“What did he say?”
Sterling duly translates: “That the two of us are together.” Screw the code of conduct. I kiss the top of his sweaty, buzz-cut head.
But Nicosa has another question.
“Where is Giovanni?”
The last time Giovanni was in our hands was way back yesterday, when he said he had arrived at the priest’s. Since then, we haven’t heard a word. A call to Giovanni’s cell goes to voice mail. A call to the rectory catches Padre Filippo by surprise. He never saw the kid. Never knew he was supposed to have arrived. Not for the first time, Giovanni flat-out lied to his dad. Now it is dark, the suspects know that two of their guys have been taken out, and Giovanni’s absence seems a lot more worrisome than a rebellious sixteen-year-old out making trouble.
Nicosa’s eyes are wide as he considers these alternatives. It must be like the primal terror of realizing you have lost your child in the supermarket aisle. He could be anywhere in the wide world.
“When your son’s in trouble, where does he go?” Sterling asks calmly. “Who does he turn to? A girlfriend? A buddy?”
“The territory,” says Nicosa.
He means the Oca district, specifically the Fontebranda fountain, around which information pivots like the wheeling doves. Of course Giovanni would go back to his childhood neighborhood, where the contrada protects its members. Where there are plenty of the bank of cocaine customers to drop in on, or drug contacts if reality gets too tough. On the other hand, anyone looking for the boy would go there, too.
Sterling says, “I’ll find him.”
“You’ll never find him,” Nicosa says. “Nobody of Oca will talk to you. I’d better go.”
“Better if you and I stay here,” I say. “In case the kidnappers call.”
We agree Nicosa will alert the contrada members that Sterling will be pounding the streets. But none of us can go any farther without food. While juggling calls, Nicosa mixes up a quick omelet with potatoes, sausage, and basil while we put together bread, fresh hard goat cheese, prosciutto, and slices of melon. A double shot of the house espresso, and Sterling is fortified and out the door. I follow to the mailbox car, and we kiss in the balmy night. Up on my toes, I reach around his neck for more.
“Come back soon.”
“I will.”
And then he’s gone. Nicosa appears in the kitchen doorway, looking in the frank courtyard light like he’s aged twenty years since I first met him. He holds out his hand.
“Would you mind waiting with me?” he asks.
We choose the small room where the hospital bed used to be, since returned to normal, a landline phone in place, connected to the tape recorder in the tower. I’ve got a legal pad and the remote receiver from the kitchen. As soon as we settle onto the white couches, fatigue hits like an iron gong. Nicosa flicks on the TV, but within minutes we are both plummeting into deep unconsciousness.
In the dream, I am in a car driving at night. The headlights reveal empty fields. In the distance, there is a palazzo on a mountain — like the one we always pass on the way into Siena — a resort, with lighted umbrellas and molten golden light dripping down the furrows of the hill. The headlights illuminate the fields of sunflower faces weirdly, like inmates on stalks. On the horizon there is a fire.
The phone is ringing — not the landline, but my cell — buzzing in my breast pocket like a device to jump-start the heart. Jerking awake, I realize that in my sleep, I have been smelling smoke. At the same time, someone is pounding on the front door.
“I have Giovanni, but we can’t get through,” Sterling says over the cell. “He was in Oca, like we thought.”
“Where are you now?”
“Bottom of the mountain.”
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
“What’s going on?”
“The road up to the abbey is blocked.”
Nicosa is snoring away. With the phone to my ear, I open the door and stand on the threshold. The neighbor, Aleandro, has run over from the olive farm, carrying a flashlight and shouting, “C’è un fuoco!”
“Aleandro is trying to say something,” I tell Sterling. “What is fuoco?”
“Fire. There’s been an accident,” Sterling says. “Can’t see it from here. There’s an ambulance and a couple of fire trucks. Looks like a car caught on fire.”
“I can see it from the house,” I say, looking where Aleandro is pointing.
The sky is lit by flames, banging orange light off the low cloud cover, under which you can see black smoke boiling up. I’m shivering in the chill as I recall images of California wildfires feeding on dry brush. Explosive fireballs that jump the road. Firefighters trapped with no way out.
“Are you in danger?” I ask Sterling.
“No; they’ve contained the fire around the car. Put Aleandro on. I’ll tell him it’s okay.”
I hand the cell to the older man. He speaks in Italian to Sterling while nodding grimly. A fire let loose in these hills would be catastrophic. He gives me back the phone. I repeat “Grazie!” until our worthy neighbor waves good-bye and retreats into the night.
“How is it down there?” I ask Sterling.
“We’ll just have to wait it out.”
“How’s Giovanni?”
“Just about like you’d expect. Aw, hell!” Sterling exclaims. “Here comes the coroner. Looks like there were fatalities. Go back to sleep, darlin’. This is going to take a while.”
Two hours later, Sterling and Giovanni are permitted to drive past the site. Under lights set up by crime scene specialists, the smoking, blackened skeleton of Sofri’s black Renault can be seen. As they pass, Sterling gently draws Giovanni close and turns the boy’s head so he is prevented from viewing the corpse. They arrive at the abbey at the same time as the Oca priest, who had followed them up the hill. I open the door and stare at their bleak, heartbroken faces.
Sterling takes me in his arms. “They killed Sofri.”
We all gather close, wondering what might be the kindest way to wake Nicosa from his sleep.
THIRTY-FOUR
When we push through the wooden doors of the questura, every detective and file clerk looks up, as if they had been waiting for us to appear. Even spookier is the universal expression of pity in their eyes, tracking as we follow Inspector Martini through the bullpen. Not sympathy. Pity. The odd looks cause my skin to prickle; once again, I’m a clueless outsider. Nicosa, wearing a coal-black suit, skin as transparent as skim milk, is stopped at every desk for a handshake or a glancing hug. Deferentially, I wait a pace or two behind, feet planted and hands clasped in the rest position, as if I were a Secret Service agent protecting the president.
Inspector Martini guides us up a marble staircase with a peculiar bad smell that leads to the executive offices on the second floor, steering us through a jumble of cubbyholes with scummy windows that obscure what could be a spectacular view of the main cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo. Instead, everybody’s face is turned toward a computer screen. At the far end of the room, a pair of mahogany doors with brass knobs opens to the private office of Commissario Dottore Enrico Salvi.
Once more I am impressed with how thin he is for a man with such a heavy-duty job: how narrow the shoulders, how feminine the waist becomes when you have to cinch a belt that tightly. The white collar of an impeccably pressed blue-striped shirt frames a bony face that is shaped like a violin, all cheekbones and hollow eyes. The man is underweight, possibly ill, but remarkably lithe as he slips out from behind the desk, extending a manicured hand.