The Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  The woman sat in silence, sipping her cocktail. Then she said: “De Santis, Cecilia. That’s what you call her: De Santis, Cecilia. Last name first, first name last. That’s all she’s become, poor Cicia, a last name followed by a first name on a police report. To me, she was Cicia. That’s who she’s always been, since the first time I saw her, when she was a newborn. I was fifteen, and our mothers were friends. As were our grandmothers, for that matter. And probably our great-grandmothers, too. You see, that’s the way our world is: small. There are only a few thousand of us, maybe three thousand; we all know each other, we never see anyone else. Every once in a great while, lately, we’ve accepted someone new into our midst, but only if they’re good for a show: if they have a lot of money, or great artistic talent. They give us something to talk about, something new to say, but basically we never change.”

  A gust of wind shook the plate glass.

  “Our world. Vacations in Cortina, on Capri. A trip every so often, nothing much; a place in New York or Paris, an office in London. Salons. Clubs. All of them without windows, because we don’t want to know what else is happening in the world, or in the city: we need to convince ourselves that our lives are actually the whole universe. Look at them, behind that window. They’re all wondering: who are these guests who’ve come to see Ruffolo? What are they saying to her? And what about her, what’s she saying to them? None of them will ask me a godda . . . blessed thing, of course: but they’ll talk about nothing else for weeks. Just as they’ll talk about Cicia, and her murder, for years: that’s our world. How dreary.”

  Aragona coughed softly.

  “And De San . . . the victim, was she like that? Like all these other women?”

  “Cicia? No. Not entirely, at any rate. Certainly, she belonged to the club, and she had a place on Capri and in Cortina, just like everyone else. But there was something different about Cicia. She was capable of love. Of real love, love that makes you sad, that makes you suffer, the way people out there love. And she took it upon herself, without making a show of it, to help other people. She did a great deal of charity work, did you know? Twice a week, with no fanfare, she went to teach in a nursery school, in a terribly poor part of the city, one of those places where no one would go, even in an armored car driven by the Italian army. I used to tell her: why don’t you pay someone else to go for you, that way you can give work to some poor underpaid teacher; but she’d say: no, I have to go. Because I’m selfish, and I so love spending time with those little treasures of every race and color. That’s how Cicia was.”

  The sea had kicked up again, and it was slapping at the wharf where all the boats were moored. The baroness went on: “Not that we don’t know how to love, in our world. In fact, we can devote all the time we like to love: to love and to health. That’s exactly what money is for, isn’t it? So we can spend time on the finer things. And what could be finer than love? Except for canasta, of course.” She sipped her cocktail. “But there was something unique about Cicia. She only fell in love once. You saw her in . . . a state I can’t imagine, and pictures didn’t do her justice. She was no beauty. But there was a kindness, a charm to her eyes that captivated people. She was lovely, magnificent: but in her soul. She had a thousand colors, Cicia did, in her soul. I used to make fun of her, I told her that she was in the running for sainthood, and she’d laugh, but the truth is that Cicia was different from everyone else.”

  Lojacono courteously tried to steer the conversation back to the investigation.

  “Baroness, we have no doubts that the lady was an extraordinary person. For that very reason, though, we wonder who might have wanted to do her harm, and why. If you cared for her, and I’m certain that you did, I’d like to ask whether you might have any ideas in that direction.”

  The sea went on howling incessantly. A couple of the yacht club’s sailors, dressed in yellow raincoats that flapped in the wind like flags gone mad, struggled on the wharf to reinforce the moorings of several boats.

  Ruffolo thought it over.

  “Cicia had just one weakness. Only one. Her husband, Arturo. A self-regarding asshole, a ridiculous peacock who never missed an opportunity to lunge at the first hen that clucked past. He was nothing, a nobody, until he had the enormous good luck to meet Cicia. He was a nobody. And she transformed him into one of this city’s most important notaries, with a network of incredible contacts that allow him to work as if he were the only notary in town. In exchange, he cheated on her so many times, made her a complete laughingstock, until, years ago, she simply stopped seeing people. I talked to her every day, begging her to tell him to go get fucked once and for all—which is what he was inclined to do anyway—but she just told me that she loved him all the same. Absurd, no?”

  Lojacono agreed: “Yes, it’s absurd, Baroness. But it happens quite often. Had anything in particular happened lately? Any disagreement, any argument or cause for special friction?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ll say it again, in spite of my advice, Cicia refused to start any kind of discussion with that asshole husband of hers. And by now he’d lost all remaining restraint.”

  Aragona took off his glasses, underscoring his increased interest: “What do you mean, all restraint?”

  The baroness snorted: “He even came here once, to a party, with his whore. Here, to the yacht club, where if he hadn’t been Cicia’s husband no one would have even considered hiring him as a waiter. And you should have seen her, the young miss: dressed like a harlot, with red hair and mile-high heels, greeting people right and left as if she were his lawfully wedded wife.”

  Lojacono asked: “Do you know the girl’s name? Who she is?”

  “Of course I know. Do you think anything happens in here that isn’t immediately known and discussed, including the two of you? Her name is Iolanda, Iolanda Russo. She’s an accountant, or a tax consultant, or who knows what other cover story for her true profession.”

  “Her true profession being?” asked Aragona before Lojacono could manage to wave him off.

  “Hooker,” Ruffolo specified, and then went on, as if nothing had happened: “A pathetic scene: everyone was trying to get away from them, mortified, while he chased after them to introduce her. A girl young enough to be his daughter, and he was presenting her as ‘an extraordinary professional, whom you might find very useful’; let me tell you what she was useful for. Anyway, the new development, which was actually nothing new, is that he had started showing off his whores again. He’d stopped, or at least been more discreet, for a few years. But men like him can’t help it, sooner or later they go back to being themselves.”

  Lojacono listened with interest. Then he asked: “Do you think, Baroness, that your friend felt insulted by her presence? That she could have demanded an explanation, and that someone might have . . .”

  Ruffolo laughed. There was something rough and annoying about it, like a metal file being dragged through gravel.

  “Who, Cicia? No. She suffered, but she never showed it. She thought her husband was perfect, a wonderful gift from God, and that he had the right to have his fun, now and then. That’s what she called her husband’s affairs: having his fun, now and then. He’d had lots and lots of affairs, so why would she have objected to this one in particular?”

  Outside, the sailors went on battling the wind, the waves, and the moorings. Aragona watched them, fascinated. Then he asked: “But in your opinion, Barone’, who could it have been? Who could have possibly wished to do such terrible harm to such a kind and gentle person?”

  Ruffolo looked out to sea too: “I don’t know. It might actually have been a robbery. And that would be a fine irony, that the most generous person I’ve ever known should have been killed for money or a handful of jewels. Certainly, the peacock would have had no motive: without her, he’s done for. What matters to me is that I’ve lost my friend, the only one I could really talk to, instead of talking endless bullshit with those
stringy old geese behind that glass. And even though she was younger than me, she could have been a thousand years old for how clearly she saw things. What matters to me is that I miss her. And when she died, a part of me died with her, the best part of me. The only part that was worth a damn.”

  They sat in silence for a while, until the two policemen realized that the woman was weeping, though she was crying no tears. Then the baroness said: “Now I’m going to stand up and say goodbye to you. I’ll kiss the younger of you on the cheek, and I’ll shake hands with the older one. I’ll say that I saw a nephew of mine, who came to see me with a friend, to ask me for money. That’s the sort of thing that happens to all the women here. If you need anything else, get in touch with me through Pisanelli. I want you to catch whoever did it, and I want you to throw him in prison. Unlike Cicia, I am a deeply vindictive person. All right?”

  Lojacono nodded. Then, suddenly, he said: “Can I ask you something, Baroness? Why did your friend collect those objects, those spheres with the snow inside?”

  Ruffolo turned slowly and aimed the lenses of her glasses at Lojacono’s face. Then: “Why do you want to know? What is the meaning of this question?”

  “I don’t know. I believe that if someone devotes that much time to something, well, then, it must have some importance. Even if, looked at from outside, it might seem trivial.”

  The baroness went on staring at him, expressionless. Aragona shifted uncomfortably in his seat. There was something about that woman that made him uneasy. He focused on a sailor tightening a knot around a bollard, poised between the wharf and the surface of the sea.

  The woman spoke, addressing Lojacono: “You’re Sicilian, aren’t you? You look Asian, but you’re Sicilian. I can tell from the accent. Nice place, Sicily. Smart people there.” She looked back out to sea, and said: “The snow globes. Cicia had been collecting them forever, since she first got married. During her honeymoon, I don’t remember where, her husband bought her one. When she got back, we laughed about it, I told her it struck me as appropriate, given that gentleman’s complete lack of taste; but she took that gift as if it were a precious diamond. After that, she scooped them up everywhere she went; who knows, perhaps she was trying to find a glint of the happiness she’d once experienced. Or else it was just something to fill her time, since her husband had basically deserted her. The fact is, whenever any of us went anywhere, she always asked us to remember to bring one back for her. I think I must have bought her a couple myself, may God forgive me.”

  They got to their feet and went through the little pantomime that the woman had requested, Aragona faking an affectionate farewell, Lojacono a formal one.

  And once again they made their way through the smoke-filled room, the targets of a thousand darting, curious gazes.

  Outside, the wind was outdoing itself.

  XXXVIII

  On the way back to the station house, they didn’t have much to say. There weren’t many people out on the street and most of them sought shelter from the rain and wind by sticking close to the walls.

  Suddenly Aragona said: “And yet, at a certain point, I felt sorry for her. You might laugh, Loja’, but I felt sorry for that old woman. I got the impression of loneliness, of a total state of despair. Even though she has more money than everyone I know put together. Go figure.”

  “You’re not wrong, you know,” Lojacono replied. “Better to starve to death and not know where your children’s next meal is coming from. That way you get through the day a little faster and you don’t become a slave to the canasta table.”

  His partner shot him an offended, sidelong glance: “That’s not what I’m saying. Still, I wouldn’t want to be her. In any case, our friend the notary doesn’t come off particularly well from the description Pisanelli’s friend gave us. By the way, how did she and Pisanelli become friends, do you think? They’re both a hundred years old. Maybe they used to screw, back in the Paleolithic.”

  “That’s their business. Still, I’d be grateful to our colleague. If it wasn’t for him, we’d never have gotten the information. That was an interesting conversation; the notary’s new girlfriend is becoming increasingly important. We should find a way to meet her, but in such a way that she doesn’t decide to zip her lips and throw away the key, the way he did.”

  The atmosphere in the station house was as stormy as the weather outside; an argument was under way between Di Nardo and Romano about an inspection they’d conducted together.

  “. . . no doubt,” Romano was saying, “that man is a real piece of shit, that we agree on. And I was the first to say that the girl isn’t his friend at all, she’s something quite different. Still, we checked their IDs. And everything checked out, right? So what can we do about it?”

  Di Nardo, who’d taken off her sunglasses, revealing a face creased with weariness, replied in voice that was calm but hard: “We both got the same impression: it’s not just a case of some old man keeping a young girl. The sense we both got was of abuse, of one person willfully controlling another. That girl definitely isn’t happy. She’s terrified, living in fear, riddled with anxiety. Are we supposed to pretend we can’t see it? Or are we going to choose to turn our backs, are we going to take that guy’s advice and worry about catching real criminals, are we going to be scared off by his threat to reach out to one of his highly placed contacts?”

  Palma broke in: “Wait a second, what highly placed contacts? Did this architect try to threaten you two?”

  Romano gave Di Nardo a nasty look: now Palma, like every commissario he’d ever known, would demand that the investigation be halted to avoid trouble.

  He related what the architect had threatened to do and admitted that he’d been on the verge of losing his temper, and that if it hadn’t been for Di Nardo, whom he gestured toward without looking in her direction, he’d probably have laid hands on the man.

  Palma surprised everyone by saying: “Ah, you should have told me that right away. If that’s the case, we have to keep investigating. Go drop by the girl’s home and talk to her parents. See what they have to say about it. If something emerges, anything at all, that suggests we’re not getting the whole story, we’ll take this guy and question him seven ways to Sunday. All right?”

  Everyone was stunned. Palma, Ottavia Calabrese decided, was the Perfect Man; she fantasized about kissing him.

  Lojacono broke in, doffing his overcoat: “The two of us, on the other hand, spend our afternoons at the yacht club, sipping cocktails with elegantly dressed aristocrats. Anyone want to swap assignments?”

  Palma spread his arms wide: “Someone has to do some work around here. Come on, tell us all about it.”

  The lieutenant summarized the day’s events, including the visits to the concierge and to the forensic squad. Aragona threw in, bitterly: “I’m not even going to tell you the look on the face of that asshole from forensics the minute he heard where we were from. I’d have liked to slap him silly! If it hadn’t have been for Lojacono who . . . who made a phone call, he wouldn’t have told us a thing, not a goddamn thing.”

  Palma nodded: “I understand, yes. Still, next time, let me take care of it, through official channels. That way, they’ll stop trying to get in our way.”

  “The incredible thing,” Lojacono commented, “is that they blame us for what happened. That was all before we even got there; what do we have to do with any of those guys?”

  From the far end of the room came Pisanelli’s deep voice: “We knew those guys, as you call them. They were our colleagues, same as you and me and him and her. Men with a hard job and not much money, and sick children to take care of, and debts. Men who fell into temptation, when all their job gave them was a mountain of shit in each hand, same as it does us every day of the week.”

  Silence fell. Everyone was looking at the deputy captain.

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not criminals, let me be perfectly clear.
Especially because they didn’t just skim some money off the top, they also sold nasty shit to innocent kids and fried their brains. And that’s one thing no one will forgive them, and won’t forgive those who decided to keep this place open: the fact that those guys could have been any of us.”

  Palma tried to shift the topic away from those bitter thoughts: “Anyway, they’re going to have get used to the fact that we work hard here, and we do a good job. If they can’t, too bad for them. As far as I’m concerned, this Bastards of Pizzofalcone thing just makes me laugh. Ottavia, do we have any news for Lojacono and Aragona?”

  Calabrese tapped open a couple of files on her monitor. “A little something, yes. The autopsy report came in, and it confirms what the doctor says he mentioned to you at the scene: a fractured cranium was the woman’s sole cause of death. Otherwise, she was in good health for a woman of her age. Practically speaking, the doctor tells me in this email, the woman would have lived to be a hundred if someone hadn’t decided to bash the back of her head in with a blunt object.”

  Romano snickered: “Oh, that’s rich, a perfect state of health can only be certified with an autopsy. Better than a CAT scan, eh? My compliments to the doctor, Calabre’.”

  Ottavia continued: “In fact, there’s nothing like an autopsy to determine one’s state of health: I may put you up for one, Romano; if you ask me, big and strong as you are, the results would be outstanding. In any case, that’s not the only news we have for Lojacono. My friend the IT expert called, and he told me that the analysis of Festa’s computer is almost done. And you want to know what?”

  She fell silent, clearly enjoying the moment. Palma thought to himself that she was irresistible.

  “Come on, don’t leave us hanging! What did your friend find out?”