by Marco Vichi
‘I’m going to lie down for a while,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you come over tonight and watch some television with us?’
‘No, not tonight,’ said Pina, her eyes lifeless.
‘Then tomorrow. There’s going to be a film on Channel Two.’
‘All right, maybe …’ she said.
They descended the stairs in silence, gestured goodbye at the door, and Piras went home. His parents had waited for him to start eating. The pasta water had been boiling for a long time over a low flame, but in the end Maria had turned off the gas.
‘It’s almost two o’clock,’ said Gavino. The television was turned off.
‘Go ahead and put the pasta in,’ said Piras,
‘I’ll be right there.’
‘What are you doing, Pietrino?’ his mother asked, lighting the flame under the pot.
‘I have to make a telephone call.’
‘A girl called about an hour ago, asking for you,’ Maria said in a neutral tone.
‘Oh, really?’ said Piras, studying his mother’s face. Normally Sonia never called at that hour.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Gavino, but nobody paid any attention.
‘She said her name … but I’ve already forgotten it …’ said Maria, trying to remember.
‘Francesca?’ asked Piras.
‘Yes, Francesca,’ Maria said, smiling.
‘And what did she say?’
‘It’s not true, nobody called. I just wanted to know what her name was,’ she said with satisfaction.
‘Well, now you know,’ Pietrino said curtly, having already guessed his mother’s game.
‘The water’s boiling,’ said Gavino.
‘But why won’t you tell us anything about this girl? Is she really so ugly?’ Maria asked, finally getting it off her chest.
‘She’s a monster,’ said Piras, thinking of Sonia’s face. He could hardly wait to hold her in his arms.
‘Maria, put the pasta in,’ said Gavino, getting tired of their banter.
At last the spaghetti were lowered into the pot. Pietrino limped to the hall and closed the door behind him. He phoned the carabinieri in Milis and asked whether anyone had perhaps picked up the shell of the bullet that had killed Benigno, but nobody knew anything.
‘It must still be in the dead man’s house. But I don’t think it really matters,’ said Amedeo Nazzari.
Piras thanked him and hung up. He stood there staring at the closed kitchen door, wondering about the missing shell. Nobody can kill himself and then make the shell disappear.
‘It’s almost ready, Nino,’ Gavino shouted.
At three o’clock Bordelli went into his office and opened the window. It was cold outside, but the room was warm and stank of smoke. He sat down without taking his trench coat off. As usual, he’d eaten too much in Totò’s kitchen. Every time he went through that door, he would swear to himself not to overdo it, and every time he forgot his solemn vow. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and was about to light it, but then he decided to wait and set it down on the desk. He thought again of Marisa, her dark eyes that looked like living stones, and all at once Milena’s face came back to him … She had black hair like Marisa, and the same colour skin …
Enough of this crap. He’d best get down to work. He had to ring Marisa’s brother, who was the first left-hander he’d come across in the investigation. The prospect excited him a little. Marisa had said her brother was always at his friend’s house, and Bordelli grabbed the phone book and looked for the number of Gustavo Fontana the barrister. While searching he thought that if he could go back in time, he would throw caution to the winds and put a tap on Badalamenti’s phone, without authorisation … Had he done so, he might now have a better lead to follow to get to the bottom of this affair. Well, let that be a lesson. Whatever the case, somehow or other he would find the person who had killed the loan shark. He was absolutely sure of this. And he said it so often to himself that he started to doubt his own certainty. At last he found Fontana’s home phone number.
‘Hello?’ said a young man’s voice. In the background Bordelli could hear music being played at high volume, but he didn’t recognise it.
‘Good afternoon, I’d like to speak with Raffaele Montigiani,’ he said.
‘I’m Raffaele, who’s this?’
‘Inspector Bordelli, police. I need to talk to you. When could we meet?’
‘What’s this about?’ asked the young man, but the inspector could tell from his tone that Marisa had already told him everything.
‘I just want to ask you a few questions,’ said Bordelli.
‘Is tomorrow all right?’
‘I’d prefer we did it straight away.’ Raffaele was silent for a moment. Somebody turned the music down.
‘Would five o’clock be okay?’ asked Raffaele.
‘Where?’
‘In Piazze delle Cure, in front of Cavini’s gelateria.’
‘All right. Don’t be late.’
They hung up. Playing around with his unlit cigarette, Bordelli tried to picture Raffaele’s face based on his voice, and he imagined a boxer. He liked to amuse himself with such speculations, and often he was close to the mark. A moribund fly was flying slowly from one end of the room to the other before landing on the wall and staying there without moving. With realising it, the inspector lit the cigarette, blowing the smoke upwards while thinking again of Odoardo. The sensation that the kid was hiding something was still strong, and he felt that he needed to talk to him a little more. Actually, he liked Odoardo. The boy had a beautiful face and clear eyes. Except that, perhaps … he wasn’t telling the truth.
When he looked outside and saw the sky darkening, he glanced at his watch and stood up. He slapped his paunch and screwed up his mouth. He had to lose a few pounds, he thought, but with Totò in the neighbourhood it wasn’t easy.
He left the station, taking his time, then drove slowly to Piazza delle Cure. It was already dark outside. There were a lot of people in the streets. He parked near Cavini’s, in front of a bunch of cut fir trees stacked against the wall. It was cold and rather windy, and he decided to wait in the car. Children passed with their woollen caps pulled down over their ears, and some of them stopped to look at the trees. Their mothers dragged them away, walking fast, hand on their collars and eyes closed against the wind.
A few minutes later a young man on a big motorcycle came round the corner of Viale Volta. The bike looked like a BSA. He slowed down and drove on to the pavement, then parked the motorbike against the wall and went and stood in front of the ice-cream shop. He had on a close-fitting black leather jacket, zipped up to his neck, and looked around impatiently. He wasn’t very tall but had broad shoulders. His long chestnut hair covered his ears. He didn’t look at all like Marisa, but it was definitely him. Bordelli got out of the Beetle and went up to him. The young man took off his gloves, and they shook hands.
‘Nice bike,’ said the inspector.
‘It’s not mine,’ the youth said, working his chewing gum. Bordelli had been wrong. He had nothing of the boxer about him. He looked more like a medieval knight. He had a rather singular face, quite virile but also a bit feminine, and the contrast worked well. The wind was cold, and the inspector invited him to come inside the car. They got into the Beetle. Raffaele, needing space, pushed the seat all the way back.
‘I already know what you want to ask me,’ he said. He didn’t move, but Bordelli could sense his nerves rustling under his skin.
‘Your sister told me—’
‘My sister has the brains of a chicken,’ said Raffaele.
‘I think she’s only a little naïve.’
‘Nobody else would ever have believed that bullshit.’
‘Tell me about the time you paid a courtesy call on Badalamenti. When was that?’ Bordelli asked.
‘A couple of weeks ago, maybe less.’
‘You don’t remember the exact day?’
‘I remember that it was a holiday.�
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‘The Immaculate Conception?’
‘Bah, perhaps …’
‘What time of day did you go there?
‘I feel like I’m back at school,’ said Raffaele.
‘It’s not a difficult question.’
‘It was night, round about ten o’clock, I’d say.’
‘Did you go alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you never went back?’
Raffaele shook his head.
‘I was sure that if I ever went back, something bad would happen. The guy had lard in his head instead of brains. I really don’t understand how Marisa could have trusted such a piece of shit.’
‘Apparently he could be polite and persuasive.’
‘With a face like that, it’s hard to believe. I would have reported him except for the fact that my sister didn’t want me to,’ said Raffaele, shrugging.
‘Exactly what happened when you went to his place?’
‘Let’s get straight to the point, Inspector … I didn’t kill him.’
‘I think I’ve heard that statement before.’
‘You’re like my father. You never say things openly.’
‘What does your father do?’ asked Bordelli, ignoring the provocation.
‘He has a car dealership, earns tons of money but lives a shitty life. I’d rather clean cesspools than work for him.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘I make music.’
‘What sort of music?’
‘Nothing that you’re familiar with, and at any rate you wouldn’t like it,’ said Raffaele, avoiding the subject. He was playing tough, and succeeding, in part. The inspector dropped the musical discussion and came to the point.
‘How did you spend the day of the tenth of September?’ he asked. Raffaele started laughing.
‘I really don’t know. I didn’t know I would have to remember,’ he said.
‘Try.’
‘Listen, Inspector, that bastard deserved to die, and if I had rid the world of him myself I certainly wouldn’t feel guilty about it. But the fact is, I didn’t kill him. It’s as simple as that,’ said Raffaele, looking him in the eye. They were more or less the same words Benito Muggio had used.
‘Did you come to blows?’ Bordelli asked.
‘Almost.’
‘Did you threaten him?’
‘When he said I had to pay him to get back those pictures of my whore of a sister, I flew off the handle and told him that if he didn’t give them back to me … Well, anyway, I wanted to scare him.’
‘But he didn’t get scared.’
‘I haven’t told this to Marisa, but her little friend pulled out a switchblade and started counting to ten, and not very quickly, either. I realised he was just a little prick who made up lies so he could fuck young girls. He seemed much more relaxed with that knife in his hand.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, I didn’t feel like getting my belly cut open over my fool of a sister … So when the guy reached the count of ten, I spat a nice big gob on his floor, wished him an early death, and left.’
‘You were prophetic.’
‘Maybe I have magical powers,’ Raffaele said with a cold smile.
‘So you gave up on the photos?
‘I would have had to kill him to get them back, and, as I said, I didn’t kill him.’
‘But you can’t remember what you did that Friday.’
‘No, I can’t. Do you remember what you did that Friday?’ the young man countered. Bordelli smiled … He couldn’t remember.
‘What was that music I heard over the telephone?’ he asked, offering him a cigarette.
‘I don’t smoke that stuff,’ said Raffaele.
‘Only marijuana?’
‘Give me a break. Marijuana. I obey the law … I drink a bottle of grappa a day and smoke three packs of cigarettes with the government’s seal on them, all healthy, legal stuff,’ Raffaele said with the sneer of a gangster.
‘So what was that music?’ Bordelli asked again.
‘It’s not for you.’
‘I used to say the same thing to my father when I listened to Duke Ellington.’
‘The difference is that I know the Duke better than you do,’ said Raffaele. The inspector lit a cigarette, rolling the window down an inch or two. He was getting a little tired of being treated like an old codger incapable of understanding new things. He thought about what he’d gone through in the war and wondered whether this kid had any idea what had actually happened … Whether he knew who Mussolini and Hitler were, whether the name Buchenwald meant anything to him. Bordelli didn’t want to play the part of the old pain in the arse trying to give lessons in life, but the question slipped out of him anyway.
‘Does the name Buchenwald mean anything to you?’ he asked, fully expecting the answer to be no.
Raffaele looked at him and shook his head. ‘Treblinka, Sobibor, Birkenau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Majdanek … I know every piece of shit that ever rained down upon the earth, never mind that we’re drowning in it. You Methuselahs think you know everything,’ he said all in one breath.
‘Methuselahs?’ Bordelli wondered, never having heard the word before.
‘Old fogeys,’ said Raffaele.
‘We all get old sooner or later.’
‘People like you and my father are old inside. Age’s got nothing to do with it. I see twenty-year-old kids who are older than my grandmother,’ Raffaele said disdainfully. Bordelli didn’t know what to say. It had never occurred to him that he might be old inside, and he tried to understand what this could mean. But, looking at Raffaele, he started to get an idea. The kid was made of a different material which Bordelli had never before seen up close. He wasn’t arrogant or offensive. He was just a young man full of anger and rancour, as if the world had done him a great wrong by not being the way he wanted it. Seen from the outside, he was very different from Odoardo, and yet the two youths had something in common. Perhaps it was their attitude. It was as if they never had enough breathing room, were disgusted by just about everything, and their patience was at its limit.
Tiny drops of rain started to dot the Beetle’s windscreen, and Raffaele slapped his thigh.
‘Fuck,’ he said in a low voice, thinking of the motorbike.
‘Pay close attention, Raffaele, it’s all very simple. A murder has been committed and I, unfortunately, am a policeman. You went to the victim’s house, and it wasn’t for a candlelight dinner. Badalamenti was killed on Friday the tenth. All I want is for you to tell me what you did that day, and if you have an alibi I’ll have to verify it … Does that seem so strange to you?’
The young man sighed.
‘I almost certainly spent the whole day with Guido, but I can’t remember exactly what we did minute by minute,’ he said, looking outside. Every so often a strong gust shook the car, as the wind gained in intensity. Pages of newspapers and plastic bags started to fly across the pavement.
‘Is this yours?’ Bordelli asked, taking out the ring found in Badalamenti’s stomach.
‘No,’ said Raffaele.
‘All right, then, I guess that’s all for now.’
‘I only ask that you don’t call on me at home. My parents would make a tremendous scene. And, at any rate, I’m always at Guido’s.’
‘So there wouldn’t be any problem if I came to your friend’s place?’
‘There’s never anybody there.’
‘All right.’
‘Now it’s my turn to ask you a question,’ said the youth.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Are you really so interested in finding out who killed that guy?’
‘It’s my job.’
‘Don’t you have a less banal answer than that?’ Raffaele asked, without malice. Bordelli thought about it for a moment. Not so much about what he should say, but about what words he should use. He was suddenly feeling anxious about not being modern enough. It was the first time this had ever happened to him. In his
youth he’d been quite aware that his father had grown up in another era, but it was nevertheless an era he recognised.This young man, on the other hand, seemed to look at him as if he were from another planet. There was an abyss between them. Maybe it was all due to the fact that Bordelli had never had children and therefore didn’t know this new race from up close. But Raffaele was waiting for a less banal answer, and he had to give him one.
‘If we accept that it’s all right to kill arseholes, there’s a little detail that must be clarified at once: who decides which people are arseholes? It may all seem clear to you now, but things can change, as happened only a few decades ago … You said you know all about those things,’ said Bordelli.
Though it had come out as a little speech, the inspector felt he’d expressed the concept fairly well. He took a last drag and crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray. Raffaele sat for a few seconds in silence, thinking it over.
‘Somebody always decides,’ he said. Then he shook the inspector’s hand and got out of the car. It was still drizzling, but very little. The young man straddled the BSA, kicked the starter a couple of times, rolled off the pavement, and went off, raising the front wheel. He disappeared round the corner of Viale Volta, but the noise of the bike could be heard for a good few seconds more.
As he was driving on the bridge over Le Cure, the inspector thought of Baragli and felt his stomach tighten. He decided to go and pay him a visit. Every time he went there, he was afraid he would find him dying or already dead. Reaching the end of Via Lorenzo il Magnifico, he turned right. As he was driving down Via dello Statuto, he pulled out his cigarettes, and as he lit one he thought seriously about the possibility of quitting for good. He could do it; he only had to find the right moment. Or else he only had to stop making all these excuses and go cold turkey. But it wasn’t easy. Perhaps he could reach a compromise. Three or four cigarettes a day, and some exercise. If he’d been younger he would have gone back to Mazzinghi’s gymnasium and sparred a little, but at his age, he no longer felt up to it.
He drove slowly through the irritating drizzle, which forced him to activate the windscreen wipers every thirty seconds or so. If he left them on the whole time, the glass dried up at once and the wipers dragged noisily; if he left them off, after a few minutes he could no longer see anything. It was one of life’s little annoyances.