Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  “It’s a promise. Well, then, ciao,” he said, informally.

  “Ciao,” she said, just as informally, and quite unexpectedly.

  Then she turned and hurried out the door.

  XIX

  As if it were possible, the following morning seemed to be even colder than the preceding day.

  On the news broadcasts, reports on weather conditions led the lineup. Experts maintained that a cold snap of this intensity hadn’t been seen in who knows how many years. Opinion writers, too, hastened to put in their two cents on the subject, which happened to be the chief topic of conversation in public establishments, on the subways, and in the city’s homes. Everyone was asking the same question: How long will this last?

  And yet, if you stopped to think about it, the problem didn’t really concern those who talked about it from the comfort and warmth of the indoors, well protected from the brutal north wind that tore the breath from your lungs and interrupted your speech. It concerned the homeless, the street vendors, the city’s poor. In the last few nights, five people had died of exposure, either in gallerias, doorways, or unheated lobbies. Volunteers were doing their best to reach out, but there was only so much they could do.

  The truth was, Lojacono told Alex, that the city wasn’t built to ward off the cold. It wasn’t used to it. Windows didn’t close tight, and there were often drafts, the window and door frames weren’t designed to provide a seal against escaping heat and intruding wind, the heating systems worked poorly if at all. Large facilities designed for public use, such as offices, stations, and bus terminals, weren’t even heated. The cold didn’t have to be asked twice and it wormed its way in through any of the hundred thousand gaps left unguarded due to the familiarity with heat, like so many gaps in a defensive fortification.

  Immediately after the news about the cold snap, and before the news reports on domestic and international politics, including the various wars being waged around the world, the mass media focused on the murder on Vico Secondo Egiziaca. It seemed that there was no single piece of crime news in the country to rival it in gravity and horror, nothing worse than the story of the two young Calabrian siblings murdered with such savagery in the big city.

  The two investigators had spent part of the morning filling in, with Ottavia’s help, the array of information that had been gathered concerning Grazia Varricchio’s father and her boyfriend.

  The father seemed to have vanished into thin air. He had certainly taken the bus to the train station, but after that all traces of him had been lost. Most likely he had caught a train from there, but there could be no certainty even about that, because no one at the ticket windows remembered a traveler who matched his description: stocky, with thinning hair that was still dark, penetrating eyes that were also dark.

  The friend who’d been the last to talk to him, the one he’d told that he was planning to go to the city to bring his daughter home, was a neighbor, he too a field hand, but retired now. He had answered the carabinieri’s questions monosyllabically, with the customary mistrust shown by locals toward law enforcement of any kind. It was clear he was reluctant to get Cosimo in trouble, but above all it was himself he didn’t want to get in trouble. Better to keep mum, or say no more than what was strictly necessary.

  A little more information had emerged concerning Domenico Foti, AKA Nick Trash. A restless young man, according to one of his old schoolteachers, but no worse than any of the other students. Caught with a bag of grass in his pocket at age sixteen, he had promised not to do it again and had been punished with a good sharp smack to the nape of the neck; otherwise, a few late-night pranks in the sleepy weekends of Roccapriora. His father was dead, he had four elder brothers who had left for various parts of Italy in search of work, and back in his hometown an elderly mother and a married sister, whom he called once a week. An abiding love of the guitar. He carried his own guitar with him everywhere he went, whence the nickname of Nick la Chitarra, or Nick Guitar, which had then been replaced by ’o Parruccone, or Bigwig, when he had grown his hair out in a spectacular set of rasta dreadlocks—dreadlocks that he was said to be sporting still. His favorite style of music was reggae, but he was happy to sing anything, as long as they let him sing.

  The photographs on social media showed a handsome young man with a sad smile. In a couple of pictures, he appeared with Grazia, who had the natural gift of seeming to be posing even when she wasn’t.

  The right time rolled around to find him in the pub where he worked. Alex and Lojacono headed out, facing up to the wind that kept the sky clear and the air crystalline, but also swept away any warmth the sunlight might afford, no matter how brightly it shone.

  The lieutenant wondered how low the temperature would drop that night, and he started worrying about Marinella, who tended, like all girls her age, to underestimate the cold when it came to choosing what clothes to wear. He was tempted to call her; he wanted to make sure that she had worn a woolen scarf to school that morning. But then he realized that Alex would overhear, and in any case his daughter wouldn’t answer his call, not in the presence of her classmates.

  They were in luck: the staff at Marienplatz were already setting up for the evening. They knocked at the glass door. A slovenly young woman, snapping a mouthful of gum, came to the door. She said that they were closed, and in any case they didn’t serve lunch.

  “We’re not here to eat,” Alex replied, brusquely. “We’re from the Pizzofalcone police precinct, and we’re looking for Signor Domenico Foti.”

  That didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the young woman. She looked the two cops up and down and said: “Who is that supposed to be? No one here goes by Signore, and I don’t know anyone named Domenico Foti.”

  Lojacono took a deep breath.

  “Listen, Signorina, it’s cold outside. Very cold. Are you going to let us in or do we need to call reinforcements and maybe shut down your establishment for three or four months?”

  The girl took a step back. Inside it was pretty comfortable, even if there was an overpowering smell of cleaning fluids. Lojacono counted at least three young people busy cleaning up; a bucket and a brush left untended in a corner suggested that the gum-chewing young woman was a member of the party, too.

  “All right, then, like I was saying, we’re looking for a person who we’re told works in this place, a certain Domenico Foti.”

  “And like I was explaining, I have no idea who that would be. We all know each other here, more or less, but what with shifts and rotations, there must be thirty of us or so, including cooks and bartenders. It’s not like we introduce ourselves by name and surname.”

  “So, we understand he’s a reasonably tall guy, with rasta dreadlocks,” Alex explained. “A genuine mountain of dreads, unless he decided to cut his hair recently.”

  A glimmer appeared in the young woman’s eyes.

  “Ah, Nick. I always assumed his real name was Nicola, not Domenico. You’re in luck, he’s working today’s shift; he was supposed to be here already, he ought to arrive any minute. Did he get up to something? Did he beat her up again?”

  Both Lojacono’s and Di Nardo’s antennae began to quiver. The lieutenant realized that he needed to move very cautiously at this point.

  “Beat her up? He might have. Just when was the last time that it happened, exactly?”

  The young woman smiled, as if she were remembering something funny.

  “Mamma mia, he gave her a tremendous smack! It was a couple of evenings back, on the weekend. It’s pure bedlam here, you know? A real mess. Anyway, in comes this girl, just gorgeous: every guy in the place had his eyes popping out of his head. To get anyone to pay attention, certain nights, you either need a girl like her or an atomic bomb.”

  Alex tried to cut to the chase.

  “So Nick was here? What was he doing?”

  The young woman looked at her as if she were an idiot.
<
br />   “What do you mean, what was he doing? He was serving tables. Without a second to catch his breath. And while he’s working, this girl shows up in five-inch heels, she looked like a movie star, and she goes straight over to him; any minute now, the whole room was about to get to its feet and give her a standing ovation. Instead, Nick pretended not to notice her. I was just a few feet away. It was absurd: he went on working as if she didn’t even exist.”

  Lojacono encouraged the young woman in her evident eagerness to recount what had happened.

  “Interesting, please continue.”

  “She grabbed him by the arm and gave him a shove; he came close to dropping the trayful of glasses he was carrying. At that point Nick let fly with an openhanded slap to her face: whack! You could hear the noise of it ten feet away, even with the music they play at top volume around here, so that we can’t hear a thing by the time we leave at the end of our shifts. The girl put her hand to her cheek and said: You’re a piece of shit. I heard her clear as a bell. Of course, everyone in the place turned away and pretended not to notice.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then Nick set down the tray, very calmly, and said to me: Tatiana, fill in for me here. And he dragged her outside. It was like watching a live telenovela, is what it was like.”

  “And how did it end?” Alex asked.

  Tatiana shrugged her shoulders, without once stopping her openmouthed chomping on that cud of pink gum.

  “How am I supposed to know? After about fifteen minutes he came back in with a scowl on his face and went back to work. We never saw the girl in here again.”

  “And you didn’t ask him anything? Like, I don’t know, who she was, or—”

  “What, are you kidding? I mind my own business, and if you don’t, you won’t last long in this place, trust me. Ah, here he is now. Nick, these two wanted to talk to you.”

  XX

  A tall young man with dreadlocks had just appeared in the front door of Marienplatz. He hesitated, as if he’d just resisted the temptation to turn on his heels and stride away. Then he met Lojacono’s eyes and walked over.

  “Who are you?”

  Alex and Lojacono turned toward the allegedly discreet Tatiana who, even though she’d declared her iron determination to mind her own business, showed no sign of picking up bucket and brush and getting back to work. Perhaps, with the story she’d told, she was convinced she’d now earned the right to be a spectator during the interview.

  “Domenico Foti, I imagine,” the lieutenant began. “I’m Lojacono and this is Di Nardo, we’re from the Pizzofalcone police precinct. We need to speak with you, sir. Can we move somewhere a little quieter?”

  The young man’s eyes darted from one officer to the other, as if trying to gauge their intentions. At last he nodded and walked out the door, to Tatiana’s unmistakable disappointment, as she turned back to her drudgework.

  Across from the pub’s entrance was a small café. They sat down and Lojacono ordered a couple of espressos. Nick shook his head no when the policeman asked if he wanted anything.

  The lieutenant scrutinized the young man and decided to probe a little.

  “Signor Foti, do you have any idea why we’re here?”

  “No, none at all.”

  Was he faking it? Even if he had nothing to do with the murder, could he really not have heard a thing, not have seen the evening news or heard anyone chatting on the street?

  “We understand that you’ve been in contact with Grazia Varricchio, who lives on Vico Secondo Egiziaca. Is that right?”

  “What do you mean, in contact? She’s my girlfriend. Why?”

  “Is it true that the two of you quarreled recently?” Alex butted in.

  “Ah, so it’s about that. Tatiana couldn’t wait to tell someone, could she? It was just an argument, and maybe it got a little bit out of hand, but an argument all the same. I don’t know why you would—”

  Lojacono interrupted him.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “It would . . . would have been the evening she came here. It was Saturday night. After we fight, she has to simmer down a little bit, you understand? I just wait, and in the end she calls me up and—”

  Alex persisted.

  “But you haven’t talked since then? You haven’t gone by to see her, or—”

  Nick jumped to his feet.

  “Listen, do you want to tell me what the problem is? If she came in with a complaint about me smacking her, well, after we left the place she punched me and scratched me, just look at this.” And he pointed to red marks on his right forearm.

  Lojacono stood up and put a hand on his shoulder, gesturing for him to sit down again.

  “I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you, Signor Foti. Grazia and her brother were found dead in their apartment yesterday morning. They were killed.”

  Right then and there, the young man’s expression remained unchanged. Then a look of astonishment swept over his face. He even tried to put on a very strained shadow of a smile, almost as if he were certain that Lojacono was making some sort of strange, incomprehensible joke.

  He tried to speak but couldn’t do it. He stared at Alex, as if pleading for help. This isn’t something you joke about, ma’am, can’t you explain to this man that he needs to tell me right away that it isn’t true? I get it, you’re a couple of friends of Grazia’s, or maybe of her brother’s, and now she’s going to jump out of the woodwork and laugh at me: There, you see how you’d feel, if you lost me forever?

  Forever.

  Lojacono and Alex waited, in silence. How they loathed that aspect of the policeman’s job: bringing news of someone’s death. Their faces were the ones that would appear before Domenico Foti’s eyes every time he thought back to that moment.

  Unless he was just acting.

  Unless he had been the one who snuffed out two young lives on Vico Secondo Egiziaca.

  Unless the scratches that he was still pointing to, as if paralyzed, had been the result of the last, dying, desperate attempt of the woman he had loved to defend herself.

  Nick’s lower lip began to quaver, and his hands—which he had placed on the table—started shaking too.

  “How . . . how did it happen? What do you mean, killed? An accident? The water heater, the kerosene stove . . . it’s cold out, she hated the cold. She was always complaining about the cold. What do you mean, killed?”

  Lojacono sighed. He just hoped this wasn’t all an act, his grief seemed so genuine.

  “No, it wasn’t an accident. We can’t go into the details, but this was murder. A double homicide.”

  Nick squinted.

  “The father. The father. Have you tried talking to the father?”

  “No, we still haven’t been able to track him down.”

  “She . . . was afraid of him. She thought he might come here, to this city, to take her home. He had called her, he’d threatened her. He . . . do you know about him? He was in prison, he killed a man.”

  “Signor Foti, where were you on the night between yesterday and the day before?”

  The question had been asked by Alex in a courteous tone of voice, but it exploded like a bomb, triggering a reaction in the young man of absolute and unmitigated surprise, as if someone had just asked him to lay out the principles underlying the science of quantum physics.

  He opened both eyes wide and raised one hand to his chest.

  “Where was I? Wait, do you think that . . . We just had a spat, we’d argued like that a million times, at least. She was the love of my life, I adored her. I never would have hurt her, never.”

  Lojacono decided to reassure him. Whether he was innocent or guilty, this wasn’t the moment to lean in hard.

  “Please try to understand, it’s police procedure. You were seen fighting just two days earlier, and
we are required to follow every lead. It doesn’t mean that we suspect you or anyone else. It’s too early for that. But we do need to get a complete overview of the situation. I would imagine that it’s in your interest as well as ours to help us break this case as quickly as we can.”

  Foti continued staring at them as if in the throes of a hallucination. He seemed to have plunged into some terrible nightmare and was just hoping to wake up from one moment to the next. He drew a deep breath.

  “I was at home, sleeping. Which is what I’m always doing, when I’m not either working or playing music. Because I play the guitar and I sing, and every so often I even manage to get paid for it. That’s why I came to this city, to see if I could get anyone to notice me. And she, Grazia, came here on my account. Oh my God.”

  Alex and Lojacono were all too familiar with that mental process whereby, step by step, as the mind linked events together, the scenario took on a new form and the sense of guilt was reapportioned. If I had never come here for my fucking stupid music career, the young man was thinking, Grazia would still be alive.

  Unless, of course, all that was just part of his act.

  “Where do you live? Could someone have . . . ”

  “No. No one could have. I live all alone in a basement studio apartment in the Spanish Quarter. On Via Speranzella, 18. Since I get home late at night, I needed a place with a separate entrance, as well as a place that costs next to nothing. I think rats would turn their noses up at the place, but I don’t care. Anyway, I went to sleep at ten and woke up very late the next morning. Since the club was closed that day, I didn’t have to go to work.”

  Which meant, no alibi. No witness. Lojacono decided to change the subject.

  “What was your relationship with Grazia’s brother like? Were you friends?”

  Nick couldn’t seem to make his way back into the territory of reality. He was in a state of shock.

  “Who, Biagio? We knew each other from town; back there, everyone knows everyone. But when Grazia and I . . . when we started dating, he had already left. We’d run into each other, from time to time, we’d say hello, but he was a very private guy, closed to the world. He loved his sister very much, and that was something we had in common. I don’t know, he might not have cared much for me. I think he would have preferred someone with a job in a bank, or even better, a university professor. But instead Grazia had fallen in love with me.”