo.”

The two men are watching as I click off the phone.

“It was her. Martini sent the photos. She must have been at the site with the police when they ‘found out’ it was torched.” Chris and Sterling nod, not at all surprised.

“I knew the Commissario was dirty,” I say. “Now he’s succeeded in obliterating the entire investigation. Not only has he wiped out the evidence, but also he’s got Falassi, the only witness, and he could be dead by now, who knows?” “He doesn’t have Falassi, love,” says Chris. “We do.” • •

Instead of heading through the gates of the abbey, we continue a hundred yards up the road and turn into Aleandro and Antonella’s driveway.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

“The witness is inside,” Sterling says.

“Falassi?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The whole time? After you told me he was taken into custody by the provincial police?” “Yup.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” “You had no need to know.” “No need to know?”

I stifle the exasperation as Sterling removes three handguns from the trunk of Chris’s Fiat and hands one to me. We go up to the front door of the red-tile-roofed house. It is late and we awaken Aleandro, who appears wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. They exchange words in Italian, and we go down to the basement.

The room has a shiny new deadlock. Aleandro opens the door and turns on the light. We enter with weapons drawn. Inside it is stifling. There are no windows and nothing in the room but the canister where the olive oil is stored, a chair, and a cot, where Marcello Falassi is sleeping naked.

He does not offer any resistance.

“Che ora è?” he asks.

Aleandro tells him it is time. When he puts on jeans and a maroon rayon shirt, he no longer looks like a brute who drives a truck and disposes of bodies, who turns his house into a toxic dump where his wife and mother limp around in the chemical waste of his crimes. All cleaned up — shaved, hair cut short — he looks like a witness, and that is what he will be.

When we had returned to Siena after discovering the vat of lye, between the time I made contact with Dennis Rizzio and when he notified the provincial police, Sterling and Chris had gone back to the campsite to stake out Falassi. Not trusting anyone, even me, they had taken Falassi prisoner for his own protection. While I was slavishly operating within protocol, Sterling was executing the independent covert action necessary to prevent the one link we had to the mafias’ chain of command from escaping, or being compromised by corrupt authorities.

Sterling and Chris had brought Falassi to Aleandro, whose anger at the disappearance of his uncle had been so palpable when we sat at the dining room table. For many years, Aleandro had been waiting for a better day, when the politics were right, to expose the lot of them. He promised Sterling he would hide the witness until the time came to present him to the world. Falassi agreed to become pentito — a penitent who confesses and is therefore forgiven by the Catholic state. For this he would recount everything he had witnessed. The bodies that were brought to be disintegrated. The ones who brought them. And those in charge.

“You were playing me,” I tell Sterling as we handcuff the witness and march him to the car.

“Protecting assets.”

“Chris knew.”

“Course he knew. He was there.” “You trust him, but not me?” “This ain’t about that,” Sterling says.

“What’d you think? I’d leak it to the FBI?” Sterling stops and turns toward me in the chilly night.

“I was protecting you from being put in a compromising position.” “I would not have told Rizzio if it compromised the mission.

There’s a lot of things I don’t tell him, but I tell you everything.” “Okay!” says Sterling, raising his hands in defense.

We put Falassi in the backseat with Chris. We get into the car.

“You know exactly what I’m saying.” I slam the door.

“Kittens!” scolds Chris. “Play nicely. There’s a witness here.” I doubt Falassi is interested in anything except hiding from the mafias for the rest of his life. He agreed to testify that he had taken care of Aleandro’s uncle’s body, and to state that it was the Commissario who gave the order for arrest and disposal. I am hopeful that the momentum of his confessions will encourage Inspector Martini to come forward and identify the Commissario as the one who ordered his police goons to torch the campsite.

I noticed that the only other object in Falassi’s basement room was a Bible.

A few days later Sterling gets the call from Oryx. A Russian billionaire is arriving in London and needs body-guarding for his family. I am surprised when he asks me to partner up.

“It’s an easy gig,” Sterling promises. “We pose as a couple of American tourists. Follow the Russian’s wife and kidniks to Harrods. Keep an eye out while they’re having tea. No worries, Atlas will hire you on a freelance basis. Make some bucks before heading back to L.A. How about it?” If Sterling is trying to make it right after hiding Falassi from me, this isn’t cutting it. I want no part of the old lady hooch, nor am I up for wrangling over the same old issues. After being immersed in the mysteries of Siena, I want something shiny and concrete, like a brand-new apartment that smells of fresh paint, with appliances wrapped in plastic and pristine walls in which nobody has set a nail.

“Appreciate the offer, but I need to get home,” I tell him.

“Sure thing,” he says. “I’ll call when I’m back in the States.” But when we kiss good-bye in the courtyard, with Chris waiting to drive him to the airport in Rome, I honestly don’t know if we will see each other again. Cecilia is waiting sympathetically in the doorway when I hurriedly turn back to the abbey. I don’t want to see Sterling walk away, carrying the black rucksack, once again.