The Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  She peered through the gap in the door. She could just glimpse a bit of desk, with a lit table lamp; a number of documents scattered across the desktop; a pen and a highlighter; three fingers resting on a sheet of paper. Not moving.

  Ottavia felt her heart surge in her chest.

  When she was sixteen years old, she had walked into the office of her father, a lawyer, to show him a portrait, a cartoon of him that she had drawn herself. She was good at drawing, and she had a special relationship with her father. She was the last of four children and the only girl; she and her father adored each other.

  She had stopped cold in the office door, cartoon in hand, mouth frozen in a smile that would never be the same. She’d stopped cold in the door of the office, staring at the corpse of her father, cut down by a heart attack, his head sprawled over the papers on the desk, one hand lying on the desktop. She’d never drawn anything again.

  She felt that twenty-five-year-old horror suddenly bloom afresh in her heart, as new as if it had been born in that instant. She let out a dry sound, something halfway between a scream and a groan, her hand over her mouth, eyes staring wide at Palma, who lay sprawled out in the exact, identical position as her father had the last time she’d seen his body, except for when she and her mother had dressed it for his final journey.

  But when she let out that brief shout, the supposed corpse of the late Commissario Luigi Palma, known to his friends as Gigi, sat up with a start and gazed around in bewilderment, his eyes bloodshot and his appearance even more rumpled than usual. Draped over his forehead was a shock of hair, the mark left by the edge of his desk cut across his face like a knife wound, two days’ worth of scruff on his face, a deeply wrinkled shirt. Ottavia thought that she’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

  “I . . . what . . . who . . . oh, Ottavia, ciao. I’m afraid I fell asleep. What time is it, anyway?”

  The woman struggled to calm her breathing and checked her watch.

  “Buongiorno, commissario. I’m sorry to have frightened you, it’s very early, it’s . . . a quarter to six. You must have fallen asleep, when a person comes in to work too early . . .”

  Palma yawned, rubbed his eyes, and slowly came to. Then he said: “No, I’m afraid not. Yesterday I just never went home. Luckily, since I know myself, I keep a change of clothes here in the office, underwear and a clean shirt. And everything I need to shower and shave. Sad, isn’t it? This is what becomes of you, when you let your work become more important than the rest of your life.”

  Ottavia moved away, hesitantly.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your things. I’ll head back to my desk and start up the computers.”

  Palma stopped her with a wave of his hand: “No, no, wait a minute. Keep me company. Let me send down for something from the café across the way, the one that never closes, even at night. What’ll you have, a cappuccino, a pastry?”

  He already had the phone in his hand; Ottavia felt uneasy, but she took a step forward into the office.

  “Just an espresso, thanks. In the morning I just drink a glass of milk at home, I’m trying to . . . well, I’m paying attention to what I eat.”

  Palma switched the order around, asking for a caffe latte, a sweet roll, and a glass of orange juice for himself.

  “That’s a mistake, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And another thing, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but you don’t need to lose so much as an ounce! I think you’re perfect exactly as you are. Sit down, sit down right here.”

  Ottavia blushed at the compliment and, hating herself for it, sat down primly across the desk from him.

  “Thanks, but I’m afraid that’s not the case, I need to lose a few pounds. But, if you don’t mind my asking, why on earth . . . that is, is there some problem, some reason that you had to stay in the office overnight?”

  She didn’t know what to say to him. It seemed to her that the fantasies, the thoughts she’d been entertaining for the past few days were no longer a form of escape from her unsatisfactory life, but an explicit message, branded in fire on her face; she hastened to assume a serious, professional expression.

  Palma seemed happy for the chance to engage in a little conversation, and he cleared his desk of documents, restoring at least the appearance of order to his workspace.

  “No, no. That is, you understand, there’s always so much to do, four-fifths of the work we do is bureaucracy, and someone has to take care of it. And after all, these first weeks are crucial if we’re going to persuade the police chief not to close down the precinct.”

  Ottavia was astonished: “But . . . I thought the danger had passed. Four new employees have been assigned, and we’re now fully staffed . . .”

  “I’m afraid not, at least not yet. The police chief was very clear: unless we manage to regain lost ground, especially in terms of winning back the neighborhood’s trust, they’ll do away with us. There are still some, both at police headquarters and in the prefecture, who would be only too happy to cannibalize this precinct’s resources and redistribute them. And after all, as you no doubt know, there’s a carabinieri barracks quite nearby, and so . . .”

  Calabrese felt a stab of anxiety in her gut.

  “What about us, is there nothing we can do?”

  Palma looked up at her. With his hair still unkempt, his shirt rumpled, and the mark on his face, he looked like a little boy who had just come home from an afternoon of playing soccer in the street. The woman felt a wave of tenderness sweep over her.

  “You’re all doing great work, and that’s the most I can ask. The guys working the field are doing fine, and you and Pisanelli are providing the kind of support I’d been hoping for. Sure, if we’re able to get our hands on whoever murdered the notary’s wife in a hurry, that would be a tremendous help. But I’m afraid that, unless we’re able to make some significant progress by next week at the very latest, they’re likely to take the case out of our hands. There are too many important people breathing down our necks on this thing.”

  The woman tried to offer some words of encouragement: “But the Chinaman seems—at least to me—like a good detective. Maybe what happened with the Crocodile was more than just dumb luck, in spite of what the usual gossips like to say.”

  Palma laughed: “The Chinaman, eh? I’ve heard him called that myself, old Lojacono. Truth be told, he does look Asian, with that face of his. No, no question, he really is good at what he does. I saw him work on that case, you know: all the rest of us kept looking in the wrong direction, and he was the only one who’d understood it all. If only we’d listened to him earlier . . . Oh well, we can only keep our fingers crossed and our hopes up. What about you, though? What are you doing here so early?”

  Ottavia looked down at the tips of her shoes, embarrassed.

  “I . . . oh, I don’t know, I just couldn’t sleep and instead of tossing and turning in bed, I thought I’d come in and get a few things done. I’m doing a little research for Di Nardo and Romano on that architect, Germano Brasco. He’s very powerful, he gives work to lots of companies, he has projects all over, and I . . .”

  Palma looked at her with greater interest. He’d sensed that the woman had just tried to change the topic of conversation, and that triggered his curiosity.

  “Why are you having trouble sleeping? You aren’t having problems with your son, by any chance?”

  Ottavia raised her head, abruptly, furrowing her brow: “No, certainly not. And wait a minute . . . what do you know about my son, sir?”

  The commissario raised both hands: “Forgive me. I . . . I read the personnel files, and . . . but it’s none of my business, that was intrusive, I apologize.”

  Ottavia sighed, sadly.

  “No, no. I should be the one apologizing. It’s just that . . . it’s really hard, you know. Sometimes other people’s pity is even harder to take, that’s all.”
r />   “I understand, I really do. I had a brother, older than me by a year, who had Down syndrome. He hasn’t been around for a long time now, he died when he was twenty; my folks had a hard time handling him, they may have been ashamed of him. But I loved him and I spent lots and lots of time with him. When he died I was still just a kid, but it was the biggest tragedy of my life. Certainly, I wasn’t his mother, so a lot of the ramifications are probably beyond me; but it’s hard, and I can understand better than most.”

  Impulsively, Ottavia asked: “But what about you, sir, don’t you have children?”

  “You don’t seem able to use my first name, do you? But just you watch, I’ll bring you around. I’m stubborn. But no, I don’t have any children. And as you can see, I don’t have a wife either to worry about what’s become of me if I don’t come home at night. I’m divorced.”

  Now it was Ottavia’s turn to feel awkward: “Oh, forgive me, commissario. I had no way of knowing . . .”

  Palma laughed and ran a hand through his tousled hair.

  “Oh, don’t mention it, it’s been three years. By now I’m used to it. And honestly I remember my divorce as a genuine liberation, the final months were pure hell! Being married can be worse than prison, you know.”

  Worse than prison, thought Ottavia. Much worse. At least there’s an end date on a prison sentence, and you can count the days off on your calendar. Then she added: “No question, though, if all you do with your liberty is take advantage of it to sleep in the office, it might have been better not to get it in the first place, don’t you think?”

  Palma thought it over: “You know, Ottavia, a person can spend a lot of time at the office for one of two reasons: either because he doesn’t have a lot else to do outside, or else because he likes being there. Likes being there more than he likes being anywhere else. Don’t you think?”

  Just then, in the nick of time, a very sleepy waiter from the bar appeared, carrying a tray precariously perched in one hand. He excused himself as he walked into the room.

  “Oh, at last, here’s our breakfast! But now I expect you to split this pastry with me. Otherwise I’ll have to assume that you find me so disgusting, just having woken up, that you’re trying to get out of my office as quick as you can.”

  And he shot her a wink.

  Ottavia laughed. Well, good morning, she thought to herself.

  Well, good morning, Palma thought to himself.

  XLV

  The bomb went off midmorning, and just at the right time.

  Inside the precinct house, optimism was certainly not reigning supreme.

  Ottavia hadn’t looked away from her computer screen once, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth between pinched lips, her brow furrowed; she was working nonstop to keep from having to think, to avoid having to reckon with herself.

  Pisanelli, aside from his frequent bathroom breaks, which in any case went unremarked by the others, leafed through old case files comparing Xeroxes of the suicide notes in which a dozen or so different people had bid the world adieu.

  Di Nardo and Romano were getting ready to check things out at the home of Annunziata Esposito, in Vico Secondo all’Olivella, 22. Alex watched her partner’s face, which seemed carved in granite; it was devoid of all expression and had the grayish complexion of someone who hadn’t got a wink of sleep. Romano hadn’t uttered a single word since he’d gotten to the office at 7:30 that morning.

  Aragona and Lojacono were drafting reports on the interrogations they’d conducted yesterday: the housekeeper and the doorman of the victim’s apartment building. They’d reached a dead end, and they knew it. They hadn’t even succeeded in ruling out any of the original conjectures: the theory that this had simply been a burglary gone wrong still held water, as did others—that the murder had been a crime of passion or property. “If only the door had been forced, at least,” Aragona had said. “I’m tempted to force it myself, after the fact. That way at least,” he’d added, “I could throw that Romanian clown, the housekeeper’s boyfriend, in jail.”

  For his part, Lojacono was also distracted by worries of a more personal nature. The night before, while he was eating dinner at Letizia’s trattoria and telling her how lucky he was to still be alive, having barely survived being driven around town at breakneck speed by that lunatic partner of his, he’d received a phone call from Marinella, much later at night than usual.

  The girl, in tears, had told him all about a furious fight she’d had with her mother.

  “That bitch,” she’d said to him through her sobs, “that stupid bitch, after doing exactly as she fucking pleases, now she thinks she can lock me up, can you believe it?”

  Lojacono had tried to calm her down: “Honey, don’t talk like that, she’s your mother. And the things she’s telling you are for your own good, aren’t they?”

  He found it paradoxical that he of all people was being forced to defend Sonia from their daughter’s accusations, which he actually endorsed wholeheartedly; but from where he was there was really nothing else he could do.

  “I’m telling you, she’s a bitch! I was in my bedroom, with a girlfriend of mine, and she, SHE!, was smoking a cigarette. She was, I wasn’t! And she came busting in like a maniac, shouting at the top of her lungs, and she embarrassed me; my girlfriend was staring at me, she almost started laughing! Fuck it, I’m not a little girl anymore. You understand it and you’re miles away, but she doesn’t and she lives with me!”

  It took Lojacono a solid fifteen minutes to get her to stop sobbing and shouting. And he’d also gotten her to promise that she would stay at home that night, though with her bedroom door closed, rather than go out and sleep at one of her friends’ houses just to stick it to her mother.

  When he walked back into the trattoria, Letizia had arranged for him to be served a new bowl of rigatoni; the one he’d been eating earlier had gone cold. He’d told her about the phone call, and she had tried to console him, doing her best to minimize the gravity of the situation: “From a distance, things always seem more serious than they are,” she’d told him, “especially fights between two women. And as far as that goes, Marinella is right, she’s a woman now, not a child anymore; parents are always the last ones to realize it.”

  She was wearing a light-blue angora pullover with a plunging neckline that showed off her magnificent breasts; that sweater had caused more than one quarrel among the couples dining there that night. Unconsciously, or at least less than fully consciously, she was trying to put her best qualities on display in order to capture the policeman’s interest. That night, though, he seemed so caught up in his own problems that he probably wouldn’t have noticed her even if she’d danced naked on his table.

  Lojacono had added, disconsolately: “At least she’ll talk to me. That’s something, anyway. If this had happened, I don’t know, six months ago, she would have had to get over it on her own, and who knows what might have happened. I’m really worried about all this.”

  Letizia had laughed; and then she’d said: “You know, right by here there’s a high school, and sometimes groups of kids come here for lunch; I give them special deals so they can enjoy a nice hot meal when they have somewhere to be in the afternoon and don’t have time to get home to eat. I watch them, and I listen to them talk. They’re better than we think they are. Sweeter, more caring, real idealists. They might seem cynical to us, apathetic. But they know what they want, and they want to live good lives in a better world. With a few exceptions—fewer exceptions than among us adults—they’re not criminals, they’re just kids. They’re just the way we were when we were their age. If I were you I wouldn’t worry so much, it’s perfectly normal for a young girl to fight with her mother. The stories I could tell you about what I was like when I was her age.”

  She had caressed his hand, on the tabletop. And he had smiled at her.

  But now, after a sleepless night, the thought of
Marinella, who had no one to talk to, who walked to school with a heavy heart, still filled him with sadness; and that wasn’t helping him do his job. Nor was the atmosphere, which was once again grim, doing much to encourage a sense of optimism.

  But, in fact, the bomb was about to explode.

  The bomb stepped out of a dark-blue official car that had rolled silently into the courtyard of the precinct house.

  Dressed in a dark and somewhat severe skirt suit that was, however, incapable of entirely concealing her shapely curves, she was, as usual, out of the door before the driver could hurry back to open it for her. She headed off, striding briskly, toward the front door. Guida half rose to ask her who she was but she sped past him and headed straight up the stairs, attacking the steps with urgency.

  She burst into the detectives’ open-plan office. Though she was petite, as always, she immediately filled the room with her presence, catching the attention of everyone there. Her dark eyes rested ever so briefly on the women, Ottavia and Alex; Alex returned her glance, with unmistakable appreciation for the fine physique of this new arrival. At last, she spotted Lojacono and said, with a strong Sardinian accent: “There you are, Lojacono. Let’s go, come with me to the commissario’s office, we need to talk to him.”

  When he saw her, Palma stood up cheerfully from his seat, but his eyes betrayed his worry: “Dottoressa Piras, what a surprise! We talked just yesterday, I hardly expected . . .”

  Laura asked him to take a seat, and sat down herself. Lojacono remained standing.

  “Hi there, Palma. I thought it was best to come in person; I have news. It’s safe to talk in here, right?”

  “Certainly, Dottoressa. Go ahead, tell me all about it.”

  “I asked Lojacono to be here, because as we know he’s working on the Cecilia De Santis murder case, isn’t he?”