Black Run

by Antonio Manzini

“Three down: series of senseless actions performed in a state of anxiety. First letter j, last letter r. Eleven letters,” said the ski instructor, lost in that week’s copy of the puzzle magazine, La Settimana Enigmistica.

  Rocco looked at him. “Jactitation.”

  “Wow, that’s right—it fits with seven across! Grazie!” the man exclaimed happily, and he wrote it in on his crossword puzzle just as Omar Borghetti’s backlit silhouette appeared in the office door.

  “Dottore!” he said, pulling off his gloves and bringing a gust of clean air into the wood-lined office. He too was wearing a red down jacket and black trousers, but there was a handsome yellow bandanna tied around his neck.

  “Ah, Omar Borghetti,” said Rocco. “With the light behind you, I hadn’t recognized you. You’re exactly who I’m looking for. Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” asked Omar, tossing his ski gloves down on the table.

  “The red bandanna. The one you’re wearing in this picture.” And he pointed at the group photograph hanging on the wall. “In the laundry?”

  “No. It ought to be in there,” he said and went over to the bin that Rocco had just explored.

  “It’s not there.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not there? I have a red one, a blue one, a green one, and this yellow one.” He tugged at the bandanna tied around his neck.

  Rocco took the two bandannas, one green and the other blue, between thumb and forefinger and held them up as if they were two dead mice. “Here’s the blue one and the green one. But the red one’s missing.”

  The bandannas dangled inertly in front of Omar’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “But I understand, Omar.”

  Omar looked around confusedly at his co-workers. “What does this mean? What does my red handkerchief have to do with this?”

  “Oh, believe me, quite a lot!” Rocco looked at Italo. Italo understood instantly and continued, taking over from his boss. “The red handkerchief was found on Leone Miccichè’s corpse.”

  Omar turned pale. The silence of the tundra fell over the office, and it seemed as if the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees. The older ski instructor looked up from his crossword puzzle while the young woman put her face in her hands.

  “On the . . . corpse?” Omar Borghetti murmured. “But, excuse me, do you know how many red bandannas there are around here? Why would you assume that it was mine? Maybe mine’s at home in the laundry, no?”

  “No,” Rocco replied tersely.

  “Why not, Deputy Police Chief?”

  “Believe me, Borghetti. That one is yours. And you know how I know that?”

  Omar shook his head.

  “Because there were bloodstains on that red handkerchief that you like to wear around your neck”—and here Rocco walked over close to Omar—“and the blood belongs to your blood group. O negative 4.4. Same as you. Not good, eh?”

  Omar suddenly needed to sit down. “How . . . How?”

  “Forget about how I know these things. But I’ve come to a conclusion. And at this point, I’m very sorry, but I’m going to have to tell you something you’re not going to like very much.” Rocco leaned on the armrests of his chair and tilted forward till their faces were about four inches apart, so that Omar could smell the tobacco and the espresso on his breath. But he wasn’t looking in Omar’s eyes. He was observing his neck. Very closely.

  “What . . . are you going to tell me?”

  “You need to buy some new razors.”

  On the cable car that was taking him back down to town, Rocco was silent. Italo limited himself to looking up at the blue sky, against which the ridgelines of the peaks and the glaciers stood out. The deputy police chief had placed his elbows on his knees and sat, hunched over, his hands in front of his mouth, moving his fingers ever so slightly, as if he were playing the trumpet. Officer Pierron, on the other hand, had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, and the sudden jerks and lurches of the cableway only made things worse. The creaking of the cabin and the wind rattling through the air vents accompanied the cable car on its rapid descent toward Champoluc. Already he could make out the snow-covered roofs of the houses and the skiers’ parked cars, reflecting silvery shafts of sunlight back up into the air.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost one,” Italo replied.

  “What time does it get dark?”

  “At five. Why?”

  “We should wait until five. There are some things that ought to be done without a lot of show, don’t you think?”

  No, Italo didn’t think so. Largely because he didn’t have the slightest idea what the deputy police chief was talking about—though a sneaking suspicion was starting to take shape in his mind, a little more substantial with each passing moment. The one false note was the strange gloom that was enveloping Rocco. If, as he sensed, they had come to the end of the case, he would have expected to see a smiling deputy chief. But not so. Rocco’s face and posture told a very different story. His eyes were dull and melancholy; there was a film that doused their usual gleam. It even looked as if Rocco had a few new gray hairs. Actually, as Officer Pierron knew full well, he’d always had those gray hairs, but now he noticed them more. They stood out and seemed to have overpowered Rocco’s chestnut brown hair.

  It was as if in just a few minutes, ten years of youth had poured off of Rocco Schiavone.

  “You wait for me here, at Mario and Michael’s bar. Have a panino, drink a beer, kick back. I won’t be long.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Italo.

  All it took was one savage glare from Rocco and Italo answered his own question. “I need to learn to mind my own business.”

  Rocco smiled and left the officer outside the bar.

  He walked a hundred yards or so along the sidewalk until he reached the ski shop. He went in. The bell rang, echoing off the wood-paneled walls and the ski outfits on display. Annarita popped out of a door behind the cash register. “Buon giorno. What’s wrong, aren’t you happy with the boots?”

  “No, the shoes are great. It’s you I’m disappointed in.”

  The woman’s cheeks turned bright red, highlighting even more her glistening hazel eyes.

  “Me? What have I done wrong? If you’re referring to our conversation the last time you were here—”

  “That has nothing to do with it. I’m a good loser; I have a sense of sportsmanship. I just wanted to give you a piece of free advice.”

  She was studying him with a nervous gaze. She didn’t understand where Rocco was heading with this line of conversation. He went on: “There are things that are best kept to yourself, you know. Private matters, personal or family secrets. It’s not a good idea to flaunt them around as if they were the latest items from this year’s fashions.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your husband. He’s a doctor.”

  “That’s right. So what?”

  “Whom did you tell that Leone Miccichè was sterile?”

  The smile faded from Annarita’s lips, and her eyes widened like two deep wells, the bottoms of which were lost to view. She almost staggered, and in fact she put down one hand on the display case that held wool caps. “What? Are you saying that . . . How . . . ?”

  “You want to know something, Annarita? If you’d kept your nose out of other people’s business, and if you hadn’t gone around spouting off about Leone’s private matters and the tests he took, this afternoon we probably wouldn’t be about to attend that poor wretch’s funeral.”

  Annarita put both hands over her mouth. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just think about it. Try to remember whom you told these things to. Put two and two together. In no more than three hours, I expect you’ll have figured out that what I’m telling you is the absolute truth. I hope that for the future you’ll have learned your lesson.” Rocco opened the door again and then stopped. Annarita stood there, stiff, gazing at him with blank eyes. “You want
to know something? I like the people in these valleys. You’re clean, honest, and sincere. The same goes for you. You all have just one defect: You don’t know how to mind your own fucking business.”

  He stood on the sidewalk, watching an old man walking along in a pair of carved wooden clogs. The uncertain step and clubfooted gait made the man look like an old worm-eaten marionette. Shaking his head, the deputy police chief pulled out his cell phone.

  “Dottor Baldi?”

  “Yes. Do you have news for me?”

  “Yes. Can I send Inspector Caterina Rispoli over to the courthouse?”

  “Would you like to tell me what for?”

  “Two arrest warrants.”

  Magistrate Baldi said nothing. The silence of a volcano just before the eruption.

  “Dottore? Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you fine, Schiavone. Do you know what procedure demands?” Magistrate Baldi went on, with great restraint. Perhaps Baldi wasn’t alone in his office. “You, Schiavone, are supposed to come see me in my office and explain how and why, after which it’s up to me to decide whether or not I should sign these warrants.”

  “There’s no time. I’m afraid that Leone Miccichè’s murderers might disappear any second now.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “They’re very intelligent.”

  “Why do you say ‘murderers’?”

  “Because there are two of them. One of them killed Leone, the other was an accomplice to murder.”

  “Fucking Christ, Schiavone!” At last the volcano erupted. “You’re dangling on a fucking thread and you continue to do exactly as you please? There’s a procedure to be respected, you know that? Do you want me to send you back to the ministry to make photocopies all day?”

  “It’d be okay with me,” said Schiavone under his breath. “As long as I get the same salary, I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

  “You cut it out, with your bullshit sarcasm! And tell me whom we’re supposed to lock up and why. And try to be convincing, because this is not the way I work.”

  “All right. Do you have five minutes?”

  “Oh, you bet I do. But try to make the best of those five minutes, because if you foist off more bullshit, I’ll find a way of converting my threats into reality. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Crystal clear, like the ice of these mountains.”

  “All right, then. Tell me everything.”

  Italo was sitting at the counter of Mario and Michael’s bar. In front of him sat an empty beer goblet and a wooden plate scattered with the crumbs of his panino. He didn’t notice that the deputy police chief was sitting outside at one of the little round tables munching on a piece of chocolate until he caught a glimpse of the back of his head and his upturned loden collar. The officer left five euros on the bar and hurried out to join his boss. Rocco, wrapped in his overcoat, was slowly chewing on his Milka bar. He was staring at a fixed point on the road. It could have been the tire of the Land Rover; it could just as easily have been the pile of snow by the curb. A bearded man with a large black Labrador went by. The big dog had a red neckerchief instead of a collar and was following the man without a leash. It went by the deputy police chief and stopped to sniff at him. Without even looking at the dog, Rocco started scratching it under the chin. The dog wagged its tail, which pounded loudly against the legs of the table. The bearded man stopped in the middle of the street and turned to look back at his dog. “Billo!” he called. But the dog ignored him now that Rocco was staring into its round, glistening eyes and massaging its back, driving his fingers deep into the dog’s coat. Billo lifted a paw and placed it in Rocco’s lap. “Hey, you,” said the deputy police chief, “what a nice elegant bandanna you have.”

  The dog’s owner came over, smiling. “Excuse me, but if you pet my dog he’s yours forever.”

  “It’s no problem. I love dogs. How old is he?”

  “Six. But he’s still a puppy. Come on, Billo, let’s go!”

  Rocco gave Billo one last scratch behind the ears. The dog yelped happily and trotted off after its master.

  “Arrivederci.”

  Rocco raised one hand in response to the farewell. Only then did Italo come over and sit down next to him, without a word.

  “I had a dog once. In Rome. Her name was India. She wasn’t any breed, or, actually, she was four or five, and all she lacked was the ability to speak. I know: everyone who owns a dog says the same thing, but it was true about her. One day she fell sick, and inside six weeks she was dead. Do you know how she died?”

  “No.”

  “I was taking care of her. I was giving her IVs. I got up for a moment and walked away from her bed to get something to drink, and when I got back, she was gone. You understand? She waited for me to leave. Because death is a very private thing for animals. More private than giving birth. Not something to be shared with anyone else.”

  Italo thought about what the deputy police chief had just said, but he didn’t know what he was referring to.

  “In nature, no guilt attaches to death. Death is just old age, illness, or survival. Dogs know that. You can see it in their eyes. You ought to get yourself a dog, Italo. You’d learn a lot of things. For example, you’d learn that there’s no such thing as justice in nature. That’s a completely human concept. And like everything human, it’s debatable and dubious.” Rocco turned suddenly to look at Italo. “Give me a cigarette.”

  Italo pulled out his pack. “Still Chesterfields? I told you I like Camels.” But the deputy police chief took one all the same.

  “I know, Rocco, but I hate Camels.”

  Italo lit the cigarette for him, and Rocco took a deep drag. Then he looked up at the sky. It had suddenly turned gray. A vast, formless sheet of gray, like the lid on an old tin can.

  “One minute the sun is out, the next minute it’s gloomy and gray.”

  “That’s often the way up here in the mountains.”

  “The weather up here seems to suffer from a bipolar disorder, don’t you think? Doesn’t it scare you?”

  “I was born to it. What scares me is riding a subway underground.”

  “Shall we head down to the church?”

  “Sure. Rocco?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Inspector Rispoli is heading up now with the warrants issued by the judge.”

  “Warrants?”

  “That’s right. There are two killers.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You’ll see in a second.”

  Half the town had gathered outside the church. The tourists walked past, rubbernecking curiously. Only a few of them knew what this was about. Those who had been there for the discovery of the corpse had finished their holidays and left, while those who had just arrived tried to get some information from the locals. The deputy police chief and Officer Pierron made their way through the crowd. The odor in the air was a blend of suntan lotion, the sickly sweet perfumes worn by the ladies, tobacco, and car exhaust. They climbed the steps. There was no way to get in—the church was tiny and unbelievably packed. It was a wall of humanity, and there seemed to be no way to get through it. They could hear the priest’s amplified voice echoing off the vaulted cement ceiling.

  “And this is why every time we find ourselves face-to-face with death, we sense that we are in a situation of extreme loneliness. But it’s not really that way . . .”

  “Could I get through?” Rocco was saying in a low voice. “Excuse me. Could I get through?”

  “A Christian knows that in this moment of departure, he is not alone. It was the same for Jesus, you know that? He experienced death . . .”

  Once he’d made his way through the wall of people, the nave opened out before Rocco’s eyes. Everyone inside was seated. Leone’s coffin sat at the foot of the altar. There was a wreath of flowers on one side and a bouquet carefully laid on the gleaming wooden coffin cover. The priest, a man in his early forties, clad in vestments, stood next to th
e coffin. Every head was directed at him. Rocco continued toward the pews in the front. A few people shot fleeting glances at the deputy police chief. There was the postmaster, who waved at him, as did the barman, Mario, as well as the beaver-physician sitting next to his wife, Annarita. Instead of greeting him, she kept her eyes downcast. There were the ski instructors sitting in a group, dressed in their work attire, and Omar Borghetti was among them. Amedeo Gunelli, the one who had found Leone dead in the snow, was sitting next to his boss, Luigi Bionaz, who, at least in church, for once wasn’t rolling a cigarette.

  “On the cross, Jesus is alone. He no longer has his disciples with him, the apostles whom he taught for three years. There is no crowd chanting hosanna in the highest. There is only his mother, Mary, and John at the foot of the cross. But Jesus knows, deep in his heart, that God the Almighty has not abandoned him. And this is the meaning of Psalm 22 . . .”

  At last, Rocco came to a halt. He had spotted Luisa Pec’s profile. He also saw Leone’s brother, Domenico, with his wife.

  “And he teaches us that death is only the beginning, that it is only a drawing closer to our Father who is in heaven, where he will take us into his infinite arms for a new beginning, the true new life. Let us pray. Our Father who art in heaven . . .”

  All of the faithful joined with the priest in prayer. All except Luisa, who sat there, eyes downcast, looking at the floor of the church. Then she slowly raised her head and turned to look at Rocco, as if she’d sensed the deputy police chief’s eyes on her.

  They looked at each other. She was a mater dolorosa of a stunning, Renaissance loveliness, with her copper blond hair tumbling down over her shoulders.

  Yep, Rocco thought, you could die for a woman like that. And you could kill.

  “Words serve no purpose,” the priest continued. “The whole valley, this whole city, gathers close around Luisa, around Leone’s brother, Domenico, and his wife, around Leone’s friends, Leone who was welcomed as a brother in these mountains, where he was not born but that now, without him, seem a little emptier; in short, we are all yearning, we all wish to know, we all need to know the truth. And I see that we have the police here among us today”—the faintest of smiles appeared on the priest’s lips—“and we thank them, do we not? We thank them for the work that they will do to ensure that whoever committed this horrible murder may be apprehended and brought to justice.”