Seated next to him, informally dressed in a short green summer shift, was Rome police inspector Luna Colombo. His daughter.
She had the decency to look sheepish as she met my gaze.
“Benvenuto, Mr. Morgan,” Antonelli said. “We’re just about to eat. Won’t you join us?”
Chapter 28
Luna spoke some angry words in Italian to him and Antonelli shrugged.
“My daughter refused to accept my offer of protection, so I was forced to take direct action to bring her here,” he explained. “She says I must apologize to you, and of course she is right. I should not have involved you in our family squabble.”
Antonelli spoke to my captors. They backed away to take sentry positions in the shade of the terrace, standing close by the wide French doors.
“Please, Mr. Morgan, have a seat.”
Antonelli gestured to the chair opposite his. The table was laden with antipasti, artisan breads, bottles of water and one of rosé wine in a cooler. Solid silver cutlery gleamed against the pressed, starched tablecloth, and crystal glassware sparkled in the sunshine. A manservant in a white shirt and matching trousers moved a huge parasol to cast the table into shade.
“Please do join us, Jack,” Luna said. “My father isn’t entirely monstrous.”
I took the chair being offered and settled into my seat.
“Bread? Olives?” Antonelli said. “The flour is milled here on the estate and the olives are from the trees you can see on the hillside. You will not find finer anywhere in the world.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but spooned huge green olives and their oil onto my porcelain plate.
I poured some balsamic vinegar around them and took a crust of bread from the basket.
“You will doubtless have done your research,” Antonelli went on, “and reached an opinion of me and my nature. Your research will be incomplete and your opinions improperly formed.”
I soaked up some oil and vinegar with the bread and took a bite.
“For example, do you think a villain could make such beautiful olive oil?” he asked. “It is the finest you have tasted, is it not?”
“It’s very good,” I replied, following the mouthful with an olive. “These too.”
“Very good? This is what you would say to an artist?” Antonelli scoffed. “It is excellent, Mr. Morgan. Perfection even.”
“My father is very proud of his produce,” Luna said.
“Of course,” Antonelli interjected. “It comes from the earth and good earth is tended by good people. It cannot be otherwise. The fruits of evil taste as such.”
“My research would suggest bitter fruit in that case,” I replied.
“Which is why I said your research would be incomplete,” Antonelli responded. “A caricature. Take my daughter, for example. You will most likely have assumed she keeps our connection secret to advance my interests.”
Luna shook her head slowly.
“In truth, she is ashamed of me,” Antonelli revealed. “She hides our connection so it does not hinder her advancement. She does not approve of who I am or what I do.”
I glanced at Luna, who gave me a sheepish nod.
“Of course, she is not so stupid that she does not know my places of business are the safest locations for her to hide.”
Antonelli confirmed what I’d suspected, that the brothel in the tower block was one of his.
“But she is stubborn like her father and will not listen when I say there are things happening that require greater security.”
“What things?” I asked.
“Rome is a city built on power,” Antonelli replied. “The pursuit of it awakens an addiction that can drive people crazy, and every so often someone has — how do you say? — an overdose that makes them crave more and more. Their hunger for power becomes insatiable and they try to take too much. More than is good for them.”
“Who is trying to take it this time?” I asked, biting another mouthful of bread.
“We don’t know,” Luna replied. “But we’re sure it has something to do with the Lombardi murder and Father Brambilla’s death.”
“Whoever it is, they made a grave mistake,” Antonelli said. “Luna is the youngest of my children. Her mother was not my wife. She was my last love, taken from me ten years ago in the most recent power struggle. One of my rivals tried to kill me, but only succeeded in taking Luna’s mother from us. He paid, of course, but I will not see my daughter suffer the same fate as her mother.”
“You think this has something to do with you?” I asked.
“In Rome all things are connected,” Antonelli said. “The people who have targeted you and Luna obviously consider you a threat. Perhaps they think you both know something.”
“About what?” I asked.
“About the reason Filippo Lombardi was killed.”
Chapter 29
“Did you know him?” I asked.
Antonelli tilted his head and studied me. “Is that what you really mean to find out?”
He was sharp, but I guess one didn’t rise to the height of power in Rome without an ability to read people.
“Was he corrupt?” I asked.
“I didn’t know the man, but from what I understand, he was the opposite of corrupt,” Antonelli replied, ignoring his plateful of mozzarella and soft ripe tomatoes, which he’d spread on estate bread. “Perhaps that was his problem. The stick that won’t bend is sometimes broken.”
“We found nothing,” Luna nodded. “In the time we were looking into Lombardi, we didn’t turn up anything to suggest he was dishonest. And I asked around. People said he was a decent man.”
“A jewel,” Antonelli remarked. “An honest prosecutor is a diamond to be cherished.”
I gave him a surprised look.
“Not by people like me, of course,” he added. “But by the public. How would the world be if everyone was dishonest? My daughter might be surprised to hear me talk like this. We don’t often discuss our work.”
“Because you know what I think of what you call work,” she responded.
“Our lives are kept separate, for her protection and mine,” Antonelli said. “If Lombardi was an honest prosecutor that might have been enough to get him killed.”
“So, someone had him driven off the road because of what he knew?” I suggested.
Antonelli shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“And now they’re worried your daughter and I might know it too?”
He shrugged again.
“And Brambilla?” I pressed. “What about him? How is Matteo Ricci involved?”
“Who knows?” Antonelli said. “Your job is to find out answers, Mr. Morgan. Mine is to grow olives. But if the priest knew a secret, that might explain his death. And my daughter’s former partner could be discredited so that no one would believe anything he said. Or perhaps made into an easier target. People die in jail all the time.”
I shuddered, and the sweet tomato and mozzarella in my mouth turned sour at the thought Matteo might be in imminent danger. I’d assumed incarceration was the worst he’d face, but Elia Antonelli had opened my eyes to a new dimension of danger.
Luna said something in Italian.
“You can protect him, surely?” she added for my benefit.
“I will do what I can for you, my dear Luna, but even my protection is not infallible,” Antonelli replied. “Perfection is the sole preserve of God.”
“Or artisan olive growers,” I quipped, and Antonelli smiled.
I wondered how a mobster could talk of perfection in such an imperfect world. How could he, an instrument of evil, still hold faith in a religion rooted in the concepts of virtue and sin?
Sitting in the man’s company, eating the fruits of his land, seeing the way he looked lovingly at his daughter, it was clear he did not consider himself a bad guy.