He started crying. Then he began to retch, and Lojacono was afraid he was about to vomit on the floor, after which his shoulders began to shake as his eyes filled with tears and his face contracted at regular intervals into a grimace of grief.
He went on talking through his sobs.
“Not long ago, we spent an evening together, the three of us, at their house. We ate dinner, we had fun. Biagio asked me about my plans for the future. He even said that, if I really wanted to cut a record, maybe he could help me out with the money. We were very different, but out of love for Grazia, who could say, maybe we could even have become friends. And now . . . him, too. God, God . . . What am I going to do now? Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
Alex and Lojacono exchanged a glance.
There was no answer to that question.
XXI
Sitting in a car parked in front of the entrance to a bank, like a couple of armed robbers in a poorly made American film from the Seventies; only it was never cold in the movies.
Romano realized that he had actually uttered those thoughts under his breath when he heard Aragona’s tart retort.
“I don’t understand what you all have against American movies from the Seventies and Eighties. That was a golden age, with fantastic actors playing magnificent policemen, not the way it is nowadays when they depict us all like the Bastards of Pizzofalcone, the real ones, a bunch of corrupt cokehounds. Back then the guardians of law and order were heroes who—”
Romano stopped him.
“Arago’, you know the routine where a guy says: Oh, things could be worse, it could be raining, and then it starts raining? That’s exactly what I was thinking just now: Things could be worse, Aragona could start talking. And sure enough, you started talking, right on cue. I already feel like an idiot sitting here waiting for I don’t know what. All that was missing was for you to give me a lecture on film history.”
“I just wanted to make my point. A cultural contribution, it’s not like we have some sort of professional obligation to profess utter ignorance. And anyway, we agreed to come here and see this guy in person. To figure out whether we should proceed.”
“And how are we supposed to deduce whether or not he’s a goddamned pervert, from the color of his eyes? Do you think that people like that have a special complexion, or they wander around in some theatrical costume and makeup?”
Aragona made a face.
“No, but if you ask me, if his face doesn’t tell us anything in particular, then there’s no point continuing with the investigation. Maybe later on we can try again with the mother, maybe we can convince her to open up a little bit, otherwise we’ll have to go back to the school and tell them that we weren’t able to learn anything more, but that if they are willing to lodge a criminal complaint, let them go ahead, and we can hand the case over to the family court, like the commissario suggested. Isn’t that how we agreed to proceed?”
Romano kept his eyes focused on the bank door. He had a shadow of whiskers on his face and he looked as if he hadn’t slept the night before.
“The mother . . . the mother struck me as odd. As if she felt guilty, somehow. If she’d only told us that she didn’t believe it, that we had no right to put the matter in doubt, and so on and so forth, I’d have known more or less what to think. If she’d been shocked and surprised, I’d have thought something else. Instead I got the impression that she knew something, but something . . . else. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Aragona wasn’t certain he’d understood what his partner had just said.
“Well, I read what the girl wrote, and that’s all I need to make me want to know what’s going on at their house. And if I want to figure it out, I need to look this guy right in the eyes. Look out, here he comes now.”
The branch office was small and the staff—the policy of frugality when it came to resources applied to everyone—was limited to a director, a well-dressed man with salt-and-pepper hair, a little older than the others, and three clerks, two women and a man: Signor Parise, in fact, Martina’s Papà. Romano and Aragona had agreed to wait until the lunch break; there were too few customers to hope they could go in without being noticed.
That morning they’d asked Ottavia to do some searching on the internet; they’d also asked her not to utter a word to a soul, not even to Palma, because all they wanted for the moment was to get a clear and complete picture of the situation.
Ottavia, who was especially sensitive to the issue of child abuse, had agreed. After spending an hour searching the far corners of the internet, she’d nodded meaningfully in their direction.
“Boys, care to buy me an espresso? Once a day, I don’t mind being reminded of what one tastes like. The coffee that Guida inflicts on us with his terrible moka express pot is just getting worse, if that’s even possible.”
At the café, she’d pulled out a few pages she’d printed out.
“All right, then, the guy is named Sergio and he seems like the illustration you’d find in the dictionary next to the definition of ‘depressing.’ He has twenty-one friends on Facebook, which basically means not having any friends at all, in case you miss the point, all of them old classmates from his school days who basically reply in words of one syllable to his pathetic memories of the good old days. He’s a nondescript little man with photography for a hobby, an art by the way at which he doesn’t particularly excel. He does lots of portraits of his wife and daughter, who are both genuinely pretty. The wife, in particular, strikes me as far, and I mean far, above average.”
Aragona heaved a sigh.
“No doubt, a hell of a woman. I have to wonder why she ever married a guy like him.”
Ottavia ruffled through, in search of another sheet.
“Reading and interpreting a few phrases I’ve culled here and there, including poems and the words of wisdom of great philosophers, I’ve come to the conclusion that when they got together, she was just a girl, or not much older, and that she got pregnant. There’s a post in which Parise tries to strike up an exchange with an old classmate of his from the university. In it he recalls that he couldn’t attend a seminar because his daughter was sick. He was twenty-four years old, he was already behind on his exams, and he never did graduate. Now he ought to be thirty-six.”
“That explains a great deal,” Aragona replied. “Certain choices will shape the rest of your life.”
“But did anything else surface?” Romano asked. “I don’t know, pornographic pictures, maniacal phrases . . . ”
“No. All the photographs are perfectly normal. Martina with her mother, riding a bicycle, in the mountains, at the beach . . . I have to say, the girl doesn’t laugh much: but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“And what’s he like, physically?”
“I told you, nondescript. Average height, receding hairline, shabby-looking clothing. Just a face in the crowd. An everyman, really, just a cipher. See for yourself.”
She had pointed to him on one of the printouts.
And now, there he was in the flesh, Sergio Parise, walking through the cold to the delicatessen nearby, bundled up in a heavy jacket with an old-fashioned cut, his scanty hair tossed in the wind. Romano and Aragona got out of the car and started after him.
Inside the shop there was a small crowd, but Parise must have had some understanding with the proprietor, because he picked up a package wrapped in yellow paper, already there on the counter, paid the attendant, and headed off toward the bar at the end of the street. He found a small table inside, sat down, asked for half a liter of mineral water, carefully opened the package, and pulled out a baguette—a mortadella sandwich—which he bit into, ravenously.
From his vantage point, at the counter, Romano decided that this was such an ordinary man, so excessively normal, that it was actually frightening. Thirty-six years old, too old to hope for a new life, any career possibilities o
r new opportunities, but still too young to give up, to resign himself, to stop bothering to look forward, to turn inward and just wait for the end to come. A flash of self-awareness shot through his mind and a disagreeable inner voice demanded of him just what he, Romano, was still hoping for from his own life. He silenced it with annoyance and refocused his attention on the little man.
The man was dressed in a nondescript manner. An ugly jacket in some vague shade of brown, a poorly ironed causal shirt, and a garish, badly stained tie. Jeans of an unknown brand, a pair of shoes made of shiny leather with rubber soles. He had to wonder if the man’s wife, spectacular woman that she was, was embarrassed to be seen walking next to a guy like him on a Saturday night.
Aragona, staying true to form, was focusing on two young girls eating desserts and chatting. They must have been high school age, eighteen years old more or less. They were attractive and dolled up in a provocative manner; a section of tattooed flesh poked out of their low-waisted trousers, their young breasts were emphasized by a cunning push-up bra. They were giggling and mischievously trying to catch the attention of a handsome young man sitting not far away, listening to music on his earbuds and reading a book.
Romano was about to elbow his partner in the ribs, to remind him that they hadn’t come there to hook up with adolescents, when Aragona grabbed a pack of cookies from the display case and went over to Parise’s café table.
“Do you mind? Is it all right if I take a seat at your table?”
Both Romano, standing about a yard away, and Parise were startled by Aragona’s initiative. The bank clerk sat there with a mouthful of food, looking around as if to find another unoccupied table to which he could point that intrusive customer but, finding none, resigned himself to the inevitable.
“Be my guest,” he said, with his mouth full.
Aragona sat down.
“You know, as cold as it is out, it’s practically impossible to find a seat in a café anywhere. Let me just finish my pack of cookies and then I’ll get out of here; I have to be back at the office in half an hour.”
Parise nodded, continuing to chew.
“Yeah, I’ve got about a half hour left on my lunch hour too. I work at the bank on the corner. I could eat at my desk, but it’s just depressing never once to leave the office during the day.”
Aragona shot him a look of understanding.
“You can say that again. All day looking at my colleagues’ miserable mugs. I can’t stand some of them, what would it cost them to smile, right?”
Romano, who was able to follow the conversation perfectly as he sipped his espresso, made a mental note to give Aragona a good swift kick in the ass first chance he got. All the same, he couldn’t keep a faint smile of amusement from playing across his lips.
“It’s not so much my colleagues,” Parise replied, “there’s only four of us. It’s the place itself that I find depressing. A person can’t wait to get back home.”
“I get that. I’m a partner in a law office, not in this neighborhood; I was here to see a client. I’m not in such a hurry to get home, though, because I live alone. What about you? Are you married? Do you have children?”
A question tossed out at just the right moment; nothing suspicious about it. Romano had to admit: Aragona knew how to bring the conversation around to where he wanted.
“Yes. I have a daughter, she’s twelve and a half. She’s growing up, I can hardly believe it. She’ll always be my little girl, to me. My wife has a job, too, and she’s always tired at night, but family is family, you know how it is.”
Aragona snickered.
“To tell the truth, no, I don’t, but I can imagine. Personally, I prefer having my freedom. Isn’t it better to have the option to bring home a different girl every night?”
Sexually tinged exchanges between men. Romano wondered what his partner was driving at, and he noticed that every so often Aragona was shooting glances at the two high school girls, to make sure that they were still there.
“No, I don’t think so. I have everything I need at home. I just wish, let me say it again, that my wife didn’t have to work late so often. Sometimes I have to cook my own dinner. Getting home and there’s no one there to greet you, that’s depressing, let me tell you. I feel sorry for you.”
“No, no, I’m doing fine. Maybe it’s just a phase, most likely one of these days I’ll get the yearning to start a family. But didn’t you say that you had a daughter? At least, if your wife’s at work, you have her, don’t you?”
Romano held his breath. A little too personal. Maybe, at this point, the man might retort: what the hell do you care who’s at home waiting for me? He sure would have said it, if it had been him in that situation, he thought. But Parise must not have had many opportunities for conversation, because he swallowed Aragona’s bait, hook, line, and sinker.
“Yes, but lots of the time her mother takes her with her. She doesn’t want to . . . we don’t want to leave her home alone. These are strange times, people don’t feel safe in their own homes. Don’t you think?”
Aragona pretended he was chewing a cookie and muttered something.
Parise went on.
“So I often find myself all alone. My wife works in a prominent clothing shop and enjoys the proprietor’s unalloyed confidence; in fact, he often involves her even in the accounting. Sometimes she has to stay long after closing time. Let me repeat, I wish I could free her of this obligation, but she makes a lot of money, as much as I do and occasionally even more. Children are expensive, sacrifices need to be made.”
“I can imagine. So what’s your daughter like? She’s still a student, right?”
This time, Romano detected a hint of wariness in Parise’s voice.
“Of course she’s a student, she hasn’t turned thirteen yet! And I hope she’ll attend university, and that unlike me, she’ll actually get a degree. She’s a good student, her teachers are very pleased with her. Unfortunately, with the work that I do, I miss all the parent-teacher meetings at school, but my wife goes to them and hears nothing but good things. She’s a good girl, my daughter. A good girl, and a pretty one.”
Was there something else in that fatherly pride? Pretty. To talk about a little girl like that being pretty.
Aragona decided to play his last card. He stared at the derriere of one of the high school girls: they were both bobbing their heads to the beat of the music pouring out of the speakers of the café’s radio. The young man with the earbuds had never once lifted his head from the book.
“No doubt, fresh young girls are quite another matter, compared to mature women. You see those two, what a treat they are. They have asses that can do everything but talk.”
The man followed Aragona’s gaze and when he realized what he’d been looking at, he turned away all at once, with a blush.
“They can’t be sixteen yet,” he whispered, “you can’t even look at two young girls like that!”
Aragona feigned surprise.
“What are you saying, they’re eighteen if they’re a day. Plus, didn’t you see how they’re dressed? Trust me, those girls aren’t hoping for anything other than a couple of real men to ask them out.”
Parise lunged to his feet, gathering up the wrapping of the panino and sweeping the crumbs into it.
“You don’t look at little girls like that,” he said grimly. “I have a daughter of my own, or had you forgotten? You don’t look at little girls!”
And he left the premises, striding briskly.
XXII
Giorgio Pisanelli arrived at the park outside of the National Library, out of breath and running a little late. Not that he had an actual appointment, but on another couple of occasions he had missed her by a matter of minutes, and he didn’t want to let that happen again.
The only thing was that with the unholy mess attendant upon the double homicide, and the sudden burs
t of intense attention focused on the precinct, everyone had become exceedingly nervous lately. Palma was in constant contact with police headquarters, which demanded a steady flow of information on every new development, of which by the way there had so far been none; the partners from the police station referred back to him and Ottavia as they moved around the city, requesting further information about this or that; Ottavia herself, who had always been the very picture of unruffled calm, was not only working the computer but had also started making one phone call after another, and she was reaching out to him for assistance. For instance, just a short while earlier, she had asked him to check again whether Biagio Varricchio had had any special relations with anyone at the university that they didn’t know about, but it appeared that the young man, aside from a few acquaintances in the laboratory, basically socialized with no one.
He emerged from the walkway and looked around. It was cold and there was none of the colorful confusion of crowds of children. In fact, the tree-lined space around the fountain, usually populated by chatting mothers and nannies, was empty, with the exception of a couple of cats intently sparring over the narrow strip of sunlight that streaked the grass.
Pisanelli caught his breath. The veil of cold whiteness that covered the leaves and the surface of the water gave the landscape a Nordic appearance. If Santa Claus had suddenly ridden his sleigh across the sky, more than a month early, no one would have found it all that strange.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, the senior policeman noticed a movement. On one of the benches, in the shadows, a woman was seated and, with a slow and mechanical movement, was taking something out of a sack and scattering it before her, as a pair of small birds eagerly pecked.
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