Balistreri winked at Piccolo. They were pushing the envelope.
“Maybe the door’s unlocked,” Piccolo suggested with faux innocence. “Is it unlocked, Rudi?”
The young guy was sharp.
“Well, now that I think about it, I believe it is.”
“Piccolo, go up with Rudi and take a look.”
“I’ll call Corvu and have him relay custody orders to the prosecutor,” she suggested.
Balistreri nodded. “All right. Remember that the sanitation workers are on strike.”
Piccolo found Rudi instantly likable. He was polite, helpless, and also, she was surprised to find, very handsome.
When they left the bar to slip into the entrance next door, she kept the handcuffs on and gave him a vicious push.
Just in case one of those shitheads happens to be looking.
They entered using Rudi’s keys. The apartment had three rooms with two single rusty iron-frame beds in each, a kitchen, a bathroom, and no living room. The furnishings were basic, mostly junk. In the first room, which belonged to Mircea and Greg, there was a television and a DVD player. The one in the middle was for Rudi and any occasional guests. The last room at the end belonged to Ramona and Nadia, an illegal extension common throughout Rome: a lumber room knocked into a balcony and finished off with aluminum and plastic sheeting. Two ramshackle beds, an old chest of drawers, no closet. Patches of dampness showed through the walls. The bathroom had no windows, no toilet seat, and only the most basic in the way of sink and shower. There was a smell of cigarette butts and ammonia everywhere.
Rudi was growing agitated.
“Ma’am, thank you for leaving the handcuffs on me.”
“Please don’t call me ‘Ma’am.’”
“Officer?” he asked hesitantly.
“I’m a deputy captain, actually,” Piccolo told him.
Both beds were made, but one was perfectly neat, while the other was rumpled.
“Which one is Nadia’s?”
He pointed to the neat one.
“Mircea told me to change the sheets.”
“When?”
“On December 25 about six in the evening, after Ramona went to work. I was down in the bar. He told me to come up here and clean up.”
“Clean up what?”
Rudi ran a hand through his hair. He was obviously uneasy in that room.
“Um, it was a mess. There was stuff all over the floor. Clothes. Nadia was messy, and some of it was hers. But Ramona was usually neat, and there were her clothes, too. And Nadia had never been that messy. Then I changed the sheets on Nadia’s bed and made Ramona’s bed, too.”
“Have you been in the room since then?” she asked.
Rudi was trembling.
“Can we get out of here?”
“No problem. Let’s go.”
They went down to the bar. The detectives were standing outside. Piccolo entered and went into the billiards room with Rudi. Two billiard tables, a foosball table, two card tables, two more slot machines, a phone on the wall. Three black garbage bags closed with twist-ties had been tossed in a corner. Remember that the sanitation workers are on strike.
“What are those?”
“Mircea told me to throw the bags that smelled onto the curb and keep the others in here until the strike ended. But I’m sure there were only two. Don’t know where that third one came from.”
Piccolo called one of the detectives and had him open the three garbage bags. The first two were full of beer cans and bottles, cigarette butts, newspapers, magazines, and other trash. But the third contained a red raincoat, two T-shirts, two polyester miniskirts, a pair of jeans, a pair of beat-up sneakers, a blue sweater, and several pairs of stockings, as well as bras and panties. The underwear fell into two categories: half the kind of showy stuff appropriate for a prostitute and the rest cheap cotton things for a normal teenager.
Rudi burst into silent sobs. Piccolo placed a hand on his shoulder.
Rudi pointed to a bunch of gossip magazines in Romanian that had spilled from one of the bags.
“Those are Nadia’s too,” he said.
Piccolo bent down, picked up a magazine and started to leaf through it. A card fell out and fluttered to the floor. She picked it up. It was a ticket. Rome—Iasi. Stazione Tiburtina. December 29, 2005. 6:00 a.m. Seat 12.
She stepped outside thinking about that empty seat on the coach back home.
. . . .
It had stopped raining, the sun had come out, and the pavements were gleaming. Traffic was flowing now, too. There was less traffic and so Balistreri took a taxi back to the station.
He looked out the window at the outskirts of Rome: pedestrians, potholes filled with rainwater, garbage everywhere. The taxi driver was unloading on the mayor.
“Look at those potholes. I have to change my tires every two months. You think they had potholes under Mussolini? No way. Politicians don’t give a crap. They’re only in it for themselves. We’re the ones who have to drive around San Basilio, Tor Bella Monaca, Tor de’ Cenci, and Quartuccio at night. I’d like to see that Communist prick of a mayor live in one of our neighborhoods with the blacks and the Romanians.”
As they approached the center of the city, the refuse grew less and the street life began to change. They passed the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, bursting again with happy tourists.
He arrived back in the office in time for lunch and asked Margherita, the new switchboard operator, if she wouldn’t mind picking up lunch for him from the café downstairs. Five minutes later she came back with a bottle of beer and a slice of pizza bianca split in half and made into a sandwich generously stuffed with prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella.
“Margherita, you’re a mind-reader. You brought me just what I needed.”
The woman blushed and left the room.
That’s all that’s left to you, Balistreri. Double entendres.
As Balistreri ate his sandwich, he read Piccolo’s e-mail about what she’d discovered. Just then Corvu came in, a satisfied smile on his serious face.
“What is it, Corvu?” Balistreri didn’t invite him to sit. Corvu liked to move around as he talked.
Corvu glanced at the notepad in his hand. “Something new on Ajello, the lawyer who’s manager of the nightclub where the Senegalese man was killed. The Bella Blu belongs to a company called ENT, and we’ve got something new from the revenue agency.”
“Hold on a minute. Tell me about Marchese first. Where is he?”
Corvu looked unhappy with the interruption.
“He’s in my office, but you told me not to question him.”
“Officially,” Balistreri said, “but I can’t believe you just sat there and stared at each other without speaking.”
“We talked about our native islands.”
Balistreri went quiet and Corvu continued, a little uneasily. “He said the Sardinian sea seems more beautiful in appearance because it’s more transparent, but the really beautiful sea is Sicily’s, which has more soul—”
“He didn’t mention Ramona?” Balistreri asked impatiently.
“I’m getting there.” Corvu searched for the right words. “Marchese said it’s the same with women. Sardinian women seem easier, but, ultimately, Sicilian women—”
“Just tell me what you talked about. What did he say about Ramona?”
At that moment, Piccolo entered before Corvu could reply. “We brought them all in, Captain, including Mircea.”
“Tell Mastroianni and Coppola to get ready. We’ll need four of you, since there are four Romanians.”
“Five,” Corvu corrected him. “Marius Hagi is coming in this afternoon with his lawyer.”
“I’ll question Marius Hagi when you’re done with those four.”
“There’s also the Albanian kid.”
Piccolo said, “We have to protect Rudi. I brought him in. Right now he’s locked in my office.”
“Let’s leave him alone for now,” Balistreri said. He swigged from
the beer bottle, but it was empty. “Corvu was just about to tell me what he got out of Marchese.”
“I’m sorry, sir. As I was saying, Marchese said that Ramona was different from Sicilian women, who . . . who are . . .” he stammered again, looking desperately at Piccolo, his face burning.
Before Balistreri went completely ballistic, Piccolo finished what Corvu was trying to say: “Saints on the outside and sluts on the inside! Sicilian men are so full of shit.” Then she remembered her boss’s origins and looked out of the window.
Balistreri broke the silence, pretending he hadn’t heard the last part.
“So according to him, Ramona Iordanescu is a saint.”
“Yes, a saint,” Corvu said. “She had the courage to go back a second time for her friend after Colajacono told her that if he ever saw her again he’d bend her over his desk, fuck her up the ass, and then throw her in prison.”
Balistreri saw the muscles in Piccolo’s face grow tense.
Trouble ahead. Have to keep her under control.
Afternoon
Balistreri was happy to go on foot to Piazza Navona even though it was full of people, as it always was toward New Year’s.
He walked past the stalls, the street performers, the artists drawing caricatures, and the people collecting for charities as he headed toward the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone. Linda Nardi was already there. She had extraordinary eyes, wore no makeup, and dressed like a fifty-year-old. Balistreri had noticed a vertical line that sometimes appeared in the middle of her brow and ran to the bridge of her nose. One day, during an interview, he had stared at her breasts. They were well shaped, not huge but promising, so he certainly wouldn’t have embarrassed her. And yet that furrow had appeared straight away. This frown was as inexplicable as the woman herself, who was far too detached in a way that was so different from all the other women he’d known. In a world where the gentler sex could obtain a great deal by seduction, she could have put her good looks to use in so many ways. But Linda Nardi wasn’t trying to seduce anyone.
“Ms. Nardi, thank you for agreeing to meet me.”
“No problem. I’m a little surprised, though. You’re not in the habit of seeking out journalists.”
“No, not really,” he agreed.
“We’d better go inside before somebody sees us.”
The silence in the church was in direct contrast to the noise in the piazza. There were many tourists wandering silently through the aisles, and several Italian families with children pulling at their parents to make them leave. Mass was about to start.
Linda pointed to the pews in a quiet corner. She looked about calmly, as if they were actually there to attend Mass.
“Do you know the story of Saint Agnes, Captain Balistreri?”
“Why don’t you tell it to me?” He wasn’t particularly interested, but he hadn’t quite worked up to asking her for what he wanted.
“The Roman prefect’s son had a thing for this Christian girl, Agnes, but the feeling wasn’t mutual, and the pain of rejection made him sick. So what do you think the prefect did?”
Balistreri joked, “Fell in love with her himself?”
Nardi shook her head. “To get back at Agnes, who had taken a vow of chastity, the prefect ordered her to be cloistered with the vestal virgins of Rome’s patron pagan deity.”
“But she wouldn’t go?”
“Exactly. Agnes refused and the prefect locked her up in a brothel. Am I boring you, Captain Balistreri?”
He didn’t like the story, and the way she was telling it seemed to indicate that she thought he was on the side of the prefect.
“Agnes refused to go to bed with clients?” he asked, knowing that wasn’t the story.
“Women can refuse to do almost anything, but they can’t defend themselves against men’s physical violence. Agnes was lucky. Everyone knew the reason she was there, and for a long time no client dared touch her. Then a man said to be blinded by an angel fell in love with her. Agnes tried to intercede with the Lord to restore his sight and was accused of witchcraft,” Linda continued.
“That was her big mistake, don’t you think? A vain attempt to challenge authority, an act of pride. Did she want to cure a blind man who loved her or show off the power of her God to the people?”
Linda looked at him for a long time in silence, but without hostility. She seemed to be trying to get to know him better through his reactions to the story. Then she went on.
“Perhaps Agnes didn’t want to heal the blind man as much as to bring to light the weakness of the powerful and the strength of the persecuted. Anyway, she was stripped naked and killed. They slit her throat and bled her out, like slaughtering a lamb.”
Nardi told the story with little inflection, but her eyes were dark and serious.
“I’m investigating the possible disappearance of a young Romanian prostitute,” Balistreri announced without ceremony.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Is this the same captain who once said that when it comes to illegal immigrants there’s no difference between criminal and victim?”
The words escaped my lips during a heated press conference after dozens of stupid questions from you journalists.
“That’s not exactly true. Or maybe I said it, but you’re taking it out of context and making it sound xenophobic.”
“Your boss, Pasquali, certainly wouldn’t approve of the head of the special team wasting his time like this,” she cut in.
“That’s why I need you to do something for me. But I can’t offer you anything in return.”
She considered that for a moment.
“I won’t do anything illegal.”
“I’ll be committing a small infraction. You won’t run any risk at all.”
“And you trust me?” She sounded sincerely surprised.
“I have to trust you. But I’m telling you upfront that this doesn’t mean I’m going to give you information about the investigation.”
“I didn’t ask for any. I wanted to speak to you about something. But not here. If you’re free, we can do it one evening over dinner.”
From Linda Nardi’s lips it was different from how any other woman would have said it. There was no shade or play of meaning. A working dinner. He remembered poor Colicchia.
She read his thoughts, knowing that he and Colicchia had been great friends.
“It’ll be on me.”
Balistreri looked straight at her.
“I’m still not giving you any information.”
“You already said that, Captain. I heard you loud and clear. Are you going to tell me what you want me to do?”
So he told her. She listened in silence until he’d finished speaking. Then she shook her head as if to say no, but at the same time she said, “Okay, I’m in.”
. . . .
Officer Marcello Scordo was a young man in his thirties from Calabria whose movie-star looks had earned him the nickname “Mastroianni,” after the famous actor. He was closely attached to a woman from his native region and faithful to her—despite the fact that many beautiful female colleagues had come on to him, sometimes quite openly—so in many ways the nickname was ironic.
“Giorgi and Adrian have regular residency permits and are employed by the travel agency Marius Travel,” Mastroianni reported. “They say Marius Hagi is an excellent boss—kind and honest.”
“I get it. He’s next in line to be pope,” Coppola said sarcastically.
“Giorgi and Adrian don’t know anything about the girls. On December 24, they left the travel agency with Hagi, Mircea, and Greg. They took the subway straight to Casilino 900 and got there at six. They were together the whole time, and by ten o’clock they were in St. Peter’s Square. They weren’t the ones who picked up Nadia.”
Coppola shook his head. “I’m sure those bastards hang out in St. Peter’s Square all the time, praying and meditating.”
Balistreri turned to Corvu. “What have you got on Mircea and Greg?”
“Greg and Mircea Lacatus are from Galati’s poorest suburbs in Moldova, near the Black Sea, where Marius Hagi is from originally. He brought them here at the end of 2002. They’ve got clean records in Italy, but we’re checking in Romania. They’re on the books as employees of Marius Travel.”
“What do they say about the girls?”
“According to them, Nadia and Ramona were prostitutes by choice. They wanted to whore themselves out in order to make money as quickly as possible and get back to Romania. Mircea and Greg found them a place to stay for free at Hagi’s. In short, these two were regular guardian angels.”
Balistreri turned to Piccolo. “Rudi told us that on the evening of December 23, Nadia didn’t go to work on Via di Torricola because she went out with Mircea.”
Piccolo nodded. “Mircea says he took her to a restaurant and nothing more. After dinner they argued, because she didn’t want to have sex, so he left her where she was and went back home with Greg, who was in the area. Rudi confirms that they were both there at midnight and didn’t go out again.”
“Corvu, get a printout of the records from the phone company,” Balistreri ordered. “Find something that will let us hold them for forty-eight hours. As for Rudi—”
Piccolo raised her hand. “Rudi needs to be somewhere safe before they get out.”
Balistreri smiled. “All right, you can see to that. Mastroianni, go to Via di Torricola. The prostitutes should be there soon. Pass yourself off as a client.”
Corvu said, “Captain, Mastroianni’s hardly a credible client. Maybe we should send someone else.” He pointed to Coppola.
Coppola was pissed. “Listen, Corvu, if anyone needs to pay for it, it’s you.”
Balistreri calmly cut off the argument. Over the years he’d learned the art of mediation.
“Okay, Mastroianni’s not a great choice. You go, Coppola, because I need Corvu elsewhere,” he said. “Corvu, can you reach out to your Romanian contacts and ask them to speak informally with Ramona in Iasi tomorrow morning? I think there’s still time to get on the last flight to Bucharest.”
While the others were exiting, Corvu was diligently taking notes. Then he looked at Balistreri. “Mastroianni’s going to question Ramona, right?”
Balistreri stood up. “Yes. Do you have anything on the killing of the Bella Blu bouncer?”
The Deliverance of Evil Page 17
