The Cold Summer Read online

  They had three cars. In one were Dottoressa D’Angelo, the captain and his driver; in the second, Fenoglio and Pellecchia; in the third, Carabiniere Montemurro, Sergeant Grandolfo, Corporal De Paola and Lopez.

  They drove along the ring road as far as the Palese exit; then they took a parallel road and, a few miles further on, a dirt road the entrance to which was almost invisible. A smuggler’s path, Fenoglio told himself, hoping they didn’t run into any. Tonight wasn’t the night for any kind of distraction.

  It took them a quarter of an hour, driving through the countryside in the ghostly moonlight, to reach a small clearing in which stood a tiny plastered shed, the kind that farm workers use to keep their tools in. Getting out of the car, Fenoglio felt nervous because of all that moonlight, even though the place seemed deserted. He had never liked guns and avoided carrying his pistol whenever he could, but at that moment he reached for the stock of the Beretta 92 stuck in his belt. It was an automatic gesture, a kind of charm. It was unlikely there were any of Grimaldi’s men lying in wait for Lopez, but in some situations it’s the unlikeliest things that scare us the most.

  “Where do we go now, Vito?” Pellecchia asked in a low voice, precisely as if there might be someone around who wasn’t supposed to hear.

  “The door’s at the back,” Lopez replied. “I have the key.”

  They opened the door. Inside, it was pitch-black and smelt of damp, hay, earth and dried dung. Montemurro and Grandolfo lit two large torches and flashed them nervously, creating cones of light. The small shed was almost empty. A few hoes and a few billhooks, two demijohns, and some jute sacks heaped up in a corner.

  “There,” Lopez said, pointing.

  Under the bags there was a wooden trapdoor and under the trapdoor a small square compartment, made of tuff, less than three feet across and perhaps five feet deep.

  “Can I go down?”

  D’Angelo said he could and with a nimble, athletic movement Lopez jumped in. He worked on the floor for a few minutes, shifted two large tuff bricks and removed some bundles wrapped in material. He handed them up to the carabinieri and pulled himself out without bothering to put things back in place.

  “Since nobody’s going to use this any more,” he commented, with a smile that had something strangely helpless about it. There were no objections.

  He placed the bundles on the floor. D’Angelo lit a cigarette. Lopez asked for permission to smoke, too. He was civilized, Fenoglio told himself. A civilized murderer. He even seemed quite likeable. An absurd word – likeable – to use about a man who had spent his life robbing, trafficking, extorting and killing without mercy. It wasn’t the first time that Fenoglio had made this kind of observation. There were criminals who were stupid, brutal, nasty and hateful. They were the way criminals ought to be in order to correspond to a simple, reassuring vision of the world. You’re different from us. You’re the bad guys and we’re the good guys. Everything clear and easy to figure out.

  But there were also – he had met lots of them – intelligent drug dealers, likeable robbers, murderers capable of unexpected and selfless gestures of humanity. They complicated things, made classifications less simple.

  They opened the bundles containing Lopez’s arsenal. There were guns of every calibre, from a 6.35 to a .44 Magnum by way of a number of semiautomatics; there were pump-action rifles, a sawn-off shotgun, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, a Kalashnikov, hand grenades that looked like small brown pineapples and so much loose ammunition as to look like an army of sleeping cockroaches.

  Dottoressa D’Angelo let out a whistle. Pellecchia sniffed. Fenoglio rubbed his oneday growth of beard. The others probably also reacted in some way in the semidarkness.

  “None of them are loaded, are they, Lopez?” Fenoglio asked.

  “None of them are loaded, marshal. The grenades are on safety, don’t worry.”

  D’Angelo knelt and picked up the assault rifle. “This is a Kalashnikov.”

  “Yes, dottoressa,” the captain replied.

  “This is the first one I’ve seen live. In Calabria, I had lots of people arrested for possessing or carrying these things, but this is the first time I’ve touched one.”

  “Do you mind if we check the barrel, dottoressa?” the captain said. “Sometimes there’s a bullet left in.”

  “It’s completely unloaded, don’t worry,” Lopez repeated.

  “I thought it would be heavier,” D’Angelo said, holding the weapon in her arms as if it were a child.

  “Unloaded, they weigh seven and a half pounds,” Sergeant Grandolfo said. “With the magazine full, nearly nine.”

  There was something a tad theatrical about the scene. It lasted some thirty or forty seconds, then practicality prevailed.

  “Let’s take it all and go,” D’Angelo said.

  The carabinieri wrapped the bundles back up again, took them outside and put them in the boots of the cars. With a gesture that seemed like a metaphor, Lopez himself closed the door and stood there in the moonlit clearing with the key in his hand.

  “Give it to me,” Fenoglio said. “You don’t need it any more.”

  Five minutes later, the small procession of vehicles, each with the same occupants as before, was winding its way through the countryside, between the olive trees.

  “What do you think about this story of an attempt on the dottoressa?” Fenoglio asked Pellecchia, who was relighting his cigar. “Do you think it’s credible or did he only say it to make himself look important in her eyes?”

  “I think Grimaldi is a lousy son of a bitch. He’s genuinely capable of doing something like that. And Lopez, as far as I know, is a serious criminal. Not someone who talks bullshit.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “What do you think of the woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “D’Angelo.”

  Fenoglio shook his head. The woman. Pellecchia was incurable.

  “She’s good, she’s tough. If I were a lawyer I wouldn’t like to come up against her. There’s something about her I can’t put my finger on, I’m not sure what.” He paused for a few seconds. “That was a stupid thing to say. If I can’t put my finger on it, then of course I don’t know what it is.”

  Pellecchia gave a hoarse laugh. “And now what do we do?”

  “We go back to the station, we put these arms under lock and key, and we go home to bed. Tomorrow we make out a seizure report, then I assume we’ll continue taking our new friend’s statement.”

  “If he really spills the beans, it’s going to take a while. The bastard has a hell of a lot of things to tell us. How do we proceed?”

  “D’Angelo will decide that, but I think Lopez will have to start with the most serious things committed by him, to demonstrate that he isn’t playing games. Murders, major drug deals, extortion.”

  “And he’ll have to tell us about the boy.”

  Fenoglio didn’t reply immediately. He looked out through the window, massaging the elbow he had broken years earlier and which still, for no specific reason, gave him sudden unpleasant shooting pains every now and again. He took a deep breath, feeling the tiredness suffuse his whole body like a wave.

  “If it was him.”

  Pellecchia turned to look at him, neglecting the dirt road for a few moments. “What do you mean? Who else could it have been?”

  Fenoglio shrugged. “You’re right. Who else could it have been?”

  4

  At 10.00 on 19 May 1992 in Bari, at the offices of the Criminal Investigation Unit of the Carabinieri, Vito Lopez, whose particulars have already been stated in other documents, currently under investigation for offences as laid out in Articles 416b, 575 and 629 of the Penal Code and Article 73 of the unified code regarding narcotics and other matters, appears before the Public Prosecutor as represented by Assistant Prosecutor Gemma D’Angelo, assisted in the drafting of the current document by Sergeant Ignazio Calcaterra, and also in the presence, for the purposes of the investigation, of Captai
n Alberto Valente, Marshal Pietro Fenoglio and Corporal Antonio Pellecchia, all detectives in the Criminal Investigation Unit of the Carabinieri of Bari. Lopez is assisted by Avvocato Marianna Formica of the Bar Association of Bari, whose office he has elected as his domicile for all legal purposes.

  The Public Prosecutor informs Lopez that

  a) his statements may be used in evidence against him;

  b) except where laid down in Article 66.1 of the code of procedure, he has the right to remain silent in response to questions, although proceedings will nevertheless continue.

  Vito Lopez declares: I intend to answer. Preliminarily, I declare that I wish to appoint Avvocato Formica here present, previously appointed by the court, as my defence lawyer.

  QUESTION Signor Lopez, first of all I would like you to summarize for us, in chronological order, all the acts of violence in which you have been directly involved. I remind you once again that the benefits the law concedes to those who cooperate depend on the completeness of your statements. If any omissions are discovered, or if any of your statements are found to be false or slanderous, that may lead to the immediate revocation of all protective measures and all procedural benefits. Are you aware of all this?

  ANSWER I am aware of it and I confirm that I intend to cooperate fully and to report everything I know about the criminal activities of my group – Società Nostra – and of those allied or opposed to it.

  I shall talk about the murders and acts of violence in general; the organizational structure, the rules relating to it and the process of affiliation; the activities of extortion and loan sharking; the traffic in narcotics and the network of dealers; the system of controlling the territory as regards both legitimate and illegitimate activities; the relations with local politicians and the support given to certain candidates at election time.

  As requested by you, I shall begin with the acts of violence. I am personally responsible for seven murders and one attempted murder. I would like to make it clear that I am able to report useful elements relating to a much larger number of murders, if we include those in which I was not involved but of which I am aware thanks to my role in the organization.

  QUESTION Tell us about the murders for which you were responsible. We can deal with the others at a later stage.

  ANSWER The first murder committed by me dates from September 1987, in other words, when I was twenty-three. The victim was a young man of whom I recall only the nickname: Curly, because of his hair. I should point out that I was never investigated for this murder, or even suspected of it.

  This young man was dealing heroin on behalf of Nicola Grimaldi, but there were nasty rumours about him: it was said that he was a police informer. I believe that Grimaldi did look into the matter. It is possible he set a trap for him, passing him a piece of information to see if it reached the police, which in fact it did, but I cannot now remember this with any accuracy. Anyway, Grimaldi decided that he had to die and that he would deal with it himself, together with myself and another of his men, Michele Capocchiani, known as the Pig.

  QUESTION Why did Grimaldi ask you and Capocchiani to participate?

  ANSWER Capocchiani was one of his most experienced men and was always given the most dangerous and demanding jobs. He was a good driver, a good marksman, he was ruthless and fearless. Grimaldi wanted me there, too, because he wanted to find out how reliable I was. I had joined the organization at the beginning of that year and Grimaldi had taken a liking to me. Getting me to participate in such a dangerous and demanding operation was the prelude to granting me a more important role.

  QUESTION Did Grimaldi offer you money for this job?

  ANSWER No. I want to make clear that only hitmen – a category to which, strange as it may seem, I do not feel I belong in any way – receive payment for committing a murder. It would have been a lack of respect towards me on the part of Grimaldi if he had offered me money, but, above all, it would have been a serious lack of respect towards him on my part if I had asked him for any. In the circles to which I belong, participating in a murder is a mark of distinction and respect. The person assigning that role shows trust in the assignee; the person given the role appreciates this trust and wants to show that he is deserving of it in order to strengthen his sense of belonging to the organization.

  QUESTION Tell us what happened.

  ANSWER We knew that Curly always did his dealing outside a pool hall in Santo Spirito. We drove past it just before lunch and stopped for a beer and a chat. Then, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, Capocchiani suggested we go to Giovinazzo and get some raw mussels from a fishmonger friend of his. Curly, who loved seafood, fell into the trap and asked if he could come, too. Naturally we said yes. Curly soon realized that we were not going in the direction of Giovinazzo and were instead driving into the countryside around Bitonto. He asked for an explanation and it was then that Grimaldi pointed a gun at his head. I should make it clear that Curly was sitting in front on the right, Capocchiani was driving, and Grimaldi and I were in the back. Our destination was a plot of land that could only be reached down a country lane, a long way from the main road. It was a place in which it was very unlikely that anyone would appear by chance. On that plot of land, there was a farmhouse that was sometimes used for hiding stolen goods, weapons and narcotics. It was there that we took Curly, after tying his hands with wrapping tape that we had brought with us for that purpose. Then Grimaldi passed me the pistol – Capocchiani had another – and began hitting Curly, telling him that he had to confess that he was a lousy snitch. He hit him with brass knuckles (he had a set in silver that a jeweller friend of his had made for him); I remember that Curly’s face was so covered in blood that you could hardly see it.

  QUESTION Did Curly confess?

  ANSWER Yes and no. He said that he pretended to pass information to the police, that he would tell them half-truths just to keep them happy.

  QUESTION Had he realized that you intended to kill him? ANSWER No, I think not. He thought we would beat him up and then let him go.

  QUESTION What happened after this partial confession? ANSWER Grimaldi told Curly to get down on his knees. That was when he realized, and he started crying and begging us not to kill him. He said that he had done nothing wrong, he had a child and things like that. Grimaldi told him he should have thought of the fact that he had a child before, when he was being a lousy snitch. Then, because Curly was not kneeling, he hit him again with the brass knuckles and forced him to his knees. He nodded to me as if to say: “Now shoot him.” I raised the gun, which was a calibre .38 with six bullets, and realized that my hand was shaking very badly; I had to hold it still with the other hand.

  At that moment Curly realized that I was pointing the gun at him – I was at his side – and wet himself. I thought that if I did not shoot immediately, I would not be capable of it afterwards, because of the shaking of my hand and the smell that made me want to vomit and all the rest. So I shot him in the head, in the temple.

  QUESTION Did you fire just one shot?

  ANSWER Yes, I fired a single shot. Capocchiani shot him another two or three times once he was on the ground. He did not like it if he did not get a chance to shoot, too. Then Grimaldi told me to open the boot of the car and fetch the can of petrol that we had brought with us. I left the farmhouse and vomited, making sure I was not seen. Then I went back in with the can, doused Curly in petrol and, still following Grimaldi’s orders, set fire to him.

  QUESTION Why did he make you do everything?

  ANSWER As I said, dottoressa, it was a kind of test, to see if he could rely on me for the most difficult operations. As I started the fire I thought I noticed Grimaldi and Capocchiani exchanging knowing looks, as if to say: “He is a good boy, he has passed the test.” When Curly’s body caught fire it moved for a few seconds and I thought he was still alive, even though we had shot him several times. I said: “Is he still alive?” and Capocchiani started laughing and replied that they were just mechanical movements pro
duced by the fire. I could not honestly say if Capocchiani was right or if Curly was still dying.

  QUESTION Then what happened?

  ANSWER We left the farmhouse while the body was still burning – I had doused him in two gallons of petrol – we got back in the car, and went and hid the guns in a wrecking yard owned by one of Grimaldi’s men. There, we cleaned ourselves carefully to remove any possible gunshot residues, in case we were stopped by the police or the Carabinieri. Then they drove me home. On the ride back Grimaldi said that I had done well and that I deserved to “move forward”.

  QUESTION What did he mean by that?

  ANSWER That I had proved worthy of being promoted within the hierarchy of the organization.

  QUESTION And did this happen?

  ANSWER Yes, a few weeks later.

  5

  Lopez had immediately shown himself to be an ideal witness: he understood the questions and answered in kind, accurately, without wandering off the subject, and without too much coarseness of speech. Of course, his words were then transformed into the somewhat surreal language of a legal transcript, but the man gave the impression that he would handle himself well in court, even under cross-examination.

  Dottoressa D’Angelo had left for a few hours: she had wanted to drop by her office where she had a few papers to sign and motions to deal with. The captain and the others had gone to lunch. Fenoglio had stayed with Lopez. They had had sandwiches and beer brought in, and they ate in silence.

  As soon as he had finished, Lopez asked if he could smoke.

  Fenoglio replied yes and opened a window.

  “What happens when I’ve told you everything?” Lopez asked after a few drags.

  “We’ll take you to your family. Then we’ll check what you’ve told us, and if any of it turns out to be false you’ll lose all your benefits. When I say ‘false’, I don’t mean inaccuracies. I mean falsely accusing people or deliberately omitting something important. Never forget that.”