Antonio nodded. “We don’t have the cell phone? By which I mean the physical object?”
“If we did, I could find the numbers myself, right?”
“Sure. But sir, the thing is? It’s no easy matter, I can tell you that right away. Usually they give us a CSV format file or maybe an XSL, then we have to get to work ourselves bit by bit, pulling useful files out of it by working in SQL or else using a converter. Let’s just hope that they have at least an ATPS2000.”
Rocco looked at him with a blank expression: “I didn’t understand a damned word you just said.”
“Let me put it in simple terms. The phone companies send us digital files that are a complete mess, and finding the numbers is no joke. The kind of thing that’s going to take us days.”
“Days? I don’t have days.”
“Let me see what I can figure out.”
“How do you happen to know these things?”
“I used to work at the phone company.” And with an innocent smile he left the office.
“Meanwhile, I’ve done some digging of my own,” said Caterina. “Calcestruzzi Varese is a tiny company that hasn’t invoiced anyone for months. Ugo Montefoschi is an eighty-four-year-old man, and he lives in . . .” she paused and picked up a sheet of paper, then continued: “Villa Sant’Agnese, in Brembate.”
Rocco nodded. “So he’s just a front. Our man is this Carlo Cutrì.”
“That’s right, and you know what? He’s a resident of Lugano. Switzerland. And apparently he owns a hardware store.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rocco murmured under his breath, looking out the window. “You see what he’s up to?”
“No.”
“He puts his share of Edil.ber in this Montefoschi’s name. Then, with a second property transfer, he moves it to his company in Switzerland. He’s never going to set foot here at all. Or if he does, he’ll only come when all is said and done.”
“But he has an accomplice here.”
“Certainly, whoever it is that took Chiara and are phoning our man, Pietro Berguet. And if you ask me, the intermediary on all this filth was Cristiano Cerruti.”
“Cerruti?”
“I’m sure of it. Just as I’m sure that he was probably ready to talk, but someone sealed his lips for good.”
“But who?” asked Caterina. Then she closed her eyes.
“Go on home, Caterì, and maybe stop by the pharmacy on your way. I don’t want to have you on my conscience.”
The inspector smiled and stood up. “Thanks, Dottore, I really can’t take it much longer.” She started to sway. Rocco hurried over and held her up. “Should I see you downstairs?”
“If you stand so close to me, you run the risk of catching the flu yourself, sir.”
They looked each other in the eyes. For a long while, too long, so that it turned slightly awkward. “All right then, see you later, Caterina.”
“See you later, Dottore.”
The inspector left the deputy chief’s office. Meanwhile, Rocco felt his exhaustion drop onto him like a sledgehammer, crushing spine and shoulders. In the last two days, he hadn’t gotten more than seven hours of sleep, total. The dark corners of that case resisted even the brightest beams of light, and he hardly felt like his brain was prompt or alert. What he needed was a good long nap. The sun must have set by now. Outside it was already dark, though at least the snow had stopped falling. Sidewalks and trees were still as white as a Christmas. He was about to switch off the office light when the phone rang. Heaving a sigh of annoyance, he went to pick up.
“It’s me, your favorite anatomical pathologist.”
“Should I be sitting down?”
“No, this’ll just take a second. All right now, our golf player told me what time he was killed.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“No later than eight thirty in the morning. Not a minute later. Do you want me to explain how he told me?”
“Forget about that, you’ll start by telling me what the body temperature was, I’ll get lost in these details and I’m not interested. I trust in your expertise.”
“It’s not just the temperature. It’s also the breakfast. He hadn’t even started to digest. Do you want to know what he had in his stomach?”
“No. Eight thirty, is that what you said?”
“At the very latest.”
“You’re invaluable, Alberto. Thanks and good night.”
“I’m not going to sleep at six thirty in the evening. I’ve got things to do tonight.”
“And just what are you going to do that’s fun?”
“Yoga.”
“That stuff where you tie yourself up in knots and then to get yourself untangled you have to call the forensic squad?”
“Just wait till we’re old men, and I’m all lithe, with my joints well oiled, and you can’t even bend over to pick up your house keys. Then we can talk it over.”
“Don’t worry, Alberto. I’m not planning to get old.”
“Grouchy and solitary. Just like any genuine policeman.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Same to you, Rocco.”
It was only as he put down the receiver that he realized that there was a cardboard box on the chair.
Clarks.
Desert boots. Size 10. And a note. “I hope I got the right size.”
He was heading straight for the pizzeria where he could order by the slice, ready for his usual gourmet repast, when he saw Anna leave the perfume shop and cross the street. Rocco in his turn crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk. Hands in the pockets of his loden overcoat, a rapid, silent stride, eyes focused on the slabs of stone beneath his feet.
“Well? Are you pretending you don’t know me?” Anna’s voice carried loudly across the street. Rocco slowed to a halt. “I thought you’d made yourself pretty clear on the matter.”
“Do you really believe everything a woman tells you?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“You should never answer a question with another question,” said Anna.
“You should never stop a gentleman in the street who’s minding his own business.”
“Shall we go get a glass of white?”
“All right, let’s get this glass of white.”
The whole café was made of wood. Tables, wainscoting, chairs, bar—even the suntanned bartender looked like he was made of sandalwood.
“To your health!” said Anna, raising her glass.
“And here’s to yours!” Rocco replied. Their glasses clinked and the clear cool nectar slid down their throats.
“Pain in the neck, all this snow, eh?”
“Yeah,” said Rocco. “But by now I’m getting used to it.”
“Liar.” Anna laughed and swallowed another gulp of wine. “Your face looks tired.”
“Yep, I’m a wreck.”
“What were you doing at the bank?”
“When? I’m starting to lose all sense of time.”
“Yesterday. The day after the night that you were at my house. After which I called you on the phone and. . . .”
“Right, right, that part I still remember.”
“I talked to Nora. Look, it turns out that things aren’t so bad after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just think, she actually thanked me. Because I managed to open her eyes, after all, to just what kind of a person you are.”
“She needed help seeing that?”
“She needed a little shove to get out of that relationship, is what I think.”
“So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You took me to bed to rescue your girlfriend. Is that right?”
Anna smiled. “Intentions and outcomes sometimes mingle and merge into an indecipherable fog. The important thing is that we all obtained something positive out of it. She got rid of you, you got rid of her. . . .”
“And you?”
“I satisfied my curiosity.”
Rocco poured himself another glass of white wine.<
br />
“Have I wounded your pride?”
“I don’t have any, Anna. You’re quite a character, you know? Cynical, cagey, world-weary, a little tormented, waging a never-ending battle against life. You designed it beautifully. But let me tell you two things: you’re a single woman, ridden with complexes, and if one day you were to look at yourself in the mirror with any real honesty, you’d fall apart.”
“And just what makes you say that?”
“You’re forty-two years old, but you claim to be thirty-eight. You’ve had work done on your breasts and a light touchup on your upper lip because you smoke, so you were starting to get wrinkles. You’ve been married twice and you couldn’t make either marriage work. You let the architect Pietro Bucci-Something-or-Other keep you in the style you enjoy. You wanted to make your mark on the world. You paint in your room at home but your paintings have never been seen by anyone—except by the wallpaper in your apartment, and let me tell you, it’s hard to tell the paintings and the wallpaper apart. You attack preemptively, and then you curl up like a hedgehog. You betray a close friend and then you find a cheap life-hack to keep yourself from feeling like a shit toward her. You issue ultimatums that you fail to respect. And you cry when you make love.”
Anna clapped her hands. “Good job, Signor Commissario.”
“Deputy Chief.”
“So, did you find out all these lovely things by rooting around in my house?”
“A few questions here, another few there, and just by taking a quick look around.”
“Do you know why I was crying while I was making love with you?”
“Because of my prowess in bed?”
“No. Because I’m in love, you fucking asshole!”
The Blanc de Morgex sailed straight out of Anna’s glass and onto his shirt, seeping all the way down into his trousers. Anna snapped to her feet and left the bar. Rocco sat there and watched as the liquid darkened his light-colored corduroy trousers. “This is starting to become a habit,” he said. Now he reeked like a wino.
“You reek like a wino.”
“I know, Marina, I know.”
She laughs.
“Who did you piss off this time?”
I don’t answer. It hardly seems advisable.
“A woman, for sure.”
I continue to say nothing.
“Will you look at me?”
I look at her.
“Rocco, why won’t you leave me in peace?”
A hand clutches at my stomach and, worse than a lemon could do, it squeezes out a sulphuric acid that, hot and stabbing, rises up my throat and burns it, like a blazing match.
“No,” I barely manage to cough out. “I’m not going to leave you in peace.”
“I’m not upset, Rocco. You are. You’re very upset. Have you taken a look around at this place?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. Nothing is what it’s got. There’s not a painting, not a book, not a CD. There’s just a television set, a couple of sofas, a clothes cupboard, a bed, and a kitchen you never use. What’s that in your hand?”
I lift the plastic bag. “A slice of margherita pizza, and a slice with potato and onions.”
“Then your breath will stink.”
“I do it on purpose.”
I set the pizza down on the table. I unwrap it. Actually, it smells great. And today, it doesn’t look like a wound oozing pus. It looks like a well-made pizza with tomato sauce and mozzarella. And it tastes good, too.
“That’s just because you’re hungry,” says Marina.
“Maybe so.”
“So do you want to hear today’s word of the day?”
“You’ve started that up again? What’s the word of the day?”
“Fanleaf.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Go look it up for yourself in the dictionary. You can’t always have everything served to you on a silver platter, you know,” and she leaves, heading for the bedroom. Or the bathroom. Bedroom, actually, because I don’t hear the sound of water running or locks being snapped shut.
As he took the third bite of pizza his cell phone rang. Rocco stood up. The phone was in the pocket of his loden overcoat.
“Hello?”
“Rocco? It’s me, Adele!”
For a moment Rocco wondered: Adele who?
“It’s me, Adele! That dumb-ass Seba’s girlfriend. How are you doing?”
Adele from Rome!
“Of course, sure, Adele. And how are you doing?”
“Terrible, I’m a mess. Listen, did Furio talk to you?”
“Huh?” He’d already forgotten. Then, “Yes.”
“So it’s all right with you? Have you found me a place to stay?”
“What the . . . no, Adè, I haven’t found a place. I just haven’t had the time. Work is killing me.”
“In Aosta?”
“In Aosta. Who’d have ever thought it?”
Adele laughed briefly. “Oh well, I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Rocco searched desperately for a solution. Tomorrow was going to be a horrorshow of a day, he knew that already. “Let’s do this. Tomorrow, you arrive in Aosta, you go to police headquarters, I’ll text you the address . . . and I’ll leave my housekeys for you there. Tomorrow night, you can sleep here. Then we’ll see, okay?”
“Okay. Corso Battaglione Aosta.”
“How do you know that?”
“Google. What about your place?”
“What? That’s not on Google?”
Adele laughed again. “No. It’s not.”
“Rue Piave. When you get here, curl up and make yourself comfortable. Oh, right, one other thing, Adele, or really, two things. Do a little grocery shopping because my fridge is so empty there’s an echo. Second thing, I don’t know anything about this. If Seba finds out I’ve been hiding you, he’ll kill me.”
“Don’t worry, Rocco, it’s for a couple of days, at the very most. You’re a friend.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“See you tomorrow, Rocco.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Now what am I going to do? Should I tell Marina that Adele is coming?
I read. Fanleaf: grapevine virus spread by nematodes which breed in the vine; can lead to deformity, yellowing of the leaves, and smaller crop yields.
“Are you saying that’s me, Marina?” No answer. “Are you saying that’s me?”
The wind was tossing the fronds of the palm trees along the waterfront. It was a cold east wind, sweeping in from the Balkans. Corrado Pizzuti, bundled in his heavy jacket, tugged his woolen cap down over his ears. The sea was back and nothing could be seen but the white crests of the breakers. In the distance, the occasional riding lights dotting that dark watery chalkboard. Some fisherman out on the open waters. The little town was deserted. It wouldn’t be crowded again until the months of July and August. So all the buildings, vacation houses and apartments, had their shutters fastened tight. In the yards, plastic sheeting covered the pedalboats, the lounge chairs, and the beach swings, reposing in their winter rest. Weeds had gained the upper hand. The seafront huts that served drinks during the holiday season were shuttered, their roll-down metal blinds padlocked, and the wind-driven sand had by now invaded the embarcadero along the beach, drifting deep from the long winter months. But it was May now, and the hard months were ending. Corrado knew it. The winter months, the time when his homesickness for Rome really pounded the bass drum of heartache. More than once, he’d been on the verge of giving in, grabbing his car, and going back to Fidene, his part of the city. Nothing much to speak, on the outskirts of the city, a former borgata, or farming town, now absorbed—just barely—into the city, but it was all still Rome. In the past four years, in that little provincial seaside town, he’d made three friends, and if he was looking for sex, he’d have to climb in his car and drive to Pescara, and once there, pull out his wallet. At least he had plenty of money. The bar was doing great and during the summer months
he earned enough to rest easy for the months still to come. But Rome . . . now Rome was another matter. Rome was where he’d been born, fifty-four years ago, and he’d always felt right at home in the midst of that bedlam, all that infernal stench. Going back there, though, was out of the question. If anything, he felt he’d been lucky. In four long years, no one had come to pay a call on him, to throw a monkey wrench into his business or to back him up against a wall.
He turned down the little street he lived on. It was a funny thing, but even after four years, he still could never remember what it was called. That night he looked up and read the street sign: “Via Treviso.” Okay, he said to himself. So I live on Via Treviso. In little towns, no one ever says the name of the street. They say, I live by the gelato place, or right after the bank, or maybe next to Mimì. It’s not like Rome, where you tell someone: I live at number 15, Via Treviso. In part because no one in this town, except for the fire department, even knows where Via Treviso is. Everyone thinks of it as the street that runs down to the Bagni di Eraldo, the beach establishment. And that’s that. End of story.
He walked into the courtyard. His apartment was on the staircase marked A. It was a tiny studio, 650 square feet, and it was on the second floor. He put his key into the anodized aluminum door.
“Ciao, Corrà!”
He leapt like a firecracker. He turned around. At the far corner of the courtyard, the flame of a cigarette lighter lit up the face of Enzo Baiocchi, who was surfacing from the darkness of his memories like the worst imaginable nightmare.
“How’s it going?”
“Enzo! Fi . . . fine. How are you?”
Enzo put out the flame. The darkness swallowed his face. Then Enzo took a drag on his cigarette and the red ember colored his eyes. He walked toward Corrado, taking the apartment house street lamp full in the face.
“So you . . . you got out?”
Enzo smiled. “The fact that I’m here.”
“Can I get you something at the bar?”
“No.” Enzo stuck a hand in the pocket of his jeans and left it there. “Let me ask you a question, Corrado. And before answering it, I want you to think it over carefully. Are you coming with me or staying here?”
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