Temporary Perfections

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  “When I found out that I was going to have to meet with you, I called Duilio. We hadn’t talked for months. We got together and planned how I should act. I was supposed to confirm everything I’d already told the Carabinieri, and if by chance you asked me what I’d done that evening, I would tell you that I’d been with Duilio, that we went out to dinner, and that the last time I’d seen Manuela was a few days before that. I didn’t expect you to bring up the subject of drugs. When you did, I just kind of lost it. I had no idea you already knew about the cocaine.”

  And in fact I didn’t. I just bluffed, and you fell for it.

  I should have felt proud of myself, but I couldn’t feel good about anything. My mouth was dry and sour.

  “Once you told me that Michele had refused to meet with you, that his lawyer had threatened to take action against you, I thought I could push the whole drug thing onto Michele and keep you from looking any further.”

  “And, of course, Michele had nothing to do with any of this.”

  “He had nothing to do with Manuela’s death, but he had plenty to do with the cocaine. He got her started on it, and he was in business with Duilio. That’s why his lawyer wouldn’t let him meet with you, because he has a lot to hide.”

  “Does he know what happened to Manuela?”

  “No. When he got back from his trip, he asked Duilio if he knew what had happened. Duilio told him that he didn’t know a thing, and Michele let it go. It’s possible he didn’t believe him, but Michele is such an asshole that he only cares about his own comfort and convenience. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody else. Everything I told you about him is true.”

  “Why did you persuade Nicoletta to talk to me?”

  “One way or another, you would have gotten in touch with her. So Duilio and I thought it would be a good idea for me to convince you I could help. If I pretended to help you in your investigation, it would be easier for me to control what you were doing and maybe I could even feed you false leads. There was the Michele thing, and then my suggesting that Manuela might have disappeared in Rome and not in Puglia.”

  She suddenly shut her mouth and stopped talking. In fact, I thought, there’s nothing left to say.

  It was getting dark.

  Not just outside.

  37.

  “What happens now?” she asked after several long minutes of silence, reviving me from the troubled torpor into which I had drifted.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” I replied, opening my door and getting out of the car.

  A wind had sprung up and was gusting the sky clean of clouds. The air was clear, briny, tragic.

  I walked back to the restaurant and stepped inside to make sure that she couldn’t see or hear me. I called Navarra and he answered almost immediately, on the second or third ring.

  “Buona sera, Counselor.”

  “Buona sera, Officer.”

  “You’re not calling to tell me you found out what happened to the girl, are you?” he asked jokingly, just to start the conversation. I said nothing. The silence dragged on.

  “Counselor?” The playful tone was gone from his voice.

  “I’m here. I assume you’re at home.”

  “No, I’m still at the office, but I was about to leave. It’s been a brutal day.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, you’ll have to stay in the office a little longer.”

  “What happened?”

  “In a short while, I’m going to bring someone in to see you. You should get in touch with the public defender currently on duty while you wait for me. We’re going to need him.”

  There was a long, heavy pause.

  “So, the girl is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “The day she disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  I told him the bare bones of the story and we agreed that in forty-five minutes he would be waiting outside the Carabinieri barracks. Then I hung up and went back out to the car.

  Caterina was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch. I got back in the car, started the engine, and pulled out. She didn’t ask me again what was going to happen next. She didn’t say a thing. Neither of us spoke until we were back in the city and I stopped the car a few blocks away from the Carabinieri barracks.

  “You’re going to have to tell the Carabinieri the things you told me.”

  Before she said anything, she gave me a long look that I was unable to decipher.

  “Will they arrest me?”

  “No. First of all, you weren’t caught in the act, and the basic elements for arrest are lacking. Second, you’re turning yourself in voluntarily, and most importantly, the cocaine wasn’t yours. You didn’t give it to Manuela. You’ll just face charges of being an accomplice to concealing a dead body. You’ll get off with a plea bargain and probation.”

  “What about Duilio?”

  “That’s up to him. In many ways, Manuela’s death was accidental. If he cooperates with the law—and it’s entirely in his interest to do so—he can stay out of prison while he awaits trial, and with a good lawyer he might be able to strike a plea bargain, too. Of course, he’ll get a stiffer penalty.”

  I was about to add a few other technical details about the process, describing the steps a good lawyer could take to reduce damage and possibly even keep Duilio What’s-His-Name out of prison entirely. But I realized that I had no interest in offering him any help at all. In fact, I was surprised to find myself hoping that his lawyer would turn out to be an incompetent—maybe Schirani—and that the prosecutor would be ill-disposed toward him, and that Duilio would be tossed into prison with the maximum sentence. It was probably a place where he’d thrive, anyway.

  “Will he be looking at drug charges?”

  “Yes. He’ll face charges of concealing a dead body, possession of narcotics with intent to distribute, and Article 586.”

  “What’s Article 586?”

  “Article 586 of the penal code: You should have studied that.”

  She said nothing, so I went on.

  “Death during commission of another crime. It’s a variation on a manslaughter charge, but less serious. The idea is that if you provide someone with drugs and the person dies from taking the drugs, you’re liable.”

  “Will we have to take them to the place where we … will we have to go to the dump?”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” I lied.

  She wrung her hands. She scratched the left side of her neck with her right hand. She sniffed loudly, as if she’d been crying, not seeming to notice that she was making any noise. Then she ran her hand over face and looked up at me. Now her face was filled with sorrow and sincerity and remorse. She was a damned good actress, and she was preparing her last-ditch attempt in the form of a dramatic monologue.

  “Guido, do I really have to? Manuela is dead and I’ll live with my remorse over what happened for the rest of my life. But it won’t bring her back to her family if I go and confess. The only thing I’ll succeed in doing is ruining my own life, without benefiting anyone else. What good would that do?”

  An excellent question. The first and only answer that came to mind was that maybe that poor miserable soul would stop going to the station to meet trains. Maybe.

  I could feel my determination wavering. I wondered if I’d been in too much of a hurry to call Navarra. Maybe she was right. Forcing her to confess would only ravage other lives, without doing anything to repair the lives that were already lying in ruins, irreparably.

  What good would that do, indeed?

  Then, like a flickering light in great darkness, I remembered something that Hannah Arendt wrote.

  “The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.”

  I’d be keeping a promise. Maybe that’s what good it would do. Anyway, it was all I had.

  “You have to do it. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to insist.”

  “What if I refuse?”


  “Then I’ll go by myself, and it will be a lot worse. For everyone.”

  “You can’t. You’re bound by attorney-client privilege to keep everything I told you secret.”

  It was phrased as a statement, but it was actually a desperate question. And legally speaking, utter nonsense.

  “You’re not my client.”

  “What if I tell them you had sex with me? Will they kick you out of the bar association?”

  “That would be unpleasant,” I admitted. “Unpleasant but nothing more. There would be no consequences for me. Like I said, you’re not my client, and you’re not even a minor.”

  Caterina sat there for a minute without speaking, casting around for some final, desperate argument, but she came up empty-handed. She finally realized that this was the end.

  “You’re a piece of shit. You’re giving me up because you want your clients to pay you. You don’t give a shit about them, about me, about anybody. The only thing you care about is getting your goddamned money.”

  I put the car in gear and drove the few remaining blocks to the main gate of the Carabinieri barracks. Navarra was already there, and as I drove past him, we exchanged nods. I stopped about twenty yards up the street and parked the car next to a couple of small dumpsters.

  “Before we go to the cops and flush my life down the toilet, there’s something I want to say to you.”

  Her voice was seething with rage and violence. Perhaps she was expecting me to ask what it was she wanted to say. I didn’t, and that only stoked her fury.

  “The only reason I had sex with you was to control you, to keep you from finding out about what we did.”

  Well, then, perhaps we should say that it didn’t work out the way you planned, I thought as I nodded my head.

  “It was a real effort. I was faking it the whole time. You disgust me. You’re old, and when you’re lying there with Alzheimer’s, pissing on yourself, or you’re hobbling down the street with a Moldavian caregiver holding you by the elbow, I’ll still be young and pretty, and I’ll think back with loathing on the day I let you lay your hands on my body.”

  Now, hold on there a minute. You’re taking it a little too far, sweetheart. I’d like to remind you that there are twenty-two years between us, not forty. It’s a big difference, sure, but when my caregiver is taking me for a walk, you’re not exactly going to be in the first blush of youth yourself.

  That’s not what I said, but I was seriously considering saying it when she put an end to my dilemma and the whole uncomfortable situation with a final flash of real class.

  “Piece of shit,” she said, just in case the concept she had explicated a minute earlier hadn’t been clear to me. Then she spat in my face, jerked open the car door, and got out.

  I sat there motionless, watching her walk down the sidewalk in my rearview mirror.

  I saw her go up to Navarra and then vanish with him, once and for all, into the Carabinieri barracks.

  Only then did I wipe my face clean and drive away.

  38.

  For a few minutes, I thought I would give Fornelli a call, tell him what I’d uncovered, and leave it to him to inform Manuela’s parents.

  After all, I’d done the job they’d hired me to do. In fact, I’d done much more. They had asked me—Fornelli’s words were still in my mind—to identify any further lines of investigation to suggest to the prosecutor, to keep him from closing the case. I had gone well beyond that request. I had done the further investigations myself. I had solved the case, and so I had more than fulfilled my responsibility.

  It wasn’t my job to tell Manuela’s parents what had become of their daughter.

  Like I said, for a few minutes that was my plan. During the course of those few minutes, I picked up my phone to call Fornelli repeatedly; each time, I put the phone back down. A lot of things went through my mind. And in the end, I remembered the time—it might have been two years ago—that Carmelo Tancredi invited me out for a spin in his inflatable motorboat.

  It was a beautiful day in late May. The sea was calm, the light opalescent.

  We set out from San Nicola wharf, steered north, and an hour later we were in the ancient port of Giovinazzo. It was a surreal place, almost metaphysical. There was no sign that time had passed over the last two or three centuries. There were no cars in sight, no antennas, no speedboats. Only rowboats, medieval ramparts, little boys in their underwear diving into the water, large seagulls gliding through the air, solitary and elegant.

  We ate focaccia and drank beer. We sunbathed. And we talked a lot. As so often happens, we went from idle chitchat to deep discussion.

  “Do you have rules, Guerrieri?” Tancredi asked me at one point.

  “Rules? Never gave it much thought. I don’t think I have any explicit rules. But I imagine I have some, yes. What about you?”

  “Yeah, I have some rules.”

  “What are your rules?”

  “I’m a cop. The first rule for a cop is never to humiliate the people you have to interact with in your job as a policeman. Power over other people is obscene, and the only way to make it tolerable is to show respect. That’s the most important rule. It’s also the easiest one to break. What about you?”

  “Adorno said that the highest form of morality is never to feel at home, not even in one’s own home. I agree. You should never get too comfortable. You should always feel a little bit out of place.”

  “Right. For me, another rule has to do with lies. You should try to tell as few lies as possible to other people. And none to yourself.”

  He thought for a few seconds, then added, “Which is of course impossible, but you should try at least.”

  The port, awash in opaque sunlight and unseasonably muggy heat for May, slowly dissolved as the lights of the city and the frantic chaos of evening traffic reappeared. Tancredi’s words shimmered out of that seascape and into my car, where they stayed, hovering in midair.

  You’re wetting your pants at the idea of meeting the girl’s parents and giving them the news. So you look for excuses and you tell lies. To yourself, which—as we were saying—isn’t a good thing.

  Isn’t it up to you to tell the parents? If not, whose job is it?

  No one else’s job but mine. End of discussion.

  I stopped thinking. From then on I did everything as if in a trance, and it all came easily to me. I called Fornelli, explained the bare essentials to him, and told him I’d drive by his office to pick him up so we could go see Manuela’s parents together. He might have wanted to say something or raise some objection, but I didn’t give him time. I hung up and started the car for what seemed like the thousandth time that day. I was about to experience the worst part of the whole horrible story.

  When we got to the Ferraros’ house, they were expecting us. Fornelli had called ahead, and when I saw their faces, I knew they already understood what was coming.

  For the third time in less than two hours, I told the story of what I had found, and what had happened to Manuela.

  I told them almost everything.

  I kept a few parts of the story to myself. The fact that Manuela was a coke dealer, and the way the young couple disposed of her corpse. I decided that I had the right to spare myself that agony, at least. Of course, sooner or later they’d find out everything, down to the last cruel detail. Not that evening, though, and not from me.

  When I said that Manuela was dead, Rosaria Ferraro rested her head in her hands, and I thought she was going to scream. But she didn’t. She just emitted a muffled sob and then remained motionless for a long time, her head in her hands and her mouth half-open, in a still image of mute, infinite, intolerable sadness.

  Antonio, aka Tonino, Ferraro was seated slightly behind her, leaning on a table. Tears started running down his face, and then he began to sob. And there I sat, watching and listening, because there was nothing else I could do.

  Luckily, it didn’t take long. Three quarters of an hour after I walked into the Ferra
ro’s house, I was back in my car. I dropped Fornelli off after helplessly sitting through a long monologue about how amazing it was that I had discovered what I had discovered, and how I would have to tell him all the details in the coming days. And, of course, I should represent the family as civil plaintiffs in the upcoming trial, he said, as we shook hands.

  Absolutely not, I replied. He’d need to find another lawyer. Something in my voice, or my face—or both—must have dissuaded him from trying to change my mind, or even asking me why.

  I walked into my apartment; I felt enveloped by, and pervaded with, a perfect, throbbing exhaustion.

  I greeted Mister Bag and told him that I would be with him in two minutes, no more. I walked into my bedroom, calmly undressed, and carefully and thoroughly taped up my hands. Then I put on my gloves. There are times when you have to do things right.

  I boxed for half an hour. I was loose and I was quick, as if the exhaustion and other things that I carried inside me—things much worse than exhaustion—had been transformed into a fluid and mysterious energy.

  Then I took a long hot shower, soaping myself with an amber-scented bath foam that I’d bought years earlier but never opened because I was waiting for the right occasion. The right occasion had never arrived.

  When I walked back into the living room, in my bathrobe, I said out loud that I didn’t want to be alone that evening, and that I intended to go see Nadia and old Baskerville.

  “Forgive me, Mister Bag, it’s not that I don’t enjoy your company. Quite the contrary. It’s just that sometimes, you really can be a little too taciturn.”

  Once I got outside, I realized that the city had turned silent, and the wind had died down, leaving only a slight scent of the sea in the air. The night once again seemed like a tranquil, welcoming place.

  So I got on my bike and started pedaling fast down the deserted street.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Award-winning, best-selling Italian crime novelist Gianrico Carofiglio is the author of three previous novels featuring the character of defense lawyer Guido Guerrieri: Involuntary Witness, A Walk in the Dark, and Reasonable Doubts. A former prosecutor in Bari, Puglia, Carofiglio is an expert in the investigation of organized crime and related psychology. His other novels include The Past Is a Foreign Country. Carofiglio’s books have been translated in seventeen languages worldwide.