Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Giorgio Pisanelli, along with Ottavia Calabrese, was one of the few survivors of the arrests and early retirements that had come on the heels of the scandal, and he was especially sensitive to the matter: if things went south, he’d feel responsible for it, in spite of the fact that he, like his female colleague, had had nothing to do with that miserable chapter in the precinct’s history.

  Aragona cut him off, making a show of his insufferable optimism: “Maybe it’s just a matter of clearing out stacks of old documents, don’t you think? They wouldn’t dream of closing us down: without us, without the new Bastards of Pizzofalcone, who would they gossip about in the other barracks?”

  Pisanelli whipped around and glared at him. Generally speaking, he was the very picture of tranquility, but the sound of that nickname, the Bastards, made his blood boil: “Aragona, I’ve told you a thousand times: you don’t know as much as you think you do. They broke the law, and they’ll pay the price, but the people in the quarter, who wouldn’t have any protection from the criminal element if we weren’t here, aren’t to blame for that. We need to keep the lights burning in here and clean up the precinct’s image, we’re capable of doing it, so—”

  Romano interrupted him, bitterly: “Sure, nice cleanup. You know they just sent us in to finish this place off, don’t you? Remember, every one of us has a blot on their record. Which means we’re all likely to pull some other boneheaded move. Just forget about it, go on.”

  Palma took the reins: “You’re all complaining pointlessly. Worse than pointlessly. All we need to do is go back through the old cold cases, nothing more than that. It’s a project that we’ll set aside, obviously, as soon as anything new comes up. All right then, Giorgio, you coordinate with Aragona and Romano to get out the old files and start going through them—”

  The sound of the phone ringing cut him off. As always, it was Ottavia who answered, and after a brief exchange, she hung up and said: “That was the switchboard from police headquarters. They just received a call, and apparently something serious has happened at number 32 Vico Secondo Egiziaca, just a short walk from here.”

  Lojacono had already stood up from his desk and was putting on his coat.

  “I’ll go.”

  Palma nodded and added: “That’s fine. Di Nardo, you go with him. You can get a little fresh air for your handgun.”

  III

  The minute Lojacono and Di Nardo had walked out the door and Palma had gone back into his office, Romano slammed a fist down on his desk.

  “Dammit. They get to do the real work, and we’re just sitting at our desks like a bunch of accountants.”

  Ottavia, who had practically leapt out of her chair at the unexpected noise, said: “Come on, Francesco, the commissario would never play favorites and—”

  Aragona interrupted her: “No, no, little mother, you’re always justifying anything that your Signor Commissario does. But the Incredible Hulk over here has a point, anytime there’s anything important going on, Palma sends the Chinaman; and as far as that goes, Calamity Jane enjoys special treatment too. I’d like to know how we’re supposed to get promotions by writing up reports on cases dating back a century that never got wrapped up because your partners on the force were too busy dealing drugs.”

  Pisanelli glared at him grimly: “Aragona, since I’m supervising this project, I’m sorely tempted to assign you some dusty case file that hasn’t seen the light of day in a good solid decade. What do you say to that?”

  Ottavia Calabrese tried to soften the tone: “Listen, all of you, I’m sure that the commissario isn’t playing favorites at all. It’s just that Lojacono has the most experience. He proved he knew what he was doing with both the Crocodile case, when he was still back at the San Gaetano police station, and the death of the notary’s wife. Come to think of it, Palma assigned you to work alongside him, Marco, so—”

  Romano was having none of it: “All I see happening is that Lojacono is getting more and more experience and the rest of us never see the light of day. I’m going in to see Palma, and I’m going to ask him if—”

  The sound of a cough from the door to the room put an end to the argument. Everyone swung around. Standing at the door was a middle-aged lady, rather nicely dressed, who was waiting for someone to notice her presence.

  “Excuse me, Signora, can I help you?”

  In response to Ottavia’s invitation, the woman took a step forward and entered the office, uneasily. From the ink spots on her hands, which anxiously clutched at the handles of her handbag, Pisanelli deduced that she must be a schoolteacher. He also noticed her rotund physique and her diminutive stature, only slightly elevated by a pair of low-heeled shoes.

  “Yes. I would . . . I’d like to file a criminal complaint. Or, rather, I should say: I’d like to . . . make a report, that’s better, I think. A report.”

  Romano stood up: he had no intention of letting the second opportunity of the day to work on a real-life case instead of a pile of old documents slip through his hands.

  “You can tell me all about it, Signora. I’m Officer Francesco Romano, warrant officer.”

  She flashed a strained smile which, nonetheless, did make her look a little younger.

  “Buongiorno, I’m Professoressa Emilia Macchiaroli. I’m a teacher at the Sergio Corazzini Middle School, not far from here. Can I . . . could we speak here?”

  “Why, of course, Professoressa. We’re all colleagues here.”

  The woman looked around and ran her tongue over her lips, still clearly ill at ease.

  “Well, you see, I don’t even know if I did the right thing. I thought it was the right thing to report . . . Or, I don’t know if I should say, report this matter . . . I tried to persuade the mother to . . . but for some reason, she just wouldn’t. Not that that’s uncommon, for a mother it’s hard to believe such a thing, and of course the girl’s an only child, which as you know only makes it worse. On the other hand, I said to myself, what if it turns out to be true? There are lunatics, attention-seekers, make no mistake, with all the filth people see on TV, but then one time out of a hundred, it might actually turn out to be true. And then, certainly, we all know about the boy who cries wolf, just for fun, and the one time that there really is a wolf, no one believes him. Not that I’m an alarmist, in any way, shape, or form, but then you can’t just let things slide without speaking up. Don’t you agree?”

  Aragona stared at her, openmouthed. Pisanelli concealed his face behind a police report. Ottavia struggled to focus on her computer screen. Romano wondered to himself whether the woman really expected an answer. Since in fact she seemed to, he decided to stick to generalities: “Well, of course. And to be specific, Professoressa, exactly what would we be talking about here?”

  “Ah, sex abuse, of course. You see, I teach Italian Literature. To tell the truth, they have different names for the subjects these day, but those of us who went to school in the old days tend to stick to tradition, am I right? That is, it’s really all a question of imprinting: if I get used to a certain terminology when I’m young, then it stands to reason—”

  Aragona couldn’t help but weigh in: “Please, please, Professore’, try to stick to to the subject. Otherwise, our colleague can’t make heads or tails of it all, and neither can any of us. And if we can’t understand, we can’t very well help you either.”

  Professoressa Macchiaroli blinked rapidly, as if astonished to have been interrupted: “Why, of course, and that’s what I’m doing, I’m explaining, aren’t I? Let me say it again, I teach Italian Literature, which means I’m basically the homeroom teacher for the whole class. Naturally, the kids write essays and papers, they do research projects, and I read what they write. Of course, they usually write to show off what they’ve learned: Literature, History, Elements of . . . ”

  Aragona rose to his feet: “Professore’, if you teach the kids the way you come in here to lay out your situ
ation, I can hardly be surprised that the levels of educational achievement are plunging in this country. Let me implore you, could you just tell us why you’ve come in today?”

  With a glance that by rights ought to have incinerated Corporal Aragona, Romano tried to set things right: “Professoressa, what we’re trying to understand is whether you are here to file a criminal complaint.”

  “No, officer, not a complaint. I believe that a complaint implies the outright certainty that a crime has taken place: and I can’t be certain of that fact, nor is there any way for me to be. All the same, I do believe that one of my female students is being sexually abused. And if I want to have a clear conscience, then I have no alternative but to inform you to that effect.”

  Silence descended over the room. Palma appeared in his office door, his curiosity piqued by the conversation, and asked: “How old is this student of yours? And who do you think is molesting her?”

  The woman turned to face the commissario, leveling her calm pale blue eyes in his direction.

  “She’s twelve. Martina Parise, Class 2B. And the abuser is her father.”

  IV

  Vico Secondo Egiziaca was, in fact, just a short distance from the police station. It took less than three minutes for Lojacono and Di Nardo to walk over there, hugging the walls to ward off the chill in the air, overcoat collars turned up, eyes narrowed to defend against the cutting wind, breath billowing out in clouds of vapor.

  Alex inhaled deeply.

  “What can I say, Lojacono, I just like the cold. If you want to warm up, all you need is to get out and move a little. Whereas when it’s hot out, there’s nothing you can do: you can strip down to your underwear, but it’s hot all the same, so there’s nothing to be done but shut the windows and turn on the air conditioner, and everybody knows how bad that is for you.”

  “I don’t see what there is to like about a wind that’s strong enough to tear your ears off. Di Nardo, you’re just trying to provoke me. When it’s cold out where I come from, it’s the same temperature as when it’s hot out here. It’s like Lapland this morning. Getting out from under the blankets was straight-up trauma. Well, here we are.”

  It hadn’t been necessary to look for the street number: outside one of the apartment house doors stood a squad car with its emergency lights flashing, and next to the car a young man in uniform hopping from foot to foot to keep from freezing.

  Lojacono walked over to him: “We’re from the Pizzofalcone police precinct.”

  The young man in uniform tilted his head in the direction of the stairs, while cupping both hands in front of his mouth: “Look who finally decided to show. Ciccolletti, police headquarters. Upstairs. Third floor. Guy and a girl. No doorman, just in case you thought of looking for one. My partner’s upstairs, expecting you. We put in a call for forensics, by the way.”

  His excessively casual manner rubbed Lojacono the wrong way; the Bastards of Pizzofalcone, an indelible stain of infamy. Staring into the officer’s eyes, he hissed: “Ciccoletti, you’re speaking to a lieutenant. So get your fucking hands away from your mouth and stand still and at attention, or I’ll warm you up with a hail of fists. You read me?”

  “Sorry, lieutenant. It’s just that it’s so damned cold this morning, and the wind is blasting down here. We’ve been waiting for you, we got here first thing, and—”

  Lojacono turned away and strode through the front door. Alex followed him, but only after giving the uniformed officer a look that betrayed a blend of sympathy and further reproof.

  The apartment building, like nearly all the other buildings in the neighborhood, had seen better days. It was an old building, subject to strict zoning requirements, and therefore intact in its crumbling façade while at the same time victim to horrible attempts at modernization of the interiors. As they climbed the stairs, Lojacono noticed the flaking walls, the ceramic tiles that had been replaced by other tiles of an entirely different color, the occasional crack that had been repaired amateurishly with raw mortar, unplastered and unpainted. The wooden apartment doors were all different, and here and there anodyzed aluminum front doors with several doorbells hinted at the subdivision of old apartments that had once been much larger and occupied by a single family. That description applied to the doorway on the third floor where they were headed. The main doorway led into a sort of entryway flanked by two interior front doors, at the moment both open.

  Waiting for them on the landing was a second uniformed officer. He was older than the one waiting down in the street, and perhaps that was why he took a more formal attitude. He raised his hand to his visor.

  “Good morning, my name’s Stanzione. Are you the officers from Pizzofalcone? They alerted me by radio.”

  Alex nodded: “Right, that’s us. I’m Officer Di Nardo, he’s Lieutenant Lojacono. What can you tell us?”

  The man turned and spoke directly to Lojacono. Certainly, in part because of his rank. But also because he’s a man, Alex decided resentfully.

  “The murder took place here, in the apartment on your right. Two kids, a man and a woman: she’s on the bed, he’s sitting at the desk in the next room.”

  Alex insisted, in a flat tone: “Who found the bodies?”

  Hesitantly, Stanzione replied to Lojacono again, as if the lieutenant were some sort of ventriloquist and Di Nardo nothing but his puppet: “One of the young man’s colleagues, and he’s pretty upset. He’s in the neighbors’ apartment . . . two . . . two people who live next door. They made him an espresso, the lucky guy.”

  Without taking his hands out of the pockets of his overcoat, Lojacono examined first the aluminum door facing the landing and then the door that the uniformed officer was pointing to; no sign of breaking and entering in either case. He took a step into the apartment: the interior was illuminated by the light coming in from the window of one of the bedrooms and from a naked lightbulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling.

  Alex, beating the lieutenant to the question, asked Stanzione: “Did you turn on the light?”

  “No, why would I? I didn’t touch a thing. I walked in, looked around, and left. I’m not some green rookie, you know.”

  Lojacono concealed a half smile, picking up on Di Nardo’s unmistakable and justifiable hostility, and then took the opportunity to ask: “What about the doors, how were they when you arrived? Open, ajar, shut . . . ”

  “Open, lieutenant, both of them. And so was the door to the other apartment.”

  Alex had stepped into the first room, lit up by the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Lojacono caught up with her and found her standing by the bed, which filled almost the whole room.

  Sprawled on her back on the mattress was a young woman, her legs spread slightly. She was wearing an open jacket and a torn blouse, which partly left her flesh uncovered. She wore no bra. A very skimpy pair of panties were rolled down to the height of her left knee. A pair of jeans lay on the floor.

  Though gray and in disarray, the young woman’s body was very beautiful.

  Lojacono leaned over to observe more closely: the face was swollen around the nose and mouth; on the neck there were a couple of reddish stripes. When he turned to look at his partner, he saw that she was staring at something on the wall. In a photograph blown up to large scale, the victim was smiling happily in bright sunlight, wearing a swimsuit, with a clear blue sea stretching out behind her. The contrast was horrifying and grim: a photograph, an inanimate object, full of life; a body, made of flesh and blood, drained of life.

  The lieutenant walked out of the room, leaving Alex frozen to the spot.

  Opening onto the tiny front hallway was another door that led to a larger room, at the center of which was a second corpse, slumped over a desk. A man, seated. His torso was pitched forward, one arm dangling loose, while his head and the other hand, still gripping a pen, rested on the desktop.

  Lojacono stepped closer, taking care wh
ere he put his feet. The corpse was displaying the nape of its neck to him. The shirt collar had turned dark, drenched in blood as it was; the cranium presented a deep depression at the base. The man’s clothing must have soaked up all the blood, because there wasn’t a spot of it on the floor.

  The policeman circled around the desk and found himself face-to-face with the victim. The dead man was young, not much older than twenty, maybe in his mid-twenties. Death had stamped an odd expression on his face, something approaching a taut, strained smile, which revealed his upper teeth; his eyes were partway open and staring into the empty air. There were no signs of a struggle, he must have been caught off guard.

  In the front hall, the lieutenant found Alex squatting down to look at something on the floor, beneath a small side table. The woman looked up and pointed downward.

  “What would you say that is?”

  Lojacono crouched down beside her.

  “It looks like a cell phone with a pair of earbuds. Hard to see clearly.”

  Alex started to extend her hand, but Lojacono stopped her: “Leave everything where it is for now. The forensics squad will be here any minute, and we can let them get it out. That’s when we can examine closely. For now, let’s go talk to the people who found them.”

  V

  Professoressa Macchiaroli seemed to have experienced a stunning transformation, which might have been a result, mused Palma, of her growing confidence that she had done the right thing by speaking to them. The commissario had thanked her and told her she could go, assuring her that they would check out her suspicions, with the greatest possible discretion, naturally. Her only reply came in an utterly chilly tone, and as she spoke, she kept her tight grip on the handles of her handbag, which she had never once released: “Don’t you worry about that, Commissario. I’m willing to take full responsibility, I’m certainly not afraid to have anyone know that I took steps when I learned that one of my female students was ill at ease. You should be discreet only if it serves a good purpose, to gather information: often, when talking to strangers, young people tend to clam up, and you can’t get another word out of them. It’s happened to us other times, you can’t get them to talk no matter how hard you try. But if you need me, you can always find me at school.”