Trotti moved behind him. The yellow shirt smelled of sweat and fear. “Why did you take her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Anna Ermagni.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t know. And the letter? ‘A target chosen at random. The first attack against the so-called Communist Mariani and his lackeys?’ ” Trotti pushed the photocopied letter before his face.
“It means nothing to me.”
“Surprising.” Trotti now faced him. “You wrote it and you signed it. The Proletarian Army of Liberation.”
He sat with his hairy arms resting on his thighs; the blue jeans were scuffed and patched with white dust. Large adhesive bandages on his forehead and temples. “Fairy tales.”
“Fairy tales—but you write them. And, my friend, they will send you to jail. Ten years, perhaps, if you behave yourself. In Sicily or Sardinia; you’ll have plenty of time to write fairy tales.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you are trying to find a culprit, I’m afraid you’re not going to have any luck. I know nothing about the child. Nothing.” His voice trembled. “You can keep your fairy tales for your friends in the Questura.”
Trotti waited. “Just one problem, Gracchi.”
“No problem at all.”
“This …”—he ran his finger along the typewritten lines of the photocopy—“was written with your typewriter. With the little Olivetti you keep in your dirty apartment—and which we’ve confiscated.”
“There’s nothing you can prove.”
Trotti laughed again. “And the dynamite?”
“I’ll have the best lawyers. They will make fools of you; they will make fools of the Questura and they will make you, Commissario, the laughing stock of the city.”
“Why did you kidnap her?”
Gracchi raised his head and shoulders; he clicked his tongue.
“You and your friends, you took her. You needed money, perhaps to buy dynamite or to buy your P38s to put bullets into people’s legs. But something went wrong and you chickened out. You were scared. Something in the paper—or something the child said. Perhaps you realized you had made a mistake, that she didn’t come from a rich family, but you went ahead. After all, you’re terrorists.”
“I don’t kidnap children.”
“You handed her back just at a time when the grandfather was collecting the money together. You could’ve waited for the payoff. Good money. Why go to the effort of snatching the girl, terrifying her, making the life of her father and her grandparents a misery just to put her back on a bus?”
“I tell you, I don’t kidnap children.”
“We’ve picked Guerra up.”
There was no reaction.
“We’ll see what she says.”
“She’ll say nothing because like me, she won’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ll see.”
Gracchi crossed one leg over the other. “I never touched the child and your clumsy attempt to frame me will get you nowhere. My lawyers will see to that.”
“But you blow people up? You admit to that?”
The eyes looked up and again he showed his regular, white teeth. “If it’s necessary.”
“And it is necessary?”
“A bomb can be a clinical instrument. With fools, Commissario, there can be no dialogue.”
“Why did you kidnap her?”
He sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned away. The sweat on his body had an unpleasant, rancid smell. “Look, I want to speak with my father. And I want a lawyer.”
“There’ll be time for all that later.”
“I know my rights. I insist upon speaking with a lawyer—with my father’s lawyer.”
“Why did you take her into the hills?”
“You’re a fool.”
“Why did you take her into the hills?” Trotti repeated the question flatly; a droning intonation.
Gracchi was about to reply angrily but he then let his anger escape like the air he expelled from his lungs. “Be careful, Commissario, be careful.”
For about thirty seconds the two men stared at each other.
Trotti knew he was overreacting; he was allowing himself to get emotional, and it was not necessary. The child was safe. There was no need to get angry. It was like a clever card trick; insignificant but puzzling. He wanted the truth—that was all.
“You kidnapped her,” Trotti spoke very softly.
“I don’t kidnap little children. Unlike you, Commissario, I have my values. I am not a criminal.”
“When you use bombs, you kill. Indiscriminately. Men, women and children. Yes, children. Dynamite is no respecter of persons. So don’t give me your moral cant. You have the scruples of an animal. You don’t give a shit.”
“The scruples of a soldier fighting a just war.”
“A just war?” Trotti was genuinely amazed. “A just war—you must be mad.”
“You’re mad if you can’t see the truth. This is Argentina. We’re living in South America, a banana republic. Only we’re not going to allow a Pinochet here. When the forces of reaction—your friends, Commissario—with the help of the American imperialists, the CIA and the multinationals—decide to topple this tottering, corrupt regime, then we’ll be ready. Ready and waiting. There will be no Colonels here. They’ve been working at it for ten years, slowly building up an atmosphere of tension with their provocation. Provocation—that’s what they want; push aside the old hag of a syphilitic republic and get the power. Do away with the myth of democracy. They want power to set up their dictatorship. Your Fascist dictatorship.”
“That’s why you kidnap?”
“Frighten the middle class and soften them up—nothing the bourgeoisie will not do to protect its creature comforts, its country villas and its vested interests—for the totalitarian coup.”
“And the Communists?”
“Ha ha.” He wiped the mocking smile from his mouth. “Traitors. They’ve sold out—just to lick the arses of the powerful and the corrupt. There was a time when they were Communists, when they stood for something, when they had genuine goals. And when they had morality.”
“You alone have morals?”
“The Communists are like all the others—constitutional and corrupt, fighting for their little piece of the cake of power. Corrupt and insidious and duping the working classes. But the working classes won’t be fooled, just as we won’t be fooled by the Fascists. We’ll be waiting for them. We’ll answer their repression with blood. With blood and with violence and with the knowledge that we are right. And out of the heroic struggle, from the blood of our companions killed in the war of resistance, we will set up a new Socialist State. For the workers, for the productive classes. A free society. Not a puppet of America. Not a lackey State—but a People’s Democratic and Socialist State. A society based upon freedom.”
His eyes had begun to sparkle. He raised his voice but he did not gesticulate and now he looked at Trotti. There was silence.
“You belong to the Red Brigades?”
Gracchi clicked his tongue.
“You use the same slogans,” Trotti said.
“We can see the same, glaring truth. Since ’69, they’ve been preparing—you’ve been preparing the coup, making your plans. Because the Italian miracle scared you. The working class and the Italian peasants, who for centuries had accepted the exploitation and the blackmail meted out to them, started to rebel. And that scares you. The autumn of ’69 when the workers in Milan and Turin demanded better treatment—less medieval treatment. The unionization in the factories, the new political awareness. And all you could do was answer by transforming the police and the Carabinieri into forces of repression; and you started your strategy of tension. Piazza Fontana you remember? In Milan? For years public opinion believed it was Leftist extremists who placed the bomb that killed innocent men and women. But it was you. It was the reactionary police who want
ed more power, who wanted to get greater, more repressive powers. And it worked. New laws, more power, new men, new guns, more repression.” He shook his head. “We learned our lesson. You won’t catch us out a second time.”
“You say we.”
“No, Commissario—I am not a brigatista. I do not believe in the indiscriminate use of violence. Lotta Continua, yes, but not the Red Brigades.”
“And the dynamite?”
Gracchi ignored the question. “Violence is a trap—a trap set by you and the forces of repression, the anti-democratic forces. We fall into it and we are playing your game. The excuse to clamp down, a justification for more repression. A further excuse to exploit the working masses of this country. No, we will not be provoked; we will not make the mistake of the Red Brigades who by their action have unleashed the Fascist forces of the totalitarian State.”
“Then why the gun—the P38?”
“We must be ready.”
“That’s why you kidnap?”
“You are a fool, Commissario. A fool, a dangerous fool. You don’t understand, you can’t see what’s going on.” He smiled; a well-fed, unshaven, middle-class revolutionary. “I called you a Fascist. You must forgive me. I was crediting you with a political understanding that you don’t have. Fascism—you don’t even know what it means. You are a fool, an idiot—and because of that you are the worst kind of Fascist.” He snorted. “You can’t even see that you’re being exploited, that you are being used by the agents of international Capitalism to uphold a creaking system that exploits you, that alienates you from your class, that enslaves you and denies you your self-respect and your human dignity.”
“And the child?”
“Damn you,” he shouted, suddenly angry and standing up, “damn you, you flatfoot, Fascist pig. The child’s alive. She’s alive, isn’t she? What more do you want? She’s alive. Consider yourself lucky.”
36
CARS WERE PARKED carelessly, their front wheels almost beneath the arcade. The air smelled of cheese and sawdust. The morning’s fish market was already over and apart from a few empty wooden cases, standing against the scarred brick wall of the cathedral, and apart from a few glistening fish scales, drying in the sun, there was no sign of the bustle that had animated the small square. They had gone, the eager fishmongers and the fat housewives prodding at the silvery goods.
It was nearly four o’clock and the shops were opening after the long lunch.
“She was in his apartment, waiting for him. Di Bono picked her up; she spat in his face, but apart from that she didn’t put up any struggle.” He stroked his mustache. “A pretty girl. Shame that she should be a terrorist.” Magagna nodded wisely.
“We can’t hold them without a charge.”
The sound of their feet echoed along the arcade.
“Even if the parents don’t complain, the NP will want to know what’s happened to them. They saw us pick up Gracchi.” Trotti popped a sweet into his mouth. “It’s as though Leonardelli doesn’t want to admit to these things. He’s like an ostrich; he hides his head and thinks the problems will go away. Only it’s not his neck that he sticks out—it is mine.”
Near the urinals, daubed with graffiti, a water tap ran ceaselessly, its overflow staining the cobbles. A couple of boys, their neat shirts and short trousers now damp, splashed and kicked water at each other and screamed with unrestrained joy.
“He’s a politician,” Magagna said simply.
This was one of the oldest quarters of the city. The shops jostled together, forming a protective ring around the walls of the cathedral. They walked along the arcade and turned into the narrow street that ran down to the river.
Trotti knew the brothel; once, many years ago, when he was still a student at the technical institute, he had come here with some classmates. Together they had found some money—goodness knows where.
In those days, the place had not acquired its tired appearance, its atmosphere of pervasive seediness. If Buonarese—the nephew of a priest in Cremona, a tall boy with short hair and outrageously large ears—had not told him it was a whorehouse, Trotti would never have guessed it. From the outside—the faintly glimpsed wicker chairs and the opaline lights—it looked like rather distinguished tearooms.
They went inside.
The brothel was called Albergo Belsole and behind the chipped ormolu reception desk, between the rows of hanging keys, there was a trusty plaster statue of a north African soldier in his loose baggy trousers, a kepi pushed back from his forehead and his tunicked arm leaning on an upright musket. A woman—blonde, with bright lipstick that made her lips look like colored rubber bands—emerged from behind a curtain of hanging plastic ribbons.
“Signora Cucina?” Magagna asked peremptorily.
She nodded.
“Pubblica Sicurezza. We received your call. Where is he?” Magagna did not even show his card. Trotti could sense that he was ill at ease and he wondered why.
“At last,” the woman said in a low, masculine voice. The short hairs along the upper lip were dark. She made a prodding movement with a finger; a rough finger hardened by work and a fingernail with dark varnish. “Over there, on the third floor.”
She watched them leave and cross the narrow road.
Somebody, somewhere, was singing an aria from Tosca. From an open door, further down the road, there was the sound of a hammer regularly striking hard metal. They went into a small courtyard and up an outside stairway.
“It was the woman who phoned,” Magagna said, slightly out of breath.
Beneath their feet the stairs were thin slabs of flint; the flint had begun to splinter and beneath the slabs, nothing but the emptiness of the stairwell.
They stopped at the landing of the third floor.
The dirty brown door was not closed; they pushed against the fissured wood and entered the apartment.
A smell of encrusted dirt, old wine, garlic and blocked drains. A single flyblown lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The window giving onto the street was open and there was a bed along the wall. Shafts of sunlight formed parallels on the grime of the floor, across the tiles that had once been black and white but were now crossed and creased with dirt and dried mud. A radio, an old-fashioned box of walnut with warped inlay, and cloaked in dust, blinked hopefully, the amber dial glowing. The sound of Tosca filled the room, echoing off the soiled plaster of the empty walls.
The old man was listening to the music. He was slumped in a broken armchair. His head lolled forward, his chin propped by the swelling of a goiter. His eyes were open, bloodshot. He looked up slowly at his two visitors. Trotti turned off the radio.
“I killed her,” the old man said.
His feet were propped against a stool; he lowered the naked feet onto the floor. The toes were ill-formed and grimy; the pale flesh of the instep lined with protruding blue veins.
“Pubblica Sicurezza.”
“I was expecting you.” He had not shaved for several days and white bristles had sprouted from the leather of his deformed jaw. “She deserved it, the stupid whore.”
“Who?”
“A stupid old cow.” He spat onto the floor and then wiped the damp lips with the back of his hand.
“That’s no reason to kill her.”
“And you’re a fool.” The bloodshot eyes looked at Magagna. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He leaned in the chair and an outstretched hand tapped the floor. There was a dark green bottle and beside it an empty, crumpled packet of Calipso cigarettes. The hand found the packet and the old man uncrumpled it like a banker smoothing a valuable banknote. “Christ.” He looked at his visitors and attempted a smile.
Several teeth were missing; those that remained were badly stained. “A cigarette?”
Magagna produced his packet and held out a single cigarette. The man took it, looked at it, sniffed it and snorted. Then he snapped off the filter tip and stuck the end of crumbling Virginia tobacco in his old mouth. His eyes remained on his visitors.
Magagna held out a light.
“Christ.” He breathed in deeply. “Christ, that’s better.”
“Why did you kill her?” Trotti had moved towards the wall near the window to be near the fresh air; it was hot in the room.
“I didn’t say I killed anybody.”
Magagna and Trotti gave each other a glance. Magagna raised an eyebrow.
“Signor Gerevini, we know you killed her.”
A silence while the old man smoked; then he started to laugh. “Who told you, then?” He laughed again.
“You lived with her, didn’t you?” Trotti replied.
The smile vanished fast. “The worst mistake of my rotten life.” Again he spat, the spittle landing in the same place. “She was a pain in the arse. She spent all her money on herself and she was a lazy, dirty old cow.” He shook his head. He held the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and the twirling smoke caused his eyes to water.
“Her money.”
“She earned it. We were married, weren’t we?” The old voice squealed with outrage.
Trotti was amazed. “Married?” He moved away from the wall and approached the man.
“Of course. We were living together, her and me. We were together.”
“Except when she was working.”
He now looked at Magagna with hatred in his watery, red eyes. “You think I can work? What am I supposed to do? A pension that the government refuses to give me. What do you want? To beg.” He pointed a finger at the goiter. “With this? It’s all right for you—you’re young and you’ve got your health. But me, what am I supposed to do?”
Trotti asked, “You loved her?”
A pause while the man still stared angrily at Magagna; then he shrugged. “She was useful, wasn’t she?” He lowered his voice. “And there were times when she needed me. Just like in any marriage.”
Magagna spoke softly, “You shared the same bed.”
“Of course,” Gerevini replied without looking at him. “You think I’m a cripple? But more recently … she was busier and when she came back, she was tired.”
“Wasn’t she getting a bit old for the game?”
The laugh was cold. Cold and humorless. “Old—of course she was old, but that’s what they all want. They’re perverts, aren’t they? Vicious and depraved; the older the flesh, the more flabby it is, the more they like it. Perverts.” He stopped to stub out the cigarette on the dirty floor; it continued to smolder, the smoke curling towards the open window. “She thought it was love, the silly cow.”
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