Game for Five (9 page)

“How did I get to buy this bar?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Please answer me.”

“You won the lottery.”

“How many people here in Pineta know that?”

“I don't know . . . Everybody, I guess.”

“Right. Seeing that, when I bought the bar, my grandfather, who might have been the prime suspect, was in hospital in Bellinzona because of his diabetic foot and my mother was there with him, and seeing that you were the only other person who knew about it, because I told you in a moment of distraction, is there something I should know?”

“God, you're really unbearable. I'll be back at six.”

“You can come back at eight, you've been here two whole hours. Did the PR guys from the Ara Panic swing by?”

“Yes, they left the vouchers there next to the cash register.”

“Tiziana, I don't give a damn about the vouchers. Did you tell them I wanted to talk to them?”

“I told them, I told them. They'll be back around six-thirty, seven. See you later.”

“See you.”

 

Soon afterwards, as Massimo was loading the dishwasher (which, being the moment in the day he hated the most, didn't help to improve his mood), Bruno's sister came into the bar. She was still dressed like Lolita, but seemed even more agitated than before.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Is it true you went to the inspector to tell him that Bruno's innocent?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did he believe you?”

Massimo said nothing, but continued piling the glasses and dishes in the monster, taking care not to get his hands caught in the racks.

“Did he believe you?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Why don't you think so?”

“Because all I could tell him was a conclusion I've reached, and that's it. I don't have any evidence to give him.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand. How can you be sure it wasn't Bruno if you don't have evidence?”

“There was evidence, but it doesn't exist anymore. Something I noticed, but apparently nobody else thought anything of it. Fusco certainly doesn't.”

“But he can't keep Bruno locked up! It wasn't him!”

“How do you know?”

The girl looked at him for a moment. She seemed really scared now. “I know him. He's my brother, after all.”

“Precisely. That's not going to convince Fusco. Quite the opposite.”

“I know it wasn't him. I talked to him.”

“And he told you . . . ”

“He told me where he was when Alina was killed. He was with other people.”

Massimo looked at her, put the dishes down on his lap, and said, “That's perfect.”

“Not really.”

“All right, we know as much as before about who the murderer is, but at least your brother can get out of jail. Tell Fusco everything you know.”

The girl shook her blond head. In spite of everything, she was impeccably made up, with a taste unusual in a girl her age. At least compared with those he knew or had known. She'd make a perfect housewife one day. It struck Massimo that there was no middle way in this nasty affair: they were either too rich, like Alina, like the doctor, like this girl, or too poor like O.K.

“He doesn't want to say anything.”

“I get it. It's the people your brother knows. What was it, cocaine?”

The girl opened her eyes wide and stared at him, apparently without seeing him. “How do you know—”

“If you don't mind, I'm going to interrupt you there. Your brother's under arrest for murder, which would scare most people, and yet even though he has an alibi that would clear him he doesn't want to use it. That must mean there's something else he's even more scared of. And that something is what would happen if he talked, what would happen if the police found out where he was, what he was doing, who he was with. Whatever he was doing couldn't be worse than murder, so you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out he's scared of the people he was with. What did he do when Alina didn't show up? With people he's scared of? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling it wasn't even the first time.”

The girl did not reply. Massimo started piling the dishes again, and the girl turned and said, “I'm going.”

“Have a nice day.”

The door opened and closed.

Immediately afterwards the doctor's ironic voice rang out. “Excuse me, I'm looking for the Pineta police station. I've been told it's here.”

“You've been wrongly informed,” Massimo said, still arranging the dishes. “And you're not the only one.”

Dr. Carli's face appeared over the counter like a giraffe at the zoo. He was smiling. “I know the girl who just went out. I wonder why she was here.”

Silence.

“She has a brother who's in jail for murder.”

Silence again.

“But I heard that this fellow who owns a bar is absolutely certain the brother is innocent. God knows why.”

All right, then. The doctor sighed, still with the air of someone who doesn't take himself seriously, then, in a changed tone and a slightly louder voice, asked, “What do I have to do to rouse you?”

“Order something. As you so rightly said, this is a bar.”

“And if I ask you for something will you give it to me?”

“Of course. If it's within my capabilities.”

“Good. Then I'll have a cappuccino. With lots of chocolate on top. Was that a moan?”

“Yes, it was. Complete disapproval. Try again.”

 

Having convinced the doctor that the most appropriate drink would be a fruit juice, they sat down at a table somewhere in the vicinity of Rotterdam. As soon as they were seated, the doctor said, “Massimo, don't take what I'm about to say in a bad way. I know, as we all do, that you're an extremely intelligent person and that you seldom talk without thinking. So even in this particular case, I'd like to believe you didn't say the first piece of nonsense that came into your head, but that you have a good reason for saying that a person who apparently has everything stacked against him, I don't mean evidence because it isn't, but anyway . . . Am I right?”

“I don't know. I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Try to put a period in there somewhere. Help me.”

“What I'm trying to say is: Can you tell me why you're so sure of what you said?”

“Because you need periods to make the structure of the sentence clear to the person you're talking with. That's what I was taught at elementary school, and I'm sure of everything I was taught at elementary school.”

“I don't think this is the right time to start playing the fool. We're talking about a murder, and about a young man who may be innocent but is currently under arrest.”

“Right. And I don't think this is the place to start talking about a murder, at least in terms of the investigation. This is a bar. I've tried to take everything back to its natural place, in other words, the police station, but your immediate superior wouldn't even give me a second glance.”

The doctor frowned. “In other words, you went to see Fusco and he didn't believe you?”

“Precisely.”

For a moment, the doctor weighed up the situation in silence. Then he made himself more comfortable on his chair and said, “Listen, there is something we can do. The only thing I can think of.”

“Go on.”

“Fusco thinks you're a pain in the neck, that I know for sure. Just as I know for sure that someone as pig-headed as he is won't reopen a case when he has a perfectly acceptable culprit just because a barman says the fellow is innocent. But he has a certain amount of respect for me, at least on a professional level. So here's what I suggest we do. You explain to me clearly why you're so sure the boy isn't guilty, and I go see Fusco and do everything I can to persuade him to reopen the case. Is that O.K. with you?”

“Yes, I don't think there's anything else we can do.”

“Then tell me your deductions.”

“I don't have any deductions, just an observation. One you may even have made yourself.”

The doctor gave a little smile. “I see. That's better still, isn't it? Go on.”

“The morning the body was found, Fusco made a fool of himself in a lot of ways, do you remember?”

“Of course. When that young man said his car was a Micra—”

“Then,” Massimo interrupted him, “you remember Fusco had the wrong car moved. And do you remember who he asked to move it?”

“Yes, Pardini. His father and I were at elementary school together. But I'm sorry, how does that—”

He was about to say “fit in,” but Massimo interrupted him again. “So Fusco tells Officer Pardini to move the car. Follow me, this is important. Do you remember what Pardini did?”

“Yes, he went to the car and moved it.”

“By lifting it?”

“No. You love splitting hairs, don't you? He got in the car, sat down, turned the key, put his foot on the accelerator, and the car moved. Did I pass?”

“No, you failed miserably. You forgot the most important thing, which is that Pardini adjusted the seat. He adjusted the seat by moving it forward. I'm sure, because I remember that it struck me at the time. It struck me that whoever had been driving that car before must have been very tall, seeing that Pardini's about six feet. So when I heard that Bruno Messa, who apart from all his other faults is almost a midget, had been arrested I thought they must have the wrong person.”

The doctor looked at him. He seemed impressed, but not convinced, and his first words confirmed this. “That doesn't seem like much to me.”

“But on top of that, I know what Bruno Messa was doing during the time when he's supposed to have killed Alina. As soon as he's gotten over the fear of being caught with his pants down, I hope he'll confide in someone the way his sister did with me. It's better to get a suspended sentence for buying cocaine than spend thirty years picking up bars of soap in the shower that have been dropped by guys a lot bigger and nastier than you.”

“Uh-huh. And his sister told you this?”

“That's right. He's afraid to admit it right now, but sooner or later he'll see reason.”

“Remarkable. But she only just told you?”

“Yes.”

“That means you were already sure, based on what you remembered, that—”

“Precisely.”

“Then let me ask you a question, even though I know it'll make you mad. The murderer must be very tall, he must be . . . ”

“He must be tall. He must be someone who knew Alina, even if now he tries to deny it. He must be someone who doesn't have an alibi for the two hours between eleven and one when Alina was killed.”

“Okay. And do you have any ideas?”

Just then, Tiziana arrived.

“Massimo, the PR guys from the Ara Panic are back. They're waiting for you inside, as soon as you can.”

 

 

H
ere we are, Massimo told himself. Now what am I going to ask these two? Excuse me, you know P.G., the bouncer at the disco where you work? Yes? Do you know if by any chance he killed a girl on Saturday night? My God, how muscular they are. Obviously, they work out. Nothing special about that. Thousands and thousands of push-ups and the biceps are bound to swell, but it's all a fake. Pectorals like potato starch, if you punched them they'd shift to the back and look like humps. Okay, but right now they're the ones with the great physiques, and you've been meaning to join a gym for the past two years, haven't you? Except that it's too hot now, then in the fall the championship matches start again, in January I have to fast for a month to recover from Christmas, and you still want me to go to the gym? You want me to kick the bucket just so we don't have to talk about it again? February is a month that doesn't count, March is the beginning of spring and I don't feel like doing anything at all, and then it's summer again and you look the same as you did, with a physique like a coat hanger. And anyway, you studied so much . . .

 

“Hi.”

“Hi. I'm Massimo.”

“Dennis. This is Davide,” the young man said, indicating a photocopy of himself, who nodded. Slightly curly hair shaped with gel, wide single-lens sunglasses in light frames shaped like a minimalist scrotum, shirts with sleeves rolled up, open on shaved chests.

“Would you like a drink?”

The two said no in unison.

“I wanted to ask you if you could give me some gen about the timetable of the disco, when things start, when they finish, and so on.”

“Some gen? You mean . . . ”

“Some information. What time you open, what time people start arriving, what time you close. Let me explain . . . ”

 

Here Massimo had planned to say how he had noticed that in the big towns along the coast it had become fashionable for groups of young people to round off the night by all going to have breakfast in a bar after the disco. Knowing that those who left the discos in Pineta—the Imperiale, the Negresses and the Ara Panic—either went to Pisa for breakfast or didn't go anywhere at all because there weren't any bars already open and functioning at that hour in Pineta or the surrounding area, he wanted to organize things so that his bar was ready to welcome and feed the thousands of young people emerging deafened from the local discos. There was no need to say any of that crap, though, because Dennis—or Davide?—in the true spirit of public relations, launched straight in:

“Well, the club gets going at around midnight, in the sense that the DJs start to turn up the music and the go-go dancers warm up a bit. In the meantime the lines form, although people don't actually come in until one. We're partly inside, partly outside, giving out cards for the themed nights if there are any planned, stuff like that. The DJs stop at four, and people leave between four and four-thirty.”