And, yes, it did resemble parts of Chicago, which she’d been to a few times. Milan was a stone-colored, dusty city, now accented with fading autumn foliage, although the dun tone was tempered by ubiquitous red roofs. Naples was far more colorful—though also more chaotic.
Like Hill’s swarthy, enthusiastic driver, Prescott was happy to lecture about the nation.
“Just like the U.S., there’s a north/south divide in Italy. The north’s more industrial, the south agricultural. Sound familiar? There’s never been a civil war, as such, though there was fighting to unify the different kingdoms. A famous battle was fought right here. Cinque Giornate di Milano. Five Days of Milan. Part of the first War of Independence, eighteen forties. It drove the Austrians out of the city.”
He looked ahead, saw a traffic jam, and took a sharp right. He then said, “That case? The Composer. Why’d he come to Italy?”
“We’re not sure. Since he’s picked two immigrants, refugees, so far, he might be thinking it’s harder for the police to solve the cases with undocumenteds as victims. And they’re less motivated to run the investigation.”
“You think he’s that smart?”
“Every bit.”
“Ah, look at this!”
The traffic had come to a halt. From the plane, she’d called Prescott and given him the address on the Post-it note found at the scene where the Composer had slashed Malek Dadi to death. Prescott assured her that it would take only a half hour to get there from the airport but already they’d been fighting through traffic for twice that.
“Welcome to Milano,” he muttered, backing up, over the sidewalk, turning around and finding another route. She recalled that Mike Hill had warned about the traffic from the larger airport in Milan, thinking: Imagine how long it would take to fight twenty-some miles of congestion like this.
Nearly an hour and a half after she’d landed, Prescott turned along a wide, shallow canal. The area was a mix of the well-worn, the quirky chic and the tawdry. Residences, restaurants and shops.
“This is the Navigli,” Prescott announced. He pointed to the soupy waterway. “This and a few others are all that’re left of a hundred miles of canals that connected Milan to rivers for transport of goods and passengers. A lot of Italian cities have rivers nearby or running right through town. Milan doesn’t. This was the attempt to create artificial waterways to solve that problem. Da Vinci himself helped design locks and sluices.”
He turned and drove along a quiet street to an intersection of commercial buildings. Deserted here. He parked under what was clearly a no-parking sign, with the attitude of someone who knew beyond doubt he wouldn’t be ticketed, much less towed.
“That’s the place right there: Filippo Argelati, Twenty Thirty-Two.”
A sign, pink paint—faded from red: Fratelli Guida. Magazzino.
Prescott said, “The Guida Brothers. Warehouse.”
The sign was very old and she guessed that the siblings were long gone. Massimo Rossi had texted her that the building was owned by a commercial real estate company in Milan. It was leased to a company based in Rome but calls to the office had not been returned.
She climbed out of the car and walked to the sidewalk in front of the building. It was a two-story stucco structure, light brown, and covered with audacious graffiti. The windows were painted dark brown on the inside. She crouched down and touched some pieces of green broken glass in front of the large double doors.
She returned and Prescott got out of his vehicle too. She asked, “Could you stay here and keep an eye on the neighborhood. If anyone shows up text me.”
“I…” He was flustered. “I will. But why would anyone show up? I mean, it looks like nobody’s been there for months, years.”
“No, somebody was here within the past hour. A vehicle. It ran over a bottle that was in front. See it? That glass?”
“Oh, there. Yes.”
“There’s still wet beer inside.”
“If there’s something illegal going on, we should call the Carabinieri or the Police of State.” Prescott had grown uncomfortable.
“It’ll be fine. Just text.”
“I will. Sure. I’ll definitely text. What should I text?”
“A smiley emoji’s fine. I just need to feel the vibration.”
“Feel…Oh, you’ll have the ringer off. So nobody can hear? In case anybody’s inside?”
No confirmation needed.
Sachs returned to the building. She stood to the side of the door, her hand near the Beretta grip in her side pocket. There was no reason to think the Composer had tooled up to Milan in his dark sedan, crunched the bottle pulling into the warehouse and was now waiting inside with his razor or knife or a handy noose.
But no compelling reason not to think that.
She pounded on the door with a fist, calling out a reasonable, “Polizia!”
Proud of herself, getting the Italian okay, she thought. And ignoring that she was undoubtedly guilty of a serious infraction.
No response, though.
Another pounding. Nothing.
Then she circled the building. In the back was a smaller door but that too was barred, with an impressive chain and padlock. She knocked again.
Still no response.
She returned to Prescott. “So?” he asked.
“Locked up nice and tight.”
He was relieved. “We find the police? Get a warrant? You head back to Naples?”
“Could you pop the trunk?
“The…oh.” He did.
She fished around and extracted the tire iron.
“You mind?” Sachs asked.
“Uhm, no.” He seemed to be thinking fast and, perhaps, recalled that he’d never used the accessory, so it wouldn’t be his prints on the burglar tool.
Sachs had decided that the front door—the one for humans, not the big vehicle doors—was more vulnerable than the chain on the back. She looked around—not a witness in sight—and worked the tire iron into the jamb. She pulled hard and the door shifted far enough so that the male portion of the lock slipped from the female and the door swung open.
She set the tire iron down, away from the door, where it couldn’t be grabbed as a weapon. Then she drew the Beretta and stepped inside fast, squinting to acclimate her eyes to the darkness inside.
Chapter 39
How curious what life has in store for us.
Only a day or two ago he was a tree cop, a badger cop…a fungus cop.
Now he was a criminal investigator. Working on quite the case. Tracking down the Composer.
Officers—Police of State and Carabinieri—labored for years solving petty thefts, car hijackings, a mugging, a chain snatching…and never had the chance to be involved in an investigation like this.
Driving through the pleasant neighborhood near Federico II, the university, Ercole Benelli was reflecting, with amusement, that this actually was the second multiple killer case he had worked (yes, Amelia, I remember: The Composer is not a serial killer). The first crime, however, had involved as victims a dozen head of stolen cattle in the hills east of here. Kidnapping it was too, even if the unfortunates had wandered amiably and without protest into the back of the truck that spirited them away to become entrées and luncheon meat.