Before knocking on the bedroom door, he focused on a single thought: Careful what you say, Max! Don’t fuck up!
He knocked. There was no answer. He slowly opened the door. “Chiara? Chiara, it’s me, Max . . .”
The girl was stretched out on the bed, fully clothed. She had a blanket over her and was looking out the window. Her feet were tucked into a pair of colorful thick woolen socks, and they poked out from under the blanket. Slowly she turned her head. As soon as she saw the boy, a smile flickered onto her face and then faded out immediately. “Ciao.”
“Ciao.” Max shut the door and went to sit at the foot of the bed. “How’s it going?”
Chiara shrugged. “Fine. How about you?”
“Fine.” He looked at her.
Her hair was messy; there were circles under her eyes. “I missed you,” he told her. “How do you feel?”
“Tired.”
“When are you coming back to school?”
“I don’t know. For now, I can’t think of it.”
Max sighed. “Can you get some sleep, at least?”
“No.”
“How’s your leg?”
During her imprisonment in the cellar at an elevation of three thousand feet above sea level, Chiara had injured her leg, and the wound had become infected. She needed a crutch to walk, but the doctor was optimistic. “Listen, would you stop peppering me with questions the way the journalists do?”
Max lowered his head. He was just trying to inquire about his girlfriend’s state of health. Chiara turned back to look out the window. “I don’t think I’ll ever be better.”
“Why do you say that? They stitched up the wound!”
God, what an idiot, Chiara thought to herself. A handsome cretin. “I’m not talking about the leg, Max. I relive it in my dreams every night. Every night I’m tied to that chair, with the hood over my head. All alone. And outside it’s raining, it’s snowing, and I’m all alone. Without water to drink . . .”
“But the two guys that kidnapped you are dead now, Chiara. Now no one can hurt you again, you know that?”
The girl whipped her head around and looked Max in the eyes. “How do you know? Are you certain?” She furrowed her brow. “Have you noticed? I turned nineteen and didn’t even have a party. Because I don’t want to have anyone else looking at me the way you’re looking at me now.” A tear streamed down from her eye; both eyes were shut tight. “That poor girl who was kidnapped and . . . who knows what else they did to her!”
“Chiara, I don’t—”
“Are they talking about me at school? And what are they saying?”
“That they want to see you again.”
Chiara softened her tone. “How are you, Max?”
“Okay, I guess. Things are horrible at home.”
“How so?”
Max looked down at his hands. He continued rubbing them against each other. “Lots of things aren’t going well, Papà and Mamma are . . . I don’t know what. I can’t take it at home anymore.”
Chiara heaved a sigh of annoyance. “Then just leave. You have plenty of money.”
“You think it hasn’t occurred to me? But until I finish school, I don’t get a penny . . .”
At last Chiara smiled. “I love you, Max. I really do. But you have to promise me something.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t come back to see me again.”
Max opened his eyes wide. “But . . .”
“Go to school, go with your friends, but don’t think about me again. Chiara Berguet no longer exists.”
“Why not?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. But I don’t know. I really don’t know . . .”
“Won’t you even give me a kiss?”
“I’m sorry, Max, just let me sleep. I’m so tired . . .”
DOWNSTAIRS, JUDGE BALDI, SITTING IN THE EXCEEDINGLY luxurious living room in the Berguet home, was stirring his espresso, tiny spoon tinkling against the porcelain of the demitasse cup that the housekeeper, Dolores, had just brought him from the kitchen. Pietro and Giuliana were eyeing him.
“I’m happy to see you looking well, Signora Berguet,” said Baldi.
“Yes, thanks, at last I’m getting some sleep.”
Then the judge turned to look at Pietro. Unlike his wife, he was pale, he couldn’t seem to keep his hands still, and he was lighting one cigarette after another.
“All right, then, I’m here to get something straight. Your company was in the running for a contract with the regional government. Right?”
The judge had touched a nerve. Pietro’s face had gone from pale to bright red. “They eliminated us!” he exploded. “They kicked us out of the competition! Mafia infiltration, they say. Do you understand, Dottor Baldi? My daughter kidnapped by that . . . that bastard Cuntrera and then I’m the Mafioso? I tried to explain it to the commission. Those pieces of shit blackmailed us!”
“Pietro!” his wife exclaimed. But Pietro wasn’t listening to her. “And now Edil.ber is a ‘company at risk of Mafia infiltration’!?”
“And what did they say to you?”
“They told me: ‘Don’t forget about Cerruti, your right-hand man . . . he was a member of that organization’ . . .” Pietro Berguet lunged to his feet from the sofa where he’d been sitting. “And they have a point, Dottor Baldi. They have a thousand points! Cristiano was in it up to his neck, my own right-hand man, and what could I say? There was Mafia infiltration, and how.”
Baldi sipped his espresso. “I understand that the company that won the competition is called—”
Pietro beat him to it: “Architettura Futura. They’re young, they only went into business a couple of years ago.” He went to the window. “They’ve never won a contract this size before, though.”
“Do you mind if I ask what’s involved?”
“A new wing of a hospital and two medical clinics, in Cervinia and in Saint-Vincent.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“A lot, Dottore. A lot.”
“Now what are you going to do?”
“I’ll try to file an appeal. But I’m sure I’ll just waste a lot of money on lawyers.”
“This Architettura Futura . . . who’s the owner?”
“Luca Grange.”
“Of Aosta?”
“Of Pont-Saint-Martin.”
The door to the living room swung open and Max appeared. The boy had a sad demeanor, like a dog that’s been beaten.
“Hi . . .” he said, as if under his breath.
Giuliana smiled at him. “Dottor Baldi, this is Max . . . Chiara’s boyfriend.”
“Yes, yes, I know him. And I know his mother very well, too. How’s it going, Max?”
“Just so-so . . .”
“Did you say hello to Chiara?” asked Giuliana.
“Yes. Well, thanks and excuse me. See you soon.”
“Actually, if you make sure we don’t ever see you again, you’d be doing me a favor!” Dottor Berguet suddenly shouted.
“Pietro!” Giuliana scolded her husband, eyes wide-open in shock.
“Go back to your mother, Max, and to that asshole father of yours! And please convey to them all my very worst wishes!”
“Dottor Berguet?!”
“You know what, Baldi? The fact that it’s all come to this? Well, I can thank the mother of that boy, right there . . . Go on, Max, get out of here, beat it!”
“I’m sorry . . . excuse me,” the young man managed to stammer out, his eyes downcast. “I never—”
“And thank your mother for me!”
Max lowered his head and slunk out of the room with his tail between his legs. Giuliana stood up, red-faced. “Pietro, what did that poor boy have to do with anything—”
“Do you want to know who suggested I get in touch with Cuntrera in the first place? To borrow money from that piece-of-shit Mafioso? Do you want to know? That poor boy’s mother! Laura Turrini, from the Vallée Savings Bank! And I’m supposed to tolerat
e the presence of that little shitface in my own home!” And with the arteries in his neck swelling, he turned to Baldi. “That’s where you’ll find the rot, Dottore. Right there, in those houses, among the Turrinis, their friends, in the elegant drawing rooms of this city.”
“Dottore, please, calm down . . .”
“My ass, I’ll calm down. And what do all of you do? All you’re good for is . . . is coming around here, sitting on the sofa, making sad faces and saying how sorry you are?” By this point, Pietro Berguet was a river flooding over its banks. His rage had broken the levees of his good manners, and now there was no stopping him. “If you care to know, where you’ll find them is at the Lions Club, or the Rotary Club, or else at the Ristorante Santalmasso, outside of Aosta, where dinner costs two hundred euros! That’s where you ought to cast your lines, out there! Not sitting on my sofa, in my home, drinking my coffee and saying how sorry you are!”
“Pietro!”
“Oh, go fuck yourself!” And after giving the sofa a swift kick, he stormed out of the living room.
Giuliana and Baldi sat in silence. The woman was the first to speak: “Please excuse him, Dottor Baldi. He didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Don’t worry . . . these things happen. But rather, tell me,” the judge went on, changing the subject, “do Chiara’s friends come to see her?”
Someone in the house slammed a door.
Giuliana sat down again. “To tell the truth, she receives more phone calls from journalists than from her classmates.”
Baldi set down his demitasse on the glass coffee table. “Have you considered psychological counseling?”
“She won’t hear of it.”
“You ought to insist.”
“We’ll try. Listen, my husband and I have never had a chance to thank you and the people at police headquarters for everything you did for us . . .”
With a brisk wave of the hand, the judge put a halt to Giuliana Berguet’s saccharine serenade. “Please. I’m not here to get thank-yous. And in any case the only person you ought to thank is Dottor Schiavone. If it hadn’t been for him, there’s a good chance that Chiara would no longer be among the living.”
“We wish we could, but we can’t get in touch with him at police headquarters. Nobody seems to know how to find him.”
“You don’t have to tell me!”
THE DEPUTY CHIEF WAS WATCHING A POLITICAL TALK SHOW. With the sound off. The guests on the panel looked like so many fish in an aquarium. Their mouths were opening and closing. Their teeth were almost constantly bared. But the thing that interested him most was the eyes. Totally dystonic with respect to the mouths. The wider open the mouths, the deader the eyes. He watched, cataloguing the fish in that aquarium: The woman with her legs crossed and her face ravaged by the efforts of some plastic surgeon was a moray eel. The little fat man with a triple chin and thinning hair was a puffer fish. The bespectacled member of parliament was a clown fish. Then a sudden rustling noise interrupted his string of fantasies. Someone was slipping a piece of paper underneath his door. Rocco got up from the bed, bent down, and picked it up. The doorman of the residential hotel was informing him that Anna had tried to get in touch with him six separate times, and asking him please to call her back.
Calling Anna back was out of the question. He didn’t have the energy to spend an evening with her, eating culinary concoctions and spouting bullshit. He didn’t even feel any yearning for her lips, no urge to sleep with her. He’d never been able to fall asleep with his arms around any woman but Marina. With her, he could easily spend the whole night tangled up with her limbs, never once shifting position, moving arms or legs, lulled by her respiration into a sleep where he would chase after her in his dreams.
His phone rang.
“What the fuck!” He picked up the receiver without thinking. “Schiavone here . . .”
“A call for you from Rome,” said the chilly voice of the receptionist downstairs. “By the way, I didn’t want to bother you, but I did slide a message under the door.”
“Yes, I saw that, thanks. Please go ahead and put the call through . . .” A few moments later, the voice of his old friend Officer Alfredo De Silvestri rang out from the phone.
“Dottore, it’s De Silvestri.”
“Do you already have something for me?”
“Yes . . .”
“Then let me put you on speaker, that way I can take notes while we talk. If I try to use my shoulder to press the receiver against my ear, I get a crick in my neck.” Rocco pushed the button and went over to sit at the little desk facing the window. There he had a notepad and a couple of pens. “Go right ahead, Alfredo. I’m ready.”
“All right, then, let’s get started.” De Silvestri’s voice filled the room in the residential hotel. “I skipped everyone who, as you instructed me, sir, had anything to do with small-time capers, thefts, fraud, and other two-bit offenses. I’d start with Antonio Biga. Do you recall the name?”
“Vaguely.”
“Back in 2004. He did eight years for armed robbery and—”
“Oh, yes, right, right, of course. Antonio Biga . . .”
“Antonio got out three months ago. Last known address is Viale Massaia 85. At the Garbatella.”
“Anything else?”
“Certainly. Number two. Stefania Zaccaria. You put her behind bars for pandering in 2006. She got out last year.”
“Stefania Zaccaria. A little short thing?”
“Yes, it says here she’s five foot two.”
“It could very well have been her. She’s half a lunatic. She might not have come all the way up here herself, but she could easily have found some loser willing to do a piece-of-shit job like that. I’m making a note. Stefania Zaccaria. And then, what do you think about Fabio Zuccari?”
“Yes, of course, he’s the first one I thought of myself. He’s in the hospital. He’s got cancer and it’s eating him alive. Then there are the two Gentili brothers and of course Walter Cremonesi.”
The Gentili brothers held the current record for burglary, having ransacked seven apartments in a single day. Walter Cremonesi, on the other hand, was a diehard. He first entered Italy’s prison system in 1976 for membership in an armed gang, a renegade militant of the extreme right. Armed robberies, murders—he treated Rebibbia prison as if it were a revolving door to a supermarket. The last time, Rocco had nailed him for armed robbery and murder. “Where are the Gentili brothers?”
“Apparently in Costa Rica. They’ve opened a restaurant. I’d rule them out, Dottore.”
“And Walter Cremonesi? Why isn’t he still behind bars?”
“You’re asking me? Good conduct. It seems as if, once they’re in prison, these people are magically transformed into lay sisters who go to church every Sunday to say confession.”
“He seems like a good candidate. How old is he now?”
De Silvestri did some quick calculations. “He’ll be fifty-eight next month.”
“Let’s not forget to wish him happy birthday.”
“Nobody’s heard anything from him in years. They thought he was in Paris. In any case, no one else occurs to me for now.”
“Call me the minute you hear anything new.”
“You can count on it.”
He looked down at his notepad. He’d only marked down two names: Antonio Biga and Stefania Zaccaria. He underlined them three times.
The time had come to catch a plane to the capital.
“Caterina? It’s me, Rocco . . .”
“Dottore! How nice to hear your voice, sir. We’ve been missing you!”
“Don’t tell lies. You’re no good at it. Listen, I need a favor . . .”
“I imagine it has something to do with Lupa, am I right?”
“Exactly. Will you keep her for me?”
“I’ll swing by to pick her up tomorrow morning.”
Too bad, thought Rocco. He would have preferred that same evening.
“Thanks, Caterì. Till tomorrow.”
> “See you tomorrow, Dottore.”
“Caterì, help me remember something. Weren’t we on a first-name basis now?”
There was a brief pause. Then Caterina smiled, or at least that’s what Rocco imagined. “Till tomorrow, Rocco.”
The deputy chief felt a stirring in his loins.
Maybe he was coming back to life.
Wednesday
Taxi . . . taxi . . . do you need a taxi?”
At the arrivals level at Fiumicino Airport, there was a crowd of men with prominent bellies approaching passengers and whispering that magic word: “Taxi . . .”
Rocco said nothing. He was striding briskly toward the parking lot for medallion taxis. It wasn’t the act of a law-abiding citizen. It was just that the medallion cabbies had paid more than the price of an apartment for that permit, and it seemed offensive to rely on these unlicensed interlopers.
“Taxi, Dotto’? Can I take you into the city?”
“What taxi are you talking about!” snapped the deputy chief.
“Then how are you going to get home?”
Rocco planted both feet on the ground and surveyed the illegal driver. “I’m going home in my department-issued car. I’m a deputy chief of police. Now are you going to get the fuck out from underfoot, or do I have to lose my temper?”
The unlicensed interloper took two steps back, shooting glances at his colleagues, who all looked down at the ground and stopped pestering passengers for a moment. “Now you don’t have to snarl at us, strictly speaking, Dotto’ . . . We need to make a living, too, you know!”
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