Rocco took a deep breath. He looked down at his feet, then looked back up at the warden. “I’m not asking you any special favors to make my stay in this shithole more agreeable. I’m doing it so I can do my job. That being said, if you’d be so kind as to take your sarcasm and stuff it up your ass, we’ll get through the coming hours in a relatively rapid and painless fashion.”
The warden cleared his throat. “They’d told me that you were a guy who didn’t mince words.”
“I’m happy to mince words all afternoon if you feel like it. But what I don’t like is when people like you think that they’re dealing with some poor fool they can dangle on a string. Now, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to speak with Agostino Lumi before he’s transferred. Do you think that might be possible?”
Martinelli smiled. “Certainly. And it won’t be necessary to fill out forms in triplicate, either.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I’ve put him in solitary confinement. He’s in the wing for sex offenders. While I make the necessary arrangements, why don’t you read up on his criminal record.” And the warden gave Rocco the binder, slamming it down on the desk. The room wasn’t brightly lit, so the deputy chief stepped over to the window. From there he enjoyed a panoramic view of the house of detention.
“All right then, I’ll get going . . .”
“One last thing. I’ll also need to be able to move around the prison.”
“Sure, I’d thought of that, what do you think? You’ll have one of my men at your disposal at all times to escort you wherever you need to go. He’s right outside, whenever you need him.” Then he pulled open the door to leave. “See you soon. Make yourself right at home.” Rocco rolled his eyes and decided to ignore that last gratuitous bit of sarcasm from the warden.
This was the time of day when all the inmates were free to roam around their respective wings. They were socializing, as he had been informed. Rocco took one last look at those gray buildings, which reminded him of a working-class quarter on the outskirts of Rome; then he started leafing through Agostino Lumi’s binder. He wasn’t interested in the bastard’s criminal record. He wanted to find his weak point.
“Well, lookie lookie . . .” he said to himself with a smile as he went on reading.
He set the binder down on the desk. He opened the door. Waiting for him was a prison guard reading the newspaper. It only took a quick glance for Rocco to classify him in his own personal bestiary. That guard was a Myocastor coypus, also known as a nutria. The big nose and handlebar mustache gave him the smiling, cunning air of a retired Prussian colonel.
“What’s your name?” Rocco asked.
The guard leapt to his feet. “Mauro Marini . . .”
“You’re the one who found Cuntrera’s body, if I’m not mistaken?”
“You’re not mistaken, Dottore. I was with my colleague Daniele Abela . . .”
“Would you take me out to the courtyard?”
“Come right this way . . .”
And the two men started walking down the long hallways as the metal doors opened and closed as they went past. “This way, follow me . . .”
“Listen, Marini, what do you think?”
“About Cuntrera’s death?”
“No, about the going-out-of-business sales in January.”
Marini looked the deputy chief in the eyes. A smile played under his luxuriant mustache. “What do I think? Like I told the judge, I’ve been working in correctional institutions for many years now. Sometimes, all it takes is a glance, a word out of place, or an insult, and . . . bam! The feuds begin.”
The air was redolent of soup and disinfectant. The smell came off the floors, the walls, the guards’ uniforms, and even from his own jacket. The two men finally emerged into the open air.
“Here we are, this is the courtyard. Down there is a soccer field, do you see?”
“And that building on the right?”
“It’s a workshop. That’s where we found Cuntrera, near Wing 3.” And the guard pointed to a perpetually shadowy corner. Rocco walked over beside him. He looked around. Hurricane fencing and enclosure walls. The guard towers.
“And the guys who started the brawl, where were they?”
“Down there, by Wing 2.” And Marini pointed to a wall on the far side of the courtyard. More than three hundred feet away. Rocco paced out the distance. Then he stood on the ground where the brawl had broken out. He looked around again. Still the same hurricane fencing, the same enclosure walls, the same guard towers looking down. From here he couldn’t see the corner where Cuntrera had been killed. “Who was on duty in the guard towers?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”
“Thanks. And I want to talk with whoever was on those two guard towers down there. I don’t need anyone else. Tell me about the schedules . . .”
“Certainly. All right, then, from nine until eleven and then in the afternoon from one until three, the inmates can come down here for some fresh air.”
“And what do they do?”
“People do different things, they chat, they play soccer, they go over there, you see? To the workshops. We have two computer workshops and one for woodworking. From five in the evening until nine they can stay in their sections and socialize. But they can’t leave the section. At ten o’clock we shut the armored cell gates and then it’s lights out.”
“What about meals?”
“We serve lunch from eleven o’clock to twelve noon, and dinner’s at six thirty. We have a library and a gym and those are the two most heavily used spaces.”
“What time was it when Cuntrera died?”
“Two thirty?”
“Are you asking me?”
“No, no. Two thirty,” the guard hastened to state.
“Let’s go back upstairs . . . This courtyard is disgusting.”
“I know. But you ought to see the cells. They’re even worse. The real problem here is health. We’ve had cases of tuberculosis, and even inmates with full-blown cases of AIDS. But with all the cuts in funding . . .”
“Listen up, are the four North Africans still in the infirmary, or have they returned to their cells?”
“Only Omar’s still in the infirmary. Two of them have gone back to their section, whereas the one who got the worst beating, Aziz, is in the hospital.”
“There’s something I need to understand. How do you get into this? What are the points of access?”
Marini nodded. “Every section has its own entrance. See? There are three. But the inmates restricted to solitary confinement have a section all their own, and they don’t come into this courtyard; they go to the covered yard, over there.”
Rocco went back to the corner where Cuntrera had given up the ghost. A recess, just yards from Wing 3. “What about this entrance? Where does it lead?”
“It’s the third wing.”
“And was that where Cuntrera had his cell?”
“Yes, he was in that section.”
“So when he was killed, he was very close to the entrance to his detention wing. Fine. Who was at that door on the day of the brawl?”
“I don’t remember. But I think Tolotta. Federico Tolotta.”
Rocco stepped closer to the gate. “Why don’t you have them open up, please.”
Marini picked up his radio. A moment later, the gate leading into the section opened. A short, balding guard with a sad face appeared. “I’m Deputy Chief Schiavone. Are you Tolotta?”
“No. I’m Biranson. Tolotta is my colleague, he comes on duty tomorrow.”
Rocco, followed by Marini like his shadow, stepped into the hallway. Straight ahead were the stairs. On the right a metal door. “What’s this?”
“That door leads to an internal corridor,” replied the diminutive Biranson.
“And where does this corridor lead to?”
“To the other side,” Marini replied. “Open up, Bruno, let’s show the commissario just where this corridor leads.”
; “Let’s show the deputy chief,” Rocco corrected him.
“Ah, of course, excuse me.”
Bruno slid the key into the lock, turned it three times, and pulled open the metal door. “If you please, through here.”
It was a long, curving, narrow passageway, barely more than a yard wide, and on either side extremely high blank walls that were topped by a metal mesh that served as a roof. “There, you see? It’s a passageway that we never use, it’s just for us guards, only in case of accidents or emergencies. A single man can just fit through.” Biranson, followed in single file by Rocco and Marini, was walking along, stepping on the weeds that had sprung up in the cracks in the cement. “But we never use it.”
They came to another door. This one, too, all in metal. “Here we are. The corridor ends here.” Biranson pulled out his keys and opened that second rusted entrance. “After you . . .”
They found themselves just outside of the recreation courtyard, near the location of the brawl, facing Wing 2. “So, if I understand completely, this corridor links Wing 3 with the outside of the courtyard.”
“That’s correct, right next to Wing 2,” said Marini. “And there, you see? It’s right where Omar was attacked. In other words, it’s helpful for going around to the other side without having to go across the open plaza.”
“But we practically never use it!” Biranson said again.
“Biranson, the concept is clear to me,” Rocco said. “Now tell me, who has the keys to these doors and to the doors to the wings?”
“Saint Peter himself!” Biranson replied, hoisting two bunches with a dozen or so keys in all. “Anyone who’s at the courtyard gate is assigned to have the keys to the armored gates”—and here he raised the first metal ring—“and to these two metal gates”—and then he displayed the two remaining keys. “Dotto’, the same is true for the other gates—the ones leading to the other sections, I mean to say. There, too, they have an internal passageway, just like this one.” And he knocked his knuckles against the metal door. Rocco nodded.
“Do you want to go see this section?” Marini asked.
“No. I want to go talk to Agostino . . .”
“IT’S AN HONOR TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE, DOTTOR Schiavone. I’ve read a great many things about you.”
Agostino Lumi, a.k.a. the Professor, had the kind of eyes that Rocco had seen on the faces of the worst bandits and armed robbers. Still, dead eyes, without a glimmer of expression, dry black river rocks. “You’re a talented policeman. Somebody just killed a friend of yours, a woman, right in your home, isn’t that right?”
“Nice to see you keep up with the news.”
“I read the newspaper every day. A German philosopher used to say that reading the newspaper—”
“—is the realist’s morning prayer,” Rocco finished his sentence for him.
“I see that we both studied the humanities.”
“Absolutely. Which is the best kind of studies. Is that why they call you ‘the Professor’?”
Agostino Lumi started rolling himself a cigarette. “Do you mind if I smoke? You know, talking to a person like you in here isn’t the sort of thing that happens every day. Mostly, I deal with rough, ignorant people, illiterates. Foreigners, for the most part. And donkeys. Donkeys that amble and graze the soil in the courtyard. Instead, I sense that you and I can have a lovely chat. So this woman they murdered in your home, was she your girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Ah, of course, after your wife’s death, you devoted yourself to a chaste, uncommitted life, didn’t you?”
“Why, you certainly do read a lot of newspapers!”
“I read and I conjecture. When you have lots of time on your hands, you know how it can be. And yet you’re still a young man, women must happen along. What do you do? Don’t you even fuck anymore?”
“Are you gathering notes for your regular evening masturbation?”
Agostino smiled, but only with his lips. “And have you come up with some ideas about who might have killed your friend?”
“Yes,” Rocco lied.
Agostino Lumi clapped his hands like a little boy watching a puppet show. “And when do you expect to arrest him?”
“I’m not planning to arrest him.” Rocco leaned in close to Agostino’s face, close enough to perceive the stench of garlic and tobacco smoke on his breath. “Arresting someone like that is just doing them a favor. I don’t do favors. For anyone.” Then he leaned back out to a safe distance.
Agostino Lumi furrowed his brow. “That’s not the sort of thing a conscientious policeman would do.”
“The idea that I’m a conscientious policeman is something you’ve come up with on your own.”
“Tell the truth. The real target wasn’t your girlfriend, was it? It was you, right?”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“I can guess . . .”
“How did that brawl go the other day?” Rocco inquired brusquely.
Agostino licked his cigarette. “Ah, you’re referring to that little dustup in the courtyard. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a brawl. It was nothing special, just the usual roosters skirmishing in the courtyard.”
“There were three of you trying to massacre a young man . . .”
“A narcotics dealer, actually, deputy chief.” Agostino lit his cigarette. “A dealer who’s bringing narcotics into this prison.”
Rocco nodded. With a quick glance he took in the cell that housed Agostino. A bed, a small window, a private bathroom. The walls weren’t flaking; they’d just been repainted with the usual bureaucratic pale green. There was a shelf full of books with tattered spines. “So what exactly are you? Some kind of internal prison policeman?”
“I’d really rather be thought of as someone who cares about law and order. I’m just trying to keep this place clean.”
“An honorable ambition.” Agostino smiled and took a drag on his cigarette.
“How does this Omar manage to get the narcotics inside?”
“With his little third-world boyfriends on the outside. They smuggle them in through the visiting room. Evidently there are guards willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for gifts. And then Omar, Tarek, and Karim deal the shit. There are two hundred prisoners in here, all of them bored and depressed. An excellent client base, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done time behind bars,” Rocco replied.
“I think that every policeman ought to spend some time behind bars, actually, maybe in disguise. You can figure out a lot of things by just spending a month or so in prison, and it might come in handy for the work you do.”
“For example?”
“You’d get a much better understanding of the psychology of criminals.”
“I really don’t give a flying fuck about the psychology of criminals.”
“You aren’t following me. I’m just saying that if policemen did a little bit of prison time, they’d work more effectively and they’d be quicker to understand the moves and the intentions of guys like me. But I’m speaking against my own self-interest!”
“There’s no need to serve time in prison to understand you. You all have pretty basic psychological makeups, believe me.”
Agostino put out the cigarette. He smiled. But, again, only with his lips. His eyes remained dark and motionless, like two glass marbles. “But from the way you’re doing your job as a policeman, if you ask me, sooner or later, a little time in here is something you’re going to be looking at.”
“Right? That way, maybe you and I will have lots of time to chat. But now, let me tell you a story. I was born in Trastevere, and you may or may not know that Regina Coeli prison is right there, at the foot of the Janiculum Hill, the Gianicolo. Let’s just say that I had lots of bad influences, questionable acquaintances, and so one time my father took me up on top of the hill, looking down on the prison. Regina Coeli stands just two hundred yards under the terrace with the panoramic view. You know what was going on up t
here? The prisoners’ wives, often clutching the railing of the parapet that stood above the sheer drop down to the prison, were talking with their husbands, shouting down to the barred windows. That way they could converse, exchange information, say that they loved each other, or maybe even talk about minor domestic issues. That day a woman was there, in her early thirties, and she had a little boy by the hand, maybe eight years old, at a guess. The woman was talking with her husband. ‘Aldo!’ she yells. ‘Listen, your son got straight Ds on his report card!’ After a couple of seconds Aldo’s voice comes up from the outermost wing of Regina Coeli: ‘Goddamn it to hell . . . where is he?’ and his wife replies: ‘Right here with me! He can hear you!’ And the husband replies: ‘Tell him that the minute I get home, I’ll take my belt to him, and that’ll make him feel like studying!’ And the wife: ‘Before you get home, your son will be out of college!’ My father looked at me and took me back home. There, you see? I didn’t need anything more than that. Of course, I always gave my father some trouble, some concerns, but he knew that that day I had understood.” Rocco looked at him, a long, intense look. He got out a cigarette and lit it. Nice and slow, prolonging that silence as much as possible.
“So?” asked Agostino.
“So our little conversation is all done now, and you and I are sitting in a cell, in the solitary confinement wing, talking like two men who delve into the filthiest shit every day of our lives. All right, then, can I speak, or do you still want to persist with these personal questions to see if you can piss me off? No? Shall I go on? Fine. Will you tell me who the fuck told you to unleash that mess in the courtyard, then?”
“So we’re on an informal basis now?”
“We’re on an informal basis now.”
“Are you still talking about that little dustup, Rocco?”
“That’s right. But listen, strictly speaking, even though you don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ it still doesn’t authorize you to actually call me by my first name. To you, I’m just Schiavone.”
“What the fuck do you want from me, Schiavone? Do you want me to tell you things that I don’t know, and that you’re going to need to find out for yourself? It makes me laugh to watch you spinning the treadmill, uselessly, just like a hamster, you son of a bitch, fucking whoremonger.”
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