Corrado darted away from the sink. “Why don’t you go back to Rome and leave me in peace?”
“I’ll go back, don’t worry, I’ll go back. Once things have calmed down. Why, what do you know about it?”
“What do I know about it? Hell, what do you know about it!” Corrado shouted. “You even fucked up. Instead of shooting that cop, you shot some poor girl who had nothing to do with it! You’re blind as a bat!”
Enzo didn’t move. He stared at Corrado, expressionless.
“It must be a problem with your family, Enzo! You and your brother, Luigi, both always seem to miss the target!”
Enzo lunged and was on him in a flash. He slammed Corrado against the wall. A knife had suddenly materialized in his hands. He pointed it at Corrado’s throat. “Watch what you say, you piece of shit! Don’t you dare mention my brother, ever!” The tip of the knife carved into the flesh of Corrado’s neck. Corrado opened his mouth and shut his eyes. A drop of blood rolled down the steel blade. “Just remember! If I go down, you’re coming down with me.” The bandit released his grip and rapidly put the knife away in his pocket. “Shave and take a shower, you reek of grease.”
Tuesday
At police headquarters, things went on as usual, even without Rocco. Officer Casella was on duty at the front entrance, Deruta and D’Intino were struggling to deal with a lost ID or two, Deputy Inspector Caterina Rispoli was on the telephone in the little ground-floor office, Antonio Scipioni was busy taking crime reports. Italo Pierron seemed to be the only one who missed his boss. Standing in the doorway, he was looking into Rocco’s empty office. The desk, the locked window, the bookshelf with the books of law that had never been cracked, the crucifix on the wall, the photo of the president of Italy, and the calendar. He only happened to notice it for the first time on that sunshiny spring day. The calendar was stuck at the eighth of September of the year before, the day that Rocco had first begun duty at Aosta police headquarters. The deputy chief had never so much as looked at the calendar. Many were the times that he’d told Italo that as far as he was concerned, each day had been like any other for years now. And aside from whether it was hot or cold, he couldn’t detect any other substantial differences.
“What do you have under your arm?”
Italo whipped around. Standing in the middle of the hallway was Caterina.
“Nothing, I was just taking a look at the office.” He glanced down at the construction paper that he had rolled up in a tube. “Oh, you mean this? It’s just something I wanted to hang up. Sort of a joke.”
Caterina pointed at the roll, her curiosity piqued. “Well, what is it?”
“You’ll see in just a minute.” He walked over to the wall next to the deputy chief’s office door. He unrolled the construction paper; then he pulled a pack of colorful thumbtacks out of his shirt pocket. He had a hammer tucked into his belt. He tapped the tacks into the construction paper on the wall. Then he stepped back to admire his work. “What do you say, is it straight?”
Caterina studied it. “Yes. I think it is. But what is it?” And she stepped closer and started reading.
Italo had divided the sheet of construction paper into five large rectangles that represented a ranking of Rocco Schiavone’s multiple pains in the ass, from sixth to tenth degree. By now everyone in the office was familiar with that list. It rose from sixth ranking, an array of milder annoyances, all the way to the top, tenth degree, where the very worst pain in the ass of them all perched solitary and cruel: an open case.
Caterina broke out laughing. “So you know them all?”
“The ones I know I wrote down here. Then, as we go along, we’ll come up with others, and we can keep adding them until we’ve devised a complete overall view of the matter.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
“He won’t answer my calls. He won’t answer anybody’s calls.”
“Did you try swinging by his apartment on Rue Piave?”
“They’ve removed the seals,” said Italo. “Among other things, I left him a note from the chief of police. He says that he’s found him an apartment on Via Laurent Cerise. Only Rocco would at least have to go take a look at the place.”
“Don’t worry. Lately, it’s not as if apartments have been going like fresh bread,” Caterina replied. “Speaking of bread, Deruta is asking if he can have time off, because apparently he needs to help his wife out at her bakery.” Caterina headed off down the hallway.
“Caterina? You do remember that tomorrow night we’re going to my aunt’s house for dinner, right?”
Without turning around, Caterina replied, “Tomorrow night I have yoga!” and rolled her eyes. She thought back to the deputy chief’s list of pains in the ass. Maybe she should draw up a list of her own, and she would definitely put dinners with relatives at the ninth degree.
SPRAWLED IN HIS BED, ROCCO WAS LOOKING AT THE FACING wall. He had fixated on a stain in the uppermost corner. A gray patch. It looked like Great Britain. Or the silhouette of a bearded man laughing. Lupa’s tail swished through the air. The dog pricked up her ears and raised her muzzle. Three seconds later someone knocked at the door.
“Dottore? Dottore? Everything okay?”
It was the voice of the doorman in the residential hotel.
“Dottore, there’s a visitor to see you. Could you please open the door? Answer me!”
He had to answer now. He got up and dragged himself over to the door. He turned the key and opened it.
The doorman was accompanied by an enormous man. Rocco recognized him: the deputy chief of the Turin mobile squad, Carlo Pietra, deployed to Aosta since Rocco had shut himself up in that residential hotel room.
The deputy chief threw the door open wide. “Come on in . . .” he said. Pietra barely cracked a smile, stepped past the concierge, and walked into the room.
“Do you need anything?”
Schiavone said nothing. He limited himself to shutting the door.
“How’s it going?”
“Well, it’s going.”
Carlo Pietra was like a human sphere who seemed to fill up the 325 square feet of the room all by himself. He had cheerful, light-blue eyes; he wore a sparse beard and long hair. “May I?” he asked Rocco, pointing to the only armchair in the one-room studio.
“Why of course, make yourself comfortable.”
He sat down, making the armchair creak. He looked at the deputy chief, his growth of whiskers from the last several days, his unkempt hair. Then he opened the binder that he had been holding on his knees and stuck his face into it. “Certainly, it’s depressing in here,” he observed as he leafed through the various documents.
“It’s not as if things are that much nicer at my old place.” Rocco opened the little fridge. “Want anything to drink? Let’s see . . . I’ve got a Coke, some fruit juices, and three mini bottles of some brand of whiskey I’ve never heard of.”
“No, thanks.”
“Otherwise, I can make you a cup of coffee with a filter pack. It’s better than you’d think.”
“No, no, nothing for me. I’m going out to dinner at a trattoria and I want to have plenty of room.” And he smacked himself three times on his ample belly.
Rocco went over to the galley kitchen in the corner. Actually, he felt like a coffee. “Well then, Dottor Pietra, tell me everything.”
Pietra pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Listen, let’s do one thing before we start getting tangled up with formalities?”
“Certainly.”
“Can we use the informal? Be on a first-name basis?”
“That would be better.” The deputy chief pressed a button, and the espresso immediately began tumbling out of the coffee maker and into the porcelain demitasse cup.
“So, in that case, Rocco, do you feel like going over the situation quickly?”
“Let’s go.” Rocco picked up the espresso and went back to sit on the bed. Lupa had fallen asleep again.
“First of all, do you have any
idea of who might have entered your apartment on Thursday, May 10, and shot . . .” Pietra hesitated as he leafed through the pages in the binder.
“Adele Talamonti,” said Rocco. “That’s right. Adele Talamonti was at my home. She was the girlfriend of a close friend of mine, Sebastiano. She’d come up here to lie low, a maneuver that was meant to force Sebastiano to lose his mind trying to find her. Yes, I know . . .” Rocco said, anticipating Pietra’s skeptical glance, “complete bullshit, but what she was hoping to do was rekindle her boyfriend’s passion and interest. Anyway, the killer assumed that the shape in that bed was me, and he shot her.”
Pietra nodded. “So that means you don’t have the foggiest idea who it could have been?”
“Not the foggiest.”
Carlo scratched his head. “Listen, Rocco, I’ve read a few things about you. And let’s just say that . . . at first glance, I’d say that you have a pretty messed-up past.”
“‘Messed-up’ is a euphemism, Carlo.”
“Which means that, even if it’s no easy matter to go dig into it, you must have some suspicions.”
Rocco shook his head. “No. I really don’t. All I know is that whoever tried to kill me is bound to try again.”
Carlo Pietra looked around the room. “And you’re waiting for them here?”
“No. I’m here because I don’t have a place to live anymore. As soon as I find a new place, I’ll move. Especially for her”—and he pointed at Lupa. “She’s a little cramped in here.”
Pietra seemed to notice the dog for the first time. “I don’t know about that. I prefer cats.” The deputy chief of the mobile squad hoisted his oversized body off the chair. “All right, then, I’m going to call on the police chief. I’ll hand over all the documentation I have, and then I’m heading back to Turin. There’s nothing else for me to do here. When are you returning to active duty?”
“I still have some vacation time to use up.”
“And you’re going to use it up here?”
“I don’t feel like going anywhere.”
“It’s been a pleasure.” Pietra extended his hand and shook Rocco’s. “How do you like being in Aosta?”
The deputy chief thought it over for a few seconds. “Have a safe trip.”
IT WAS MASSIMO, HIS FRIEND FROM VITERBO, WHO HAD given him a recommendation of the best dog food for Lupa. You could rely on Massimo. He bred Lagotto Romagnolo dogs for truffle hunting and he trained them like soldiers. So Rocco had taken a picture of his puppy and texted it to his friend. Massimo replied: “My good friend Rocco, it’s hard to tell the breed. At a glance, I see three: setter, Brittany, and a shepherd of some kind. Anyway, she’s a beauty, hold on to her.” He picked up the dog food bowl, all the food eaten now, and placed it in the sink of the galley kitchen. Then he picked the newspaper up off the floor to crumple it up and throw it away. His eye landed on the article by Buccellato:
We wonder, however: Is this an investigation that warrants a wall of secrecy to keep from tipping off the culprits, or is it more of a delaying action being run by law enforcement now that one of their members is at the eye of the hurricane?
He crushed the newsprint into a ball and hurled it into the trash can.
“I HAVE 7 DOWN, ‘AIMLESS, MEANINGLESS,’ ELEVEN LETTERS.”
Marina is sitting on the bed, next to Lupa. She’s petting the puppy with her right hand. In her left hand, she’s holding La Settimana Enigmistica, the weekly puzzler magazine.
“‘Vague’?”
“Hold on, it starts with p and ends with s.”
“‘Pointless’?”
“Rocco, I said it has eleven letters.”
Eleven letters . . .
“It’s pretty ugly in here . . .”
“Yes, it is.”
“Oh, Lord, it’s not like Rue Piave was much to look at, either.”
“True enough,” I answer her.
“You need to find yourself a place.”
“It’s useless.” Then I stop to think. “‘Useless’?”
“What?”
“The answer for the crossword puzzle. Is ‘useless’ the answer?”
“Rocco, that’s seven letters and it starts with u. I said eleven letters and it starts with p. Hold on, let me solve 12 across . . . ‘Receive an offering’ . . . That’s easy, ‘accept’ . . . ‘The fictional grimoire by Abdul Alhazred’ . . .”
“By who?”
“The Necronomicon.”
“How on earth do you know these things?”
“I just do. And that means that 7 down was . . . ‘purposeless’!”
“‘Purposeless’?”
“Exactly.”
I look at her. “Are you mad at me?” Obviously, she’s mad at me. One thing is certain. My wife always reels off strings of words as big as Saturn’s rings, but by now I’m used to that. “Are you mad at me? Then why don’t you just go ahead and tell me so, directly?”
She sets down the magazine, gives Lupa a kiss on the muzzle, and heads off to the bathroom. She stops in the doorway. She looks back at me with her enormous eyes—“Do something, for Christ’s sake!”—and vanishes through the door.
THERE THEY WERE, MILLING ABOUT, MUTTERING UNDER THEIR breath. Donkeys. Only donkeys walk in circles and turn millstones. These tattered remnants of men did nothing but wear out shoe leather and the grass in the courtyard.
“All done, everyone inside!” shouted a young guard with a wispy beard and his skin still speckled with acne. Agostino, a.k.a. the Professor, stood up, followed by Oluwafeme, the Nigerian giant, and Erik the Red. Another fucked-up day, the umpteenth fucked-up day. He slowly walked through the door that led into the staircase of Wing 2 of the house of detention of Varallo. He greeted the bald prison guard with a grin and started up the steps. He didn’t even notice the glances of respect from the other convicts. Or the requests for summary justice brought to him with trembling hands during social interaction hour, when the cell doors were left open and you could wander around the prison wing, collecting cigarettes and debts. Those prison walls were starting to nauseate him. He needed a change; he needed a transfer. Fresh air, new surroundings, a new life, new people to subjugate. Two convicts he’d like to take with him were Oluwafeme and Erik, competent, loyal, and, above all, dangerous. Plus, Erik was a fabulous cook. “What are we having for dinner?” he asked him as they filed through the last door before the corridor of the prison wing.
“Tonight, I’ll make you pasta alla carbonara. And chicken breast with lemon.”
Agostino nodded. “Will there be olives in the chicken?”
“Of course there will, Professor!”
He exchanged handshakes with a couple of convicts who’d extended their arms to him, and then, finally, he walked into his cell. The only bed that wasn’t part of a bunk bed was his. He immediately noticed that someone had moved his pillow. The sheet was folded wrong. He slipped his hand under the blankets and pulled out a note, a sheet of paper torn from a graph paper notebook.
“Tomorrow!” it read.
Agostino looked at Erik and the Nigerian. Then he popped the piece of paper into his mouth and began chewing.
“What’s that?” Erik asked him.
“The antipasto . . .”
“COLOMBO POLICE STATION, GO AHEAD.”
“Put me through to De Silvestri.”
“Who’s speaking?”
“Deputy Chief Schiavone.”
He held the line. His old police station in Rome, where he’d worked for years and where De Silvestri was still on duty, the senior officer who had watched him enter the police force, a man with the memory of a computer and the intelligence of a Nobel laureate. With the receiver of his cordless phone in one hand, he looked out the window. Gray and damp. It was threatening to rain from one moment to the next. But the glass of the windowpanes wasn’t fogged over, a sign that the outdoor temperature was finally catching up with the spring.
“Dottore? What’s happened?” De Silvestri began in his rheumy v
oice.
“You heard about it?”
“By pure chance, on the regional news broadcast. Someone had it in for you, didn’t they?”
“Yes. I need some help, Alfredo.”
“Anything I can do.”
“Anyone who’s been released recently?”
“What do you mean by ‘anyone’?”
“Anyone I might have put behind bars. I don’t know, anyone who might have it in for me?”
He heard the officer breathing. “Dottor Schiavone, are you asking me to reprint the yellow pages?”
“Okay, but forget about the little stuff. Misdemeanor thefts, cases of fraud, that kind of bullshit. Focus on the heavy stuff.”
“How long do I have?”
“As long as you need.”
“I’ll call you back.”
Rocco ended the call. He’d suddenly felt a pang of hunger. He woke up Lupa.
“Shall we go out?”
“CAN I GO UP AND SEE CHIARA?” ASKED MAX.
“All right, but don’t stay long, all right? She’s still very tired,” said Giuliana Berguet.
Max smiled with his perfect teeth, swept back his head of long blond hair, and climbed the stairs that led from the living room to the bedrooms. He hadn’t seen his girlfriend in days. He’d never once gone to the hospital to see her. Hospitals freaked Max out. All it took was a glance from a sick person and he started to feel each and every malady afflicting him. An amputated leg, a heart attack, appendicitis, there wasn’t a single pathology that would fail to infect the young man like a bad smell wafting into his nostrils.
He had texted her dozens of times, but Chiara had always replied with brief phrases and broken words: “I’m fine,” “we’ll see each other soon,” “don’t come to the hospital,” “say hi to everyone at school.” Then there was that thing with Filippa. It hadn’t been his fault—she’d practically thrown a half nelson on him—but he was dating Chiara. He’d tried talking to his father about it—Dr. Turrini, the head physician at the hospital. But his father had just given him a grin and said: “Max, you’re twenty years old, you’re handsome, you’re healthy. Fuck her and don’t give it a second thought. You can think about more serious things when the time comes.” Sure, more serious things. But he couldn’t pull a dirty move like that on Chiara after everything she’d been through. Kidnapped! Max couldn’t bring himself to think about it. She’d languished for days, her head in a hood, in a freezing garage, abandoned in the mountains, without food or water. The two guys who had taken her and then had been killed in a crash? He’d even met them. He’d also sold them an entire package of Stilnox that he’d stolen from his father’s medicine cabinet. And he knew exactly what Stilnox was good for: making someone helpless. A rape drug. You give it to a girl and then you can fuck her—she won’t even remember. Is that what they’d done to Chiara? Had they raped her? And did that make him responsible? Was it his fault? But if he hadn’t sold the pharmaceuticals to those two sons of bitches, someone else would have done it instead.
Spring Cleaning Page 2