The Bastards of Pizzofalcone

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Outside, the rain was turning into hail, and large pellets were rattling against the windshield.

  But nothing was rattling loose inside Lojacono’s head now: everything was where it belonged.

  LI

  It was like a fever. From that moment, time seemed to accelerate, as if someone had pushed the “fast-forward” button on their day.

  Lojacono explained his theory to Aragona, discovering as he put it into words that all the tiles of the mosaic were fitting into place, every element now had an explanation, each individual incongruence had been ironed out.

  The young man was delighted, as if he’d just been given a priceless gift.

  “Fantastic. Fantastic. And it was all right in front of our noses. Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s wrap this case up!”

  Lojacono shook his head: “No. Not yet. We still have a few things to check out first. Let’s get to work.”

  And they split up, each going his own way.

  Lojacono went back to the barracks where the forensic squad was headquartered.

  He was drying off in a waiting room when he was greeted by an out-of-breath Bistrocchi, who—the memory of the brutal humiliation he’d been subjected to last time still fresh—didn’t hesitate to put himself at the detective’s complete and entire disposal.

  Lojacono immediately asked after the information that interested him. The man in the white lab coat threw his arms out wide: “Unfortunately, lieutenant, there too we have no prints. Clearly someone was wearing a pair of gloves there too. It’s also true that only rarely do we find clear prints on that type of item; there’s almost never a direct contact with the fingertips . . .”

  Lojacono interrupted him; he didn’t have time to sit through a lesson on the detection of fingerprints.

  “Listen, sir, all I want is to examine the object. Would that be possible?”

  Disappointed, Bistrocchi left the room and returned with a transparent plastic bag. He put on a pair of latex gloves and carefully extracted its contents.

  Another plastic bag. A shopping bag

  “Here you are, the stolen silver was found in this. As you can see, there’s a rip in the side, possibly caused by one of the objects either while they were being transported, or when they were tossed into the dumpster.”

  But that’s not what Lojacono was interested in. On one side of the plastic bag there was a logo of some kind. He spoke to Bistrocchi: “Excuse me, but could you turn it toward me, so that I can get a better look at what’s written on it?”

  He leaned forward and read.

  The first confirmation.

  Aragona, heading over to the notary’s offices and, as usual, driving at breakneck speed, was hosing pedestrians down, sending tidal waves of rainwater onto the sidewalks as he fiddled with his cell phone: he needed to get in touch with Ottavia Calabrese immediately.

  Luckily, she was the one who answered: “Ah, ciao, Aragona. I would have called you later: you remember the report you asked me to do on Adrian Florea, the notary’s housekeeper’s boyfriend? Well, he’s clean. No priors, no evidence of any contact with ex-convicts, or . . .”

  Aragona sighed loudly: “Of course, just what I expected. I only wanted to run the check to make sure, I saw when I met him that he was a stand-up guy. And after all, we have to stop assuming every immigrant is necessarily a criminal! Tell me something else, though: by any chance did the official report come in from the IT department?”

  Ottavia chuckled: “Not yet, they’re taking their time. What is it you need, though?”

  “I need the date and time that the email reserving the trip to Whatchamacallit was sent from the notary’s office. Can you help me out?”

  By the time he reached the firm, he had the information. He asked to see the notary, who immediately led him into his private office. Aragona had to force himself not to lock eyes with any of the employees, which Lojacono had so often warned him against.

  Once inside, after making sure that the door was securely shut, he asked the notary for what he needed.

  The legal professional was baffled: “That’s very, very confidential information. It’s not the sort of thing I can share with just anybody, we have fiduciary responsibilities to safeguard the secrecy . . .”

  Lieutenant Lojacono had warned him of this possible, last-ditch evasion, but time was running out; he wasn’t about to be thwarted by propriety. So Aragona said exactly what he and his partner had agreed on: “Notary Festa, if you want to get out of this situation in one piece, there’s no alternative. If you can’t do it for your wife’s memory, do it for yourself.”

  And, after thinking it over briefly, the notary picked up his phone and, in a brusque and decisive voice, summoned the signora Lina Rea to his office.

  Lojacono caught a taxi, and was refreshed by the experience of crossing the city while not gripped by the horrifying certainty that either he or a dozen innocent citizens were about to die.

  The rain was falling incessantly and the traffic, already tangled, was only getting worse; the streets were starting to flood. The lieutenant asked the taxi driver how long he thought it would take, and received an eloquent shrug in reply. At that point he tried to call Marinella; he hadn’t heard from her since their last, stormy conversation, in the aftermath of her screaming fight with her mother. The girl’s cell phone, however, seemed to be off.

  Then he called Laura Piras, to bring her up-to-date on the case. The woman answered on the second ring: “Hey, ciao! What’s going on, do you have news?”

  “I believe I do. If you ask me, we’ve cracked it.”

  “Really? Tell me everything. Spare me no detail.”

  Lojacono told her the whole story, starting with his visit to the notary’s office, and then moving on to his meeting with Russo. And he told her, specifically, how it had been Aragona’s chance phrase that had torn the veil from his eyes, showing him a new theory that he was now in the process of checking out.

  Piras listened intently, breaking in now and then with brief questions and monosyllabic sounds of confirmation. Then she said: “Incredible. Really incredible. The thing that surprises me most is that Aragona actually seems to have justified his existence. And just what do you intend to do now?”

  Lojacono told her about the things that were still being checked out, by Aragona at the notary’s office and by him, after his recent trip to forensics.

  She asked: “And now you’re heading over to the store, is that right? To check out the logo on the bag. You know, it really does add up. And I won’t lie to you, it would be a blessing, a spectacular success to throw in everyone’s face, everyone who said that Pizzofalcone should be shut down immediately. But if I were you, I’d move cautiously: you need to obtain a full and complete confession; otherwise, any two-bit lawyer will be able to dismantle your whole theory in seconds. You have a series of clues, but not a single piece of solid evidence.”

  Lojacono objected: “What do you mean, clues? I explained everything to you clearly, that’s the only way it could have happened! We’ve got it, we know who it was, and we presumably have the motive as well.”

  “Sure, but I could never authorize you to make an arrest on this basis. You can’t just work by a process of elimination, and you know that: we need proof, certainty, and right now you have no solid evidence. And no certainty either, believe me. Which means you have just one option: you need to obtain a full confession, which is, as you know, the hardest thing. And I can’t help you get that from here.”

  Lojacono reached the store filled with a new anxiety; in the space of just a few yards, walking from the taxi to the front door, he got thoroughly drenched. He asked the shop clerk a few questions, and she directed him to the section he was interested in, which was downstairs. In a corner, at the end of an aisle that boasted a wide selection of dishes and glasses adorned with wedding announcements, there was a display case t
hat looked exactly like the shelves at the scene of the crime.

  He walked over to it, hands in his pockets, rivulets of water dripping off his raincoat, creating a small puddle on the gleaming floor. Behind two layers of glass, a dancer with a ukulele looked up at him, smiling sweetly. He didn’t smile back.

  A few minutes later, he was leaving the store with a bag in hand that was in every detail identical—except for the rip on the side—to the one now being held in the forensic squad’s laboratory.

  At the same time, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket: it was Aragona. His partner, jubilant, told him that he’d just found the confirmation that they needed at the notary’s office.

  Now they just needed to wrap the case up, as Aragona had put it.

  Which was the hardest thing, as Piras had told him.

  LII

  Once they’d checked everything out, they’d headed back to the station house.

  The meeting, which Palma had insisted that everyone attend, had been short but intense: it was clear that the choice of strategy and its success or failure would not only determine how the case would be resolved, but also whether or not the precinct would survive.

  Lojacono and Aragona had revealed the identity of Cecilia De Santis’s murderer and explained how they had figured it out. The confirmation had come from assembling various observations—from forensics, from the notary’s office, from the luxury housewares store. When they’d finished talking, there had been a moment of intent silence.

  Romano and Di Nardo had agreed with Aragona: he wanted to make an immediate arrest, convinced they had all the elements necessary to construct a successful prosecution. Palma and Pisanelli, in light of their more extensive experience, had instead counseled a more cautious approach: they’d seen more than a few criminals walk free because someone had been in a hurry to wrap up an investigation.

  Ottavia had nodded: “That’s true. But it’s also true that if we submit all our evidence to the magistrate, someone else will have the privilege of completing the investigation; and if we—and I mean all of us—are convinced that we know who committed this murder, it’s not fair for those guys to get to wrap up the case. Especially if this might determine our future as a precinct. As far as I’m concerned, I’m for trusting Lojacono and Aragona: I bet they’ll get a confession. I’d let them try.”

  Pisanelli, noncommittally, had said they certainly risked putting the guilty party on notice, and giving the murderer time and opportunity to prepare a stronger defense; but he also had to agree that, if there was a way to save Pizzofalcone, this was it.

  And so now Lojacono and Aragona found themselves standing under a narrow overhang, seeking shelter from the driving rain, the scene dimly illuminated by a streetlight that hung from an overhead cable in the middle of the street and was swaying in the wind. They were waiting for the person who had murdered Signora Cecilia De Santis to be so good as to exit the building across the street.

  The tension was palpable, and for the past several minutes neither man had said a word. Every so often Aragona took off his glasses and tried to wipe them off with a handkerchief that was already soaked; Lojacono wondered how the hell he could even see through those preposterous blue-tinted lenses now streaked with rain.

  At last, the person who had murdered Signora Cecilia De Santis emerged from the front door. The person stopped at the threshold, looked out at the pouring rain, trying to gauge the distance that needed to be covered in order to reach the expensive sedan that was waiting to be driven to the dry shelter of a garage. The person sighed, and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves.

  Lojacono and Aragona emerged from the shadows and briskly crossed the street, indifferent to the puddles they splashed through on the way; they approached the person who had murdered Signora Cecilia De Santis, one man on each side. “Let’s get in the car,” Lojacono said. “That way we can have a little chat.”

  Once they were inside, Aragona in the middle of the back-seat and Lojacono in front, in the passenger seat, the murderer said: “That way we can have a little chat. And just what are we supposed to chat about, lieutenant? I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  Lojacono said: “No, De Lucia. You haven’t told us everything. We know that, because the first time we talked, you said that the poor signora stayed shut up in her apartment with all the windows and shutters fastened tight, but you couldn’t have known that, because the notary told us that during their phone call his wife had told him that she had just closed the windows and blinds, including the one that the concierge had just fixed, but also that she didn’t usually do that. We know because only you and Rea had the passwords to the notary’s computer, and Rea doesn’t know how to use computers at all; and from that computer, reservations were made for a trip, reservations made with a specific request, that it be possible to change one of the names up to one day before departure, and the name that was to be changed was the notary’s, because the people who would be going on that trip were you and the signora. We know it because that email was sent at 10:13 A.M. on March 5th, and at that exact time, as we know from the probate ledger, the notary was in fact with Signora Rea drawing up a last will and testament on Via Posillipo. We know it because the shopping bag used to carry away the silver that was stolen as a cover and then discarded in a dumpster was the same bag used to bring the snow globe, the murder weapon, into the apartment, because it had in fact just arrived; and you are the one who purchased it, in the store where you regularly accompanied the signora, and where they remember very well who purchased the snow globe, claiming that it was a purchase being made on the signora’s behalf. We know, because the absence of fingerprints at the scene of the crime is due to the fact that you were wearing these gloves, the gloves you use to drive the notary’s sedan, to make sure you don’t smear the briarwood steering wheel with the ink from the promissory notes you handle all day. And we know it because you’ve known and worked for the notary all these years, which makes it plausible that the signora would have opened the door to you at that time on a Sunday night, in a dressing gown. We know everything. The only thing we don’t know is why you did it.”

  There ensued a silence that, to the two policemen, seemed to last for a thousand years.

  The chubby little man sat there with his head bowed, his wet comb-over plastered dismally to his cranium, his thick glasses lenses fogged up, his gloved hands cradled in his lap, motionless. Outside, a gust of rain lashed the windshield.

  At last, he looked up, lost in thoughts and memories. And he spoke, repeating as usual the last few words uttered to him.

  The only thing you don’t know is why I did it.

  Do you think I haven’t asked myself the same thing?

  Do you think I haven’t been wondering it every minute, since it happened right up until this very second?

  Who even knows why I did it.

  All I know is that I did it, and that my life ended at that very instant, along with hers.

  He didn’t deserve her, you know. That man didn’t deserve her. He’s a bastard, an arrogant, shallow bastard. He likes women, he doesn’t let even one of them get by him: if you only knew how many young women, mature matrons, even barely legal girls I’ve seen pass through his hands over the years. And I know it, because the bastard used me to cover his tracks. Oh, the lies I’ve had to tell, to everyone, when, instead of working or going home, he was acting the playboy around town.

  And he owed everything he had to her; she had even given him the money that allowed him to study for his civil service exam. And his clients, the highly placed friends he was so proud of, they all came from her. He owed her everything.

  My position, you understand, is like a front row seat. From where I sit you see lots of things, you understand lots of things. Over the years I’ve seen what kind of a man he is, and I’ve seen what a wonderful woman she is. She was. Because now she’s dead, isn’t she? She’s dead.
And I killed her.

  He’d tell me: Rino, do me a favor, she wants to be taken here or there, you take the long way round, or pretend the car isn’t working right, stall, give me time to get back, you already know what we’re talking about, right? And he’d laugh, and shoot me a wink. How that wink disgusted me. And he’d say: we understand each other, man to man, eh? What was I supposed to understand, man to man, sitting in my little furnished room, reading a book or watching a movie on TV, while he’s staying in the finest five-star hotels with beautiful women, spending the money he earned thanks to her?

  Still, I was happy. I was happy because I got to spend time with her. She was a wonderful woman, you know that? She suffered, she suffered terribly. He thought he was pulling the wool over her eyes, but she understood it all, she knew everything. She kept her pain to herself, and she avoided other people because every friend she saw, male or female, couldn’t wait to tell her all about her husband’s latest exploits. Shitheads, you know: they like to see other people suffer. Sometimes even here in the car, while I was driving, they’d say to her: Don’t you know, can’t you see? I hear that what’s-her-name ran into him on Capri with this woman, and so-and-so saw him in Sorrento with some other woman. But she’d just smile and reply: I don’t care, and she’d change the subject; but I knew how it tore her up inside.

  But she’d talk to me about it. She was the only one who’d talk to me. I don’t talk with anyone; that office is a nest of vipers, just put three women together and forget about the Gaza Strip, there’s your intractable war zone. Better to have nothing to do with them. I live a private life, I’m not the kind of guy who’s out and about at night. She was the only person who talked to me.

  What else were we going to do? She in her luxury, me in my poverty, we were two lonely people. At least we could comfort each other. And we did.