“A rascard,” Italo explained. “They’re characteristic houses you find around here, and also in France. In the old days, they had stalls for cattle and horses on the ground floor, and living quarters only upstairs. Now, of course—”
“The architects have taken over,” Rocco concluded. “Well, it’s beautiful, all right.”
“But Omar’s not here. What are we going to do?”
“You stay put here in the car.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not staying put. Do we have a screwdriver?”
Italo pulled open the glove compartment and pulled out a little red-handled screwdriver. He handed it to the deputy police chief.
“What do you need that for?”
“Italo, did your mother ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”
“No, she died when I was just a baby.”
“Then take it from me.”
Rocco opened the car door and got out.
He shot a look around. The houses and the street in the village of Saint-Jacques seemed deserted. He approached Omar’s front door, which opened onto an alley shielded by a house under construction, the scaffoldings covered with snow, the cement mixer and bricks abandoned there by the masons at the end of fall.
The rascard was concealed from the street and prying eyes. The deputy police chief eyed the little front door. There was only one simple door lock. It wasn’t reinforced. It was the kind of keyhole you’d find on a bathroom door.
They’re certainly trusting folk up here, he thought.
He approached the side window. It was a small, double-hung sash window, less common in Italy than elsewhere. The wood was old, and cracked in a couple of places. He tried to peer inside, but a filmy curtain blocked his view. What he wanted to know was the exact location of the sash lock. It was in the middle. He pulled on the lower sash slightly, creating a tiny gap between the two sashes, just enough to insert the tip of the screwdriver. He moved it two or three times quickly, until he heard a click. He pushed the screwdriver toward the exterior. Then he slowly pulled up the lower sash. The window opened. Rocco clambered over the sill and slipped into Omar Borghetti’s house.
The place was small, the walls lined with wood. On one wall was a bookshelf stuffed with novels. A table and four chairs, two armchairs upholstered with green velvet, a small television set. The small galley kitchen stood in a far corner. Just one bedroom, a bathroom, and, last of all, a floor-to-ceiling storage cabinet packed with ski equipment. Four hundred and fifty square feet, a cozy little hideout. A haven where a man could pull the plug and be alone, with no contact with the outside world.
Rocco had no idea of exactly what he was looking for. But he knew that rummaging through someone’s possessions is a better way of finding out about them than having a nice conversation. Objects don’t lie.
He started with the chest of drawers in the little living room.
The first interesting thing he found was photos. Not pictures of the ski slopes, as he might have expected. The beach. With palm trees. And the subjects were Omar Borghetti and Luisa Pec. On a lounge chair with a cocktail. Under a giant banana leaf. Her riding on his shoulders as he stood chest deep in cerulean water. The two of them, tanned, eating by candlelight and looking out at a breathtaking sunset. Again the two of them, in front of the glass pyramid of the Louvre. The two of them at a café in the Latin Quarter. Always and exclusively the two of them.
Clearly Omar Borghetti was obsessed. In addition to the passion that the man felt for Leone Miccichè’s wife, the other thing that Rocco discovered, thanks to the beach photo, was Luisa Pec’s body.
“Fuck!” the deputy police chief commented tersely.
Perfect.
Did it make sense to die for a woman like that? Maybe it did, he thought, answering his own question. It made sense to kill, too. Luisa Pec had torn out Omar’s heart, shredded it, and dropped it into her pocket, and now he was hiding like a bear in its den, licking his wounds and remembering the skin, the buttocks, and the eyes of Luisa.
Love.
Love and Rocco had run into each other more than once along the way. There was a time when he would fall in love at the drop of a hat. His heart and his thoughts chased after his classmates in high school and at university, and then after the women he worked with. Mariadele, Alessandra, Lorenza, Myriam, and Finola. All it took was a lingering glance, a certain hairdo, an up-from-under look and Rocco Schiavone’s heart started racing, surging in excitement, leaping into the air, only to collapse in misery on the ground. Then one day Marina showed up, and he married her. And there was a click, like the sound of a window lock snapping shut. At age thirty-five. Marina had pushed a button, and Rocco’s heart from then on leaped up only at the sound of A.S. Roma fans roaring in the stadium on a Sunday. He was with his wife, he loved her, and there was no room for any other woman. That was it. Over. Done with. And it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Sure, he looked at other women, but in the way you might admire a nice painting, or a landscape so beautiful it leaves you breathless. Marina was his port in the storm. He’d tied up and he no longer felt the slightest inclination to go sailing on the sea.
In Omar’s bathroom, there was a succession of hand creams and face creams, scented with calendula, with brands such as Nivea and Leocrema. The attention that Omar gave to skin care clashed with the contraption he used to shave: a single-blade straight razor, an antique, the kind you’d see in an old gangster movie, where the barber is shaving Al Capone or a pair of bandits are fighting it out in an East Harlem alleyway. Bone handle, and a very sharp blade.
But Omar Borghetti’s clothing and knickknacks were of no interest to Deputy Police Chief Schiavone. He wanted to take a step further. Discover a detail, a foolish banality that would open a world to him.
And it turned up.
Between two fat file folders full of papers and documents—including pension plans, receipts for utility payments, the deed to the house that Omar had purchased in 2008 for 280,000 euros—he found the floor plans for a building on a sheet of copy paper. It was a xerox of a document from the local land registry. Up top, the scale of the plan, 1:100. And the name of the village where it was located: Cuneaz.
It was an enormous house. There was no mistaking it for anything but what it was: the floor plans of the hut that Luisa and Leone had renovated together.
Why do you have this? Rocco wondered, and answered his own question immediately, aloud. “The Sicilian beat you to the punch, with his timing and his cash, my friend,” and Omar had used the money he’d borrowed to purchase the little house where the deputy police chief, like a common burglar, was now lurking and rummaging, sticking his nose into the owner’s past and present.
“You were in there for more than half an hour,” Italo Pierron said to the deputy police chief as he put the screwdriver back into the glove compartment.
“So?”
“I was just wondering if you found anything interesting.”
“Plenty. I’m hungry. Let’s find a decent place to eat, and we can talk over lunch.”
Italo started the engine and put the car into first gear. “Did you close the window good and tight behind you?”
Rocco looked at him. “He’ll never know we were even inside.”
“We were?”
An ironic smile played across Rocco’s face. “Okay, I was. Why? Don’t you like working with me?”
“I love it. I just wish I could do more, though.”
“If I’m going to let you do more, though, I’d have to trust you.”
“Rocco, you already trust me.”
The deputy police chief’s smile broadened further. “You’re a sly fox, Italo.”
“Never as sly as you, Rocco. We’re on a first-name basis, right?”
“You just called me Rocco. But at headquarters we’re going to stick with rank and surname, or just ‘sir,’ okay?”
“Got it. So what are we going to do, subpoena this Omar Borghetti?”
> “Well, he already knows he’s been invited to come in for a little talk. Let’s let him sweat for a while.”
They found a place near Frachey, in a hotel by the promising name of Le Charmant Petit Hotel. The hotel’s restaurant was inviting, and the smells that came from the kitchen seemed to fulfill the promises offered by the name. The place was covered with antique wood—walls, floors, and ceilings—and a fire was crackling in the fireplace. Enormous windows overlooked the forests and the snowy park. Rocco munched a breadstick as he and Italo listened to Carlo, a young man with a beard and a candid open face that had a Mediterranean, almost Arabic, beauty.
“For starters, we have a risotto al Barolo that’s out of this world. Otherwise—”
“Halt!” Rocco said. “You had me at ‘Barolo.’ I’ll have that.”
“Me, too,” said Italo.
“Wine?”
“I like Le Crete. Do you have any?”
“Certainly. Shall we decide on the entrées later?”
“Sure. Carlo, would you satisfy a curiosity of mine? Are you friends with Caciuoppolo?”
“Who?” asked the young man with a smile.
“He’s a colleague of ours; he works on the slopes.”
“Ah, yes, I know him. He’s from Vomero. I’m from Caserta, so we’re practically neighbors. You’re here because of the horrible discovery up at Crest, right?”
“Yeah,” Rocco replied.
“Are you going to catch the son of a bitch who murdered Leone?”
“We’re doing our best.”
Italo broke into the conversation. “What are people saying in town?”
Carlo leaned forward, his knuckles on the tabletop. “Everybody has something to say. Some people suspect that Leone stepped on someone’s toes down in Sicily. Others think he’d run up too many debts and couldn’t make the payments.”
Rocco liked the young man. He had a wide-awake, intelligent face. “What’s your take on it, Carlo?” he asked him.
“I’ve got nothing. I didn’t know him well enough. Or anything about his business. But the idea that it was someone from down south looks like bullshit to me. If they kill you for a vendetta or because you’ve broken the ground rules, they might arrange for the body to be found in the center of the city, or else they make sure it vanishes once and for all. Leaving it up there makes no sense.”
“Bravo, Carlo. That’s right.”
“But someone hated him,” added Italo.
“Look,” Carlo said, taking a deep breath, “there’s just one thing that Leone had that everyone here in Champoluc wished they had.”
“The hut up in Cuneaz?” Rocco ventured.
“No. Luisa Pec. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“I’ll say I have,” Italo replied.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get into the kitchen, or I’ll be serving you that risotto for dinner.”
And he took his leave of the two policemen, vanishing behind the saloon doors.
Italo lowered his head and leaned forward toward the deputy police chief to make sure he wasn’t overheard by the three couples seated at the tables around them. “Rocco, I can’t really afford to eat in a place like this.”
“Italo, don’t worry, you’re my guest. What the fuck, if I can’t buy you lunch, then what were we even put on this planet to do?”
Italo shrugged his shoulders slightly. “That’s right. And why were we put on this planet if at age twenty-seven I have to keep living at home with my father to save on rent and bills, and if I have to count my pennies before going out to the movies and to eat a pizza . . .”
“Sure.” Rocco bit off half a breadstick. “You’re talented, Italo. Your career prospects in the police force aren’t exactly blindingly bright.”
“I know that. And I’ll tell you something more. My prospects in general aren’t all that bright. But if I find something better, I’d be glad to leave the police.”
Italo wasn’t opening the door a crack, Rocco realized. He’d just thrown it wide-open. Rocco charged through without wasting any more time. “There’s something we can do to improve our lives on this planet a little. You interested?”
“What is it?”
“It’s something illegal.”
Italo picked up a breadstick and bit into it. “How illegal?”
“Very, very illegal.”
“Steal something?”
“From the thieves.”
“I’m in!” he said, and took another bite of the breadstick. “So I’m the uniform you were talking about with your friend on the phone, right?”
“Exactly. Do you want to know the details?”
“Maybe we’ll get to those later. Just tell me now: what would be involved? No shooting, right?”
“No. It’s marijuana. A lot of it.”
“We’re going to bust someone?”
“Exactly, Italo. But not all the weed we confiscate is going to be turned over to the law.”
“How much is in it for me?”
“Thirty-five hundred.”
“Done deal!”
Just at that moment, an intense aroma announced the arrival of the two risottos al Barolo. Italo and Rocco turned toward the kitchen door. Carlo was walking toward them with an enormous steaming pewter platter and a smile on his lips. He set the risotto down on the table. He served the two men as plumes of aromatic steam rose from the rice. In a religious silence, the policemen looked down at the reddish grains and sniffed at the paradisiacal scents that wafted across the dining room. Carlo didn’t say a word. He finished serving, made a slight and amused bow, and walked away from the table. Rocco picked up a fork. He put a mouthful of the risotto into his mouth. He closed his eyes. After Luisa Pec and the perennial glaciers, that risotto would be the third thing from Champoluc that the deputy police chief would carry with him for the rest of his life.
It wasn’t until he was sipping a juniper berry grappa and chatting amiably with Carlo and Italo that Rocco suddenly remembered that Magistrate Baldi had summoned him to his office at three thirty.
The face of the magistrate waiting impatiently at his desk had appeared before him with all the violence of a sledgehammer to the forehead.
Italo had driven recklessly, slicing across the opposite lane as he slalomed through the switchback curves and downshifting like a madman. Rocco ordered him to slow down. Not because he was afraid of a crash but because of the very real risk that his portion of risotto al Barolo might wind up splattered on the floor mat, a horrible waste of a masterpiece for a summons from a judge.
They got there half an hour late.
But Baldi wasn’t in his office.
Rocco sat at the magistrate’s desk, looking out the window at the flat, gray sky. The picture in the silver frame was still there, off to one side on the desktop, facedown. He leaned forward. He turned it over and looked at it. It was a photograph of a woman in her early forties. Curly hair, a gleaming Colgate smile.
The judge’s ex-wife wasn’t bad-looking at all, at least judging from the framed head shot. Maybe not a woman you’d turn around to stare at in the street, but she wasn’t bad. The breakup must have been recent. Because a photo turned facedown on the desk was only the first step on the path to a definitive divorce. A photo turned facedown meant that the judge still had hopes of repairing his marriage. Normally, the next step was to put the picture in the top drawer, a sign that things are getting worse, and then last of all, the photo in the trash—the end, the tombstone marking the burial plot. Rocco laid the photograph flat just as the door swung open. Baldi looked cool and cheerful, the lock of hair covering part of his forehead was finer and softer than the day before, and it bounced with every step. When the judge shook hands, his grip was dry, firm, and strong.
“I’m sorry I’m late, I was up at Champoluc.”
“We have any news?” asked Baldi.
“Some. I’m running down the lead of the jealous ex-lover. A certain Omar Borghetti. I’ve summoned him to come in.”<
br />
“I did find something, you know? Look here,” said the judge, lifting his forefinger. He walked around the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a red folder. He sat down and opened the file. “What do we have here . . . what do we have here,” the magistrate repeated as he leafed through the pages, licking his finger as he went. “Ah, here we are. Luisa Pec and Leone Miccichè were married a year and a half ago. The ceremony was performed by a city clerk. Not in church. The ceremony was held in Cuneaz, where they own that sort of hotel up above the resort. Joint ownership of all property, et cetera, et cetera. Here.” Baldi looked up at Rocco with his finger on the documents. “They’d asked the local office of Banca Intesa here in Aosta for a loan of several tens of thousands of euros. But the bank said no.”
“So they had some project in mind, you think?”
“I’d say so. You see?” the judge pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder. “They’d offered a couple of buildings down in Sicily as collateral.”
“Joint property of Leone Miccichè and his brother. But that doesn’t prove anything.”
“No. It doesn’t prove anything. But they’re tiles, Schiavone. They’re all tiles in a mosaic, and if you put them together, they may give us a nice clear overall picture of the situation.”
“Ah, yes, a nice clear overall picture of the situation. Speaking of tiles, by the way, look at this.” Rocco pulled out the gloves he’d bought just a few hours earlier in Annarita’s shop.
“Nice,” said the judge.
“Right? They’re identical to the gloves poor Leone had on. Can I smoke?”
“I’d say you can’t.”
“It’s to prove a point.”
“Then go right ahead.”
Rocco put a cigarette in his mouth. He picked up the lighter. Then he put on the gloves. He tried to light the cigarette. He couldn’t do it. The judge watched him. “What are you trying to show me?”
“Something very simple. Before Leone Miccichè was murdered, he smoked a cigarette. He went up to the middle of that shortcut, veering off the main piste, and he smoked a cigarette, and he probably had a conversation with his murderer. But he wasn’t wearing gloves. That means, first of all!”—and he lifted his thumb, still begloved—“that the cigarette wasn’t one that his killer offered him, but that he must have pulled out of his own pack.”
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