Adam's Rib

by Antonio Manzini

  “Are we sure that the woman’s at home?”

  “Yes. Do you think we’ll be done in time for lunch?”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Twelve thirty.”

  “No problem. At the very latest, we’ll be out by two.”

  “Then so long lunch.”

  “This habit of eating lunch at twelve thirty, like patients in a hospital, is something you need to get over. In Rome, two o’clock is still prime time for lunch.”

  “Up here, two o’clock is teatime.” And Italo downshifted.

  “You know what? In March it rains in Rome too . . .” Rocco said. Italo rolled his eyes. It was time for Rocco Schiavone’s nostalgic sonata. He sighed as he looked at the road ahead and started listening. He had no real alternative. “Only it’s not a chilly rain. It’s a warm rain. It’s good for the flowers and the grass. All it takes is a little sunlight and the lawns are covered with daisies. You have to dress warm, but it’s nice to walk around Rome in March. It’s like when you were expecting a present as a child. You know it’s coming, and the waiting is the best part. You’re all bundled up but you can feel it in your bones, that things are about to change. That spring isn’t far away now. Then you turn around and you can see that the women have already sensed it. Springtime. They know it long before you do. One fine day you wake up, you go outside, and you see them. Everywhere. You get a crick in your neck just from watching them. You can’t say where they’ve been all winter. They’re like caterpillars and butterflies. They hibernate and then they just explode into life, and it makes your head spin. In spring, all the ordinary categories are abolished. There are no longer skinny women, fat women, ugly women, and pretty women. When it’s springtime in Rome, all you can do is stand there in silence and watch the show. And you have to enjoy it. You sit down on a park bench and you watch them go by. And you thank God for the fact that you’re a man. And you know why? Because you know that you’re never going to reach those levels of beauty and when you get old you won’t have that much to lose. But that’s not how it is for them. All those colors, one day, they’ll dim and fade, they’ll evaporate, like the sky over this fucking city that you can never see. And it’s a terrible thing, getting old. Age is ugly people’s revenge. Because it’s the coat of paint that kills all beauty and reduces all differences to zero. As you watch them from your bench, it occurs to you that one day all those lovely creatures won’t even recognize themselves anymore when they look in the mirror. You know something, Italo? Women should never age.” And he lit himself a cigarette. Italo had braked to a halt outside the street door where Irina Olgova lived. At no. 33, Via Volontari del Sangue.

  They got out of the car. Rocco flicked his cigarette away. “And this is supposed to be a deteriorating neighborhood?” he asked, slamming the car door.

  “Let’s just say that it’s a quarter that has some problems.”

  Rocco burst out laughing at the thought of neighborhoods like Tor Bella Monaca, Laurentino 38, the Idroscalo di Ostia. Compared with those, the Quartiere Cogne was a residential neighborhood for the pillars of society.

  THEY CLIMBED THE STAIRS ALL THE WAY TO THE fourth floor, where they found Irina waiting for them at her apartment door. There was a blend of odors in the stairwell but what triumphed over all others was the scent of curry, which Italo had mistaken for underarm sweat, a clear sign that this building was inhabited by immigrants from outside the European Community. “Irina Olgova, you remember me? Deputy Police Chief Schiavone.”

  Irina bowed her head ever so slightly, shook hands, and invited them in.

  It was a small apartment. A tiny living room with a sofa that must also do double duty as a bed because there was a reading lamp clamped to the arm of the sofa and on a cubical side table there was a stack of comic books. The kitchen was carved out of a recess in the living room wall. Two doors presumably led into a bedroom and the bathroom. On the floor was a brown flowered carpet and on the wall hung a light blue tile with a phrase in Arabic and a number of pictures. The pyramids, a souk, an elderly North African couple, and a small snow-covered town that looked like it came straight out of a short story by Chekhov.

  As if there weren’t enough snow here in Aosta, Rocco thought to himself as he looked at the immaculate blanket of snow that covered the roof of a small wooden church in the picture. Then there was a photograph of a man and a boy standing in front of a fruit stand. The man had a jovial smile and a mustache, while the boy was serious-faced and had a piercing on his eyebrow.

  Irina had brushed her hair and put a Band-Aid on her kneecap. She was on edge and kept twisting her hands.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to calm down, would you tell me about yesterday morning?”

  Irina took a Formica chair and sat down in front of the sofa. “At ten in the morning I went into apartment and—”

  “Hold on. First question. Was the door closed?”

  “Yes, but not triple-locked. Strange, because I always find door triple-locked. Signora comes back at eleven after she goes shopping. Do you want to know a, what is the word . . . significance?”

  “Significance?”

  “Coincidence, sorry. I meant to say, coincidence?”

  “Go ahead, I’m all ears.”

  “She does shopping at market where my husband, Ahmed, has stand and sells fruit.”

  “Is Ahmed this one in the picture?” He pointed to the man with the boy.

  “Yes, yes. There he’s with his son, Hilmi.”

  “Go on.”

  “So then I went in. I found everything in mess. Everything in kitchen, all mess. And I thought of burglars, no? So I ran. Then there was that gentleman downstairs . . .”

  “The warrant officer,” said Italo.

  “Exactly, and then we called you.”

  Rocco looked at Irina: “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Belarus. You want to see visas and permits?”

  “Thanks just the same, but I don’t give a damn. Your husband?”

  “Egyptian. But he’s not my husband. We live together, but we’re not married. He is Muslim, I am Orthodox. There are some problems.”

  “Well, understood, but as long as you have love,” said Italo out of the blue, earning himself an angry glance from Rocco, who had gotten to his feet in the meantime. Irina followed him with her gaze. “How long have you been working for the Baudos?”

  “I’ve been working for almost a year there. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” Just as she finished saying Friday the front door flew open. A young man about eighteen came in, skinny, wearing a bomber jacket over a sweatshirt, loose trousers with big side pockets, and a pair of phosphorescent American shoes on his feet, just the thing to wear on a road repair crew late at night on a highway. On his left eyebrow was a brand new Band-Aid. The minute he saw Italo’s uniform he turned pale. Rocco, on the other hand, was hidden behind the open door and could conveniently spy on him.

  “Ah. This is Hilmi, Ahmed’s son.”

  The young man swallowed and stared at Italo with his large dark eyes, hungry and wolfish.

  “Pleased to meet you, Hilmi. I’m Schiavone.”

  As if someone had lit off a firecracker behind him, the kid flinched and swung around. At last he saw Rocco. Who was standing there, wrapped in his loden overcoat, leaning against the wall beneath the phrase in Arabic on the light blue tile, surveying him from head to foot.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” asked the kid. “What have I done?”

  “You? Nothing. Why, have you done something?” asked Rocco.

  The boy shook his head with conviction.

  Italo pointed at Irina. “We’re talking with your mother.”

  “That’s not my mother. That’s my father’s woman,” the boy corrected him.

  “And didn’t your father’s woman tell you anything?”

  Hilmi shrugged. He was slowly regaining control of his reactions. He shut the front door and walked toward the kitchen. “So just what would she have t
old me about?”

  There he is, thought Rocco. He’s just donned the mask of the pitiless gangsta again, using the American word in his thoughts. “That she found a woman’s dead body in the apartment she cleans.”

  Hilmi looked at Irina, who nodded. “Who was it? Signora Marchetti?”

  “No, Signora Baudo.”

  “Ah,” said Hilmi, as he poured himself a glass of water.

  “Did you know her?” asked Rocco.

  “Me? No. It’s not like I’m supposed to meet all the ladies that she slaves away for. And why would I want to? I don’t give a fuck about them . . .”

  “Right you are, good point. It’s always best to mind your own business.” At last, Rocco moved away from the wall. “What does that say?” he asked, pointing to the light blue tile.

  “It’s a verse from the Koran.”

  “Can you tell me what it says?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t read Arabic. I just speak it a little and that’s all.”

  “Is written: the night of destiny is better than a thousand months,” Irina broke in. “I know it because Ahmed told me.”

  “Do you go to school, Hilmi?” asked Rocco. Hilmi replied with a sarcastic snicker: “I try to.”

  Rocco answered back with a snicker of his own. “Would you rather work?”

  “He doesn’t like to do anything,” said Irina. “He just waits for money to fall from sky.”

  “You’d better mind your own fucking business,” said the boy, glaring daggers at her.

  “And you just remember that what you eat your father and I pay for with money we earn.”

  “Well, fuck you!” he said and turned to grab the door handle. Rocco grabbed him by the arm and kept him from leaving. “Nobody told you you were free to go. We’re not done with you yet.”

  “Let go of my arm!” said Hilmi.

  Instead Rocco tightened his grip. “First of all, you call me ‘sir,’ because I’m not your dad and I’m not your friend. Second, you sit your ass down on the sofa and you listen to me. Got it?”

  Hilmi ran his hand over the hair on his head, a buzz cut that was low and tight to his scalp, then jerked free of the deputy police chief’s grip and went over to sit, straddle-legged, on the couch. His head hung low and he’d shut off all contact with the world around him. He kept scratching his forearm, where a Maori tattoo gleamed, probably new. He tapped one foot nervously, making his oversize orange gym shoes sparkle.

  “It’s murder,” said Rocco, after a couple of seconds. Irina’s eyes opened wide. But Hilmi just sat there, staring at the brown flowers decorating the carpet. “I wanted to tell you, because you ought to know. Signora Baudo was murdered. What can you tell me about her? Friendships? Habits?”

  “Why did they kill her?” asked Irina, horrified at the news.

  “We don’t know that yet,” Italo broke in, “but we’re working on it.”

  “All right then, tell me something I can use. Did she have any girlfriends? Relatives? Sisters?”

  “Relatives none. Signora Baudo was orphan. This I know because she told me. We didn’t talk much. Basically, I cleaned and she stayed in bedroom, reading or watching television.”

  “She didn’t work?”

  “No. Only husband worked. He’s salesman. Sports equipment.”

  Rocco went over to look out the window. “Shitty weather, isn’t it?”

  “You should see where I come from,” said Irina.

  “What’s it like where you come from?” he asked Hilmi.

  The boy sat with his head down, scratching his tattooed forearm. “I don’t know. I went there three times when I was little. It’s hot, full of people, and it smells bad.”

  “Wow, you’re a regular patriot.”

  Hilmi jerked his head up and glared. “Why, would you be proud of a shitty country like mine?”

  “No, not if you don’t tell me which country it is.”

  “Egypt.”

  “I don’t know if I’d be proud of it. But I guess when they were building the pyramids in Egypt, around here they still hadn’t discovered fire. But why aren’t you in school?” Rocco asked, sharply changing the subject.

  “Teacher strike . . .” the boy muttered.

  “So, Irina, tell me, did Signora Baudo have any female friends?”

  “Often, on the telephone, she talked with Adalgisa. She was her girlfriend.”

  “Can you tell me anything else?”

  “No, Dottore. Nothing else.”

  “In that case, thanks very much. Pierron . . .” The officer snapped to attention and walked toward the door. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I would just like to know who did this thing to Signora Baudo.”

  “I will be very sure to tell you the day we lay hands on him. Ciao, Hilmi.”

  Hilmi said nothing. And the policemen left the apartment. Irina took a deep breath, put the chair back in its place, and then turned to the young man: “Are you hungry? Shall I make you something?”

  “No. I’m eating out.”

  ROCCO AND OFFICER PIERRON LEFT IRINA OLGOVA’S apartment building.

  “I need to have a little chat with this Adalgisa,” said Rocco.

  “Who?”

  “Adalgisa, Esther Baudo’s girlfriend. I’m going back to headquarters.”

  Italo looked at him, car keys in his hand. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  “No. You’re not going to headquarters either. You’re going to tail the kid.”

  “Who, the Egyptian?”

  “That’s right. Follow him. And tell me what he gets up to.”

  Italo nodded. “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Did you see the Band-Aid on his eyebrow or are you blind? If instead of running your mouth and spouting bullshit, you ran your brain, or if you looked around a little, then you’d know, like I know, that he had a piercing of some kind on his eyebrow.”

  “Well?”

  “Just watch the video of the attack on D’Intino and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”

  “Do you think he had something to do with it?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it.”

  “So you see that I was right?” asked Italo as he headed for the car.

  “Right about what?”

  “Right about lunch. I knew we were skipping lunch today.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m the boss, and first thing I’m doing is getting myself a bowl of spaghetti, then I’m going to track down this Adalgisa.”

  IT HADN’T BEEN HARD. ALL IT TOOK WAS A PHONE call to Patrizio Baudo and he had the address where Adalgisa worked. Even though he sensed—indeed, it was an unmistakable fact—that there was bad blood between Patrizio Baudo and Adalgisa. In fact, all he had to do was mention the woman’s name to the new widower and he could sense a blast of icy air coming over the phone lines. Anyway, the woman worked in a bookshop in the center of town, not far from the piazza where the tax office building stood.

  THE TAX BUILDING WAS A PIECE OF ARCHITECTURE dating from the twenties, and it was as out of keeping with the general appearance of Aosta as a pimple on a newborn’s skin. In the minds of the Fascist architects, the town hall clock was meant to replace the bell tower. No longer would it be church bells in the service of Christ marking the hours of the workday and sounding alarms. Now it would be the clock, which was under the control of the top-ranking local Fascist official, the podestà. The geometrically shaped eyesore, though, did have one advantage. It told the correct time. Ten minutes after three. Rocco pulled open the bookshop’s wooden front door. The place looked like a mountain hut. Wood-lined walls, which were stuffed to the ceiling with bookshelves lined with volumes, their spines a thousand different colors. Walking into a bookshop triggered a series of guilt complexes in him. Because time and time again, just like with a long-neglected diet, he made mental resolutions to start reading books again, one of these days. He could have read books every night when he came home to the apartment on Rue Piave, that nameless, drab pl
ace, devoid of any whiff of love, any scent of a woman. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he was overwhelmed by a wave of unpaid bills from the past. The place was quickly haunted by thoughts thick as oil, thoughts that kept him from reading a book or even watching a movie with too complicated a plot. A turbulent sense of nostalgia, a yearning for the past, and the life that no longer existed took over; his books just lay there, on side tables and bookshelves, unopened: they sat there watching him as they faded and grew dustier with every passing day.

  He stood by the door and noticed on the “new arrivals” counter a copy of the Turin daily, La Stampa, lying open to the local news page. There for all to see was the article about the mysterious death of Esther Baudo. A clear sign that the police chief had started talking with the news vendors, as he liked to call them, and also a sign that Adalgisa had already received word of her girlfriend’s death, albeit in the chilly, impersonal form of a newspaper article. A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties walked toward him. She was tall and powerfully built, with a strong nose that looked good on her face. She had shoulder-length hair.

  “Can I help you?”

  She had big dark eyes filled with the kind of sadness that only Russian actors in black-and-white movies seem able to project.

  “I’m Schiavone, deputy police chief of the Aosta mobile squad.”

  The woman gulped and stood listening, saying nothing.

  “I’m looking for Adalgisa.”

  “That’s me,” she said, tilting her head slightly forward. Then she extended her hand. “Adalgisa Verratti. You’re here about Esther, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Adalgisa turned and called out toward the interior of the shop. “I’m going out for a moment!” she cried. “Be back soon.” Then she turned to look at Rocco. “Shall we go get a cup of coffee? Would that be all right?”

  ADALGISA KEPT HER EYES LOCKED ON THE LITTLE coffee cup as she stirred her espresso. “Esther and I went to high school together. We’ve always been friends. Always.” She sniffed. She hastily grabbed a paper napkin and dried her eyes.

  “When did you talk to her last?”