Then she slowly dialed her home phone number. He husband didn’t speak a word, but Rosa Mastriani could hear him breathing:
“I’m going to come get them. If they still want me.”
47.
Martusciello’s summertime defeat and the frantic oppression that had been growing ever since that initial moment of disgust in the sheet metal shack all vanished in a rediscovered determination to defeat the lawyer’s smile.
The captain decided that he wanted to find a way to unsettle Nino Sparaco, recently hauled in as part of the investigation into illegal betting and gambling rings. Despite the hours-long deposition, Sparaco was careful not to let the slightest hint of a piece of useful information escape his lips, he just drank water and sweated the whole time. He had a fear in him that made him careful.
And so the captain turned to Lieutenant Guidi of the Guardia di Finanza, the financial police, who had arrested Sparaco in the first place. Guidi was a man he had worked with a number of other times. The lieutenant told Martusciello that they were looking into the well tested cliché of money laundering and business operations linked to the illegal betting rings, the account books that were adjusted to reflect the bets in question.
“Some defective mechanism must have slipped into standard operating procedure, but no one’s talking, we can’t find anything better, and the investigation is at a standstill. We’re arranging new wiretaps and arrests, but I think we’ve got a long wait ahead of us.”
“Does Luigi D’Amore, Esquire, have anything to do with this?”
“He always seems to get off scot-free, but we’re looking into his case too.” The captain decided to show his hand, but he asked his colleague to keep it quiet:
“Luigi D’Amore was the lawyer of Jerry Vialdi, the Singing Maestro found dead in the San Paolo Stadium.”
“Malanò is in charge of that case, if I’m not mistaken. Look out for Malanò. Now, I’d be the last person to deny that the motorcycle-riding police captain is an ethical person: when he plants his claw in your eye he takes great care to hit dead center in your pupil, that way the mark is less obvious and everyone continues to think he’s such a nice guy. In a number of ways, he resembles Counselor D’Amore. I can tell you that Vialdi was a heavy better, and that recently he’d even been winning. He alternated legal and illegal betting.”
“So why didn’t you tell the motorcycle-riding police captain about it?”
“Maybe because he wasn’t especially interested in knowing about it, in fact, quite the contrary.”
“Yes, I can believe that. Malanò hates anyone who tries to take away his landscape painting signed by the serial killer.”
“In that case, we never met and we never talked. Though in a while we may have an opportunity to meet formally: I’m going to need Occhiuzzi’s help on a few wiretaps. Is it true that Liguori is cozying up to Malanò past the point of what’s acceptable?”
“You think?”
“I hear.”
48.
Blanca had a sweater with two pockets, one for her old phone, and one for the new phone, specially designed for the partially blind. They’d been offering her that phone since it was an experimental prototype, but she’d always refused it. She’d decided to get one when she got back from Verona, because for private reasons she couldn’t have her messages read to her.
“They need to work on the privacy function, though,” she’d said to Nini, who was showing her the vocal translation of the phone’s functions.
“Why don’t you just turn down the sound, so no one can hear it but you?”
Still, Blanca had taken care not to give Liguori her new phone number: if the old one had been good enough until now, it could go on being so.
She responded to the faint buzz of the old cell phone. When it squirmed in her pocket, the vein in her neck had throbbed in response. By now, no one used the old number but the detective.
“Check Marialuigia Moreno’s address and come downstairs.”
Blanca checked, then lingered with Carità long enough to make sure she wasn’t prompt.
Liguori was waiting for her out front, and escorted her to the car.
“The address?”
“Same as Vialdi’s.” Blanca noticed that the detective’s tone of voice, as he reported to her on his conversation with Rosina Mastriani, was distant. And it remained equally distant when he told her that he’d come up empty-handed in his search for the recording of the concert.
“It was Mastriani who recommended I talk to Gatta Mignon to find out what had become of it.”
“Lately, you seem to enjoy wasting time. If she has the recording, or if she knows where it is and won’t give it to us, I don’t see why she should change her mind now.”
“That’s why we we’re going to see her together, and you can figure out the things that aren’t clear.”
Lately, you seem to enjoy wasting time was Blanca’s reference to Verona, but the man seemed to have missed it.
They pulled up outside of Vialdi’s apartment building together, but Liguori couldn’t find the name he was looking for.
“Nothing. Are you sure she lives here?”
“Yes, I checked. Martusciello told me that the surname Moreno was listed. What’s the panel of buzzers look like?”
“How do I know what it looks like? It looks like a normal panel of door buzzers, with names.”
“Are the names inserted into holders, superimposed, glued on, is there a plastic cover, is there a glass front, is the panel steel or some other material, is it screwed on?”
“The buzzer panel is made of brass and is meant to look classical, but it’s just ugly. Each buzzer has the name set in a Plexiglas holder screwed in with . . . wait a minute, these screws are slightly raised compared with the others.”
“Fine, go ahead and ring.”
The lovely voice of Marialuigia Moreno answered. Blanca waved both hands in the air to indicate more, longer. She wanted to go on listening to her. Liguori didn’t understand the reason behind that gesture, but before asking which staircase and floor, he engaged her in a superfluous conversation: it would have been protracted in any case because the woman had no intention of letting them come up.
Blanca broke in:
“We’ve just been over to Vialdi’s apartment, the seals have been broken again. We’re coming up.”
While they were on the stairs, Liguori complained that Martusciello hadn’t been keeping him informed of every detail in the case, such as the breaking of the seals, in contrast with what he must be doing with Blanca. Blanca replied that the captain’s ways of working sometimes didn’t allow for participation. “Lately, you speak in revealed truths, and also lately, you seem to like wasting time.”
Blanca smiled without letting the smile appear on her lips.
Marialuigia Moreno ushered the two of them into an apartment filled with cardboard boxes, suitcases, and furniture packed for shipment. Only the piano was free of paper, cardboard, and tape. On the lid sat a wilted pot of daisies.
She apologized for her unwillingness to receive them. It’s just that she was getting ready to move. She explained that this was her way of defeating all the endings that had befallen her lately: the death of her employer had dictated a conclusion to a profound emotional partnership and also to her source of employment.
Liguori interrupted Marialuigia Moreno with a particularly well crafted half-smile.
“Were you in charge of recording the concerts?”
“I often helped on postproduction work to improve the sound quality.” Blanca walked over the piano and ran her fingers over the edge of the keyboard in a caress. Liguori went on with his distracted peppering of questions.
“And of course, you attended all of Vialdi’s concerts?”
“Yes, all of them. That was my job.”
“Then you must have the reco
rding of his last concert?”
Marialuigia Moreno arched her back.
Liguori noticed just how much Gatta Mignon really did resemble the scrawniest, and therefore the most cunning, cat in the litter.
“I looked for it myself, unsuccessfully, but I wasn’t all that surprised. I knew that they’d been planning to produce a live album, Vialdi’s last concert was in fact the first one of his new tour. We were going to stay three nights in Naples, at the RAI Auditorium, then we’d travel on to various Italian regions, and after that, we’d go abroad. The first concert is never ripe, even the musical arrangements need to be broken in. Maybe the sound technician thought the recording was unsatisfactory, or maybe there’d been a malfunction of some kind. During the rehearsals, for example, the technician had filtered out all ambient sound, an amateur’s mistake.”
“You were in charge of recording even during the rehearsals,” Blanca noted.
“Recording and archiving the recording are two different things,” Marialuigia Moreno pointed out, in a voice that verged on the cheery. “That’s all.”
“That’s almost all.” Blanca didn’t like to let other people draw her conclusions for her. “Captain Martusciello told us about a certain lawyer . . . ”
Moreno noticed Blanca’s limited sight, the woman stretched out her hands a bit too obviously when she moved from one place to another.
“Look out for the stool legs. They’re sticking out. I don’t know if he’s certain or anything else, but I imagine you’re talking about Counselor Luigi D’Amore, Vialdi’s lawyer. But D’Amore’s bar membership is available to anyone who asks.”
Liguori laughed in a way that froze Blanca’s blood and made it clear to her just how little she really knew the man.
“Funny,” said the detective. “I’m not kidding, I really do appreciate it when someone uses another person’s words in retaliation.” He paused for a beat. “That’s all.”
In the car, the sergeant asked him for an explanation of the last exchange with Gatta Mignon.
“You shocked me, Liguori.”
“Sure, but why? Marialuigia Moreno neither has the concert nor is she disconcerted, she’s done. She gave me the idea of someone who’s taken so many kicks in the ass and the teeth that even if she was willing to take more, she simply wouldn’t have any place to put them. What do you think about her?”
“She’s remarkably skilled in her use of words, she talks straight, but not because she’s bringing who knows what truth along with her, like anyone else, for that matter: it’s just that while she’s thinking, she can draw on authentic sentiments.”
“She’s a True Artist. Like Giuseppe Càrita.”
49.
Darkness was our daily bread, or actually it was yours. And it was no accident that you stumbled upon it.
You used darkness for other purposes too, when you felt any kind of malaise before a show, or when your memories were scraping their fingernails across the blackboard of your skull and sleep wouldn’t come, after the cornucopia of chemicals.
Sleep. I never stayed with you, afterward. Never. I did what you wanted and then you’d send me away. Not even once did I see you sleep through the night.
I could hear you while you told other people: I have to turn it all off, even the little red light on the television, which gives me a pain right here, you get it? Right here. I still didn’t sleep, but at least the brain stoned out on total darkness. The dark is good for gastritis, sudden hoarseness, and other problems as well.
You laughed and talked dirty. But I know how to talk dirty better than you did, in a whisper or in a scream, the way you liked it.
Then, in the darkness, you’d bless me between one insult and the next: you’re a handsome devil, you have a perennial blaze crackling in your chest. Your mouth spits out gold and sea salt.
Because you have a way all your own of blending disgust and thirst-quenching water, so that it only makes you thirstier still.
You’ve addled my sense of time, I don’t know anymore whether you were or you are.
It’s such an enormous abuse to modify a person’s perception of the minutes, the hours, the years.
When you’re with me that’s what happens.
This thing with time is a curse, yet another masquerade of which you are, or you were, a master.
I never told you this, but everything I did “during” was also because I hoped that it might change the “after.”
It never did a bit of good, you always dismissed me lovingly with a: Now run along. Disappear, and I mean it, and not only into the darkness.
Now, yes, I’ve seen you sleeping an enduring sleep, while sucking on grass. No, that’s not right, this time too I had to go away.
50.
Liguori walked into Martusciello’s office, visibly on edge.
The captain was delighted to see the roles reversed: for once, he was the calm one, and the detective was upset. He went on shuffling papers. He’d gathered documents on investigations having to do with illegal betting and related activities: false bets, money laundering, artificially hedged bets, commercial fraud, blackmail, extortions, false front companies, and lots more. The quantity of numbers, conclusions, and reports were filling his head, so his indifference to the detective’s presence came across as convincing.
Liguori started in with a succession of objections, Martusciello talked with his head down, as he was leafing through the documents.
“I’m pleased. It’s so rare that you openly lose your temper, without the twists and turns that you know how to execute so well. You’ve changed, Liguori, there’s a new soul in you, with the price sticker still dangling on a string. Bravo. Something’s different, what could it be? Do you have a girlfriend? Come, come, gallant knight, open your heart, loosen the bridle of the horse you don’t have and ride toward new worlds.”
“Martusciello, cut it out. Why didn’t you tell me that Marialuigia Moreno had violated the judicial seals? For what goddamned reason on earth would you not keep me up-to-date on all the details of the case? And look me in the eye.”
Martusciello ignored the request and kept his eyes focused on the documents.
“What can I tell you, Liguori, since your point of reference is Malanò, it didn’t strike me as necessarily the best idea. Understandably.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
“No question, you’ve changed. Verona did you good.”
Carità rudely shoved open the door and the man he had with him. Martusciello and Liguori were astonished: Carità had been a mild-mannered person even before the courses in acting and speech that had caused his condescension to degenerate into pedantry.
Martusciello finally looked up from his desk and took off his glasses.
“What’s this, Peppino?”
Carità forgot his correct pronunciation and carefully gauged movements: he forced the man down in a chair and reported to his superior officers, in thick dialect, that he had brought Menico Gargiulo into the police station because, passing himself off as a taxi driver, he had defrauded a number of passengers with the old five-euro con game. Every time one of his passengers offered to pay with a fifty-euro bill, he’d sneakily exchange it for a five-euro note and tell the passenger they must be mistaken. If the unfortunate victim tried to object, he’d threaten them.
“And that’s nothing,” Carità concluded. “Do you want to know who he tried to pull the con job on this time, right outside, near the ferryboats for Procida? The wonderful actress Santina D’Offerta. It’s just crazy, nobody has any respect anymore. Not even for True Art.”
Martusciello carefully observed the fat man, who seemed much more concerned about his gastric disturbances than Carità’s accusations.
“Ah, so that’s the reason for your indignation. And where is the victim of this outrage?”
“Santina D’
Offerta is talking to Blanca Occhiuzzi, I accompanied her personally.”
Liguori left for the RAI Auditorium.
51.
Blanca couldn’t figure out why Santina D’Offerta was so upset. It struck her as excessive: after all Carità had intervened in a timely fashion and the actress had recovered her money. But she kept pitching her voice in a vibrato of anxiety that struck Blanca as contrived.
After filing her complaint, the woman asked about Liguori. She said that she’d met him a few days ago, at one of her performances.
Blanca, pretending further curiosity, asked her the date of the performance, then she walked the woman over to Liguori’s office, but he’d already left.
As she said goodbye to the woman, Blanca caught a whiff of the vanilla scent on her skin, caramel mouth, patchouli hands, bergamot and cedar hair. The coincidence between preparations for Verona and the birth of this new friendship between the actress and Liguori fit between a fragrance whose brand she recognized and annoyance. Jealousy loosed with a laugh that revealed rotten teeth.
The depression that ensued suggested to Blanca the precarious nature of her own exoticism and the durability of the actress’s oriental perfumes.
She searched for the missing piece of her defense, tossed into a forgotten corner of her head the heels on which she’d teetered at the cliff’s edge, and went on working.
Her new telephone alerted her in a soft murmured message that Nini would be getting out of school early today. Blanca remembered the hasty sound of her daughter’s bare feet scampering through the apartment.
Liguori imagined the conversation between Santina D’Offerta and Blanca. If he’d been on edge before, it only grew worse.
The last thing on earth you need to worry about is protecting yourself from me. Ridiculous, he thought. He parked outside the Polytechnic and looked up at the mosaic along the base of the building. He’d gone by it a hundred times without ever stopping to decipher the figures. The blur of colors, with a prevalence of watery blue-green, took on the significance in the detective’s eyes that he chose to assign to it: a celebration of human progress. The building and the progress concealed from view the public housing and part of Viale Augusto and its colonial architecture.
Three, Imperfect Number Page 15