Marino swiveled back to the phone again and Wolf noted on his watch the seven minutes that had already passed. The Colonnello brought his non-phone hand to the ancient rotary, pressed the switch again, then dialed another number and held up a finger as he swiveled slowly towards the window.
“Excuse me, sir,” Wolf said. “I’ve come a long way and would like to speak about my brother. My brother John Wolf?”
Colonnello Marino pulled the handset from his face and swiveled his chair, shooting a hot glare that bore deep into Wolf’s eyes. He pause for a breath and then his face melted into sympathy in a split instant. “Ah, yes. Mr. Wolf. I am-a sorry about your brother. And I am-a sorry about-a-my English-a. It is terrible.” He gently hung up the phone, then launched into a fast paced pleasant sounding paragraph, speaking directly to Tito.
Tito turned halfway to Wolf, taking on the role of interpreter.
“He says that he is waiting for the final release papers for releasing your brother’s body. It should be at some time een the next two days when everything is finished and signed, so you can take him home.”
Colonnello Marino folded his hands and leaned forward on his desk with a sympathetic expression.
“Okay, thank you,” Wolf said. “As I explained to the man I spoke to on the phone, Detective Rossi, I am a police officer in the United States. I would like to see my brother’s body, the police report, my brother’s apartment, and speak to the officers who found my brother.”
Tito turned to Colonello Marino and interpreted for Wolf, using far less words than he had. Wolf furrowed his brow and looked to Tito.
The Colonnello reached and lit a cigarette in a practiced flourish, taking a deep inhale. He spoke his exhale, “Meester Wolf. I-a-understand your-a concern weet your broder’s det,” he placed the cigarette in the ash tray and folded his hands. Smoke streamed from the desk top in front of his face. “I can geev-a you-a Tito tomorrow to go see your broder,” he said picking up the phone and dialing a phone number. He plucked his cigarette, swiveled to the window, and began a jovial conversation into the receiver.
Tito exhaled in relief, stood and opened the office door.
Wolf sat still for a few seconds, then stood, leaving his backpack on the ground, and walked to Colonnello Marino’s desk. He reached out and pushed down the phone switch.
Colonnello Marino looked genuinely puzzled at the handset for a second and then slowly looked to Wolf holding his finger on the switch. His face contorted into a deep hate filled rage.
“I need more than Tito for a day. I need to see my brother, I need to see the police report, my brother’s apartment, and to speak to the officers who found my brother,” Wolf said.
Marino’s face brightened to a glistening tomato-red in a matter of seconds. “Yyyyyyyyyou-a don’t-a tell-a ME what-a-to do!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, and then he snapped a quick order to Tito who relayed something out into the main room.
An instant later, two officers slammed into the office, each snapping an arm back and kicking the back of his knees, landing him hard on the tile floor. A third showed up and wrapped him in a choke hold, pulling him up to his feet.
“You-a-want-a to tell-a…us how-a to investigate? American Cowboy?” Marino said loudly. Wolf could hear a group gathering in the office doorway behind him, officers shuffling to get in on the action.
“Sir,” Wolf coughed, struggling to breath. “No sir.”
Marino motioned for the officer to release his choke hold.
Wolf sucked in a breath, making a show of how mentally and physically destroyed he was at that moment, though the chokehold had been hesitant by the officer behind him, or just weak. “Colonnello Marino, please help me. My mother and I are in desperate need for some answers about his death. I’m not saying you have conducted a poor investigation, I am saying there is no way you could have known my brother like I do, and I know for a fact that he didn’t kill himself. I have some irrefutable evidence that he has not. I just ask for some help from your department, and to please allow me to go over the evidence found at the scene.”
Marino looked down his nose with a puzzled look at Wolf. He seemed to contemplate his words for a few seconds, then looked to the rest of the now crowded room with an amused look. “Non capito niente!”
The officers in the room began chuckling and looking quickly to one another, mood quickly turning to a jovial atmosphere.
This crazy American makes no sense!
A female voice interjected loudly, speaking rapidly in Italian directly behind Wolf. He turned to find a stunningly beautiful young woman speaking in reasonable tones, gesturing to Wolf and speaking to Marino in a pleading tone. She looked to be arguing in Wolf’s defense.
When she finished, Marino lit a cigarette and looked at Wolf up and down. The room was dead silent, awaiting the emperor’s decree. A distant car horn honked from somewhere in the streets below. An officer coughed lightly behind him.
Marino put his cigarette into the ash tray and stood directly in front of him, index finger tapping hard on his chest.
“Do not make-a me hangry, do you understand?”
“Uh…yes sir,” Wolf assumed he meant to say
angry
.
Marino looked at the other officers and began waving them out of the room. He barked a long order at the beautiful young woman who pushed her way to a standing at attention position next to Wolf. She was listening intently with a stone face. She finally answered in a curt affirmative.
“I weel geev you until Friday, de end-a of da-week,” Marino turned to Wolf. “We have very important work to do and cannot spare officers, so I weel geev you officer Parente. She weel show you what you-a need. Den, ayou must leave here after-a dis week. Take your broder home to your moder,” he said with a sudden sympathetic look on his face.
“Thank you sir. I appreciate your help.”
“Vai, vai,” Marino swept his arms forward, sweeping them out of the room.
Wolf picked up his backpack and left, the beautiful officer already lost amid the crowd. Tito saw his confused look and pointed to the hallway, where he saw a slender backside storming away with the gentle sway of a dancer, straight shoulder-length brown hair in a tight ponytail whipping side to side.
He nodded to Tito and walked after her.
She turned an abrupt right and was out of site. He followed fast and almost slammed into her
picking up her hat and coat of her desk. She huffed and pushed past him back down the hallway.
“You coming?” She turned her head halfway down the hall.
“Yep.” He strode after her.
Wolf surmised she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. Her coffee colored hair
was pulled back tight against the back of her skull, hanging down just to her shoulders. She tucked a dangling strand behind her ear and bit her lower lip revealing a perfect set of teeth, while her tormented aqua marine eyes darted back and forth out the front windshield.
“Hey, I don’t know what you said in there, but thanks.”
“Yep.” She gunned the Alfa Romeo out of the parking lot directly in front of a fast moving, large truck.
He fished for his seat belt and put it on, “I’m David by the way.”
She kept her eyes forward, “Lia.”
Wolf sighed in quiet resignation as she picked up her cell phone and dialed a number.
Chapter 12
Lia hung up after a short conversation and plopped the phone in front of the stick shift.
“I have to admit, I’m glad you kept that phone call to a minimum, Tito was on the phone the entire way here from the train station,” he said. “I never did get a chance to even…”
“Tito’s an idiot,” she said.
“Yeah…” He looked at her expressionless stare out the windshield. “Anyways, thanks.” He turned to look at nothing in particular out the window, seeing a large group of pedestrians walking along the lake shore.
Just then Lia downshifted and accelerated into a traffic circle, threading in between two cars that were no more than two car lengths apart, then shot out the other side, swerved into oncoming traffic, looked left at a convex mirror mounted high on an ancient wall, jammed the brakes and cranked the wheel in a sharp button-hook right turn.
It took Wolf a couple breaths to go from shock to realization he was riding shotgun with a gifted Formula One driver. He let go of his white knuckle grip on the door. “Could you take me to my brother’s apartment?”
“That’s where I’m taking you. We have to meet a colleague first.”
“Okay, thanks. I wasn’t sure. I really haven’t been able to communicate with people that well so far. It’s nice to be on the same page as someone finally.” Wolf sat in silence for a minute. “I noticed your English is very good, hardly an accent.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Your welcome,” he said.
They parked in a shadowy alley and walked a narrow cobble stone street up a slight rise. An archway opened into a bright piazza that was the length of a football field and not quite as wide. Water jumped out of a ground level concrete slab a few feet to the right. Cafes with four or five rows of outdoor seating lined the entire length of the piazza, old ornate looking residential buildings stacked on top. Aromas filled the air, making his mouth gush. There were people everywhere.
A male Cabinieri officer stood in the deep distance — light blue shirt, dark blue pants with bright red stripe down the side of each leg, and white leather belt. Lia began walking swiftly in his direction.
Suddenly a cacophony of noise stirred the piazza. It was a group of four kids on some motorbikes, rapping their engines loudly. Wolf thought they looked like dirt bikes, but they had smooth street tires on them. Upon closer looking, he realized they didn’t look like it, that’s exactly what they were — dirt bikes with street tires.
Three of them killed the engines and leaned their bikes up against a side alley wall, while another circled back and revved hard in front of a group of people, scaring them into a frenzy of stumbling and shrieks. It was a group of young mentally handicapped people.
Lia slowed down and Wolf came up along side her. She was watching the officer in the distance march with determination towards the four kids on bikes, who were now taking off their helmets and laughing. The fourth kid still sat on his bike, leaning against the wall with the engine shut off, pealing off his helmet.
He didn’t see it coming.
The officer walked up and slapped his head, a smack that was clearly audible from the forty yards they were at. He ripped the kid off the bike and pushed him up against the wall, giving the boy a typewriter to the chest and a vigorous speech that, by the looks of his whitened expression, was the scariest thing he’d ever heard in his life. He released the boy and said something to the others, who all began pushing their bikes out of site up the alley. The Caribinieri officer turned and started walking towards Wolf and Lia.
Wolf bounced his eyebrows. “That’s good police work right there.”
“Detective Valerio Rossi.” He shook Wolf’s hand. “We spoke on the phone. I’m so sorry for your loss, officer Wolf.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you for all your help so far.”
“Ready?”
“Yep,” Wolf exhaled.
“His apartment is right here. Just off the piazza. Let’s go.”
Wolf followed Rossi and Lia watching them have a conversation in Italian. Lia seemed to be confiding something to him, and Rossi was shaking his head in disbelief, consoling her with a fatherly, or brotherly, pat on the back.
Wolf turned his thoughts away from their relationship dynamic to the task at hand. His heart skipped a beat at the prospect of going to see where his brother died.
Security fencing surrounded the property, iron spikes filed to thin deadly points topping each tall iron bar. Rossi pushed the intercom button and spoke to a male voice who buzzed them in. It was the property manager who lived on site.
“Buon giorno.” He had a sullen expression, holding his hand out to Wolf.
“Hello, do you speak English?”
“Uhhh, no.”
“Okay,.” Wolf glanced at Lia and Rossi. “Thank you for meeting us.”
Lia stepped in and began translating.
“You were the one who found my brother?”
“He and the girl, Cristina, that lives above your brother, found him. He called the Caribinieri.” Lia translated to Wolf.
“Okay. Let’s just head up.”
The janitor took a set of keys out of his pocket and expertly inserted the top key into the door of apartment twenty two. He turned it four or five complete revolutions to the left, then put a smaller key in and turning it five more times before the door popped open a crack.
The janitor stepped back and let the door hang open a few inches. They all looked to Wolf, who stepped forward and pushed.
It smelled of lemon disinfectant, and was very dim. Rossi walked around Wolf and went to the small balcony off the main room, sliding open floor to ceiling shutter doors. Bright sunlight poured in revealing a very spacious room with high ceilings he estimated to be ten feet.