Black Run

by Antonio Manzini

  The house in Provence was as distant as Halley’s Comet. Who could even say if it would ever return.

  “Shitty line of work,” he snarled a second time. Then he left his office and headed over to the press conference.

  There was no need for a question from any of the professional journalists, either print or television, on the issue of Rocco Schiavone and the findings of his investigation. It was none other than Chief of Police Corsi, finally present in flesh and blood and no longer just a voice on the telephone, who beat everyone else to the punch. “Dottor Schiavone will now tell you how he managed to work his way to the point of requesting arrest warrants for Luisa Pec and Luigi Bionaz.”

  Usually the press conferences run by Chief of Police Corsi were simply monologues. He’d give the reporters a chance to ask one or, at the most, two questions, and then he was gone. He was the star of the show, and anyone who tried to steal the scene from this prima donna found that out at their own expense. So it was a gesture of great generosity—as Rocco immediately understood—to give him the spotlight. A generosity that was every bit as pointless as the press conference itself, because there was nothing that meant less to Rocco Schiavone than the spotlight, and the attention of public opinion in general. Corsi had stood to one side, next to Schiavone, arms folded across his chest. He was highlighting the point that this was his deputy, a member of his team, an extension of his own identity. The chief’s face was beaming, his suit was impeccable, his hair was neatly gelled, his titanium-frame eyeglasses were gleaming, and, above all, he was exuding joy from every pore.

  Rocco cleared his throat. “Buona sera. Considering how late it is, I’ll try to keep this brief . . .”

  Everyone was concentrating on him. Notebooks in hand, TV cameras running. There was just one pitfall he needed to avoid: the thighs of the cute blonde in the front row. With her tip-tilted eyes, like those of an Asian kitten, she seemed to be there to make Rocco’s job just as challenging as possible.

  Why is she in the front row? Couldn’t she have found a seat a little farther back? thought Rocco as he prepared to address the room.

  “I’ll start from the beginning, if you have no objections. Thursday. It’s about five in the evening. Leone is heading down the mountain to town. A pack of cigarettes, a conversation: in short, he heads out. Three-fourths of the way down the main piste, in the middle of a clearing, right where the shortcut runs through, there’s someone waiting for him. That person calls his name. Leone leaves the run and heads over to talk to the person. It’s a friend, there’s no doubt about it. So he heads over. The friend offers him a cigarette. Leone takes it. He takes off his gloves—he takes them both off,” and here Rocco paused and looked around at the press. “He starts talking to this man. Then the conversation turns into an argument, and the mysterious individual hits Leone Miccichè. But he doesn’t kill him. Leone is just knocked unconscious. So the man shoves a handkerchief into Leone’s mouth to keep him from shouting and leaves him there, covering him with snow to make sure no one can see him.”

  “Why would he do such a thing? Does he want to let him freeze to death?” asked a bespectacled reporter with a prominent nose, prompting a sneer of contempt from Police Chief Corsi.

  “No. The mysterious man has a very specific plan. He leaves him there, unconscious, under a foot and a half of snow with a handkerchief in his mouth. But that’s not his handkerchief. The mysterious man stole it. To be exact, he stole it from Omar Borghetti. Omar Borghetti is the head ski instructor up at Champoluc. Everyone knows him.”

  “Sure, but why would he steal it?” asked the cute blonde with the thighs.

  “The son of a bitch—forgive me, the murderer,” he said, correcting his gaffe, to the ill-concealed embarrassment of the police chief, “wanted to make sure it was found on the scene of the crime, no? Leone dead, with Omar’s handkerchief stuffed in his mouth. Omar Borghetti. The longtime boyfriend of Leone’s wife, Luisa Pec. In other words, the murderer did it to frame that unlucky wretch.”

  “A crime of passion?” asked the blonde with the thighs.

  “Sure. A crime of passion. A crime of jealousy, anger, frustration, and so on. That’s why I said that the killer committed what was clearly premeditated murder. That handkerchief speaks loud and clear. What do we know about him? First of all, that he’s no fool.”

  “Right,” broke in Police Chief Corsi, who’d held back until then. “He must have read a few detective novels or seen a few TV shows.”

  The reporters all nodded in unison but turned their eyes back to Rocco. Who felt it his duty to proceed with his explanation. “My superior officer just stated a great truth. This guy must know something about DNA. Which is why he takes great care to get rid of his and Leone’s cigarette butts.”

  “Okay, that’s all clear up to this point,” said the reporter with the big nose. “Then what?”

  “If you’d just give us a chance to explain, Dottor Angrisano!” The police chief scolded him, with the cold indignation of a headmaster visiting the worst class in the school.

  Rocco resumed his explanation to keep the atmosphere from deteriorating further. “All right. But at this point I asked myself a question: What did they argue about? Debts? I don’t see that. This is no ordinary argument. The killer was there for the specific purpose of taking Leone’s life. So I came to this conclusion: there never was an argument. You don’t need an excuse to commit premeditated murder. If you’ve decided to kill a person, you just go straight for the target. Our mysterious man strikes Leone and knocks him unconscious because his victim has discovered something.”

  The roomful of journalists waited in silence. Pens poised over their notebooks. The smartphones blinked as they recorded.

  “That’s right. He’d suspected something that he then confirmed with further analysis. His wife, Luisa, was pregnant. But Leone Miccichè was sterile.”

  “Oh, Jesus . . .” someone blurted.

  “Who got her pregnant, then?”

  “If you ask me, the murderer,” volunteered the blonde in the front row.

  “If you all don’t mind,” put in the police chief, “why don’t we let Dottor Schiavone finish.”

  “No, no, you’re perfectly right, ma’am. Now we only need to figure out who he is.”

  “Well, all you’d really need is a DNA sample from the fetus, no?” ventured the reporter with the big nose.

  “True. But there’s another way of finding out, without even falling back on forensic science. The crucial point has to do with the cigarettes. I really racked my brains over that one, you know? The whole question of the gloves just didn’t add up. The victim took off both gloves. But you only need to take off one glove to smoke a cigarette, no?”

  The reporters all nodded their heads.

  “But Leone took off both gloves. Why?”

  “To light the cigarette?” theorized one reporter, bald as a cue ball.

  “No. You only really need one hand for that,” Rocco replied. “Then I understood. It was so simple. A person has to take off both gloves to roll a cigarette. Right? That’s why,” he said, and he mimicked the act of rolling a cigarette.

  “So the murderer who gave him the cigarette smoked loose tobacco?”

  “Bravo!” Rocco replied to the schnozzola. “We even know the brand: Samson. The same brand that Luigi Bionaz smokes.”

  Cue Ball nodded. So did the blonde with the thighs. But the schnozzola bit his lip. “Wait—wait just a minute. Fine, so he smokes that brand of tobacco. But that alone isn’t grounds for murder charges, is it?”

  “Listen here, you and your questions!” broke in Police Chief Corsi. “This isn’t the first time you’ve made a special effort to trip up the findings of my office.”

  “But all I—”

  “And that’s not all. Just pipe down. Let us hear what the deputy police chief has to say. Maybe then we’d finally have a chance to read something sensible in your newspaper, too.”

  “That’s sheer insanity,” b
lurted the reporter. The other members of the press snickered. There was no mistaking the fact that the big-nosed reporter and the chief of police had grudges that went back even further than any of the others.

  “Pardon me,” Rocco Schiavone broke in, “could I ask what paper you work for?”

  “La Stampa.”

  Now Rocco smiled too. It was all as plain as day. It wasn’t the reporter who got on Corsi’s nerves; it was the paper. La Stampa. The same paper where the man who had stolen the police chief’s wife so many years ago had worked.

  “Let’s get back to Luigi Bionaz.” Rocco resumed the thread of his story. Then, to make sure he wasn’t annoying his boss, he asked, “If I may, Dottore?”

  Corsi nodded seriously.

  “There’s another reason we have Luigi Bionaz dead to rights. He’s the head snowcat operator. He decides who goes out and where. Which pistes need grooming, what shortcuts to take. Most important of all, he buries Leone Miccichè, still alive, right in the middle of one of those mountain lanes that those treaded monsters use to head back to town. And in fact, at his earliest opportunity, he sends poor Amedeo Gunelli up there. And Amedeo, unsuspecting, runs his snowcat right over Leone’s living body, lying under a foot and a half of snow, and shreds him into a thousand pieces.”

  “Maybe he was already dead,” ventured the schnozzola from La Stampa.

  “No. Leone was still alive. Our medical examiner, Fumagalli, is positive.”

  “In that case, it’s a murder without a murder weapon!” concluded the bald-headed reporter.

  “Exactly. But the real murder weapon is the knowledge that Luigi Bionaz had of the schedules and routes of the snowcats. He was the one who directed all that traffic. And that night, he insisted that Amedeo leave the work he was in the middle of doing and head back down to town. So Leone was buried and half-frozen, but he still could have dug his way out of his hiding place. That could have become dangerous for Luigi, no? Think it over. If a monster of that size runs you over, what are the odds of tracking down the weapon, the object that clubbed Leone over the head when he was still alive, knocking him out? Well, I can tell you. The odds are zero! That was Luigi Bionaz’s stroke of genius.”

  “How did he steal Omar Borghetti’s handkerchief?”

  “That’s a whole different matter. Luigi has access to Luisa’s chalet when and however he wants. Omar Borghetti, as Pec’s ex and longtime friend, would go to see Luisa almost every night after work. Among the things that bound them together, aside from their friendship, was a matter of money. Luisa owes a large sum of money to the head of the ski instructors. Stealing Omar’s house keys was child’s play for Luigi.”

  “But what proof do you have?” asked the blonde with the thighs. Her fellow journalists nodded collectively. Police Chief Corsi felt called upon to intervene. “The proof is the tobacco, Luigi Bionaz’s absolute lack of an alibi for five o’clock, when the killer knocked Miccichè out, and eventually the child that will be born. And DNA evidence is stronger than fingerprints.”

  “What do Luisa Pec and Luigi Bionaz have to say for themselves?” asked the bald reporter as he jotted down notes on his pad.

  “Luisa Pec has already offered a spontaneous confession. Luigi Bionaz, on the other hand, insists he’s innocent.”

  Only then did Rocco notice that standing behind the journalists was Magistrate Baldi. He was smiling. Rocco returned his silent greeting.

  “Bravo, Dottor Schiavone. Excellent work. Fast and precise,” said Baldi, giving him a slap on the back as the journalists filed out of the conference room.

  “Grazie, Dottore.”

  Baldi looked at him seriously. He nodded. “I asked and you provided.”

  “Provided what?”

  “The murderer. Better yet, the murderers. You kept your promise.”

  “Very true, Dottor Baldi. Now how about you? Are you going to keep your promise, too?”

  The judge smiled. He looked over at the chief of police, who had stopped to talk to a woman. “Sure. I’ll keep my promise. I’m a man of my word, you know? But can I just ask you one thing?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where were they from?”

  Rocco nodded. “Sri Lanka. There were eighty-seven of them. And they had an appointment with someone who had jobs for them. I couldn’t bring myself to round them up as if they were weapons themselves.”

  “Sri Lankans,” murmured Maurizio Baldi. “Excellent work, Schiavone. But don’t forget: you owe me a favor.”

  Rocco nodded.

  “Maybe in the end, you and I really will find a way of becoming friends,” said the judge, flashing him a radiant smile. “Tomorrow morning, come by and see me in my office. I want to hear your opinion. I told you about it, no? I’ve got a nice big pile of tax evaders on my desk. I’d really like to know what you think.”

  Rocco heaved a sigh. “Certainly, Dottore. I’ll be there tomorrow morning. But could I give you a piece of advice? The less you’re seen with me, the better it will be for you. I’m just saying—for your career and for your future.”

  “Future? What future, Schiavone? We’re in Italy, hadn’t you noticed?” And he left the deputy police chief standing there. Rocco put a hand in his pocket and pulled out his pack of Camels. It was empty. He cursed through clenched teeth and glared at the cameramen, who were stowing their video cameras in their canvas cases and aluminum suitcases. He looked around for the blonde with the thighs and the eyes of an Asian cat. But she was gone, without a trace.

  When the car driven by Italo reached Brissogne, it was past nine. The exterior lights of the prison were all on. The other windows seemed like dead, menacing eyes. An icy wind was blowing, whipping whirlwinds of snow off the asphalt in the glow of the headlights.

  “Is this going to take long, Rocco?”

  “No more than a few minutes.”

  There Luisa sat, her arms resting on the table, a water bottle beside her. Rocco walked into the room and looked the woman in the eyes. Her eyes were weary and bloodshot, clearly hoping for nothing better than sleep, and an end to that shitty day. Luisa’s head slumped onto her chest as if she’d suddenly fallen asleep.

  Rocco placed his forefinger under her chin and lifted her face. “Why?” he asked.

  Luisa dropped her gaze. “For a while now, things between me and Luigi . . . had been a little out of control. Leone was jealous. Life with him was just hellish.”

  “But you kept telling yourself, We have debts; this guy owns property down in Sicily . . . No?”

  “I didn’t want it to end like this. Luigi had promised that he’d just talk to him.”

  “Luigi had already made up his mind to kill him. He had a very specific plan. Didn’t you know that?”

  “He was only supposed to talk to him, to see if he could settle things peacefully. That was the understanding. Luigi took the initiative.”

  “That’s a technique as ancient as Rome, you know that? The idea of dribbling the ball back and forth between the two of you.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No. I say that the two of you planned it out together. You may now be sorry that you did it, but Luisa, you did it. Listen to me. You’re nailed on this one. And you know perfectly well what it is that nails you: the evidence that you’re carrying in your belly. Right?”

  Luisa touched her midriff.

  “Get it off your chest now, and then we won’t have to talk about it again. At least try to get out of this situation with a shred of dignity—that is, if you ever had any to start with.”

  Luisa Pec was crying now. “If I tell you one important thing that pins this on Luigi, then will you give me a hand?”

  “What kind of a hand?”

  “I mean, will you talk to the judge?”

  “We’ll see. What are we talking about?”

  “Thursday evening, at five fifteen, Luigi called me on his cell phone. He was freaked out. He told me to go up to the Crest shortcut. He said that something disastrous had h
appened.”

  Rocco remained silent.

  “I was there, too, that night. I got there afterward. Luigi had already buried Leone.” Her tears started pouring out, as if someone had left the faucet open. “And he told me that it was too late, there was nothing he could do now. That he was dead. And that the only thing left to do was to try to protect each other as best we could.”

  “Leone was still alive, under the snow—do you know that?”

  Luisa looked the deputy police chief in the eyes. “Leone . . . ?”

  “That’s right. He died two hours later. Run over by Amedeo Gunelli, in a snowcat that ripped him up into eighteen thousand pieces.”

  Luisa hid her face in her hands, and her chest heaved in an explosive series of sobs. Rocco waited for the woman to calm down. Then he pulled her hands away from her face. “Who was there, besides you and Luigi?”

  “No one else. Just the two of us. And . . . Leone.”

  “Where was Omar Borghetti?”

  “I don’t know. He’d come to see me half an hour earlier. I owe him money.”

  “Yes. I know about that. But what is this supposed crushing proof you have against Luigi?”

  “Get my cell phone—the prison guards have it.”

  “What would I find on it?”

  “Search through the pictures. There’s one that leaves no doubt.”

  “What’s in this photograph?”

  “It’s Luigi, standing in front of the pile of snow where Leone was buried. He has a shovel in his hand and he’s looking down at the ground.”

  “Did you take the picture?”

  Luisa nodded her head.

  “That meant you had him by the balls, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. It was an awful thing, just terrible. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t wanted to kill him, and it just seemed that if something went wrong, that photo might help me out, no?”