None of it made any sense. The body wasn’t even cold yet, not even discovered by his fellow employees milling about. Wolf instinctually twisted to look behind him.
Nothing but corn.
He poked his head out and looked to the building, seeing flashing blue and red against the corn rows lining the road. Faint radio noises came from the vehicle inside the property.
He ran down the road to the scooter. Pausing, he looked and listened again, then pushed it up the dirt road, away from the observatory grounds. Reaching the small rise, he jumped on, coasting towards the lake — towards the narrow trail they’d navigated earlier in the day.
Towards the crime scene
.
He jammed the brakes hard, skidding to a stop. Whether or not the crime scene would be manned was a toss-up. If he were the one giving orders at a crime scene in Colorado, he would have a couple men down there. Probably not at the trail head below, but more near the actual crime scene. He knew there was a farm road to the left and to the right at the bottom of the small hill ahead, right where the narrow trail began. He coasted forward.
The narrow path at the bottom had yellow tape across the entrance, but no officer in site. He fired up the scooter and gave it a small rev that echoed in the still night, sounding like a handful of pebbles in a tin can. He chose the road to the left, towards the road he took here. It was also towards the road the Caribinieri screamed in on, but most importantly, it was back in the direction of Lecco.
Time wasn’t on his side anymore, and there was a lot to do.
Chapter 40
Wolf got off the hissing scooter and eyed the Albastru Pub across the piazza. It was lively, chalk full of patrons, merry laughter gushing from the pub doorway as they came and went.
Walking past the front window, he could see a thickly muscled bartender working behind the counter in a blur of activity. A young waitress weaved in and out of standing customers. Her face sparkled with facial piercings.
A group of young men wearing soccer jerseys charged out with cigarettes in their mouths, beers in hand.
He slowed his pace, stalling to get a longer look inside, digging in his pocket and pulling out a cigarette from the pack he borrowed from Cristina. “Excuse me, do you have a light?” He flicked his thumb.
Two of the bigger guys turned toughly, eyeing him up and down. “Yes, I have one!” Another guy stepped forward with a friendly smile and extended lighter. “Where are you from?”
Just then Wolf saw Cezar’s tall head bobbing above behind the bar, above the other patrons. Wolf took the lighter and turned his back to the window to light.
“Tijuana.” Wolf tossed it back without looking and walked away.
He took a left and walked down the street, the pub noise fading in the distance.
Thirty yards down he took the first left, then the next, into a dark rain soaked alley. He made his way toward where he pictured the rear of the pub. Through a slot canyon of thousand-year-old connected buildings with dark doorways.
Ahead was a blind curve with a bright glow beyond it. He tossed the cigarette in a puddle and walked.
Two men stood in a brightly lit garage doorway sucking on cigarettes.
He ducked into a sunken doorway on the right and looked.
The two men were wiry, much like Cezar, as if they didn’t eat much, or had the metabolism of ferrets. They didn’t look particularly dangerous, neither being over six feet tall, nor bulky, but they were undoubtedly raised on the streets of a country he had no knowledge of.
Whether from Italy or Romania, he didn’t know the skills these guys brought to the table. They were heavily tattooed, and his gut told him they weren’t just a couple of dishwashers out for a smoke break.
The shorter of the two guys was telling an animated story while the other one stood still, chuckling silently, looking self consciously at his own cigarette. Neither looked to have guns or knives tucked in their waist.
They finished their cigarettes and stayed there, like they were going to wait for something, then ducked inside.
Wolf put another smoke in his mouth, walked out of the doorway and directly towards the bright garage.
As he got closer, he heard the sound of at least two men talking. Definitely Romanian, not Italian.
Wolf walked to the door and looked inside, bathed in bright light. The interior of the garage was large enough for one American SUV, or two Italian cars. Boxes were stacked along the walls of either side. It was obviously used as a loading dock for restaurant supplies to be offloaded from a truck and into the establishment through the door in the back left.
The two men were hard at work pulling full boxes from a haphazard area in the middle of the garage, taping them shut, and stacking them along the walls. The boxes were brown, of the same dimension he’d seen in the back of Cezar’s truck the night before. And just like the night before, they were filled to the brim with what looked to be stolen electronics.
One of the guys did a double take when he saw Wolf, who was now standing just in the garage doorway with a cigarette in his mouth, digging in his pocket with a frustrated look.
They both stood with wide eyes and began walking to Wolf, chests out, heads leaned way back and to the side.
“Excuse me,” Wolf said. “Do you have a lighter?” He flicked his thumb.
The shorter guy on the right took the lead, skipping in front of the other guy. “No, no, no, no.” He shook a finger, walking up fast.
Wolf took his left hand out of his pocket and cigarette out of his mouth with his right, hands out in a defenseless gesture. “No, sorry, I’m just looking for a lighter!” He pointed wildly to his cigarette.
The small guy put his right hand on Wolf’s chest and pushed gently.
Wolf kept his hands up and shuffled backwards, a look of horror now displayed on his face, out into the center of the alleyway.
The short guy kept his hand on Wolf’s chest and began chuckling. He patted Wolf a couple times hard, pushing Wolf back further with each smack. The guy looked Wolf up and down, like he was creepily sizing up a woman, then launched into an amused conversation, looking over his left shoulder to speak.
Wolf knocked the guy out with a hard left knuckle punch to the right temple, following with a massive right elbow to the middle of the face.
The taller guy spit out his cigarette with wide eyes and ripped his hands from his pockets.
Wolf stepped over the still crumpling body straight towards him. He could see that fight or flight instinct was being weighed against each other in the tall guy’s eyes. Flight won out. He turned around and bolted to the pub door.
Wolf was in full stride the second the guy turned, catching up to him immediately. He put his shoulder down and tackled him from behind, just underneath the waist, landing on him hard, driving chest and face into the smooth concrete floor with a slap. Wolf bounced up onto his knees, grabbed two fists of greasy hair and slammed the man’s head down face first. The guy went limp beneath him. Wolf shot a look to the guy in the alley, who still lay motionless.
Wolf got up and pulled the man underneath him into the dark, leaving a red smear. When he reached the rougher alley surface, he flipped him over onto his back, feeling a slight twinge of pity for man’s face.
Within a minute he had both guys stowed up against a dark doorway in the alley.
He hurried back into the open garage and began rummaging. Boxes, some open, some shut, were filled with electronics. A stack of the white EAC logo boxes were piled along the right wall. He lifted one quickly. The contents felt the same as the night before — heavy and packed densely.
Clipboards hung on the wall with official looking shipment papers. He pulled down the first one — an original Bill of Lading from an Italian shipping company. It was in Italian making it almost one hundred percent illegible to Wolf, except one line that said
Genoa, Liguria, Italia
. The line before it
Tenes, Algeria
.
A shipment from Algeria? North Africa?
Sheet after sheet was the same.
Genoa, Liguria, Italia and Tenes, Algeria
. Another line stood out to him, being that it was the same on each and every sheet -
Fratelli Importatori.
A loud clang of a pot or pan from inside the door jolted him into quick action. He set the clipboards back on their hooks and ran out of the garage, careful to step over the darkening blood streak on his way out.
As he turned the corner he heard the door inside the garage open with a squeak.
He ran quietly down the road and around the bend.
Chapter 41
Wolf ran down the alley, back to the right, and out to the front of the pub once again. He walked inside, past the resentful eye of the man he bummed a light from earlier, who was now sucking on a new cigarette.
The thick necked, heavily muscled, and tattooed guy was alone behind the bar. He nodded to Wolf and leaned forward with an ear, looking at him sideways with beady pollution-brown eyes.
“Stella Artois,” said Wolf over the thumping music.
The man twisted to the glasses and swiftly poured him a beer from the tap.
Wolf took a sip, paid the behemoth, and sauntered to the drinker’s side of the bar, which gave him the best view into the back hallway. The hallway ended in a kitchen where two employees paced back and forth. Beyond them was a brightly lit doorway, wide open to the rear garage.
Cezar appeared in it, striding into the kitchen. He closed the door hard and leaned against it, then turned and marched through the kitchen towards the bar. He was gritting his teeth and flexing both fists.
Wolf grabbed his beer and walked through the standing patrons, wincing at the various cheap colognes and bodily emissions as he weaved his way through the loud room. There was an open small table in the corner, so he took it.
The waitress was quick to the table. She had a half circle piercing dangling from the center of her nose, a couple lip rings, and three neck tattoos that he could see. Her blue spiky hair was shaved in a stylistic side wall configuration, like an eighties NFL football player.
She asked something he didn’t understand, then looked at the dumb expression on his face and smiled. “Would you like a menu?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
She looked him all the way down and up, then left with an evil smile.
He watched her shapely body go for a second, then brought the beer up to his lips. From behind the glass he watched Cezar, who was bending in towards the thick necked guy’s ear, whispering with sharp head snaps.
The bartender nodded towards the front window, just to Wolf’s left. Cezar stood up straight and looked, eyes hardening. Wolf froze, the beer pouring down his throat slowly. He stopped drinking, letting the beer rest up against his closed mouth, breathing out his nose. Then he realized they were looking at the front door as a warm, smoky breeze hit his face — a fully clad Caribinieri walking in.
Wolf set the beer down on the table and bent down to his boot. He fondled his laces and looked sidelong towards the red stripe of the Caribinieri uniform pants. They were poised right inside the door for a few seconds, then turned, stepping away from him.
Wolf straightened in his seat and strained to see through the patrons. He spied Cezar, who was wide eyed and turning pale. His Adam’s apple traveled up and down fast as he swallowed dryly.
He seemed to be shitting himself, and he should have been with the stuff he had sitting twenty feet directly behind the thin wood and concrete at his back.
Wolf stood and shuffled through the crowd to a more central locale, his curiosity peaked. Had the Caribinieri begun their investigation into the shady dealings of the Albastru Pub?
The girl with the piercings cut him off. “You not going to eat after all?” Her bottom lip was out with a pouty look.
“Uh, yeah, sorry. I think I’m just going to go up to the bar.” He pointed past her, then stopped dead in his tracks, accidentally juking the waitress into bumping straight into him. His eyes narrowed.
The waitress laughed excitedly, placing her tiny hand on the small of his back.
“Oh, sorry!” she giggled.
He didn’t notice her. He was still looking hard at Cezar, who had made a subtle move that didn’t make sense — a nod of his head towards the end of the bar.
Wolf looked to the Carabinieri officer, who changed the direction of his approach to the bar, following the nod.
It was an odd interaction. It was like Cezar was calling the location of the conversation, which he was, or else he wouldn’t have nodded his head. It didn’t make sense. It was a very familiar gesture, as if they were friends.
The officer reached the end of the bar, plopped his hat down and leaned over onto his elbows.
Cezar reached him and immediately leaned down, launching into a conversation in his left ear. The Carabinieri officer turned his head to his right, revealing the unmistakeable profile of Detective Valerio Rossi. Cezar was gesturing behind himself with a thumb, then also sat his elbows on the counter.