Three, Imperfect Number

by Patrizia Rinaldi

  13.

  Anna Karenina. You use the books you read like some obnoxious handgun,” Martusciello said to Liguori once the three of them were alone. “You’re one of those intolerant snobs dripping rancid venom on all the citizens who are incapable of repeating the things you say, or learning the things you know.”

  “That’s so untrue. I’m fond of you actually.”

  “Drop dead, but do it slowly. And by the way, excuse me but aren’t your offices suitable for interviewing people?”

  “No, put the blame for that on me,” Blanca stepped in. “On our side of the building, they’re reinforcing the eaves of the building and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear clearly because of the construction noise.”

  “Blanca, give me a break: you can hear the anchovies in the harbor breathing. And in any case, what did you hear?”

  “Nothing significant. I noticed some hesitancy when she mentioned gambling. She modified her tone of voice, she laid a little more emphasis on her vowels, she stalled for time. Either she lied, or there’s something connected to it that makes her uncomfortable. That aside, the few phrases she spoke strike me as consistent. What’s she like?”

  “What do you mean what’s she like?” Liguori asked.

  “What’s she like physically?”

  “Oh, right. I always forget that you . . . Let me think it over.”

  “Well, think it over and tell me what she’s like.”

  “I don’t know, if she kept her mouth shut she might be all right. Red hair, cropped short, but the hair color’s pretty close to the original: she has some freckles along her neckline that confirm the color. She kept touching her nose, slender waist, long legs. Her fingernails are chipped along the edges, she has a scent of France gone sour.”

  “My nose works fine.”

  Martusciello sensed a tension between the two of them, like a couple of promised lovers who had limited themselves only to promises for too long.

  “What do you say we bring the other two women in together? It’s already three o’clock.”

  Liguori walked over to open the door.

  Mara Scacchi strode in, clearly eager to get done and leave as quickly as possible. She went on moving her legs even once she was seated on the chair that Liguori had been using.

  Julia Marin took a seat and rummaged through her purse for her sunglasses. She justified herself:

  “I can’t stand the light.”

  Blanca turned her head in the direction of the older woman, who was unaware of her limited vision:

  “From the Veneto?”

  “Yes, I’m from Verona. I come . . . I come to Naples frequently for . . . But now I live in Verona and that’s where I’m going to stay. As soon as I get out of this police station I’m returning home.”

  Liguori studied her profile: her mouth, her hair, her straight back, her stockings, black, a little out of season.

  Martusciello noticed Liguori’s interest and gave him free rein. He was good with women—for Martusciello’s taste, a little too good.

  “We’re sorry to have forced you to come back to such painful surroundings, but we know that you were very important to Jerry Vialdi.”

  “I hope so. In any case, Gennaro—that’s what I preferred to call him, I never liked his stage name—was certainly important to me. I know that I might seem like a fool, but I’m endowed with an elaborate form of emotional idiocy. It’s unbelievable how many years the man made me waste.”

  “Me too.” Mara Scacchi’s voice sounded shrill. “Useless years of wating and time wasted. He would summon his lovers to his concerts, and he’d dedicate songs and long lingering looks to each woman. He may even have doled out his attention in alphabetical order. He’d stand me up for one date after another. I always seemed to be somewhere waiting for him, he was worse than the Mergellina-Posillipo bus.”

  Julia Marin lowered her dark glasses to get a better look at the woman who’d interrupted her. Liguori appreciated the knowing seductiveness of her hands and eyes.

  “That’s not what I meant. Gennaro took years away from me, true enough, but mainly in the sense that he made me forget how old I was. I knew that he saw other women. I’m not saying that I didn’t care, but it only mattered to a certain extent. I was happy with a very imperfect situation, and I held tight to it. I even went along with his fear of oneness, of loving just one woman. I said it before: I verge on a form of idiot wisdom. I miss Gennaro. I understand that you might be particularly interested in this taste of geriatric honey. What else do you want to know?”

  The melodious Venetian accent had taken Blanca to a lovely place, a place of great calm. With carefully chosen words the sergeant asked both women about Vialdi’s business dealings, about how he was able to wear different hats, professionally speaking.

  With differing tones of voice and intentions, the women confirmed Rosina Mastriani’s information. The final conclusion fell to Mara Scacchi.

  “Enemies? Sure he had them, but they weren’t all that ferocious.”

  “Are you by any chance a psychologist?” asked Liguori.

  “No, I’m a pharmacist. All I meant was that Jerry wasn’t even all that good at getting people to hate him.”

  Martusciello didn’t appreciate the comment.

  “Signora, believe me, he was very good at getting someone to hate him.”

  14.

  Blanca stood up to see Mara Scacchi and Julia Marin to the door. She brushed her hands along the edge of everything she encountered.

  Liguori watched her as she left the room; he rested his eyes on the pale white nape of the neck, the shoulders, the waist, the feral hips of a woman who can run even in pitch darkness.

  Martusciello noticed his gaze:

  “Let her be, Liguori.”

  “Jealous?”

  Mara Scacchi hurried off.

  Julia Marin extended her hand to say farewell to the sergeant. Blanca overlooked the movement of the woman’s arm: she was still distracted by the detective’s gaze on her back.

  Julia Marin stood there, motionless and uncertain, and only then did it dawn on her that the policewoman must have some problem with her sight.

  “Well, I’m leaving, I’m heading back to Verona, if . . . ”

  Blanca sensed the variation in the woman’s voice and connected it to the sense of embarrassment previously experienced by others who had noticed her eyes. She knew the diverse array of rections by heart: some displayed something verging on annoyance that they hadn’t been previously informed, as if it were her duty to wear a highway sign announcing limited visibility hanging around her neck. Others, the majority, started talking to her in simpler words, enunciating more clearly. To them, partial blindness turned her into a child who was also hard of hearing. And others diluted their words into diminutives, in a display of saccharine courtesy. Nearly all of them avoided stating exactly what they’d understood, beating around the bush to a ridiculous extent. Nearly all of them. But none of them knew just how unpredictable her darkness could be. A switch, over which she had no control, could suddenly flip and give her a much more accurate outline of the shadows. It was a mystery, this ungovernable ability. She often told herself that the lack or the intensification of light might be a result of weariness, her mood, everyday irritations, but then there were times when the images came to see her just when she was as at her weakest and most out of sorts.

  And so she’d resigned herself to the cruel whim of chance, said nothing, and obeyed changes she was helpless to guide or direct.

  Julia Marin called her back to the present and surprised her.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  “It almost never happens that someone says to me I didn’t realize.” She laughed. “I feel like a cup of tea. Would you care to join me? Would you like something? Right next door there’s a famous four-star tea room.”
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  “Gladly.”

  Blanca strode confidently toward the little broom closet that Càrita had set up as the office bar and coffee shop.

  Ever since Giuseppe Càrita had chosen to tread the path of Art, a sense of desuetude had hovered over the broom closet. The checkered oilcloth no longer gleamed and the tins and bottles were in disarray. Still, it offered the considerable advantage of free access, which in past moments of greater glamor and coffee Càrita would never have permitted.

  As she watched Blanca move confidently to put the kettle on the fire and prepare the teacups, Julia Marin quickly and easily forgot.

  Blanca, in the restricted space, was better able to recognize the woman’s calm presence.

  “You strike as somehow distant. Just the right degree, frankly. Despite your recent loss.”

  “That’s right. What is left is my prerogative to say and do what at the moment strikes me as the lesser evil. In any case it won’t change a thing. What I did for a living was organize concerts, in my private life I was always a negotiator, I’ve always been mild mannered and quick to give up. Then I met Gennaro. He desired me with an arrogance that I loved. Perhaps it was a question of age. Perhaps, for the first time, I made a decision. I couldn’t say. But I went ahead and bothered to choose the death that in any case will certainly come along sooner or later in this kind of a love affair. Only in this case, what came along was a death of the flesh.” She dropped her voice. “My body’s dead too, the years all came rushing back together, with compound interest. Excuse me.” Blanca shredded three mint leaves into her tea and then sniffed her fingers. The pleasure spread to her mouth. Death could still make her furious with life and with despite.

  “Who did it, Julia?”

  “I can guess, but I won’t say. It’s too late. Don’t try to push me, we’re alone, I’ll deny everything. Or else I’ll surprise you, who can say? Why don’t you come see me? I’ll let you hear the sound of the river Adige running under the bridges. Beautiful.” Julia Marin took Blanca’s hand to say farewell. “See you again soon. You are a very pretty woman.” Blanca sought with her fingertips the wrinkles on the back of the other woman’s hand.

  “I don’t believe that and in any case I’d have no way of knowing, my memory of me dates back to when I was thirteen. I don’t know what I’ve turned into. In any case, beauty would just be one more luxury that I can hardly afford. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  Julia Marin went back to her hotel to get her luggage. She didn’t have much time before she was due at the central station.

  They’d given her the usual room.

  She went to the window that overlooked both the entrance and the Bay of Naples. With distant eyes she stared at the water as if it weren’t the sea, then she looked at the trellis of bougainvillea and jasmine that ran along the entry drive.

  She remembered every step she’d taken along that drive with Vialdi at her side, the laughter, the girlish excitement as she gave her ID to the desk clerk, the sound of her heels on the stairs, the hasty kisses before entering the hotel room. She closed her eyes and saw all the rest that could no longer touch her.

  She left her clothes in the closet.

  She arranged two toothbrushes in the bathroom.

  “I brought you one, you always forget yours.” She sat down on the bed and looked through her purse with its well organized contents for her telephone.

  “This is Julia Marin. I’m well aware that you know about me. I have something to say to you.”

  15.

  When they stuck the knife into your neck, I was there.

  It was a beautiful day, the Phlegraean light had been rinsed in the clear salt water, and not even a shadow could survive in the bright air.

  It’s something I’ve noticed, the worst things that have happened to me have often had beautiful landscapes as backdrops. Perhaps the joyous panorama is doing its best to highlight the lovely spread legs of bloody wounds. Which isn’t such a bad thing. You know, I’ve always loved contrasts.

  There. Now they’re going to kill him, now they’re going to kill him.

  They’re going to kill my father, my brother, my beloved one. Now they’re going to rid the earth of what remains of my face, my only smile; I’ll shuffle off this coil lost in a delirium of hours seized by the tapeworms that consume wakefulness and slumber.

  The man who had his arms around your shoulders sunk in the knife and gave it half a pirouette twirl.

  A slow drop oozed down your neck.

  The other man laughed:

  “Look out, you’re going to get his nice shirt all bloody.”

  “What does that matter? He can always buy himself another. With our money he can buy it.”

  You weren’t talking, you had red fear in the corners of your eyes.

  “Three days,” they told you before leaving.

  The knife had left the faintest embroidery on you, they knew how to do their work: you might have just nicked yourself shaving.

  I know every detail of your neck and I was relieved, you weren’t dead and your skin would repair the embroidery.

  You went off onto the terrace. I followed you. You were ashamed of your tears and the rancid stench of your own terror.

  “Get away from me. Wait for me in the house.”

  I waited.

  You came back after an hour, lowered the blinds, shut the curtains, and turned off all the lights.

  The voice arrived from a precise place I couldn’t see:

  “Now you get over there and do what you’re supposed to do, my little man.”

  “At your orders, sir.”

  16.

  Martusciello put the chairs back in place. His own untidiness was more than enough.

  Years of thinking about investigations had carved a rut: the captain left his office, as was his custom, pondering the people he had just met:

  Three women in three years, plus the thousands on the side. What a robust constitution that Vialdi had. Bursting with health and cocaine, I’d be tempted to say. The older woman, Marin, has the tick tock of death in her eyes. Still, a nice kind of death, and I have to say that I like women who have the passing years stamped into their bodies. The other two each have thighs that make you hide in the first empty hole you see. Better yet if it’s solid gold. Hasty approximations tend to toss a series of this, that, and the other thing in your face. They have the why and the how stamped on their chests. In any case, I don’t give a damn about any of it, not even about this envy of mine. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to add two plus two, I don’t even want my head venturing into the logic of the facts; anyway, logic is finite, and facts are misleading. I’m only amazed that no excruciating interviewer has come to torment me in the midst of this vast expanse of nothingness.

  Giuseppe Càrita knocked and cleared his throat.

  “Captain, forgive my intrusion, but there’s a woman, the journalist Chetruli from Free World Weekly, who wants to have a word.”

  “Precisely where my mind was at. So let her have her word, remove the duct tape from her face.”

  “No, Captain, she wants to talk directly to you.”

  “Unfortunately, Peppino, her desire is not mutual.”

  “Giuseppe.”

  “Peppino, do something for me: send her to Liguori.”

  “At your orders, Captain.”

  “Ah, Peppino, one more thing. I’m ill suited to this theater of yours. I don’t like it. Unless you cut it out, playing the policeman who’s playing a policeman, what I’m going to do is toss you out on your ear, ship you off to some other police station, maybe on the far side of nowhere.”

  “Captain, sir, you have no heart, with all due respect, sir, really you don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand a thing. And the older I get, the less I understand. It’s not true that your horizons broaden as y
ou get older! The dripping drops of days have carved a hole,” and Martusciello pointed to the top of his forehead. “There’s a leak right here and the rain gets in, along with everything else, and it all turns into a churning muck.”

  “You see, you don’t understand. Why, did you know that even Funicella Corta has found another role?”

  “You don’t say! Just how big is the theater? Does it seat many?”

  “No, it’s in an auto repair shop. Do you remember Funicella Corta?”

  “He’s not that idiot who got tangled up in explosives at the store of the fellow who was late on his kickbacks?”

  “That’s right, Captain, he’s the one. He lost three fingers. You turned him into an informant. Do you remember?”

  “Carità, skip the do you remember routine, you’re starting to sound like some ad for omega-3.”

  “Well, what of it? He’s taking the course too. And you ought to see the good it’s done him: he’s a new man.”

  “Ah, the resurrection of Funicella Corta.”

  “You know who sent him to my maestro? None other than your murder victim.”

  “Who, Vialdi? Peppi’, Vialdi’s by no means my murder victim, in fact he belongs to Captain Malanò, or perhaps to Detective Liguori.”

  “Captain, whoever he may belong to is who he belongs to. I know for certain that Funicella is very grateful to him.”

  “So how’s he making a living these days? I have to guess he’s not living on ticket receipts.”

  “No, he’s not working with the girls anymore. He does a little small-time dope peddling for the Sconciglio family.”

  “Peppino, do you have rehearsals at your theater tonight?”

  “We start in an hour.”

  “And will Funicella be there?”

  “He generally comes. A little late, but he comes.”

  “Then we’ll see you later at the auto repair shop. Now go tell this Chetruli from Free Fucking World Weekly that True Art is a-callin’. Tell her to go see Liguori.”