“No. He never asked for money, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I would sense when he needed money and arrange to get it to him. The apartment, for instance: I let him have it years ago, when I realized that living in a pensione was forcing him to study in bed, by the dim light of a bare bulb. Or the grocery shopping, the household staples like laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies that I’d send around periodically. For his other needs, the salaries that we get here, when we get them, were more than sufficient for him. At least, until his sister arrived. But he never asked me for a cent.”
Lojacono exchanged a glance with Alex.
“Doctor, we thank you for the information that you’ve given us. If we were to need anything else—”
“He was an extraordinary young man, you know? A wonderful friend. And he would have been a great scientist, the kind that really leave their mark. My father thinks that, of the two of us, I was the more brilliant, but he is completely wrong. Biagio was a shy type, and even when he was interviewed by the universitary magazine, he was very shy, but he had remarkable abilities.”
“We’re sure that’s true, Doctor. We’re sure of it,” Alex murmured.
Renato stared at her. His eyes, behind the lenses of his glasses, were welling over with tears.
“He was my friend. I loved him very much. No one will miss him more than I will.”
XXXVII
The principal, Tiziana Trani, hadn’t expected to receive another visit from Romano and Aragona so soon. To tell the truth, she had hoped never to see them again as long as she lived, because that would mean that the ugly story of Martina Parise was a gross exaggeration.
When she found them waiting at the door to her office, accompanied by her secretary, she felt her heart lurch in her chest.
Romano greeted her.
“Please forgive us for just showing up like this, Signora, but we need to speak to you. Urgently.”
The principal studied them, clearly worried. She gestured to her secretary, who left the room, closing the door behind her.
“Then it’s true? Really? Oh, my God,” she said as soon as they were alone.
Aragona made his usual grimace and removed his eyeglasses.
“No, Signora. It’s even worse, in a certain sense. Could you summon Professoressa Macchiaroli? Maybe she ought to be present, too.”
In class 2B, a sleepy hour of Musical Education was under way. They were talking about solfège and scales, or rather, the elderly teacher was, but it was a soliloquy, while most of the students were texting each other under their desks.
The whole classroom’s interest was aroused by the arrival of Professoressa Emilia Macchiaroli, who knocked on the door, stuck her head in, and called Martina Parise’s name in the grave tone of someone reading a funeral announcement. Before leaving the room, the girl exchanged a conspiratorial glance with two female classmates seated directly behind her.
The whole way down the hallway to the principal’s office, the literature teacher never spoke to her once, and she busied herself replacing her triumphant expression with one better suited to the role of sexually molested adolescent, a grim, sorrowful look.
When she saw Romano and Aragona sitting at Principal Trani’s desk, she pretended that she was astonished. Actually, she’d never believed for a second in that story about them being administrative investigators: the noose was tightening, at last. Of course, there was still a risk of that idiot mother of hers denying everything, but then she had read that it was normal for a wife to refuse to accept the truth when confronted with evidence that her husband was molesting their daughter. The investigators wouldn’t believe her mother, and soon she’d be free to enjoy their new life.
In any case, the last thing she cared about was whether or not that insignificant creature, her father, was sent to jail. All she cared about was getting him out from underfoot. After all, out of her twenty-five classmates, no fewer than nineteen of them had parents who were either separated or divorced, and they were all having a high old time, battening off their fathers’ sense of guilt and their mothers’ abiding resentment.
The principal wasted no time on preliminaries.
“Martina, the other day, we told you a little white lie. These gentlemen aren’t administrative investigators, they’re from the police.”
No kidding.
“What you wrote in your essays, and also what you told us when we met here, didn’t persuade them, and they decided to delve a little deeper.”
Good.
The less ridiculous policeman of the two, the one with the square face, addressed her directly.
“Yes. We dug a little deeper, and now we believe that what you wrote in your essays might be true. Even if you claim you just made it up.”
Well, aren’t you clever.
“But we need evidence, and that’s what we’re missing.”
So what the hell do you want, a video on YouTube?
“So there are two options: either we find the evidence, or you need to make a nice, clear, detailed complaint.”
A complaint. Well, that might be cool: an interview on afternoon TV, pictures in the newspapers . . . it’s just too bad that, since I’m a minor, they’ll have to pixelate my face.
The ridiculous one weighed in, toying around with those horrible Seventies glasses of his.
“Naturally, without any evidence and without confirmation on your mother’s part, the criminal complaint will mean transferring you to a group house, at least for the duration of the investigation.”
What the fuck is this asshole talking about?
“What . . . what exactly is a group house?”
The ridiculous cop went on, beatifically.
“A small community in a place far away, run by psychologists and volunteers, where they take in maladjusted children guilty of minor crimes that don’t call for incarceration, or else children who have been, as in your case, the victims of domestic violence.”
So, basically, a community of losers and criminals.
“You’ll have to change schools, too. But you’ll be assured of an education at one of the special institutions that operate with considerable success in the more challenging parts of town. The staff at those institutions know how to manage this type of situation.”
The policeman with the square jaw shot a grim look at the ridiculous one. Maybe he didn’t want him to reel off all that information.
It still wasn’t over. Of course, that idiot mother of hers would provide all the confirmation she needed: she had her by the short hairs.
Martina spoke, in a low voice, gazing into the empty air, with a disoriented and pained demeanor.
“But what if . . . if my mother were to say that it was all true?”
The one with the massive jaw put on a falsely contrite expression.
“We talked to your mother this morning. She denies in the most absolute terms the idea of any molestation.”
Everyone’s eyes—the principal, the schoolteacher, and those damned policemen—were fastened on her. The assholes had come to an agreement.
The ridiculous one piled on: “You needn’t worry. Of course, in the group house, you won’t be allowed to have a cell phone, a computer, or a tablet, because it’s important to avoid any ongoing contact with your original environment, nor will you be able to talk to your current classmates, but we’re certain you’ll make other friends, among the other girls who share your terrible condition.”
Martina leapt to her feet. There was a joyous and innocent smile on her face.
“So you fell for it! Forgive me if I wasted your time, I really wanted to make sure that my story was realistic. When I grow up I’d like to be a writer and I wanted to do this experiment.”
Aragona was disconcerted.
The girl gave him a sweet smile.
“Don’t worry, my family is perfectly
happy. Deliriously happy.”
Romano shot her a furious glare.
“Listen, Signorina, do you really think you can play pranks about certain matters? Do you realize that your father could have been in serious trouble?”
Martina continued smiling.
“But Dottore, do you think that I would have dreamed of leaving my father in a mess of that kind? I just wanted to be sure that you would take me seriously. Can I go back to my class now, please? There’s an interesting music lesson, and I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Principal Trani heaved a sigh.
Aragona said: “If I were you, I’d think about becoming an actress, not a writer. You seem more cut out for it.”
“Oh, really? Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” And she strode lightly to the door.
As her hand came to rest on the door handle, it was frozen in place by Professoressa Macchiaroli’s hissing voice, which had remained silent until that instant.
“I think we’ll have a pop quiz soon, Parise. I’m really curious to see how well you study in the idyllic environment you have at home.”
Martina left the room without turning around.
But her ears had turned beet red.
XXXVIII
Deputy Chief Ottavia Calabrese sat down at her desk, her face hidden behind her computer screen. She had had to go out because she’d been summoned to her son Riccardo’s school. Usually it was her husband who tended to that sort of emergency, but for once they hadn’t been able to get hold of him.
Over time, they’d come to a tacit understanding: until Ottavia got home in the evening, anything that had to do with Riccardo fell under Gaetano’s jurisdiction. The fact that Gaetano was a respected and prominent engineer who ran a company with fifteen employees—as well as the fact that in the midst of an economic downturn he earned twenty times the salary of a government civil servant like her, and that his time was, therefore, from the point of view of their family economy, far more important than hers—wasn’t the kind of consideration to be brought to the fore. And, in fact, Gaetano never did bring it up.
The truth is, thought the policewoman as she signed on to her email, that Gaetano, for who knows what reason, felt responsible for Riccardo’s condition. As if he possessed the absolute certainty that the mysterious gene responsible for the birth of that son secluded in a world all his own had come from him, and that as a result, Ottavia’s life had been ruined.
All of it true, she fiercely told herself. All of it true.
Because it was true that one of her husband’s great-uncles had been strange and mentally disturbed and that his parents and siblings had kept him hidden until the day that, at the age of twenty, he had jumped off the balcony.
It was true that in their first years of marriage Gaetano had taken precautions because he hadn’t wanted children, and then he had finally given in to her demands and done her this great favor.
It was true that she had never accepted Riccardo and that she put up with him as her burden, her undeserved cross to bear.
It was a bitter irony that the boy could only emerge from his shell a little when he had her near him. That he’d sit on the floor in silence, that he’d lay his head on her legs and continue murmuring in a dull monotone that one word, Mamma, Mamma, Mamma: not an invocation, not a plea, not even an accusation.
Gaetano changed him, washed him, and took him to school, insisting relentlessly with the teachers on the importance of stimuli. He had taken him to a thousand doctors around the world, and he still was searching for others to contact; he read publications on the topic, he reached out to parents’ associations and university clinics.
Every so often, just to wound him, Ottavia would ask him if he’d received any newsletters lately from Lourdes or Medjugorje, or whether he could rely on even more highly placed connections. Her husband would shake his head and then walk away, realizing that this was one of those moments.
It was always one of those moments, Ottavia would have liked to tell him. Always, if she was at home. Only when she went out to take the dog for a walk did she regain a piece of herself. And only at work was she truly happy.
If she had plotted on a Cartesian curve her mood over the course of the day, the result would have been a steady rise from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, a progressive decline from three until seven in the evening, a sudden spike when the time came to bid Palma goodnight, and then a collapse until seven the following morning.
Palma, Palma, Palma. The handsome, rumpled commissario, the man with tired, kind eyes who had brought a smile back into her life, along with a deep concern, a sense of languor, a hint of uneasiness, and a grace note of hope. Palma, who had led her in front of a mirror, naked, to search for imperfections she could mend. Palma, who perhaps—though she was cautious not to get her hopes up—smiled at her occasionally in a very special way. In a way he smiled at no one else.
She shot a furtive glance around her monitor. At the others.
Romano and Aragona had returned to the office while she’d been out and, in response to her courteous request as to whether they had come to any conclusions with respect to the alleged molestation of the girl at the Sergio Corazzini Middle School, their only response had been a muted grunt. They weren’t a particularly well-suited pair, but then no pair that included Aragona could be. That young man was a real piece of work, no two ways about it.
A real piece of work, the phrase almost made her laugh. Riccardo was a real piece of work, Marco wasn’t, the most eccentric quality he had was the occasional blindingly garish shirt.
That very morning, her son had climbed up on his desk and had peed on the classmate sitting in front of him, who hadn’t noticed a thing until he felt the stream of warm liquid on top of his head.
It had taken Ottavia fifteen minutes to get to the school and another half hour to calm her son down; he just wouldn’t stop screaming and wriggling free from the hall monitors as they struggled to keep him from rushing out of the classroom by main strength. She’d spent another hour trying to explain to the principal, the teacher, and the mother of the bespeckled classmate that they had to do their best to be understanding: Riccardo didn’t always understand what he was doing. Another fifteen minutes to get back to the office, for a total of two hours wasted, while the ever attentive Gaetano continued his building inspection, his expert evaluation, or whatever the hell else it was that he was engaged in somewhere his phone was getting no bars. Ah, the delights of motherhood.
Now, though, she was finally back in the squad room, accompanied by Romano, Aragona, and Pisanelli, while Alex and the Chinaman were out on the streets, on the hunt. The door to the commissario’s office was shut, as it was whenever he was out.
He must be at police headquarters again, thought Ottavia. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
The fear that the police precinct would be shuttered had been kindled in her by her pride, wounded by the unseemly episode that had swept over the old structure, and then by the desire to prove that they weren’t all unworthy, her new colleagues and she herself. Now she didn’t want to lose a setting where she felt fully alive, where she had goals to fight for, without that vague feeling of apathy that derived from her sense of resignation. The resignation that she could sense growing inside her every time she thought about her son.
But in order to keep hope alive it was indispensable to find at least a suspect in the case of the two murdered siblings. That’s what Palma had said. She hoped that Alex and the Chinaman would be back soon with something new to contribute.
Scrolling down through the email that had come in while she was gone, she saw with a surge of joy what she had been waiting for. She’d have something to report at the meeting.
Palma said goodbye and left the police chief’s office. The umpteenth meeting had ended with a big fat nothing as a result.
The climate wasn’t especially fav
orable. There was no legacy of trust around the Bastards of Pizzofalcone. Certainly, no one had dared to use that terminology in his presence, but that was clearly the upshot. The previous successful investigations had left no lasting impression in the minds of his superiors, at least nothing capable of standing up to the brutal shove that had been given to the reputation of the police by that earlier incident of cops peddling confiscated narcotics, the regrettable affair that had caused the lasting stench. All the same, Palma suspected that that wasn’t the real point.
The real point was that his colleagues were convinced they’d cleverly foisted off so much dead weight, people who were useless or even toxic, and they were extremely reluctant to entertain the idea that they’d misjudged their staff. And in particular they refused to believe that a newly minted commissario such as Palma could have succeeded in transforming that motley crew into a team worthy of the name.
A Sicilian accused of collusion with the Mafia and thefore shipped off to gather moss at the San Gaetano precinct, in a dusty office in the police station where he spent time playing solitaire on the computer, had somehow turned into a world-beating investigator; a side of beef of a cop, an oversized lunk who in Posillipo had come close to murdering a hooligan with his bare hands, had now become a disciplined and intelligent policeman; a madwoman who had fired her pistol in the police station where she worked had been transformed into a perceptive and determined officer; a sort of Harlequin clown who had avoided being kicked off the force for rank incompetence only because of highly placed connections was actually turning out to be an intuitive and sagacious investigator. And the hand-me-downs from the original precinct, the only ones that the tempest of the original Bastards had spared, a mercurial and daydreaming deputy captain and a competent and well-liked matron with an obsession for computers, long considered little more than a secretary, had managed to put together the most efficient database for criminal investigators in the entire greater metropolitan area. It wasn’t easy to swallow for administrators who had decided and declared that there was no blood to be squeezed from these stones.
Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone Page 22