The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (7 page)

By now they'll have already found you.

It would have been the housekeeper, the Bulgarian woman. She must have searched the house for you—the kitchen, the bedroom. Maybe she tried the handle of the bathroom door, to see if you were in there. And the door would have swung open, into silence and darkness.

The apartment must have seemed deserted. Nothing, except for the wind shrieking outside. Not another sound.

Then she'd have walked down the hallway, uncertain. Maybe she assumed you'd left.

I wonder what it would be like, if emotions hung in the air like a smell. If the scent of your sad smile, the last time I saw your face, was still suspended in the room. What sort of a scent would it have had, your smile?

She must have gone looking for you, the Bulgarian housekeeper. Moving circumspectly among the furniture and the carpets, taking care not to knock anything over in the dark. Maybe she wouldn't have even turned on the lights, for fear you might be fast asleep somewhere and she'd wake you up.

But there's no real risk of that, is there? As far as waking you up goes, no one on earth can do that.

Who can say what she did, when she finally came face-to-face with you. Or face-to-face with what was left of you, to be exact. A bundle lying in the semidarkness of the windows, shuttered to preserve the last scraps of night.

I look outside. The wind is still blowing, and big black clouds are being shoved across the sky. It's not raining, now.

Instead, just a few dozen yards from your dead body, the sea spray is still whirling through the air, covering the walls of apartment buildings and the balconies with salt. But all around you, everything is inert. Motionless.

Your snow globes, for instance. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Shelves filled with them, arranged according to that odd system you seemed to prefer. With fake snow, lying nicely and obediently at the bottom of the globe, just waiting to be shaken up. What will become of them now, of your snow globes? We'll have to think about what to do with them.

With all of them, except for one. That one, I think, will follow a different path. It will go on its way through crime labs and courtrooms; it'll wind up in a big cardboard evidence box, archived on some forgotten shelf. And there it will sit for years and years, until it's finally thrown away. That snow globe is special. Unique. The one with the girl playing the little guitar. The one with your blood smeared on its surface.

The one that ripped away your last truly happy smile, and then ripped away your life.

I wonder what she'll do, the housekeeper, when she finally understands. When she realizes that it's you, or that it used to be you, now lying there in a pool of blood with your head bashed in. She'll scream, I think. Or maybe not. Bulgarians are tough.

Now starts the hard part. For me, for those of us who are still here.

Not for you.

For you, it's all over.

Too bad. If only you'd been reasonable.

If only you hadn't turned your back on me.

 

 

 

A
s soon as Palma finished, Aragona sprang to his feet, ready for action. Lojacono, on the other hand, turned a gaze of mute supplication in the commissario's direction; his commanding officer took great care not to meet his eyes, studiously looking elsewhere.

“I'll drive, I know exactly where that is,” the young man had said, grabbing for the sheet of paper with the directions.

Palma had shrugged: “Do as you like, there's no hurry; two squad cars are already on the scene, and the medical examiner and the forensic team are on their way. This time of day there's a lot of traffic.”

Lojacono, putting on his coat, replied sardonically: “Oh, there is? When you have a minute, could you draw up a chart for me of the times when there isn't a lot of traffic in this city? Maybe on August 15th, when the whole city's at the beach?”

They'd taken a compact, unmarked car that had been parked in the courtyard. Aragona had the engine running before Lojacono got in the car, and he screeched out of the parking spot before the lieutenant's feet were in the car.

“Aragona, have you lost your mind? Are you trying to run someone over? The way you're driving, our first official act in this precinct will be to run over a few locals, and you know how much they love us already.”

The young man drove as if the streets were empty, causing the pedestrians in their path to bolt. Out of the corner of his eye, Lojacono saw a little old lady darting to one side just in the nick of time, with a leap worthy of a classical ballerina; he agreed wholeheartedly with the stream of angry dialect she showered in the driver's direction, even if he couldn't understand a single word.

“Calm down, Loja', don't worry. I took a course in performance driving, I know exactly what I'm doing.”

“Just where did you take this course, in prison? You heard him say there's no hurry, didn't you? Why the fuck are you going so fast?”

Aragona kept his foot on the accelerator.

“It's quite an honor to work with you. Fuck, the man who nailed the Crocodile! For weeks, no one in this city talked about anything but you and how you made all the other precincts working on the case look like pieces of shit. You're a legend!”

Clutching the door handle, Lojacono said through clenched teeth: “Not that it did me a lot of good, though. It's not as if they let me go home.”

“Eh, well, that's a horse of a different color. From what I've heard, someone back home thinks that, even if there's no evidence against you, you must have been in touch with those people somehow. But don't give up hope, if you do a good job, maybe they really will send you back home.”

Lojacono looked over at his colleague's profile, watching him as he did his best to kill anyone who threatened to hinder his rapid progress.

“What do you know about my me and business, Arago'?”

“Ah, I know plenty, actually. I told you before, I used to work at police headquarters. That's where all the documents wind up, and if you have the right connections, you can find out anything you want to know. For instance, when this opportunity opened up in Pizzofalcone, I read the files on all the characters the various precincts had volunteered in the hopes of getting rid of them. A fine assortment of losers.”

“In that case, why on earth did
you
volunteer? From what I've heard, you could have found yourself a much more comfortable berth somewhere else, no?”

“No, for me this place is perfect, believe me. Just think: a very serious crime took place here, which ruined the whole department's reputation. They wanted to shut this precinct down, and sure enough, they sent us the worst cops they could lay their hands on. Are you with me so far?”

Lojacono had noticed that, when Aragona spoke, he slowed down ever so slightly; he decided he could stand the kid's ravings if it meant saving the life of some innocent pedestrian.

“I'm with you. Keep talking.”

“You know what they call the people who work here, the other cops in this city? They call us the Bastards of Pizzofalcone. Don't you think that's great?”

Lojacono shrugged his shoulders: “I don't think it's anything, personally. What's so great about it?”

The young man looked hard at Lojacono and just missed a bicyclist, who veered sharply away and rode right up onto the sidewalk.

“What's great about it is that if we do something good, then we become heroes; and if we don't do anything at all, then things remain as they were.”

“Listen, Aragona, don't you care anything about doing a good job? What if someone wanted to be a cop just so he could be a cop?”

The officer put on an offended expression: “Why on earth would you say that? Of course that's the most important thing. It's just that a person has to think about his career too, doesn't he? Certainly, if you're someone they've put out with the trash—someone like the four of us—it's harder to prove that you know how to do your job right. But that's exactly why it's so exciting.”

“Put out with the trash? That's overstating things, isn't it?”

Aragona turned serious.

“Listen to me, I've seen the files. I can tell you for sure, every one of us is tarred by some black mark. Take Di Nardo: the quiet girl, the one who loves guns. You know you're not supposed to carry loaded weapons with the safety off inside the station house: that's against the rules. Well, she actually discharged her firearm inside the building. And she came
that
close to killing another cop. Can you imagine?”

As he was being tossed between car door and seat, Lojacono was forced to admit: “Just think, that little girl. I would never have taken her for a pistolero. And the other guy, what's his name . . .”

“Romano, Francesco Romano. You know what his fellow cops used to call him? They called him Hulk. Behind his back, though, or he'd rip their heads off. He can't control his own strength, much less his anger. The third time he grabbed a suspect by the throat, they suspended him. When he went back on duty, they sent him straight here.”

Lojacono nodded.

“Mmm, he did seem a little on edge, that's true. And we know everything about me. But what about you, Aragona? Do we know everything about you?”

The young man turned defensive.

“Well, my good Lojacono, in my case, the fact that I'm . . . that I have a certain name seems to have created overblown expectations. And when everyone's looking over your shoulder, you wind up doing something stupid. Or other people make you do something stupid. But I don't give a damn, and sooner or later I'm going to show everyone just how wrong they were. Maybe with your help. Well, here we are, this is the place. You see what I mean? It only took a couple of minutes.”

Lojacono catapulted himself out of the car.

“One of these days I'll have to remember how you're supposed to thank God for still being alive. Let's make one thing perfectly clear: next time, I'm driving. Come on, let's go.”

And they got out of the car, battered by the wind and the spray from the sea that reached all the way onto the street.

I
n spite of the blustery weather, a small crowd had gathered outside the entrance to the building. The door was on the side of the building, not along the façade that overlooked the sea, and you reached it by walking through the piazza that opened out away from the waterfront, its other side adjoining the large park that was the Villa Comunale.

Lojacono, raising his voice to be heard over the wind, asked Aragona:

“This is a wealthy part of town, isn't it?”

The officer nodded his head, clutching his raincoat closed at the neck: “Hell, yes, it's wealthy. The richest neighborhood in the city, as far as that goes. And on the waterfront? Forget about it. These buildings are priceless; they're monuments.”

Outside the entrance were a pair of squad cars and an ambulance with its flashers on. Lojacono identified himself and asked one of the two uniformed officers how long they'd been there.

“Twenty minutes or so, lieutenant. And ten minutes ago the medical examiner got here. In any case, it's up on the fifth floor.”

“That means they waited to call us,” Aragona commented. “Before calling us, they took some time to think it over. They still don't trust us, that much is clear.”

On their way in, Lojacono stopped to take a look at the front door, which showed no signs of forced entry. Then he started up the wide marble staircase.

Aragona, who had headed over to the elevator, followed him: “Hey, it's up on the fifth floor! Why are you taking the stairs?”

The lieutenant went on walking, his eyes fixed on the low, shiny marble steps.

“Because if you've just murdered someone, you don't take the elevator when you leave. At least, not always. And if you're trying to get away, you might just drop something. Or you might trip and fall. Listen, Aragona: I'm here to do my job, not to tutor you. Watch what I do, try to understand why I'm doing it, and quit busting my chops. If you really can't figure it out, even through deductive reasoning, then you can ask and I'll answer. Fair enough?”

The officer looked offended: “I'm an investigator too, you know. And I've been to school, I know things. It's just that I want to see them in the field, because I've never had the opportunity.”

“Anyway, as far as I can tell, there's nothing on these stairs. Either the murderer was very careful, or else you were right and he took the elevator. Or maybe he flew away on a gust of wind.”

On the fifth-floor landing, there was just one dark, wooden door, without a nameplate; a red doorbell in the mouth of a small bronze lion was fastened to the doorjamb. Aragona made quite a show of inspecting the side of the door to make sure there was no sign of a break-in. Lojacono smiled, despite himself. After a second, inner door, at the center of which was a pane of frosted glass decorated with what seemed to be a monogram, there was a front hall; daylight came through yet another door, and with it, the sound of an agitated conversation. Lojacono and Aragona continued inside, following the voices.

“Jesus, do I have to keep telling you the same things over and over again? If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, a thousand times. You touch nothing, do you get that or not? Nothing, not until I'm here with the forensic squad. Fucking Christ, these are the ABCs! Don't they teach you anything at all at the academy?”

The man who was talking was about forty, solidly built with very close-cropped hair. He was wearing a sweater and a pair of jeans.

A uniformed cop was objecting weakly: “Hey, dotto', what did I do wrong? I opened the window to let in a little fresh air, it's stale and it stinks. Plus you couldn't see a thing, we could have knocked something over. Anyway, I closed the window right away . . .”