The Lizard's Bite Part 20

"Just drunken nonsense. I didn't understand any of it."

Nonsense took on an importance of its own when it came from a man with a gun.

"What kind of thing?"

The dark eyes gazed at her, sad, resolute. "I can't be sure but I thought he said, just once, 'Where's the Englishman?' There were several Englishmen there that night. Ma.s.siter. Some of his lawyers. Some of the city's art people. It probably doesn't mean a thing."

"Probably."

How many Englishmen did Aldo Bracci know? Teresa wondered. Bracci didn't move in art and legal circles. It had to be Ma.s.siter surely, not that a half-heard comment sounded much like evidence to her.

She took Raffaella's hands again and asked, "This is just a wild guess, but do you think it's possible Hugo Ma.s.siter and Bella were having an affair?"

"No!" A sudden smile broke Raffaella's face. "That's ridiculous!"

"Why? He looks like a ladies' man to me."

"Bella! Bella? Bella?" Raffaella looked aghast at the idea. "I mean this as no disrespect to her, but I think a man like him would set his sights a little higher. If the gossip's right, he doesn't sleep with the poor. I don't think he needs to, does he?"

"You never saw any sign of it? He had that apartment next door."

She waved away the notion with a firm hand. "During the day only. Michele insists on that. And Bella never went near the place. There are workmen around constantly. A man like Ma.s.siter would show some discretion, surely."

"Then somewhere else? He's got this boat, hasn't he?"

"So they say. I still . . . it feels wrong wrong."

Teresa glanced at the unconscious Leo Falcone. "He always has some smart comment for these situations. Something that sends you back to look at what you had and try to see it in a new light. It rarely works. But then it doesn't need to that often."

Raffaella was struggling to come up with something. This was, Teresa's instincts told her, a bad way to extract information from people.

"She left the island quite a lot during the day," Raffaella suggested. "I a.s.sumed she was visiting friends. Or shopping. Bella never seemed short of a little money recently for some reason."

"Then she could have visited his boat?"

"I suppose so." She looked doubtful. "I'm sorry. This is all a little beyond me. Perhaps you're right. Is that what an affair would be like? Fitting in a few minutes in bed during the occasional afternoon? It seems so feeble. So sad sad. But then I'm not an expert. Relationships . . ."

"Join the club," Teresa agreed, when the other woman failed to continue. "Love is a mystery to me too."

"But I thought you'd found it?"

Raffaella had seen her and Peroni several times in the hospital. Perhaps it showed.

"I think I have. I just don't know how I got there."

Raffaella Arcangelo nodded.

Teresa liked this woman. A lot. That was all the more reason to get her away from Leo's bedside.

"L'amore e cieco," Raffaella said softly, beautifully. Raffaella said softly, beautifully.

Love is blind.

THE IDEA THAT LEO FALCONE HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED by anything more than bad luck offended Luca Zecchini's sense of fairness. To make matters both more complicated and more interesting, the state police inspector's two men had mentioned a name that p.r.i.c.ked so many bad memories from the not-so-distant past it ruined Zecchini's appet.i.te completely. by anything more than bad luck offended Luca Zecchini's sense of fairness. To make matters both more complicated and more interesting, the state police inspector's two men had mentioned a name that p.r.i.c.ked so many bad memories from the not-so-distant past it ruined Zecchini's appet.i.te completely.

"You seem remarkably sure about the guilty party, if I may say so," he observed when the two cops from Rome had finished. "I heard Leo was the victim of an unfortunate accident. Sometimes these things are best left alone."

"Until the next accident? And, yes, we're sure." Costa looked tougher, more determined than Zecchini had expected from Falcone's description.

"I've followed this in the papers, Nic. They all say the lunatic the commissario shot was responsible for those murders. That part of the case is closed. All they've got to do now is deal with their own. Are you telling me there's more? That Leo was shot deliberately?"

"No," Peroni conceded, and Zecchini found, to his shame, that a small part of him regretted the fact there would be no easy way to send them packing with their fantasies. "It was an accident," the big Roman cop continued. "But killing Aldo Bracci wasn't. Randazzo was improvising there. Trying to do his paymaster a favour."

The two of them stared at him, expectant.

"Even if you're correct, gentlemen," Zecchini answered, "what can I do? This is a case for the police. Not us. We don't intervene in each other's affairs. It would be unheard of. I couldn't contemplate that."

"We're not asking you to cross any lines," Costa said quickly. "This falls squarely in your existing responsibilities. Art theft. Smuggling."

Luca Zecchini doubted that greatly.

"You know," he replied, "perhaps you should be wondering what Leo would be doing in these circ.u.mstances. He's a practical man. He'd know when he was beaten. You're off duty for the time being. You don't have the right to question people. To investigate anyone, least of all someone of this man's standing. Also, I always found Leo to be reluctant, meticulously meticulously reluctant, to reach hard decisions in advance of hard evidence." reluctant, to reach hard decisions in advance of hard evidence."

Costa pushed away his plate. He'd hardly picked at his food. "We've asked ourselves that question. We'll have hard evidence too. I don't want to mislead you, Luca. There are other lines of attack open to us. The Arcangeli case, which is far from closed. And the charges Ma.s.siter skipped away from five years ago." He glanced at Peroni. "Plus we may have some forensic too."

Peroni didn't seem too happy with that last observation. Maybe the older man understood just how perilous it could be to play games like these. It was time, Zecchini realised, to come to the point.

"Then let me put it plainly. Hugo Ma.s.siter is a man of extreme influence and importance, more so by the day, from what I read in the papers. Once he becomes the owner of that island, he becomes virtually untouchable. I live here. Everyone in the Veneto follows what happens in Venice, because that's the place the money goes. Very large sums of money that bind the giver and the receiver in ways you people in Rome can't imagine. When that deal's done, Hugo Ma.s.siter becomes something different. Part of the establishment. You'd need written permission from the Quirinale Palace just to talk to him about a parking ticket after that. And now-"

"Now what?" Peroni interrupted.

"Now he's just a very powerful crook with some friends who ought to know better. If you screw around with him, he will, surely, come looking for his revenge. This is not idle speculation. I've watched careers destroyed trying to take down that man. I'm not much inclined to invite the same fate."

Costa's eye, bright, alert, inquisitive, caught his. "You know him personally?" the young policeman asked.

"No details. I'm just giving you the big picture. Ma.s.siter's a man who's wriggled out of our grasp many times in the past, then turned up smiling with not an etto etto of blame on him. You'd need a motive-" of blame on him. You'd need a motive-"

"Got it," Peroni interjected. "This deal he had with the Arcangeli. He needed it closed down."

"So why did he kill the brother and his wife?" Zecchini demanded. "What's the point of that?"

"It's personal," Costa said. "He got Bella pregnant. She was putting pressure on him. He killed her, then set Uriel up for the blame."

"You can prove some of this?"

"We'll get there," Costa insisted.

"You're going to have to do better than that! Suspicions fall off that man like dead skin. We've tried to screw Ma.s.siter for art smuggling in the past. Many, many times. You people thought you had him for murder five years ago. Instead . . ."

This wasn't just about guilt. It was about proof, and the ability to see through the judicial process. They all knew that-police, Carabinieri, and the armies of lawyers who had, over the years, been a.s.sembled on both sides too.

Costa was unmoved. Luca Zecchini tried hard to remember more of what Falcone had said about these two men. Of their honesty, their disregard for their own safety when it came to a case that mattered.

"Leo's my friend as well," he added. "I don't think he'd want you to put your necks on the line for him. Not just on a hunch. Not like this."

"Is that what you think this is? A hunch?" Costa seemed disappointed. "Some personal vendetta on Leo's behalf?"

"It seems-"

"No! We've looked at the records, Maggiore. And those are just ours. G.o.d knows what's there on your side. Hugo Ma.s.siter is a cancer in Venice. He's everywhere. In the government. In the city. Alongside all the organised crime that's coming in from across the Adriatic."

The two of them must have seen the expression on his face.

"You'd be amazed the stuff we managed to dig up before they threw us out of the Questura. We called a friend in the DIA too," Peroni said. "We know about the Serbians and the Croats. How he plays them off against one another. And that's just the tip of the iceberg."

Zecchini groaned. No one talked to the anti-Mafia people unless they were desperate. "This isn't your field," he warned. "Leave it alone."

Costa fed him a sour glance. "So you don't want him?"

Zecchini couldn't miss the taunting tone in his voice. "I'd give my right arm to arraign that b.a.s.t.a.r.d on anything. But we've been there before and we failed. That makes it harder to go back again, to get the lawyers nodding the case through, unless it's more watertight than anything we've had before. And mark my words. What we've been able to throw at him in the past was good. He should have been in jail ten times over. Would have been too, if it weren't for his friends."

"If the case is good enough," Costa objected, "even his friends will abandon him."

"Really?" He couldn't believe they could be that naive. "Well, here's something else I discovered. Every time we lose, he gets stronger. I'd need something very special just to get the authorities to read a file on Hugo Ma.s.siter right now. Once he's signed that contract, and all those millions of public money are behind him, all those grateful politicians in his debt . . ."

He looked at the wasted food. Zecchini had expected more of them. Maybe he'd be on the date with Gina after all that night. He wasn't going to stick out his neck over some amateur, unauthorised probe into someone who always managed to slip out of their grasp.

"And I regret to say I don't have a single piece of evidence to help you," he added with a scowl. "I wish I had. It's all spent. Useless. There's nothing close that's fresh. If it was there, I'd be nailing this man tomorrow. Leo or no Leo."

They had something to say, and it made them uncomfortable. A part of Luca Zecchini was beginning to wish he'd stayed in Milan.

Costa took a sip of his mineral water.

"You asked us what Leo would be doing in these circ.u.mstances. Let me tell you. He'd be turning on the heat. He'd be making moves that put Ma.s.siter in an uncomfortable position. A place where he was likely to make mistakes from which we could profit."

Zecchini had seen enough of the police inspector's methods to understand this was probably an accurate interpretation. He still didn't see where it got them.

"Two lone cops on enforced vacation aren't going to be putting the heat on anyone," he objected.

Peroni smiled. "No, Luca. But you could. You could pick up the phone, call the Questura in Venice and ask if they'd mind letting you talk to Commissario Randazzo for a bit. Just to see if he knew anything about art theft."

Zecchini snorted. This was absurd.

"I'm serious," Peroni persisted, giving him a quick, icy look that Zecchini didn't like at all. "We've taken a peek inside Randazzo's house in the Lido. It's empty. He's gone. The wife's gone. It's an expensive place for someone on his salary. And all kinds of fancy stuff in there. Paintings. Ceramics. Silverware. We sort of found the door open . . ."

"No!" Zecchini waved his hand in the big man's face, demanding silence. "I don't want to hear this. Breaking into houses. Jesus . . . Are you insane?"

"You could just make a call," Costa repeated. "Ask for a simple interview. See how they respond. You could also run up a search warrant on his place. You'll find something there. Look."

Costa reached into his shoulder bag and took out a folder of photos. They showed antiques and paintings inside an airy, elegant house filled with potted plants and small palms, not the sort of place most police officers favoured.

"There are a couple of Serbian icons in there," Costa observed. "Genuine, I think. Probably fifteenth century."

"And this Randazzo would be stupid enough to keep illicit material around in his own home?" Zecchini demanded.

Peroni let loose a low grunt of a laugh. "Honest answer, Luca? Yes. As far as he's concerned, they're just gifts. Trophies. From some rich and very influential Englishman. Maybe he didn't even know how deeply he was involved until it was too late. When he saw shooting Bracci as a way out. A debt repaid. Ma.s.siter off the hook for the murders, and a clear way through for him to buy the island. Two birds with one stone. Neat, don't you think?"

Zecchini couldn't argue there. It was neat, if it was true.

"And maybe," Costa added, "Ma.s.siter liked to give the commissario stolen objects just to cement the bond. So that if Randazzo did turn awkward, he'd have some extra hold on him."

These two were smart. Zecchini recalled a case where the Carabinieri suspected Ma.s.siter had played a very similar trick on a magistrate called to investigate a minion of his, caught bringing in contraband through Trieste.

"I could do these things," he acknowledged. "But why? What do I get in return?"

"Ma.s.siter," Costa answered quietly. "We get you details of transactions, perhaps. Or storage locations. Routes. Vessels. An inventory of objects. We don't care who puts this man in jail. You. Us. The DIA if they like. He just has to go."

"Like cancer," Peroni echoed.

Zecchini laughed. The authorities had been trying to get that information for years. No one talked about Hugo Ma.s.siter. No one had the nerve.

"Now you're playing games with me," he said, and looked at his cold food, wondering when he'd feel minded to sit at an outside table at Sergio's again. "Let's just have a couple of beers, huh? Then say a few prayers for Leo. I don't think there's many doing that."

They didn't budge. Luca Zecchini looked at this odd, stubborn pair and thought again about some of the stories Leo Falcone had told him. Stories he hadn't quite believed at that time. No one could be that unbending, that resolute about seeing an issue through to the bitter end.

Then it dawned.

"You've access from inside?" Zecchini murmured, amazed, and more than a little disconcerted.

Costa and Peroni glanced at each other and didn't say a word.

Luca Zecchini tried to think what that meant. Just the effort sent a shiver down his spine. If the Carabinieri's meagre intelligence was right, Ma.s.siter now relied solely on the Balkan gangs for street-level muscle, men who were loyal to the end, did what they were told as long as the money kept coming, and never broke the code of loyalty and silence. It was inconceivable one of them would betray their capo capo. There was too much at stake. The punishment, if one was discovered, would be unimaginable. He'd seen the results of a gang punishment killing in Florence. It would have turned the stomach of the toughest of Italian mobsters.

"You've put someone in?" he asked, incredulous, and got no pleasure at all in seeing the dismay on their faces when his words connected.

"Jesus," he murmured, then ordered three beers, a big one for himself. "I hope to G.o.d you know what you're doing."

Costa reached into his pocket, pulled out a mobile phone, and replied, "We hope so too. Now will you make that call?"

THE WEATHER HAD LOST ITS TEMPER. IT WAS A WARM, bright evening, with a sweet salty breeze blowing in from the Adriatic. In Verona, Costa and Peroni were slowly working their way into the confidences of a small specialist Carabinieri team, praying the sc.r.a.ps of information they owned would persuade Luca Zecchini and his colleagues to first order a search of Randazzo's house, and then pull in the man himself for questioning. In a small apartment in Castello, Teresa Lupo and her a.s.sistant Silvio Di Capua now pored over the results of the first tests they'd run on the meagre material they'd found, scanning arcane reports and charts on Costa's notebook computer, puzzled by the results coming in from the private labs they were using, both in Mestre and Rome, to try to extract some answers from the spa.r.s.e debris and clothing they had. And in the Ospedale Civile the unconscious Leo Falcone, unaware of Raffaella Arcangelo by his bed, continued to dream, locked in a private world, part fantasy, part remembrance, a place he feared to leave, not knowing what would take its place. bright evening, with a sweet salty breeze blowing in from the Adriatic. In Verona, Costa and Peroni were slowly working their way into the confidences of a small specialist Carabinieri team, praying the sc.r.a.ps of information they owned would persuade Luca Zecchini and his colleagues to first order a search of Randazzo's house, and then pull in the man himself for questioning. In a small apartment in Castello, Teresa Lupo and her a.s.sistant Silvio Di Capua now pored over the results of the first tests they'd run on the meagre material they'd found, scanning arcane reports and charts on Costa's notebook computer, puzzled by the results coming in from the private labs they were using, both in Mestre and Rome, to try to extract some answers from the spa.r.s.e debris and clothing they had. And in the Ospedale Civile the unconscious Leo Falcone, unaware of Raffaella Arcangelo by his bed, continued to dream, locked in a private world, part fantasy, part remembrance, a place he feared to leave, not knowing what would take its place.