Rocco quickly answered the phone: “Who is it?”
“Why are you talking in a whisper?”
It was Anna.
“Anna, what do you want?”
“You haven’t called me all day long. Does that strike you as normal?”
“You told me to go fuck myself yesterday. Why would I have called you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to apologize?”
Rocco spread his arms wide. Italo continued to look around wildly, like a trapped hamster.
“Anna, this isn’t a good time. I’m right in the middle of a police operation.”
“Of course you are. And what’s this police operation called? Elisabetta? Barbara?”
“Fuck, Anna, I’ll call you tomorrow. I swear.”
“Save yourself the phone call. And have a nice night.”
She hung up.
“Who the fuck was that?” Italo practically yelled.
“A woman I know. And by the way, I heard you, you know? You called me an idiot.”
Italo looked down at his shoes. “Sorry. I was scared.”
“Don’t let it happen again,” Rocco warned him. “I’m still your superior officer.”
“All right. But you should have turned off your cell phone.”
“Then how would we have been able to see?”
“I have a flashlight.”
“And you think I’m an idiot? Turn it on!”
Italo did as ordered.
Behind a stack of cartons there was an empty space. At the center stood an old metal desk, straight out of a post office. A Naugahyde chair and a steel lamp. Schiavone went over to the desk. Which had two drawers. In the first drawer there was bric-a-brac and junk, as well as sheets of paper. In the other was a ledger. Rocco sat down, turned on the light, and began perusing that ledger as if he were a bookkeeper.
“The light!” Italo called in a hoarse whisper.
“Don’t worry. All right, now, what have we here?”
A sheaf of paper with a long string of names. Next to each surname was a number. Some of the names were underlined in red.
“What is it?”
“A list of some kind. Look here. Federico Biamonti . . . Gressoney. 130,000. Paride Sassuoli. Pila. 85,000.”
“What’s it mean, though?”
Rocco looked up from the ledger. “Debts, Italo. Debts. Are you good at taking pictures?”
“How do you mean?”
“Take your cell phone and photograph every page of this thing. It’s only five pages.” He got up from his chair and gave Italo his place. “And do it fast, before day dawns.”
Italo pushed the button for the cell phone’s camera and set to work. Rocco finished up his examination of the place. He walked over to a big carton. He pulled out a jackknife and opened it up. Inside were boxes.
Car stereos.
He opened another. Electric kettles.
“Are you done yet?”
Italo photographed the last sheet of paper and put the ledger back where it belonged. He turned off the light. At the same time, a key creaked in a lock.
“Fucking. . . .”
“Over here!” hissed Rocco. Italo hurried over to the deputy chief who was standing behind the stack of cartons. “What is it?”
“Someone’s here.”
They turned off flashlight and cell phones.
“Lass Crizma, I gevv yoo mi ar,” someone sang, butchering a seasonal evergreen. “And de rilli good play yoo mèche it awaiiii.” One after another, the overhead fluorescent lamps flickered on. The storeroom was lit up like a supermarket at rush hour. Italo blinked, wide-eyed. Rocco remained motionless. He held the pocket knife in one hand.
“Dis yeer too sevv yoo from deers . . .” A shadow moved forward into the storeroom. Rocco and Italo shrank as small as they could, pressed against the stacks of cartons like a couple of mice. “Lass Crizma, I gevv yoo mi ar . . .” the shadow took shape. It was a man. Short, with a beard. He grabbed a carton, opened it, checked the contents, then heaved it up onto his shoulder. “Too sevv yoo from deers . . .” The body dissolved back into a shadow, the fluorescent lamps switched off, the key creaked in the lock again. Rocco and Italo were plunged back into darkness.
“Jesus, that was close.”
“I know, right? We can go now, Italo.”
The officer mopped the sweat from his brow, then followed the deputy chief. Without turning on any light sources, they reached the window they’d forced and looked out into the courtyard. It was all dark outside. No sign of life. Rocco went through first. Italo followed him. Above them, in the second-floor window, Primo Cuaz was waving goodbye. Rocco and Italo waved back and, hugging close to the apartment building’s outside wall, they made their way back to the metal gate, climbed over it, and found themselves out on the sidewalk, just in time to see a red Alfa Romeo roaring off toward the center of town.
“So where were we just now, Rocco?”
“In a very nice little place. Things look much clearer to me now. How about you?”
“They’re laundering money and selling stolen merchandise!”
“That’s right. That’s what these people do for a living. They launder money and they loanshark. And the two activities are linked, Italo. Closely linked.”
As they were heading back to the car, Italo elbowed Rocco in the ribs. “Look at that!”
Rocco looked up and stood there, enchanted, as if he’d just beheld the Madonna floating over the rooftops of Aosta.
It was snowing.
“I don’t believe it. In May?”
“These things happen. Come on, Rocco, let’s get going! Don’t worry, with all the rain we have, it’s not even likely to stick.”
Sleep, wakefulness, more sleep, more wakefulness.
Even breathing seemed to be getting harder. With the hand still bound to the piece of the chair’s backrest, she’d succeeded in touching the floor next to her wounded leg. There was a gooey puddle, as sticky as jam.
Blood. Blood dripping from the wound.
You need to get up.
She wasn’t even bothering to answer that voice anymore. She didn’t have the strength. She just answered it in her head.
There was no point trying to speak aloud now.
How am I supposed to get up? Any suggestions?
You just need to brace your knee against the floor and haul yourself to your feet. Use your injured leg for leverage.
Impossible. I already tried. It hurts too much! My head’ll start spinning and down I’ll go, got it? I can’t do it.
Yes, you can.
No, I can’t.
Yes, you can, you drooling idiot!
No.
Okay, then you can just die. You realize that you’re going to die, don’t you?
The night was ending. A faint, pale light was starting to tinge the darkness of that cellar. However faint the light, it helped. It strengthened her courage. It dusted off her brain a little. She looked out the little window. It was snowing.
Don’t just lie there waiting for something to happen. You’re burning out. You’re going to burn out like a candle. Clench your teeth and try. Give it a try!
She slowly leaned her torso forward, both hands clenching the seat of the chair.
No pain.
Now she had to brace her right knee against the ground and try to bend the other one, too. Her whole body was tingling. Her chest hurt, and so did her shoulders, her pelvis, and her ankles. And her left leg, with that section of broken chair leg stabbed into it like a harpoon, was straight and rigid, as hard as a piece of ice. She tried to wiggle her numb toes. It took a few minutes to wake those tingling toes back up, but in the end, she could feel them moving inside her hiking boots. And no pain in her thigh. Then she moved on to her calf. That too was getting stiff, and she no longer felt any pain. Now the hardest thing of all, the quadriceps. She tried to tighten that muscle. Slowly, just barely contracting it. No pain. Fine. The leg was awake now, maybe the pain back there was only lu
rking in ambush.
Your knee. Bend your knee!
Slowly, she did it, bending her knee inch by inch, but continuously. The pain shot through her like a whiplash and froze her motionless.
Go on!
I don’t think I can.
You can’t stop now, unless you bend it, you won’t be able to get up on your knees. Go on!
She tried again.
God God God that hurts!
Don’t stop!
It wasn’t a fair fight. She was on one side, and on the other was a monster with sharp fangs.
“Chiara, bend that knee!”
It wasn’t the little voice anymore. Now it was a man’s voice.
“Chiara, bend it, God damn it, bend it!”
Was that Stefano? Stefano, her ski instructor, her teacher. Was he there? Was he watching her?
“Chiara, bend your knee, for Christ’s sake!”
“I’m bending it, I’m bending it!” she shouted as she pulled her foot toward her.
“Not enough, bend it more!”
“It hurts!”
“I know it does, but you have to pull on it. Come on, Chiara. Work on it, Chiara!”
She was pulling her foot back and sweating. The pain was biting into her, but she still had a duty to bend her knee. She could do it, she had to do it. Stefano wanted her to bend her knee.
“Good work, Chiara, that’s it, that’s it!”
One last shout. Her left leg was bent halfway.
“Good job, Chiara!” said Stefano.
Good job, Chiara, echoed the little voice.
Tongues of fire were torturing her, but they were fleeting flames, nothing in comparison with what she’d just been through. With her torso bent over the good leg, she was breathing raggedly and waiting. Now the fire just needed to quiet down, the pain lessen so she could make one last major effort and get up onto her knees.
But right there and then she decided that the best thing to do was to give in to a bout of liberatory sobbing.
At five a.m. on a gray morning with flakes of snow still dropping from the sky, with his office door shut, the deputy chief had turned up the heat. He smoked as he jotted down notes on a pad. The coffee from the vending machine had left a taste of old mud in his mouth. He was starting to miss the morning rituals of an espresso at home, breakfast at Ettore’s, and a nice relaxed joint in his leather armchair before starting the day. He absolutely had to lay his hands on whoever had kidnapped Chiara and make them pay, for those sleepless nights if nothing else. The phone rang.
Who could it be at this time of day? he wondered.
“Deputy Chief Schiavone, it’s me, Baldi.”
“Judge Baldi, are you having trouble sleeping too?”
“That’s right. The thought of Chiara Berguet is devouring every neuron in my brain.”
“Any progress?”
“I’d say so. Listen. I’ve discovered something. Now then, a month ago Edil.ber was the subject of union complaints because of delays in payment, and it ran the risk of losing a substantial number of union employees. The three main Italian unions—CGIL, CISL, and UIL—invoked Article 18, Pietro Berguet had a narrow brush with bankruptcy, lawyers got involved, there was a considerable back and forth, and you know the routine. But now comes the interesting part. Pietro Berguet resolved his financial problems and managed to pay his back wages, and Edil.ber continued to operate and managed to take part in the competition for regional government contracts.”
“So far, nothing startling. . . .”
“Except for this: neither the Vallée Savings Bank nor any other banks issued loans or lines of credit.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“One hundred percent. So the question is this: where did they find the money?”
“Fucking hell . . .” Rocco murmured.
“Excuse me?”
“I said ‘fucking hell,’ your honor.”
A silence ensued. “Right, I’m with you,” said Baldi. Only now did Rocco realize that the judge’s voice was weary and broken. “Fucking hell.”
He hung up the phone. Just then, Italo walked into the room with printouts of the pictures of the ledger that they’d found in the shop. He tossed them onto Rocco’s desk.
The deputy chief stood up from his chair. “I need to go have a chat with Berguet.” He grabbed his overcoat. “Is it still snowing out?”
“No, it stopped. But don’t worry. Like I said, it’s not going to stick!”
But, in fact, it had stuck. Aosta had woken up blinding white, and Rocco walked out of police headquarters cursing all four seasons, the month of May, and most particularly, that sun-forsaken land.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” Miniero, the officer originally from Vomero, had commented, as he looked out sad-eyed at the soft blanket that the city’s snow plows were already clearing off the streets.
This just isn’t right, Rocco kept repeating to himself. You don’t let people get a glimpse of the colors of the flowers, the green of the meadows and lawns. You don’t fill the air with sweet scents if you’re just going to put the cork in the bottle again and put things back the way they were. You don’t do that.
He got into his Volvo, reflecting that at least the car had four-wheel drive, and drove away from Corso Battaglione Aosta.
Antonio Scipioni’s car was right around the curve, in front of the Berguet villa in Porossan. The officer hadn’t gone to bed at all. He’d spent the whole night staked out, in spite of the fact that the deputy chief had relieved him of that duty.
“Here. It’s nice and hot,” Rocco said as he got into the squad car, handing a piping hot espresso to Antonio, along with a paper bag containing a cream-filled pastry and a strudel.
“Dotto’, keep that up and you’re going to spoil me, and I’ll get the belly of a retiree.”
“Why didn’t you go get some sleep?”
“Because I wanted to keep an eye out and because I can’t stop thinking about that poor girl.” Antonio opened the tiny thermos of espresso and poured it into the cup. “Do you want a sip?”
“No, thanks, I’ve have already had some. Pretty, isn’t it?” asked Rocco, pointing to the snow.
“I like it. You know that, I told you before. I prefer it to the beach.”
Rocco looked at him without commenting.
“This cream pastry is spectacular,” said the officer as he took his first bite.
“You’ve got sugar all over you.”
Scipioni laughed and a drop of cream filling fell onto his uniform. He wiped it away and took another bite. “The lights were on all night long on the ground floor.” And he tilted his head in the direction of the Berguets’ lovely villa. The trees in the garden were weighed down with snow, as was the enclosure wall. On the asphalt, there were only scattered tire tracks here and there.
“Ground floor, so in the living room.”
“Umbround vive vat uvver guy . . .” Antonio mumbled.
“Just swallow and then you can talk. I can’t understand a fucking thing you’re saying.”
Antonio gulped. “Around five that other guy showed up . . . the one with the soul patch, the one who drives an Audi TT.”
“Cerruti.”
“That’s right. He was here for an hour or so. He just left ten minutes ago with a stack of papers under one arm.”
“All right. Good job, Antonio. Now get the hell home.”
“What? You just brought me my morning coffee, sir! Now I’m awake.” Then Antonio Scipioni, as if he’d suddenly been transformed into a bloodhound, started sniffing the air. “Listen, aside from the fact that I reek of sweat, don’t you catch a smell of grass?”
“Who, me?” asked Rocco with the most innocent look imaginable.
“Yeah. How could that be?”
“Search me. It must be the snow that’s burning the resin. I’m going to pay a call on the Berguets. Be well, Scipio’,” and so saying he slapped him on the leg and got out of the squad car, leaving the officer to finish his breakfas
t.
“It’s time to get the hell up,” brayed the woman’s voice, strangled by forty cigarettes a day. The woman got no answer.
“Hey,” and she delivered a kick to the mattress lying on the dusty floor.
Enzo cracked an eye open. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Time for you to wake up and get the fuck out of here.”
Enzo got up. The light penetrating through the half-closed shutters barely illuminated the room. The window panes had been repaired with duct tape and the wallpaper was peeling away in various spots. “Is there any coffee?” he asked the woman.
“Go down to the café and get yourself some. I have to go out. When I get back, I want to see you gone. I don’t want you around here.” She turned away. Enzo could barely see the pattern of red and green flowers on her nightgown as she glided out of the room. Then he opened the other eye.
“Whoa, thanks a lot!” he shouted. But there was no response. He threw the filthy sheets aside. He swung his feet down onto the floor and rubbed his face. Getting up from the mattress was no simple matter. He found a chair nearby that was serving as a nightstand. He got a grip on it and hauled himself to a standing position. As soon as he was on his feet, his head started spinning. He took a deep breath, waited for the merry-go-round to slow down, then left the room. He stuck his head into the kitchen. The woman was at the marble sink, washing glasses made of Nutella jars and colorful glass dishes.
“Come on, Robertina, aren’t you going to make a nice little cup of coffee for Enzo?”
The woman set the glass down in the plastic drying rack. “Listen up. I know how to count. I finished eighth grade. And there’s another three years left to go before I had any reason to see you back out on the street. Now, I don’t want to know what you’re doing here at my house. I never saw you, I never talked to you. But the night is over, and you need to get out!”
Enzo smiled. “What about a cigarette? You got a cigarette?”
“I gave up smoking,” the woman lied. She dried her hands on her nightgown. Then she pushed back her hair, half blond, the other half dark roots, black and gray. Enzo looked at her carefully. She looked at least fifteen years older than her age of thirty-two. “You look wrecked,” he said.
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