“Does a head physician really make this much money?”
“It’s family money, Rocco. Now stop drooling over these things and let’s go introduce ourselves.”
“Anna!” A man in his late fifties approached with both arms thrown wide-open. He was bronzed, with gleaming white hair and a black suit worn casually over a simple T-shirt the same color. “At last!”
“Berardo!” They embraced. The usual double kiss, one on each cheek. “May I introduce Dottor Schiavone?”
“I know him by reputation,” the man said, with a faint smile. They shook hands. Rocco took in the house at a glance. “So does a person have to buy a ticket to come see you?”
Berardo broke into a deafening laugh. “I see that you appreciate contemporary art. Come along, let me introduce you to my wife.”
They walked through a living room the size of an apartment and approached the wine table, where Laura Turrini was chatting with a woman well into her seventies. A spiderweb of wrinkles on the face clashed with the lips newly redone by a cosmetic surgeon. “Laura, guess who’s here?”
“Anna!” Laura broke away from the table with a glance of apology to the older woman. “Anna, how nice to see you.” They embraced. Then Laura’s gaze turned sad when she saw Rocco. “Dottor Schiavone . . .”
“So you’ve already met?” Berardo asked.
“Yes,” Rocco replied. “How are you, Dottoressa Turrini?”
“Tonight we can be on a first-name basis.”
“How’s it going, Laura?”
“Fine. I see you’re in fine form!”
“Don’t lie,” Anna broke in. “He looks as if he’s just gotten off a forty-eight-hour stakeout!”
“Have you seen the Berguets lately?”
Laura turned pale. Her husband took it upon himself to intervene. “Don’t even talk about it . . . What happened to them . . . was . . . unpleasant?”
“Just ‘unpleasant’?”
“Well, of course. Is ‘terrible’ more like it?” asked Berardo.
Laura regained her normal coloring. “What do you think? I’m so sorry for what happened to the Berguets! I’ve been friends with Giuliana and Pietro for years now. The bank that I represent has always been close to the Berguets.”
“Except for the last little while.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Excuse me. Rocco, do you really think this is the time and place to talk about this sort of thing? We’re at a party!”
“Anna’s right!” Turrini added. “I have other guests, please excuse me . . .” And displaying a mouthful of teeth that gleamed like ivory, he abandoned the trio.
“May I offer you some wine?”
“Gladly,” said Anna, and chatting in a low voice with Laura, she walked away from Rocco. The deputy chief didn’t follow the two women. He stood there watching them as they approached the buffet table.
What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself.
SOMEWHERE THERE HAD TO BE SPEAKERS PLAYING MUSIC. IF the master of the house showed a certain eye for the visual arts, the same could not be said of his ears. Rocco thought he could recognize the saccharine notes of “Strangers in the Night” as mangled by the Italian saxophonist Fausto Papetti. He scrutinized the faces of the guests. The men were atomizing sheer arrogance from the pores of their skin. The women, in contrast, were exuding botulinum toxin. All the women seemed to have the same face. A face that had been re-created in an operating room. A democratic standardization of facial features, eliminating any diversity of race or physiognomy, making those faces smooth, glistening, and expressionless. A house full of reptiles.
“Well, are you going to take the apartment?”
The friendly voice of Police Chief Costa made him turn around to look at one of the three big windows that dominated the room. “Dottore, buonasera.”
“I heard that you’re back in the office. That makes me happy. But at the same time, I’m saddened by the knowledge that you didn’t come upstairs to see me. And yet you know that I was trying to get in touch with you. Have you seen the newspapers?”
“I’d say so.”
Costa straightened the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Don’t be offended by the things they say about you.”
“Are you referring to Buccellato? She’s going a little heavy-handed, don’t you think!”
Costa grunted. His hatred for those news vendors, as he called them, showed no sign of abating, still as strong as when he originally conceived it, after his wife left him for a reporter in Turin. Then Costa shook his head to clear it of the columns, the fonts, the articles above and below the fold, the jump lines, the editorials, and the bylines that danced before his eyes, mocking not only him but also his office and his efforts. He gave Rocco a level look. “How are you, Schiavone? Do you feel like you’re up to coming back to work?”
“No, Dottor Costa. I’d say that I’m not.”
“I understand. Are you going to bring me the son of a bitch who broke into your apartment?”
“I certainly hope so,” Rocco said, thinking back to the muttered promise he’d made to his friend Sebastiano that if he ever found Adele’s murderer, he’d turn him over to his friend so that Sebastiano could put an end to that matter with his own bare hands. So Sebastiano could avenge his girlfriend’s death in cold blood.
“I’m relying on you.” Costa recovered his smile. “Well then, are you going to take the apartment on Via Laurent Cerise?” the police chief asked. “It’s eight hundred fifty square feet, the rent is eminently affordable. If you like, it’s already furnished. It’s on the fourth floor, and it has a burglar alarm and grates on the windows.”
“It only has one shortcoming, but it’s as big as the Matterhorn.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s right around the corner from the prosecutor’s office.”
Costa looked at Schiavone. “If anything, that strikes me as a feature.”
“I know. That’s why we’ll stay friends. We have two very different views of life.”
Costa nodded. “You can bet on that. Speaking of views and visions, what do you have to say about what happened in prison?”
“I don’t know yet. In any case, it was certainly a murder; Cuntrera, the Mafioso who was blackmailing the Berguet family, was murdered.”
“An ugly story, in that case. Oh, and speaking of the Berguets, look over there . . .”
The police chief jutted his chin toward a specific point in the living room. Standing next to a tapestry was a man. Small in stature, fair-haired, light-colored eyes. A charcoal gray suit draped over his frame without a crease or wrinkle.
“Who’s he?”
“Luca Grange.”
“The one who was awarded the construction contract by the regional government instead of Edil.ber?”
“Right. The party is partly for him.”
“Ah. How nice to know that Signora Turrini is such a close friend with the Berguets.”
“Yes, such a close friend,” Costa commented sadly. “But life goes on, doesn’t it?”
“I see it differently. It’s more a case of the victor’s carriage being the most comfortable one.”
“That’s always the case, except for in one field: soccer. I will always remain a Genoa fan, in victory and in defeat.”
“And since when has victory ever favored your team?”
“Let’s forget about it, Schiavone, and just focus on your own team.”
“Right you are. Tell me a little something more about this Luca Grange.”
“He’s a young businessman. His father had contracts with the township of Aosta to clean the public transit vehicles. But Luca is an architect, he founded the company, and apparently not even two years later, he’s ready to make the great leap.”
Rocco Schiavone had no trouble whatsoever classifying Luca Grange in his mental bestiary. His ice-blue eyes, focused and still, perfectly suited to the snows of the endless tundra, and his white teeth and small, sharp nose made Luca a Siberian husky, t
he dog originally from Siberia trained to pull sleds, the protagonist of the greatest novels of the northern frontier.
“So it certainly seems that Luca Grange is a young man who’ll go far . . .” Schiavone muttered.
“So it would seem.”
Now Fausto Papetti was squeezing out a version of “Killing Me Softly.” Costa smiled at Rocco. “I need to go find this stereo and put on some different music.”
“That’s something I’d appreciate deeply, Dottore.”
With a smile, the police chief walked away.
“HEAVENS! OF COURSE, I’LL TAKE YOU TO SEE HIM!” BERARDO Turrini was shouting in the center of the living room with a wineglass in his hand. “Everybody, come with me!” And he headed for the door. A group of six people followed him. Rocco looked over at Anna, who shrugged and tailed after the group. Rocco did the same.
“Where are we going?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. To see something very important, I think.”
The group, which now numbered fifteen people, went out the back door of the house, and like the rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin town, they followed the master of the house in single file. They turned down a little lane, and only the sound of gravel crunching underfoot broke the nocturnal silence. A narrow road illuminated by beautiful lampposts led to a cluster of reddish buildings.
“The stars are out,” said Anna.
“Don’t look up,” Rocco warned her. “On those heels, you’d wind up in the trauma ward.”
“I think that there are at least three orthopedic surgeons at this party! In fact, why don’t you have them take a look at your back?”
The odor of horses, mixed with leather and fodder, became increasingly strong as the group approached the stables. In the distance, on the left, the light-blue color of a brightly lit swimming pool promised the arrival of summer.
A short, powerfully built man came forward to greet the group. “Here’s Dodò . . . the best groom in the whole valley. Dodò, these are my friends.”
“Buonasera . . .” said the little man. From his wrinkles, it looked as if his face had been folded and refolded countless times, like an old road map.
“They want to see Winning Mood.”
Dodò smiled and raised his right arm, pointing the way. “Over here . . .”
The heels of the guests echoed on the cobblestones. From inside a stall a horse was delivering powerful kicks against the structure. Another horse, farther away, was neighing, perhaps because he’d been bothered by that noise in the night.
Followed by the guests, the groom threw open a double sliding door, and they were all immediately enveloped by the dampness and stench of equine urine. Then the groom turned on the lights, illuminating a long hallway. Every thirty feet or so there was a door with bars. It looked like a wing in a penitentiary. “Winning Mood is in the last stall,” said Berardo Turrini, by this point incapable of further restraining his excitement. “Come on, come on!”
To the right and left, there were sleeping horses, and here and there horses with their heads bowed, munching on the fodder scattered over the floor. A gray stallion pushed his muzzle out through the hatch in the door. He kept his ears back and gazed out at the group of rubbernecking intruders with a blank gaze. At last, Berardo came to a stop.
“Dodò!”
The groom, who had seized a rope, opened the door and walked into the stall.
“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Winning Mood!”
At Berardo’s gesture, the little man emerged, leading a bay stallion on a halter.
“Here he is, ladies and gentlemen!”
He was an enormous animal. Gleaming, powerful, with a long mane and strong, muscular legs. His hooves seemed to set the stone floor aflame.
There was a chorus of appreciative “Ohs!” from all the onlookers. Except for Rocco, who knew less about horses than he did about women.
“He’s marvelous!” cooed a blonde matron at the head of the group.
A bespectacled fellow walked up to the horse and started stroking him. “With a horse like this, what’s to stop you?”
“Right,” said Berardo, and he smiled complacently. “We’re going to run him for the first time at Cattolica, at the end of the month.”
“Who are you going to have ride him?”
“I still don’t know . . . Maybe Rodrigo . . .”
“Nice, isn’t he?” a woman said to Rocco, trying to engage him.
“Fantastic,” replied the deputy chief.
“He’s the grandson of Chandelier!” said the woman.
“Fantastic,” said Rocco again.
“He’ll win plenty of national races, even if he’s only three years old!”
“Fantastic!”
Anna leaned over and whispered into Rocco’s ear: “Don’t you know how to say anything else?”
“It’s like the old joke . . .” Rocco whispered back. “‘Fantastic’ is just a nice way of saying ‘Who gives a flying fuck!’” The deputy chief turned around and realized that they weren’t in the very last row. Behind them was Luca Grange, glass in hand, laughing softly.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said.
From up close he looked even more like a sled dog.
“I didn’t mean to be offensive.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. I don’t know anything about horses, either. They’re like a fever: you either have it or you don’t.” He extended his hand. “Luca Grange.”
“Rocco Schiavone. This is Anna . . .”
“Cherubini!” She filled in the name that he had clearly forgotten as she shook Luca’s hand. Rocco was ashamed of himself. Forgetting a woman’s last name was an unforgivable slight. And Anna made that clear to him, glaring fire at him. “Shall we go in?” Rocco suggested to Anna.
“You go ahead. I want to stay here to look at Chandelier’s grandson.”
“Fantastic!” said Rocco, but Anna didn’t laugh.
THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT FOR HIM TO DO BUT TO WANDER through the house all on his lonesome. He was suddenly reminded of the film where Peter Sellers, mistakenly admitted to the party of a wealthy movie producer, bumbles into an endless succession of embarrassing gaffes. Rocco had one of the servers pour him a glass of red wine, and then he grabbed an hors d’oeuvre off a tray, a small tart of a vague color, hard to pin down exactly. “What is this?” he asked the server.
“Salt-cod paste with a corn polenta purée and . . .”
He gulped it down in a single mouthful. It was exquisite. He had just managed to swallow the food when his throat locked tight. At the far end of the room, standing and talking with two smiling ladies, was Walter Cremonesi, an old acquaintance of his. The right-wing terrorist, an extremist who’d been in Italian prisons since 1976, had a criminal record as long as his arm, featuring burglaries, armed robberies, and a couple of murders. The deputy chief hadn’t seen him in years. He was pushing sixty, but he looked hale and healthy.
What’s he doing in Aosta? Rocco wondered. And his mind flew straight to the thought of Adele murdered in his bed.
Drawn closer like a moth to a flame, he didn’t even realize that he’d come within a few yards of the man, who stood almost six feet tall, skinny and lithe. All that remained of his dangerous years was a small scar under his square jaw. There was no need to expend any effort to give him the appearance of a specific animal. He’d always known it: Walter Cremonesi was a Dendroaspis polylepis, better known as a black mamba. His eyes were lively and wide-set, his mouth was lipless, and his lean body seemed ready to dart forward from one moment to the next. But the thing that he most had in common with the reptile was the shape of his head. Like a coffin. Walter swiveled his small dark eyes toward Rocco, and a barely perceptible light seemed to flash in his irises. The close-shaven top of his head reflected the halogen spotlights illuminating the little corner bar. Rocco furrowed his brow.
“Rocco Schiavone! I’m delighted to see you again.”
Rocco drew even c
loser. The two women who were chatting with Cremonesi had lost their smiles. They seemed embarrassed. They ventured only the slightest nods of the head to greet the new arrival.
“I’m much less delighted than you are, Walter Cremonesi. Much less delighted. And I don’t remember that we were ever on a first-name basis.”
Walter nodded, maintaining a half-hearted smile. His upper lip pulled back, briefly displaying a mouthful of teeth as small and sharp and straight as knife blades.
“May I introduce my friends?”
“If they’re friends of yours, I’ll have to decline the honor.”
“Oaf!” said the taller of the two women, who then left the little group. The shorter one, a few years younger, seemed amused.
“That’s just the way our friend the policeman is. A little brusque, but he’s always been tons of fun, you know that, Amelia?”
“Ah, so you’re a policeman?” asked the young woman. “Pleasure to know you, my name is Amelia.” And she extended a handful of inch-long Ferrari-red fingernails. She’d had some work done on her mouth by a plastic surgeon, while a tattoo artist had put a small bee on her neck. But Rocco didn’t shake hands; he just threw back the glassful of wine.
“Do you like my tattoo?” the young woman asked.
“No. I like bees, though.”
“So do I. And do you know why? Because they flit from flower to flower.” And with a faint smile she took her leave of that individual with a two-day growth of whiskers and a corduroy suit, so completely out of place at such a chic gathering. “See you around, Dottor Schiavone . . .” said the young woman as she brushed by, just inches from Rocco’s nose.
The scent of tuberose flowers. Too much of it, thought the deputy chief.
“Pretty, isn’t she? Do you want to take her out for a spin, Schiavò? A girl like Amelia, though, might be a little much for a deputy chief. Or maybe not. Are you still rounding out your salary these days?”
“You know something? Seeing you a free man out on the street is worse than a curse word in church.”
Walter turned serious. “I’ve paid my debt to society.”
Spring Cleaning Page 11
