“Film, go on and film everything! Everything! People need to know that the police are just standing by and watching. Fascists!”
Until he spotted her.
Marshal Carmine Terenzi unbuttoned his camelhair overcoat and crushed out his cigarette beneath a Timberland hiking boot above which rode the cuffed hems of his pipestem jeans. He raised the visor of his helmet, pointing his nightstick straight at Alice, who stood about fifty yards away, and spoke quietly to the private who had stepped away from the unit of the Calabria battalion, which Terenzi happened to be commanding that day.
“There she is. Come on!”
The Neri had dispersed, vanishing as if by some spell, and Alice never even had the time to figure out just who that pack of wolves lunging toward her even were. Neri like the rest of them. But these Neri had the Italian tricolor banner on their chest. And a yellow flame on their helmets.
The first blow from the nightstick caught her on the cheek, flooding her mouth with the rusty taste of blood. Alice staggered, but managed to stay on her feet. Stunned, she slipped into the on-guard position that she’d practiced a thousand times at the gym. She dodged the first cop in riot gear who came at her by leaning to the left, and with her right fist she unleashed a straight that knocked him flat on his ass. Someone shouted something behind her. Alice whipped around and let fly with another punch, blindly this time. She hit something soft, and she heard a moan. She’d put another one out of commission. Good. She assumed the on-guard position again. The second blow from the nightstick caught her off guard, between her neck and shoulders. She fell to the ground. One, two, maybe five combat boots finished the job. Curled up in a fetal position, she felt her back, legs, and ankles explode. Then she felt the stabbing, electric pain of someone hauling her away by the hair. A leather glove protruding from the sleeve of a camelhair coat was dragging her toward an armored car whose doors had just been thrown open with a noise that was a foreshadowing of prison.
Alice found herself tossed roughly onto the filthy metal deck of the paddy wagon, paralyzed by the pain and the fear. One of the soldiers was looking at her and making comments. She recognized his voice.
“Nice work, our little slut, eh? Savelli, Alice, your fun is over. You enjoyed destroying everything you could lay your hands on with your little boyfriends, eh? So you liked Occupy? Well, now you can occupy my throbbing dick!”
Terenzi. It was that piece of shit, Terenzi.
Overcoming the pain that was locking her neck in place, Alice did her best to turn and look out the Fiat Ducato’s doors, before that miserable wretch of a marshal had a chance to close them. But she wasn’t fast enough.
Her black North Face jacket dropped onto her face. It felt weirdly heavy, far heavier than normal. She turned out the pockets. Steel ball bearings rained onto the floor.
Even the night seemed unwilling to carry off that shitty day. Malatesta had chased after ski-masked demonstrators until nine o’clock, on Via Merulana, where one last charge had scattered them before they had a chance to set fire to the Tamoil gas station with their Molotov cocktails. Which would have delivered the street and the neighborhood into quite different epic literary territory than that of the book by Carlo Emilio Gadda. And when he’d finally rolled through the vehicle entrance of Ponte Salario, he decided that, if there was a God, that day He had laid his merciful hand on Piazza San Giovanni. No one on Via Emanuele Filiberto had been swept away by the deranged water cannons of the mobile squad. Nor had the flames that devoured a Carabinieri armored car claimed the life of a single private. And surely none of this could be attributed to the good will of the rivals in the field.
But as far as he was concerned, that was the only piece of good news. Alice’s phone continued to remain mute, indifferent to his calls.
Marco was worried. He asked Captain Bruni for a definitive list of those arrested.
Her name was the first on the list.
Savelli, Alice, born in Rome on November 7, 1983. Arrested redhanded in criminal activity by members of the Calabria battalion on Via Cavour at 16:00. Crimes with which she is charged: rampaging and looting, resisting and insulting an officer of the law. Outcome of the searches of her person: positive. Currently held at the house of detention of Rebibbia. On the authority of the judicial police: DIGOS (General Investigations and Special Operations Division), Rome.
Alba cleared her throat with a sharp cough.
“Scorpio.”
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
“Alice Savelli was born under Scorpio. Just like I was.”
“Alba?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Go fuck yourself! Would you please just go fuck yourself!”
Malatesta slammed his fist down onto the table with a terrifyingly loud crash, and then delivered a crushing kick to the plastic document shredder. His hands were shaking with rage, and he crumbled two Camels between his fingers before finally managing to get the third one lit.
Alba was horrified, to say nothing of her humiliation.
“I’m going to say it to you straight from the heart, Marco. That little bitch made a fool of you.”
Malatesta glared at her with hatred.
“What the fuck do you know about it, eh? What the fuck are you even talking about?”
Music. What he needed was music. He fumbled with his computer and launched the web radio. Which turned into the first station on the list of pre-sets.
Radio FM 922.
There was no music.
Christ, Spartaco Liberati at midnight? What the fuck did he have to with the incidents of that afternoon?
A bloodbath. That’s what happened, dear friends. A rout, a Caporetto, like in World War One. What am I saying, a Waterloo. Today we can say that the police force handed our city over to the Communist fury of the Black-bloc.
Alba tried to talk over the radio.
“Why on earth are you torturing yourself with this troglodyte?”
Marco hushed her.
Burnt cars, supermarkets stormed and looted. And the police, the Carabinieri? They just stood by and watched, dear listeners. They waited for them to arrive at St. John Lateran. And only there, in front of the sacred precinct of a Catholic basilica, did they remember that in the world there are the police and then there are the thieves. They even broke a cross. You might ask: why? Yeah, why? The reason why, dear friends, will now be explained to you, and you alone, by your friend Spartaco Liberati. A very, very well informed little birdie tells me that one of the masterminds behind this afternoon of devastation is a well known extremist. Her name is Alice Savelli. We’ve talked about her before, do you remember? The one who has fun slandering good people on the internet . . . The one with the blog, the one who doesn’t want to let anyone build new homes in Rome, because there are already plenty. Well well, you might say. But I’m the one saying well well well. Because Alice Savelli, according to what that same little birdie tells me, is the girlfriend of an important Carabiniere who was there at the piazza today. You get what I’m talking about?
Marco turned off his PC.
“The little birdie. The little birdie. That piece of shit.” He lowered his head to his chest, holding it tight with both hands. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, sensing a pang in the pit of his stomach.
“Michelangelo. I have to call him.”
Alba made one more effort to get the man to listen to reason.
“Just think it over for a second, Marco. If you call de Candia now, you’ll have lost all control over this thing. It’s hard enough as it is. Listen to me for once . . . ”
Marco had already grabbed his landline phone and dialed the prosecuting magistrate’s home number. He hadn’t been asleep. Or if he had, he was a real pro at concealing the fact.
“Michelangelo . . . ”
“Marco, but . . . do you have any idea what . . . ”
/> “Alice has been arrested.”
“Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll call you back.”
Michelangelo de Candia presented himself in person at Ponte Salario with very bad news.
The file concerning the clashes at St. John Lateran just happened to be, surprise surprise, in the hands of the prosecuting magistrate Setola. Who was known, among other things, for having kept a Moroccan butcher in preventive custody for a full year on suspicion of being the head of the Italian network of Al-Qaeda. All of which was done thanks, so to speak, to the erroneous translation done by a brigadier who, when it came to the Arabic language, knew about as much as Setola himself: which is to say, practically nothing at all.
“Our ineffable friend theorizes a link between Alice and the Greek anarchists. There is evidence of phone calls to Greece. The phone number in question, which hasn’t yet been identified, answers with a voice mail message in Greek and English. Setola also says that the girl, at the time of her arrest, managed to knock two officers to the ground with her fists. You never told me that she had such a spectacular left hook.”
“Do you think this is the time for that sort of thing?”
“Ah, plus, her jacket was absolutely full of steel ball bearings. The arrest report looks solid. Ten eyewitness depositions. The whole squad that detained her during the rampage on Via Cavour.”
Marco shook his head. This was the end. The end. And he was the biggest idiot ever to have worn the uniform.
Michelangelo de Candia took a moment, then coughed lightly and tilted his head in Bruni’s direction: she’d heard every word.
“Do you believe it, Captain?”
“Me? If there’s a signed report, the solemn word of my colleagues.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s all utter crap. In other words, they’ve framed her.”
“How can you say such a thing?” the captain retorted indignantly.
“First of all,” de Candia argued, “this all comes from Setola, and that alone is more than enough as far as I’m concerned. Second, not even one minute after her arrest, the news is on everybody’s lips, and snap, the attack on Marco Malatesta is underway. No, it’s not at all clear.”
Bruni couldn’t believe her ears. In the orderly world in which she’d been raised by her father, a Carabinieri general, the border between good and evil, was an unquestionable ethical fact. There was indisputable evidence against this Savelli. And now these two men, the colonel and the prosecuting magistrate, two institutional figures who by rights ought to have been on the side of the government and the powers that be, were doing their best to get this terrorist out of her current fix. As if Red judges weren’t enough: now there were even Red Carabinieri. She had always defended Marco, but enough is enough. She was about to interrupt, when Marco shook himself out of his catatonic state and recovered his powers of speech.
“I’d like to believe you, but—”
“Let’s check the story out.”
“How? Setola’s never going to let this one go.”
“Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, show up at Rebibbia prison. Go and talk with her.”
“Setola is never going to authorize it, Michelangelo.”
“You’re right. But I’d say the time has come to play the wild card that you know about . . . 1993 . . . ”
Marco’s face lit up. That genius, that great genius de Candia.
Alba was increasingly disconcerted. Wild card? 1993? That you know about? What on earth was going on? What had those two lunatics gotten up to? Something big, to judge from the way that Marco had suddenly come back to life. What was it about this girl Alice Savelli, that the minute a man laid eyes on her he started drooling in her direction. A perverse cocktail of resentment and jealousy was churning inside her. That was what was scalding her, even more than her offended sense of duty. But she’d never admit that was the case. Not in front of Marco.
XLVII
At eight on the dot, Marco Malatesta showed up at the front gate of Rebibbia prison.
He waited for the great metal doors to swing slowly open, driven by electric motors, then he covered the distance between the internal parking area and the registry office of the women’s wing, where the most senior female correctional officer, Silvana, took him to see Alice.
He knew Silvana well. A big strong woman in her early fifties who long ago had worked as a social worker among the junkies of the Laurentino 38 and Corviale housing projects. The laboratory neighborhoods of all those years ago. Where, according to urban planners, the proletarians would have a chance to live better lives. Would. Caracoling down the hallway that led to the interview rooms, Silvana stopped for a moment and lowered her voice.
“That poor child . . . ”
“What are you saying, Silvana?”
“They beat her black and blue, Marco.”
“Well, considering what she did.”
“I don’t know about that, you know?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“You know, don’t you, that I have a good sharp clinical eye. Especially with young girls and the new arrivals.”
“I certainly do.”
“What can I say? When they brought her here last night, she was furious as a rattled viper.”
“They always have it in for whoever arrested them.”
“I know that. But it’s not like she was pissed off only at you Carabinieri. She kept telling me: Those Fascist Black-bloc bastards. You understand? She called them Fascists. Now you tell me how she could possibly have been mixed up with them? I mean to say: either she really is an actress, but an Academy Award level one, or she has nothing to do with this.”
“And that’s exactly my problem, Silvana.”
Alice was sitting at the table in the interview room, her face turned, offering Marco a glimpse of the profile battered by the furious nightsticks. A deep purple bruise disfigured the left side of her face. From her hairline—the hair was greasy and was held together in a hastily assembled bun by a hot-pink plastic hairclip—to her chin, which was marked by a sloppily sutured cut, stitched together by black surgical staples.
She didn’t seem surprised to see him. She stared at him with a blank look, betraying no emotion whatsoever.
Silvana left them alone. Marco stifled the urge to clutch her to his chest.
“How do you feel, Alice?”
“Are you blind?”
“Listen to me, and listen good, you’re in no situation to be acting flippant or arrogant. You get me? There are things I kept from you, I’ll admit that. But you . . . so far everything you’ve told me has been a pile of bullshit.”
“What was I supposed to tell you? Do I have to justify myself with His Excellency the Colonel, just because I happened to be present at a demonstration with another half million people? Do I have to beg forgiveness because I didn’t come into the barracks with hat in hand, begging permission to go?”
“You need to tell me why you decked two Carabinieri.”
“It was self-defense.”
“They found twenty steel ball bearings in your pockets.”
“You can ask your colleague Terenzi all about that.”
“What does Terenzi have to do with it?”
“He’s the one who arrested me. And he’s the one who beat me up and left me looking like this. And he’s the one who planted the steel ball bearings in my pocket. Do I have to explain to you how the Carabinieri work? After all, you ought to know in some detail. Remember the cocaine at the Arcobaleno movie house.”
“Very nice. Just go on talking bullshit. Terenzi isn’t the one who arrested you.”
“Oh, he’s not? Then who did arrest me?”
“A junior lieutenant from the Calabria battalion.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Of course. And you’re the one who decides what’s true and w
hat’s a lie, right? There’s a written report and at least ten witnesses.”
“They’re all lying.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re the one who’s lying.”
“Then I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“Good for you. Because right now all they have against you is a violation of Article 419 for rampaging and looting. A sentence of eight to fifteen years. No big deal for someone who’s just twenty-eight. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, don’t you? But if instead of that you get a nice fat charge of subversive conspiracy, since you had the brilliant idea of making friends with an assortment of Greek anarchists, then we can add a substantial stack of years behind bars to that pile. Say, another five to ten. With continuation and repetition of a criminal act, the generic mitigating circumstances applicable under the law, and the fact that you have no priors, you’ll walk out of here a middle-aged lady. Excuse me, I should have said a middle-aged ex convict.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? What Greek anarchists?”
“That’s right. Who made a phone call to Greece from your phone number, two days before the demonstration? Do you think it was me, maybe? Do you have another Grandma Sandra somewhere around Corfú and Thessaloniki? Or maybe you were planning to make reservations for a nice seaside vacation around Christmas?”
Alice dropped her head, shaking it. She formulated a contemptuous smile.
“You’re just a poor miserable fucking Carabiniere. You’d send your mother to prison without a shred of evidence. You and your colleagues are all the same, and even worse than people realize. It strikes me that Samurai was right: certain bonds are never broken.”
Suburra Page 37