The Crocodile (16 page)

She fell silent, the pause heavy with meaning. She’d never once shifted her glance away from Di Vincenzo’s face, and he had withstood her gaze.

“Finally, and I’d like to think that this is the first and the last time I’ll be obliged to remind you all of the fact: I’m in charge of this investigation. My reputation rides on it. And when I wish for advice or opinions, I’ll ask for them. Unless any of you consider yourselves better qualified, of course? If that is the case, then you are quite welcome to submit a written request and application to His Excellency the Director of Public Prosecutions of the Italian Republic. Anyone here planning to take that route? If so, I’d like to be made aware of it, if you please.”

You could have cut the silence with a knife.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I owe you all an explanation for the presence of Inspector Lojacono. He was the first officer on the scene of the murder of Mirko Lorusso, as he was on duty that night. On that occasion he noted the presence of the notorious paper tissues. In the aftermath of the murder of the young De Matteis girl, someone was kind enough to leak that detail to the press, giving rise to the legend of the now all-too-well-known Crocodile. I had occasion to meet with Inspector Lojacono subsequently, at the San Gaetano police station where he works currently, and there I had the opportunity to learn that he does not subscribe to the theory of Camorra involvement in these murders. As long as we were working on that lead alone, it struck me as inadvisable to bring him into the investigation; but now that it’s a cold hard fact that we have no idea which way to turn, it seems to me we might as well listen to anyone who has any ideas of any kind whatsoever.”

Scognamiglio, the station chief of Posillipo, stirred in his seat, clearly annoyed:

“Hold on now, dottoressa, you’re undercutting us here. We have ongoing investigations underway—my station inspector, Marotta, has questioned a good hundred young people to reconstruct the overall picture of drug dealing outside the local schools, he’s worked hard, to the point of exhaustion, and now you see fit to sashay in and tell us we have no idea which way to turn.”

This time Piras made no effort to conceal her irritation. She slammed her palm down on the table, making pens and pencils leap into the air, and startling her secretary.

“Goddamn it, Scognamiglio! You’ve worked yourselves to the point of exhaustion, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! And the kids keep dying, different ages, different parts of town, with no evident links between them. Because of our incompetence we have three corpses on our hands, and there may very well be more on the way! You ought to be the first ones—you, Palma, Di Vincenzo—to display a little humility and accept a helping hand, whoever’s offering it. If you don’t like it, then you’re free to leave and you’ll be receiving detailed instructions on how to conduct investigations directly from me and the chief of police himself.”

Immediately after the hurricane subsided, a quick look around the room was enough to count the victims. Scognamiglio’s ears were bright red and his eyes were fixed on the surface of the table in front of him. Di Vincenzo resembled a statue carved of granite. Marotta, who had interviewed all those kids and worked himself to the brink of exhaustion, was blinking his eyes at a rate roughly equivalent to the wingbeats of a hummingbird. Lojacono cringed, afraid the man might be about to burst into tears. Palma hastily buttoned his collar, as if he’d just reviewed his personal appearance.

Piras coughed lightly and went on talking as if nothing at all had happened.

“Lojacono, as I was saying, seems to have a different view of what has emerged from the investigations. Could you tell us more, please?”

Lojacono was slightly sprawled out in his chair, hands in the pockets of his overcoat, which he had not removed, unlike the others. It was as if he were emphasizing the temporary nature of his presence in that room.

“Well, to my mind, dottoressa, these killings don’t share any of the typical traits of Mafia murders. I’m referring to the technique. I’d posit that we could probably extend that to include the motive.”

Di Vincenzo snorted and muttered venomously, “Sure, Lojacono. After all, you do know a thing or two about the Mafia.”

Lojacono gave no sign of having heard. But Piras snapped around and glared at the station captain.

“Another line like that, Di Vincenzo, and as God is my witness, I’ll have you suspended from active duty. Don’t test me, I urge you. You’d learn to your bitter regret how serious I am. Lojacono, you’ve already expressed these doubts to me before, and for that matter we’ve also had occasion to note the differences in style and method. It’s also true that organized crime families have shown a willingness to turn to outside professionals, to outsource, so to speak, certain kinds of operations. That aside, do you have anything else to tell us?”

There was a moment of silence. Everyone was looking at Piras, and she in turn was looking at Lojacono, who was staring at the tabletop.

At last the inspector glanced up and said, “Has it occurred to anyone here that the intended victims might be the parents, not the children?”

She’d knitted the little pink cap herself, and she’d knitted the outfit too. She buttoned the outfit to the neck before sheathing the baby girl in her padded overalls and then strapping her into the stroller.

In a way, Roberta misses the time she had spent waiting for the blessed event. Hours and hours spent poring over patterns, knitting, embroidering. And smiling, imagining. Understandable, she muses, after all those years. An endless series of days spent pursuing a single goal: to have a child. To hold a little piece of yourself in your arms, an independent life, possessed of its own breath and heartbeat. She enjoyed every second of her pregnancy, every tiny kick, every instant of nausea; she took it all as a blessing.

There are women who aren’t cut out for motherhood. Roberta had known plenty of them: highly trained professionals devoted to their careers, athletic types, women in love with the nocturnal lifestyle, or adventuresome collectors of experiences—none of them willing to trade their personal freedom for a weak and needy creature demanding constant care.

But there are also women like her—women born to be mothers—though fewer and fewer in number in this world where selfishness and individualism triumph over all.

Not that Roberta ever gave up her profession or her career. She made her way in the world, working hard as an architect, at first in a larger firm and then as a freelance professional. She had her dalliances, a couple of relationships and one great passionate love affair, but the whole time she felt as if she were edging around a crater, an empty space at the center of her life.

Roberta takes a look around outside. The temperature seems mild enough, and there’s no sign of rain; in fact, a shaft of sunlight angles through the clouds and lights up the street outside her front door. Stella can go outside and get a breath of the fresh air wafting up from the waterfront.

Stella. So sweet and small. The destination and objective of an entire lifetime. Roberta remembers when the doctor told her she was sterile, ten years ago. She hadn’t believed him at first. She hadn’t wept, she hadn’t slid into a slough of depression; she’d put on a smile and girded for battle.

The old man emerges from the shadows and starts walking, on the far side of the street. He’s careful because there aren’t a lot of people out and about so he’s more visible than usual today.

A woman doesn’t spend her entire youth waiting for Mr. Right, the great love of her life, the man with whom she can finally start a family of her own, only to give up passively when faced with a sentence printed on a sheet of paper. Not on your life.

And Roberta hadn’t given up, not in the slightest. She had recruited Orlando to fight the battle alongside her; her husband had followed her willingly, but more than once she had been forced to rekindle his determination. Everybody knows it’s different for men. For men, a child becomes important once it’s there, but not before; women, in contrast, are born with the maternal instinct. That’s nature’s way.

The old man stops suddenly, because the woman is tucking a blanket in the stroller. Twenty-five feet from the other side of the street: not an inch less. Invisible. He must remain invisible.

Orlando. She’d met him at work. A smile, a lingering gaze, and the magic spell had been cast.

He was older than her, by a good fifteen years: reassuring, strong, sensitive. The right man, the right husband—the right father. When it comes to the idea of a family, the concrete reality of the thing, it’s a matter of degrees, a gradual thing, Roberta thinks. You might yearn for it as an abstraction, but when the time comes to build it, actually create a family, that’s quite another matter. Orlando clearly had a long history of relationships. He didn’t talk much about them, but the scars were unmistakable. And a man still alone at his age suggested a troubled past. His father’s long drawn-out illness—a father to whom Orlando had always been very close, a father whom she’d never met—had left its mark on him too.

Still, they were a perfect couple, bound together by a powerful force from the very beginning. Maybe they’d been looking for each other all their lives. Maybe that whole time they’d been waiting for each other.

There was no way they’d stop at the first diagnosis. Roberta had always known that she’d be a mother someday—a mother of her own biological child, not an adopted child. She wouldn’t turn to those horrifying baby markets. She would have a child of her own.

The old man starts moving again, his feet dragging, his gaze low, clinging to the sides of the buildings. No one knows him. No one sees him. Twenty-five feet, not a foot more, not a foot less.

Roberta had always loved to sketch; that’s why she became an architect in the first place. And she’d always sketched the face of her future daughter. She hadn’t stopped even when a second and then a third doctor confirmed the first doctor’s diagnosis.

She listened, smiled politely, and then went out to find another doctor. And meanwhile, she went on sketching. The loveliest portraits—the ones that vaguely resembled the wonderful features of her daughter as if they were intimations of some future beauty, some foreshadowing of grace—Orlando had had framed and now they hung on the walls of the little pink nursery where they safeguarded the most loved of all Roberta’s and Orlando’s treasures.

The old man stops when he sees her step into a shop. He backs away a short distance until he finds a bench, pulls his newspaper out of his pocket, and pretends to read. But all the time he’s watching and waiting.

In the end, they found the right doctor. Not that they’d have ever stopped looking, of course. But this one had smiled and explained exactly how to go about it. With a minor operation and a course of pharmaceuticals it might be possible to achieve their goal—those had been his exact words. And Roberta remembered the sound of his voice as if it were a chorus of angels.

The old man breaks his self-imposed rule and draws closer. The woman stands in the shelter of a doorway to protect the baby girl from the wind and so she won’t see him. Twenty-five feet, fifteen feet, ten feet. He leans against the wall, as if catching his breath after a long walk. He pulls out his tissue, dries a tear from his cheek, and then rubs his eye. He looks closer.

The baby girl opens her eyes and smiles at her mamma. Stella. The most magnificent spectacle in the universe.

Roberta immediately accepted Orlando’s suggestion; she knew she could never have come up with anything better than that. Stella. Star: beautiful, luminous. A light in the darkness, the strongest light of all. Her North Star, her
Stella Polare
, the star that would guide her footsteps for the rest of her life. The daughter she’d hoped for, wanted, searched for. Her dream come true.

The woman can’t resist. She gives in, planting a kiss on the baby’s face before laying her down on her back in the stroller again. The girl cheeps like a chick and smiles once again.

The old man looks at the baby girl. This is the first time that he’s had a chance to see her up close like this. The risk was worth it. She’s lovely: a button nose, chubby cheeks. The old man searches for a feeling, any tinge of emotion, and comes up with nothing. His eyes remain expressionless, the hand holding the tissue steady. He looks at Roberta’s smile and decides that this woman must truly be a fine person. Someone who wishes the whole world well. And therefore trusts the world to feel the same way towards her.

The old man retraces his steps. Thirty feet back, at least, he decides.

Lojacono’s words had landed in the middle of the conference table like a hand grenade.
Everyone stared at him as if he’d cut loose with a stream of profanity. The first to regain his composure was Scognamiglio.

“What the devil did you just say, Mr. What’s-your-name-again?” he barked. “What do the parents have to do with it?”

Di Vincenzo snorted again, rolling his eyes skyward. Palma, the Vomero station captain, lunged forward:

“But why would he do that? Sorry, but wouldn’t the Crocodile have gone after them directly?”

Scognamiglio turned to glower at him, practically foaming at the mouth. “Palma, don’t tell me you’ve decided to start calling him the Crocodile too? What, are we going to let the press influence the way we think now?”

Piras hadn’t taken her eyes off Lojacono’s face for a second; in turn, he’d gone back to staring at the tabletop, like a student in the principal’s office.

“What do you mean, Lojacono? In what sense could the parents be the victims?”

Lojacono looked up and met the prosecutor’s gaze.

“I think that there could only be one thing worse than dying, and that’s losing a child. It’s a blow, a crushing grief from which you can never recover.”