Spring Cleaning

by Antonio Manzini

  A TUMBLEDOWN LITTLE CHURCH ON THE STATE HIGHWAY, houses scattered, seemingly at random, a crossroads, and an old streamer hung up between two trees, advising the citizenry of Pitocco, a small village near Vico nel Lazio, in the province of Frosinone, that in July the Sagra degli Aborti would be held. The Abortion Festival. Or at least that’s what Flavio Buglioni thought he’d read on the rumpled, faded streamer.

  The gas station attendant, a man with a gut that could easily accommodate the contents of an entire mini-fridge, explained that this wasn’t the Sagra degli Aborti, luckily, but rather the Sagra degli Abboti, a type of tripe roulade that in July must have been a rare delicacy. A mistake that anyone could have made.

  “I’m trying to find the house of the cousin of a friend of mine. My friend’s name is Enzo Baiocchi. But the cousin is a lady, and I don’t know if she has the same last name.”

  “Don’t you even remember what her given name is? What was she baptized?” asked the gas station attendant, chewing on the toothpick that he kept wedged between his black incisors.

  “No. All I know is that they told me to ask where the crazy woman lives!”

  “Ahhhh,” said the man. “I know who you mean. But I don’t know if she’s still alive, you know? It’s been years and years since I saw her last!”

  “And can you tell me where she lives?”

  “You need to go uphill . . . that way, you see?” And he pointed to a dirt road that wound up through the fields. “You go up about five hundred yards . . . you’ll find an intersection, take a right, another five hundred yards and you’re there. If the house is even still there, it’s probably falling apart, and there’s a stench of cat piss that could kill you. Anyway, she’s a strange old lady. No one ever talks to her, you know? So, you need any gas?”

  THE HOUSE WAS STILL THERE. SINGLE STORY, UNPLASTERED, and the roof had given way in two places. Sticking up in the middle of the terra-cotta roof tiles was an off-kilter chimney. The windows were so heavily mended with duct tape that there was no need of curtains to protect the intimacy and privacy of the inhabitants, that is, assuming that there even were any (inhabitants) and that they even had any (intimacy and/or privacy). A low wall surrounded the property. The rusting body of a Fiat Ritmo rested on four cinder blocks. Weeds infested what had once been a garden and now covered an old stone fountain with a circular basin, now empty of water. Atop the fountain was perched a moldy cupid. Flavio got out of his car and put on his sunglasses. May had run riot. Whitish puffs of pollen wafted through the air, and the perfume of flowers mixed with rust was spreading in all directions, gently pushed by the wind.

  “Anyone home?” he said as he pushed open the remnants of an iron gate that had been eroded by the passing years. Halfway, the gate ground to a halt, stopped by a mound of dirt, and Flavio just barely managed to squeeze sideways between the sharp-edged iron gate and make his way into the front yard. Long ago, beneath the weeds and the wildflowers, there must have been a pathway in rammed earth. A lizard twisted behind a stone. The ants were busy, marking the dirt with black lines.

  “Hello? Anyone home?” Flavio arrived at the front door. He was peering around in search of some cat, any sign of the presence of the mistress of the house, but nothing met his eye. There wasn’t even the stench of cat urine, or any old bowls with remnants of food or water. An old doorbell had popped out of its hole in the wall, dangling in precarious equilibrium at the end of a pair of red electric wires. He didn’t feel safe touching it. He rapped sharply on the wood with his knuckles. The door shook, and flakes of old paint showered to the ground. He waited a few seconds, then knocked a second time. Harder, this time. No good. He decided to walk over to the nearby window. He placed his hands against the glass and peered in. A room with a dusty floor and cracked terra-cotta tiles. There was a green velvet armchair, an old smoke-blackened fireplace. On the walls, small picture frames or photographs had left shadows of their presence on the wallpaper that was peeling away here and there. Some crumpled papers. A dust-covered table with chunks of plaster littering it, plaster that had dropped straight down off the ceiling. The state of neglect and abandonment was unmistakable. He moved away from the pane of glass and went back to looking at the house as a whole. He decided to walk around it—maybe there would be some sign of life in the back. Taking long strides in order to avoid stepping on dandelions and underbrush, he noticed a small building with the door torn off its hinges. He went over to it. Inside were two rusty shovels, a deflated wheelbarrow tire, and a saw hanging on a nail. A veil of cobwebs covered a series of empty bottles standing on a shelf made of crumbling, rotten wood. On the back of the house there were two windows. One had the shutters nailed closed; the other had its glass smeared with bird droppings and a crack running right down the middle. He tried to peer in, but all he could make out was an old bathroom, consisting of a toilet black with mold and a small bathtub streaked with rust. All that was left was the window with the shutters nailed closed. But there was no way to see inside that window. He didn’t notice the fact, but the nails that held the boards in place over the shutters were bright and brand-new.

  On the other side of that window, in the silence of the abandoned house, a shadow sat observing Flavio’s face. That shadow was silently smoking. Safe in the darkness, he knew that sooner or later the annoyance would turn and leave. He only had to wait there, like a spider in ambush. And if Flavio did try to enter the house, the 6.35 mm pistol that he held ready on his thighs would do its job once again. The shadow smiled at the thought that, if he so much as tugged on that trigger, the pistol would kill none other than the man who had sold it to him in the first place.

  Flavio stepped away from the window. He looked around. The grass was crushed underfoot, but maybe that had been him. “Enzo!” he shouted. “Enzo, are you here? It’s me, Flavio! I need to talk to you!”

  There was no answer. He retraced his steps, with another circuit of the house. He slipped back out through the metal gate that stood half open and got in his car. He took one last look at that teetering ruin and took off.

  Enzo Baiocchi crushed his cigarette under the heel of his shoe. He lay back on the old mattress that had belonged to his aunt, picked up the Peroni, and drained off the last of the beer in a single gulp. He hurled the bottle against the wall and it shattered into a thousand pieces.

  “WELCOME BACK, ROCCO!”

  “Ring the church bells! Let rivers of champagne run! Mark this date on all the calendars as a red-letter day!” shouted the deputy chief. “Caterina Rispoli has learned to call me by my first name!”

  Caterina blushed and almost wished she could take those words back and stuff them in her mouth. “Heh . . . heh heh . . .” she managed to say.

  “Well, Caterina, what are you doing in my office at lunchtime?”

  “You have visitors waiting for you. A married couple . . .”

  “A couple?”

  “It’s the Berguets. They just want to say hello and thank you.”

  “What the fuck? No! What is this? Did I get married to them?” Rocco shouted.

  “Sshhttt,” said Caterina, lifting her forefinger to her nose. “Hush, or they’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t want to see them. I can’t stand them anymore! First of all the wife has problems with her husband, then there’s the daughter, then there’s the husband, who’s flipped out completely . . . What do they take me for, some sort of psychological counselor? Let them go to the national health clinic! Tell them . . . tell them you couldn’t find me, that I’m dead, that I’ve come down with some sort of contagious disease, invent whatever bullshit you can think of and get them out from underfoot!”

  “I can’t. They know that you’re here!”

  Rocco thought it over. “Then, if they won’t believe you, let them in, and that way they can see with their own eyes that I’m not here!”

  Caterina made a face. “But if I let them in, they’ll see that you are here.”

  “They won’t see anyone but Lupa,
trust me! And after you send them away, come back into the office and stick your head out the window!”

  Caterina nodded, baffled, and left the room. Moving quickly, Rocco opened the window, clambered over the sill, and found himself outside police headquarters, on the roof of the canopy over the front entrance. He squatted down. He waited. He took advantage of the passing time to scoop up a few roaches from long-ago joints. A minute went by. There was no sign of Caterina. “What the fuck are you doing?” he cursed her through clenched teeth. He waited a little longer. Perhaps the time had come to go back into the office. How long does it take a person to stick their head in and see that the deputy chief isn’t in his office? he wondered.

  As he was being tormented by these doubts, he heard someone leave police headquarters, right under the canopy on which he was hiding. It was none other than Signore and Signora Berguet! If they had chanced to turn around at that instant, they would have seen him perched, balanced precariously, atop the canopy over the front entrance. A passerby in fact did look up and spotted him in that strange position. Rocco gestured to him to mind his own business and keep on walking. The man laughed and walked away. Just as the Berguets were opening their car doors, Rocco’s “Ode to Joy” started to ring. With a feline lunge, the deputy chief flattened himself, legs and arms splayed wide, onto the roof. Pietro Berguet had looked up toward the second-story window, his notice attracted by the cell phone’s ringtone. In the meantime, Rocco managed to extract the bellowing electronic device. It was Baldi calling. He had no choice; he had to answer. “Yes, sir, Your Honor,” he said in a choking voice.

  “I’m calling about something important. Daniele Abela and Federico Tolotta must have caught on. They’ve disappeared.”

  “Oh, fucking . . . What about Amelia?”

  “She’s behind bars. Do you want to have a chat with her?”

  “We’ll see . . .”

  “What are you doing? Your voice sounds strange . . . forced. Are you climbing the stairs?”

  “No,” he replied, his back plastered against the roof. “Everything’s fine.”

  “I’ll tell you something else. The fact that the two guards took to their heels as soon as they heard about the arrests of the Turrini–Cremonesi group tells us all we need to know about their guilt.”

  “That’s for sure . . .”

  “Take care of yourself, Schiavone!” Baldi ended the call without saying good-bye. Rocco put his phone back in his pocket. Leaning out the window, a yard above him, was Deputy Inspector Caterina Rispoli, looking down on him as he lay flat on the roof. “You’re not a well man, Rocco. It might be best if you came back in before the police chief looks out his window.”

  “Yes. Might be best . . .” Rocco got up and climbed back over the windowsill, with the deputy inspector’s assistance.

  “What did the Berguets say?”

  “They seemed disappointed. But they wanted to make sure I thanked you . . .”

  “Fine. What time is it now?”

  “One thirty.”

  “Shall we go get something to eat?”

  “Actually, I ate lunch an hour ago!”

  Rocco heaved a sigh. “This bad habit you people have up here of scheduling your meals as if you were in a hospital!”

  “Here he is! Mr. Deputy Chief!” A shout echoed through the office. Lupa barked. It was D’Intino. He was carrying an enormous sheaf of paper. “All done!”

  “What?”

  “The list of the foreigners. Now we highlighted everything nice and clear. And we’re done with the hotels, too. What should Deruta and I do?”

  “What should you do? I told you, didn’t I? You need to draw me up a list of all the guests of all the hotels who came from Rome. Okay?”

  D’Intino’s eyes opened wide. “All of them?”

  “Don’t you feel up to it? Would you rather I left this very important and grueling task to Caterina?”

  D’Intino glared at the deputy inspector with hatred and, stung in his pride, almost snapped to attention. “I couldn’t let that happen, Dotto’! We started the job, now we’re going to finish it!” And he turned on his heel with a smart about-face and left the office.

  “Don’t you have any more useful work for them to do?” asked Caterina.

  “No. Plus what do you know? It might turn out to be very useful!”

  “You asked me for Amelia Abela’s address in Aosta.”

  “That’s right, the address where she lives, not the one where she receives clients.”

  Caterina looked at him, slightly bewildered. “What do you know about where she receives clients?”

  “I’m a policeman, Caterì, and there are certain things that policemen just know.”

  “Then why don’t you know where she lives and you have to ask me for it?”

  Rocco threw both arms wide.

  “Huh . . . anyway, Amelia Abela lives on Via Laurent Cerise, right behind the courthouse.”

  “I’m going to go take a look at her apartment.”

  AMELIA LIVED ON THE FOURTH FLOOR OF AN APARTMENT house on Via Laurent Cerise, right where the police chief had found a place for him to live, at least in theory. Rocco had already prepared his Swiss Army knife and his credit card to open the door, but a man in his early sixties came to his aid. He was the building’s doorman, and at the sight of that badge and ID from police headquarters, he’d hurried to get the extra keys to the apartment. “She’s a good girl,” he’d told the deputy chief, unlocking the door, which had been triple-locked. “She works for a construction company . . . Why on earth do the police need to come take a look at where she lives?”

  Rocco laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Your name is Paolo, right?”

  “Paolo Chinoux,” the doorman proudly stated.

  “Well, Signor Chinoux, I’m afraid that somebody’s trying to get Amelia into trouble. And I’ll need a few documents to get her off the hook.”

  Paolo shook his head. “Eh, I hear you. These days, with the public works contracts and all these other stories we hear, you need to keep your eyes wide-open.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Schiavone entered the apartment. The first thing that struck him was the extremely modern furniture and decorations. The rather spacious living room was lit by two windows overlooking the street. All the furniture was upholstered in light-colored leather, the same shade as the walls. The scent of tuberose flowers dominated over all else. “You can go, Paolo. I’ll alert you as soon as I’m done.”

  Signor Chinoux backed out of the apartment like an English butler, shutting the door behind him. The policeman gazed around the place with a sinking heart. There were dozens of places to look—who could say how long this was going to take? For starters, he checked to make sure there wasn’t a safe installed in one of the walls. He looked behind the paintings, in the bedroom, in the built-in armoires. He checked the bathroom and the kitchen. He even checked all the wall switches, well aware that the latest models of safes were built to mimic in every detail those switch panels. The whole search took more than half an hour. He took off his loden overcoat, tossed it onto the sofa, and got ready to look in all the drawers. He started in the bedroom. And this time his lucky star gave him a hand. In the nightstand, next to a little jewelry box, he found a small picture album with a leather cover. The third picture put a smile of joy on his face. He slowly drew it out of its plastic holder and slid it into his pocket. That piece of evidence would be more than enough.

  “All done, Signor Paolo,” he said as he walked out the apartment building’s front door.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I sure did! Amelia is safe and sound!”

  He was tempted to add, “. . . and locked up tight in a prison cell,” but he decided that wouldn’t help matters.

  HE SAT WAITING FOR AMELIA IN THE VISITING ROOM IN THE Aosta prison, a room that Schiavone knew well. A damp patch of discoloration in every corner, a plastic chair, a flaking window up quite high,
mold-green walls. He was starting to be heartily sick of prisons. He leaned back, with his legs stretched out, and didn’t move when Amelia Abela entered the room. She was wearing a pink tracksuit with a Swarovski rabbit design on the front. Pink running shoes without laces, her hair loose, and her eyes highlighted with an application of eye shadow, also pink. “Well, well, we meet again,” she said, without the shadow of a smile. She sat down. The scent of tuberose assailed Rocco’s nostrils.

  “How are you, Signorina Abela?”

  The woman laughed. “So we’re back on formal, official terms?”

  “How are you, Amelia?”

  “Quite shitty, thanks. Now then, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon make this a quick chat, I’m not very interested in spending time with you.”

  “Why?” asked Rocco, looking at her.

  “Because you’re not very pleasant company.”

  “No, what I was asking was, why did you get involved in the plot to eliminate Cuntrera?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What a pain in the ass,” Rocco huffed. “It’s always the same old tune. Come on, Amelia, your brother is in Varallo prison, and he’s been singing like a bird to the magistrates for the past hour and a half. All I want to know is why on earth you chose to get involved.”

  Amelia scrutinized Rocco before answering. “I don’t believe you.”

  “My ass, you don’t believe me.” He pulled a cigarette out of his pack and lit it.

  “So smoking is allowed in here?” the woman asked.

  “It is for me. But not for you.” And he took a long generous puff. “Don’t make me drag out the old standby line of how, if you cooperate, they’ll go easier on you, but the fact is: if you cooperate, they’ll go easier on you. You didn’t know Mimmo Cuntrera, so why did you drag your brother into it? For money, I’d have to guess . . . The people who paid you are behind bars just like you are, and it’s only a matter of time before they talk. You see? Aside from Cremonesi, who’s used to being in jail, they don’t have the slightest idea. Doctors, bank directors, architects, half-assed politicians. Prison’s going to have a bad effect on them all. All I can tell you is this: beat them to the punch. You could get off easy if you admit that all you did was put them in touch with your brother.”