Game for Five (3 page)

“Deal the cards, and let's give it a go.”

 

He had gotten home at four in the morning, after dumping Grandpa Ampelio on the couch, because Grandma Tilde went to bed at eleven and bolted the door of the bedroom and whoever was out stayed out.

He had really enjoyed himself. And ever since that night, whenever the customers allowed it, he'd played
briscola
for five and had a whole lot of fun.

About an hour and a half had passed and the game was over. Pilade had won, Massimo and Aldo had put up a good fight, and Ampelio and Rimediotti had been a disaster. As Massimo, once again forced to be a barman, gathered the glasses, the four old youngsters laboriously shifted their chairs in the direction of the sidewalk. Having transformed the vicious circle into a parliamentary amphitheater, they were now ready for what, in Pineta, was the national sport.

Sticking your nose in other people's business.

 

“So, did you see? There's even been a murder now.”

“I know. Just imagine! A poor girl murdered in her own home! It's already dangerous enough on the streets with all these Albanians around, now they kill you in your own home.”

“Gino, I'm sorry but, firstly, can you tell me what the Albanians have to do with it, and secondly, how do you know she was killed in her own home?”

“She was wearing slippers, fur slippers. Nobody walks about outside in fur slippers apart from crazy old Siria. That means she was killed in her own home.”

“Poor thing . . . ”

Massimo, who was emptying the overflowing ashtray in the bucket, couldn't stop himself from asking, “But where do the Albanians fit in?”

Gino looked up at him, gave an upward jerk of his chin (an age-old gesture, intended to reinforce one's own opinions almost as if invoking divine knowledge for oneself: it is indispensable in barroom arguments, especially when dealing with subjects about which there might be a number of different viewpoints, such as the performance of a center-forward, a woman's familiarity with oral-genital practices, and so on) and said, “Why, don't you agree? Do you think it's right for all these people to come here, without papers so you don't even know who they are, and I'm supposed to believe they're all decent people? They're all crooks! They deal drugs, they steal, they think they're God knows who . . . ”

“What I meant,” Massimo continued wickedly, “was where do they fit in this time? Can you explain to me why every time something happens you bring up the Albanians, even when that woman had her bag snatched outside the Lomi baths?”

Gino flushed and for a moment lost the thread of what he was saying. Three weeks earlier, a woman bather had been robbed of her bag outside that particular bathing establishment, and the old man had held forth for two days about the Albanian peril, prophesying every kind of misfortune and demanding that the government take action. It had gone on until the evening of the third day, when it emerged that the thief was the grandson of one of his neighbors.

 

***

 

Taking advantage of the moment, Pilade now joined in the debate. “How do you know about the slippers?”

“Massimo was telling us before you got here,” Gino said somewhat stiffly. “He was the one who found the poor girl.”

“So now you've dropped the Albanians and you suspect me?”

“You found her, did you?”

“Not exactly, a guy who was near the trash can found her. When he found her he tried to call the police, but his cell phone was flat. As this bar was the only place open at 5:15 he came here to call the police, only he was dead drunk, so the switchboard operator thought it was a joke and hung up. I went with him to see where the body was, and then I called the police. They arrived five minutes later, they identified the girl within ten minutes, and since they'd already called the doctor they all looked a bit . . . ”

Massimo broke off for a moment, passed the cloth over the table, and shook it over the bucket. He didn't have to make an effort to remember that morning: he recalled everything very distinctly.

He liked Dr. Carli, all things considered, and when he arrived at the parking lot by the pine wood Massimo was curious to see how he would react to seeing someone he knew in the trash can. He did know her, even if only by sight, because she was the daughter of a good friend of his.

The doctor had lived up to his reputation of being a seraphic person: he had immediately recognized the girl, and had only stood there for a moment, looking at the body, before shaking his head dubiously.

He hadn't seemed upset: he may already have suspected something when he arrived. Nobody had had the presence of mind to look him in the eyes after he got out of the car and greeted the police officers. Only after examining the body, with a delicacy that was unusual in him, had he let himself go a little.

 

“You know what the problem is?”

Massimo said nothing, continuing to look the doctor in the eyes—eyes that now betrayed a touch of anxiety. It was clear that he had no desire to go home: most likely, he preferred the role of the efficient doctor to that of the grief-stricken friend.

“The problem is that I have to tell Arianna.”

Precisely, Massimo thought.

“And you don't want to?” he asked. It was a stupid question, but he couldn't just stand there and say nothing while the doctor wiped his glasses for what must have been the fiftieth time. The doctor was in his early fifties, very tall, about six and a half feet, with an easy-going face and graying hair, and looked exactly what he was: a doctor at a crime scene. He had a vague resemblance to the singer Francesco Guccini, and seemed as much at ease in that parking lot as Francesco did on stage. He had dressed in great haste as usual: in addition, he had arrived home late from a reception and couldn't have gotten much sleep.

“No, but if
I
don't tell her . . . Poor thing. Poor things, both of them.”

He seemed more concerned about the mother than the daughter. That was only natural: the mother was an old friend of his, who always spent at least a couple of weeks in Pineta every year. He probably hadn't seen the daughter much, just enough to recognize her. Whenever they went out together, the children (Arianna's daughter, Dr. Carli's son, and other young people from the area) went out separately.

Massimo was released from his predicament by the stentorian voice of Inspector Fusco, about whom he had decidedly mixed feelings.

He had talked about him once with Dr. Carli, as it happened, and they had found themselves in agreement that it wasn't humanly possible to find anything in Inspector Fusco (or Dr. Fusco as he liked to be called, being a graduate) that inspired the slightest sympathy. After the two men had concluded that Vinicio Fusco was prickly, arrogant, pig-headed, conceited and vain, the doctor had passed judgment:

“The man is like a book of jokes about Calabrians.”

And whenever Massimo, who had entirely approved of this conclusion, thought about Fusco he couldn't help wondering if, thanks to rubbing shoulders with Rimediotti, he wasn't becoming a bit of a racist. He consoled himself with the thought that when he was at university in Pisa, a Sicilian friend of his, who could be accused of everything except making racial distinctions, had in a drunken moment drawn up “a profile of the perfect idiot”: and among various other basic characteristics that Massimo couldn't remember, this person had to be an engineer, a supporter of Juventus, and a Calabrian.

Anyway, Inspector—or Dr.—Fusco had arrived just at the right moment. In a good mood, because he loved his work and liked doing it in front of an audience, he had come up behind the two of them, taking them by surprise, and boomed cheerfully, “So, Walter, tell me everything: age, sex, time, cause, any other business.”

The doctor looked down at the tips of his shoes, put his hands together behind his back, and said, “Age nineteen, sex female, as if you needed a doctor to tell you that, time of death between two and five hours ago, no more, no less. Cause of death, strangulation. Any other business, the world is full of assholes.”

Fusco took this full on. He had almost certainly forgotten that Carli knew her. He stood there for a moment, with his jaw jutting forward and his hands on his hips, then he resolved to get on with things to cancel out the fact that he'd made a fool of himself. He immediately began by screaming at the photographers that he wanted the prints before the morning was over, then focused his attention on a dark green Clio parked nearby, with its right-side wheels stuck in the mud.

“What about that?”

He went to the car, looked through the window, and assumed the expression of someone who understands everything. Then he pointed at one of the officers and beckoned him to approach.

Massimo watched in amusement as the officer, a young man as tall as a beanpole, strode up to the diminutive Fusco and stood to attention to receive his orders.

“At ease, Pardini,” Fusco said, addressing the officer's chest. “That's the car belonging to the young man who found the body. The keys are still on the dashboard. Move it away from here, it's getting on my nerves.”

“Excuse me, Inspector,” the young man in question intervened. He had been waiting to be questioned, and now felt as if he was the center of attention.

Fusco raised his hand to silence him. “It's all right, son, while your car's being moved we can have a little chat. What time was it that you discovered the body?”

“There's something I have to tell you first. That—”

Fusco gave the young man a truculent look, one he had probably rehearsed for minutes on end, and stood with his hands on his hips. “Son, first you need to answer my questions. I know you have a hangover, so I'll repeat it slowly and maybe you'll understand.
What time was it that you discovered the body
?”

In the meantime Pardini had gotten in the car, adjusted the seat by moving it forward, turned the key in the ignition, and started the engine. The wheels skidded in the mud, but the car didn't move. Two other officers arrived, began pushing, and eventually managed to get the car out.

“About four, I'm sure of that.”

“What position was she in?”

“She was inside the trash can, with her face sticking out. Like she was when we came back.”

“I know, I know. And you went straight to the bar?”

“Not immediately. I waited a while until I was less dizzy, then when I felt better I left. I almost crashed my car getting there. A brand new Micra.”

Fusco looked at the young man, the dark green Clio, the young man again, then at the puddle in front of him, and, staring down at the mud, said, “What?”

“I said I waited a while then—”

“Stop!” Fusco yelled at the officers who had shifted the car by now, then looked up at the sky and moaned, “Shit!” He turned back angrily to the young man. “You could have told me before! A car with keys on the dashboard in the place where a body has been found, and I have it moved! Why? Because nobody tells me anything! What the hell do you have in that head of yours?”

“Look, Inspector,” the young man said, clearly genuinely upset and even a little scared, “that's what I was trying to tell you before, but you interrupted me . . . ”

Eyes open wide, the inspector put his hands back in his pockets. He looked at everyone present as threateningly as he could, then turned and walked away muttering audibly, “It's always your fault, Fusco. Oh, yes.”

The young man said nothing, merely looked at Fusco's back with an expression that was starting to betray a certain lack of trust in the authorities.

Massimo and the doctor, who had both regained the semblance of a smile, exchanged knowing looks.

“Every time I see him in action I discover something new,” the doctor said.

Then his face abruptly darkened again.

Partly out of curiosity, partly in an attempt to distract him for five more minutes, Massimo asked the doctor, “Can you explain one thing to me? When you said ‘between two and five hours ago,' did you say that to be on the safe side, even though you may have a more specific time in mind, or did you really mean such a long interval?”

The doctor shook his head. “At the moment that's how it is, I can't say anymore,” he replied without looking at Massimo. “To be more certain we'll need more tests, we'll need to determine the progress of the auricular or rectal temperature over time, examine the stomach contents if we know the exact time of her last meal, and then we can be more precise, but it all depends on when it happened. If death occurred not long ago, we can be very precise. However”—now he looked at Massimo—“I'm pretty sure the girl died about midnight, an hour more, an hour less. But I'll only be sure after . . . well, afterwards.”

Fusco was coming back in their direction. He beckoned to the doctor, and as he waited for him to approach said loudly to Massimo and the young man, “You two, make sure you're available, I still have to interview you officially. I'll send for you in the afternoon.”

 

“So now you have to go see Fusco and be questioned?”

By now the bar was empty, inside and outside. The people had all gone to the sea, there wouldn't be anybody about until six in the evening, at which time they would arrive in groups of two or three to have a flatbread and a beer on the way back from the beach. Then, from seven until such time as it pleased the Almighty, life would begin. Letting his thoughts wander, Massimo imagined the scenes he would soon be seeing, the people he would greet. Every night, there were guys with gym-trained bodies and improbably tanned girlfriends, men from Livorno wearing vests over their naked chests and big gold medallions, and women so gorgeous and smooth and trim they could only be high-class hookers, and Massimo often found himself thinking they were all different but all identical, and then, as always, was irrationally ashamed of himself for pigeonholing such an interesting group.