It was 10:10 on the morning of Friday, March 16.
WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF, IT WAS TWENTY TO eight. Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone had been stationed in Aosta for months now, and as he did every morning he walked over to the bedroom window. Slowly and intently—like a champion poker player fanning open the hand of cards that’s going to determine whether he wins or folds—he pulled open the heavy curtains and peered out at the sky, in the vain hope of a glimpse of sunlight.
“Shit,” he’d muttered. That Friday morning, as usual, a sky as oppressive as the lid of a pressure cooker, a sidewalk white with snow, and natives walking hurriedly, bundled up in scarves and hats. Now even they feel the cold, Rocco had thought to himself. Well, well, well.
The usual daily routine: shower, coffee pod in the espresso machine, shave. Standing in front of his clothes closet, he had no doubts about how to dress. Same as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the same as tomorrow and so on for who knows how many days yet to come. Dark brown corduroy trousers, cotton T-shirt underneath, wool T-shirt over that, wool blend socks, checked flannel shirt, V-necked light cashmere sweater, green corduroy jacket, and his trusty Clarks. He’d done some rapid mental calculations: six months in Aosta had cost him nine pairs of shoes. Maybe he really did need to find a good alternative to desert boots, but he couldn’t seem to. Two months ago he’d bought himself a pair of Teva snow boots, for when he’d had to spend time on the ski slopes above Champoluc, but wearing those cement mixers around town was out of the question. He’d put on his loden overcoat, left the apartment, and headed for the office. Like every morning, he left his cell phone powered down. Because his daily ritual still wasn’t complete when he got dressed and left for the office. There were still two fundamental steps before really starting the day: get breakfast at the café in the town’s main piazza and then sit down at his desk and roll his morning joint.
The trip into police headquarters was the most delicate phase. Still wrapped in the dreams and thoughts of the night before, his mood as bleak and gray as the sky overhead, Rocco always made a muted entrance, as darting and slithery as a viper moving through the grass. If there was one thing he wanted to avoid, it was running into Officer D’Intino. Not at eight thirty, not first thing in the morning. D’Intino: the police officer, originally from the province of Chieti, a place the deputy police chief despised, possibly even more than he hated the inclement weather of Val d’Aosta. A man of D’Intino’s ineptitude was likely to cause potentially fatal accidents to his colleagues, though never to himself. D’Intino had sent Officer Casella to the hospital just last week by backing his car into him in the police parking lot, when he could perfectly well have just put the car into first gear and driven straight out. He’d crushed one of Rocco’s toenails by dropping a heavy metal filing drawer on his foot. And he’d come terrifyingly close to poisoning Officer Deruta with his mania for cleanliness and order, by leaving a bottle of Uliveto mineral water around—only filled with bleach. Rocco had sworn he’d fix D’Intino’s wagon, and he’d started pressuring the police chief to transfer the officer to some police station in the Abruzzi where he would certainly be much more useful. Fortunately, that morning no one had come cheerfully out to greet him. The only person who’d said good morning was Scipioni, who was on duty at the front entrance. And Scipioni had limited his greeting to a bitter smile, and then lowered his eyes back to the papers he was going over. Rocco made it safely to his desk, where he smoked a nice fat joint. His healthy morning dose of grass. When he finally crushed the roach out in his ashtray, it was just past nine. Time to turn on his cell phone and begin the day. The phone immediately emitted an alert that meant he had a text message.
Are you ever going to spend the night at my place?
It was Nora. The woman he’d been exchanging bodily fluids with ever since he’d moved from Rome to Aosta. A shallow relationship, a sort of mutual aid society, but one that she was steering straight toward the breaking point—a demand for stability of some sort. Something that Rocco was unable and unwilling to face up to. He was perfectly fine with things the way they were. He didn’t need a girlfriend. His girlfriend was and always would be his wife, Marina. There was no room for another woman. Nora was beautiful and she helped to alleviate his loneliness. But he didn’t know how to resolve his psychological difficulties. People who go to an analyst do it because they want to get better. And there was no way that Rocco would ever set foot in an analyst’s office. No one walks a woman to the altar just for the exercise. If they go to the altar, it’s because they want to spend the rest of their lives with another person. Rocco had already taken that walk once years ago, and his intentions really had been sincere, the very best intentions. He was going to spend the rest of his life with Marina, and that was that. But sometimes things just don’t go the way you expect them to, they break, they unravel, and you can’t stitch them back together again. But that was a secondary problem. Rocco belonged to Marina, and Marina belonged to Rocco. Everything else was an afterthought, branches that could be pruned, autumn leaves.
While Rocco was thinking about Nora’s face, her curves and her ankles, a sudden crushing realization hit him square in the forehead. He’d just remembered the words she had whispered to him the night before, as they lay curled up in bed. “Tomorrow I turn forty-three, and on my birthday I’m the queen. So you have to behave like a good boy,” and she had flashed him a smile, with her perfect white teeth.
Rocco had continued kissing her and squeezing her large luscious breasts without a word. But even while he was enjoying Nora’s nude body, he understood that tomorrow he’d have to buy her a gift, and maybe even take her out to dinner, and certainly miss the Friday peek-ahead to Sunday’s Roma-Inter match.
“No perfume,” she’d warned him, “and I hate all kinds of scarves and plants. I’ll buy my own earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, and the same goes for books. To say nothing of CDs. There, at least now you know what kind of presents not to get me, unless you’re actually trying to ruin my birthday.”
What was left to bring as a gift? Nora had thrown him into a state of crisis. Or really she was forcing him to think, to reflect on what he should do. Giving presents, whether for birthdays or at Christmas, was one of the things that Rocco detested most intensely. He’d have to waste time on it, think of something, wander around from store to store like an asshole, and he didn’t feel like it in the slightest. But if he wanted to slip between the sheets and go on banqueting off that splendid female body, he’d need to dream up something. And he’d need to come up with it today, because today was Nora’s birthday.
“What a pain in the ass,” he’d said under his breath, just as someone knocked at his office door. Rocco had lunged to yank open the window to air out the room, then like a bloodhound he’d sniffed at the ceiling and four walls to make sure you could no longer catch a whiff of cannabis, then he’d shouted “Avanti!” and Inspector Caterina Rispoli had walked in. The first thing she did was wrinkle her nose and make a face. “What’s that smell?”
“I’m applying rosemary plasters for this cold I have!” Rocco had replied.
“But you don’t seem to have a cold, sir.”
“That’s because I use rosemary plasters. Which is why I don’t have a cold.”
“Rosemary plasters? Never heard of them.”
“Homeopathy, Caterina, it’s serious stuff.”
“My grandmother taught me how to make plasters with eucalyptus nuts.”
“What?”
“Eucalyptus PLASTERS.”
“My grandmother taught me how to make plasters too.”
“With rosemary?”
“No. With my own fucking business. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re doing in my office?”
Caterina fluttered her long eyelashes for a moment and then, after regaining control of her nerves, she said: “There’s one crime report that might bear closer examination . . .” holding out a sheet of paper for Rocco to see. “In the park b
y the train station, somebody called to say that every night there’s a tremendous ruckus until three.”
“Hookers?” Rocco had asked.
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Rocco gave the report a quick scan. “We ought to follow up on this . . .” Then a magnificent idea occurred to him that all by itself gave a brand-new meaning to the day. “Get me the cretins, right away.”
“Get you the what?” Caterina asked.
“D’Intino and Michele Deruta.”
The inspector had nodded quickly and hurried out of the room. Rocco took that opportunity to close the window. It was freezing. But his excitement about the idea he’d just had made him forget about the chill that filled the room. Not five minutes later, D’Intino and Deruta, escorted by Caterina Rispoli, walked into his office.
“D’Intino and Deruta,” Rocco said in a serious tone, “I have an important job for the two of you. It will require your utmost attention and sense of responsibility. Are you up to it?”
Deruta had smiled and rocked back on his heels, balancing his 245 pounds of weight on his size 8 shoes. “Certainly, Dottore!”
“Most assuredly, no doubt about it!” D’Intino backed him up.
“Now listen carefully. I’m going to ask you to do a stakeout. At night.” The two officers were all ears. “In the park by the station. We suspect there’s drug dealing going on. We don’t know whether it’s smack or coke.”
Deruta glanced at D’Intino in excitement. At last, an assignment worthy of their skills.
“Find yourselves a place where you won’t be noticed. Requisition a camera, so you can take pictures and record everything you see. I want to know what they’re doing, how much narcotics they’re dealing, who’s doing the dealing, and in particular I want names. Are you up for it?”
“Certainly,” D’Intino replied.
“Well, though, I have to work at my wife’s bakery,” Deruta had objected. “You know that I often help her out, and we work until sunrise. Just last night I—”
Snorting in disgust, Rocco stood up and cut off what the officer was saying. “Michele! It is a wonderful and admirable thing that you help your wife out at the bakery, and that you break your back with a second job. But first and foremost, you’re a sworn officer of the law, for fuck’s sake! Not a baker!”
Deruta nodded.
“You’ll both be reporting to Inspector Rispoli.”
Deruta and D’Intino had swallowed the news unwillingly; it was clearly a bitter mouthful. “But why her? We always have to report to her!” D’Intino had the nerve to say.
“First of all, Rispoli is an inspector and you aren’t. Second, she’s a woman and I’m not going to send her out into the field to do a challenging stakeout like the one to which I’ve assigned the two of you. Third, and this is a fundamental thing, you will do exactly what I tell you to do, D’Intino, or else I will kick your ass from here to Chieti. Is that quite clear?”
D’Intino and Deruta nodded their heads in unison. “When do we start?”
“Tonight. Now get out of here. I need to have a talk with Rispoli.” The inspector had said nothing, standing off to one side. As the two male officers filed out of the room, they’d glared angrily at her.
“DOTTORE, NOW YOU’RE PUTTING ME IN AN AWKWARD position with those two.”
“Don’t worry, Rispoli, this way we’ve got them out from underfoot. What I need now is some advice. Sit down.”
Caterina did as she was told.
“I have to get a gift.”
“Birthday?”
“Exactly. I’ll give you the information. It’s a woman, age forty-three, in good shape, sells wedding dresses for a living; she’s from Aosta, she has good taste, and she’s quite well-off.”
The inspector took a moment to think it over. “Personal friend?”
“That’s my fucking business.”
“Understood.”
“Rule out flowers, scarves, plants, jewelry, books, perfume, and CDs.”
“I need to know more about her. Is this Nora Tardioli? The one with the shop in the center of town?”
Rocco nodded, without a word.
“Congratulations, Dottore, nice get.”
“Thanks, but as per aforementioned comment, my own fucking business.”
“How far out on a limb are you interested in going?”
“Not far. Just consider it a tactical move, keeping the status quo. Why?”
“Because, otherwise, you could give her a diamond ring.”
“That’s not going far. That’s handing yourself over to the enemy bound hand and foot.”
Caterina smiled. “Let me think it over. Does she have any hobbies?”
“As far as I know? She likes to go to the movies, but I’d avoid DVDs. She goes swimming twice a week, and works out three times a week. She’s a cross-country skier. And I think she bikes too.”
“Who are we talking about here? Lindsey Vonn?”
“Right now it’s . . .” Rocco glanced at his watch. “Ten fifteen. Do you think you can come up with an idea by noon?”
“I’ll do my best!”
Just then, Officer Italo Pierron threw open the door and strode into the room. Along with Rispoli, Pierron was the only other officer Rocco considered worthy of being on the force. He was allowed to walk into the deputy police chief’s office without knocking and address him by his first name outside the four walls of police headquarters. He glanced briefly at Caterina and nodded hello.
“Dottore?”
The young officer’s face was pale and alarmed. Rocco asked: “Italo, what’s wrong?”
“Something urgent.”
“Go on.”
“A call came in. Apparently a gang of burglars have barricaded themselves in the apartment of Patrizio and Esther Baudo on Via Brocherel.”
“Barricaded themselves?”
“That’s the term used by Paolo Rastelli, a retired warrant officer who’s also half-deaf. That’s what I managed to piece out, but in the background I could hear a woman screaming: ‘They’re inside! They’re inside! They’ve turned the place upside down!’”
Rocco nodded. “Let’s go . . .”
“Can I come too?” asked Caterina.
“Better not. I need you here. Stay close to the telephone.”
“Roger.”
AS THEY ZIPPED THROUGH CITY INTERSECTIONS WITH their siren off, Rocco pulled a cigarette out of Italo’s pack and looked out at the perfectly plowed streets. “The city government does its job up here, eh? In Rome you get a couple of flakes of snow and there are more deaths than from the start of the August vacations.” Then he lit the cigarette. “Why don’t you buy Camels? I think Chesterfields are disgusting.”
Italo nodded silently. “I know that, Rocco, but I like Chesterfields.”
“Make sure you don’t drive into a wall or run over any old ladies.”
Italo turned into Corso Battaglione Aosta, downshifted, passed a truck, and accelerated sharply.
“If you weren’t a cop, you’d be a perfect getaway driver for an armored car robbery.”
“Why do you say that, Rocco? Are you planning something along those lines?”
They both laughed.
“You know something, Italo? If you ask me, you ought to grow a goatee or a beard.”
“You think? You know, I’d thought about that myself. I don’t have any lips.”
“Exactly. You’d look less like a weasel.”
“I look like a weasel?”
“I never told you that? I’ve met lots of people who look like weasels. But never on the police force.”
After a six-month acquaintance, the two men understood each other clearly. Rocco liked Italo. He trusted him after what the two of them had done some time ago, intercepting that load of marijuana on a Dutch semi and splitting a nice big haul of several thousand euros. Italo was young, and in him Rocco glimpsed the same motivation that had led the
deputy police chief to undertake his police career: pure chance. At the fateful moment when the deputy police chief’s classmates were starting life on the streets, working with blades and bullets, he just happened to put on the lawman’s uniform. Nothing more than that. For people who were born in Trastevere at the start of the sixties into blue-collar families, with neighbors who were on a first-name basis with prison, there were only two paths available. Like the game they used to play at the parish after-school when they were kids, a little game of tag known as police and thieves. In fact, Rocco had become a cop, and Furio, Brizio, Sebastiano, Stampella, and all the others had become thieves. But they’d remained the best of friends.
“How on earth is a gang of burglars going to barricade themselves in an apartment, Italo? It’s not as if it’s a bank, with hostages and everything.”
“I don’t get it either.”
“I mean, if the people reporting them are a half-deaf old man and a woman, then what’s to stop them from coming out of the apartment, clubbing them senseless, and taking off in less than a minute?”
“Maybe the old man’s armed. He is a retired army warrant officer, after all.”
“Absolutely crazy,” said Rocco, looking out the window at the cars screeching to a halt and honking furiously as the BMW with Italo at the wheel zoomed past.
“Listen, Rocco, don’t you think we should use the siren? At least that way people would know it was the police and we’d be less likely to crash into someone!”
“I hate sirens.”
So, racing at 75 miles per hour through the city streets, they pulled up in front of no. 22, Via Brocherel.
ROCCO BUTTONED UP HIS LODEN OVERCOAT AND, followed by Italo, walked over to the two people waving their arms outside the front door.
An elderly man and a woman in her early forties, with straw-blond hair, a large run in her stocking, and blood on her kneecap.
“Police, police!” the woman was screaming, and her Slavic accent was echoing down the deserted street. The street might have been deserted, but a few inquisitive faces appeared behind the glass of windows here and there. The old man immediately stopped the woman with a wave of his hand, freezing her in place, as if to say, “Better let me handle this, man to man.” At the old man’s feet, a tiny pug of a dog, its eyes bulging out of its head, was barking furiously at a NO PARKING sign.
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