“Hey!”
She stared into his eyes. It had been dark in the apartment. She had never looked closely at the figure that hovered over the caretaker’s dead body. Nevertheless, there was the smell, and something about his presence too. She was sure it was him.
“You remember me?”
He scowled. “Never had the pleasure. So what is this?”
There was time, she knew. As much as she wanted. There was no point in tackling the issue head-on. “Are you deaf as well as stupid?” she barked. “Forty thousand dollars in the bank and you try to roll some American in full sight of a couple of cops. Jesus. If there was a law against being dumb, you’d get life.”
Rizzo’s narrow eyes opened a little wider. There was an expression of relief on his face, and she understood why. He had been expecting to be quizzed about a murder, and found himself faced with a simple mugging instead. The man was off guard.
“You listen to me…” he objected. His voice had a coarse city croak.
“All in good time!” He went quiet when she yelled at him. She looked at the sergeant. “You’ve got his possessions. Give them here.”
Biagio smiled, enjoying the show, then brought a red plastic tray to her. She picked up the bankbook, glanced at it, then threw it on the floor.
“Bitch!” Rizzo screamed. “That’s my money.”
“It’s going to buy you a lot in jail,” she hissed.
Rizzo held out his hands to the sergeant. “Look. I give in. Take away the crazy witch and bring me a normal cop. The American just asked for it. OK?”
“No such luck,” she said, then picked up his mobile phone, one of the tiny ones the young liked so much. She pressed the button. It burst into life with a beep.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly.
“Calling my cousin in New York. You don’t mind, do you? These things are just so pretty you have to play with the buttons. Oh, look! You’re not such a loner at all!”
Rizzo’s eyes were back to being slits again. He looked pale. Not quite the white shade the sergeant had spoken of, but she got the message anyway. “What do you mean?” he asked.
She shook her head. “These uniform people. They go all over your flat and think you’re just some solitary, antisocial scum. Just because you don’t know anyone and the only girlfriends you’ve got live in those magazines you keep by the bed.”
He didn’t say anything. Deep in her head Giulia Morelli let a little whisper run around the long, dark corridors there, one that said: Get lucky, get lucky, get lucky.
“But we know different, don’t we? Look. This loner’s got four people he loves so much he keeps their numbers right there all the time just so he can call them when he feels like it.”
She pointed the face of the phone at him. “Who are they, Rizzo?”
“Relatives,” he grumbled. “Friends.”
“Right.” She looked at the numbers and tried to keep hoping. The first two were in Mestre. The third was in Rome. Only the last was local.
“Do you think we should call them?”
“If you want. My folks live in Mestre. They’re divorced. Two numbers, OK? And I got a friend in Rome.”
“And the last?”
He didn’t reply. She pressed the key, waited for a few rings until someone answered, then killed the call without saying a word. Rizzo was grinning at her.
“Listen,” he said. “I like pizza. You call, they come. Real cheap too. I can recommend it, though I guess you cops never like to pay for anything, do you?”
She listened to the sound of traffic outside the window and wished there were a better place to work. It was the absence of cars that made her stay in the city. Then she stabbed at the buttons again.
“You had pizza last night, Rizzo.”
“Maybe.” He’d turned surly again.
“No, that was a statement. Not a question. Look.” She turned the face of the phone to him again. “It shows the last ten numbers you dialled. And when.”
“Right.” He was pale once more. She tapped at the keys, listened to the call go through, then once again hung up without speaking.
“Bank,” she said, then dialled again.
Rizzo swore and glanced at the sergeant. “This is private, man,” he moaned. “There are laws about this stuff.”
“Wow,” Giulia Morelli said gleefully. “You bet too? All that money’s not enough for you, Rizzo? You still have to play the horses? That is sad, surely. It shows an undue obsession with material objects.”
She looked at the list of numbers again. Rizzo’s social life was not wonderful. There was only one other unique entry. The rest were repeat calls to the bank. She pressed the button, listened for a good thirty seconds, then hung up. Giulia Morelli pulled her chair up to the desk, put her elbows on the blue plastic, and smiled.
“How do you know Hugo Massiter?” she asked. “What do you do for him?”
His head jerked from side to side. “Who? I don’t believe this woman. What kind of stupid game do you think you’re playing?”
“How do you know Hugo Massiter?” she repeated. “What do you do for him?”
He slammed his hands on the table. She didn’t blink.
“Enough,” he said. “Just charge me or let me go. I don’t care. I just want this bitch out of my face. Trying to play these stupid tricks.”
She keyed the number again and held the phone between them. They could both hear it ring twice, then make way for the click of an answering machine. Massiter’s suave voice recited an unimaginative excuse for his absence. She waited until the message was close to the end, then, a moment before the beep came, said, “I’ll just leave a message and ask him to join us all here, Rizzo. So we can clear this up right….”
“No!” he screamed, and dashed the phone from her hands. The sergeant was over in an instant, wrapping his arm around Rizzo’s neck. She wondered why he bothered. Rizzo wasn’t violent. He was just scared. As scared as anyone she had ever seen.
Giulia Morelli got up and walked to the corner of the room, picked up the phone from the floor, then killed the call. When she returned to the table, the sergeant had let go. Rizzo sat, head down, glowering at her through narrowed eyes.
“Want a coffee?” she asked.
“No,” he grunted.
“Beer? Orange juice? Prosecco?”
“Nothing!”
She nodded at the sergeant. “Fetch some coffee. I can handle him for a while.”
Biagio grunted, then walked out of the room. She sat down opposite Rizzo. He was sweating. She felt fine.
“Just say you remember me. That’s all.”
“You’re a crazy woman.”
She shook her head, put her bag on the desk, then reached inside and retrieved her small police handgun, the one that had wriggled out of her grip in Sant’ Alvise.
Rizzo stared at it. Giulia Morelli lifted the gun and turned it in her palm.
“My hand doesn’t shake anymore,” she said. “I ought to thank you for that. Maybe I could save you, Rizzo. Understand?”
“Fu—”
In an instant she was out of the chair, reaching across the table, grasping his greasy head, holding it tight as she jammed the nose of the gun into his cheek.
“Don’t speak,” she said. “Just listen. I don’t want you. I don’t care about you. Maybe I can even forget about what you did that day. It depends on what you do now. What you say.”
She took the gun out of his face. The barrel left a mark on his cheek, a circle of disturbed flesh. Giulia Morelli sat down and smiled.
“Before he comes back, Rizzo. Tell me you remember me. Then we have something we can work on. Something that might keep you alive.”
Rizzo stared at the door, waiting for it to open. He was shaking.
41
The prison