He had to get rid of Enzo.
It’s him or me, he decided.
“Here’s your espresso . . . ristretto, the way you like it.”
Tatiana had joined him outside, with two demitasse cups of espresso.
“Thanks . . .”
The woman placed her lips against the rim of her demitasse. “The sea is beautiful today, isn’t it? The winter is over. Soon it will be warm and the season will begin.”
Corrado smiled as a motor scooter shot noisily past along the waterfront. “It’s true. And then the noise will start up again and I won’t be able to get to sleep before three in the morning.”
“Hey, what’s got into you?”
At last, he turned to look at her. “Oh, just foolish thoughts in my head.”
“You want to tell me about them?”
“It’s nothing much, don’t worry about it.”
“No, I will worry about it. Since that trip you took last week, you’ve been odd. What happened to you?”
“Oh, nothing, like I told you. Every so often I think about Rome. And I get a little homesick, that’s all. Then I get over it.”
“Tonight, I’ll take you out to dinner.”
Corrado smiled. “What about the CPA De Lullo? Are you going to leave him all alone at home?”
“What if I do? One evening alone won’t kill him.”
“What’s the name of the city you come from? I always forget it.”
“There’s no way you could remember it. Vsevolozhsk . . . near St. Petersburg.”
“What if we went and opened a café back there?”
Tatiana burst out laughing. “You wouldn’t last three months. It’s too cold for you there. But why? Don’t you like it here?”
“Not anymore . . .” And he stepped around the woman and went back into the bar.
Tatiana heaved a sigh just as Barbara the bookseller stepped out of her store. “Buongiorno, Tatiana . . .”
“Buongiorno.”
Barbara looked around. She seemed to have something urgent to say to the Russian woman. She shot a glance around the inside of the café. “I need to talk to you,” she told her in a whisper, without stepping any closer.
“So talk to me.”
“Not here. Later. I have to run now.” And she hurried away.
Everyone’s getting strange, Tatiana thought to herself.
Corrado had started making panini. Slowly, methodically. A slice of bread, a dollop of mayonnaise, a leaf of lettuce, the tuna, another leaf of lettuce, another dollop of mayonnaise. While he was working on his third prosciutto panino, he suddenly froze. He looked down at the yellow-handled knife that he held in his hand and resumed the train of thought that his business partner had interrupted. He didn’t have any other solutions. He couldn’t go on living in that nightmare, blackmailed by that piece of shit. He had to do it. He had to prepare everything with calm and care and then strike unexpectedly. When Enzo least expected it, when Enzo was defenseless. Otherwise he’d never be able to beat him. A quick, accurate, lethal blow and all his problems would be over. He just needed to find the courage. Maybe help himself out by snorting a line or two before going to bed so that he’d remain wide-awake and clearheaded once the time came to drive the point of the yellow-handled knife into the monster’s body.
BEFORE ENTERING HIS OFFICE, ROCCO NOTICED THAT CATERINA had updated the chart of pains in the ass. He smiled at the painstaking work his deputy inspector had done.
“Dottor Schiavone!”
Officer D’Intino’s high-pitched unpleasant voice echoed down the hallway. Rocco turned around.
“What do you want, D’Intì?”
“The dog.”
“What about her?”
“It’s inside. It’s still sleeping. It’s not feeling sick, by any chance?”
“She’s just a puppy. Sleeping is one of her favorite activities.”
“Listen, there are at least six phone calls from Judge Baldi. He’s been looking for you like a crazy person.”
“What time is it now?”
“Five o’clock.”
Rocco rolled his eyes. “I need to go to the prosecutor’s office.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“God, no.”
“Do you want me to look after the dog?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Do you want me to do anything else?”
He was about to retort: “Yes, get the fuck out from underfoot.” Instead, an idea came to him, unlooked for, but it lit up his brain as only genuine strokes of genius are capable of doing. “D’Intino! I have something important for you and Deruta to do. It’s a fundamental mission!”
The officer snapped to attention. “You do? You do! I’ll call Deruta?”
“Here he is now!” said Rocco. And in fact, Deruta had just emerged from a side door. “Deruta! Come here, please.”
“Right away, Dottore.” And wobbling on his undersized feet, he walked toward them.
“All right, then, Deruta and D’Intino, there’s something very important and delicate that I need you both to do for me.”
“At your service, like always,” Deruta blurted.
“Now, first of all, and this is a very important point: you must always report directly and exclusively to me. No one else at police headquarters. Is that clear?”
Both heads bobbed affirmatively in unison.
“It’s a tough, challenging, difficult task, but I know that you can pull it off. You always have in the past, as far as that goes.”
A small grimace of skepticism twisted Deruta’s mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, actually, Dotto’ . . . one time you sent us out in search of a lock that you gave us the key to and they practically beat us both to death.”
“That’s true,” added D’Intino, “and another time you sent us to spy on some narcotics dealers and I broke two ribs . . .”
“Plus, also just last week up in the mountains in the middle of all that snow so that they almost had to cut off D’Intino’s frostbitten big toe.”
“I’m still limping a little from that!”
Rocco listened and then replied: “But this time it’s much harder than that. Still, if you don’t feel up to it, that’s okay. I’ll just ask Scipioni, this kind of thing doesn’t scare him!”
“Don’t say that even in jest!” Deruta’s pride rebelled at the thought. “Give us our orders!”
“Wednesday, May 9, and Thursday, May 10 . . .”
“Last week . . .”
“Very good, Deruta. I need you to make the rounds of all—and, I repeat, all—the hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in Aosta and surrounding provinces and get a list of all the guests who stayed there. Avoid luxury accommodations and three-star hotels. Search two-star hotels and down. In other words, cheap and cheerful.”
D’Intino lowered his voice. “Who are we looking for?”
“You go search. Most of all, keep your ears open for any mention of someone who comes from Rome. This is important, get the lists and bring them to me. To me and me alone. Have I made myself clear?”
They both nodded again. “When do we start?”
“Right away, Deruta. This minute!” And he pulled open his office door to go through it. He turned again to look at the two officers, who still stood, anchored to the spot, in the middle of the hallway. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get going!”
“But if we’re going to do this job, though . . . then there’s something we need!” And Deruta looked at D’Intino in search of some sign of assent.
“What do you need?”
Deruta held up his right hand with four fingers in plain view. “Four highlighters!”
“One pink, one yellow, one green, and one blue!” D’Intino summed up.
Rocco furrowed his brow slightly. “Why, though, don’t you have any in the office?”
“No,” Deruta replied tragically. “They never approved them for us.”
Rocco thr
ew both arms wide. “Will ten euros be enough?”
“Certainly.”
The deputy chief put his hand on his wallet. He didn’t have a ten-euro bill. So he gave them a twenty-euro banknote. “Buy yourselves four highlighters apiece!”
D’Intino and Deruta emanated joy from their eyes, from their skin, and from their hands as they hastily grabbed at the twenty euros. Effusively thanking him and already deep in conference, they hurried out of the office.
“Huh . . .” Rocco murmured and went into his office.
LUPA WAS STANDING BY THE DOOR. SHE WAS WAGGING HER tail, and it smacked rhythmically against the back of the couch she’d fallen asleep on. She’d heard the deputy chief’s voice. “Ciao, Lupacchiotta, how are you?” Rocco picked the puppy up and hoisted her in midair, gazing into her eyes. “Now you and I are going to have to have a serious conversation. Papà might have to go away for a few days. Are you going to be a good girl?”
Lupa licked his nose.
“I’ll take that for a yes. Now will you come with me to see the judge?”
Lupa licked his nose again.
“But you have to behave yourself, understood? Let’s go, forward march!” And he set her down on the floor, whereupon Lupa ran straight out of the office and disappeared down the hallway.
LUPA WAS PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN THE FRINGE OF THE faux-Bukhara carpet in Baldi’s office. She was ripping the tassels of fringe one by one.
“Dogs aren’t allowed in the prosecutor’s office building,” Baldi told him.
“I know that. But downstairs they made an exception.”
“She’s stinking up my office.”
“Lupa doesn’t stink. If anything, she smells of popcorn. Especially when she’s asleep.”
Baldi shook his head. “Just tell me if you’ve come up with an idea, Schiavone.”
“First of all, let me extend my compliments.”
The judge listened attentively.
“If you hadn’t insisted on bringing the victim’s body immediately to the morgue where Fumagalli could take a look at him, we would never have noticed.”
“Noticed what, Schiavone?”
“You were right. This was no heart attack. Cuntrera was murdered.”
“I knew it, I knew it!”
Rocco shot a quick glance at Lupa, who continued to chew on the carpet.
“Only I wish you’d explain better.”
“Fumagalli discovered a strange reaction taking place with the corpse during the night. And as a result of that, he’s now examining exactly how that corpse, in fact, became a corpse.”
“Excellent!” And Baldi slammed his fist into the desk, making the photograph of his wife jump, along with all the pens and an old brass calendar that was still set to June 2005. Lupa, however, did not allow herself to be distracted. She went on munching on the Bukhara rug. Baldi suddenly leapt to his feet. He strode around the desk. “That carpet is state property, and if your dog won’t stop, I’ll make you pay for it.”
“Lupa!” And the dog shifted her attention to Rocco’s Clarks desert boots, methodically ripping the laces to shreds.
“So that means we’re looking at a murder. And whoever did the killing might be our mysterious puppet master, right?”
“That’s right. The self-proclaimed Carlo Cutrì.”
“Self-proclaimed, you got that right. Now listen carefully . . . Let me bring you quickly up to speed. Domenico Cuntrera belonged to the gang that was extorting the Berguet family. But we need to assemble the puzzle pieces. Important puzzle pieces. The first piece: Cuntrera’s papers, the ones we arrested him with at the border. Well, I’m working on it . . . and there are plenty of things that don’t add up. But those are complications with the banking system that are of little interest to you . . .”
“If you say so . . .”
“The reason they don’t add up is, if you chase after various numbers and numbered accounts, you get very high up the totem pole, Dottor Schiavone.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who has a fear of heights.”
Baldi burst out laughing. “I love it, I’m going to steal that line. But now let’s move on to the second puzzle piece: the Vallée Savings Bank. Do you remember them? They were lending money to Pietro Berguet’s company, Edil.ber. The bank had shut off the spigots of funding to the building company. And so Pietro Berguet started borrowing money from Cuntrera, which means ’Ndrangheta, and once Cuntrera got his nose under the tent flap, he was trying to take over the whole company.”
“I remember perfectly, Dottore. It’s only been a couple of days.”
Baldi paid him no mind. “Then you discovered that no fewer than seven of this Cuntrera’s victims, all of them small businessmen who owed him money, had one thing in common: namely, a bank account with the Vallée Savings Bank. Are we on the same page so far?”
The deputy chief did no more than nod.
“And so I started digging into the papers of this bank, whose director, Laura Turrini, you’ve already met. And here’s the second puzzle piece: Dottoressa Turrini . . . Well, she’s no longer employed by the bank. Fired, given her pink slip in the course of a single afternoon.”
“That sounds odd.”
“And now let’s move on to the third detail, which is the most concerning one. Specifically, Carlo Cutrì. Who is supposed to have been the accomplice of the late Cuntrera.”
“Right. A resident of Lugano, no?”
“Carlo Cutrì doesn’t exist.”
Rocco’s eyes opened wide.
“No,” Baldi specified. “No such person. At his address, there is a French family, and there isn’t the faintest shade of any Carlo Cutrì in the lists of Lugano residents.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It means that Carlo Cutrì is a fake name for someone else who controlled Mimmo Cuntrera and who organized the kidnapping of poor Chiara Berguet.”
Rocco lit a cigarette. “Or else it’s a real name, but now he’s hiding behind a fake one.”
“Right.”
“A fine mess, Dottore.”
“I have the distinct sensation that we’re always several steps behind.”
“Behind who?”
“That’s what I don’t know, Schiavone! If I did know, I would have solved the case by now, don’t you think? The sensation I have is that we’re closing the stable door—”
“—after the horse has bolted. Yes, and it’s a nasty sensation.”
“And put out that cigarette. Who told you that you could smoke in here?” Rocco obeyed with a grimace as the judge went back to his desk. He noticed that the photo of the judge’s wife had fallen facedown. The judge picked it up, and for the first time since Schiavone had set foot in that office, he turned it to face his interlocutor. He made the introductions: “My wife . . .” Rocco smiled. Maybe the judge’s marriage was intact after all. After all the back-and-forth since September with the photograph traveling from drawer to trash can and then back onto the desktop, but only facedown, after months and months, peace and serenity seemed to have returned to the judge’s little family. Baldi leaned over to make sure the dog wasn’t doing any damage to the furnishings of his office.
“What breed is it?”
“She’s a Saint-Rhémy-en-Ardennes.”
“A what?”
“A very rare breed. And bipolar, into the mix. They can be extremely accommodating or else terribly aggressive. It all depends on the owner’s personality.”
“In that case, remind me never to pet her. Saint-Rhémy-en-Ardennes . . . that strikes me as complete bullshit. In any case, if we find out who killed Cuntrera . . .”
“Then we can track back to the mastermind. Cuntrera had just been transferred to the prison, so it seems a little early for him to have made any mortal enemies, at least to this degree.”
“I couldn’t agree more. And then, as I said, the papers that Cuntrera had with him were pure dynamite! Tremendously explosive. I think the brains behind this murder
can be found somewhere in those documents. I’m sure of it. How do you intend to proceed?”
“Investigating inside a prison is a very challenging thing to do. The rule of silence is more powerful than the prison walls themselves. No one would breathe a word to me, no one would make any false moves in my presence. I’d have to undertake the investigation from outside. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that if you’re going to dig into filth and shit, then you’re going to have to climb down into the sewers yourself, roll in the stuff, until you start to reek of it.”
“How about a disguise?”
“It would be pointless, Dottor Baldi. The convicts would figure out immediately that I’m not one of them. And anyway, I’d need time. No, what I’m going to have to do is go in and pretend that I’m there on some routine assignment. That’s the only way I can hope to win some friends, get someone in there to like me. If you can help me with the warden, persuade him to give me all the help possible.”
“Consider it done.”
ALL HE WANTED WAS TO RETRIEVE A COUPLE OF LINEN SHIRTS and his disposable razors. He stealthily entered the old apartment on Rue Piave like a thief in the night. First he went into the bathroom, and then, after counting to three, he went into the bedroom. He was afraid. Afraid that the mattress might still be there, with the patches of rust on it, rust that wasn’t really rust at all. Afraid of envisioning Adele’s body again, riddled with the bullets that someone had fired into the poor woman that Thursday night. He opened the door and lunged at the clothes closet without turning around, without thinking, rapidly, holding his breath, as if the air itself were still befouled with that murder. The shirts were there, on the second shelf. He took them and quickly exited the room. He shut the front door behind him without even stopping to double-lock it. He went down the steps again without breathing and found himself back in the street. At last, he breathed in, his mouth wide-open, and started toward his car. Sitting on the still-warm hood of his Volvo was Anna, arms crossed.
“How are you?” she asked him.
Spring Cleaning Page 9
