Turn to Stone Read online

  TURN TO STONE

  ALSO BY JAMES W. ZISKIN

  Styx & Stone

  No Stone Unturned

  Stone Cold Dead

  Heart of Stone

  Cast the First Stone

  A Stone’s Throw

  TURN TO STONE

  An Ellie Stone Mystery

  JAMES W. ZISKIN

  Published 2020 by Seventh Street Books®

  Turn to Stone. Copyright © 2020 by James Ziskin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover image: Alamy

  Cover design: Jennifer Do

  Cover design © Start Science Fiction

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Start Science Fiction

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  978-1-63388-552-3 (paperback) | 978-1-63388-553-0

  To the 10,000 Italian Jews deported to the death camps.

  Non dimenticheremo mai.

  In the summer of 1963, Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka scored hits on the Italian pop charts. Andy Williams and Petula Clark, too. That fact, in and of itself, might have provoked nothing more dramatic than a shrug if not for the oddity that the songs were actually sung in Italian. All in Italian. It’s a jarring sensation to hear a voice you recognize singing in a foreign tongue on the radio. Language is an emotional, intensely personal faculty. Men have conquered nations to impose its dominance, written poems to document its beauty, and defined it at its most elemental as “maternal.” From our earliest days, we absorb language. It nourishes and sustains us, and we never manage to wean ourselves from its diet. It remains fundamental to our identity. No intellectual acquisition is more essential to our human distinctiveness. Nothing. Except perhaps a name. We are tagged with names and become what we are called. But, using language as a tool, names can deceive. They can hide secrets as discreetly—and discretely—as a mask. As faithlessly as a lie.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1963

  The young lady in the blue pillbox hat tore the outbound coupon from my ticket, handed the booklet back to me, and wished me a pleasant flight. Moments later, I boarded a gleaming Pan Am 707, destination Rome, and found my seat next to a ruddy-faced businessman in a tight-fitting seersucker suit. He introduced himself—Harvey Turner of Portland, Maine—and, squeezing my hand in his death grip, nearly crushed four of my favorite fingers and three perfectly fine knuckles. With growing dread, I soon realized that my chatty neighbor intended to chew my ear off for the next nine hours whether I liked it or not.

  Once we were airborne, he puffed away on a cigarette, going on about himself and chuckling at his own wit. My attention strayed. I wondered where middle-aged men got their wealth of confidence with young women. Surely not from the mirror. Still, I had to be polite, listen to his golf jokes, and endure his accolades of my beauty, which—apparently— grew more bewitching with each cocktail he consumed. At length, the Old Fashioneds worked their magic and, head back and mouth open wide, he commenced to snore louder than the four jet engines roaring outside the window.

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1963

  Upon arrival in Rome, I cleared customs at the spanking-new airport, where the immigration officer welcomed me to Italy with a wink, followed by a smart tap of his stamp in my passport. I’d been inoculated against pertussis, tetanus, and diphtheria, but not the charms of handsome Italians in uniform. I resisted my reckless impulses, inspired by the very first man I’d clapped eyes on in the paese del sole, and, without further temptation, found my way to the Pan Am transport bus for Rome. An hour later at the Termini station, I boarded the train for Florence and claimed my seat in a gray second-class compartment. I was impervious to Italian sex appeal with the second man in uniform I met, a pudgy, middle-aged train conductor. He appeared above me with indifferent, sleepy eyes, and said simply, “Biglietti.” He punched my ticket and moved on without further comment.

  I’d been warned about thieves and, of course, never to sleep on trains. So from time to time I dug into my camera bag to make sure everything was in order. My precious Leica was there, along with three dozen rolls of Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Kodacolor, and Tri-X film. A secondhand— brand-new-to-me—135mm Elmar lens I hoped to put to good use while in Italy was tucked safely in its case. There hadn’t been enough room in my luggage to pack flashbulbs, so I was resigned to buying them on site at a premium if necessary. The experts had also told me that such items were prohibitively expensive in Europe.

  Confident my photographic supplies were present and accounted for, I opened my purse. Passport still there, as was the packet of American Express Travelers Cheques as thick as two decks of cards. Then, sitting back to watch the Lazio countryside blur into Umbria, I fell asleep, only to wake as we pulled into the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence with all my possessions intact. What is it they say? God protects fools, children, and drunkards.

  Settling into my room at the Albergo Bardi, I unpacked my bags and scrubbed my face. The light streaming through the window shone a glorious goldenrod, tinged with approaching orange. It was nearing five o’clock, and I figured I had a couple of minutes still before the sun set over the Arno.

  Camera in hand and purse slung over my shoulder, I skipped down the stairs to the lobby and into the street. Barely ten minutes later, I’d already cranked nearly two full rolls of Kodacolor through my Leica. Only one frame remained in the camera, and I decided to save it in case the perfect subject presented itself.

  Having crossed the Ponte Vecchio to the north side of the river, I strolled through the narrow streets and landed in the tiny Piazza del Limbo. There, I treated myself to a Campari and soda in an outdoor café. The waiter leaned against the railing of the terrace, eyeing me whenever he wasn’t picking at his fingernails. I was the only patron in the place, prompting me to wonder if he was ogling me or merely doing his job.

  No matter. I paid the bill, left him a little something extra as a tip, and made my way back to the Ponte Vecchio. Pausing at the center of the bridge to soak in the warm rays of the sinking sun to the west, I couldn’t help noticing a young couple—newlyweds—holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes next to the bronze bust of Benvenuto Cellini. Then, just so I wouldn’t feel left out of the romantic moment, a strange man sidled up to me, pinched my behind, and offered me a proposition of sorts.

  I scurried offtoward the south bank of the Arno, nearly losing my hat as I fled. Once on the Oltrarno side, I chanced a look back over my shoulder. The creep, a slim, wormlike sort in dark glasses, had slithered to the end of the bridge in pursuit of me but gave up the chase there. I raised my camera, aimed it at him, and snapped a picture, which I intended to show to the police. He must have figured I was a lost cause and there were plenty of other foreign girls upon whom he might ooze his charm. Throwing one last glance over my shoulder, I saw him gazing after me longingly, ruefully, as I—his prey—loped away to safety. He’d hunt again. I was sure of that.

  Back at the hotel two minutes later, I glanced at my watch: 5:35. It had taken barely thirty minutes for me
to run into my first pincher.

  FLORENCE, ITALY WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1963

  Squatting in the small bathtub and holding a hand shower over my head, I succeeded in spraying most of the water onto the floor. Mission accomplished on my first morning, if the mission had been to flood the place. But at least I was clean and temporarily safe from the dive-bombing mosquitoes.

  Zanzare. Mosquitoes. No one had prepared me for such misery, the scourge of sultry Florentine nights that frustrated all attempts to sleep with their maddening buzzing. The same know-it-alls who’d told me not to drink the water or to sleep on trains, had said nothing about mosquitoes. Desperate for relief, and willing to try anything to repel their attacks, I’d steeped myself in perfume, left the lights on, and hunted down the elusive little beasties with a rolled-up newspaper. But the onslaught resumed as soon as I’d let my guard down. Eventually, despite my discomfort and determined vigilance, fatigue triumphed and I drifted off to sleep. In the wash of the morning’s sunlight, evidence of the mosquitoes’ transit became all too plain in the form of welts, stippled and swollen, on my arms, ankles, and neck. Larger bites than I was used to back home, and they itched like all get-out.

  But I was determined not to let a few insects ruin my first trip to Italy since 1946, when my late father had dragged me along on what, at the time, felt like a never-ending tour of dusty academic institutions and stuffy colloquia. Now I was in charge of my own itinerary, at least once I’d paid the piper, who in this case was a man named Professor Alberto Bondinelli, founder and Secretary General of the Società Filomatica Dantesca. He’d heard my father lecture in Milan in the late thirties, shortly after he—Bondinelli—had finished his laurea degree, and set out on a distinguished if dry career in medieval Italian studies. Bondinelli had invited me to represent my father at a symposium in Florence and accept a posthumous award on his behalf. The academic portion of the proceedings promised to be as dull as ditchwater, but the agenda also included a relaxing weekend in a country house in Fiesole after the close of the seminar. In his letters to me, Bondinelli had assured me that there would be food and wine aplenty and no talk of medieval literature.

  I headed down to the sala colazione for breakfast where I was to meet Bondinelli before setting out to do some sightseeing on my free day before the symposium. The waiter, a middle-aged man with a baldpate and a pencil mustache, showed me to a table in the center of the room. Once I was seated, he unfolded my napkin with great ceremony, laid it across my lap, and noticed the red bites on my arms. Maurizio, as I later learned his name was, fetched me a caffellatte, a pot of yogurt, some cold ham, and a brioche. Then he disappeared behind a door only to re-emerge a few moments later with an aerosol can of something called Super Faust.

  “Insetticida,” he said, enunciating the word with great care. Then he aped a back-and-forth spraying motion. “Per le zanzare.”

  I thanked him warmly and made a mental note to leave a good tip after breakfast. Then, waiting for my host to arrive, I retrieved the envelope—a welcome packet—that Bondinelli had left for me at reception. Inside I found the symposium schedule, meal vouchers for local restaurants, a map, as well as information on some of the local attractions. For my reading enjoyment, he’d also included a list of the scholars, students, and professors who’d be presenting papers and sitting on panels, some of whom were staying in the hotel. I was happy to see Bernie Sanger on the list. He had been my father’s last and perhaps favorite doctoral student.

  After my breakfast meeting with Bondinelli, I intended to set out and explore the city I’d last seen in 1946. I didn’t remember much about Florence. Our visits to nearby San Gimignano, with its forest of medieval towers, and Siena, where we’d watched the Palio from a balcony overlooking Piazza del Campo, had left deeper impressions on my ten-year-old mind. Then there was the Coliseum in Rome. My father’s stories of gladiators and slaves and wild beasts dying for the entertainment of thousands of citizens had both horrified and fascinated me. That evening so many years before, for my edification and enjoyment, he’d even sketched a ferocious lion rending a poor Christian slave to shreds. Once he and I had returned stateside in September of that year, my mother scolded him for scaring and scarring me so with his stories. I still have the drawing, along with hundreds of others he made.

  A voice from over my shoulder interrupted my memory. “Scusi, è lei la Signorina Stone?”

  I turned to see a squat, barrel-chested man with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair atop his tanned face. He wore a pair of thick, black, horn-rimmed eyeglasses on his broad nose.

  “Professor Bondinelli?” I asked, extending a hand to him from my seated position. Somewhere somehow I’d come to think of him as a taller, younger man. But perhaps I’d been mistaken. Then I noticed the two uniformed policemen behind him.

  “I am Inspector Peruzzi,” he said. “Polizia di Stato. You were expecting Professor Alberto Bondinelli?”

  “Yes, he’s my host. That is he arranged for my visit here in Florence.”

  He considered me for a long moment, the way men do when they’re not sure how much respect is owed the woman they’re confronted with. Was I someone important or merely the professor’s bit of fun on the side? He produced a small notebook and fountain pen from his breast pocket. I could see that his right forefinger and thumb were stained black, as if he’d sliced them open and bled ink. He propped his glasses up onto his forehead and aimed his naked right eye at the notebook as he scratched something onto the open page. He asked when I’d last seen Bondinelli. “I’ve never seen him.”

  That surprised him. “Mai?”

  “Mai. We corresponded by mail, but I’ve never met him in person. Can you tell me what this is about, Inspector?”

  He closed the notebook, slipped it and the leaky pen back into his breast pocket, and stared me down, again leading with his right eye.

  “Il professore è morto,” he said. “Drowned in the Arno.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Having helped himself to a seat at my table, Peruzzi retrieved his notebook again and flipped through the pages. We embarked on a conversation in Italian. He really didn’t speak any English beyond the most basic greetings and common words. While I’d never met Bondinelli, he was my only contact in Florence—at least until Bernie Sanger arrived—and his death came as a bigger shock to me than I might have expected. I asked the inspector when it had happened.

  “Yesterday evening,” he mumbled, looking at his book. Then he explained that it wasn’t known exactly how Bondinelli had ended up in the river, only that he’d been spotted in the water under the Ponte Santa Trinita, one bridge to the west of the Ponte Vecchio. A young couple, necking on one of the bridge’s piers as the sun was about to set, noticed a dark shadow in the water drifting under the central arch of the span, directly below the gaze of the fierce Capricorn escutcheon. Squinting into the murky river, with the fading glow of the sun’s last rays as the only light, the pair distinguished what they thought was the shape of a man. The girl screamed, according to the cop. And her lover ran to summon the police, who, rushing to the scene in a powerboat a few minutes later, caught up with the submerged body and, using high-powered flashlights and a mooring hook, fished the corpse from the water just beyond the Ponte alla Carraia, the next bridge downstream.

  “How awful,” I said. “That must have been shortly after I’d returned to my hotel. I was taking photographs on the Ponte Vecchio.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard tourists do that kind of thing.”

  I ignored his comment and asked if dead bodies floated.

  Peruzzi twisted in his seat and made eye contact with one of the uniformed policemen standing by a few feet away. The officer signaled to the waiter, and Maurizio arrived at a trot.

  “Un caffè” said the inspector barely moving his lips. Then, turning back to me, he explained that bodies didn’t float until they’d started to decompose.

  “So that means he wasn’t in the water long.”

  “It appears n
ot.”

  I gulped. “Does he have any family?”

  “A daughter. Fourteen years old. She’s away at school in England. His wife died six or seven years ago.”

  “My God, that poor girl is an orphan. Does she have any other relatives?”

  “An uncle here in Florence. We’ve contacted him. And there’s a donna di servizio, a cleaning lady, who lives in the Bondinelli household.” “This is such terrible news,” I said. “How tragic for that girl.”

  He nodded. “Già. Poverina. We’ve spoken to the headmistress of her school. She’s making travel arrangements for the girl to return to Florence.”

  Across the room, a man entered from the corridor, surveyed the tables, then approached ours.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Signorina Stone? Eleonora Stone?”

  Peruzzi considered the gentleman, and I did the same. A well-built man of about forty, the new arrival offered his hand, which I took, and he introduced himself with an exaggerated bow, “Professor Franco Sannino.”

  “Piacere,” I said in my best Italian.

  He raised my hand to his lips but didn’t quite make contact.

  Peruzzi interrupted the niceties and said, “Signorina, if you must, save your flirting for your own time.”

  I must have looked mortified, as Sannino came to the defense of my honor. “This is a proper signorina from a fine family.”

  The inspector offered a dismissive wave of his hand as reparation. If he realized that he’d misjudged me, it didn’t show. Of course he couldn’t possibly have known, but my interaction with the males of the species was hardly above reproach. I was what people called a “modern girl,” and I apologized to no one for the way I lived my life. Still, I appreciated the effort to defend my good name.