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Nothing to see here; move along.
Then, a week after the riot, someone came to see me.
A guard came to the cell to fetch me. “Hey, Anderson – you got a visitor.”
Dario glanced over at me. “You expecting anyone?”
“No,” I said, mystified.
No one knew I was here besides my lawyer and Gunnar, and I seriously doubted either one of them would have visited without informing me beforehand.
The guard escorted me to the administrative part of the building and led me into a room where inmates conferred with their lawyers.
Except the man waiting inside the room wasn’t a lawyer.
He was dressed in a cheap navy blue suit. The rest was inexpensive, too: shirt, tie, shoes, haircut.
Add to that the cynical look on his face, and everything about him screamed ‘cop.’
He was sitting on one side of a battered table. I sat down opposite him.
The guard was about to handcuff me to the chair when the stranger shook his head. “Non c’è bisogno.”
No need.
The guard shrugged and left the two of us alone.
The man looked at me and said in heavily accented English, “I am-ah here to talk-a to – ”
“Parlo abbastanza bene l’italiano,” I interrupted.
I speak Italian fairly well.
He raised one eyebrow and continued in Italian. “Court records indicate you didn’t know Italian at your trial.”
“I’ve had some time on my hands,” I said drily. “I picked up a few things since then.”
He smirked at my answer, then got a serious look on his face. “I’m Detective Vincent Benardi with the Milan Questura – the police department. I’m here about some of the deaths that happened during the riot.”
I didn’t say anything.
He opened up a battered briefcase and took out a mugshot. “In particular, Aristide Caproni, a made man in the Camorra mafia.”
I looked at the black and white photograph in silence.
“You know him?” Bernardi asked.
“I know of him,” I said. “I saw him around.”
“You know what happened to him?”
“I heard he met an unfortunate end.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Bernardi said. “Another way of putting it is he was murdered.”
“A lot of men were killed in the riot.”
“We’re interested in Caproni in particular.”
