He felt energized after the conversations, meal, and the nap from before. “Cristina.” He looked at her with a serious expression.
“Yes? What’s going on?”
“I need to know about these guys who own this pub. The Albastru Pub that John was always going to.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know the guys from home? From before you came here?”
“No, I don’t. Why? Because we are both Romanian?”
Wolf wiped his mouth and looked out the window. The rain was letting up gradually. “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. How about this guy, Ferka Vlad, from the observatory? Did you know him from before?”
“I’ve met him before at the pub once. But it was just the one time. There really are a lot of people from Romania in Italy. But I don’t know many. I know that they are often looked at as criminals here, though. There is a lot of crime in northern Italy, where there is more money — more theft and people’s houses getting robbed. The finger is often pointed at the Romanian.” She shook her head. “There are bad Italians just like there are bad Romanians. But I do know that those guys at the Albastru Pub look bad. I would bet a lot of money they are criminals.”
“So would I.” Wolf looked out the window. She didn’t seem to be lying.
“Why? What’s going on? What have you found out?”
“I’m pretty sure that the owner of that pub and this guy Vlad killed my brother. But they’ve covered all their bases, and I can’t prove it. They’re smart. Or one of them is smart.” He set down his fork. “Or, they’re getting lucky.”
He looked around the kitchen, then got up and walked over to the knife set on the counter. He pulled four smaller knives on the bottom row, then checked the larger blades on the top. “You know my brother doesn’t have a single knife in his apartment other than four butter knives? Didn’t he ever cook?”
She laughed, then stopped, watching him put all but two blades back. He picked them up in one hand and brought them back to the table.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“I need these.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “You have to be careful with those guys from the pub. I’m serious. They are probably killers.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She shook her head with glistening eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“It will come to me.” He picked up the plates and put them in the sink. “They beat my brother over the head and strangled him to death. And they beat Matthew Rosenwald’s head in. Making it look like my brother did the whole thing.”
He fetched the blades from the table and put them back in the wooden housing.
“I’m going to just bring this down to my brother’s apartment, okay? I’m sorry, you’re going to have to get another set. If anything happens, I don’t want anything tied to you. And come to think of it, it really would be better if I could just borrow the scooter tonight.”
Chapter 37
Faint ambient light from the city beyond the piazza streamed into his brother’s otherwise pitch dark bedroom. His show of walking around in his underwear, turning off the lights in the entire apartment, as if turning in early, was over.
Now he was dressing quickly. Wearing the darkest clothes he had, without overtly looking like a cat burglar. The two most important things he wore were tucked into his socks — two kitchen knives, the blades loosely covered with folded paper towel sheathes to protect his skin.
His stomach was queasy with nerves. He was paranoid from seeing the Alfa Romeo in the side mirror earlier. But more importantly, he needed to prove something to himself. There was no other way to know for sure how the killers left his brother’s apartment, leaving it locked from the inside.
He patted the knives, twisting his ankles to test the tuck-job, adjusted his socks, and went to the balcony. The piazza was ninety degrees to his right and out of site, on the other side of the A-ridged roof. The roof extended straight out to a distance of at least fifty yards. He could hear the murmur of a bustling Friday night crowd and see bright lights pouring upward against the thick humid air, swirling with insects.
There was no moonlight shining on the ceramic roof. It was dark, difficult to get a sense of the exact angle of pitch. He knew it wasn’t too steep to navigate, no more than thirty degrees, but steep enough to keep his heart rate racing, and wet enough to quicken his pulse even more. If it was a ski slope, it would have been labeled black diamond.
The roof butted right up against the balcony to his lower right. Ceramic tiles could be brittle, and he had no idea how old and brittle these were. He also knew that old ceramic tiles that were wet after a rain storm were probably slick with a thin film of clay.
He looked over the edge to his left, away from the roof to the narrow walking alleyway below. It was far. Three vaulted-ceilinged floors up from the hard cobblestone ground. He stared for a full minute, not seeing a single soul.
He gritted his teeth, gave a sharp exhale, and stepped over the railing. He put his left foot on the roof and gradually placed more and more weight on it while still straddling the balcony. There was a creak. He placed more weight still and tested the traction of his left foot.
Satisfied, he stepped his other foot over, and made the entire transition to the roof, laying forward in a low push up position, on his hands and tip toes.
Wolf’s stomach fluttered as he thought of slipping over the edge, hearing the gradual rush of air becoming deafening right before he hit the ground with an unfathomable pain.
Jesus.
He shook his head, thought back on his Army Ranger training and how this was nothing, looked up, and crawled.
Small ceramic scrapes and creaks accompanied every movement, though the tiles seemed solid. He shuffled quickly up towards the ridge of the roof that was a straight line of shadow against the bright piazza beyond. He stopped just before the top, not wanting to risk being seen from the other side. He got to the soles of his feet, stooping with his right hand in contact with the tiles, and made his way.
Step by step, foot by foot, the tiles held up beneath him as he crept along carefully keeping focus.
Impatience overwhelmed him. He glanced at his watch and noted the ten full minutes it had already taken him to travel a mere thirty yards.
He stood up with bent knees, arms out for balance. Looking to his right, he couldn’t see the other side of the roof, so no one could see him from below. He began walking at a faster pace toward the dark void that was still twenty yards ahead.
No more than three paces into his light footed trot, his left foot gave way, sweeping violently down to the left with an air-splitting ceramic crack. His right foot shuffled forward in mid stride and caught on a tile as his body weight plummeted towards the roof. His right knee bent, smashed into his chest, bounced him up to the left, and into an uncontrollable fall.
He hit the roof with a hollow thud on his entire left side. For a moment, he stalled, planking parallel to the roof ridge line, shifting slowly, unstoppably into a roll towards the roof edge. He extended his right leg out and up to stop it, but it was no use.
Without thinking, he kicked up with his left leg, extended his right arm straight above his head, and twisted hard to his right, towards the drop. A fraction of a second later he split his legs and arms into a wide X, toes and hands digging for purchase, belly against the wet roof. He landed in a cacophony of cleaving tiles, which tumbled like the sound of plates sliding off a waiter tray, into the darkness, now just a foot to his left.
His body skidded a few inches as he gritted his teeth, digging his toes and finger tips into the wet ceramic. His body stopped with inches to spare. Panting quickly now, he forced himself to take a deep breath, then heard a few distant splatters of tiles hitting the cobblestones below, giving him yet another shot of adrenaline.
Ten seconds later he managed to get back to a position perpendicular to the crest of the roof, using the sturdy tiles beneath. He went all the way to the peak this time, willing to trade being seen from within the piazza for living to see another day. Straddling the crest, he walked low and quick the remainder of the way.
As he approached the black void at the end of the roof, growing discouragement gave way to instant relief as his eyes adjusted, revealing a one meter drop onto a flat topped black roof below. He could see puddles reflecting the city-lit clouds. The roof extended twenty feet, then there was a steel rectangular structure at the edge.
A fire escape stairway?
He slunk over the edge and made his way there.
It was a fire escape. Steps zig-zagged all the way down to the ground, or so he assumed. He wasn’t about to test the strength of the railing by leaning over to see.
It wobbled and creaked with each step, but he was on the ground safely in a few minutes.
His body tingled with adrenaline as his feet hit the ground. He turned to look back up at the stairway. He shook his head with wide eyes — cold-blooded conviction pounding in his veins. That was how the murderers got out of his brother’s apartment that night.
The piazza was just around the corner. He walked the opposite way, through a narrow gap — to where Cristina had told him to go earlier. The familiar white scooter was parked right where she said it would be. He cranked the key, fired up the kazoo-sounding engine, and took off down the side street.
Chapter 38
He rode the scooter fast to the Merate Observatory. The gate in the rear of the property was wide open, just like every other time he’d seen it, so he planted the scooter in the corn and walked in. Checking the back door with a tug, he was surprised as bright light poured out, opening without any resistance.
Walking in like a stalker would have drawn a cautious eye to any observers inside, so he walked in like he belonged.
Opening the door hard, he strode across the brightly lit telescope room floor while looking down at his hooded sweatshirt zipper, making a mild show of struggling to unzip it. A man at a computer terminal looked to him over a pushed down set of reading glasses.
Wolf raised his eyebrows and his hand in a quick wave as he walked in full stride through the propped door to the interior building.
“Ciao,” the man said distractedly, already turning his head back to the computer screen.
Wolf took to his right, down the hallway towards Vlad’s office, and allowed himself a quick look over his shoulder. No one was in sight along the hall that extended in the opposite direction, but a few lights were on. He glanced at his watch. 8:44 pm. For a Friday night, it seemed positively bustling. But then again, it was an observatory.
He walked past an occupied office on the left. Inside, a man sat with his face to a computer screen, an Asian man looking over his shoulder — Dr. Chang. He passed unobserved down the hallway. Blinds were drawn tight over Vlad’s hall windows, lights on inside, and his door was shut. Wembly’s office was dark, looking shut tight for the night.
Wolf stopped, swiveled another look down the hall, and pressed his ear lightly against Vlad’s office door. There was no sound.
He twisted the handle and entered fast.
Before he finished shutting the door, he knew he was in big trouble.
Chapter 39
Nothing inside the office moved but the swirling digital lines on the computer screen.
Vlad sprawled motionless, directly face down. His head was back slightly, face balanced on his nose and gaping jaw which was mashed into the terrazzo floor.
What bothered Wolf was not Vlad’s obviously lifeless body, as much as what was wrapped around his neck — a shiny black leather belt. A shiny black belt of a design he
might have
remembered seeing in his brother’s closet earlier in the week.
His mind raced.
He looked at the computer screen. The lines had disappeared, blanking out to a black sleep-mode screen. He snapped his head to Vlad and bent down, feeling his cheek with the back of his hand. The body was still warm.
Wolf stood up with a jolt and turned towards the door. He pulled the door open with his sweatshirt pocket covered hand and scrubbed clean the exterior knob. Suddenly, a faint two tone siren became audible somewhere in the distance. Turning to the exterior window, his breath quickened when the flicker of red and blue flashed through the closed blinds, and the siren become louder.
Wolf sprinted down the hall, past the Asian scientist who was now taking a long swill of soda in his office doorway.
“Hey!” He stepped back, spilling his drink on himself as Wolf blew past him.
Wolf ran hard through the telescope room and out the door. He stopped outside with a skid and lunged back to the handle, wiping both inside and outside knob quickly with his sweatshirt before turning and sprinting as fast as he could out the gate.
Running down the dirt road to the left, red and blue pulses dimly lit the corn rows in front of him, coming from behind. He dove straight left into the corn rows, stopping his movement as fast he could. Looking up, he steadied two cornstalks in place.
The siren was now muted, but the brightening strobe of red and blue told him the vehicle was getting closer by the second.
Wolf inched to the edge of the corn and stole a glance. It was a Caribinieri Alfa Romeo Gazelle slowing at the observatory’s back gate, then whipping hard into the property. He waited for the next car, which never came. He held his breath and listened. A faint familiar clack of the observatory door told him the officer had probably entered the building.