“He’s sick, you know that. But he’s strong, he’s holding on.”
Lena caresses his face: “And you’re strong too, little one. So strong. And your grandfather would be proud of you, if he could see how brave you are.”
“Listen, Lena: We can’t be afraid. You’ll see, someone will come get us, and it’ll be my papà. My papà won’t let anything stop him.”
“Dodo, no one knows where we are, not even your father. This is the second night we’ve been here. The longer we’re here, the angrier he gets. Give me the number, I’m begging you.”
Dodo thinks it over. He’s seen it on so many TV shows and in cartoons, too: At times like these, the thing to do is stall.
“All right. But tell him that if he tries to hurt us he’ll be sorry. Understood, Lena? He’d better not hurt us, otherwise my father will make him pay a heavy price.”
Once she has the number, the woman crawls toward the door and knocks softly. Stromboli throws the door open again, slamming it against the sheet metal, and shouts: “Well? You are done? Woman, you have number?”
Lena nods, sobbing, and he grabs her and drags her out of the room.
Dodo pulls the Batman action figure out of his pocket. Batman, Batman, he murmurs. You see, poor Lena is a prisoner, too. Do you remember Lena, who lived with us before I started school, when I spent mornings with my grandfather? Lena, who used to tell me fairy tales, who played with me, who used to take me to the park. That’s right, Lena, who we never saw again because once I started school they didn’t need her anymore and my grandfather fired her. Stromboli has taken her, too.
He’s a bad man, Stromboli. Just like Two-Face, or the Joker, or Bane. A terribly bad man. My papà is going to have to be very strong to defeat him.
But my papà will do it, you know, Batman. You know it, heroes stop at nothing. Heroes are the stubbornest, strongest people in the world; they have no weaknesses. That’s why we have to hold out, Batman. Because even if someone isn’t born a hero, he can become one. Heroes exist, Batman. Even if in the real world, even I know this, you don’t see them flying from one building to another or zooming down the street.
I remember asking my papa about it once, because I’d never seen them. And he told me: My little one, it’s because in the real world, heroes don’t seem like heroes. They have to hide.
Out in the world, Batman, there are a bunch of heroes, you know.
Lots of heroes.
XXIX
Heroes.
There are lots of different kinds of heroes, you know. There’s not just one kind.
Heroes are courageous, they never get lost. They know what they’re up against, they look their enemies in the face and take them on, fearlessly. Heroes never hesitate.
Because if they had doubts, fears, they wouldn’t be heroes. In a black-and-white world, heroes know where to go.
You can recognize heroes right away.
They’re the strong ones, capable of crushing evil in one fist and throwing it away.
They’re the ones without fear, heroes are.
You’ve been lucky, Francesco Romano. When it comes to stakeouts, as everyone knows, it’s all a matter of luck. This time there was even a parking place right behind a delivery van, which means you can keep an eye on the front entrance without being seen.
When they teach you police procedure, they never take luck into account, you think to yourself; but actually luck is everything. Not only in stakeouts, truth be told. In life, too, it’s all a matter of luck.
Roll your car window up a bit. May is a dangerous month, at night the temperature can drop as much as twenty degrees and you can catch a cold before you even know you’re sneezing. And you, after all, Francesco Romano, even though you’re big and strong and muscular, even if you’re capable of choking a man one-handed and sometimes you’re even tempted to do so and you have to stop yourself and you do, you stop yourself just in the nick of time, you still catch colds at the drop of a hat. Do you remember how she used to wrap a scarf around your neck before you went out? Remember how she’d stand on tiptoes to kiss your reddened nose? Remember how she’d unwrap the chocolates and surprise you by popping them into your mouth, and then she’d read you the little slip of paper with the stupid romantic phrase and say, it’s true, it’s really true? You can remember plenty of other things, for that matter. You can remember everything.
You can even remember the letter she left on the table that night you came home and she wasn’t there anymore. The letter that begins, “Dear Francesco,” just like that, as if it were some stranger writing you, someone you barely know. Not Giorgia, your Gio, the girl that set the world on fire to get to know you back when you were at university, the same girl who couldn’t stop crying tears of joy the day of your wedding, the same one who hopped around the house like a kangaroo for a solid hour the day you were promoted to the detective squad. Dear Francesco. It’s just funny she didn’t end the letter with “all my best.”
That’s no way to end a romance is it, Francesco Romano? Just because a poor hardworking man, in a moment of anger, raised his hand almost without knowing what he was doing. And what the hell, that was little more than a love tap, after all. It’s not your fault, Francesco Romano, if she’s so delicate that she got a black eye and a bruise on her cheek from nothing more than a love tap.
And you can’t say that you’re not a respectable person, Francesco Romano. An honest and upstanding man; it’s no accident that you decided to be a policeman. Good men become policemen, don’t they? Not criminals. Criminals, by definition, are bad men; they rob, they rape, they kill. And the policemen chase them, catch them; they don’t do what those bad men do.
While you stare at the road that cuts through the night in silence, with your sleepless eyes wide open, illuminated by the streetlights, staring at dumpsters and parked cars, you think to yourself that no woman should leave an honest and upstanding man because once, just once, his hand got the better of him. A man, however honest and upstanding, can have some troubled times when they kick him out of his precinct just because some asshole criminal got under his skin. What were you supposed to do, Francesco Romano, should you have just sat there smiling when that two-bit criminal said to you, Hey superintendent, I’ll get out of here before you do tonight, because I pay my lawyer more in an hour than you make in two months?
And in the meantime, she’s left you, Francesco Romano. And here you are, sitting outside her mother’s apartment building, spending your night in the car since you can’t sleep at home anyway, that apartment is too fucking big for just one person, and noisy at night, so noisy you can’t get a wink of sleep. So you might as well sit in your car, looking up at the apartment where that bitch of your mother-in-law lives; neither of you could ever stand the other. You can just guess how she’s brainwashing her daughter now, you can almost hear her voice: You see, he’s violent, he’s a nut, I told you this is how it would end, I never even wanted you to marry him.
But that’s not right, Giorgia my love. I’m the man for you, the only man for you, the same way you are and always will be the only woman for me. If only we’d had the child you wanted; if only for once fate had helped me instead of tripping me up. If we’d had a baby of our own, a boy, with your looks and your kindness, and my strength and my determination.
Your thoughts turn to the kidnapped child; and for that matter, Giorgia always says that someone with your job never stops working. That poor innocent little boy; he had the money, and the beautiful homes, and the school for rich kids, and even so, some stupid asshole just took him and carried him off to who knows where, and no one stopped it.
I wish I could tell you all about it, Gio, my love. I wish I could talk to you, now, in our bed, after making love desperately, searching for some way to assuage the pain that I carry inside me, that never gives me peace. How I wish I could tell you about my day, and hear your delicate voice utter wo
rds of relief.
I’m strong; I am, you know. I’m a strong policeman, honest and competent.
A hero.
A hero who, without you, is weaker than a kidnapped child. At least he has someone who loves him, at least he can hope to come back to his old life.
Not you, Francesco Romano, you have no hope.
And no life to go back to.
It’s a good thing there’s a delivery van parked here in front. And that no one, hurrying past to get through the night, can see a man in a car watching a front entrance and crying.
Heroes.
Who, while everyone else is asleep, watch over us. Who scan the night in search of something that’s just a little off, in search of wrongs to set right.
Who sometimes live in caves so no one can see them.
Or who live in our midst, in a luxurious penthouse, ready to throw on a special outfit at a moment’s notice, or to take off in a souped-up car that looks like an ordinary automobile, but which actually flies, shoots, and can even travel underwater.
Heroes who know that evil can lurk anywhere, who can always duck into a phone booth, change clothes, and sally forth against the enemy in their brightly colored costumes: handsome, powerful, and invulnerable.
The night is the right place for heroes.
Marco Aragona walks unhurriedly, straight down the center of the sidewalk.
He left his car in the garage. The usual spectacular entrance: tires screeching, brakes slamming. The sleepy nighttime parking attendant’s usual jerk into wakefulness, the usual resentful glare, the usual forced smile: Buonanotte, Dottore. He knows, that Moroccan asshole, that Marco’s a cop. He knows that if he so much as thought of saying something, Corporal Marco Aragona would kick his ass sideways.
Striding smugly down the deserted street, Marco Aragona feels like the master of the night. The terror of all the two-bit sewer rats who populate this city, the rats who emerge from their holes only when darkness comes to shelter them. It wouldn’t be hard to clean up this city, if there were a hundred Marco Aragonas, a special squad with license to come down heavy. That broom would sweep clean: So long, faggots, sluts, thieves, and illegals.
Marco thinks that all the mealymouthed optimism politicians, priests, and humanitarian associations spout is bound to be the ruin of the country. We ought to be less tolerant, he always says. A little spring-cleaning and then you’d see.
No fear of the night for Corporal Marco Aragona. And not much desire to sleep, as far as that goes. He takes the long way around, he feels like thinking. Hard day. The whole thing with the kidnapped boy really is brutal.
At first, he’d assumed this would be a good career opportunity: It’s not like kidnappings come along every day. But then the idea of having to partner up with Hulk had almost convinced him to foist the thing off onto someone else. Working with that guy was like sitting on a crate of explosives, you never knew what might happen. And dealing with the little kid’s family made him uneasy, too. Everyone’s nerves balanced on a knife’s edge, everyone ready to take offense or act all scandalized; and yet this was a kidnapping, not a palace ball. The quicker they got that straight, the better it would be, both for the investigation and for that poor little kid.
He stops before the front door of his home. Actually, it’s not really a home at all. Aragona lives at the Hotel Mediterraneo, midway between police headquarters, where he’d been assigned when he first moved to the city, and Pizzofalcone’s precinct house.
He’s never told anyone at work that he lives here. He knows what they think of him: That he’s there because of nepotism, that he doesn’t need the 1,200 euros a month a policeman makes. A guy who could have snapped his fingers and had a job at any law office in the provincial town he came from, where his family might as well have been royalty with all the money they had. And all that gossip would be confirmed by the way he chooses to live; instead of renting a studio apartment, he lives in one of the finest hotels in the downtown area, where a room, breakfast included, costs more than his salary.
But Aragona has his reasons. He’s served, flattered, fed magnificently, and they wash his sheets. He never has to tidy up after himself and there’s even satellite TV, so he can watch the American cop shows he is so passionate about. And then it’s all so secret agent to live in a hotel and drink dry martinis on the roof garden, the city stretched out at his feet, the traffic noise muffled by distance like faraway music.
Actually, there’s also another reason. But to Mamma and Papà, who are only too happy to continue looking after their beloved son by sending a sizable wire transfer that the bank deposits punctually into his account every month, he hasn’t mentioned it. The reason is Irina, the angel who, disguised as a waitress serving breakfast, brings him plates of scrambled eggs and bacon every morning.
He’s never spoken to her. But sooner or later, as soon as the opportunity presents itself, he’ll sweep off his blue-tinted eyeglasses and give her that famous look of his, as if he’s only just noticed her. And, pretending to read the name tag that the girl wears pinned to her remarkable chest, only then will he say to her: Ciao, Irina. What are you doing for fun, after work?
Okay, he thinks, as he heads off to the elevator, his room key in hand, it’s an immigrant’s name. But not all immigrants are bastard sons of bitches like the one who’s kidnapped the boy, right? You can’t tar them all with the same brush.
We’re heroes, fucking right, thinks Corporal Marco Aragona, trying out the look that he’s planning to use on Irina in the elevator mirror.
Heroes aren’t racists. And he certainly isn’t one. Who could have ever said otherwise?
Heroes. Heroes with secret identities.
Because it’s not necessarily the case that heroes seem like heroes.
Sometimes they seem like ordinary people, and they do it on purpose, so that no one will suspect they have special powers, so that none of the villains will suspect that at any moment they might find themselves face-to-face with the hero who’ll throw them up against the wall, toss them into a cell.
Sometimes not even the people who live right alongside them know who they are, these heroes.
Perhaps they don’t even notice them, they’re so used to taking things for granted. Maybe even to those who love them, who’ve known them since they were small, maybe even to their own families, heroes don’t seem like heroes.
Hidden behind their mundane alter egos, heroes can seem like something completely other than what they are.
Heroes, sometimes, are complete nobodies.
Alessandra Di Nardo, known to her friends as Alex, was sitting up straight, the way she’d been taught, watching TV. She didn’t care much about whatever they were blabbering on about on the screen; she was listening with an eighth, or maybe even a tenth, of her attention. She was minding her own business.
She’d have gladly done without that ridiculous after-dinner ritual entirely. But it mattered to the general a great deal, her mother had explained to her, and if something mattered to the general, then no one else had the right to vote.
Alex lived with her parents. She could—she wanted to with all her heart—live on her own, in an apartment, however small, in any neighborhood in the city, ideally as far as possible from this one. But the one time, years ago, that she’d expressed that desire at dinner, breaking the silence imposed during meals because, as the general liked to say, you can only do one thing well at a time, so either you eat or you talk, the answer had been quick and decisive: Certainly, the general had said, when you get married.
That was the end of that, because Alex was never going to get married.
On the television, the guy that they always watched at that hour was talking; his voice was low and courtly, and he used the same tone on every topic, whether it was diets or politics or the economy. That night, the spotlight was on a famous murder, perhaps for the hundredth time. The sce
ne of the crime was analyzed inch by inch, the psychologist sketched out a profile of the probable culprit, the magistrate outlined standard procedures, the criminologist laid out the evidence that had been overlooked by the dimwitted investigators who had taken on the case. Alex, with the tenth of her attention that she’d devoted to the show, realized how pointless all that talk really was, as if one crime were the same as another, as if it weren’t true that each time, the weed of evil grew inside a soul in its own unique and twisted way.
She shot a glance over at the general; he had fallen asleep in his armchair, his mouth open and his head thrown back. He was getting old, she told herself with the usual incredible blend of tenderness, resentment, fear, and love that she felt for him. Her prison. The man whose opinion, to her, could be more damning than a verdict handed down by a court of law, seeing as they disagreed on everything.
Farther off to the side her mother had fallen asleep, too; her eyeglasses had slid down the sharp ridge of her nose. Alex knew that the minute she moved to get up, even if it was just to go to the bathroom, both of them would suddenly jump to attention like grasshoppers. Where are you going, sweetheart? her mamma would ask, in accordance with the general’s silent command. Don’t you like the show?
She decided that tomorrow, instead of coming home after work, she’d go to the shooting range. She only really felt like herself before a darkened hallway, a pair of soundproof earmuffs on, staring down the target with a bull’s-eye on its chest. And when she had a regulation weapon in her hand, a gun that she’d modified all by herself. Six shots in a row, six bull’s-eyes, and all around her, her fellow policemen looking at her in astonishment: a twenty-eight-year-old woman, slender and refined, with delicate features that made her look five years younger, who could shoot faster and more accurately than all the rest of them put together.
A passion for weapons was the only interest she shared with the general; the only thing that united a father and daughter who were otherwise opposites. He’d taken her to the gun range for the first time when she was ten. Her mamma’s feeble protests—she had imagined her daughter partaking in more feminine pastimes—had proved as ineffectual as a spring breeze: For that matter, wasn’t the general’s wife the one who had been unable to bear him a son? And now what did she want, that he should resign himself to the idea that there would never be another Di Nardo in the army without even being able to share an innocent hobby like firearms with Alex?
Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone Page 15