Temporary Perfections (15 page)

Now there was a note of exasperation in her voice, and I decided it was time to bring the session to a close. To keep from coming to a sudden end, and giving her the impression that I’d stopped because she’d lost her temper, I sat in silence for a few minutes, giving her time to finish her cigarette.

“All right, thanks very much. It’s been very helpful to talk with you.”

She looked at me and became visibly more relaxed. Now it appeared that she wanted to ask me a question.

“What are you going to do next?”

I gave her a look that was similar to the one she’d given me earlier. I wondered whether—and how—I should answer her question. I decided that maybe she could help me see into Manuela’s world, that is, if it was true that the explanation of her disappearance was concealed there.

“That’s a good question. I wonder the same thing. Of course, it would be interesting to be able to talk to Cantalupi, but that doesn’t strike me as easy to arrange. I’d also
like to talk to Nicoletta, in Rome if necessary. I just hope she’ll be willing to talk to me.”

“If you want, I can speak to Nicoletta about it.”

I looked at her. Her offer surprised me.

“Well, if you did, it would be a help.”

“I’m sorry I lost my temper, earlier. It happens to me in situations where I feel insecure. I don’t like feeling insecure. Please forgive me.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was entirely understandable, and sometimes I can be a little pushy. I can see why you might get irritated.”

“I’d like to help you. I’d like to do something to help find out what happened.”

“If you could talk to Nicoletta and ask her to meet with me, that would be a big help. It really would.”

“Fine. I’ll call her and I’ll let you know. Why don’t you give me a cell phone number where I can reach you?”

I knew that she was asking for my cell phone number for a technical, practical reason. Still, for a brief moment, I experienced a dangerous thrill.

I pushed it out of my mind with some annoyance. I pulled out a business card, wrote my cell phone number on it with a pen, and handed it to her. The same thing I had done with Anita.

But it wasn’t the same thing at all.

Caterina left, and for the next hour I was caught up in meetings with Maria Teresa, Consuelo, and Pasquale, who came in one after another to present a variety of papers to sign or examine. Notifications of fees to be sent to the bar association, summonses and complaints served by courts all over the region of Puglia, the schedule for the following day, briefs for appeals drawn up by Consuelo and Maria Teresa, who were still learning the trade and, eager apprentices that they were, had successfully conveyed to me their intense anxiety.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Pleading union rules, I told them it was long past normal quitting time. I insisted they go home, or go to see their sweethearts, or go wherever they felt like going. The important thing was that they go, and go immediately.

When I was alone at last, I tried to think through the events of that afternoon, from my meeting with Anita and the phone call from that asshole Schirani, up to my long conversation with Caterina.

Fifteen minutes of musing produced nothing, so I picked up a fat, brand-new legal pad and began jotting down on its blank pages everything that had emerged from my two
meetings, as if I were writing a report for someone who hadn’t been present. When I was done, I circled a few words in red ink and drew a double circle around the name Cantalupi every time it appeared in my notes, as if those red circles could make the answers emerge, or perhaps at least conjure some reasonable questions.

The only real working hypothesis—feeble though it was—involved Manuela’s ex-boyfriend and the question of his use—and possible dealing—of narcotics.

I tried Googling Cantalupi’s name, but I came up with nothing. Just to give it a shot, I Googled Manuela’s name, too. There were a few hits, but none of the Manuela Ferraros were my Manuela Ferraro.

On my legal pad I wrote the following phrase:
investigate the world of drug dealing
, followed by a handsome question mark. I circled that note in red. I felt like an idiot. But then, immediately afterward, I did have an idea.

I rarely have clients from the world of organized crime, so I don’t have much call to defend drug dealers. The few that I happen to take on as clients are generally lone operators, like the young man for whom I had gone to Rome a few days earlier to argue, unsuccessfully, the Court of Cassation appeal.

Among these clients, however, there was one—Damiano Quintavalle—who had continued to operate for years now because, even after he was caught, he always managed to emerge more or less unscathed. He was a smart young man, even likable, and most importantly for my purposes, he seemed to know a lot of people, in every walk of life, all over the city.

He was the only person I could reasonably contact to ask for help in discovering whether, and in what way, Michele
Cantalupi was involved with the world of drug dealing or with illegal activities of any sort. I decided I’d give him a call the next day and have a chat. I was feeling my way in the dark, I told myself, but it was better than doing nothing.

As I was deciding to call Quintavalle the following day, I found myself thinking about Caterina. I thought of her in a manner that was inappropriate, in view of the fact that—as I told myself over and over again with a certain masochistic emphasis—I could have been her father, or at least a youngish uncle of hers.

Cut it out, Guerrieri. Get a grip: She’s a schoolgirl. Ten years ago, she was thirteen years old, and you were already a grown—a fully grown—man. Fifteen years ago she was eight, and even then you were already a fully grown man. Twenty-two years ago she was just one year old and you’d just graduated from university. Twenty-four years ago you and your girlfriend Rossana spent nearly a month of horrible apprehension, thinking that you’d slipped up and were about to become twenty-year-old parents. That turned out to be a false alarm, but if it hadn’t, you’d now have a son—or a daughter—Caterina’s age.

At that point, I was caught in a maddening cycle. Since I couldn’t go back in time twenty-four years, I decided the thing to do was to shift my point of view. I tried to remember how long it had been since I’d been with a girl that age.

The episode I managed to dredge up from my memory proved somewhat confusing. The last twenty-three-year-old with whom I’d had a fleeting and illicit sexual experience, over ten years earlier, was not exactly an inexperienced young girl. Quite the opposite. In fact, I realized as my recollections acquired greater—and increasingly unprintable—clarity, she showed a noteworthy willingness to push
the envelope of conventional morality. In fact, she had been quite capable of providing me with instruction in a number of new forms of sexual experimentation.

I asked myself which category of twenty-three-year-olds Caterina was likely to belong to, and I imagined the answer. Now my thoughts were veering in a decidedly dangerous direction.

Time to get something to eat—I told myself—time to let those thoughts evaporate.

It was cold out. The sky was filled with swollen, threatening clouds that looked as though they might burst into rain any minute. But I didn’t feel like walking over to the garage, handing over my parking stub, asking them to bring up the car, and waiting for it to arrive, so I decided to run the risk of getting soaked and ride my bike.

When I walked into the Chelsea Hotel, piano music filled the air, along with the voice of Paolo Conte singing the opening of “Sotto le Stelle del Jazz.”

The place was nearly empty, and there was a strange, agreeable sense of expectation in the air.

I sat down at a table not far from the entrance. Before long, Nadia emerged from the kitchen, spotted me, and came over to say hello.

“Tonight, Hans made a
tiella
—rice, mussels, and potatoes. Care to try it?”

Hans is Nadia’s partner. He’s a German cook and baker from Dresden. He looks like a former shot-putter who quit training and took up drinking beer instead. I don’t know how he ended up in Bari, but I’d guess he’s been here for a while, because he speaks fairly fluent dialect and he’s learned the secrets of the local cuisine.

A
tiella
of rice, mussels, and potatoes is not too different from a
paella valenciana
, though any Barese will tell you it’s much, much better. Here’s how you make it: You take a cast-iron pan—or a
tiella
, as we call it—and layer it with rice, mussels, potatoes, zucchini, and chopped fresh tomatoes. Then you add the soaking water from the mussels, olive oil, black pepper, diced onions, and finely minced fresh parsley. Bake it in a hot oven for about fifty minutes. There’s no guarantee it will be any good, though, unless your family goes back at least four generations in Bari.

“The last thing I’d want to do is offend Hans, if for no other reason than that I’d have to guess he weighs, what, at least two hundred seventy-five pounds, but I have my doubts about how good his
tiella
is.”

“Yeah? Why don’t you just try it and tell me what you think.”

Nadia walked past my table as I was wolfing down the last forkfuls of my second dish of
tiella
and draining my second glass of Negroamaro. She gave me an ironic glance.

“So?”

I held out both hands, palms up, in a sign of surrender.

“So you were right. Only Old Marietta made a
tiella
this good.”

“And who was Old Marietta?”

“Marietta was an old lady who kept house for us when I was a kid. She lived in the old town of Bari. Sometimes she’d bring us a sauce or homemade orecchiette. And her
tiella
was the stuff of legend. From now on, as far as I’m concerned, Hans is an honorary Old Marietta.”

Nadia laughed, and in effect the idea of Hans-Marietta had its comic potential.

“Can I sit down with you? You’re practically the only
customer tonight, and I doubt we’re going to get anyone else in now that it’s raining.”

“Make yourself comfortable, of course. Is it raining? Great—I rode my bike here.”

“If you’re not in a hurry to get home, I’ll drive you. I’d say that unless we get a rush of customers, we’ll close at midnight. You can bring your bike inside and come back and get it when it’s convenient.”

“I’m in no hurry. And thanks, the idea of riding home in the pouring rain doesn’t thrill me.”

“Are you still hungry?”

“Hungry? I’m stuffed. If anything, I need a strong drink.”

“Have you ever tried absinthe?”

“No. I haven’t tried cocaine, peyote, or LSD either.”

“Well, we don’t serve peyote or any of that other stuff, but we do serve absinthe. Want to try some? It’s legal.”

I said sure, I’d like to try some, and she told Matilde—the bartender—to bring us absinthe for two. Matilde, who’s no chatterbox, nodded almost imperceptibly, and a few minutes later she was standing at the table with a bottle of greenish liquid, a bowl of sugar cubes, and a carafe filled with water.

“What do we do with all this?” I asked.

“Are you familiar with pastis?”

“Yes.”

“Same method. This is pure, very strong liquor, 136-proof. You dilute it with three to five parts water and, if you like, you add a sugar cube.”

I followed her instructions, tasted it, and liked it.

Hell, I liked it a
lot
. I immediately poured myself another.

“Zola said that when you start pouring absinthe, you always wind up with drunken men and pregnant girls. Now I’m starting to see what he meant.”

She nodded and gave me a mirthless smile.

“In any case, it’s highly unlikely that the pregnant girl would be me.”

She said it in a flat, neutral tone of voice, but it was instantly obvious that I had touched on a sore subject. I looked at her and said nothing. I carefully set the glass—which I’d just picked up to take another sip—down on the table.

“Two years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer, and they removed everything I’d need to become a pregnant girl. It’s not like there was this long line of suitors asking to become the father of my son or daughter, but in any case, I’d say now the matter is settled once and for all.”

Why on earth had I quoted Zola? No matter what, now that I thought about it, it had been an inappropriate thing to say, as well as embarrassingly vulgar. I really felt like a fool.

“I’m so sorry. Forgive me, it was a stupid thing to say.”

“Relax. No need to apologize. If anything, I should apologize for bringing it up. There was no reason for me to dump all that on you, tell you about my personal problems, without fair warning.”

I sat there with no idea what to say. She looked at her empty glass for a while. Then she decided that she felt like having another drink. She prepared a second glass of absinthe. Diluting it with three parts water, maybe less. She drank it slowly, methodically. When she’d finished her glass, she turned to me.

“Do you mind if we leave now? I feel like smoking a cigarette. Maybe we could go for a drive before heading home. Hans and Matilde can close up.”

Five minutes later we were outside, in the rain.

Nadia had a compact minivan; I slipped into the front passenger seat quickly, without noticing the make or model. As Nadia was climbing in on her side, I thought I noticed something moving in the back of the car. I turned to look, and in the darkness I glimpsed a white gleam in the middle of an enormous dark mass. I looked closer, and realized that the white gleam was a pair of eyes, and that the eyes belonged to a black dog, the size of a young calf.

“Cute. What’s his name, Nosferatu?”

She laughed.

“Pino, his name is Pino.”

“Pino? As in Pino Noir the Killer Canine? Is that a name to give a beast of that size?”

She laughed again.

“I never would have thought it, but you’re actually pretty nice. I always thought you were good at your job, reliable, even handsome, no question. But you never struck me as funny.”

“No? Wait until you see me dance.”