The Puppeteer

by Timothy Williams

  “Don’t use long words and don’t make intellectual jokes. I’m a dumb policeman. But that won’t stop me from causing you trouble.”

  “You shouldn’t threaten me, Commissario.” Although flat, the voice was full of menace.

  “I’m talking about murder.”

  “You’re dangerous, Trotti.”

  He took the chair and sat down. “Now perhaps, we can talk seriously.”

  The naked face gave a thin smile. “You’re not going to get away with this.”

  “Perhaps you don’t understand, but I’m talking about murder. Murder, Baldassare. And that can mean life imprisonment on some Sardinian island. Don’t become all tough little intellectual with me.”

  “You’re mad—and you’re dangerous. What do I know about your daughter? A poor thing who looks like an underfed rabbit and follows me around like a faithful puppy.” He shrugged. “I thought that she was ill—some disease, some incurable disease. She pestered me, always asking questions, always trying to attract my attention. I felt sorry for her—and now I understand. Her disease is her father.” His elbow was on the table and he wagged his finger at Trotti. It was a strange gesture. Baldassare was afraid, physically afraid; yet there was no fear in his defiance. “Listen, Trotti, I am not a doctor, but I read the magazines. It didn’t occur to me that your daughter was starving herself—I didn’t realize that. But I read the papers and I’ve heard about anorexia. And I know what causes it.”

  The skin on Trotti’s face felt numb.

  “Nothing to do with me, Trotti. That’s your little pipe dream and if you want to think that your daughter’s starving herself out of love …” He shrugged, and the mocking smile had returned behind the upheld finger. “But from what I’ve read about anorexia, I thought it was a way of asserting yourself. Not a broken heart, Commissario, but a way of showing yourself and showing the rest of the world that you’re in charge—that you’re an autonomous adult. Control your body—and you control your life.”

  “Be careful what you say, Baldassare.”

  “A way to assert your freedom—freedom from demanding parents, freedom from people who don’t consider you a real human being but merely a pawn. A pawn in their own private game of conflict and domination.”

  The numbness had spread. It had reached the back of his neck. Trotti felt cold, very cold. A lump of ice within his chest.

  “A poor kid who’s crying out for attention and love. But attention and love are things a man like you doesn’t need to think about. It’s easier, isn’t it, to come round here”—Baldassare gestured to the pile of scattered books on the floor and to the stream of dark ink that had almost reached his shoes—“and to accuse me of murder? Accuse me of having killed your daughter. But then, you’re a policeman—you can throw your weight around with other people, just as you throw your weight around with your daughter.” He shook his head. “Poor Commissario Trotti.”

  “Save the pity for yourself.”

  “Trotti, you’re finished. As a human being, you must have died a long time ago. As a policeman, you’re not worth the paper your identity card is printed on.” Baldassare rubbed his face, then leaned over and picked up the sunglasses. “By God, I’m going to see you pulled through the mud.”

  Trotti stood up.

  The ice was there in his heart, but his head was clear now and his body was washed of any need for revenge. He went over to the window.

  It looked onto the Cloisters of Magnolia. A couple of students were sitting beside the well, enjoying the sunshine. The sun was warm and a man was sweeping the cobbled courtyard. The birch broom moved in regular, short strokes. The man was sweeping away the accumulated dirt and detritus of winter.

  For the first time, Trotti noticed the smell of the magnolia.

  “No, Baldassare, no.” Trotti turned and now he was smiling. “You can’t escape the facts. There’s only one person who knew where I was going last Friday morning—and that was my daughter. Nobody else—nobody. And yet a journalist found me there. A journalist, Professor Baldassare, who had been living with Signorina Guerra. Which is, I am sure, a name that is not totally unknown to you.” Trotti paused. “Your wife’s maiden name.”

  The long face was looking at him. Baldassare ran a hand through his hair.

  “My daughter told you—and through you, the message reached Maltese. Only now, Maltese is dead—murdered in cold blood by two men who knew that he would be at Gardesana on Lake Garda at eight o’clock in the morning. Two men who were waiting for him.”

  One of the tinted lenses had been smashed in the fall.

  “Tell me, Baldassare, why did you want Maltese killed?”

  Baldassare smiled as he tapped the lens; small shards of glass fell onto the desk.

  38: Carmine

  THE BEAUTY OF the city—Roman brick, Renaissance architecture, Hapsburg ochre walls and the trees in blossom—did not touch Trotti. Nor did the gentle smell of flowers coming from the private gardens. His footsteps echoed against the high walls of the narrow streets.

  Piazza Carmine was full of rows of parked traffic. The church was of red brick and in the walls, blue and white dishes had been embedded. It was said that they were gifts brought back by local dignitaries from the Crusades. Trotti brushed past a group of old women and pushed open the heavy door, worn and dirty beneath the touch of so many hands. He entered the cool chill of the church. The smell of candles reminded him of his childhood and Zia Anastasia, stiff in her black clothes and her hand firmly on his wrist, pulling him towards the altar and—she hoped—a more Christian existence.

  Pioppi was a regular churchgoer and sometimes Agnese accompanied her—perhaps because she enjoyed dressing for the occasion, perhaps because she met old friends, people like her. They would never think of coming to visit her in via Milano but were happy enough to chat with her on the neutral ground of the church steps and to speak of other, anodyne things—of clothes and prices and children—but never of the policeman whom she had married.

  Trotti stood by the door, looking at the burning candles. He felt that he was an intruder upon a world that he had renounced many years earlier. A clumsy genuflection. Crossing himself while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He went to a pew and sat down.

  The creak of shoes as a man—the sacristan, perhaps—busied himself before the high altar. There were rays of light coming from a window. Specks of dust fluttered and danced in silence.

  Trotti placed his head on the back of the chair in front and closed his eyes. He did not move. He did not pray—did not know how to. He sat motionless for over an hour. He remembered Pioppi—when she was little, pointing at the fish that darted beneath the surface of Lake Garda. The silence of the church brought him comfort. The grittiness behind his eyes seemed to lessen and when he raised his head, he felt refreshed.

  39: Siemens

  “RAMOVERDE WAS LIVING in Buenos Aires until about 1968, when he had a heart attack.”

  “Leave me alone, Magagna.”

  “He died in 1970. The Argentinians have been slow in sending us any information—very slow. I don’t think that they’re pleased with Italy or the Italians. Perhaps they feel that we’ve let them down in their moment of need.”

  Trotti stared at the empty wall in front of him; the cream paint had been smeared by the passage of time and by the movement of people along the hospital corridor. He turned to look at the younger man, but Magagna did not look up from his notes. Magagna said, “His wife died a couple of years later, but the body was repatriated.”

  “Leave me, Magagna. Go back to Milan.”

  It was then that Magagna took notice of Trotti and of what he was saying. He smiled brightly. “You can’t stay here for the rest of your life.”

  “Pioppi needs me.”

  “You’ve seen her—she’s asleep.”

  “I must stay with her.”

  “You’re not doing her any good—nor yourself.” He removed his sunglasses and there was compassion on his face. There was also stubbl
e along his upper lip where he was growing a new mustache. “You’re only hurting yourself, Commissario.”

  “What the hell do you want me to do?”

  It was still early morning, and beyond the door, in the parking spaces by the trees, doctors were arriving for work. They looked naked without their white laboratory coats.

  “Take this.” Magagna handed Trotti a packet of sweets. “It might help you to get a bed in the diabetes ward.”

  Trotti shook his head. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’ve driven down from Milan to see you, Commissario.”

  “I phoned America. I left a message saying it was urgent, and still my wife hasn’t phoned.”

  “I think,” Magagna said, putting his glasses back on, “that we ought to go and see the girl.”

  Trotti’s shoulders were slumped. He sat with his hands hanging between his knees and he stared at his shoes. Further down the corridor, a woman was singing—a cleaning woman, whose voice rose above the clanging of her pails and broom: “Amor, dammi quel fazzolettino.”

  “I should be in Monza—but there’s not much point. Ragusa knows that we’ve got all his phones tapped for the simple reason that he’s got friends in Siemens … the telephone company.”

  “Siemens?”

  “Perhaps we ought to go back to the shop and ask Guerra a few more questions—questions that we should have asked her the first time.”

  Trotti looked up.

  “You told me that there must be some form of insurance that Maltese took out to protect himself. If he knew anything, he probably told the girl—or entrusted her with evidence.”

  Trotti said nothing.

  “Unless, of course, she knew he was going to get killed,” Magagna said.

  40: Canary

  TROTTI DID NOT talk. He sat beside Magagna, his chin on his chest and his shoulders slumped forward. Magagna could not see whether his eyes were closed or whether Trotti was staring out of the window, looking at the fields or the sluggish canal where fishermen held their rods over the polluted water.

  Past the Certosa, past Binasco—where Magagna was held up by the blue coach turning into the station. Afterwards, determined to make up for lost time, he sped along the road and before long they were on the outskirts of the city. Suddenly the flat fields became a jungle of new tower blocks, and the morning sky was acrid with fumes. Cars hooted at each other, driven by a magic, manic force.

  Milan.

  “For God’s sake, stop that whistling.”

  Magagna turned, surprised. “I was whistling?”

  Trotti did not reply.

  At Ventiquattro Maggio, Magagna turned left, almost hit a truck—Reggio Calabria registration and the driver sweating, despite his cotton singlet—and moved through the traffic at speed.

  Trotti was gripping the armrest. “Where are we going?”

  “To the shop.” He bumped the car across a tramline, took another turn. A woman with a poodle, about to cross the road, gesticulated angrily.

  “Women!” Without stopping to catch his breath, Magagna added, “Either she sent him to his death without knowing it—or it was deliberate.”

  “Guerra?”

  “If—as you say—her brother-in-law knew that you were going to be at Gardesana, it would seem reasonable to assume she told Maltese.” Magagna pulled the car onto the pavement. “The question is, did she know he was going to his death?”

  Trotti said nothing. He got out of the car and Magagna soon joined him. Magagna pushed the sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. Guiding Trotti by the arm, he crossed the road.

  It was not yet eleven o’clock. Already a hot day. The neon light seemed insignificant.

  The bell rang overhead.

  “Gentlemen?”

  The woman was wearing the same vivid lipstick, but she had changed her jeans. Now she had on a bright pair of canary yellow slacks.

  “Pubblica Sicurezza.”

  The woman threw her eyes to the ceiling. “We’ve met.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  Her eyes watched the two men with ill-concealed hostility.

  “Well?” Magagna looked at the shelves, glanced at the display of new and second-hand clothes, the single black and white poster of Totò, the Neapolitan actor, drinking a cup of coffee, his eyes sad, and a burning cigarette between two fingers. Then he looked again at the woman. His face had grown older, more feral. “A few questions that we want to ask her.”

  The woman shrugged.

  From between the racks of jackets a client emerged. A man in a raincoat. He mumbled “Buongiorno” and left hurriedly, accompanied by the dying tinkle of the overhead bell.

  “Strange customers,” Magagna said.

  “I didn’t invite you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl—where is she?”

  She looked at Trotti in surprise and raised an eyebrow of plucked hair and paint, “I haven’t seen her.” She gave a sudden, ingratiating smile. Lipstick on her false teeth.

  Magagna asked, “Why not?”

  “I don’t know—perhaps because she hasn’t been in since you went off with her—perhaps because she’s a lazy bitch. Or perhaps she’s staying out of trouble.” She added, “I am not a relative of hers.”

  “Lucky girl.”

  Then the woman lost her temper. “Who d’you think you are? I’m a respectable woman and I run a respectable shop. Please leave—your presence here is not good for business.”

  “Your presence in Questura will be even more harmful to business, signora.”

  Trotti brushed past the woman—she took a step back on her high-heeled sandals—and went to the door at the back of the shop. He turned the handle: it was locked.

  “Please open it.”

  “Why?” The tone was querulous, with a hint of fear. “I’ve told you, she hasn’t been in. Not since the last time you were here. And anyway, I didn’t want her—I don’t like having flatfeet coming here when I’ve a legitimate business to run. There are criminals, you know, real criminals—why don’t you go and bother them? Leave honest folk to get on with their business. Go and catch criminals and terrorists.”

  “Please open the door, signora.”

  The woman hesitated, bit her lower lip and as she did so, her jaw swelled with the displaced dentures. She turned and glanced at the front door.

  “All you have to do is unlock this door.”

  “I haven’t got the key.”

  “On Monday, you had it.”

  Again the head turned and with her bloodshot eyes, she looked despairingly at the front door. “It’s not me who has the key.”

  “Then we’ll have to knock the door down.”

  Her face lit up, inspired. “Do you have a warrant?”

  Magagna shrugged and turned to Trotti. Trotti said nothing.

  She repeated, “Do you have a warrant?”

  With his thumb, Trotti gestured towards the closed door. Magagna nodded, but before he could approach it, the woman fell on him.

  “No!” she screamed.

  He pushed her away. Theatrically she threw her head back; the knees crumpled and she started to fall towards the floor. She released a slight, hissing gasp as her head hit the coarse weave of the jute carpet.

  Magagna put his shoulder against the door. Without moving his feet, he swung his body and pushed hard. The lock gave way immediately.

  The last time, the room had been almost empty, dry and dusty. Now it was full of parcels—parcels wrapped in brown paper and attached with string.

  Magagna produced a penknife and cut at some string; then he ripped at the brown paper.

  Magazines—glossy magazines.

  41: Theory

  “YOU CAN’T TRUST women.”

  Magagna said, “Why did you marry one?”

  “You can’t trust men, either. Magagna, take me home,” Trotti said tensely, “or take me to the station and I’ll catch a train.”

  “I
think you ought to see the girl.”

  “I want to get back to my daughter.”

  “Let’s talk to Guerra first.”

  Trotti did not reply; he stared at the dingy buildings that followed the via Isonzo. With the sudden arrival of the summer, this part of the city appeared shabby, unprepared for the brightness of the sun. Soot hung in the air.

  “I need to get back to Pioppi.”

  Magagna said, “Five hundred thousand lire.”

  “What?”

  “That’s how much the Carabinieri found on Ramoverde.”

  “Well?”

  “Perhaps he wanted to give it to you, Commissario. Perhaps that’s why Ramoverde went to Gardesana.” Magagna paused for an instant. “Or perhaps the girl gave it to him.”

  Trotti looked out of the car window.

  “She knew he was going to be killed—and she wanted you to associate him with the robbery at the Banca San Matteo.”

  “There’s no connection between the money and the robbery.”

  “Other than that’s what the Sardinians were looking for.”

  “I don’t understand, Magagna, what makes you think that the Guerra girl wanted Maltese killed. Why, for heaven’s sake? They were living together, weren’t they? It was you that pointed out he pissed down her sink—a sign of intimacy, you’ll agree.”

  “Money, Commissario.”

  “Explain what you mean.”

  Magagna lit a cigarette. “An expensive habit to maintain, heroin. Where could she get the money? She must have known that after the Night of the Tazebao, there was money on Ramoverde’s head.” Magagna gave a thin smile and nudged his glasses. “The Danish magazines? I knew that they’ve been circulating—I didn’t know they were coming out of Senigallia—but I’ve been out of things at Monza. I’ve got you to thank for bringing me back into the city.” He opened the car door—they had parked on the end of viale Lodi, near the traffic lights. “Heaven knows why anybody should want to buy that rubbish.”

  “Loneliness.”

  “With children, Commissario? That’s sick—for maniacs, not for human beings. For depraved sex maniacs.”