Chapter Text
They’d only taken two weeks off in the end: after some time ‘persuading’ the remaining active capos that Giorno Giovanna of all people either was the boss come out of hiding, the son of the old Boss, or was to be installed in the old Boss’ place (depending on their prior knowledge); Bruno had taken Leone to his father’s old house and they’d recovered from the events of early Spring out of the glaring spotlight, while still being just a call away if necessary. Narancia had bounced back from the jaws of death fairly quickly with help from an unusual source, but their fateful mission had taken a toll on the eldest pair that needed a little time to sort out. And Trish, it appeared, had just taken up a recording contract that her mother’s death had postponed and was currently out of the country. So they collapsed into each other after they both realised just how close both of them had come to death themselves over those tense few days leading up to the previous head of Passione’s brutal demise.
There had been over thirty calls in those first couple of days they’d been ‘unavailable unless it was urgent’ - especially when the old La Squadra leader Risotto had fucked off to who knows where - but things eventually settled down and the pestering reduced to roughly once a day.
At first it was positively idyllic: taking Bruno’s yacht out, enjoying each other’s company without a gaggle of kids (and their Stands) harassing them every ten minutes, and enjoying each other even more after the sun went down. And sometimes when the sun was up, too. After a time, however, Leone had started to realise that he needed other things to do and was getting positively stir-crazy; in the end, Bruno admitted that he was also getting bored, and slotted back into Passione as if he’d never left, in the position he’d gained that spring (although unofficially he had the ear of the Don more than most other capos did).
He’d been offered a capo position too, but he didn’t want that; it was enough to be allowed to stay at Bruno’s side in Napoli, and figure out what to do with his continued existence as he went. Especially since he had learned via his own brand of eavesdropping on the other Stand Users that just happened to show up in Rome at exactly the right time to help them, that in some kind of parallel universe, both he, Narancia and Bruno had died on the mission, and Fugo had just upped and left, leaving a third of their number and the old Boss’ teenage daughter to try and figure out how to do things on their own…
He hadn’t told Bruno this until four weeks had passed since the deed had been done in a quiet moment just before Giorno’s surprise birthday party, using it as ammunition alongside his ennui; of course they had to come back after that, using the christening of the new headquarters as an excuse. Presenting the new Boss - and Passione of course - with his very own mansion, and dropping in with housewarming/belated birthday gifts with the gang all there… even he had to admit that it had been nostalgic… if a touch embarrassing at times…
* * *
It was now the first of July, and all the soldatos and minor capos that had kept their heads down between Polpo’s ‘suicide’ and the dust settling after Rome were starting to come out of the woodwork. And yet quite a few soldatos and several capos didn’t. So he’d carved out a job for himself in the new order that suited his particular talents; a detective in all but name. He’d find the missing people that no-one else could, or wanted to find: those people disappeared by Passione to whom the Don wanted to make reparations to their families, and dig out members that were still in hiding, for various reasons.
The barefoot brat - a girl even younger than Trish that had been some sort of floating go-between in the old regime - had found him… and had been annoying by grovelling about his capabilities and demanding to pay due respects to the one in charge…
After he brought her in, she’d flung herself at the new Don’s feet in a similar manner with some not-quite-bullshit story about how she’d worked her way up from the inside to kill someone from La Squadra who was now conveniently dead, and now owed them - big time - for that. As a gesture of good will, she’d divulged some decidedly flaky information as to the whereabouts of La Squadra’s old hideout: not the hideout itself, but a series of locations where she’d liaised with its leader which she hoped would be useful.
Well, Giovanna specified that Abbacchio would be the judge of that, apparently; it was his fifth assignment after their sabbatical to find out if Sheila E’s information was useful or not. And hopefully the first that didn’t involve killing anyone. The dead sister part of the story checked out at any rate…
The problem was, this scrappy, scar-faced girl could only remember what places she’d met him in, not what times. And standing around in a number of spots for several hours while he went through two year’s worth of recordings and then following a recording of Risotto Nero for several hours more to test out each single location he’d been given would get him precisely nowhere, knowing his luck; [Metallica]’s ability to disappear from view on top of that would put the final nail in the coffin (morbid pun intended).
Normally, they would have quizzed Risotto himself, but after he’d asked to be declared officially dead as far as Passione was concerned, he’d taken some freelance job under an unknown alias and disappeared off the face of the earth around two months ago, just after them beating the old Boss. Maybe he thought it was funny to not let the new and improving Passione - baby steps - know where their old hideout was; maybe it was out of loyalty to his old team and their possessions, maybe not. But those that remained still had due diligence to do, to make sure there wasn’t a stack of evidence lying around somewhere, that other criminal elements might stumble upon before Passione did.
Evidence that could lead to hidden members still loyal to the old regime. It was unlikely in this case, but-
It meant that he’d have to pound the streets manually and do some old-fashioned legwork: asking questions, leaving a calling card, showing passers by photos and hoping it jogged someone's memory, all to aid him in narrowing that huge area down, so he could at least find somewhere to start playing back one of the Hit Team in a more manageable timeframe.
The day had not gone well so far: barely anyone was talking, for a variety of excuses. He realised that this was because the area he was in was effectively La Squadra’s old turf, and a reputation like that was almost impossible to keep quiet, and slow to recede; some minor gangs in the area were still unsure whether all of the squad had left or not. The most he got were false rumours and empty threats.
* * *
Leone had noticed the young, one-eared tortoiseshell cat following him - or was it a calico? He could never remember - about five minutes after he’d left a piazza near the all-girls middle school (currently closed for the summer), where he’d shown pictures of the old La Squadra to gauge reactions while any grown-ups weren’t looking: younger children were (on the whole) more likely to have not learned how to hide emotions or lies, and also noticed many things adults didn’t give them credit for.
There were some positive sightings here: a small group of school-aged girls in summer dresses had seen the gang member that Narancia had fought - Formaggio - several times in or around this very area when they’d been hanging around after school together, but they were unsure where or when. And one of them had spotted Illuso - the member with the mirror Stand - before school one day, cussing at a running girl in their school blacks - although they couldn’t see just who it was as they had their back to them - running down the street after that girl with a bloody arm: the man, not the girl, they clarified; it was definitely before school started as they were on the way there themselves, but they couldn’t remember exactly where or when either, apart from it being ‘definitely Spring, but before Easter’ in one of the places where old Neapolis poked through, oh, and there might have been a statue…? Kids… he huffed to himself. Still, they were the best leads he’d had, and at least semi-confirmed that their flaky informant was (somewhat) on the level in this regard.
He let the cat follow him for the time being, doing as he had done for the rest of that morning; at lunch he stopped at a café, ordered a light snack and an iced drink, and cooled himself for a while in the shade. He saw the cat take up a station in the alley opposite for a long while, watching him whilst sitting on a fence and slowly swishing its tail from side to side. Then it seemed to lose interest and run off at bang on one-thirty: after he paid his bill, he went over to where the cat had sat, and used [Moody Blues], putting the cat recording into a fast reverse. He backtracked the cat to the time it had sat on the fence then set it off in reverse at five times its speed to begin with, and trotted to keep up with it on occasion.
After this had gone on for about fifteen minutes, and he’d picked up the location where the cat suddenly seemed to ‘switch on’ to him, mere minutes before he’d seen it, it seemed, just after he’d left those kids; he pushed backwards for nearly another hour and a half afterwards (over seven hours in realtime), seemingly revisiting every fence, alley and yard in the area…
… and found nothing. The cat hadn’t seemed to react to anyone else in its vicinity either: it just sort of perked up when he’d walked past it, just after he’d interviewed those girls… Keeping running after the playback of the random meanderings of this cat before stupid o’clock in the morning was just going to lead nowhere, and by this point he’d run out of forwards time too. He’d have to ruminate over the information he had and come back to the area again later. Hopefully with another pair of eyes, if he could persuade… ah, who was he kidding? This wasn’t the highest priority on the list at the moment; everyone else was busy on life-or-death missions.
But there was definitely something about that cat that set his intuition off in a way that suggested… what, exactly? Was the cat a Stand User? Possibly not, but it might be connected to one…? One who had been watching him before directing the cat to continue doing the same. He sighed and glanced around the neighbourhood in which he was currently standing: it was actually not that far away from where he had started to notice the cat in the first place… and if it wasn’t the selfsame cat on a car roof across the street, staring at him intently as it curled its tail in a question mark, then he was Dutch.
What the hell. He was going to try something.
He took out his pictures and cautiously approached the cat, holding the photos clearly in front of him so the cat could see them. Calling out ‘here kitty’ felt inappropriate after the chase this animal had led him on, so he just stopped next to the beat up car and showed the picture on top of the pile, which happened to be Risotto Nero. And the cat reacted: it stood up and paced from side to side. Agitation maybe? No, there was almost a recognition, an anticipation there… he switched to another photo. And another. But there was no further reaction until the cat leapt backwards and spat at the penultimate portrait, its tail fluffed out like a squirrel’s. Score another hit for the fucking Mirror man… he thought bitterly.
The one after that the cat had an interesting reaction to: it was the last one - Formaggio’s: he realised he’d stacked them in reverse order of the team encountering them, then - and the cat came right up to it, sniffed, and bunted the picture, rubbing it with its face. It then seemed to ‘realise’ what it had done and ‘switched off’ again, jumping off the car and ducking down another alley before it could be questioned any further.
Well, that definitely wasn’t nothing, Leone thought as he made his way back to the villa. But how much further can I get with this kind of information…?
* * *
“What did you find, Abbacchio?”
Don Giovanna was sat at his usual chair behind the impressive desk in his personal office (that used to be a sumptuous music room but had been tastefully toned down like a lot of the décor in the mansion after they had taken it over), and Leone was pacing uneasily in front, a frustrated expression on his face: he knew he had something, but it was tantalisingly out of reach; there was little else he could do but report his little excursion as, well, not quite a failure, but if not that, then what…?
“Well, obviously no base,” the taller man began, “but over twenty people aged eight to eighty out of five times that many reacted in a significant manner to the photo canvassing; most were probably either too scared to talk, or have their own petty crime agenda going on. I don’t think it’s worth following up on those individuals just yet: it’ll stir up too much trouble in an area that is giving us fewer problems than others at the moment; we still have the drug trade to overthrow and those we can trust are spread too thinly. If you want me to stand exposed on every street corner for hours at a time to find a needle in a haystack, then I’ll want backup. We all know what nearly happened last time…”
“Thanks, Abbacchio,” The smile was polite, verging on warm, but not quite as tranquil as usual. That mention of drugs had struck a nerve. “That’ll be all for-”
“Oh, there was one thing…” Leone interrupted before the Don could dismiss this as a waste of time… maybe this Sheila E brat could be given a sliver of a chance by what had occurred that afternoon. And then she’d get more than she bargained for by trying to be a suck-up: let her find out the hard way…
“Yes?”
Ah, yes, the mission… “I was followed. By a cat.”
“You’re sure?”
“I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I wasn’t,” Leone noted flatly, then pursed his lips, launching into the day’s events, concluding with: “... after being led on a reverse wild goose chase it showed up again; to be honest, I think it was watching me use [Moody Blues].” He paused momentarily, wondering how stupid he’d sound, then ploughed ahead anyway. “And it reacted to the pictures in a way a cat normally wouldn’t.”
“You canvassed the cat?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You think there’s a Stand User in the area.” It wasn’t a question. I’m being taken seriously though…
“And I don’t think it’s the cat either, with the way it just switched on and off, like someone else was directing its attention towards things it wouldn’t normally interact with…” Leone replied, “But I looked into the possibilities before I came here: there’s no-one local with a Stand relating to cats, or scouting with any type of animal - apart from tangentially yours - on the books, and there’s no-one new that came forward in the last couple of months with that kind of Stand either… but the way that Polpo’s Stand worked-”
“Someone could’ve been caught by [Black Sabbath] unintentionally. There weren’t that many new soldatos that passed in the last year; you’d be looking at anyone between Mista and… hmm… myself. Anyone before that would have most likely been picked up already. And the janitor at my school died: I don’t think there was time for it to pounce out on another observer.”
Leone noted that pause, and the tiny amount of regret in Giorno’s voice at the mention of the janitor’s death, but instead of needling him about it, he took another tack: “Or… we have another natural born Stand User, like Trish.”
Giorno’s head-tilt conceded the possibility. “That could mean the Stand User is a relative of a pre-existing one. And makes me think of what Risotto said before he left regarding his old hideout: he insisted ‘there was nothing there that would point to any other member, past or present of Passione, that wasn’t accounted for - either dead or alive - or had left Italy already’. Telling the absolute truth, but omitting much, as Buccellati put it…”
“Maybe he was hiding someone there instead of a thing: someone that wasn’t Passione…” the investigator ventured.
“Were any of La Squadra old enough to have children old enough to wield a Stand themselves? Cousins, nieces or nephews, maybe…” the blond Don mused, “whoever it is, maybe he gifted the house to someone before he left; there could be a normal family living there now?”
“If he did that, he would have told us, and threatened us to keep well away, while still keeping the location secret. But if it were a Stand User…” Leone paused, and remembered something. “Risotto had a thing about not taking in underaged members to his team, unlike Br- Buccellati… he kind of had a point,” he added, side-eying the Don. “I think there’s a kid of middle-school age - my gut is telling me it’s a girl - prowling the streets of Napoli with a Stand related to cats; so I can see it being good for scouting as far as it goes. If that’s all it does. And she definitely knew something about Risotto, Formaggio, and possibly Illuso: there was a negative reaction to his picture…”
“Interesting… So, whoever it is, they’re not causing us any direct trouble just yet: they observed you for a time and didn’t do anything else apart from react to your canvassing as far as you saw.” After a quick reflection on that summary Abbacchio gave a hesitant nod; Giorno took the file in front of him and closed it, slipping it into a drawer in his desk and locking it: “I think this gets parked for now: we have other priorities at the moment, and I need all the people I can get looking at more pressing problems. Sorry, Abbacchio.”
“You’re taking me off the… mission?!” He’d been about to say the word ‘case’ but that sounded too policelike and settled for a more neutral word.
“No, that’s not what I was suggesting,” Giorno shook his head adamantly. “In fact, I think you’re probably the only person I know who could solve this little conundrum quietly. But… give it some time to percolate and see what shakes out naturally: if it is a kid, then sooner or later they’re going to slip up and we’ll deal with that when it happens; if the property was on a long lease, however, then it may still turn up on the market for rent or sale by then.”
“So, softly, softly, catchee utility bill final notice…”
“Exactly: we’ll keep a more passive reconnaissance on the area marked out by Sheila’s hazy recollections, and if something bizarre does happen, it will be inevitable that someone’s path - yours if you still want that - will cross with this Stand User, by the unwritten law… but we won’t push just yet: I’d prefer a Risotto that’s not on the warpath, wherever he is; I’ll respect his stance until either the end of the year, he shows up with an explanation, or something big enough happens that he’ll have to answer to me for keeping it quiet.”
“As long as I get an extra pair of feet to work it with me when that time comes, then fine…” Leone decided. “What’re you going to do with the barefoot brat?”
“As you said: her claim wasn’t quite bullshit, and did give you a lead to follow, if not immediately: I might have something coming up for her soon; she’ll either take care of it, or vice versa.”
And the Don smiled that smile of his: Leone still found the serene swan act as annoying as fuck, but he had to admit the boy had not seen anyone on the team wrong so far. And he knew from personal experience just how madly the kid’s legs were paddling underneath…
The cat would have to wait…
* * *