The Second Day of the Renaissance Read online

  Also by Timothy Williams

  The Inspector Piero Trotti Novels

  Converging Parallels

  The Puppeteer

  Persona Non Grata

  Black August

  Big Italy

  The Anne Marie Laveaud Novels

  Another Sun

  The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe

  Copyright © 2017 by Timothy Williams

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Timothy, author.

  The second day of the renaissance / Timothy Williams.

  Inspector trotti 6

  ISBN 978-1-61695-720-9

  eISBN 978-1-61695-721-6

  1. Police—Italy—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

  I. Title

  PR6073.I43295 S43 2017 823’.914—dc23 2016044299

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ai genitori

  Dolceacqua

  Bordighera

  Cogoleto

  Poggibonsi

  Porto Garibaldi

  ricordi d’un altro secolo

  Glossary

  ACQUA BRILLANTE: sparkling water

  ALPINI: an elite mountain military corps of the Italian Army

  AMORE: love

  ANONIMA SEQUESTRI: Sardinian criminal organization specializing in kidnappings both in Sardinia and mainland Italy

  ARMA: see Carabinieri

  AUTOSTRADA: highway

  BALLO LISCIO: Italian ballroom dancing

  BANCA DELL’AGRICOLTURA: an Italian bank specializing in agricultural credit

  BANCO DEL LAVORO: one of Italy’s larger banks, nationalized from 1929 to 1998

  BONGUSTO: family name of Fred Bongusto, an Italian singer and songwriter

  CAPACI: a town on the outskirts of Palermo, Sicily, where the investigative judge Falcone was murdered along with his police escort

  CAPITANO: captain

  CARABINIERI: Italian militarized police force

  CELERE: riot police

  C’ERAVAMO TANTO AMATI: a 1974 Italian comedy–drama

  CHIESA: church

  CHINOTTO: myrtle leaved orange tree bearing a small, bitter orange, used to produce a carbonated soft drink of the same name

  CIAO: hello/goodbye

  CINQUECENTO: a Fiat; the investigative judge Falcone was murdered while traveling in a Fiat Croma

  COMMEDIA ALL’ITALIANA: an Italian film genre from the late 1950s to the early 1990s that set comedic overtones against a backdrop of the period’s social issues

  COMMISSARIO: commissioner

  COSA NOSTRA: the Sicilian Mafia, a large criminal syndicate overseeing several smaller groups that each control a territory

  CROMA: a Fiat; the investigative judge Falcone was murdered while traveling in a Fiat Croma

  DOPO MARX, APRILE: A saying that encapsulated the jadedness of the Italian leftist youth with Marxism, literally translating to “After Marx, April”

  DUNA: a sedan model by Fiat

  ERICE: a medieval town in Trapani, Sicily

  FARMACIA: drugstore

  FERROVIE DELLO STATO: a government–owned holding company that manages the infrastructure and services of the Italian rail network

  GANNA: a brand of fine Italian bicycle

  GUARDIA DI FINANZA: militarized police force under the direction of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, with responsibility for economic crime

  INDIANI METROPOLITANI: a small, active faction of the Italian far-left protest during the Years of Lead (1976-77)

  ISPETTORE: inspector

  JUVENTUS: the team of a professional Italian soccer club based in Turin

  LA GAZZETTA DELLO SPORT: an Italian newspaper dedicated to the coverage of various sports

  LA GRASSA: the Fat One, nickname of Bologna, famous for its cuisine

  LEGHISTA: member of the Lega Nord political party, which seeks autonomy for northern Italy

  LEGHISTI: plural of the above

  LICEO CLASSICO: high school with a humanities- and Classics-based curriculum, and the only kind of school that allowed students access to an Italian university education until 1969

  LITTORINA: a rail motorcoach

  LOTTA CONTINUA: a political group on the far left; also the newspaper published by the Lotta Continua movement

  LUPARA: a sawn-off shotgun traditionally associated with Cosa Nostra

  MANI PULITE: a national judicial investigation into Italian political corruption in the early 1990s

  MATTANZA: tuna fishing; the expression is used to indicate violent bloodletting in mafia wars

  METROPOLITANA: underground/aboveground urban rail network in Milan, Rome, etc.

  NARCOLIRE: money in Italy coming from the drug trade

  NAZIONALI: an inexpensive brand of Italian cigarettes

  NUCLEO ANTI-MAFIA: organized crime unit

  NUCLEO POLITICO: political segment of the Carabinieri

  OLTREPÒ: hilly area in the Apennines on the south bank of the river Po south of the city of Pavia in northern Italy; famous for its wines

  OMERTÁ: Mafia code of silence

  OMICIDI: homicide department

  OSPEDALE MILITARE: military hospital

  PALAZZO DI GIUSTIZIA: courthouse

  PALIO: a horse race held twice a year in the center of Siena; even a riderless horse can win

  PALIOS: prize (pl.)

  PARTITO COMUNISTA ITALIANO: Italian Communist Party

  PASIONARIA: Spanish for a highly motivated female activist, often in a left-wing organization

  PENTITO: participant or accomplice in criminal activity supplying evidence for the prosecution in court; a grass

  PETRARCA: the family name of Francesco Petrarca, an Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy (commonly anglicized as Petrarch)

  PICCIOTTO: a young man, especially a young mafioso

  PITTORESCO: picturesque

  PIZZO: bribe

  PO: a river that flows eastward across northern Italy

  POLGAI : police training academy

  POLIZIA: police

  POLIZIA DI STATO: national police force

  POLIZIA STRADALE: highway patrol

  PROCURA: state prosecutor’s office

  PROCURA DELLA REPUBBLICA: state prosecutor

  PROVINCIA PADANA: an Italian newspaper

  PUBBLICA SICUREZZA: the old name for the Italian police force; now Polizia di Stato

  PUBBLICO MINISTERO: public prosecutor

  PUNT E MES: a dark-brown, bitter Italian vermouth

  QUESTURA: police headquarters

  RAPIDO: express

  REPUBBLICA: a Italian daily newspaper

  REPUBBLICHINI: Fascist army and supporters of Mussolini’s Republic of Salò, 1943–1945, set up on Lake Garda by the Germans following the Italian surrender to the Allies

  ROMA STAZIONE TERMINI: the main railway station of Rome

  SAN VITTORE: a prison in the city center of Milan

  SCIENTIFICA: forensics

  SEICENTO: a city car model by Fiat

  SESTO: sixth

  Sesto san giovanni: a suburb of Milan

  SIGNORA:
madam, lady

  SIGNORINA: miss, young lady

  SOSTITUTO PROCURATORE: deputy prosecutor

  SPREMUTA: freshly squeezed citrus juice

  SUD: south

  SUPERSTRADA: highway

  TENENTE: lieutenant

  TOPOLINO: the Italian name for Mickey Mouse, as well as an Italian digest-sized comic series featuring the Disney characters

  Toscano/TOSCANI: bitter Italian cigars from Tuscany

  TOTOCALCIO: a form of gambling on the results of soccer games; football pools

  TUTELA DEL PATRIMONIO ARTISTICO: an arm of the Carabinieri dedicated to the protection and preservation of Italy’s cultural and artistic heritage

  UNA ROTONDA SUL MARE: a song by Fred Bongusto, an Italian singer, literally translating to “On a Terrace Overlooking the Sea”

  VENETO: Venetian(s)

  VIA: road

  VIDDANI: offensive expression in Sicilian dialect for peasants

  ZIO: uncle

  1: Florence

  The city of Florence was packed with tourists, with Germans and French and Japanese, talking loudly and flaunting their currencies.

  Trotti cursed under his breath. It was another week to Easter, and yet every reasonably priced hotel in the city was full. There had been no reason to expect this sudden drop in the temperature; nor had Trotti been expecting the main railway station to close for the night. Foolishly, he had lingered in a restaurant and now he was shivering in the street. He did not even have a coat. Half past two and the train for Empoli would not leave for another couple of hours. There was no escape from the cold, and Trotti was cursing his own stupidity when he noticed the African girl. She had been standing there for some time, but he had assumed she was just another whore. He looked at her from behind; the overhead neon highlighted her hair and for a moment Trotti thought it was Eva. There was a lurch in his belly, but as the girl moved towards the main entrance of the Stazione Santa Maria Novella, Piero Trotti realized she was a lot younger than the prostitute from Uruguay.

  A couple of barefoot children were begging in front of a mobile bar. The bar—probably the only place open in Florence at half past three in the morning—was selling hot drinks on the far side of the road. Trotti scraped money from the bottom of his flimsy pocket and bought two cups of steaming chocolate. He gave the change to one of the children.

  He went back across the road.

  “For you, signorina.”

  She turned and the plucked eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “Hot chocolate to warm you against this chill,” Trotti smiled.

  Her lips were almost white in the feeble glow of the station lights. “My mother told me not to take presents from strangers.”

  “Just a retired policeman.”

  “Men like you she warned me about.” Without taking her eyes from his, she put the styrofoam to her lips and drank.

  She must have been in her early twenties. The girl was almost as tall as Trotti, and the appearance of height was accentuated by curly hair, combed outwards. A blue ribbon ran through the curls and was tied into a knot above her neck. She held the cup between her hands—hands that trembled.

  She did not have any luggage other than a small bag at her feet and the clothes she was wearing—cotton skirt, blue tights, a sweater and a denim jacket.

  “You missed your train?”

  Her scuffed tennis shoes were no protection against the Siberian cold. “Perhaps.”

  “You missed it or you didn’t?”

  The eyes appraised him from behind the rim of the paper cup. Widely-set brown eyes; Trotti realized why she reminded him of Eva. He felt the pinch of nostalgia.

  She blew across the surface of her drink before taking another sip. “I have nowhere to sleep.”

  “You’re not Italian, signorina?”

  “Just one of my problems,” the girl said in a lilting accent, and then she started to cry.

  2: Empoli

  They had to change trains.

  At Empoli, side by side, they sat in an empty waiting room and before long, the girl’s head slumped onto his shoulder. Trotti felt the rasp of the girl’s thick hair against his cheek and he could smell its warmth.

  He closed his eyes and recalled the first meeting with Eva in Milan. A long time ago, before the beating they gave her and her hurried, frightened departure for Uruguay.

  He dozed off; the local train pulled into the station and the girl woke Trotti with a sharp jab of her elbow. Grabbing his arm and her bag, she pulled him out into the feeble light of morning and bustled him onto the impatient train, an old, rust-colored Littorina.

  After the stuffy coziness of the waiting room, the compartment was cold and the train empty. They collapsed onto upholstery that smelled of cigarette smoke and sweat. The locomotive gave a melancholy hoot to the grey sky and the outskirts of Empoli were soon falling behind them.

  They were both too weary to talk, but Trotti was no longer tired enough to sleep. He stared through the window at the rolling countryside of Tuscany, grey-green beneath the leaden sky.

  It was quite unlike the flat expanses of Lombardy. Tuscany could have been a different country; it was a different world.

  “You’re not from Florence?” she asked, as if reading his thoughts. One eye was closed, one eye was looking at him.

  “Padania.” He laughed.

  A frown.

  “I’m from the North.”

  After leaving Bari in the mid-seventies, Trotti had traveled South on only three occasions, and never for pleasure. It was not that Piero Trotti disliked central Italy or the South—unlike the leghista Ubertini in Scientifica, who maintained that you needed a pith helmet and a rifle to venture anywhere south of the Po.

  Florence, Rome and Palermo were as much a part of the republic as Milan and Bergamo, Crema and Lodi. It was just that Trotti had no call to go there. He had always been happy where he was, in the city where he belonged, with its winter fogs and with its mosquitoes and its airless heat during the summer.

  The softness of the Tuscan hills, even on a freezing April morning, was quite alien to him.

  The girl sat before him and soon the second eye closed again as she dropped off.

  Surreptitiously, Trotti studied the graceful hands and the long fingers where they loosely clasped the cloth bag. He smiled to himself.

  Her name was Wilma Barclay and, speaking in idiomatic Italian, she had told him that she was from America. She was twenty-one—the same age as Pioppi when his daughter had decided she no longer wanted to eat.

  No young woman with all the challenges of life before her, American or otherwise, deserved to be left to fend for herself on a freezing night outside Florence SMN.

  The train emitted its mournful hoot, a hoot made more mournful by the first snowflakes that battered against the window.

  The 6:45 local from Empoli pulled into Siena.

  3: Pétain

  “General Spadano’s waiting for you.”

  “General?”

  With a remote, patrician smile, the uniformed officer leaned forward and opened the door. “Kindly enter,” he said in an educated voice.

  Although a policeman himself for nearly forty years, Trotti still imagined that most flatfeet were called Quagliarulo or Scognamiglio and spoke in Neapolitan or Sicilian. Surprised, Trotti thanked the man and obediently did as he was told, entering the office softly, almost on tiptoe, almost intimidated.

  He had never seen anything like it; or at least, Piero Trotti had never seen a police room that was Renaissance in style, with vaulted arches and walls covered in delicate frescoes.

  “So there you are.” Spadano stood up from behind a desk covered with various telephones.

  The place smelled of cigars and Atkinson eau de cologne.

  Trotti nodded, “You’re looking fit.”


  “Not so bad yourself,” Spadano replied. “Except for the paunch and the extra ten kilos you’re carrying.”

  Physically, Spadano was small, and looked even smaller behind the large black desk. He was not wearing a uniform but a dark linen suit, a white shirt and a blue tie. The oblique light from the window had caught his grey eyes. His hair was cut very short and brushed backwards; it was snow-white. “Glad you could make it to Siena, Piero.”

  “Thanks for the ride from the station.”

  “I hear you’re accompanied.”

  “An American girl I met shivering to death outside Firenze SMN at three in the morning.”

  “What were you doing outside Santa Maria at three in the morning?”

  “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Always were a ladies’ man. Good to see you haven’t changed.”

  “You have.” Trotti gestured towards the engraved name plate on the desk, “I thought you’d retired years ago, Spadano. You’re older than me.”

  “Perhaps I was.” The Carabiniere took a packet of cigars from his jacket and set it on the desk. “Still a few more years before I collect my pension. One of the advantages of rank.”

  “Last I heard of you, you were in Sardinia fighting bandits.”

  “In Calabria fighting bandits.”

  “What brought you to Siena?”

  Spadano grinned and gestured to the walls of the office, the painted ceiling, the computers. “Tutela del patrimonio artistico.”

  “You’re a peasant like me, Spadano. What would you know about art?”

  “I can’t afford to retire yet. I’ve got a young family to bring up.”

  There came a muffled shout from beyond the closed window, outside in the medieval city. “I can remember your words, Spadano, as if it were yesterday: ‘One thing’s certain—I’m not going to find a wife in the Sopramonte. Just sheep, wind and rain—and foul-smelling Sardinian peasants and murderers.’”

  “Thanks to you, Piero, I met Signora Bianchini in your foggy northern city.”

  “How does a general of Carabinieri find the time to have a young wife and a family?”

  There was the soft hum of a printing machine in a far corner. Spadano looked thoughtfully at his old friend.