The Roma Series
The prequel to the Roma series
Five Before Rome
These five novellas, Man of Honor, The Fallen One, Two Warriors, Dance of the Spider, and Five Before Rome, precede the first novel in the Roma Series, Roma, Underground.
Meet the five men before they meet Bianca, their personal history, their respective parts of Italy, and why they each have a stake in the fight against organized crime. Each novella gives a deeper insight into the world and players that make the Roma Series so captivating.
Reviews
“Five Before Rome is a well-researched set of stories that provide an in-depth introduction to some of the main characters (Alessandro, Silvio, Isidrò, Gennaro and Dante) of Valjan’s Roma series in the years before they form an investigative police team along with an unforgettable female forensic accountant. They all have devastating encounters with the organized crime of the Mafia, whether it be the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Neapolitan Camorra or the Calabrian Ndrangheta and these experiences cement their determination to fight for justice. Having lived in Italy for a number of years, I can attest to the fact that the author gets to the essence of the Italian culture. I highly recommend it.” —Joan Wright Mularz, author of the E.T. Madigan series for teens
“Where Dan Brown scratches the surface in the Da Vinci Code, Gabriel Valjan immerses the reader into a culturally rich series of stories examining the complex relationship between Italian organized crime and the ordinary citizen. The use of setting is especially well-crafted. As you read the passages you’ll feel the Southern Italian sun on the back of your neck as the characters move through the ancient streets and piazzas.
Valjan deftly takes the reader deep into the world of Italian organized crime in this collection of five novellas. Steeped in culturally and historically accurate detail, FIVE BEFORE ROME delivers evocative, poignant, heart-rending stories of loss, love, and living with the pervasive influence of crime. The stories will appeal to fans of organized crime fiction with an Italian flair, with echos of Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri. A well-written and highly recommended prequel to the author’s ROMA series.” —James L’Etoile, author of Black Label, and the Detective Penley mystery series
Book #5 in the Roma series
Corporate Citizen
A phone call for help. A mysterious new ally. Murder, designer drugs, and a hacker who doesn't take ‘No’ for an answer.
“Is this Mr. DiBello?” said a woman’s voice through the long-distance connection.
“This is he,” Gennaro answered.
Bianca raised her eyes at hearing him speaking in English. She had just come into the room with their afternoon drinks. She was even more concerned that the call had come to Gennaro’s cell phone and not the house phone. They were apartment sitting for their friend Claudio Ferrero, La Stampa’s top investigative journalist, who was on assignment. This call also threatened their afternoon ritual of talks out on the balcony where they enjoyed the sights below of San Salvario, the neighborhood near Turin’s city center. Gennaro was motioning for her to come over and eavesdrop.
“What can I do for you?” he asked the caller.
“Not for me, Mr. DiBello. I’m calling on behalf of your friend, Diego Clemente. He asked me to dial your number for him. It’s not easy dialing Italy from a hospital phone.”
“Hospital?” Gennaro said, alarmed. His eyes flashed his concern to Bianca.
“I’m a nurse at MGH and he’s my patient. MGH is Mass General–”
“Hospital in Boston,” Gennaro stammered. “I know that. Scusi – I mean I’m sorry for interrupting you, but is Diego alright?”
“He took a fall at home and broke his hip,” the woman seemed to sigh, “slip rugs are dangerous, you know. He can tell you the rest himself. There isn’t much time.”
“Wait, please. Much time?” Gennaro asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s due for surgery and I’ve started his IV. I’d say that you have about ten minutes before happy hour.”
Gennaro said, not understanding to Bianca. “IV…and ‘happy hour.’”
Bianca bared her forearm and explained in Italian: “Medication; probably anesthesia.”
The voice on the phone said, “I’ll hand over the phone to him so you two can talk.”
“Thank you, Nurse.”
“You’re welcome.” Gennaro heard the phone shuffle and heavy breathing. The connection improved. Gennaro and Bianca heard the pull of the curtain. “Diego?”
Another moment passed, and more ruffling sounds. Gennaro and Bianca huddled closer around the phone as Clemente spoke, “Slip rug, col cazzo.” Clemente had learned some Italian, but only the choice words. “That’s some hell of a story, from Mason Street to MGH and now a hip-replacement. Jesus, I can feel the drug working its way up my arm already.”
“You’re making no sense, Diego.”
“Gennaro, please listen to me, since I don’t know how fast Nurse Ratched’s cocktail will work.”
“Less than ten minutes. I’m listening.”
“Thanks. My head feels light. Damn.”
“Wait — where’s your wife? You shouldn’t be alone in a hospital.”
“My wife passed away. Look, Virgil showed me the apartment, the dead girl, and it’s a real mess, a real setup, and my life is going to hell. To hell, you understand, Gennaro, in a boat, hole in the bottom, and toothpicks for oars.” The voice was Diego irritated, in hyper mode.
“Slow down, Diego. I’m sorry about your wife. Why didn’t you tell me?”
A deep, relaxed sigh. “I didn’t want to trouble you. What could you’ve done? Send me a Mass card? You’ve been through it yourself.”
Gennaro’e eyes turned downward. He remembered Lucia. “But still, Diego. I’m your friend. Friends do something, and I don’t mean send you the latest self-help manual on grief.”
Bianca swatted his arm, “No time for sarcasm,” she said.
“I couldn’t help myself, he told her in Italian.
“Hello? Help me then.” Diego
“First, I need to understand what you’re telling me,” Gennaro said. “Who is Virgil?”
“I wish I knew, Gennaro. I wish I knew. I think Virgil is one of Farese’s people.”
“Farese?” The name, as it came out of Gennaro’s mouth, made Bianca’s eyes widen.
U.S. Attorney Michael Farese was a chameleon of a character, changing colors when he worked for the Department of Justice, when he handled diplomatic requests for the State Department, and when he worked for the CIA, as they thought he might have been after their last run-in with him during their investigation of the Camorra in Naples.
“Diego? Concentrate. Why do you think Farese?”
“That doesn’t matter. She’s dead and he’s dead.”
“Who? Who is she? Who is he?” Gennaro asked. His voice almost cracked.
“Norma Jean. She had such nice lingerie, too, and that son of a bitch was in such a nice bed.” Clemente’s voice was almost singing as he was speaking. The wonders of pharmacology.
Gennaro rubbed his eyebrows. He was frustrated. “Diego, stay with me. Who is Norma Jean? Who was in the bed?”
“Marilyn Monroe was a sad girl.” Diego giggled.
“He’s giggling,” Gennaro said to Bianca.
“Oh, it’s a party line!” Diego almost shouted. “Who else is there?”
“Bianca,” Gennaro announced. “She is staying with me.”
“You naughty boy,” Diego said. “Put her on, please.”
“Here,” Gennaro handed his cell phone to Bianca. “Talk to him. I think the medication has gotten into his brain.”
Bianca seized the phone. “Clemente, this is Bianca,” she said, hoping that using the man’s last name would snap some momentary sense into the man’s head. “Forget about Marilyn Monroe. Who is dead?”
“Marilyn, of course. Somebody murdered her,” Diego answered.
“That’s right, but who is in the bed?”
“James Guild, former special agent, FBI, scourge of my loins.”
Bianca put her hand over the receiver and repeated, “Guild is dead.”
“Porca puttana.” Gennaro stepped in closer to the receiver. “What happened, Diego?”
“Hell if I know. Virgil gave me the tour of hell. I got nice slippers, though. He had a needle in his arm.”
“Virgil had a needle in his arm?” Bianca asked.
Clemente became belligerent. “I just told you Guild had a needle in his arm. He was in that expensive bed. I saw it. No gun, too. Norma was out in the living room. He was in her bedroom. Nice bed, and what a nice view, and did I tell you what a beautiful kitchen she had?”
Gennaro asked, “I couldn’t hear that last part. What did he say?”
“Nice kitchen,” she said in English “He’s getting delirious.”
“I’m not delirious,” Clemente yelled. “I’m serious! Oh, that rhymes.”
“Please focus, Clemente,” Bianca said.
“I saw it. I saw the computer. My life, your life…it all goes to shit.”
Bianca, trying a soothing voice, said, “You saw a computer. What did you see, Clemente?”
“Black, black background,” Diego’s voice was now sputtering.
In a coaxing tone and hoping for more details, Bianca asked, “What else did you see?”
“Big, big.” More sputtering. Bianca closed her eyes.
“Big red R!” Diego said triumphantly.
Bianca and Gennaro understood what they had heard: black background and red R.
She said softly, “Fuck me.”
“Lingerie?” Clemente asked. Bianca handed the phone back to Gennaro. She put her hands to her temples, rubbed them. She thought of Boston, the Sargent case, Nasonia Pharmaceutical, and the body count.
“Diego, this is Gennaro again. We’re coming to Boston.”
“That would be nice. Somebody should feed the floor people. I feel sleepy now,” Clemente said, mewing. Gennaro stared at his phone before he put it to his ear again.
“Get some sleep, Diego. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Gennaro heard more purring and then the cacophonous drop of the receiver on the floor on the other end. He ended the call on his cell phone.
“Did he say anything else?” Bianca asked.
“He said someone should feed floor people. I think he has cats.”
“How do you know he has cats?” she asked.
“Blame it on hanging around Silvio.” Bianca didn’t question the logic. Silvio was a translator, Farese’s interpreter, their friend, member of the team, and lately, animal whisperer.
“We should go to Boston,” Gennaro said.
“He saw the red R.”
“I know. You should call Dante.”
“Do I really have to?” she asked.
“Yes, and you have to tell him.”
“Which part? Clemente and Guild, or that Clemente saw the red R.”
“Doesn’t matter. Tell him everything,” Gennaro said. “It adds up to the same.”
Red R meant Rendition.
Excerpt appears courtesy of Winter Goose Publishing
‘On a break’ from Dante after the tragedy in Naples, the former Rendition analyst Alabaster Black/Bianca Nerini is back in Boston, trying to solve the murder of a call girl. The murder appears to be connected to designer drugs, a horrifying deal between a covert U.S. organization and a Russian real estate mogul. However, there’s a power shift within Rendition that would put a brilliant but unscrupulous figure called Magician in charge.
Bianca finds help from a new friend, someone who has suffered more than enough trauma to understand hers. But is he to be trusted, or is he a tool for Rendition? A battle will redefine the past for everyone and create a new uncertain future.
A breathtakingly fast-paced fifth installment in the Roma Series, Corporate Citizen will start a new chapter for those who mange to survive the Magician’s spell.
Reviews
“Corporate Citizen is the fifth in Gabriel’s Valjan’s Roma series. It’s not often I come across a book that excites my imagination as much as this novel did. Gabriel Valjan is an extremely gifted writer who should be highly recognized for his work. I was continually astonished by his character development, the pacing, the multidimensional plotting, the beautiful descriptions. The intricacy and depth of Valjan’s technical and political understanding are displayed with sparks of brilliance.” —Linda Berry, author of the Sidney Becker Mysteries
Turning to Stone
An anti-mafia judge is assassinated. The Camorra and the Sicilian mafia might be working together. A brilliant young sociologist holds the answers... And hides a secret.
“We should go, Alessandro,” Gennaro said.
“Just a minute, Boss. I’m waiting to see what the financial analysts have to say.”
“We can listen to the news in the car.”
“I know, but why wait when we can get the forecast now.”
Alessandro, standing near the office’s flat-screen television, clicker in hand, spiked the volume. Gennaro DiBello resigned himself to staring out of the high-rise window, overlooking the Bay of Naples. He saw a U.S. destroyer in the distance en route to Bagnoli.
Dante was putting his papers away before leaving for lunch. He put the stack into his desk drawer, locked it, and began the ritual of backing up his electronic files to a jump key and powering down his monitor. Living with Bianca was showing in his daily work habits. Silvio was at his desk, in his own world, with his own mound of paperwork, his Italian-English dictionary closed but ready.
“Here they are,” Alessandro pointed the remote at the screen and stepped up the volume again. He was a defiant kid who had to get the last word, Gennaro thought.
Gennaro saw their boss, Pio Piersanti, approaching. “Incoming.”
“What is it?” Alessandro said and, seeing Piersanti through the glass, shut off the television.
“What’s the word, DiBello?” asked the man entering the room.
“The word is nothing.”
“Monotti,” Piersanti gestured toward Alessandro, “turn that back on. I want to see what they have to say.”
The television screen crackled to life. A scrolling marquee on the bottom of the screen repeated Moody’s judgment: Downgrade on Italian bonds.
Piersanti’s face soured. “Shit. There goes the bond auction tomorrow.” He turned from the screen to Gennaro and said, “Shouldn’t you be on your way to meet with Giurlani, DiBello?”
“I am. We are. I’m waiting for them.”
“Late lunch,” Piersanti said, confirming the time on his wristwatch.
“Yes, and then we’re back here to give our reports to you and Giurlani.”
“Excellent. Giurlani has a lot faith in you and your group here. He pulled some serious strings to get your team transferred from Milan to Naples, including Isidore Farrugia. The Brooks murder was a PR nightmare. I don’t know how he did it.”
“I thought the answer was simple: Aldo Giurlani is the regional commissioner, and when Milan talks, Naples and Rome listen. If you’ll excuse me, we should get going.”
“I won’t delay you. You and this crew of yours have healthy appetites so please don’t kill me on the expense report. My boss might think I’m in bed with the System.” System was local slang for the Camorra, the infamous Naples crime syndicate.
Pio Piersanti, Gennaro’s new boss, was a decent man, with an alliterative and triplet of holy names. Unlike Pinolo, Gennaro’s former boss in Rome, he wasn’t a penny-pincher or a ball-breaker. Perego, their boss in Milan, was supposed to come to Naples, but was called away to another investigation.
“Dottore?” It was Enzo, the mail clerk.
“Something for me?”
“Yes. I have a package. You’ll have to sign for it.”
“What is it?”
“Books in English. All the same title and author,” the young man answered.
Gennaro’s name and address were typed out. No name in the sender space. All rather peculiar, Gennaro mumbled. He hadn’t forgotten the heightened security measures. The postmark was days old because the Neapolitan Guardia di Finanza Security downstairs used canine units for sniffing out suspicious parcels for chemicals and explosives. Security was not victim to Italy’s latest austerity measures.
Gennaro signed and handed over the clipboard. Enzo left and Alessandro, Dante, and Silvio gathered around him as he examined the contents. The enclosed books were rubber-banded together. Five copies.
“What is it, Chief? Looks like a thin volume. Poetry?”
“You’re just like a kid, Sandro. You know that?”
Dante looked at the cardboard mailer and noticed the postmark. “Better for a package to be late than have someone go to pieces. Literally. Security probably dusted this for prints.”
“C’mon, Boss. What is the title?” Alessandro pestered.
“The Man of Smoke. Aldo Palazzeschi, a dead writer,” Gennaro answered.
“Why five copies, Chief? And why in English?” Alessandro asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Gennaro said, as his eyebrows lifted. “There are four of us here. One for each of us, I guess, but that leaves one extra copy.”
Dante took his copy and then another. They all looked at him.
“One for Bianca since she is part of the team. Now, let’s go meet the commissioner for lunch. The elevator is waiting. Shall we?”
Alessandro said to Gennaro when the bell chimed, “Palazzeschi was the pen name for Aldo Giurlani.”
“I know, Sandro. He was an anti-Fascist.”
Commissioner Aldo Giurlani, who had worked with them in Milan, insisted on meeting the group in the city center for lunch. A public place was best, he had said, but had kept his travel itinerary secret. All Gennaro knew was the name of the restaurant, the appointed hour, and that the commissioner was arriving by car with a modest security detail. The commissioner, who had been receiving death threats, was fast becoming a worthy successor of Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone for his innovative strategies against organized crime.
Gennaro, at the wheel, was stalled in a stagnant sea of cars on Via San Biagio. They heard them in the distance, but could not see any emergency vehicles in the side-view mirror. Nee-nah. Nee-nah.
“What the hell is going on?” Alessandro said in the backseat.
“No idea,” Gennaro answered, peering in his side-view mirror.
People were running on foot between cars, around them, like water over rocks. The flood of flesh was fleeing like hordes of humanity in a science-fiction film. Gennaro gripped the wheel, seeking some escape with his small Fiat Punto. He had navigated the construction site near the Greek and Roman ruins, passed remnants of colonial rule, ignored the Fascist architecture of Banca di Napoli on Via Toledo. Yet there he sat, stranded, adrift, among motionless cars, surrounded by people on foot. As he surveyed the congestion as far as the eye could see, he realized he could get out of his Punto, walk over to the Banca Commerciale Italiana, visit the Caravaggio on the second floor, and light a votive before any car began to move again.
Sandro’s finger tapped his shoulder. “There’s a lollipop.” One of the carabinieri, a blue-suited policeman with a Stop-and-Go paddle, had come out to direct traffic.
Gennaro rolled the window down. The policeman’s torso neared his window. Gennaro showed his identification before he asked for an explanation. There was the intimation of smoke in the summer air: Gennaro could smell it. The policeman held up his lollipop and peered down and surveyed the group inside the car. The policeman tipped his hat.
“There’s been a car bombing in the Spanish Quarter on Via San Gregorio Armeno.”
“Camorra?”
The officer shrugged. “Perhaps. I can use my whistle to move you to the curb.”
“We’re supposed to meet someone for lunch.”
“I’m afraid that you’re not going anywhere, unless you can fly. I will direct you to the side of the road. Park there and call your party on your cell phone. You will be at least half an hour late. They still have to cordon off the scene.”
“Damn,” Gennaro said. He slapped the steering wheel hard. He decided to admit defeat. He said to the cop, “That’ll do, thank you.”
After several loud whistle blows and slow, painful cuts of the wheel and hostile stares from other drivers, Gennaro managed to squeeze his Punto near the curb. His parallel parking would have failed a driver’s exam. Giurlani was going to be pissed off, but what could he do?
“Let’s get out and see what we can make of the scene,” he told his passengers. Dante exited from the passenger side, Alessandro and Silvio maneuvered out of the backseat. Once he was on the sidewalk, Gennaro flipped open the cell phone and speed-dialed Giurlani. Without saying a word they started walking uphill in the direction of the acrid stench until they saw wisps of black and grey smoke.
“No luck getting through to Giurlani?” Dante asked.
“I’m trying, but he’s not picking up.”
Dante’s own cell phone began to ring. He fished it out of his jacket pocket. “Pronto . . . Isidò? Where are you?” Dante stood still and the rest waited for him to say something. Dante cupped the receiver. “Farrugia heard about the car bombing. He’s at the restaurant. I’ll tell him that we’ll be late.” A few words later Dante closed his phone.
They traversed the cobblestones together. Farrugia had been working undercover to track the Camorra’s trade in steroids and recreational drugs. Narcotics work was where he had started his career until he became an anti-mafia expert. Illicit drugs in Naples were yet another hothouse of endless euros for the System.
“It smells nasty,” Alessandro said, squinting his eyes and coughing.
“Burnt rubber and melting plastic are the worst,” Dante said while Gennaro tried Giurlani again on his cell phone. Dante noticed but didn’t say a word.
“No answer,” Gennaro said, snapping the cell phone shut.
The stench and smoke worsened as they crested the hill. They saw the car and several policemen across the street. Firemen had yet to arrive. The car and its contents were nothing now but crackling flames and twisted steel. The top of the car had been sheared off at a jagged angle. A torso in what was the driver’s seat was still visible, smoldering, as well as the shape of an arm and a hand faithful to the wheel. The passenger in the backseat was nothing more than a charcoal stump of charred flesh. Gennaro thought of the late Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five, and fried jumbo grasshoppers.
Alessandro, flashing his badge, called over to one of the cops, who began walking toward them. “What happened?” Alessandro asked.
“Witnesses said the car was coming down the street when three motorcyclists ambushed it. One motorcyclist came out in front to block the car. The driver jammed on his brakes. Two gunmen with Kalashnikovs on the other motorcycles sprayed the car while the one in front took out a bazooka or an RPG and fired it into the car.”
The young policeman pointed to the ejected shell casings and shattered glass on the stony street.
“A bazooka, an RPG?” Alessandro asked. “I wouldn’t expect witnesses to know the difference between a bazooka and a rocket-propelled grenade.” Alessandro wiped his tearing eyes. “Did any of the witnesses have anything to say about the gunmen or the victims?”
“Not really. The motorcyclists wore helmets, visors down. Three men were in the car. We’ll know more once we trace the plates.”
“Camorristi with AK-47s. Typical,” Dante said.
Gennaro, like the rest of them, looked at the license plate. Milan.
Dante said, “Maybe you should call Giurlani again, Chief?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Why not?”
“Still have that book?”
“It’s in the car. Why?”
“Because the books were a message.” Gennaro stared at the car wreck. His eyes seemed distant and immune to the smoke.
A confused Alessandro asked, “What is he talking about?”
“Aldo Palazzeschi was a pen name. You said so yourself, Sandro.”
“For Aldo Giurlani, why?”
Gennaro nudged his chin at the wreckage. “Dante’s book might be in my car, but Giurlani is in that one.”
Alessandro stared at Gennaro for an explanation.
“That’s the message. Our Commissioner Giurlani is now a man of smoke.”
Gennaro started the descent back to his car.
Nee-nah. Nee-nah. The sirens had arrived.
Excerpt appears courtesy of Winter Goose Publishing
After the assassination of an anti-mafia judge on the streets of Naples, ex-Rendition analyst Alabaster Black/Bianca Nerini faces a mystery: why did women on motorcycles carry out a typical Camorra ambush?
As it turns out, this case is something the former forensic accountant understands very well: a financial crime, or, more specifically, a counterfeiting operation so large it might disrupt the global economy, and involves not just the Camorra, but the Sicilian mafia, too, with their mysterious leader.
Fast-paced and filled with mystery, intrigue, and unexpected twists, the fourth book in the Roma Series will take you even deeper into financial deals, organized crime, and test the friendship, love, and loyalty within Bianca’s inner circle.
Reviews
“I’ve read all of the Roma series books, and I found this to be the most complex and skillfully plotted…a deftly written novel and one fans of suspense will surely enjoy.” —Blogcritics Book Reviews in Brief
“Readers will be kept involved in Turning to Stone until the end. This is truly one of those books in which readers find [they are] questioning and doubting motives until very late in the book. I enjoyed the fact that I found myself unsure of things until nearly the end. The suspense and uncertainty keep readers guessing — and pull readers deeper into the setting and emotions of the book.” —A.J. Thompson for Italy Books Blog
Book #3 in the Roma series
Threading the Needle
A secret file. A murdered student. A repeat of a dark chapter of Italian history.
This was a bad idea from the start.
Isidore Farrugia sat in a car, watching Bianca from across Via Manzoni. He was off-duty, out of his jurisdiction, and doing the best and worst of all possible things: doing a favor for a friend.
But his gut was telling him this was a bad, bad idea.
She said that she had to meet someone with information, someone who wanted to meet her in person. Not good. Bianca had explained that in the past her drop-offs were anonymous and in public places. A postal box. A newsstand. Never face to face. The ideal was through the computer. Remote and anonymous.
None of them could forget Loki. None of them had forgotten Rendition.
Bianca wouldn’t say what the information was and when Farrugia asked, all she said was that her contact was a man. He didn’t ask her how she knew. Farrugia knew better than to expect a straight answer from a woman. The female brain was wired differently, processing nuances below masculine capability, and the female heart was attuned to the unknown frequency of feminine intuition.
She ordered something from her table outside.
Nobody seemed suspicious.
The waiter delivered her drink. She had ordered something sweet. Rabarbaro? Women and their sweet drinks.
Two university-age kids were sizing her up for flirtation.
Her contact, she said, did not know what she looked like. If this someone was expecting an American in jeans or some gaudy ensemble that American women thought was fashion, then he would be in for a surprise. Bianca fit into Milan with her Aspesi turtleneck, Alessandra Colombo leather jacket with the rose-accent, ruffle fringe, and a pair of Tod’s. He saw that she sensed the two amateur Casanovas, turned her head and dismissed them. Quite remarkable, since she was wearing sunglasses.
That must be him.
Definitely an American. Down the block, about to turn the corner onto Via Manzoni.
He was walking fast, hands in pockets. No messenger bag, no bag at all, so maybe this wasn’t him, despite what Farrugia’s gut was saying. A few meters behind him, two other men followed. Matching camel jackets, matching haircuts. The man in front peered over his shoulder.
This must be him. Farrugia knew that worried expression.
Bianca hadn’t seen him yet. No time to call her cell. Her contact was early-twenties, handsome with a nice navy jacket, although from the looks of him he’d had little sleep for a few nights. He glanced again over his shoulder.
The other two behind him picked up their pace. It was definitely him.
This was a bad idea from the start.
Farrugia opened up the car door. The car was a small rental and climbing in was like putting a sardine back into the metal tin. No typical American could fit in that automobile, and he knew the stubborn strip of fat around his midsection was what made his extraction an act for Houdini or Chaplin. The next risk was crossing the street and not getting killed by a real car or grazed by an angry Vespa.
The two tails on Bianca’s man had that experienced stalking gait. Several notches up from street vermin. Farrugia was thinking contract killers, possibly with a military background. Hair was short and they weren’t neo-Nazis. They were lean, looked foreign, and moved with precision. A career soldier’s walk was never erased from neurological memory. Their jackets were relatively short, so that might mean no shotgun, unless one of them had a sawed-off for the maximum amount of spray while his partner had the handgun for the final shot, usually to the head. Farrugia thought all of this in the seconds it took to negotiate one car horn and one silent obscenity from behind fast-moving glass.
He was on the divider in the middle of Via Manzoni when Bianca saw him.
She stood up and both their eyes drifted to the fast-walking man. Farrugia had hoped she wouldn’t do that. That is, stand up.
Everybody knew everybody now.
The two men were almost there. His Beretta Raffica was ready.
The contact walked up to her, turned her shoulders so her back was to his two trackers. Air-kiss to her right cheek, air-kiss to her left. Pause. His hands slid down her hips. He said something to her, kissed her on the lips, then ran inside Bar Gadda.
What the . . .
The two in pursuit graduated from walk to run. They got into the bar before the door closed. Farrugia unzipped his jacket and withdrew his gun. Instinct. He didn’t think about the traffic after the divider. He ran. There was a squeal of rubber. Farrugia realized that he still had functional legs when he reached the pavement’s gray flagstones. Horns blared behind him, but he focused on the commotion inside the bar in front of him.
He slid through the door, eyes searching, and out of reflex said, “Stay calm. I am Commissario Isidore Farrugia.” The customers couldn’t have cared less once they saw the Beretta. Their eyes and a few of their arms pointed the way out back. With his adrenaline flowing as it was, he wouldn’t remember much of what he saw, but would always remember the old lady crossing herself and calling upon the saints and the Virgin. He did the same in his mind.
A restaurant kitchen was always a well-lit trap for a confrontation. Cops and bad guys. Rats or roaches and the health inspector. Illegals and Immigration Services. The Albanians and the Romanians made way for him and pointed. The broken plates crinkled as he stepped on the shards. The chef looked scared with a huge knife in his hand. Farrugia was trying not to look frightened with the pistol in his. Almost thirty years as a cop, pension calculations and the whisper of mortality moved through his head. The Beretta had two settings: three-round burst or single fire. His was set to single fire, and each round would count.
Ahead he spotted the streak of navy blue and then camel. Hunted and hunter. Then the metallic slam of the back door flung open to crash against a hard wall. There was some indistinct yelling. Farrugia’s eyes took it all in while he calmed his heart down with deep belly breaths and moved through the kitchen. His belt was tight. He promised himself that he would lose the stomach if he lived through the day.
The busboy on Farrugia’s right said, “Vicolo cieco.”
Dead end. That door would make him an easy target for two potentially armed men on the other side. He approached the door. He peeked through the sliver of light, since the door had returned home on its hinges. The busboy was right. A wall a few meters to the left, a large, fragrant metal dumpster against it, left you with no choice but a hard right turn and a fast run down an indeterminate alley out to Via Manzoni.
The American didn’t know that. He had turned left. Arms and legs appeared and Farrugia heard pleading.
The saints might not help him, but the Virgin had always been kind. He gripped the gun, breathed in, and trusted his eyes and trigger finger to think for him. In through the door and outside.
Too late.
Man One fired a single shot into the American’s chest. Man Two fired the headshot. Farrugia faced two automatics now turned on him, and the only thing he could do was resort to his lame academy training.
“Police. Put your weapons down.”
In this two-against-one dialogue their likely reply is to shoot him, knowing that at his fastest he could wound only one of them.
A choked siren, the screech of one blue-and-white cop car, its silent blue twirling lights now blocked the alley from Via Manzoni. Farrugia saw the first man’s eyes look leftward again. No weapons had gone down. No concession. Farrugia was the apex of the triangle with his gun, and these two were the base angles pointing theirs at him. Unequal . . . unlikely he’d survive if they shoot.
The car doors down the alley opened and closed. There was a squelch of walkie-talkie exchange. The siren lights played like a rave-party color on the walls.
Farrugia repeated himself. “Weapons down.”
Another leftward look. The second man lowered his gun. Farrugia almost breathed.
The gun went off.
The first man had shot the second in the head and, as Farrugia was about to step forward and pull his trigger, put the barrel into his own mouth.
The two cops walking down the alley stopped when the shot went off.
Four gunshots can have a way of ruining a drink. Four.
The orange zest, the hypnotic cardamom and the other curatives in Bianca’s drink suddenly turned sour. Two shots might be a matter of syntax, like a judicious comma and then the full-stop period. Or they could be a call-and-response exchange. But the second set of shots, Farrugia, her contact, and two suspects made four men.
One of those shots may have been for Farrugia.
She had to know before the other cops came. There were already sirens in the distance, she couldn’t tell whose. Here in Milan, ambulances and police cars sounded the same to her, like the European starling with their “nee-nah nee-nah” through the ancient streets. But within minutes Via Manzoni would be covered with screaming sirens, the smell of rubber, bright lights, a cacophony of voices, a multitude of colors, and every type of police, from authoritative uniform to the suited support staff to process the crime. There would be tape to cordon off the bodies, tape to section off each part of the bar and the path to the denouement in the alley, and tape to identify the section where the witnesses had been herded off for questioning.
She was worried about witnesses recalling the American embracing a woman. She was worried whether any surveillance cameras in the shops or on top of the traffic lights might have recorded Farrugia’s transit across the street, his momentary interest in the future victim. She was worried whether any surveillance cameras had captured her.
But she was most worried about Farrugia.
Down the street, a man in an eco-fluorescent uniform and ear protection was spray-cleaning the sidewalk with pressurized water from his l’agevolatore, a moveable, jointed steel arm on top of a truck. A policeman ran down the street and asked him to stop his work. The streets can remain dirty for a few more hours for the sake of preserving the crime scene. The imposing l’agevolatore stopped. The water stopped. Everything stopped.
She had to move.
Navy-blue cars with red pinstripes—the carabinieri—began to arrive as she cut through the crowd. She expected to see women making the sign of the cross and men bypassing the five wounds of Christ to simply kiss their thumbs as a way of kissing the Cross of Christ and acknowledging death. She had seen Italian-Americans do that thousands of times back home. Not here in Milan. She heard murmurs of inquiry, exchanges of speculation, and the confident assertion from someone that three men were dead. She flowed with the crowd to the open mouth of the alley, her head bowed in respect.
She saw Farrugia.
He was speaking to someone from the Omicidi, the Homicide Squad. He was visibly unnerved, but unharmed. She surprised herself by saying, “Thank God.”
There’s was a smaller crowd moving out of an old-style carrelli on Line One, a street tram like the ones in San Francisco. The street was blocked off at both ends.
She needed to call Dante.
She decided on the nearby metro, the Montenapoleone stop. That would lead her anywhere that was away from the noise, away from detection. She would have a chance to think, collect, and determine what was on the jump-key he had slipped into her pocket during that surprise kiss.
She would never forget that—not so much for the kiss, or that he was handsome and kissed well. But that he was young, terribly young, and now dead.
The brilliant analyst Alabaster Black, alias Bianca Nerini, is happy to be back in Italy, back with her love, Dante, but then her curiosity gets the better of her and leads to a meeting in a café in Milan…a meeting that results in the death of young university student Charlie Brooks, who leaves her with a secret file detailing the development of a new weapon that violates international law. Burdened by guilt, she seeks justice for Charlie.
Things go from bad to worse: Dante is angry at her because she told him nothing about the meeting, a scandal-mongering journalist is trying to crucify her friend Farrugia, blaming him for Charlie’s death, and even her contact Loki is warning her to stay away from the case, because it involves not just a secret weapon, but political intrigues and powerful corporate alliances, too, as well as the organization Bianca is desperately trying to escape: Rendition. The stakes are higher than ever, and Bianca and her trusted friends will have to find their way through these murky waters, or watch Italy return to the decades of daily terrorism known as the Years of Lead.
Reviews
“Valjan’s characters, from Bianca to investigator Isidore Farrugia to the irascible Gennaro, are memorable and worth following, in this book and the others in the series; the international terrorism and tech investigating ring true, and the European tensions — which I double-checked for reference — are intriguing and of ongoing concern…Characters, plot, ideas, background: In THREADING THE NEEDLE, Valjan weaves it all into an international crime novel worth the read.” —Kingdom Books
“I continue to be amazed at how well Valjan incorporates Italian political history into a great plot as he immerses us deeper into the lives of these characters that I now love. This time Valjan tackles government conspiracies that have ties to the years of terrorism in Italy from 1969 to 1984 known as the “Years of Lead.” I remember this time.” —Library of Clean Reads
Wasp's Nest
A new case from her old employer. A contract on her head. A scientific breakthrough that could save countless lives... If she can save the genius first.
He could have passed for a banker. Passed for the mailman. Passed as the man down the hall who walks by a thousand times, says hello day in and day out, but his name dances on the tip of the tongue, stays buried in the brain, unavailable for recall. His is the face seen at the bar when the fight breaks out, but nobody can describe him when the police arrive. Complete milquetoast.
He was also in Boston. Returning home on the Red Line after secreting himself into the back of an open Harvard lecture, because he enjoyed obscure Latin authors. He had just listened to a discussion on the fragmentary Cynegetica, three hundred twenty-five hexameters on hunting by the third-century Marcus Nemesianus. The impassioned professor had announced at the end of the lecture that next week’s discussion was eleven eclogues erroneously attributed to Titus Calpurnius. He would argue that they belong to Nemesianus.
Waiting on the platform for the inbound train to downtown Boston that should arrive soon—theoretically, at least—he stood there inside a throng of students, shoppers, and tourists. He showed no signs of impatience, content to turn his mind to the question of the authorship of the eclogues. He knew that the train was coming when he’d heard the long shrill metallic groan as it took the curve into Harvard Square T-station. He ignored the latecomers in the distance who tried to run down the ramp and make the train, jamming themselves into the first car. He habitually took the car towards the rear so he would not be one of the first faces exiting.
He found his seat inside the crowded car. A man of indeterminate age marked off the seat next to his by throwing down a hefty shoulder bag, nearly crushing his feet, and then casting down another bag, a backpack, which he swung around, barely missing him.
He said nothing. His face expressed nothing.
Once seated, his neighbor wrested off his winter coat, intruding in his personal space without a smile or an excuse me. The rude man, divested of his baggage, then proceeded to check all his mobile devices. The non-descript man could see that the cell phone had no messages.
The man next to him thumbed a quick text or a tweet, not knowing that it was all rather useless because there was no reception or possibility for a signal between Harvard Square and the next stop, Central Square.
The two men seemed settled in for the ride. Bodies stood and held sway with the train’s movements either by balancing like urban surfers or by hanging on from overhead straps like military airborne on a plane from which they hoped that they could jump from soon.
Finding at last that his phone was incommunicado, the rude man thumbed further buttons, and it began to emanate something that must pass for music. Treble flattened to a rhythmic buzz, bass all but gone, only the bare skeleton of the melody line and harmonic tempo remained.
The man let his mind drift to Nemesianus. It had been many years since he read Haupt’s De Carminibus, which identified Nemesianus as the author of the last four Eclogues. Haupt had offered some argument for keeping the remaining seven with Calpurnius.
The tinny music became more insistent. A simple, three-chord development, classic AABA melodic structure.
The train entered the darkness and there were the flickering images of an advertisement passing by like a movie made from the thumbed edge of a matchbook as the train neared Central Square.
Then came the sniffling.
The unencumbered man blew his nose into a piece of tissue that had outlived usability, but its owner nonetheless thought he could parcel out one more meager area for his stuffed-up nose. Nobody looked when the man inhaled and made that gurgling winter-cold sound.
Haupt. Calpurnius. What was it that the professor had seen in those other seven to lead him to ignore the differences Haupt had seen?
The music changed again, to another three-chord, ballad-like ditty, the progression through tonic, dominant, and subdominant drawing in the man’s attention against his will. Music always had that effect. He could listen with rapture; he could listen with disgust, as he did then. But he couldn’t not listen.
His neighbor used the snot rag to wipe his watery eyes after he had frayed the last of the tissue with a trumpet blast.
Again annoyed, he turned his mind to recalling hexameters.
The music modulated into the dominant minor. The inconsiderate miserable next to him coughed without covering his mouth. Disgusting. Charles Street into Park Street Station was another opportunity for an anonymous dark tunnel and more metallic screeching. It was less than two minutes between stops. He stood up before the darkness came and squared himself off in front of the man with the bags to take the door when it opened. He knew that there would be sound, a bend in the rails that would jolt the unseasoned traveler forward.
It went dark. The train took the curve. Those who rode the train daily took the mechanical rounding of the rail with unknowing habit, reflexive muscle memory. He lunged forward and whispered an indecipherable excuse me in the dark.
He got off early at Park Street and went for the concourse. He knew that in the next stop or two the seated man would loll back and forth and others might think that he was asleep. It would likely be the third stop— Broadway Station—that the train might reveal the man’s true state.
The body would fall forward to the floor. Dead.
The MBTA police would come and investigate the disturbance, then the BPD, the Boston Police Department. It would take little time for the inevitable conclusion: ice pick through the larynx. There would be the cataloguing of all those bags and their contents, a review of surveillance films at every station since the victim had boarded the MBTA train; but there would be nothing.
Just crowds of people; and if anyone had noticed that a man had gotten up near the victim before the lethal darkness they would still have nothing. A hat hid the hair. Sunglasses obscured the face. Gloved hands would preempt fingerprints. Nothing left for them except snot rags to bag.
He had already walked the concourse to get above ground. Gone. He was a man of no qualities but of certain skills.
On assignment in Boston.
Excerpt appears courtesy of Winter Goose Publishing
The last thing that former Rendition analyst Alabaster Black, now Bianca Nerini, wanted to do was to leave Italy, and return to the U.S. to investigate a case, but she couldn’t turn down the request for assistance from her online contact – code name: Loki – who already helped her so much. She returns to the U.S. to investigate Cyril Sargent and Nasonia Pharmaceutical. However, when she realizes the implications of wasp genetics as a far superior cancer treatment, she knows she must help Sargent and protect his research from falling into the wrong hands.
Even a brilliant analyst like Bianca can’t accomplish everything on her own, though. Her friends from Roma Underground soon join her in Boston to try and stop an assassin, a cold-blooded murderer who will stop at nothing to fulfill the contract on her head…An assassin who has already caused heartbreak and grief in the past to her friends in Rome.
Fast-paced and filled with intrigue, treason, loyalty, and good Italian food, the exciting sequel to Roma, Underground will leave you breathless with anticipation and eager for the next book in the Roma Series…For nothing is certain once you enter the wasp’s nest.
Reviews
“…the mood and pace remain consistent throughout this thrilling page-turner. Black is back and just as entertaining as ever.” —Kirkus Reviews
“As is his trademark, Valjan’s description of things, places, people and situations are vivid. This time the setting is Boston and the author’s knowledge of the city’s history, its culture, and its citizens are evident. However, his love for everything Italian comes through clearly in this novel too because it is infused with Italy’s dishes, culture, expressions, the Mafia and the Italian characters Gennaro and Farrugia from the first book.” —Marilyn for Italy Books Blog
Book #1 in the Roma series
Roma, Underground
An impossibly smart forensic accountant. An amateur archaeologist. Stolen Italian beauty that brings them together.
The cell phone was ringing again.
The light crept white and warm through the high balcony doors, across the gray marble flooring, up the sides of the walls, and almost intentionally focused on the recumbent form alone in the bed big enough for two. She twisted in a shroud of sheets as the telephone chirped again.
“Leave me alone.”
But she was pulled into that familiar haze of half-waking, still tired from the overnight trip, the July heat. Back home she could sleep through most sounds, but in a different country she never would’ve imagined that a phone would sound so different.
It stopped and she sighed. “Thank God.”
The laziness called her back to sleep, enveloped her after she relaxed into a long stretch. She smiled to herself with thoughts of how she might spend the day. It felt like a day for curling up with a good book or a film. Or better, pampering herself with a self-made spa treatment, remaining half-naked in her nightshirt if—
The phone interrupted again.
She snapped up the micro-thin mobile from the nightstand.
“Pronto!”
“Buon—”
“What is it, Dante?” She brushed her hair back with her hand as she watched the drapes billow in a small breeze, the gauzy material providing a barrier from the punishing sunlight.
“Thought I’d call to ask if you had plans for today.”
She tried not to sound annoyed, but she couldn’t help it.
“You’ve been persistent with your calling.”
“What do you mean? I just called . . . this instant.”
Even half-awake, she could hear him translating in his head when his Italian brain meant adesso or ‘now’. She could also hear either hurt or confusion in his voice.
“Sorry, woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Well, the little hand is on eleven and the big hand is walking to- wards twelve, Bianca.”
She laughed. Dante, unlike some Italians she had met, didn’t brood over minor matters or perceived insults. He just went on as if nothing had happened.
“You want a date, don’t you?” she said. “Only if Lady Bianca would be so gracious to grant me one.” She felt his smile through the phone. “I don’t know. I’m quite tired. I returned from Milan late last night after a shopping binge. The train ride with no air conditioning left me drained.”
“Ah, yes, soldi season. You’re a determined huntress to go by train. Four hours is a long ride when you could’ve shopped here in Rome. What did you capture that was not local to our woods?”
“Shoes, Via della Spiga, and Corso Buenos Aires, of course.”
“I would’ve been flattered if you said you visited the shops on Via Dante and thought of me, but I’ll stay modest, as always. So how about I take you on a special adventure and treat you to a late lunch?”
She hesitated for a moment. But what the hell, she was up anyway. She had no book in mind, and she always wasted far too much time in deciding on a movie. Besides, she was intrigued by what Dante might consider an adventure. “Uh, what do you have in mind? I’m concerned about the heat and what to wear. I want to be comfortable today.”
“Uh, don’t worry about the heat so much.”
So, it will be someplace cool. “Ah, you have a romantic date in mind. Perhaps Bagnaia?” She was sure that he was thinking of taking Via Cassia to Viterbo to spend the day in that small town. Dante had mentioned the town’s medieval center, the città di dentro, the last time they had lunch together. A tour of dark, old Romanesque churches would be pleasantly cool.
“No. I’m thinking something far older than medieval. You decide: clean or dirty?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where we go is your choice: clean or dirty? Pick one,” he said with a dry tone.
This was . . . unexpected. They had been seeing one another for a month-and-a-half or so, but the relationship hadn’t yet gotten terribly physical. She had not felt quite ready for intimacy, and Dante, flying in the face of the Italian stereotype, had not pushed. “Okay, naughty boy, I will disappoint you and say ‘clean.’ Where do we meet?”
“Near the Domus Aurea in an hour? This sounds good to you?” He knew she lived in an apartment not far from Hotel Diocleziano, and it was within walking distance, or by fast taxi with time to spare if she didn’t fuss.
“Sounds like a plan. Ciao.”
She snapped the phone closed and dropped back in the bed for a moment. Dante had said that he had called her only once that morning. So where did the earlier plague of calls come from? Bianca took all the necessary measures to make sure that her cell was unlisted—only Dante had the number, and giving it to him had been a monumental decision. Even though he knew whereabouts she lived, she had never had him over to the apartment.
She opened the phone and toggled through the Italian version of CALLER ID HISTORY; she saw numerous calls identified as UNKNOWN or BLOCKED. She verified Dante’s call: ten-thirty am.
How had this happened? Bianca refrained from giving out her residential details to retailers and acquaintances. Bianca had no phone in the apartment. She received no postal mail except for the quarterly utility bills that she paid in cash at various kiosks throughout the city.
It was time to get rid of the SIM card. Someone had found her. Someone who knew that Bianca was not Bianca.
All former analyst Alabaster Black wanted was to run away from employer, a covert U.S. organization called Rendition, and immerse herself in the beauty and wondrous culture of Rome, Italy. But when she meets a handsome investigator and passionate amateur archaeologist, Dante, and learns that he is looking for thieves of priceless Italian artifacts, she can’t resist. She has to help.
With the assistance of Roma Underground – Dante’s band of friends and colleagues dedicated to mapping the city beneath Rome – the trap is set. However, they;re up against men who are from common criminals: they’re the proof that Alabaster’s past isn’t going to stay secret, and even her new love and the strong bonds of friendship in Rome may not be enough.
Action-packed, filled with mystery, romance, friendships, and rich Italian flavors, Roma, Underground will keep you reading well into the night, until you read the last sentence – and grab the next book in the Roma Series.
Reviews
“A provocative thriller with a riveting and surprising plot.” —M.J. Rose, International bestseller
“…the strong, captivating heroine and an allure of conspiracy and organized crime make this novel an undoubted success.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The book is an interesting cross between TV’s Alias and Camilleri’s Montalbano books. Each book in the series gives the reader a police case from law enforcement’s perspective with all the teamwork needed to bring down the bad guys, plus there is the secret conspiracy stuff that draws our heroine into places she doesn’t want to be, including dangerous situations.” —Italophile Book Reviews