Softly, slowly, one step after the other, one foot in front of the other. Without making noises, without any sudden movements. Tense and silent, quieter than a shadow and lighter than an insect’s wings. He could hear snoring from the other room. He went on walking, outside all was silence and darkness. Only a yellowish streetlamp tinged the sofa and the living room floor. Another step. And then one more . . .
This was the moment. He threw open the bedroom door. He held the 6.35 straight out in front of him.
“Take this and die, Schiavone! This is for my brother.”
And he emptied the entire magazine of the pistol into the body wrapped in blankets that spat out feathers and shreds of cloth.
Enzo Baiocchi put the gun back into his pants pocket and strode rapidly out of Deputy Chief Schiavone’s apartment.
That was when Lupa jumped up onto the bed. She crept close to Rocco and started licking his ears. It was only on the third lick that Rocco startled awake. It took him three seconds to realize where he was. Three seconds, an eternity.
Lupa, next to his pillow, looked at him, cocking her head to one side. It was dark outside. He was in Anna’s apartment. Once again, he’d fallen asleep in Anna’s apartment.
“What the fuck . . .” he muttered under his breath. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. He looked at the hour. It was four thirty. He needed to get dressed. Quietly, without making noise, without waking the woman who slept on in spite of the dog’s low growl. The minute Rocco put his feet down on the floor, Lupa started wagging her tail. “Come on, let’s go home . . .” he said. He slowly crept over to get his clothes from the armchair. “Be a good girl and don’t bark.” As he laced his shoes, he remembered about Adele. He just hoped she’d gotten in his bed and not on the sofa. It was uncomfortable having to sleep on the sofa. She wouldn’t get a wink all night.
But Lupa refused to move. She stayed there, curled up in the blankets, with no intention of leaving the bed.
“Let’s go, Lupa.”
The puppy was whining and wagging her tail, with her nose buried next to Anna’s feet.
“Come on, Lupa.”
Lupa barked.
“No, Lupa, no barking. . . .”
“Are you leaving?” asked the voice deep in the pillow.
“Ah, so you’re awake?”
“Are you uncomfortable here?”
“A little.”
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that I’ll be sorry to wake up without you beside me.”
“But just waking up is already a minor achievement, don’t you think?”
A thunderclap echoed in the distance.
“It’s starting to rain again. Why don’t you stay here?”
Rocco thought it over. He took a quick glance out the window. The clouds had gathered over the city once again. Maybe it was safer to stay here, at least until tomorrow morning. If nothing else, it would be warmer. And the bed was cozy. Lupa had been trying to tell him that for hours now. The dog’s round, watery eyes extinguished his last shred of doubt. He undressed again and got back under the covers.
“Put your arms around me, please.”
Anna’s feet were icy cold. She slid them between his legs. Rocco wrapped his arms around her and three minutes later he was fast asleep, with Lupa braced against his back.
Outside the rain started pounding down on the asphalt. At least it would melt the snow.
Friday
Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
“Yes . . . hello? Hello?”
“Schiavone, it’s me, Baldi. Where are you?”
“I’m asleep. . . .”
“It’s nine thirty in the morning!” Baldi’s voice was quavering with excitement.
Rocco sat up, his back resting against the headrest of the bed. He rubbed his face. Lupa was asleep. So was Anna.
“Just a second . . . let me get up.”
“I don’t have time. I just want to give you a piece of good news. Last night we arrested Domenico Cuntrera at the border. He tried to make a break for it, but the Carabinieri nailed him. With a bag of documents that . . . well, to put it briefly, we’re going to see some fireworks. The idiot hadn’t thought to get rid of them.”
“I’m delighted, Dottore.”
“All credit due to you and to me. It’s a gratifying thing. Now here’s the bad news.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s a joint press conference at ten thirty. The chief of police, me, the Carabinieri General Tosti of the Carabinieri, and of course, you.”
His brain was still stalled. The only thing that came to mind was: “I have the flu!” but the judge merely laughed a hearty laugh. “And bring your men. It’s time that their unsung exploits are brought to the light of the television cameras and immortalized in the pages of the daily press which, tomorrow, we’ll promptly use to wrap fish! We’ll see you at the district attorney’s office in an hour.”
One hour. Just enough time to go and take a shower, get changed, grab a quick breakfast at Ettore’s, swing by the office for a second, say his daily secular morning prayer, and then rush over to the district attorney’s office to answer questions from the press. He decided that there was no good reason to wake up Anna. Lupa instead looked up at him, wagging her tail. “We need to go, little one.”
The snow was gone. There was water in its place. Lots of water. Schiavone walked ahead, Lupa walked behind, and they came around the corner of Rue Piave and reached the street door of his building.
“Now you’re going to meet Marina,” he told the little puppy as she drank from a puddle at the edge of the sidewalk. “Just wait, you’ll like her.”
He put the key in the lock. He opened the door.
There was something wrong. He realized it immediately. Something about the air. Or maybe a smell. An odor he hadn’t smelled in a long time but which stagnated like some sinister early morning fog in the apartment.
“Adele? Adele, are you here?”
She was. But she couldn’t answer. Wrapped in the bullet-riddled blankets, only a single pale arm protruded from the down quilt. A rivulet of blood oozed from the mattress, forming a puddle on the parquet floor.
Rocco shut his eyes. He fell back into the armchair.
He burst into tears.
The first to arrive were Italo and Caterina. Then came Fumagalli, Casella, and Scipioni. The apartment, where no outsider had set foot in the past nine months, was suddenly full of police officers. Soon, the officers from Turin would be there too.
Rocco, sitting on the sofa, still hadn’t found the strength to call Sebastiano.
Fumagalli had come over and sat down next to him. “Eight shots, all eight hit her. Three shots fatal. Fired from very close range. If it’s any consolation, she died in her sleep.”
Rocco didn’t even look at him. “Shots to the head?”
“No. All to the body. Six to the back, one to the right leg, and one more to the left forearm.”
Rocco nodded.
“Of course, you know who she is.”
“Adele Talamonti. An old friend of mine from Rome.”
Schiavone was holding his arms between his legs. He looked like a bundle of dirty clothes.
“Where are you going to sleep tonight?”
“That’s the last of my problems.”
“Mi casa es tu casa,” said the medical examiner.
“What time do you think she was killed?”
“I’ll be able to tell you with precision in an hour or so. There is a detail that can help us. Her watch stopped at four thirty. It might have just stopped independently, but maybe not, in any case, it’s a big help.” Then Alberto gave the deputy chief a pat on the knee and went back to his work.
“Alberto?”
“Yes.”
“Treat her kindly. I’ve known her since we were born.”
Alberto nodded. And went back to the cadaver.
Rocco wouldn’t be able to put it off any longer. The time had come to tell Sebastiano. But he wanted to do it without witnesses. He stood up, grabbed his cell phone, and left the apartment under Italo’s saddened gaze and Caterina’s worried eyes. Scipioni on the other hand seemed to be concerned chiefly with restraining Casella who was nosing around the apartment.
“Seba? It’s me, Rocco.”
“I know that! I can read it on my display!” His friend’s voice was hoarse, distant, and gloomy.
“I’ve got some news, and it isn’t good.”
“What’s going on?”
“Have you already spoken to Furio?”
“Yes. Why do you ask? Did he tell you that Adele has gone missing?”
“She isn’t missing.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Yes, I do. She had come up to stay with me.”
Seba said nothing.
“Seba? Did you hear me?”
“Had come? Why had? Where is she now?”
“Last night. Someone shot her. She’s dead, Seba.”
“What the fuck are you trying to say? If this is a joke, Rocco, it’s not making me laugh.”
The call ended. Rocco tried to call back. The cold robotic voice of the phone company informed him that the party he was trying to reach was unavailable for the moment.
He called Furio.
“Rocco? Did Adele get up there? Listen, Seba. . . .”
“Listen, Furio. Something awful’s happened. Call Seba right away, go straight over to his house.”
“But why? What the fuck’s going on?”
“Somebody shot Adele. Here at my place.”
“Oh fucking. . . .”
“Hurry, Furio. Hurry, because Seba’s not well at all.”
The news of the day, as could reasonably be expected, was no longer the arrest of Domenico Cuntrera, a.k.a. Mimmo, at the border, but the mysterious murder at the home of Deputy Chief Schiavone. The press conference at the district attorney’s office had veered toward that story which, in just minutes, had magnetized the attention of the entire city and the television news broadcasts.
For the first time in nine months, Rocco Schiavone found himself in the office of Chief of Police Andrea Costa, sitting in front of his boss’s desk, looking at a man whose face was as pale if not paler than the face in the framed photograph of the Italian president on the wall behind him. Costa was feeling uncomfortable. Nine months of coexistence with Rocco and he was starting to like that strange Roman policeman. He’d never have expected it, that first day they met in the parking lot behind police headquarters, when the deputy chief introduced himself with a muted smile and eyes veiled in sadness. Costa knew all about Rocco’s past, about the reason he’d been transferred from Rome to Aosta. But he’d made inquiries with a colleague in the Palazzo del Viminale, in Rome, national police headquarters. Rocco Schiavone had done outstanding work in Rome on the staff of the state police. And now here he was, sitting across his desk from him, with the same sad eyes he’d had nine months ago.
“What’s its name?” he asked, pointing to the dog that lay in Rocco’s lap, fast asleep by now after his gentle petting.
“Lupa.”
“Did you find it?”
“No, some of my colleagues found her when we were searching for Chiara Berguet.”
“What breed is it?”
“Just take a wild guess. She’s such a mix that you’d be certain to get at least one right.”
“Are you going to keep it?”
“When a dog finds you, you have to keep it. You never run into a dog in life just by accident. Someone always has sent it to you.”
“Who sent you this one?”
“I have my suspicions. But I can’t tell you.”
Costa smiled. “Let’s talk about what happened. Do you have any ideas?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Were you the target?”
“No doubt about it. Adele Talamonti works at her parents’ bar in the Balduina section of Rome. Her record is cleaner than the pope’s, and as far as I know she’s just argued with a neighbor or two. She was the girlfriend of Sebastiano Carucci, a dear friend of mine.”
“And is he someone who stays out of trouble, too?”
“No, sir. Sebastiano has had plenty of trouble with the law.”
Costa nodded. “Could he have been the target?”
“Impossible. That Adele was even here, in Aosta, at my place, was something that only Adele and I knew, along with Furio, another friend of mine from Rome. A friend of mine and Sebastiano’s. A close friend, like a brother.”
“What about this Furio. . . .”
“Don’t even think of it, sir. We’re talking about a brotherhood that goes back forty years. We always shared everything. If there were scores to settle, we settled them amongst ourselves. Dottor Costa, whoever unloaded the clip of a 6.35 mm handgun into Adele Talamonti thought they were unloading it into me.”
“There’s a question I have to ask you. Where were you last night?”
“At Anna’s place. I slept there.”
“And why was Adele staying at your place, if I can ask?”
“Minor troubles between lovers. She was hiding out at my house to try to make Sebastiano crazed with concern so he’d try to find out where she was. This was supposed to prove that he loved her desperately. The kind of thing you’d expect from teenagers, but that’s just the way Seba and Adele were.”
Costa started folding a sheet of paper. “You do realize, Dottor Schiavone, that . . . ahem . . . it certainly doesn’t testify in your favor, much less in favor of Aosta police headquarters, that one of our men should have been involved in a story that’s so . . .” he struggled to find a suitable adjective, “. . . so very . . . ?”
“I do realize that, but I’d like to remind you that in this case, I was the intended victim.”
“I know, I know. And I’ll try to explain it to the newsvendors and also to the Ministry of the Interior in Rome. But. . . .”
“But certainly, it would be better to have a clean deputy chief who doesn’t have any history with anyone, and especially who doesn’t have guests who get murdered in his apartment.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“For now I’d like you to see if you can figure out who did it. In the meantime I’ll try to plug the various leaks. You know what? You have a lot of enemies in Rome.”
“I have to admit it.”
“No, I don’t just mean murderers and various criminals. I mean at the Palazzo del Viminale, too.”
“I’m politically bipartisan.”
“And when they find out about what happened, there’s a chance, and I’m just saying it’s a chance, that they’ll start exerting pressure to get you transferred.”
“Do you seriously think it could be worse than Aosta?”
“My friend, I think you might find that you miss Aosta.”
Rocco nodded. Lupa was awake now.
“What do you feed it?”
“I’m going to take her to the veterinarian now. Then we’ll see.”
“I had a German shepherd who ate as if he was one of my children. He was one of my children, actually. That dog was very sweet.”
Rocco nodded.
“But there’s one thing you have to promise me.”
“Tell me.”
“If you catch whoever killed this poor unfortunate Adele, you’ll come to the press conference. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
Rocco smiled. He nodded. Then he stood up. “I’m not going to shake your hand. Mine smells of dog.”
But Costa stuck his hand out anyway. “Bring me good news.”
“Same to you, Dottore.”
Locked in his office.
He didn’t feel like lighting a joint. He didn’t feel like an espresso. Lupa was fast asleep, which is a puppy’s main occupation. Someone
knocked at the door.
“Who is it?”
“Ernesto!”
It was Farinelli. Rocco opened the door. “Ciao Ernè . . .” he said.
Ernesto came in. “I’m so sorry, Rocco.”
“Thanks. Take a seat.”
“I don’t have a lot to tell you. Eight shots, a 6.35 mm handgun, not a very common weapon but deadly effective if used at close range. The murderer was just six feet away from the bed when he fired.”
“Have you figured out how he got in?”
“Yes. From the balcony. He climbed up the drain pipe.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We found that the central section of the drain pipe had been pulled away from the wall of the building. So I’d suggest a person weighing well over a hundred fifty pounds. Skilled at breaking and entering. The window panes were left intact. He used some kind of device to open the lock. A precise little job of work, clearly someone who knew what they were doing.”
Rocco and the deputy director of the forensic squad looked at each other.
“We’ve never seen so much of each other.”
“True. . . .”
“Do you know who had it in for you?”
“No. But the list is long.”
“I’m going to stay in Aosta for a few more hours. This time, I’ll go to see the judge. I swear to you. Has he already called you?”
“No.”
“But have you thought it might have been someone involved in the kidnapping?”
“You see, Ernè? There are three things that don’t add up. The first thing is that they don’t usually move this fast. If they’re going to make you pay, they do it at their own pace, when they’re good and ready. And then, why climb up into my apartment late at night like a burglar? I walk around like anybody else, all alone, and there would be every opportunity in the world to shoot me out in the street. Third, it lacks the usual signature, the head shot. They usually finish you off with a bullet to the head, execution-style, as the saying goes, to make sure you’re done for. No, this guy snuck in, emptied his gun, and didn’t even stop to check. It’s no one who’s involved in the kidnapping. It’s some dickhead who has it in for me. And who’s afraid to be seen out in the open. Someone who was behind bars, or maybe somone who’s wanted by the police.”
Out of Season Page 26