Poisonville

by Massimo Carlotto

  Just then, he realized that his cell phone had been ringing for a while. It must be his mother. These days, she was the only who ever called him. When he picked up the phone, he planned to mute it, but he noticed that there was another number on the display. Curious, he pushed the green button to answer.

  * * *

  After my run-in with Selvaggia, I felt sure if I wanted to get anywhere, I’d have to take advantage of Filippo’s psychological instability. Without any specific plan, I picked up my cell phone and searched for his name in the phone book.

  He answered after an endless series of rings.

  “Your mother is going to have you locked up in a lovely clinic, and you won’t get out again until you’re old and senile,” I said in a burst of words.

  “I don’t see why she would want to do that,” he replied, unperturbed.

  “She and my father want to avoid a trial in criminal court, because she would be found guilty as your accomplice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Have you already forgotten you murdered Giovanna?”

  Filippo said nothing. I tried to provoke him further by telling him how he had killed Giovanna in the little suburban house and how his mother had gotten rid of the body.

  Filippo huffed in annoyance. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. My mother had me declared incompetent because I told my analyst she was a murderer,” he explained, and then clicked off.

  “Filippo said those exact words?” Inspector Mele demanded.

  “That’s right,” I answered.

  “That makes no sense,” he commented. “And that boy isn’t all there, mentally. They had good reason to have him declared incompetent.”

  “Selvaggia hated Giovanna. Maybe she found out that Filippo was sleeping with her, and she went to the mansion after her son left, and then drowned her, with the help of her chauffeur.”

  Mele raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “First you tell me it was Filippo, now it was his mother with her chauffeur,” he cried. “The only thing we know for sure is that Giovanna was killed in the mansion and a couple of hours later Lucio saw the Contessa’s Mercedes drive out the front gate.” The inspector flashed a satisfied smile. “By the way, I found the Mercedes,” he announced in a triumphant tone. “The chauffeur had paid a wrecker from Pordenone with a criminal record as long as your arm to demolish it, but instead of crushing the car he kept it. He planned to sell it somewhere outside of the country, but my colleagues found it during a routine check.”

  “At last, a little luck,” I commented.

  “And that’s not all,” he continued, with even greater satisfaction. “I immediately sent the sergeant from the forensic office to do some tests. He found an entire handprint on a metal surface. It was Giovanna’s. What probably happened is the arm flopped out of the blanket or tarp the body was wrapped in.”

  “Then we’ve got them.”

  “Let’s just say that this is a substantial step forward,” he replied cautiously. “Enough to indict the chauffeur but not the Contessa. And the Romanian left town some time ago, we’ll never track him down. We have to find a way of linking Selvaggia to the murder.”

  “How can we do it?”

  “The phone records. For her home phone and her cell phone,” he answered. “If her son called her for help after murdering Giovanna, we’ll find a record of it. It’s not conclusive evidence, but together with the testimony on the car, it would be enough to force the prosecutor to name her as a suspect.”

  “But to obtain the phone records, you’d need the authorization of the court, wouldn’t you?” I objected.

  “That’s certainly true for me. But not for you . . .”

  In the middle of the afternoon of the following day I walked into the men’s room of a multiplex cinema outside Padua for a meeting with a guy who would hand over the Contessa’s phone records. I had no idea who he was. Mele had organized everything. The guy had told me to bring him an envelope with five thousand euros in cash and to forget I had ever seen his face. The signal of recognition was a navy blue scarf hanging out of my overcoat pocket. When I walked in, there were two people washing their hands. A young man and a middle-aged man, about forty, with a buzz cut. I started washing my hands, too. The young man left immediately. The older man dried his hands methodically, waiting for me to do the same. Then he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and extended it. I handed over the cash. He took the time to check the contents of the envelope, and then he left. I walked into a stall, sat down on the toilet, and opened the envelope. It contained two sheets of paper. One was for the phone in Villa Selvaggia, but there were no phone calls between 9 P.M. and 8:30 the following morning. The records for her cell phone on the other hand showed numerous phone calls until 11 P.M. Then there was nothing until 3:26 A.M. When I read the area code I was disappointed at first, because it wasn’t the same as Filippo’s cell phone. Then I focused on the number and it dawned on me. I knew who had killed Giovanna. I punched in the number. The murderer picked up on the fourth ring.

  “It was you,” I accused him.

  My father said nothing. Then he hung up.

  * * *

  Selvaggia was having dinner with a Bulgarian businessman. She was about to palm off a collection of old industrial machinery on him. It was all junk, good for scrap and nothing more. In the middle of dinner, Antonio had called to warn her that Francesco had discovered the truth.

  How could that have happened? How had he learned the truth? She had never been confronted with an ineluctable sequence of events before. She had always had the time to calculate, control, and manipulate. For the first time, a hint of panic had begun to surge in her chest. It was a horrible sensation; she would have to make sure it didn’t get out of control.

  She left the restaurant and ordered her driver to take her home. She barely had time to take off her evening gown, put on something comfortable, empty her office safe of cash and documents, and toss everything into a valise. She raced upstairs. She threw open one door after another, until she arrived in Filippo’s bedroom. Her son wasn’t there. She looked into the bathroom: empty. “He must be in his studio,” she thought with annoyance, and she raced back down the stairs.

  The door to the studio was closed. On the door handle hung a sign reading “Do Not Disturb,” decorated with a hand-drawn skull, by Filippo of course. Selvaggia angrily threw open the door to the studio and called his name loudly, as if she wanted to scold him for everything that was happening. There was no answer. The room was dark. She flicked on the light switch, took a step forward, and stared in shock. She dropped her purse and clapped her hands over her mouth to suffocate a shriek of horror. In the corner, over the worktable, her son’s body was hanging from a noose at the end of a rope dangling from a wooden rafter. He was dressed in his sculptor’s smock. His face was shrouded in shadow, and his legs were hidden behind a screen. Filippo. Her legs trembling, Selvaggia found the strength to walk over to the lifeless body, dangling like a sack hauled up off the floor. She edged around the screen and forced herself to look up. What she saw left her breathless: danging from the rope was not Filippo but a perfect wax likeness of him, the sculpture that depicted him faithfully. The effect was horrifying and mocking, just as its derisive creator had hoped.

  Selvaggia gasped in astonishment, and from her open mouth there issued a roar that had something ancestral about it, like the furious impotence of the roar of a wild animal that had been dealt a fatal blow.

  * * *

  Sitting in his empty train compartment, Filippo had the sensation that Selvaggia’s roar had echoed through his ears. Of course, that was impossible, he couldn’t even guess what time his mother would return home. Sometimes, though, our imagination can put us in touch with something profoundly real.

  For the first time in his life he had done everything with mathematical precision. He had closed the curta
ins of the studio, positioned the mannequin in just the right shaft of light, made the final minor adjustments to the staging, fastened the placard to the door handle, knowing that only his mother would be arrogant enough to disturb him. Then he stepped out the door, making sure no one noticed his departure, and walked to the train station in forty minutes. The day before, he had gone to the bank and emptied his personal savings account, transferring the other funds to a Swiss bank, the way Counselor Visentin had shown him. The interdiction had not yet taken effect, and they would not be able to move fast enough to block the transfer.

  There were still people in the train station, for the most part commuters returning home. His was the only empty compartment. He looked at his watch. Just three minutes to scheduled departure time.

  The door of the compartment slid open. Filippo saw a pretty girl step through, with long, smooth, black hair. She was bundled up in a heavy shearling jacket and she was laboriously pushing a huge imitation-Vuitton suitcase.

  “Is this seat free?” she asked Filippo without even glancing at him.

  Filippo answered lazily, gesturing with one hand at the empty seat across from him.

  The girl tried to lift the heavy suitcase up to the luggage rack. After the second effort, she gave up, and hoisted it onto the seat next of her.

  “As long as no one else needs the seat,” she half-heartedly justified her actions, more to herself than to Filippo.

  Filippo merely nodded. He hadn’t expected to share his journey with anyone else. And he was embarrassed to display his limp. For no particular reason, he asked: “Where are you headed?”

  The girl looked at him for the first time. She didn’t seem any more interested in conversations with strangers on a train than he did. Still, she replied, either out of good manners, or because she hoped that Filippo would help her put her suitcase up on the rack: “Anywhere, anywhere that’s far from here.”

  Filippo nodded again, shyly. It was a good answer. The right answer. He wished that “Anywhere” was the name of a place. Anywhere, Elsewhere, Faraway. Stops along his unknown journey, the cities in a new mental geography, just waiting to be invented. He looked at the girl a little more closely, and he had the sensation he might have seen her somewhere. He was careful not to ask her. He wouldn’t have wanted to start his new life with any memories from the past, however unimportant. Still . . . He took courage and introduced himself, with a simple: “Nice to meet you. I’m Filippo.”

  “Alicia,” the girl replied with a fleeting smile.

  “That’s not an Italian name . . .” The observation was idiotic in its banality, worthy of a small-town pickup artist. Maybe that’s what he was, deep down.

  “I’m Venezuelan,” the girl explained, and Filippo was too shy to ask any other questions.

  The train had begun to move. As soon as it pulled out of the station, it was swallowed up by the fog.

  Filippo looked out the window. Maybe, who could say, the Northeast would become a land of farmers again, and Romania would become an industrial center infested by poison gases, with cities teeming with Italian immigrants.

  “Do you mind if I pull down the shade?” he asked the girl sitting across from him.

  “Be my guest. There’s nothing to see out there anyway.”

  She had said it in that tough yet sweet tone that Latin Americans seem to have even when they talk about the weather. But maybe she really was angry, maybe she’d rebelled like he had, or maybe she was running away from something, or from someone.

  Filippo pushed the button, and the curtain of coarse cloth was slowly lowered, a curtain coming down on that grim stage. On his past.

  “Well, at least it’s over,” he thought, and it was the simplest thought he had ever formulated in his waking mind. He closed his eyes, eager to fall asleep, and without knowing why, he had the feeling that while his eyelids were lowered, the girl was watching him.

  That was when, for the first time, Filippo smiled.

  * * *

  Antonio Visentin was stretched out on a leather sofa aboard the glittering yacht that served only as a way of justifying deductions for the Foundation’s entertainment expenses. There was a bottle of cognac within reach. He hadn’t stopped drinking since he’d boarded the yacht. After Francesco’s phone call, he had gathered up the suitcases that he always had packed and ready; then he had driven to the port of Jesolo. He could hardly believe he had been caught. Right up until the end he had been confident that he could manage the situation without difficulties. Francesco would never suspect his father was the killer. But then something happened that he couldn’t have foreseen. And now he had to escape. Not forever, of course. He would be able to arrange things, as he had always done in the past, but there was no way of fixing things with Francesco. His son was lost to him. He would have to learn to live with his hatred.

  Through the silence he heard the noise of an arriving car.

  He didn’t move. He wouldn’t have been able if he had tried. Too much cognac on an empty stomach.

  The cabin seemed to be illuminated from within, from the gleaming reflections on the windows and the brass fittings. It was a little magic act that enchanted him for twenty seconds or so. When the headlights went dark, he heard two car doors slam in rapid succession. Sitting in profound darkness, he listened to the steps coming up the wooden gangplank.

  The door swung open and the dazzling light blinded him. He threw up a hand to cover his eyes; through the outspread fingers he recognized Selvaggia, extremely elegant in her casual Hermès outfit. She looked as if she were ready to leave on a luxury cruise. The only detail that didn’t fit in was the briefcase in her left hand.

  “There’s champagne chilling in the ice bucket,” he told her. “To celebrate our departure.”

  Without taking her gaze off him, Selvaggia ordered her chauffeur to wait outside.

  The alcohol made him analytical but kept him from trying to do anything. If he had moved, his head would have started spinning, and he would have wound up down on all fours, vomiting at Selvaggia’s feet. And that could not be allowed to happen.

  Selvaggia set her briefcase down on an armchair and walked over to him. She picked up the ice bucket; the ice had melted into chunky water. She pulled out the empty champagne bottle and set it down. Then, in a single movement, she grabbed the bucket and tossed the icy water into his face. She did it with one hand, unemphatically, like a mother emptying her child’s bucket into the sand before leaving the beach.

  The water on his face helped. He sat up, legs straddling wide, his arms lying limp at his sides, his head dangling forward.

  “So there weren’t going to be any problems,” she accused him, slapping him flat-handed in the face.

  Part of him reacted. He grabbed her wrist before she could pull her hand away. He squeezed hard. Without anger, really with the desperation of a man grabbing a ledge to keep from falling.

  “Let go of me,” Selvaggia hissed.

  He tried to focus on her.

  “Let me go, I said!” The pain made her even more dictatorial.

  He released her wrist.

  Selvaggia jerked her hand away with an angry gesture.

  “We have to set sail immediately. Everything’s taken care of. They’re expecting us in Split, and from there they’ll take us to Romania.”

  Selvaggia sat down at his side, and changed her tone:

  “It’s about time for a Contessa to set foot in Romania again, don’t you think?”

  That woman was incredible. She could make jokes at a time like this. He wanted to kiss her, throw her down on the sofa, ravish her, come all over her Hermès dress, prove to her that he wasn’t finished. He wanted to throttle her neck, he wanted to wipe that smug grin off her face. He would have liked to . . .

  “I’m not coming,” he managed to say. He had suddenly changed his mind.

  “Don�
��t be an ass. Your little lawyer tricks aren’t needed anymore. It’s all over.”

  “I need to talk to Francesco,” he replied stubbornly.

  “To tell him what? That you’re the swine who betrayed Alvise and that then you forced Giovanna to become your lover? And that then you killed her when she threatened to tell everything to him, to Francesco? Do you think that your son can understand you? Forgive you? No, Filippo hates me for much less.”

  The chauffeur poked his head in the door, speaking to Selvaggia like an aide-de-camp addressing his colonel on the eve of a major retreat.

  “Contessa, we have to go.”

  Selvaggia nodded, understandingly.

  “Start the engines.”

  The chauffeur nodded and discreetly closed the door behind him.

  “I’m going ashore.”

  “Antonio,” said Selvaggia in an attempt to instill some reason in his mind, “till now you’ve gotten away with it because what you’ve done is so inconceivable that your son has grabbed wildly at any possibility in order to avoid the truth. Now it’s too late. If you can’t accept that, then you might as well kill yourself.”

  He looked at her admiringly:

  “I don’t know where you get all this strength.”

  The chauffeur started the engines.

  It was like an electric shock. Moving cautiously, he got to his feet and managed to take a few steps toward the door.

  “Antonio!”

  He turned around; she seemed miles away.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked him, incredulous.

  “I want to see my son,” he said, his hand already gripping the brass doorknob.