Spring Cleaning

by Antonio Manzini

  “We don’t give a fuck whether or not you killed someone. All we want to know about is the pistol that you used . . .”

  “Here we go again!” said Paoletto, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  “Who’d you give the gun to?” Sebastiano insisted. “Your brother?”

  “My brother?”

  “That asshole Flavio? Did you give it to him?”

  Paoletto leaned in, just inches from Sebastiano’s face. He wasn’t afraid of him. “What the fuck does my brother have to do with any of this? Flavio lives with Mamma, and she’s eighty-five years old.”

  They looked like a couple of mountain goats about to lock horns. On the one side there were muscles and long hours in the gym, on the other stifled rage. Brizio did his best to keep them from reaching the point of no return. “Paolè, I told you, we don’t want you, we don’t want your brother, all we want is the gun that you used.”

  The bouncer continued looking Sebastiano in the eyes. He ground his teeth. “If I told you I don’t know a fucking thing about it, it’s because I don’t know a fucking thing!”

  “You know what your problem is?” Seba asked him calmly.

  “No, what is it?”

  “When you stand up to someone face-to-face, there are two things you need to remember. The first one is to brush your teeth. The other is never to turn your front toward them. Never ever. Always at an angle, turned to one side. Always . . .” And with an extremely rapid move, he grabbed Paoletto’s testicles until the other man shouted in pain. Seba was clenching them so tight that the enormous bouncer slowly sank to his knees. Seba’s gigantic hand was a hydraulic press, the veins swollen with blood and the skin red with effort. Brizio didn’t stir from the sofa. He limited himself to observing the scene. Paoletto continued shouting, “Let go of me! Let goooo!” but Seba wasn’t listening. It wasn’t until the complexion of Paoletto’s face veered toward a purple hue that the Marsican brown bear released his grip. Buglioni remained on the floor, curled up, his hands on his testicles and a mask of gasping pain on his face. He rolled back and forth on the living room carpet, cursing the Holy Trinity. Slowly Seba climbed up on top of him, immobilizing both Buglioni’s hands with his knees. Towering over him, he spoke in a calm voice: “The pistol. Who did you give it to?” And he accompanied the question by pulling back his fist, a brutal iron mace, ready to smash down into Paoletto’s face.

  “I gave it back to my . . . my brother . . . Flavio. He’d given it to me in the first place.”

  Seba nodded. He stood up. He brushed his trousers off at the knees. “If I find out that you called him, we’ll be back. And we won’t be waiting for you sitting on your sofa.”

  “What he’s saying,” said Brizio as he stood up, “is that if you see us again, you’re about to die. Ciao, Paoletto.” And he stepped over him and went out the door. Sebastiano shot one last glance at the bouncer still sprawled on the floor, then followed his friend.

  “IF YOUR DOG WANTS THAT CARPET, I’LL GIVE IT TO HIM AS A gift.” Judge Baldi had leaned over the edge of his desk to observe the painstaking work Lupa was doing to unweave the imitation Bukhara.

  “Lupa!”

  The dog stopped chewing and laid her muzzle on the floor, gazing up guiltily.

  “Please excuse her.”

  “So, what about these papers?”

  Rocco extended the sheaf of paper that Chiara Berguet had handed over to him. “Here. There’s lots of interesting stuff.”

  “How did you happen to lay your hands on them?” Baldi grabbed the documents and started reading through them.

  “Max, the Turrinis’ son. He photocopied them and gave the copies to Chiara. Because he may not be a rocket scientist, but he did understand that there’s something rotten going on in that house, and clearly he was disgusted by it.”

  A blazing, radiant smile lit up Baldi’s face. “There’s lots of lovely stuff in here . . .” And then, “Ah!” he shouted suddenly, jabbing his finger down onto a slightly rumpled sheet of paper.

  “What is it?” asked Rocco, almost frightened. Lupa, too, had pricked up both ears.

  “It’s nothing. I knew it. I knew it!” And he stood up suddenly from his chair. Then he sat right back down. His excitement was unmistakable in every fiber of his body. “This is useful, this is exactly what we needed!” And he looked at Rocco. “That the Turrinis were in cahoots with Luca Grange was something we’d known for a while. Who besides Chiara and you and me has seen these papers?”

  “Just Chiara and you and me. And Max, but that’s like saying that a blind man has seen them.”

  Baldi went on reading the document. “Six companies in Switzerland . . . I know this one, and I know this one, too . . .” It was like watching a little kid eagerly trading baseball cards. “I already have this one . . . and this one . . . Ah! This one I’m missing! The Viber company! Fantastic! Fantastic! Fantastic! Schiavone, this is manna from heaven. Blessed, and welcome, and very, very important.” He laid down the documents. “What can I say? Thanks!”

  “You’re quite welcome. Now, I have a question to ask you . . . An officer of mine happened to make the acquaintance of a carabiniere while he was tailing Cremonesi.”

  “I know. We all know. We’re working that side of the street.”

  “We who?”

  “You know perfectly well. You saw them the other day here in my office. Don’t ask questions, and instead, tell me . . . the problem at the prison?”

  “Solved.”

  Baldi clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. “What is it today? Christmas morning? You actually know who murdered Cuntrera?”

  “Yes. But what I haven’t identified yet is the mastermind. Or rather, I should say, I do have my suspicions . . . There are only two pieces of the puzzle I still have to find.”

  “With your work today, you’ve redeemed yourself for months of irritability and judicial blasphemy! What else can I do to help you?”

  “Nothing. Now it’s my problem to solve. There’s a detail I’m still missing.” Rocco raised a finger in front of his face and twirled it as if trying to kick up a whirlwind. “I can sense that this detail is spinning round and round and round in my brain, but it’s going so fast I can’t quite grab it!”

  D’INTINO AND DERUTA HAD PILED UP DOZENS MORE PAGES with lists of the guests at local hotels and motels on the nights of the ninth and tenth of May, as ordered by Rocco. The commitment they were devoting to the task was deeply moving. They’d even come up with a variant that, in their fervid imaginations, was meant to simplify the deputy chief’s work, by highlighting the women in pink and the men in blue. It wasn’t clear to him yet what they were trying to communicate with the green and yellow highlighters. Rocco made a mental note to ask the next time he saw them. Antonio Scipioni and Italo were in his office. Rocco opened the drawer that was normally locked. Inside he found the Ruger, still there, along with the four prerolled joints. But this wasn’t the time for that. He was looking for Scipioni’s photos from the restaurant. “Where are they?”

  “I put them in the middle drawer. I never touch the locked drawer, you know that!” Scipioni replied.

  “Right you are!”

  He reached in and picked them up. Four people sitting around a table. Very first thing, he recognized Walter Cremonesi and Amelia. The others, with their backs to the camera, were unrecognizable. “Who are these two?” And he flipped the photo over to Antonio.

  “I don’t know. I never saw them before. One of them has blue eyes . . .”

  “Does he look like an Alaskan husky?”

  Antonio thought it over. “One of those sled dogs? Yes, I’d say so.”

  “Then he’s Luca Grange. What about the other guy?”

  “He’s a little short man, kind of rough-looking.”

  “Wrinkled as hell?”

  “Yes . . . wrinkled as hell, and he walks with his legs all bent, like this.” Antonio tried to bend out his thighs so that they looked like
twin parentheses. “Oh, heck, it’s not quite right, but you sort of see what I mean . . .”

  “Like a soccer player?” asked Italo.

  “Yeah, like a guy who used to play soccer . . . but with Sandro Mazzola, because he’s at least seventy years old.”

  Rocco gazed at Scipioni with a serious expression. “Are you mocking Sandro Mazzola?”

  “Me, never, I wouldn’t dream of it. Why?”

  “Because Sandro Mazzola is as close as you can get to the pure essence of soccer as anything this country has ever had. Mark these words clearly in your brain, scratch them into the walls of your bedroom, buy a poster of the champion and venerate it every blessed day of your life.”

  “He played for Inter, though,” Italo objected, “not for Roma!”

  “Imbecile! When you’re talking about a champion of this level, the color of the jersey is an insignificant detail. He’s a part of the heritage of all humanity, understand?” He went back to look at the photo. “But in your opinion, why would someone take a groom to dinner?”

  “What’s a groom? Some kind of Val d’Aosta specialty?” Scipioni asked in perfect earnest.

  “No. Italo, you tell him.”

  “A groom? It’s one of those things, a whatchamacallit . . . the thing that has those something-or-others . . . no?” And he raised his hands into the air, describing a sort of circular shape.

  Rocco rolled his eyes. “Disgusting ignoramuses. Groom, ostler, hired hand, or in our case . . . stable boy. So, let me ask again: Why should two businessmen and a courtesan take a stable boy to dinner?”

  “A courtesan?”

  “That’s right, Italo. Because that’s what Amelia is. So?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they want to talk about horses?”

  “Or else because this little fellow right here is something more than a groom, no?”

  IF IT HAD BEEN IN DECENT SHAPE, RECENTLY WASHED AND maybe given a solid, polished coat of wax, if the side-view mirror had been intact, if the windshield hadn’t had a crack running from one corner to the other, if the wheels hadn’t been naked, unprotected by hubcaps, if the lightbulbs of the back-up lights and running lights hadn’t been stripped of their plastic covers, if the tires themselves hadn’t been underinflated, the rubber cracked and scuffed, no officer of the highway police in Pescara would have ever given a second glance to the green Fiat Multipla parked for the past two days over by the bus station. Instead, that ramshackle jalopy had attracted the attention of law enforcement. And soon a report that Corrado Pizzuti’s car had been found reached the barracks of the municipal police of Francavilla al Mare, in the province of Chieti. Things had thereupon immediately gone terribly downhill. All the comforting words that Ciro and Luca had lavished on Tatiana had done absolutely no good, and neither had the hugs and smiles of the bookseller. It was clear to everyone that this abandoned vehicle marked the beginning of something tragic, dark, and frightful.

  “Why would he have left it there?” the Russian woman kept asking as she leaned against the railing of the pier overlooking the sea. The wind was tossing her hair and drying her tears. She’d locked up the bar and was standing there with Barbara, trying to figure out what she thought now.

  “At the bus station. Does that mean he took a bus? Or what?”

  “It just might be . . .” Barbara guessed, but more in an attempt to comfort her than out of any real conviction, “. . . that someone stole the car and then dumped it there so they could get back home.”

  “Then why would they have stolen the car in the first place?” Tatiana asked with a glimmer of hope.

  “Maybe it was just some drug addict who wanted to get to Pescara, saw that piece of junk, and stole it. Corrado was the kind of guy who left . . . I mean, who leaves his keys in his car.”

  “And someone would risk going to prison just to avoid taking a bus where no one ever checks your tickets and that takes you to Pescara in less than half an hour?”

  “What if he drove around first? What if he used it to commit an armed robbery?”

  “A Fiat Multipla that’s barely even running?”

  Barbara knew that there had to be another explanation. She didn’t know which one, as long as it was anything but the one that she and Tatiana had already understood for some time. She tried playing one last card. “Listen. What if he just wanted to disappear? What if he did something in Rome that he just couldn’t tell anyone else? Do you remember, in the last few days, he was frightened, lost in thought . . .”

  Tatiana looked her in the eye. “Meaning that the reason he didn’t take the car was to make sure . . .”

  “To make sure no one ever found him. And he dumped his cell phone somewhere, too. Exactly for that reason: to make sure nobody could track him down. So you know what we can do? We can go to the bank and ask whether by any chance he made a sizable withdrawal in the last few days. My friend, if he did, we’ve found the lead to the solution! Corrado has a big problem on his hands, but he’s still around, still hiding out somewhere trying to come to terms with it. If you ask me, pretty soon we’ll hear from him!”

  She couldn’t even say how she’d been able to bolster her friend’s spirits, but a faint smile appeared on Tatiana’s face. The glimmer of hope sparkled even brighter. Barbara silently thanked Simenon, le Carré, and P. D. James, and she accompanied Tatiana to the local savings bank to delve into this hunch. If the bank teller confirmed her intuition, then that would deal them a whole new hand, and it would restore Corrado Pizzuti to the ranks of the living.

  THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOW CAME THE PERFUME OF MEADOW flowers. It managed to overpower the stench of exhaust fumes from the passing cars. All winter long he’d smelled nothing but the odor of burning firewood. And the resin of the pine woods. Snow, too, ought to have had a smell. But Rocco had never managed to catalogue it, occupied as he was with cursing that crisp white blanket as it devoured one pair of desert boots after another. Only now that the threat had receded did he try to give it a name. But he couldn’t come up with one. He decided that, just as the Newton disc sums up all colors and transforms them into white, so it was with the scent of the snow that summed them all up, only to zero them out in its blinding whiteness. Even though someone had once managed to explain that smell to him. A carpenter, in a town in Valtournenche. Who knows why he gave him that example. Perhaps moved to pity by Rocco’s light loden overcoat, his shoes drenched by snow, he’d taken a clump of snow in one hand; then he’d crushed it and held it up to his nose. “There are people who can smell the forest in snow,” he’d told him. “Others smell a rose. To me, the snow smells of cream.” And he’d extended the palm of his hand so Rocco could smell it. But all that Rocco could smell was the scent of wood that issued powerfully from the man’s hands, mixed with glue and wet sawdust. Still, the old man seemed perfectly sincere. He could smell cream in the snow. He smiled at the thought that he, too, could smell Marina’s distinctive scent every time she came to see him. Cream, pine needles, Marina. When all is said and done, everyone smells the odors and scents they like best.

  He went back to his desk. He picked up his cell phone. He dialed Amelia’s number, which he had obtained from the website. The phone rang twice; then a woman’s voice replied, as warm as an embrace. “Ciao . . .” she said. “Who’s this?”

  He hadn’t thought of a name to use. “A friend.”

  “And just what does this friend want with me?”

  “He wants to drop by and get to know you.”

  “When, my love?”

  “Right away would be good by me.”

  “Oh, oh,” the woman laughed. “We’re in a hurry, are we?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you want to get to know me at my place or yours?”

  “At your place. I don’t have a home here.”

  “Then you’re not from here.”

  “Otherwise, I’d have to be a homeless person, right? And a homeless person isn’t likely to be able to afford someone like you . . . Amelia . . .” />
  “You’re sweet.”

  “Listen. The pictures on the website . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that really you? It’s not like I’d show up there and then find a surprise?”

  “Sweetheart. You’re talking to a professional!” She playfully acted stern. “It’s me, a hundred percent. The only thing you can’t see is the face. But that’s reserved strictly for someone who . . . I think you know what I mean, right?”

  “Of course, I know what you mean. So can I have the address?”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  “Right in my hot little hand . . .”

  “All right then, come on up to Arpuilles . . . on the regional road . . . As soon as you’re in the village, third house on the left. It’s a red house. But you have to tell me when you’re coming. Are you in town?”

  “Yes. As long as it takes me to get in the car . . . shall we say in fifteen minutes?”

  “All right, then, I’ll be expecting you . . .” Then the voice turned cold and professional, like an announcer at the end of an advertisement for a pharmaceutical product. Speaking rapidly, she said: “I accept only cash, no credit cards, no debit cards, no checks, payment must be complete before services will be provided.”

  “Do you offer student discounts?”

  Click. Call ended.

  SEBASTIANO AND BRIZIO HAD GONE LOOKING FOR FLAVIO Buglioni, who lived in the Ostiense quarter, but they’d only found his mother. A woman eighty-five years old who couldn’t even hear the cars honking downstairs at the traffic light.

  “Signo’!” Brizio shouted as the woman listened to him with a foolish smile on her face. “We’re here to see Flavio! Flavio, understood?”

  “Flavio is my son!” the mother proudly announced. “Do you want an espresso?”

  “No, we don’t want an espresso. We want Flavio!”

  “Flavio is my son!”