Aaron Elkins - Dying on the Vine

The glance between the two was accompanied by the barest of nods from Rocco, a signal that he was jumping into character. “If there’s nothing to hide,” he said crisply while Quadrelli was still hemming and hawing, “then there’s no problem. Let’s go get them now.”

“Yes, but you see, it’s not as easy as that. As I’ve tried to explain, it’s, ah, my job to protect the welfare and privacy of the Cubbiddu family—”

“You just told us there wasn’t anything to hide. Am I right, Maresciallo ?”

Martignetti looked at his notes. “‘Not that any of them have anything to hide,’” he read.

Quadrelli twisted his neck as if his collar were too tight and the fluorescent panels caught the gleam of sweat on the curve of his forehead. “And there isn’t anything to hide. All the same, I feel it’s incumbent on me to ask that you provide a warrant—”

“Didn’t you just say we were welcome to them? Maresciallo , didn’t—”

“Yes, yes, yes, that’s what I said, but on second thought—”

“You didn’t ask for a warrant before, when you gave us the earlier records. Why is this different?”

Quadrelli appealed to Martignetti. “ Maresciallo , I really . . .” His tone and manner were somewhere between entreaty and indignation, but closer to the first: Why am I being harassed in this manner? But Martignetti merely smiled pleasantly, while Rocco continued to fix him with a cold stare.

Quadrelli rose, lifting his double chin and tugging down the bottom of his vest. There was a massive gold-banded Rolex on his wrist. “I have nothing more to say. Those accounts have been entrusted to my guardianship. I do not feel I can surrender them to you without the safeguard of a judicial warrant demanding them. Gentlemen.”

“If that’s the way you want it, fine,” Rocco said, biting off the words. “We’ll be back here with one first thing tomorrow morning.” Talk about wishful thinking.

“You know, signore,” Martignetti said slowly, as Quadrelli turned to go, “it’s really up to you. We’ll do it the way you want, but if we could get the accounts today with your cooperation, which we’d very much appreciate, it’d save us a lot of paperwork.”

Quadrelli remained standing, silent and glowering, but a muscle under his right eye twitched. He brushed at it with his hand, as if it had been caused by a flying insect.

“And between us,” Martignetti continued with his friendly smile, “I’d sure do it that way if it was me. Why in the world would you want to call attention to yourself and irritate an overworked magistrate, when the result would be no different—either way, you relinquish the accounts. That makes sense to me. Doesn’t it make sense to you?”

“Are you threatening me, Maresciallo ?”

“Absolutely not,” Martignetti said earnestly. “Look, signore, all I’m trying to do is to make things go as smoothly as possible for everybody concerned. But it’s your choice.”

“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Rocco abruptly announced. “Let’s go. We’ll file for a warrant as soon as we—”

Quadrelli sighed. His fat-padded shoulders sagged. “If you come with me, Maresciallo , I will turn them over to you. I will want a receipt.”

“Absolutely,” Rocco said.

Ten minutes later, Martignetti was back with two thick folders. “Well done, Tonino,” Rocco said. “So what did you think of that whole routine of his?”

Martignetti stroked his chin and pondered. “After due consideration,” he said, “I think he just might have something to hide.”

Rocco smiled. “Well, enough for today. You can start digging into that paperwork tomorrow morning.” He got up and took a long, luxurious stretch. “What would you say to a Cinzano before we head back?”

“I’d say, lead me to it.”

NINETEEN

JULIEpeered doubtfully up at the time-eaten marble street plaque affixed to the corner of an old building. “Via del Bicchieraia,” she read aloud. “This is it.”

“Nah, can’t be,” John said.

The other two in their party, Marti Lau and Gideon, had to agree with him. More alley than street, barely two car widths wide, lacking sidewalks, and bordered by moldering eighteenth-century, three-story apartment houses faced with peeling stucco that showed their rubble-stone construction, Via del Bicchieraia didn’t look like a street that housed the best restaurant in Tuscany.

It was only two blocks long, overshadowed at one end by the stark “tower of a hundred holes,” the grim, thirteenth-century Romanesque bell tower of the Church of Santa Maria della Pieve, so called because of the eight forbidding stories of mullioned windows that encircled it. At the other end it was closed off by an old apartment building on a cross street. With the looming tower and the leaning buildings, it was doubtful if the sun ever made it all the way to the street itself.

“Well, he said it was here,” Gideon said. “Number twenty-three. Let’s have a look.”

They had to watch their step because there was no sidewalk; the irregular, stone-block pavement was uneven; and they had to negotiate around cars that were parked along the sides, jammed up against the walls of the buildings. When a small panel truck came down the street, they had to hurry to get around a parked car and flatten themselves against a wall.

“If two cars come along from opposite directions, it’s every man for himself,” John muttered.

But they were lucky, making it without incident to number twenty-three, the address Luca had given them. It was a storefront, its two windows partially covered by warped, gray shutters that surely hadn’t been repainted in this century, and maybe not in the last. No menu outside—not even a chalkboard—no stickers indicating acceptable credit cards, nothing but a couple of barely legible words painted in fading green directly on the stone lintel above the door: La Cucina di Nonna Natalia . Grandma Natalia’s Kitchen.

“This is it, all right,” Marti said.

“Well, he did say it wasn’t very impressive,” Gideon said.

“He got that right,” said John.

“Or very welcoming,” Julie said. “Do you think maybe it’d be better to wait for them?” She glanced up the street for Luca and Linda, who were parking the winery van in an underground lot a few blocks away. “They should only be another minute.”

At that moment, though, two automobiles did turn onto the street from opposite ends, and that decided them. Something had to give. Gideon pulled the door open—predictably, the hinges squealed—and in they went.

The aromas were wonderful; homey and warm, but with something subtle about them that was hard to pin down. The restaurant itself was less wonderful, a narrow room, only two tables wide, with an aisle down the middle. The walls held a single row of shelving on which bottles of red wine were sporadically displayed, the flooring was of much-worn tiles of cheap, wood-veneered plywood, and the tablecloths (which were white linen or cotton in almost every eating place in Italy) were red-and-white-checked plastic, the kind you found in cheap Italian chains in America. The diners, mostly older people, didn’t seem to be bothered by their shabby surroundings. They were eating happily and with gusto. Even for an Italian restaurant, the noise level was high. There was lots of laughter and the frequent clinking of glasses.

“You know, I like this place,” Gideon announced. “It’s, I don’t know . . .”

“Real?” said Julie, laughing.

“That’s it.”

An overweight woman came heavily forward to greet them. Other than wearing a scowl instead of a smile, she was an Italian version of Aunt Jemima: a white kitchen towel was wrapped bandanna-like around her head, and a white, stained apron covered a shapeless red-and-white-checked housedress that matched the tablecloths.