Spring Cleaning

by Antonio Manzini

  Dedication

  To Mamma and Papà

  Epigraph

  A man alone,

  In the privacy of his room.

  With all his reasons why.

  All his mistakes.

  Alone in an empty room,

  talking. To the dead.

  —GIORGIO CAPRONI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Antonio Manzini

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Monday

  AOSTA, THE SHADOW OF THE ’NDRANGHETA LOOMS BEHIND THE LOAN SHARKS

  They lent money to businessmen and private individuals at dizzying interest rates, only to move in later to seize ownership of property and bank accounts. That was the business model of Domenico “Mimmo” Cuntrera, a native of Soverato with a long criminal record, arrested by the police in the aftermath of an investigation into the murder of Cristiano Cerruti, right-hand man of local builder Pietro Berguet, the owner of Edil.ber.

  In the course of a press conference, Police Chief Andrea Costa declared: “We went straight to the core of the organization, thanks to the wide-ranging and thorough investigations carried out by my men, but I can’t add anything more because we’re certain that this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “There can be no question that Mafia-related organizations have been sinking their roots for years into the territory of the Valle d’Aosta, and I believe that this latest episode brought to light by the police of Aosta simply offers further evidence of that fact,” commented Carabinieri General Gabriele Tosti, of the Turin Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate.

  “We’re faced with a direct attack against the decent people of this country. We must redouble our determination not to abandon the businesses of this region to the malicious intent of these Mafia-related organizations,” thundered Judge Baldi from the prosecutor’s office.

  Domenico Cuntrera, being held on suspicion of the murder of Cristiano Cerruti, was arrested at the Swiss border after hastily fleeing the Posillipo pizzeria he owns here in Aosta. In the murder suspect’s possession were numerous documents now being examined by investigators. It is thought that Cuntrera is probably associated with an organized crime ’ndrina. The arrest of this man might mark the first real success of law enforcement against the forces of organized crime currently infiltrating our territory.

  —GIAMPAOLO GAGLIARDI

  Rocco felt a vague surge of satisfaction as he noticed that his name hadn’t appeared once in that article. Still, it wasn’t enough to alleviate his state of prostration. He hadn’t left his residential hotel room for three days. In the past three days he hadn’t once turned on his cell phone, he hadn’t laid eyes on the office or his colleagues, he hadn’t gone for his usual breakfast in Piazza Chanoux, he hadn’t smoked a joint, he hadn’t seen Anna. Aside from taking Lupa out for a walk and a pee, he remained behind closed doors in his apartment in the Vieux Aosta Residence, staring at, variously, the television set and the ceiling, as often as not finding the latter far more interesting. Lupa seemed to love this new life, which consisted of long naps on the bed next to her master, ravenous meals, and romps through the historic center of town to help digest meals. It was understandable. She’d been abandoned in the snow, where she’d wandered for days on end through forests and across fields, narrowly avoiding death countless times. To be able to curl up in the warmth of a safe haven now, on a soft and cozy goose-down blanket, without anxieties or fear of tribulation or the risk of being hit by a truck? Well, it seemed to her like a dream come true. And she luxuriated in that toasty comfort, relishing every second of that newfound safety.

  Newspaper in hand, Rocco turned the page.

  STILL NAMELESS: THE MURDERER OF RUE PIAVE

  Still unidentified is the man who broke into the apartment of Deputy Chief Rocco Schiavone on Rue Piave on Thursday night, where he fired eight bullets from a handgun, putting an end to the life of Adele Talamonti, age 39, from Rome, a friend and confidante of the deputy police chief. According to recent revelations, she was in Aosta paying her friend the deputy chief a visit, and now the victim’s body has been transferred to the capital, where it has found interment in Montecompatri, the victim’s family’s hometown, not far from Rome. Many unanswered questions remain, however, concerning this murder. Was she really the murderer’s chosen target, or was it Dottor Schiavone, who wasn’t home the night of the murder? At police headquarters, everyone’s lips are sealed; at the prosecutor’s office, the silence is deafening. There is a sensation in the air that in the city’s offices, executive and otherwise, the wagons are being circled to protect the deputy chief, who has been stationed in Aosta since September last year. An effective policeman, he has already solved a number of important cases, not least his successful cracking of a loan-sharking ring run by organized crime. We wonder, however: Is this an investigation that warrants a wall of secrecy to keep from tipping off the culprits, or is it more of a delaying action being run by law enforcement now that one of their members is at the eye of the hurricane? If the latter were the case, we might rightly point to a corruption of the rule of law. Instead, we choose to rely on the guardians of the law, and we await further developments with our trust in the institutions of democracy unshaken.

  —SANDRA BUCCELLATO

  “Oh, go fuck yourself!” Rocco hurled the newspaper to the floor. “Wall of secrecy, my ass!” he shouted at the pages of newsprint scattered across the room. Who was this Sandra Buccellato? And what was she insinuating?

  This was the second article that the reporter had written about the murder with that acid tone. “Adele Talamonti, age 39, from Rome” was the girlfriend of Sebastiano, his oldest and closest friend from Rome. The victim was a dear old friend who now lay buried in the cemetery of Montecompatri. What the fuck was the venom that this journalist was spreading with that article?

  Here’s what Sandra Buccellato ought to have written in the newspaper instead: “Dottor Schiavone! They murdered a friend of yours in your home, and for days now, instead of investigating, you’ve been lying around shut up indoors like a hibernating bear? What are you waiting for? Get your ass in gear and try to figure out what happened. While you’re licking your wounds, that bastard is walking the streets, a free man, doing as he pleases. Get busy, Schiavone!”

  The truth was that Adele had died in place of Rocco. Those eight 6.35 mm bullets that someone had fired into her body as she lay sleeping peacefully in his bed on Rue Piave had actually been meant for him. For him and him alone. Adele had been his responsibility, and now she was dead. Yet another case.

  Just like Marina.

  HE WATCHED AS THE DAY WILTED LIKE A FLOWER CLIPPED from its stem.

  Someone knocked at the door. Lupa, sprawled on the unmade bed, cocked an ear. Rocco didn’t move. He waited. Whoever it was knocked again.

  Now they’ll leave, he decided.

  He heard his visitor’s footsteps move off down the hallway. He drew a sigh of relief.

  That pain in the ass had left, too.

  He slowly sank back onto the bed, settling into the down quilt. Lupa snuggled into his armpit. Man and dog fell asleep, like a pair of shipwrecked passengers clinging together for safety.

  “CAFFÈ MACCHIATO AND A DECAF!” TATIANA SHOUTED. CORRA
DO Pizzuti didn’t move, his eyes blank as he stared at the dishwasher tray loaded with demitasse cups and cappuccino mugs waiting to be run.

  “Corrado, wake up, it’s seven in the evening! Caffè macchiato and a decaf!” Corrado snapped to and turned his gaze to the two customers at the counter. They were Ciro and Luca, two constables of Francavilla al Mare.

  “What, did you fall asleep?” asked Ciro.

  “Why don’t you make an espresso for yourself? You could use it!” chimed in Luca.

  Corrado busied himself at the espresso machine.

  “It was a beautiful day, wasn’t it, Tatiana? Bright and sunny. Why don’t we go get a nice seafood dinner together this evening?” Luca had been flirting with Corrado’s business partner, Tatiana, for three years now, getting nowhere. And he still hadn’t figured out that the Russian woman had been married to the CPA De Lullo, a childless widower, for the past two years. “Why don’t you take your wife out for a seafood dinner!” Tatiana retorted, with a courteous smile.

  Corrado smiled faintly. Tatiana was always courteous. Always smiling. Always positive. Maybe that’s why he had invited her to become his partner three years ago. Not because she’d invested any money: Tatiana didn’t have any and couldn’t raise any. But Corrado needed someone to work alongside, someone honest, someone he could trust, someone he could leave in charge of the bar if he had to go away for whatever reason. As he had the week before, when Enzo had shown up in the middle of the night to take Corrado against his will and force him to drive him all the way to Aosta. Who had given that bastard his address in Francavilla? How had Enzo found him? He was being blackmailed by that murderer, and now there was nothing he could do but obey his orders and hope and pray that Enzo would soon vanish from his life.

  “What’s wrong?” Tatiana whispered. Corrado smiled at her. “You seem worried.”

  What could he say to her? That lately every day was an endless nightmare? That he would gladly board the next flight for anywhere, anyplace at all, on the far side of the planet? Instead, all he said was “This is for you, Luca!” as he handed the espresso to the town constable.

  “Well, Tatiana? Are we going to go have this seafood dinner or not?”

  “Here’s what you can do, Luca. Finish your espresso, take Ciro with you, and just continue your rounds. Maybe you’ll be lucky and manage to write a few tickets before your shift ends!”

  Ciro burst out laughing and slapped Luca on the back. “Come on, Luca, you don’t have a chance!” And the two constables left the bar. Outside they crossed paths with Barbara as she strode into the Bar Derby with a thirty-two-tooth smile.

  “Corrado, could you make me two pots of tea? I’ll take them with me to the shop!”

  “At your service!” Corrado replied with alacrity. The two proprietresses of the bookshop next door to the café intimidated him. Not because they were stern or authoritarian. Barbara and Simona sold books, and for that reason, in his eyes, they were wreathed in an aura of mystery. After all, everyone orders espressos and panini, but books? And yet the shop seemed to be thriving. As if they were two priestesses of a cult he understood nothing about, he respected them and granted their every whim. “With a lemon, like always?”

  “With a lemon, like always!”

  “Corrado, as soon as you’re done making those teas, turn on the lights outside, it’s time . . .” said Tatiana; then she gestured to the bookseller, who followed her out of the café. Tatiana wanted a word.

  On the sidewalk outdoors, she lit a cigarette. She offered one to Barbara, who thanked her but declined.

  “What’s wrong, Tatià?”

  “Corrado’s acting very strange. Four days ago, he shuttered the café. He was gone for two nights. He didn’t tell me why, he didn’t even tell me where he had gone. Ever since he returned he’s been . . . I don’t know, pale and uneasy, with his head in the clouds, and he jumps at the slightest noise.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t like it one bit.”

  They looked at the man busy heating an aluminum pitcher full of water. “Corrado had a pretty rough past in Rome. One time he told me that he can’t go back there.”

  Barbara’s eyes lit up. “What kind of past?” An inveterate reader of John le Carré and P. D. James, she glimpsed conspiracies and mysteries around every corner.

  “Rough stuff, like I told you.” Then she added, in an undertone: “He’s even been in prison . . .”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something that’s eating at him.”

  “The tea is ready!” shouted Corrado. Barbara squeezed Tatiana’s arm in solidarity and went inside. The Russian woman remained outside to finish her cigarette, staring up at the sky. The sea went on driving its breakers against the beach and the rocks. Soon it would be dark. The bookseller walked past Tatiana with her two teas. “We’ll talk more later,” she whispered as she passed by, and then headed out toward her own shop. The Russian woman discarded her cigarette and went back into the café. Leaning against the espresso machine, Corrado was staring at the crate of fruit juices. “Here, Corrado, why don’t you just go home. I can close up tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I told you, go home. Get in bed, or lie down on a sofa and watch TV. Get some rest. After all, the day is done.”

  Corrado nodded. “Yes . . . yes, all right. I’m going home, then.”

  The woman went behind the bar. “Are you sure that you don’t have a fever?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you have a fever?”

  “No. No, what fever are you talking about?” Corrado replied. “So, can you close up?”

  “I already told you that I’d take care of it.”

  The man pulled his head down into his shoulders, grabbed his windbreaker off the coatrack, pulled his woolen cap out of his pocket and yanked it down on his head. “All right, see you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Tatiana stood there and watched him walk off.

  THE LIGHT WAS DYING. SOON THE SEA WOULD BE NOTHING but a patch of darkness spangled with the lights of the fishing boats. He decided to go home along the beachfront esplanade so he could get some fresh air. He crossed paths with two young men jogging and a woman who was returning home from a walk with her dog. Only two cars and a ramshackle rattling scooter went past. Francavilla al Mare was a vacation town. Especially along the beachfront, most of the houses and apartments were shuttered, locked up until their rightful owners came back in the summer months. Corrado lived on a street not far off the beach, and besides him, only three families lived in his apartment house, with its two stairwells and twelve apartments.

  Things just couldn’t go on like this. An endless torture. He only slept a few hours a night, and they were weary, agitated, gray, dreamless hours.

  All things have a start and a finish, he told himself over and over again. Why won’t it ever end for me?

  How much longer would he have to pay for the error of his ways? It was worse than serving a life sentence without parole. Maybe it really would be better to land in prison, he told himself. Why hadn’t that policeman, six years earlier, killed him along with his accomplice? Now he found himself chained to the spot, helpless, frightened, and in the hands of a killer.

  “This thing has to end!” he said to himself all in a rush, as he inserted his key into the lock of the metal gate that led into the courtyard. He went to the left, toward Staircase A. He opened the ground-floor door. His apartment was half a floor up, on the mezzanine. He turned the key just once and walked through the door. He turned on the light. He took off his hat and heavy jacket and hung them on the hooks next to the door. He drew a deep breath and walked into the kitchen. Enzo Baiocchi was sitting at the table. He was watching TV and smoking a cigarette. The windows were closed, as well as the shutters, and the room reeked of stale smoke and old coffee. He felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

  “Welcome h
ome,” Enzo said to him.

  Corrado said nothing. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water.

  “You didn’t buy any fucking groceries.”

  Corrado glanced briefly at Enzo out of the corner of his eye as he went to the dish rack for a glass. It would have required only a good sharp blow with that glass bottle to the back of his head, powerful and determined, and his nightmare would have been over.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “So what am I supposed to eat tonight?”

  Enzo’s bleached-blond hair, stiff and dry, looked like frayed rope. The man put out his cigarette in his espresso cup.

  “You could have brought a couple of panini from the bar . . . a sweet bun . . . goddamn you!”

  “It didn’t occur to me.”

  “I’m going to go out to dinner in Pescara tonight. Give me a fifty-euro bill.”

  Corrado finished pouring the water in his glass. He drank. He set the glass down in the sink. “No,” he said.

  “No what?”

  “I’m not giving you a penny, Enzo. I’m fucking sick and tired of this.”

  Baiocchi turned slowly to look at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that you’ve been here for three days. You wanted me to take you to Aosta, I did, now each of us can go his own way.” Even he had no idea where he had scraped up the gumption. But he’d said it. “How much longer do you need to stay here?”

  Enzo rose slowly from the chair. “As long as I want. Don’t you think of busting my balls. And you know why?”

  Corrado shook his head. Enzo stuck his hand in his pocket. He pulled out a receipt. “Take a look at what I found in the pocket of your jacket. You’re an asshole!” And he held it out in front of his eyes. “You see that? You know what it is? It’s got your full name on it, first and last, and the name of the hotel in Pont-Saint-Martin where you slept, and you even gave them your ID.” He smiled, baring his yellow teeth. “Asshole! This is all anyone needs, more than enough. Just remember, Corrà, if I go down, you’re coming down with me.”