Temporary Perfections (12 page)

“I remember their faces. I don’t know their names.”

The names of the young people were in the file. Their statements had been so insignificant that I hadn’t even bothered to include them in the list of people to interview.

“Before you tell me about the car ride that Sunday afternoon, I’d like you to talk to me about life at the
trulli
.”

“What do you mean?”

“What was going on, exactly? People coming, people leaving, if you noticed any unusual people, for instance, who might have been talking to Manuela. I don’t know, someone drinking, maybe someone smoking a joint.”

I felt a little awkward as I pronounced that last phrase. I said “smoking a joint” because it struck me that using legal terminology such as, “Did you observe the consumption of narcotics?” would just interfere with our ability to communicate. Instead, I realized that I’d spoken as if I were a grownup clumsily trying to talk hip like the kids, and it made me deeply uncomfortable. In any case, I thought I saw a momentary evasiveness come into Anita’s gaze, a sudden loss of eye contact, as if the question about whether joints were being smoked upset her a little. But it was a passing moment, and I told myself that maybe there was nothing to it.

At the
trulli
, life began late in the morning, though a small group woke up very early, did tai chi, and then went
to the beach when there was still virtually no one else there. Around one o’clock, at lunch, some drank espresso and cappuccinos while others sipped their first aperitifs—a Spritz or a Negroni, generally speaking, she told me, as if the information were crucial. Big, informal meals of pasta, drinking, music, people coming and going. Down to the beach in the afternoon, where they’d stay until sunset, happy hour on the beach, with music and more Negronis and Spritzes, then back to the
trulli
or to a restaurant for dinner in one of the surrounding towns: Cisternino, Martina Franca, Alberobello, Locorotondo, Ceglie, or, of course, Ostuni.

These were rituals I knew all too well, because I had taken part in them myself until just a few years ago. And yet, listening as this young woman—twenty years younger than I—described them, they seemed a world away. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

“You said that you were a fairly frequent guest at those
trulli.
”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anyone in particular, that weekend? Or was it different in some way from what usually happened?”

“No, I don’t think so. There were some English kids, but nothing happened that seemed out of the ordinary.”

“Naturally, at a certain point, a few people smoked pot, right?”

As I expected (and for that matter, as had just happened), the mention of marijuana made her uneasy.

“I’m not sure … I mean, maybe, but …”

“Listen, Anita. Let me explain something to you, before we go any further. Something important. I’m not with the police, and I’m not with the district attorney.”

I paused to make sure she understood what I was saying.

“That means that it’s not my job to investigate crimes and prosecute the people who commit them. I don’t care in the slightest if people at the
trulli
smoked themselves silly, got drunk, or ingested substances of some kind. Or, rather, I care only if that information can help me find out something about Manuela’s disappearance. You have nothing to worry about. This conversation is, and will remain, completely confidential. For that matter, there’s probably no connection between someone smoking a little grass and Manuela’s disappearance. But I’m feeling my way in the dark here, and the slightest scrap of information could be helpful, in theory. The only way I can know that is if I’m able to evaluate the information for myself. Is that clear?”

Anita didn’t say anything right away. She scratched an eyebrow, then smoothed it with her middle finger. She heaved a sigh.

“There were some drugs out there.”

“What kind of drugs?” I asked cautiously, afraid that at this point in the conversation any questions I asked might cause her to stop talking, instead of encouraging her to say more.

“I only saw joints. But I think there were other drugs.”

“Cocaine?”

“You promised me this conversation would be confidential.”

“Absolutely confidential. You don’t have a thing to worry about. No one will ever know you told me any of this.”

“Cocaine, yes. And some acid. But like I said, I never saw it, I never touched it.”

I felt a triumphant thrill of excitement—as if the objective of my investigation had been to discover whether in the
trulli
of the village of Saint Such-and-Such there were
a bunch of bored kids who were ingesting various grades of psychotropic substances, and therefore my mission was accomplished.

“Do you know whether Manuela ever used drugs?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“No, you mean that she didn’t use narcotics, or no, you don’t know whether she did?”

“No, I don’t know. We met for the first time Saturday night, even though we’d probably crossed paths earlier, at the beach at Torre Canne, but at the
trulli
, too, or in Bari. I’d seen her face before, but we met, we spoke for the first time that Saturday night.”

“How did Manuela happen to ask you for a ride?”

“The evening … well really, the night before, when the party was already over and those who weren’t sleeping at the
trulli
had already left, there were five or six of us left talking, one or two were smoking cigarettes. It was our last conversation before going to sleep. It was past three, a good bit past three. At some point, Manuela asked if anyone was going back to Bari the next afternoon, because she needed a ride.”

“And nobody was going back to Bari?”

“No one who was still awake. I said I needed to go to Ostuni on Sunday afternoon. If she wanted, I’d be glad to give her a ride to the station, and from there she could catch a train to Bari.”

“And Manuela accepted immediately.”

“She said that if she hadn’t found a ride all the way back to Bari by then, she’d come with me.”

“And evidently she couldn’t find a ride?”

“We ran into each other the next morning, around noon. There were definitely people going back to Bari that night,
but late. She wanted to get back early, in the afternoon, so she told me she’d come with me to Ostuni and then she’d catch a train.”

“Did she say she
had
to get back in the afternoon? Did she have something to do, something that meant she had to get back before evening?”

“She didn’t say that.”

“But you had the impression that was it.”

“Yes, it did seem as if there was some specific reason she needed to get back before evening.”

“But she didn’t tell you what the reason was?”

“No. We agreed to meet around four o’clock and then she headed off. I don’t know what she did between then and when we met up for the drive.”

I nodded, doing my best to think if I had any other possible questions, before continuing on to her account of the drive from the
trulli
to Ostuni. I couldn’t think of anything.

“All right. Shall we talk about what happened after that, in the afternoon?”

“Sure, though there really isn’t much to say. She had a bag and she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. We got in the car, we talked about this and that.”

“What did you talk about?”

“First of all, we didn’t talk much, because for most of the drive, she was fooling around with her cell phone.…”

“You said, ‘fooling around.’ Did she talk to someone or receive texts or what?”

“I already told the Carabinieri that I don’t think she talked to anyone. Probably she was texting. At a certain point, the phone made a sound, and I thought it might be a message.”

“Why did you think it might have been a message?”

“Because I believe it only made a single sound. That is, I don’t think the cell phone went on ringing. Like an alert. It may have been a strange sound, but I can’t explain exactly what I mean by that. I just remember something … unusual, that’s all.”

I was about to ask more, and then I realized that pressing her on this point was ridiculous. I had Manuela’s phone records, so there was no point trying to push Salvemini to recover her shreds of memory. Completely unnecessary. Manuela’s communications, that afternoon, would be listed in detail on her phone records.

“Okay. You said that you didn’t talk much. But what did you talk about?”

“Nothing important. ‘What are you studying? What did you do this summer?’ That kind of thing, but certainly nothing important.”

“How long did it take you to get to the station in Ostuni?”

“About twenty minutes. That time on a Sunday afternoon, everyone’s still at the beach, so there’s no traffic.”

“Did Manuela make any particular impression on you?”

Anita didn’t answer right away. She made the same motion she had before—by now, it struck me as a nervous tic of some kind—scratching her eyebrow and then smoothing it with her middle finger.

“Any particular impression? I couldn’t say. Maybe she seemed, how to put it, kind of high-strung.”

“You mean that she seemed irritable in the car?”

“No, it wasn’t that. The night before, and the next morning, when we agreed to drive to Ostuni together, and in the car, too, she seemed to me … I don’t know how to put this. She was just a little high-strung, I can’t think of another word for it.”

“Well, did she seem worried about something?”

“No, no. Not worried. It’s just that she didn’t strike me as an easygoing person.”

“Could you describe any specific gesture that she made that might have given you that impression?”

Another pause to think.

“No. I couldn’t indicate any specific gesture. But she was a little, how to put this … a little speedy, that’s it.”

I took a few seconds to make a mental note of this.

“How did you say good-bye?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you say, let’s get together, let’s have dinner sometime? I don’t know, did you exchange phone numbers?”

“No, we just said good-bye, the way you do. Thanks, bye, and so on. We didn’t exchange phone numbers.”

“When did you find out that Manuela had disappeared?”

“A few days later, when the Carabinieri called me in for an interview.”

I really couldn’t think of anything else to ask. The fact that the drug use at the
trulli
had come out had given me a false sense of triumph, in part because no one had told the Carabinieri about it. In reality, though, aside from that detail—which really wasn’t of any importance as far as I was concerned—nothing new had emerged. And of course that was frustrating. I had the feeling that I was trying to climb up a smooth glass wall.

I made one last attempt.

“While you were in the car together, did either of you mention the fact that stuff was circulating at the
trulli
, drugs, that is, as you mentioned before?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“And you don’t know whether Manuela used drugs.”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

There really wasn’t anything else to say. The time had come to say good-bye, and that’s when I remembered the suggestion that Navarra had given me. I pulled one of my business cards out of my desk drawer, wrote my cell phone number on it, and handed it to her.

“It’s possible, in fact it’s very likely, that something else will come to mind—a detail, some minor thing that you’ve overlooked. That’s the most normal thing in the world. If, and when, this happens, please call me. Call me here at my office, or on my cell phone. Call me even if you remember a detail that strikes you as irrelevant. Sometimes details that seem unimportant turn out to be key.”

We stood up, but she continued looking at me, across the desk, as if she wanted to say something else, but couldn’t think of the words, or was uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry about the things you told me. Our conversation was completely confidential. It’s as if you never said a thing.”

Her expression relaxed. She half-smiled and told me that if anything else occurred to her, any detail at all, she’d certainly call me.

I shook her hand, I thanked her, and I walked her to the door.

My next meeting was with Pontrandolfi. If she was punctual, she’d arrive in the next five minutes or so. I thought that I’d use my conversation with her to try to understand what kind of person Manuela was. Of course, that would be useful only if Manuela’s disappearance had something to do with her past. Otherwise, if her disappearance was just a random event, there would be practically no chance whatsoever that I would be able to find out anything new.

While I was thinking this, the phone rang. Someone else picked up, and a few seconds later the phone blinked red, indicating an internal call. It was Pasquale.

“It’s Counselor Schirani. He wants to speak to you.”

Schirani is a dangerous cretin, and the fact that he wanted to speak to me was not particularly good news.

Somebody once said that all people are either intelligent or stupid, and either lazy or enterprising. There are lazy idiots, usually irrelevant and innocuous; then there are the intelligent and ambitious, who can be given important tasks to perform. The greatest achievements, in all fields, are nearly always the work of those intelligent and lazy. But one thing should be kept in mind: the most dangerous category,
the people who are unfailingly responsible for the most appalling disasters, the ones you have to avoid at all costs, are enterprising idiots.

Schirani belonged to the last of the four categories. In fact, if there were an official parade for that group he would be up front, waving the flag. He was the ideal representative, the paragon of the category. He wore shirts with big collars and ties with overgrown knots. He understood nothing—and when I say nothing, I mean nothing—about the law, and he was convinced that he was a distinguished jurist, one who shouldn’t be expected to waste his time with common lawyers. The few times we’d been on the same defense team—different defendants in a single trial—had been a nightmare. He gratuitously offended prosecutors and unfailingly annoyed judges. He was high-handed and abrasive with the witnesses.