by Tobias Jones
She looked back at my face and tried to smile. ‘Looks like you need a partner.’
‘I don’t do partners. What about you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Sandro.’
‘What about him?’
‘Where were you Wednesday night?’
She frowned. ‘Here.’
‘This where you live?’
She nodded.
‘With Sandro?’
‘Sure.’
‘And Wednesday you were here all evening?’
‘Sure.’
‘And Sandro?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s time to remember.’
‘I …’ She was about to play ignorant again, but stopped herself. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘Did Sandro go out on Wednesday?’
She shrugged. ‘He said he wanted to get some gear in.’
‘What gear?’
‘You know,’ she said scornfully.
‘Where from?’
‘Lo Squarcione.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The guy he normally gets it from.’
‘What’s it, exactly?’
‘Coke.’
‘And Lo Squarcione sells?’
‘Right.’
‘Did he come back with anything on Wednesday?’
She nodded.
‘And you know this character, Lo Squarcione?’
‘Sure.’
‘Where?’
‘He hangs out around the station. Always has.’
‘Dealing?’
‘Doing any business he can.’
I wasn’t sure what to believe. She looked too eager, like she was after something.
‘What does he look like?’
‘Who?’
‘Sandro’s dealer.’
She blinked. ‘Large scar from ear to nostril. That’s how he got his name I guess. He looks like the kind of kid who puts too much candy up his nose. You know, looks tense most of the time.’
I went through the flat room by room. Started emptying drawers, looking in cupboards, rifling through clothes. The girl was watching me as if she was thinking about calling for help, so I ripped the phone from its socket and threw her mobile off the balcony.
I went through the other rooms: the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I went through the whole flat again, frustrated. It was a mess now, and the girl was whimpering. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, though I had a few hopes. If I could find his father’s credit card here I would be a lot happier that my theory was valid.
Nothing showed up. I pulled out my phone and called the Questura. I didn’t give my name, just told them to send men round to the address. I hung up before they could ask any more questions.
I grabbed her by her upper arm and held her against the wall. ‘This is a murder case, sister,’ I said. ‘That means people who kill and kill again. We’re going to the station. Let’s go and see who you see.’
She was shaking her head, staring at me with nervous eyes.
‘The carabinieri will be here in a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I’ve just called them. When they get here, they’ll arrest you and you’ll probably spend the next ten years inside.’
‘What for?’ she hissed. ‘What for? I haven’t done anything.’
‘No one ever does, do they?’
She was shaking now, not understanding my words properly, but understanding the sense somehow.
‘The only way out is with me. I’ve told you, I’m not going to hurt you if you help me, OK? You coming or staying?’
She started crying and I put a hand under her arm, took one last look around the flat and walked out, leaving the door ajar. She leaned heavily on me as we walked down the stairs.
I threw her in the passenger seat and sat down next to her. We saw the carabinieri arrive en masse and disappear up the staircase of the block.
I started up the engine. ‘You’re going to wait for a bus that never comes, you got it? You see Sandro’s dealer, you ask him for a cigarette. He’s the only one you talk to. You don’t approach anyone else, you with me? All you’re doing is asking for a cigarette.’
‘I’m not sure …’
‘He tries anything and I’ll put more holes in him than a scolapasta,’ I said, speeding up Via Trento towards the bridge. I hardly slowed at the roundabout. I screeched round to the right and on to the forecourt. ‘This may take hours,’ I said, ‘and it may not happen at all.’ I leaned across her and opened her door. ‘Just wait for that bus.’
She nodded and slammed the door shut. I parked up by the Toschi and walked back. From a few hundred metres away I could see the amassed lights of the station. Buses pulling in, heaving off. Cars dropping. Taxis hovering.
I crossed at the lights and sat on one of the stone walls under a tree. There were a couple of Moroccan men sitting there on a rug. From here I could see her. She was taking out a cigarette from her pockets and lighting it. ‘You’re supposed to ask for one,’ I said to myself, ‘not provide your own.’
She stood in the same place for a few minutes. She glanced around all the time, but it looked like she was searching for me, not her man’s man. I walked past her on the way to the ticket counter and told her to keep looking. I watched her from inside the station. Occasionally people would go up to her and ask something. She kissed a couple of people who recognised her. But she didn’t ever approach anyone.
I was just walking between one window and the next when I lost her. She must have seen me disappear for an instant and was suddenly gone. I went out there immediately but couldn’t spot her. There were trucks and buses parked everywhere. The Saturday morning crowds were already marching up Via Garibaldi. I ran away from the centre along the river but couldn’t see her.
There was no one who even looked like her. The pavements were busy with weekend shoppers coming in from all over the province now, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I saw a girl down a side street. It wasn’t Sandro’s squeeze, but it looked like someone about as desperate as me. She was hovering like someone needing a score and biting her fingers like she hadn’t eaten for weeks.
‘You want to earn some?’ I said to her.
She looked at me and assumed the obvious. ‘I don’t do that sort of stuff.’
She was a sorry sight. Dirty fingers and skin like a toddler’s knees. Her forearms were reddened by a rash, and her joints all jutted out as if the flesh had been sucked out of her. Her eyes looked tough and dead. They moved too fast, but never seemed focussed.
‘What happened to you, sweetheart?’ I asked bluntly.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Looks like you’ve got something nasty on your skin.’ I pointed my chin towards her forearms.
‘Yeah, well …’
‘Injecting?’
She threw her hands upwards in admission and I got a closer view of the needles’ damage. I looked at her face again: if she had washed her hair since the turn of the century she could have been quite cute.
‘How long have you been using?’
‘A few years.’ She shrugged.
‘Every day?’
‘Never miss one,’ she said bitterly.
‘Who are you buying from?’ I asked.
She didn’t say anything.
‘With respect,’ I said, ‘I’ve had tougher assignments than shadowing a junkie.’ She shrugged and I pulled out a note from my back pocket. She looked at it like a starving man might look at a plate of food.
‘Lo Squarcione, right?’
She looked at me scared now. ‘Who are you?’ She still hadn’t taken the note. She must have thought I was an undercover.
‘I’m a private,’ I explained.
She took the note and I told her to go find Lo Squarcione. I didn’t like paying for her habit, but I didn’t suppose it made any difference. I followed her round the back of the station and within
minutes she had gone up to a thirty-something man and started talking. They disappeared round a corner for a minute, just enough time to get the camera out. Someone like Lo Squarcione doesn’t like to be away from the shop for too long.
He came back without the girl. He looked the opposite of the kind of dealer I’m used to. He dressed like one of the boys: a tight leather jacket and trousers with too many pockets. He could have been an undergraduate with his raffish sideburns and air of the institutionalised rebel.
I pulled my camera up to my eye and got a shot just as the man was reaching into his pocket to find a lighter. The traffic suddenly cleared and I saw his hollow cheekbones and pressed the shutter. I kept my finger down, but the traffic cut off my view again.
I looked at the shots on the screen and zoomed in on the face. Up close it was mean. The scar made him look dangerous. His black hair was gelled up and his eyes were prematurely wrinkled.
Two Moroccans under a tree were looking at me with suspicion.
‘What?’
They didn’t say anything.
‘You selling grass?’ I asked them.
They looked at me as if they hadn’t understood. They were good at pretending not to understand. I held out a fifty, and nodded eagerly. Neither of them moved. They weren’t going to deal in daylight to a man with a telephoto. ‘Take it,’ I urged. ‘You haven’t seen me, OK?’
‘Va bene, va bene,’ one of them said, as if talking to himself.
I phoned Dall’Aglio. One of his operatives answered the phone. Eventually Dall’Aglio came on the line spitting blood.
‘Was that you?’
‘What?’
‘We got an anonymous tip-off an hour or two ago. Called to a house that was turned upside down.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m sorry I went in unauthorised, but I’ve got a case to wrap up from fourteen years ago. You find anything?’
‘Nothing but a mess. You broke into a private dwelling and left the door open for anyone to enter.’
‘I didn’t break in. Sandro Tonin’s partner invited me inside.’
‘Really. So where is she?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘The defence will have a field day with your operational procedure. Even if we do find something, we’ll be accused of planting it. That’s the problem with you privates. You’re not seen as orthodox, honourable people for some reason.’
‘Stop bleating. You need to find the girl. She was with me just now and was playing along, all cooperative. Gave me a story about Sandro’s alibi that Wednesday night, said he had gone to see some random pusher from the station. If she was stringing me along she will have alerted him by now. She’s called Marzia Colombi.’
Dall’Aglio was listening and I could hear his teeth grinding.
‘Have you brought in Sandro?’ I asked.
‘No, not yet.’
‘He’s not around?’
‘Left his office in a hurry minutes before we arrived.’
‘He’s been tipped off. Find Colombi, she’ll know where he is. Something else. I’ve got a photograph of someone called Lo Squarcione who’s come on my radar. I need a bit of background.’
‘Lo Squarcione?’
‘You know him?’
‘Yeah, I know him,’ Dall’Aglio said.
‘What line’s he in?’
‘Delivery.’
‘Of what?’
‘What do you think?’ The carabiniere sounded confused. ‘What’s Lo Squarcione got to do with this?’
‘I’ve no idea. Is he one of yours?’
Dall’Aglio didn’t say anything. Most of the petty dealers working in the open air had been picked up so many times by the carabinieri that eventually they started to get to know each other passing well.
‘We know who he is,’ Dall’Aglio said. ‘We’re watching him very closely and we don’t want a poacher in the woods, you understand?’
‘How long have you been watching him?’ Watching was police-speak for letting Lo Squarcione lie. Letting everyone lie. It was an old habit. ‘How long have you kept tabs on him?’
‘Goes back years.’
‘What about ’95. Was he on the radar then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So why don’t you clear him out? He’s dealing shit to every teenager this side of Reggio and you just let him carry on.’
Dall’Aglio was riled and started defending his force. ‘He’s one we have to leave in position.’
‘Why?’
‘We just do.’
‘And you say us privates aren’t honourable.’ I felt better once I had returned the insult. Dall’Aglio wasn’t going to say it out loud, but it was clear enough. Lo Squarcione must have been informing on his friends, helping police with their enquiries. If he looked tense it was because he was a squealer. It gave me a lever and I intended to use it.
I checked my gun under my armpit and watched Lo Squarcione for the next few minutes. People kept coming up to him and they would disappear off together into a block of flats and come out separately a minute later. He was making decent money, that was for sure: probably ten or twenty every five minutes.
I was about to go up to him when he walked off towards a moped. He had pulled on his helmet and sped off before I had time to take the number plate. It didn’t look like he knew he was being watched. I guessed he needed a safe-house for his earnings.
I saw him head south and ran back to my car. It had a parking ticket, which I ripped off. I pulled a U-turn in front of three buses of impatient shoppers. Whatever else happened in this city, people would always buy frocks on a Saturday. Not even a war would stop it.
I caught up with Lo Squarcione as he was turning left just before the tangenziale. I backed off and watched the moped pull into the Blue Camel. It was a strip joint by night, one of those places where lonely men go to be reminded how lonely they are.
By day it looked like a grim building, the kind that can only look enticing under neon. The front doors were locked. I walked round the side and through an open fire door. It led into a black corridor. I couldn’t see anything, and felt along the wall for a handle. I found one that led into a larger, lighter room. There were voices from the floor above and I found the stairs and walked up quietly.
I saw him at the far end of the room flanked by a couple of heavies.
‘Squarcione!’ I shouted like an old buddy.
I sat down opposite him but the two men were immediately at my elbows.
‘What do you want?’ One of the bruisers said, pulling me up hard by my hair. He was a shaven-headed nut with a thick nose.
‘I want a word with Squarcione,’ I said.
He was watching the scene.
The other thug whispered in Lo Squarcione’s ear. Lo Squarcione pointed at a chair opposite.
I leaned over the table as the bruisers retreated.
‘Lo Squarcione?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Castagnetti.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Private investigator.’
‘I’m not hiring.’
‘I’m already hired. And you’ve come on to my radar.’
Lo Squarcione looked at me and his sneer froze. He seemed more dangerous up close. The scar made him look like a street fighter. ‘Any radar that’s got me on the screen is nearing the end of its useful life.’
I was cheered by his arrogance. It’s always a reflection of fear.
‘But, you see, you’re already on my radar. I want help getting questions answered.’
‘I’m not taking questions, the interview’s over.’
He held his hand beside his shoulder and bent his fingers forwards. The heavies behind him jumped towards me.
‘There’s a lot in it for you.’ I had to speak quickly. ‘I’m investigating something from fourteen years back. You’re not in the frame because you were still in nappies back then.’
Lo Squarcione stopped the bruisers by raising his fin
gers.
‘What’, he said through dark teeth, ‘is in it?’
‘Glory.’
‘Not interested.’
‘Money. There’s an inheritance involved.’
‘Whose?’
‘A man. Two men.’
Lo Squarcione looked at me with interest.
‘How much?’
‘I will have to talk to the men’s descendants. They’re in a position to approve a reward for information leading to a satisfactory resolution of the case.’
‘Hundred thousand.’
I showed him my palms as if to say I was powerless. ‘I’ll talk to them.’
‘And what do I have to do?’
‘Answer questions with whatever honesty you’ve got left. I want to know about a deal you did recently.’
He smiled, like he had gone back to being a boy.
‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.
‘You know how many deals I do in a night?’ He dropped the smile.
The arrogance was beginning to try my patience now and I suddenly felt tense. ‘All I know about you is that you shovel shit to children …’
‘Don’t be rude,’ he said coolly. ‘What’s the difference between me and that drinks dispenser over there. I’m just giving them what they want.’
‘What did you give Sandro Tonin?’
‘Who?’
‘Sandro Tonin. He came your way to score on Wednesday night.’
‘Means nothing to me. Anyway, they all use nicknames.’
‘Here.’ I pulled the photograph of Sandro out of my pocket and tossed it across to him. ‘This is what he looks like. There’s a man been murdered’, I gunned, ‘and I don’t know why your name keeps coming up.’
‘Who’s been murdered?’ He was trying to follow.
I ignored the question. ‘Did you see this man on Wednesday night?’
The man shook his head. He looked at me with that arrogant look again, shaking his head to say he didn’t answer questions.
‘If Lo Squarcione was in the witness stand,’ I stared at the ceiling, trying to aim my question to the heavies behind me, ‘would people believe him?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Lo Squarcione spat.
‘Just thinking aloud. Drug-dealers don’t normally make good witnesses. People seem to think they’re rotten, and I’m inclined to agree. But in his case …’