nor female. More...
come si dice
? Like a bear growls?” “Guttural?” “Guttural? What an ugly word. But that is what they said.” “But it means someone was in the room with Porter?” “According to the clerk, who guards the door all night, no one
came in to see him. The hostel has many young girls there and they keep order because of it. Guests are always observed and announced. No one came for him. Therefore we must assume that Mr. Naumann was alone.”
“What? Talking to himself ?” Brancati shrugged. “Unless it was someone who was already in the hostel.” “The guests have been interviewed. Mr. Naumann would have
had nothing to say to any of them. They are all these traveling
blatte.
These cockroaches. Americans. Canadians. Swedes. These
backpack
ers.
” Brancati made the phrase sound like a risky sexual deviance.
“Did this desk clerk see Porter leave?” “He says he did not.” “I don’t believe him.” “He is a reliable man, a cousin to one of my men. It is a puzzle.” “Damn straight it’s a puzzle. Somebody’s lying to you. On what
floor was Porter’s room?” “The third.”
16
|
david stone
“Was there a fire escape? Outside stairs?” “Fire escape? The buildings on Via Janelli are the oldest in Cortona.
From the twelfth century. They do not have these ‘fire escapes.’ ” “Then how did he get out?” Brancati shrugged again, palms raised as if in divine supplication.
“We do not know.” “On the face of it, if I were you, I’d take that desk clerk apart and I’d talk to everyone who was in that hostel. Somebody is lying.”
Brancati studied Dalton’s face for a time. Young, late thirties, perhaps as old as forty; tall, slightly tanned, with long white-blond hair swept back from his forehead like a Renaissance princeling. He had the scarred face of a gentleman boxer, with strong nose knocked slightly out of true and flattened at the bridge; a hard, fit frame under his blue cashmere topcoat and his dark gray pinstripe, his pristine collar and the gold bar under his pearl-gray silk tie.
His pale, almost colorless eyes were wide-set. There was something in his face that was not quite right, as if it had been badly damaged, perhaps in an accident, and then expensively repaired by someone who was an artist at the work. Dalton waited out the appraisal in an uneasy silence.
“You interest me, Signor Dalton. Were you ever in the military?” “Never.” “
Polizia,
maybe? Or the government?” Dalton shook his head. “I would not take you for a banker. Maybe a fencer. Do you fence,
Signor Dalton? In the army, I was a fencing instructor. You have
the eye.” “No. I box a little. I don’t fence.” “You ask good police questions, Signor Dalton. For a banker.” “Thank you.” “You think well. You ask clear questions, like a policeman would.
the echelon vendetta
|
17
You are observant and intelligent. You are his friend, his colleague. You meet for drinks and dinner. You know his family. And yet you tell me you have no idea why he would leave his suite at the hotel, leave all his clothes, even his shaving things, all his papers save his passport, and drive down to Cortona to hide himself in a student hostel on the Via Janelli? Then to come up here and die in this outrageous way in the courtyard of San Nicolò? Do you not even wonder about such things?”
“Of course I do. So what? I have no standing. These are your problems. We’ll let you handle them. Naturally we’ll provide whatever assistance you require. But our policy in situations such as this is to leave the inquiries to the professionals.”
“Burke and Single has a policy about employees who die like this?”
“No. It’s a policy about not interfering with official investigations.”
Brancati looked as if he had more to say and then decided not to say it.
“Okay.
Basta.
Time is running. Come with me. We will do this.”
A rising wind was whipping the material of the tent and a cold rain lashed at their faces as they crossed the gravel courtyard. Father Jacopo stepped into their path as they walked, gently brushing aside Brancati’s intervening arm, his dark face fixed on Dalton.
“You are Micah Dalton?”
“I am.”
“You must forgive me. I have something to say to you. I do not mean to offend. It may sound ridiculous.
Ma . . .
It
is
ridiculous. But Paolo has begged me to speak to you. You will permit?”
“Please, Father.”
“Paolo says you stand in darkness, Signor Dalton. Paolo says a man calls for you along the Via Margherita. Paolo wants me to say that if you see this man or hear him call out to you, you should turn away. He says this man is a ghost, a spirit, and he has been standing
18
|
david stone
there for almost a full year now. Paolo says the ghost has been calling out a name. The name of an
inglese.
The name Paolo heard was Micah. I know this is absurd. But when Paolo heard your name from the police, heard that you were coming here, he came to me and told me. I said this is godless. Mere superstition. But Paolo was determined. So I felt I should say something. And this I have done. Forgive my intrusion. You are going into the tent now. To see your dead friend. May I give you the blessing of Our Lady?”
Dalton glanced at Brancati, whose face was unreadable. “I would be grateful, Father.”
The priest made the sign of the cross in the air between them, uttered a few unintelligible words in low but sacred tones, and then held out his hand, his face solemn, his dark eyes intense.
“I wish you grace, Signor Dalton. If you wish to confess later, I will open the
chiesa
and hear you. Good bye, now. God be with you.”
The priest withdrew, and after a long silence—puzzled and vaguely uneasy on Dalton’s part, simply exasperated for Brancati—the major reached out, unzipped the closure, and pulled the flap back. Then he stood aside and opened it to Dalton.
Dalton stepped into the tent, and Brancati followed him inside, moving around what was on the ground in front of them until he could watch Dalton’s face. Dalton looked at the figure on the ground, its back up against the heavy wooden doors of the chapel; it took a while to make sense of what he was seeing. When he finally put it together with the smell of fresh blood and intestinal fluids, a rush of hot acid flowed up into the back of his throat and a chilly sweat came out on his cheeks. He swallowed with difficulty and opened his mouth to take in shallow breaths so the smell wouldn’t overpower him. He swallowed twice more and shoved his hands into the pockets of his Burberry coat. Brancati said nothing for a time and then crouched down beside the body, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.
the echelon vendetta
|
19
“This person has been very badly damaged. As you see. So it is very hard to make the identity. I regret asking this, but you must try.”
Brancati pulled out a Streamlight and shone the beam directly onto what remained of the face. Dalton had to make himself concentrate on seeing any remnant of an old and familiar friend in shredded flesh and torn muscle, in a face that was no longer being ruled by the mind and the emotions that had made it live. Even a death mask has a shadow of the living spirit in it; this was barely human.
“Yes,” he said, after a minute. “That’s him.” “You must name him, Signor Dalton. For the record.” “That’s Porter Naumann.” “You’re sure.” “I think so. Yes. I’m sure. What ...?” “What happened to him? We think he came up here wearing only
what you see, the bottom of his...” Brancati hunted the word. “Pajamas.” “Yes. Pajamas. And barefoot. Look here.” He indicated the soles
of the corpse’s feet, where the flesh was torn and bruised. “He ran all the way from the hostel, it seems. People on the Via Berrettini say they heard a man running last night. Around midnight. They heard him saying something. But not screaming. More like a prayer, or simply talking out loud. But it was raining very hard. No one went to the balcony to look. Bits of the gravel outside we find also in the skin of his feet. See, here, he fell once at least. You see the gashes on the palms. He fell hard onto the gravel. He gets up, stumbles, finally he reaches the doors of the cappella.”
Brancati aimed the light at the wooden doors of the chapel.
“See here the marks. His palms were bloody and he struck the doors. Several times, from the smears here . . . and here . . . struck them hard.”
“No one heard?” “Paolo lives two streets away. And the wind was high all night.
20
|
david stone
The rain washed a lot of things away. Anyway, so far, no one has
come to us.” “Do they know? The people around?” Brancati gave him a disdainful look. “The whole of Cortona
knows. Cortona is not Napoli.” “What happened to his belly?” Brancati sighed. “It is speculation only. But we think maybe the
dogs.” “Dogs? Dogs chased him up here and killed him? Jesus Christ.
What kind of dogs do you have in Cortona? Werewolves?” “All dogs are carnivores.” “His guts have been torn completely out. No poodle did that.” “No. But the town dogs—many are half-wild. They breed in the
fortezza
above the town. They would have smelled this in the wind.” “So the dogs killed him? Is that it?” “No. That is not possible. He was dead before the dogs
found him.” “How do you know?” “The wounds. Men don’t bleed after death. If you look at the
way he sits, his back against the doors, his ankles crossed so, his knees spread, this is not the position of a man fighting off dogs. And when dogs kill they do it at the throat, at the head, and at the tendons in the legs. The belly they open afterward. After he was dead. It is natural. The scent would bring them.”
Dalton felt the acid rising again. His vision blurred and he swallowed it down again with difficulty. Brancati’s sympathetic look was unconvincing.
“You wish to go now, Mr. Dalton?” “Is there anything else?” “Yes. There is. If you are all right?” “I am.” “You tell me Mr. Naumann was a banker, yes?”
the echelon vendetta
|
21
“A lawyer, actually. His brief was international trade.”
“Never a soldier?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve known him for eight years. Ever since I came to work at Burke and Single. He was one of my first trainers. He would have mentioned it.”
“Trainers? Bankers have trainers?”
“Instructors. A mentor.”
“A mentor. I see.”
Brancati pointed the flashlight to an irregular row of coin-shaped lesions across Naumann’s right hip. “Okay. These are bullet wounds. Not recent. But not that old either. Not many years. And this...” He indicated Naumann’s left shoulder. “This is a scar like one gets from a knife. A big knife. It is quite recent. No more than a year old. And he was a very active man. Very strong. See the musculature of the chest and the arms. Here on his left pectoral he once had a small tattoo. It has been partially removed with a laser, but you can see it was once in the shape of a helicopter with spread wings behind it. Do you know it?”
Dalton shook his head and internally damned the Agency medics. Brancati waited for something more, realized that nothing was immediately forthcoming, shrugged, and continued.
“Well, I may know this tattoo. We are military, we Carabinieri. Many years ago, when I was a young man, we took part in a military exercise with some American forces. The tattoo of a helicopter with wings signifies Air Assault training in the U.S. Army. Look at his hands. He has the kind of calluses on his hands that you also have. I have seen these before. I recognize them. They come from a long practice of the martial arts. So, very strange for a banker whose entry visa says he is fifty-two years old. Bullet holes. Tattoos. Knife
22
|
david stone
scars. Mr. Dalton, are your office parties so dangerous? Do the ambulances stand by?”
Dalton didn’t laugh. “I can’t tell what those wounds are. They could be cigarette burns. I have no idea how he came by a knife scar. About the tattoo, many men come to regret the tattoos they get when they’re young and stupid.”
“Like you? A banker only. Never a soldier?” Dalton shook his head. Brancati got to his feet, groaning with the effort. “I don’t think you will say yes if I ask you to take off your shirt?” “No. I won’t.” Brancati raised his hands, smiled again. “A joke. Otherwise it is
all too dark, too
sfumato.
” “A joke. Great. But somebody killed him? Right?” Brancati’s face altered again, hardened. “Possibly. Possibly not.” “But you said he was running from someone.” “I said he was running. I did not say that he was being chased.” “For Christ’s sake, Brancati. Look at him.” “I have.” “What killed him? If not the dogs, then what?” “Look at his hands, Mr. Dalton.” Dalton leaned down. Brancati shone the narrow beam of the
Streamlight onto Naumann’s lap, where his hands lay palms-up in the bubble-and-squeak of his opened belly. The tips of his fingers were shredded and pulpy.
“Someone has pulled out his fingernails.” “No. They are just full of blood and flesh. Only two are gone. We
found them. In the muscles of his face and in his throat.” It took Dalton a while to get the picture. “You’re saying he committed suicide by...” “Tearing at himself ?”
the echelon vendetta
|
23
“Do you believe it?”
“I do not
wish
to believe it. I am too fond of my sleep.”
“But do you?”
“I believe that he has been hurt by his own hands. Whether or not this means he committed suicide is another question. He may have been under the influence of some delusion. Temporary insanity. Perhaps a drug.”
“Porter didn’t do drugs.”
Brancati performed an ironic bow, his face impassive. “Maybe. Maybe not. We will do the blood work. Perhaps he was in the grip of a psychotic event. What they sometimes call a ‘fugue.’ Or there is some lesion of the brain. Such facial disfigurement is not unknown. Several years ago a young girl of Cortona who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia used poultry scissors to slice off her nose, her cheeks, her ears...”