Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  At this point, Palma snapped.

  “Because as we all know, guilty parties invariably confess, right? If we only sent people to prison who had made full confessions, then the whole problem of overcrowded prisons would be a thing of the past. Of course he hasn’t confessed. But he has no alibi, he definitely has a motive, he admits that he was in the apartment and that he had an argument with his son, in fact, that he even laid hands on him. And he displays absolute indifference to what happened to the two kids. He hasn’t even asked for a lawyer to be present.”

  Ottavia looked at Lojacono.

  “Giuseppe, why don’t you think that it was him?”

  Lojacono continued staring at the commissario, who waved his hand to indicate he should speak.

  “I’m not saying that it wasn’t him. I’m just saying that we don’t have any proof that clinches it. In practical terms, he’s in the same position as the young woman’s boyfriend, or anyone else who can’t prove that they were somewhere else during the hours the double homicide took place. And the truth is that Varricchio has a point: since he’s an ex-convict and a Calabrian, he’s guilty until proven otherwise.”

  Palma raised his voice.

  “How can you think that I’d base my actions on such flimsy prejudices? If that’s the way I operated, none of you would even be here! He has no alibi and—”

  Lojacono interrupted him, calmly.

  “He could have denied having a fight with his son. He could have said that he’d been welcomed in affectionately and that he’d had nothing to do with the argument overheard by the neighbors. He could have pretended to be upset and in despair. He could have denied any disagreement with his daughter, and we would have had nothing to use against him.”

  Aragona broke in.

  “Well, he’s certainly not a relaxed individual, if he murdered someone with his bare hands. And those two kids were murdered with such a violent beating that—”

  Romano hushed him.

  “Arago’, you never miss an opportunity to talk bullshit, do you? Because all that a guy has to do is make a mistake once, and then anything that happens in the radius of three hundred miles to anyone he’s ever met is his fault? Lojacono is right: If we don’t have solid evidence, then we have to go on searching.”

  Stung, Aragona shrugged his shoulders, grabbed a magazine off Lojacono’s nearby desk, and from that point on feigned utter disinterest in the conversation.

  Palma looked at Romano, in astonishment.

  “And now you’re putting in your two cents. Didn’t you all hear me say that we’re going to cease investigating? Of course we’ll continue, but in the meantime, at least, we won’t have the case taken away from us.”

  Alex spoke, as if to herself.

  “And in the meantime, a man who may be innocent will sit in a jail cell, thinking over and over again about all the mistakes he made in his life, perhaps feeling indirectly responsible for the deaths of his children. Worse than hell.”

  Palma ran his hand through his hair.

  “All right, then, let’s do this: let’s reverse the order of the process. Convince me that Varricchio isn’t guilty. Give me one reason to believe that it wasn’t him. You do realize that he vanished entirely for three days, and he didn’t even know that we were looking for him? The minute we release him, I guarantee, that’s the last we’ve seen of him. We’ll never find him again.”

  Ottavia sensed the commissario’s dismay and came to his assistance.

  “That’s right. We can continue the investigation all the same. If we identify another culprit he’ll be set free, otherwise we’ll go on sifting through the evidence. It’s not as if the attorney general is going to indict just on the basis of suspicion and flimsy clues.”

  “There are still too many details that don’t add up, as far as I’m concerned,” said Lojacono. “A person doesn’t have an outburst of rage, kill their son, pretend to leave, slamming the door behind them, and then wait for their daughter to come home and than assault her, simulating a rape. What’s more . . . ”—and here he searched through the sheets of paper on the desk in front of him—“there is this six-minute phone call between brother and sister at 6:32. What did he do, then, did he leave the building, make a call from his son’s cell phone, talk to his daughter and tell her to come home with the intention of murdering her as well, and then go back inside?”

  Palma shrugged his shoulders.

  “Theoretically, it’s possible. Just as it’s possible that he simply came back later. In other words: it’s conjectures that suggest we should arrest Varricchio and it’s conjectures that lead us to think it might not have been him. But if the only way of keeping our hands on the investigation is to—”

  “The money,” Alex murmured. “There’s still the matter of the money.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pisanelli.

  The young woman turned to look at him.

  “I keep wondering: what became of the thirty-seven hundred euros that the young woman was paid for her photographs? She knew that she could have earned a great deal more, Cava had told her so and I believe him, because he was obsessed with her, as is proved by the phone calls. So why did Grazia want that exact sum of money, and why did she want it so urgently?”

  Lojacono filled in the point that his partner had raised.

  “And that’s not all. Biagio promised Foti that he would help him record a CD. And Cosimo Varricchio, too, told us that his son was certain that he’d be able to ensure financial security for himself and his sister, and even for him, the father, if he would just leave them alone. It’s clear that he expected a significant cash influx, before long. Something much bigger than just thirty-seven hundred euros.”

  Palma stubbornly shook his head.

  “Maybe he was just talking nonsense to get rid of his father and maintain good relations with his sister’s boyfriend. Or else he’d invented a scientific system for betting on horse races. Let’s not talk nonsense, if you please.”

  Aragona was leafing through the magazine, sprawled in his chair.

  “Certainly this obsession with the thirty-seven hundred euros was a family trait,” he said in an offhanded tone, as if he were having a conversation at the bar.

  Palma turned beet-red with fury.

  “Aragona, don’t you understand that when we’re having a serious conversation nobody wants to hear your wisecracks? I don’t—”

  Lojacono had turned toward his colleague, his curiosity piqued.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Didn’t you read the article about this business over at the university?” Aragona replied. “Or do you just look at the pictures?”

  Lojacono exchanged a glance with Alex.

  “But it’s just an interview, Professor Forgione mentioned it to us, there isn’t any—”

  Aragona tapped his finger on a page.

  “Lookie here.”

  Lojacono read aloud.

  “Question: ‘Dottor Varricchio, you are considered one of the most promising young scientists in the country. Tell us something that might encourage other young people to enter the world of research.’ Answer: ‘Many people assume that this is a sterile world, where there are no opportunities to make any real money. That’s not true. A patent, which costs more or less thirty-seven hundred euros, can allow you to sell the results of your research to a manufacturer, and in some cases, it can even make you rich. Young people today can think of research as a significant source of revenue.’”

  A sense of bafflement was seeping through the room.

  “Well?” asked Romano. “What’s so odd about that? All right, it was a reference to a sum that—”

  Alex leapt to her feet, her eyes glittering as she stared at Lojacono.

  “A patent. She paid for her brother’s patent. And that’s why Biagio preferred working at home over the past f
ew months, in spite of the fact that he had no internet, forcing himself to put up with a great deal of inconvenience with the laboratory at the university.”

  Palma was confused.

  “So . . . what does all this mean? It doesn’t have anything to do with the father’s visit and—”

  Lojacono was rummaging through the files on his desk.

  “Romano, on that list . . . where the heck is it . . . I clearly remember, among the things he had in his wallet there was . . . Here it is!” He raised a xerox triumphantly into the air. “A return receipt from a registered letter. You can clearly read the addresss of the recipient, see, boss: ‘Trademark and Patent Office, Rome.’ This is it!”

  Palma turned to look at Ottavia, as if seeking help.

  “I don’t understand, what does this have to do with anything? . . . We’re investigating the fact that Varricchio worked at home instead of going to the laboratory. So he submitted a request for a patent, what of it?”

  As if Alex hadn’t heard him, she said to Lojacono: “The key. He didn’t even have to knock to get in.”

  The lieutenant nodded.

  “He went to demand an explanation. An explanation for everything, and he thought he had a right to demand it.”

  “Certainly. He was paying, and that meant, in his head, that he was buying.”

  By this point, Alex and Lojacono were just talking directly to each other, as if there was no one else in the room but them. Romano had the impression he was watching a ping-pong match.

  The lieutenant added: “And, of course, nobody knew anything. That was in both their interests.”

  A smile spread across Alex’s face: “Until the sister arrived. That’s when everything went to hell, when it all slipped out of control.”

  Aragona was sick and tired of that call-and-response.

  “Listen, if you’d be kind enough to explain it to us, too, you’d be doing us a favor.”

  Lojacono stood up and grabbed his overcoat.

  “Boss, I’d recommend you postpone the press conference. I have a feeling you’ll be announcing a very different piece of news, by the time the morning’s over. And please, trust me, sell it as well as you can, because you’re absolutely right: Your team is on top of things. The very best. Come on, Alex, let’s go.”

  Before heading out, in front of the appalled eyes of the whole officeful of officers, Di Nardo planted a kiss on Aragona’s cheek, telling him: “Officer Marco Aragona, you’re a goddamned genius.”

  He swept off his eyeglasses with a self-conscious gesture.

  “You’re right about that. But later you’ll explain exactly why, right?”

  Alex was already chasing Lojacono down the stairs.

  L

  To get there, they had to ask directions. They were absolutely unable to remember how they had gotten there the previous time.

  In words of one syllable and choked off phrases, they’d done their best to put together a strategy. It was no easy matter. They possessed no incontrovertible proof that could put their target with his back to the wall, and they had no doubt that he possessed the knowledge and the tools to upset their plan. They needed to rely on his lack of cold-blooded confidence, the intrinsic instability of his personality, the tension that had built up deep inside him over the past few days.

  His remorse.

  They had very little in hand and only one opportunity before his mind started cooking up alibis and erecting defensive walls. Only one chance to ensure that the one who paid wasn’t an innocent man, a man who had just lost both his children.

  That an ancient transgression not cast a shadow of guilt over an entire lifetime.

  Alex carried in her heart a deep well of regret for having attributed, in her own personal mental process, the scarlet letter of guilt to Varricchio at the very instant she’d heard him speak, the night before. Transferring to the Calabrian family the subterranean injustices and secret dynamics of her own family, she had judged him guilty of murdering his own flesh and blood, by first depriving them of their happy adolescence, and then actually cutting off their lives, root and branch. Now that she knew what had actually happened, she was more determined than ever to see justice done.

  Lojacono, too, was driven by a similar degree of determination. He was not willing to renounce, for his own advancement, the principles that had first convinced him to become a policeman, and truth be told, he’d never really been persuaded of the idea that Varricchio had killed his children. Sadly, it was something that happened: financial interests, sheer pettiness, and abject ignorance did sometimes lead to that sort of murder. But the man had left his home to ask his daughter to come back and live with him, because he didn’t want to grow old all alone in an open-air prison all too similar to the one in which he had been confined far too long. He simply couldn’t have committed such a cold-blooded murder.

  In the very few hours he’d spent lying in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the restless sleep of Marinella, who had dropped off fully dressed, the lieutenant had plumbed the depths of his own immense love as a father, and he had realized that there was no room in it for any hypothesis of hatred, no matter what might happen. And his doubts about Cosimo’s guilt had only emerged reinforced, along with the determination to oppose a deduction that was too simplistic to be plausible, namely that the man had murdered Biagio and Grazia, the son in a fit of rage, the daughter out of premeditated animus.

  Then Aragona had read the interview and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place. The overall picture had come into focus in all its tragic harmony, explaining all the hows but especially the whys and wherefores. A picture that made perfect sense from square one but which was only fully visible now, and which supplied an answer to each and every question.

  That however did nothing to solve the problem.

  Before anyone noticed their presence, they observed the everyday activity of the laboratory through a soundproof plate glass window, which gave them the impression that they were watching a silent movie. The researchers moved back and forth around and through the instruments with skill and dexterity; it seemed impossible that they never bumped each other or broke anything. Every so often one of them would make a wisecrack and the others would laugh, or else they’d limit themselves to a brief exchange of glances; from time to time they’d exchange data that they read aloud off computer screens. Alex and Lojacono decided that, all things considered, collective workplaces tended to look the same everywhere, that in terms of human interactions, there was no difference between that laboratory and the squad room at the police station.

  Renato Forgione was sitting off to one side. He was ashen-faced, and his eyes were wandering without concentration. No one was speaking to him, as if his colleagues were intentionally avoiding him.

  Then the young man looked up and saw them. His eyelids fluttered as if he were trying to ward off a horrible hallucination, and Lojacono thought he’d detected a slight slumping of his shoulders underneath his lab coat, almost a reaction of dismay.

  He emerged from the laboratory, walked over to them, and spoke to them in a monotone.

  “Buongiorno. Did you need me? Is there any news?”

  At first, the two policemen said nothing. Then Lojacono pulled several sheets of paper out of his overcoat pocket.

  “Let me come straight to the point, Dr. Forgione. Were you aware of the fact that, last October 21st, Biagio Varricchio had submitted a request to the Trademark and Patent Office of Rome in his own name?”

  Forgione shut his eyes and then opened them again, as if he’d just been slapped in the face.

  “Me? No, how could I have—”

  Alex drilled in.

  “Isn’t that what you went to talk to Dr. Varricchio about after reading the interview with him in the university magazine?”

  Renato took a step back.

  “What ar
e you talking about? I couldn’t have known anything about that. And when do you think I went to see Biagio, anyway?”

  Lojacono dealt the blow.

  “We happen to know that you were at his apartment late on Monday evening. You came in through the downstairs entrance using your own key, which you have because your father is the owner of several apartments in the building, and then you left several minutes after Grazia Varricchio’s return home, listening to music in the earbuds of her cell phone. There was no one else there, which means that the double homicide was committed in your presence. We’ve also found the murder weapon, and we’re in the process of taking fingerprints from it now.”

  Alex held her breath.

  Forgione replied instinctively, albeit with a shaking voice: “What are you saying? The statuette is at my house and—”

  Alex breathed again. It was over.

  Lojacono leveled his almond-shaped eyes into Renato Forgione’s.

  “Stay calm,” he said. “It’s all going to be much easier, now. Please come with us.”

  LI

  You don’t know my father. You have no idea what he’s like.

  My whole life, I’ve felt that damned pressure crushing down on me. If he’d demanded something, if he’d hammered at me, maybe I would have been capable of defending myself, of living my life. But he never did. He just looks at you, nothing more.

  He has a gaze, you know, that stings the flesh worse than ten cracks of a bullwhip. A bitter, pained, sorrowful gaze. A gaze that tells you: I understand, you hate me. You have it in for me. That’s why you don’t excel, that’s why you’re not the best.

  I’m the only son of a great man. I’ve never had anyone else to share the burden with me. In that, Biagio was luckier.

  Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? To call someone lucky who practically never even knew his father just because he had a sister. And yet I’m sure of it, he was the lucky one. He actually had a family.

  My father isn’t a family, he’s a great man. He’s a genius. Did you know that he was shortlisted for a Nobel Prize a few years ago? They informed us of the fact privately. He’s world-famous in a sector as small and restricted as ours. That’s right, in our sector, because there was never the slightest doubt that I was bound to follow in his footsteps.