The Four Corners of Palermo

by Giuseppe Di Piazza

  “You’re being pointlessly dramatic: I was just talking about swimsuits.”

  “I go underwater fishing, in scuba gear with a speargun.”

  “I guess that’s just one more way to go on killing.”

  “Francesca, are you sure the lawyer isn’t home? I’m starting to think I’d rather talk to him …”

  She laughed. “All right, I have nothing against fishing. It’s just that I hate boats. They increase my sense of instability.”

  “I fish from under the surface of the water. Down there, it’s perfectly stable, let me assure you: you’re like a floating corpse. The truth is that I love boats, though.”

  “Too bad for you.”

  “Fine, let’s play a game. If I were to say to you: Francesca, come on, let’s go from Vulcano to Lipari and then to Salina, to see the most beautiful water on earth, to feel the gentlest breezes on earth on our faces, to sunbathe in the most beautiful sun on—”

  “I don’t sunbathe, and I don’t like boats. So my answer would be no.”

  “No, period?”

  “No, period.”

  What I liked about her was her warmth, her ability to shave off sharp angles. I said goodbye to her in the tone of voice of a disappointed skipper of a sailboat watching his guests throw up over the side. Wasted time, wasted beaches. I hadn’t even asked her how the pictures from the photo shoot had turned out. Perhaps boredom was better.

  I grabbed my Ray-Bans and the keys to my Vespa, and I went to see the two kids from the Liceo Garibaldi.

  They were waiting for me outside Bar Crystal, the temple of the torta Savoia, the Savoy torte: alternating layers of chocolate cream and sponge cake; a circular tablet of pure pleasure, drenched in a lava flow of chilled cocoa.

  The two kids were a couple: her name was Antonia; she was blonde, with brown eyes, dressed in a pair of Lee jeans and a pink tank top. Her boyfriend was named Filippo, and he told me that he was a competitive swimmer: he had a trim, powerful physique, a strong, American jaw, and short hair. I imagined him wearing goggles and a rubber cap: perfect. They had come in their dark-blue Peugeot Boxer. Classmates, in the third year of liceo, section III-B. They didn’t attend classes with Rosalba, but she and Antonia had been close friends and had socialized until last summer.

  “Then this boy showed up, Marinello, and she disappeared: I only saw her at break. Ciao, how are you, then arrivederci. We stopped going dancing together, she stopped coming to parties. A few of her classmates told me that she was still getting good grades, but that she seemed distracted. She had other things on her mind.”

  I asked her about Rosalba’s family.

  “Her mamma used to come meet with her teachers every now and then. A very polite lady. My mother told me that Rosalba’s papà works for the city, or at AMAP … I don’t remember which.”

  Filippo sat in silence. He stretched right in front of me, his pectorals expanding his T-shirt: I was afraid it was about to rip open.

  I thanked them, they got back in their Boxer, and they drove off down Via Sciuti. I summed up the situation in my head: Rosalba came from a good family, she’d met a malacarne, a bad egg, and her life had changed.

  Riding my Vespa back home, where Fabrizio and Cicova were awaiting my return, I thought about Francesca’s harshness. That unappealable no of hers had taken me by surprise. I believed that life was made up of surrenders, that pleasure wasn’t clinging stubbornly by your fingernails to a wall made of certainties, but rather letting yourself slide, with the reckless joy of a child rolling down a sand dune. I was twenty-three years old, and I was looking for higher dunes to throw myself off of.

  Marinello was on his feet. He was zipping up his jeans and grimacing. Rosalba was rummaging through her purse in search of something.

  “Heart of my heart, you put the keys on the coffee table.”

  “It’s true.”

  She was beautiful, somehow Asian-looking, thought Marinello. Her yellow tank top was stretched tight over her angular breasts. Her eyes, after that almost sleepless night, had become even more elongated. And her gaze was fierce; the girl who had grown up in the bourgeoisie was learning one of the lessons of this city that was a slaughterhouse writ large: never look down; lowering your eyes is something only victims do.

  “I’ll go get the car, I’ll honk the horn twice, you come out, and we can go.”

  “Let’s go to Ciaculli.”

  “No, please, don’t.”

  “I want to wait for him and tear him limb from limb.”

  “You swore you wouldn’t kill.”

  “Yes, I swore it to you. But killing Totuccio isn’t murder: it’s house cleaning.”

  “Blood of my life, you can’t do it. You’re different from them. You have me, we have to go live somewhere far away from here, you don’t want other people’s deaths on your conscience.”

  Other people: his family, the death sentence against him. Marinello looked at her with all the love that was permissible in Palermo. He knew that she was right, that taking vengeance would mean accepting a life sentence: an eye for an eye, Mafia for Mafia. No, he was no Mafioso.

  He held her to him, caressing her back. His big hand climbed up until it stopped under her ponytail. He exerted a light pressure with his forefinger and thumb on her soft shoulders, which made her close her eyes. The air around them was dense.

  “All right, my darling. Let’s go away.”

  In an auto repair shop in Brancaccio, Totuccio was trying to start and stop an Alfetta. The four-cylinder engine made itself heard.

  “They’re in the Fiat 126. We pull up next to them, while Tano swerves in front of them with the Honda.”

  Tano nodded yes. He was short, muscular, and he wore a black crewneck T-shirt over a pair of khaki riding trousers. On his feet he wore a pair of leather sandals. Leaning against the tool counter, two other picciotti were spinning the cartridge drums of their Smith & Wesson .357 Magnums.

  “We’ll do it tomorrow afternoon, around nightfall,” said Totuccio. “They go every Thursday to do their shopping at the Standa. He drives, she’s in the passenger seat.”

  Tano nodded: he liked the idea of killing someone who was going grocery shopping.

  “But you’d better bring your compact submachine gun with you, the Uzi. You never know. They’re certainly not going to shoot back, but if we don’t finish them off immediately, the best thing is to spray them with a nice hail of lead.”

  Tano smiled. He liked the Uzi submachine gun, too: short as a celery stalk, light as a celery stalk, but far more dangerous than a celery stalk.

  One of the two picciotti broke in. He was wearing a camo T-shirt and he kept his cigarettes under his rolled-up short sleeve.

  “Totuccio, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Where do you think those two dickheads, those minchia, are going to go? They’re going to let themselves be killed, docile and obedient.”

  The two minchia in question were Dottor Arcangelo Corona and his wife, Signora Mariapia Cuzzupane Corona. The message had been mailed. Now all they had to do was deliver it.

  “Francesca, I’ve figured you out.”

  “What?”

  “You wish you could live here in Sicily.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, it’s that girls like you break my heart: I understand everything they say and, especially, what they don’t say.”

  “What didn’t I say?”

  “The most important things.”

  “Like what?”

  “That Milan isn’t right for you, that gray isn’t really your color, that you’d like to have the sea right before you, but as seen from dry land. We can make that happen. Plus you’re looking for someone to get you out of your relationship with that lawyer.”

  “You’re truly out of your mind.”

  “Listen here: Have you broken the law? Are you wanted on some charge or other? No. So why would you need a lawyer?”

  She laughed. A friend, back in high school, told me that if you ca
n get a woman to laugh you’re well over halfway there. I never knew how to seduce anyone. It just happened, that was all.

  “You need to stop yammering about the lawyer,” she said, forcing herself to be serious again.

  “Okay. I’ve made up my mind …”

  “You scare me when you say that you’ve made up your mind.”

  “I’ve made up my mind to give you a chance. You and Sicily: eye to eye.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You come stay at my house, a guest for a long weekend. It’s summertime. You’re not going to tell me that you have to take pictures dressed in nightgowns and pajamas all of July and August, are you?”

  “You’re crazy, but still, I like the challenge.”

  I couldn’t believe that she was taking it seriously.

  “You mean you’ll catch a plane and come down here?”

  “Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Francesca. I’m a romantic young man.”

  She laughed: to someone like her, the word “romantic” must have sounded like a joke.

  “No, I’m deadly serious. A project I’ve been working on was canceled, so I’m free from tomorrow till Sunday: four days in Palermo. But on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “That you don’t even try to touch me.”

  “What, are you joking? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  I’m not sure how much she appreciated the lie.

  The next morning at eleven o’clock I was at Punta Raisi airport, waiting for the most beautiful and the toughest girl I’d ever met in my life.

  We exchanged a pair of kisses on the cheek, and I picked up her suitcase and loaded it into the back of the orange Renault 4 that I’d asked Fabrizio to lend me. Riding around the coast of the Gulf of Capaci, on one of the most luminous days I’ve ever seen in my life, we headed for home.

  “This is your bedroom; over there on the right is the bathroom. Fabrizio, my best friend, sleeps in the loft, and I sleep in the room down the hall. You want to see it?”

  “No, grazie.”

  “You take your time, I have to go over to the newspaper, but I’ll be back soon. Today’s half a holiday for me. I told them I had visitors from up north.”

  She smiled, and a spark appeared in her Martorana marzipan-green eyes.

  At seven o’clock I was back home. Francesca had wandered around the neighborhood, discovering that panelle, or chickpea fritters, are better than cazzilli, that is, potato croquettes, and that cannoli filled while you wait are something they invented in Milan, just to make themselves feel important. If a cannolo is good, it’s good from morning, when it’s first made, till nightfall. And she’d found one that was truly delicious at the Pasticceria Macrì.

  She had met Fabrizio, but he’d had to leave early to go meet his girlfriend, and she’d fed Cicova, immediately enslaving him for life. There was something special about Francesca. Damn that Milanese lawyer.

  Now she was ready for our first night out on the town of Palermo: white miniskirt, off-white linen shirt, lace-up espadrilles.

  The telephone rang.

  “Hello, handsome, it’s the switchboard speaking: the news editor is trying to get in touch with you.”

  The Fiat 126 had turned onto Viale Lazio, heading for the Passo di Rigano district, where the largest Standa store in Palermo was located. Thursday afternoon was the best time of the week to go shopping. No crowds, and easy to park in the roundabout out front.

  Arcangelo Corona was driving the subcompact, and his wife was in the passenger seat, holding the fishnet shopping bags with woven-cord handles. She had four of them. She was pleased with the practical good sense and frugality that she devoted to her family.

  Arcangelo had left the office early, the way he did every Thursday, to take his wife grocery shopping. He thought about what he’d left behind him: not exactly a mess, but still, now he wished he’d made that phone call to the aqueduct of Termini Imerese.

  “Oh well, I’ll do it tomorrow morning,” he murmured.

  “What did you say, Arcangelo?”

  “No, nothing. I was just thinking aloud.”

  Mariapia looked at the man sitting next to her: the lightweight gray jacket, the glasses with the black plastic frames, the well-shaped nose, the vertical creases that marked his face. They’d been children together. She saw herself, for an instant, from the outside: a middle-aged woman, unattractive, in a dress made of synthetic fibers, low-heeled shoes, and hair done up in a bun. She loved this man who loved her for who she was, for how she had always been. She forgot that twenty-two years ago Arcangelo had fallen head over heels in love with her for her eyes, elongated like the eyes she’d later give Rosalba, for her intense gaze and the tenderness that she managed to instill in everything she did. A Sicilian woman, kneaded and shaped from living material, with the character of the sea on a summer morning: still and warm.

  Mariapia adjusted her skirt, which tended to hike up on the upholstery of the car’s seat, and smiled at her husband.

  “It’s nice to think aloud,” she said, tenderly.

  Neither of them noticed the Alfetta that had been following them for a couple of minutes now.

  At the end of Viale Lazio, where the big thoroughfare merges into the ring road around Palermo, a motorcycle with two men on board, both wearing full-face helmets, pulled out of a cross street and swerved ahead of the Fiat 126.

  It all happened in a flash.

  The motorcyclist slammed on his brakes; Arcangelo jammed his right foot onto the brake pedal; Mariapia lurched forward out of her seat and dropped her shopping bags, which fell between her feet. A large, dark automobile loomed up instantly beside them. The guy riding shotgun on the motorcycle dismounted with a gun in his hand. A third man got out of the car.

  Arcangelo and Mariapia both felt a powerful burning sensation in their hands, their chests, their legs, their heads. Then they felt nothing. Their bodies were now dead meat, bathed in the gushing blood that poured out of the holes punched in them by the .357 Magnums.

  A bus driver on a route heading in the opposite direction down Viale Lazio saw the muzzle flashes, heard the racket of gunfire, but decided to continue on his way to the next bus stop. Two other cars didn’t even bother to slow down.

  Totuccio climbed back aboard the Alfetta. The other killer climbed onto the backseat of the Honda. They peeled out, heading toward the Bellolampo dump: another car and another motorcycle to burn to charred skeletons. Message delivered.

  There was a shrill note of alarm in the news editor’s voice. His words came across the line like a police siren rising and falling.

  “Get going, as fast as you can. Viale Lazio. Double homicide. No other details available. They say it’s something big.”

  With the receiver braced between my shoulder and neck, I looked over at Francesca. She was standing there, in front of me, in a miniskirt that was tearing me apart.

  “Right, boss. I’m on my way.”

  I hung up.

  “Francesca, forgive me, something’s come up at the office. I ought to go take a look at it; do you mind very much if we swing by on our way to dinner, to check out the story my boss told me about?”

  “You already told him you were going. Were you planning to leave me here on my own again?”

  She didn’t sound angry; her voice was simply flat, matter-of-fact: I was starting to understand that this was just how she talked.

  “No, I’d like you to come with me, that way, afterward …”

  She didn’t let me finish my sentence.

  “That way, afterward, nothing. But I’m coming with you. Let’s see what your job is like.”

  In order to climb onto the Vespa behind me, she was forced to hike her already skimpy miniskirt even higher. I silently wished I could be a pedestrian watching us go by.

  We headed for Viale Lazio. We didn’t have far to go.

  Already midway up that broad thoroughfare, flashing blue squad-car lights and
a small, tangled column of cars pointed to the scene of the murder. A policeman stopped us.

  “I’m from the newspaper.”

  “Does the signorina work for the paper, too?”

  “No, she’s my fiancée: she’s just along for the ride.”

  Francesca sank a sharp fingernail into my ribs.

  “All right, you can go on through.”

  We got off the Vespa a dozen yards from the Fiat 126. I saw the camera flashes of the forensics team illuminating the scene. Two figures, sprawled back in the seats of the car. Blood everywhere. An official I knew responded to my greeting, with a quick glance at Francesca.

  “Nasty story.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “We’re still identifying them. We took IDs from his wallet and her handbag. At headquarters they’re running down the license plates on the Fiat 126.”

  I took another five steps or so, and Francesca took my hand.

  Seen from the outside, we were a couple admiring not a beautiful sunset, but a couple of corpses.

  Francesca turned to look at me, her eyes glistening.

  “I’ve never seen a dead person before,” she whispered.

  Half the man’s face had been blown away by the pointblank pistol fire. The woman was huddled over. A small mass of humanity, red with blood.

  “If you prefer, you can just wait for me in the bar across the road, there.”

  She didn’t answer; she just gripped my hand even harder. I didn’t insist. Among the cops hard at work I noticed Salvo, my friend from the Squadra Catturandi. I dragged Francesca along with me and went over to him.

  “Who are these two? Why a woman, too?”

  “I told you. Nasty story, what happened in Piazza Scaffa. These are the girl’s parents: Signore and Signora Corona, Arcangelo and Mariapia. Shot down like dogs, just to send a message to Marinello that love isn’t everything.”

  A few days earlier, I’d read a line in a novel and I’d found it annoying. The main character, a detestable woman, said: “Oh my God, love is so overrated.” She would have gotten along famously with the Spataro family, I decided.