Authors: Antonio Manzini
“Your retirement?” asked Rocco with a smile. From the other end of the line came De Silvestri's companionable, booming belly laugh, reverberating as if in a grotto. “No, Dotto', I've still got to wait for that. A few more years. But it's clear to me by now, I'll start taking my pension the day they put me into a casket.”
“Now, don't say that.”
“But there's something else I need to tell you. Your replacement here, Mario Busdon, is from Rovigo.”
“I'm happy to hear it.”
“Yes, but he doesn't understand a thing. He doesn't know how things work down here. There's a problem that needs to be taken care of.”
Rocco sat down. De Silvestri's voice had suddenly turned serious. “Do you want to talk about it over the phone?”
“No. That's not a good idea. Tomorrow is Sunday. I'm taking my son to the stadium. Juve's playing Lazio.”
“Why would you take him to see a bloodbath? You're just cruel, De Silvestri.”
“Not necessarily, Dottore.”
“Necessarily, necessarily, take it from me . . . you'll get three referee's whistles and be heading back to Formello with your tails between your legs.”
“Like the three penalty whistles you all got yesterday in Milan?”
“Don't start getting snappy, De Silvestri. Even if I'm up in Aosta, I'm still your superior officer. So anyway, you're going to Turin and . . . ?”
“And I'll make a side trip. You want to meet halfway?”
“Fine. You have any suggestion about where?”
“We're flying up. Do you know Ciriè?”
“Who the fuck is Ciriè?”
“Not who, where. It's a small town near Turin. Let's meet there. I'll drive down with a rental car from the airport.”
“You want to tell me why Ciriè of all places?”
“Because I'm going to pay a visit on a close personal relation, and round-trip from the airport is just twenty kilometers. I wouldn't even have to refill the tank on the rental car.”
“Do you have a place in mind?”
“Certainly. There's a bar on Via Rossetti. We'll see you there.”
“At what time?”
“Let's say noon. I'll wait for you inside.”
“De Silvestri, I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me the name of the close personal relation you're going to visit in this small town outside of Turin.”
“Why would you want to know that, Dottore?”
“I just do. A lover?”
De Silvestri laughed once again, boisterously. “Sure, my eighty-four-year-old lover. It's my aunt, the sister of my
mother, God rest her soul. The only living relative that remains to me.”
“You're a man with a heart the size of a bull's.”
“No, Dottor Schiavone, very simply my aunt just got remarried and she wants to introduce me to her new husband.”
“She remarried at eighty-four?”
“Her husband is ninety-two.”
Rocco thought it over. “Find out what it is they eat in Ciriè. It strikes me they've found the right diet for longevity.”
“You can be sure of it. See you tomorrow.”
“Till tomorrow.”
WHAT COULD THIS PROBLEM BE? SOMETHING TO DO
with old cases in Rome, maybe a friend of his was in trouble? But in that case it wouldn't be De Silvestri getting in touch with him. He would have received a phone call from Seba or Furio. Something to do with him? But he hadn't left any outstanding matters behind. He'd settled all his debts and collected anything that was owed him, and if there was something wrong with his bank account he'd have gotten a call from Daniele, his lawyer and accountant, certainly not from De Silvestri. He'd have to wait until noon tomorrow to find out the truth. The afternoon light was dying and with it the lights in Schiavone's office. He wanted to go home and turn up the heat, dropping by a
rosticceria
to get some dish of unappetizing prepared food or other, and then take a bath and watch a little television.
He'd completely forgotten about Italo Pierron; they
hadn't talked since two that afternoon, when he sent him off to tail Hilmi, Irina's Egyptian son.
He was thinking about that as he walked out of the pizzeria where he'd just bought six euros' worth of rancid mozzarella pizza. The rain had stopped, giving the city a bit of respite, but the sidewalks were a filthy morass of water and mud. He almost plowed straight into a woman walking in his direction.
“Excuse me . . .”
“Dottor Schiavone!”
It was Adalgisa. She looked good in jeans and boots, bundled up in a Moncler down coat that stretched all the way down to her knees. The bookseller glanced at the packet with the slice of pizza. Rocco turned it awkwardly over in his hands, and for some reason he felt an urge to hide that evidence of his solitude.
“I was just heading home,” the woman said. “But don't think for a minute that my dinner's going to be any better than what you're holding in your hand. I imagine . . . there's no news, right?”
“You imagine right. How are you, Adalgisa?”
“I miss her. I can't even bring myself to erase her name from the contacts on my cell phone,” said Adalgisa. “I'd have called her today. It's our book club tonight. Did you know? We have reading nights at the bookshop. At first Esther never missed a session; with her notebook, she'd jot things down, ask questions, argue points. Then she stopped coming. Patrizio wouldn't let her. He was certain that there was someone in the book club who was more interested in his wife than in Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Why Edgar Allan Poe?”
“We like him. Don't you?”
“Well now, tell me. Was there someone more interested in Esther than in literature?”
“Sure. A seventy-two-year-old CPA who's recovering from a recent stroke and Federico, a thirty-five-year-old tango dancer, who's been living with Raul for seven years.”
“Then we're done with the book club.”
Adalgisa walked forward a couple of steps, her eyes on the ground. “That's right. Done with the book club. Esther wanted to write. That was her dream. To tell the truth, it was both of ours, ever since high school. She'd start a short story, but she'd always quit halfway through. Her creative drive was manic-depressive. That is, either she was inspired or she was depressed. There wasn't room for both at the same time.”
“What about you, Adalgisa? Do you write?”
“Yes, since I started living alone. They may publish a novel of mine.”
“Autobiographical?”
“I'm not that interesting. No, it's a detective novel. I like detective novels. Maybe, I was just thinking, if I give you my novel you might be able to give me some advice. You must have seen plenty of things in your line of work, no?”
Adalgisa smiled. Only with her mouth, though. Her eyes remained sad, veiled, as if a highlighter had run over them, leaving a patina of gray.
“Yes. I've seen plenty of things.”
“My book is about a perfect crime.”
“There's no such thing as a perfect crime. You know why? Because it was committed in the first place. And that's enough. If anything, there are some very lucky criminals.”
Adalgisa nodded. “Do you read much?”
“I'd like to. I don't have time. Sometimes at night. The one who used to read was my wife,” Rocco said.
“I don't like that past tense.”
“Neither do I, believe me.”
“You, sir, are a man full of regrets. How do you live with them?”
“Uncomfortably. Don't you have any regrets of your own?”
The woman did nothing but shrug, then pointed to a building entrance. “This is my place. Can I call you by your first name?”
“Sure. I started calling you Adalgisa already without even asking.”
“Now you know where I live. You've been in town six months already. I hope you'll consider me a friend.”
Rocco looked at the building. It was a two-story building, very nice. “How do you know that I've been here for six months?”
Adalgisa smiled again and started walking toward her front entrance, escorted by the deputy police chief. “Because I read the papers. I followed that whole case up at Champoluc, in February. I told you that I like detective novels and true crime, no? You were very good. Maybe someday you'll tell me how you wound up here, in Aosta.”
“A special reward vacation.”
They laughed together. Once again, Adalgisa laughed with her mouth. Never with her eyes.
“Seeing that you know so much about me, you must know where I live too.”
“No. That's your private life. All I know are things about your public life. Life on the street. The things I've read in the papers. I told you, I read a lot. And I keep my eyes open.”
“So do you have a book club or a hairdresser?”
“All aspiring writers, in the final analysis, are tremendous gossips.”
“We have another word for people like that in Rome.”
“Busybodies?”
Rocco smiled. “There was nothing you could have done for Esther. Don't feel guilty. And above all, don't feel tortured by remorse.”
“It's much more complicated than that, Rocco.”
“Then why don't you tell me how it is?”
“It's not worth it. It's a long and complicated story. Maybe someday, when we're better friends . . .” Then she pulled out her house keys. “See you soon, Rocco Schiavone.”
“I hope I'll have better news for you.”
“Find out who did it. Please.”
“Don't worry. Where do you think the asshole can go?”
“Do you think it was a man?”
“Yes. To haul a body up on a cable through a lamp hook, you'd need to be good and strong, wouldn't you?”
“It wouldn't be easy,” said Adalgisa, and her eyes turned sad and filmy again. She was picturing the scene to herself.
Her best friend, strung up like a side of beef in a butcher's freezer.
“Right. How do you think he did it?”
She was leaning on the small wooden door that opened in from the larger carriage door of the building. The bright light from the stairway illuminated a quarter of her face. “It's not something I like to think about.”
“You say you write detective stories. So give me your take on it.”
Adalgisa took a deep breath. “Maybe I'd do what mountain climbers do when they're faced with a sheer wall. With a carabiner, and then just haul her up.”
“Yes, up in these mountains that strikes me as the most apt image. So you're saying he used a carabiner. Or a pulley?”
“Yes. That's the kind of thing I'd imagine.”
“Very good. It's the only way.”
“Is that how he did it?” the woman asked in a faint voice.
“Yes. He used a cable, anchored to the leg of a heavy piece of furniture.”
Rocco's Nokia rang. The deputy police chief stuck his hand in his pocket. It was police headquarters. “Sorry, I have to take this,” he said, and waved good-bye to Adalgisa. “See you later,” he said.
The woman walked through the front door and closed it behind her, vanishing from Rocco's view.
“This is Officer Pierron.”
“I was just thinking about you, Italo. What news do you have for me?”
“That I came back to headquarters but you weren't here. We need to have a quick chat. Can we meet at your place?”
“Are you crazy? Come into the center of town, I'll wait for you at the bar in Piazza Chanoux.”
“Let me give Deruta a couple of documents, and then I'll be right there.”
Then Italo hung up without completely hanging up, so Rocco was able to catch a snatch of the conversation between the two officers.
“Deruta, I have to go see the deputy police chief. Can you finish up these two documents for me?”
“Me? Why me? I don't even feel particularly well.”
“This is a favor I'm asking you. We're working on a very important case.”
“You and Rispoli act so snotty, all buddy-buddy with the deputy police chief, and you give me the boring jobs to do. But one of these days I'm going to walk upstairs to the chief's office and set things right.”
“Do as you think best. Then you can talk to Schiavone. And if you want my advice, the less you say about Caterina the better it'll be for you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“No, you go, fat-ass.”
Then he heard the sound of paper being crumpled, a door slamming, and a sigh. Clearly, Pierron had put an end to the argument and left.
Rocco stuck his cell phone back in his pocket and started off toward the bar, looking down at the package of pizza he was still holding. He tossed it into the first trash can
he encountered. It would be cold by now. And if there was one thing that he didn't need, it was to sit in his apartment and gnaw on a slice of pizza with the consistency of chewing gum.
“ITALO, YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN SOMETHING TO ME?”
Rocco asked the minute the police officer sat down at the table by the front window. “It's Saturday night. Where are all the kids?” He waved his hand to indicate the half-empty bar.
“I don't understand.”
“We're in the center of town. What is there beside this bar, which is about to close? A pub and nothing else? What do they do on a Saturday night?”
“I couldn't say.”
“What did you do?”
“I'm not from Aosta. I'm from outside of Verres, and for me it was like a burst of nightlife to come down to Aosta.”
Rocco looked out the window. The rain had started pounding the streets again. There were a few people walking under the portico, a couple of umbrellas here and there; otherwise the place resembled nothing so much as one of De Chirico's metaphysical piazzas. “Maybe they go down to Turin.” He got a secret thrill from being able to say
down
to Turin.
“Yeah, down in Turin there's more excitement. Clubs, pubs, discotheques, movie houses, and theaters. Oh, and speaking of Turin. Farinelli from the forensic squad called
three times. He left the last message with Caterina. He's back in Turin now and I think he needs to talk to you.”