Temporary Perfections (28 page)

“Enrico, ciao,” I said, once he released me from his embrace. I tried to remember the last time we’d seen one another and to reconstruct his life based on the information in my possession. He’d gone to college—law of course, the refuge of the crooked—but he’d dropped out after taking two or three exams. For years he’d indulged in a variety of pastimes, some more dangerous than others, and some less lawful than others. Businesses and companies were created and then conveniently made to disappear. Check kiting. Questionable operations with his credit cards. A marriage to a homely but wealthy young woman that went sour—very sour—in the wake of a series of legal accusations, police reports, and trials. A guilty verdict for bankruptcy fraud, and additional criminal prosecutions for further fraud and for receiving stolen goods.

He’d disappeared from Bari, with a host of creditors eager to track him down on his back, some of them exceedingly unsavory. Individuals with nicknames like Pierino the Criminal, Mbacola the Shark, and Tyson. That last name succinctly described the methods this character employed to recover debts that were not exactly out in the open.

De Bellis had vanished into thin air, the way only people in that world can. And now he had reappeared out of the void, materializing right in front of me, with his rumpled clothes and the stench of tobacco smoke, his air of slovenliness, and a grim, poorly disguised desperation.

“It’s been forever since I’ve seen you! What are you doing in Rome?”

I decided that it might be best not to tell him exactly what I was doing—what I had just finished doing—in Rome.

“The usual. An appeals case, a hearing at the Court of Cassation.”

“Oh, of course—an appeals case, a hearing at the Court of Cassation. You’re a big-time lawyer now. I read about your cases. I’ve kept up with you through our friends.”

I preferred not to think too carefully about what mutual friends Enrico De Bellis and I might have. He slapped me on the shoulder.

“Shit, you look great. You haven’t changed a bit. I’ve had some tough times, but things are starting to look up for me. In fact, things already are looking up. Things are going great. If I can get this one project I have in mind off the ground, I’ll be all set.”

He spoke hurriedly, his words tumbling out with such forced cheerfulness that it verged on the grotesque.

“Come with me. Let me buy you a coffee,” he said, taking me by the arm and steering me into a nearby café.

“Two espressos,” he said to the barista.

And then, turning to me with a conspiratorial air, he said, “Should we ask for a drop of sambuca in our coffee, Guido?”

No thanks. Sambuca at ten in the morning isn’t part of a healthy diet.

I gave him a tight smile and shook my head. So he decided to go ahead and add my dose of sambuca to his coffee. He nodded to the barista, who clearly knew him well. He poured sambuca into Enrico’s cup and stopped just before it spilled over the brim.

Technically, that was a glass of sambuca with a little espresso to top it off. De Bellis drank it quickly and immediately afterward—I’m sure of it—decided he’d like another. He got a grip on himself, though, and refrained from ordering the second sambuca with a drop of coffee.

Then he pretended to check his pockets and discover, with mock chagrin, that he’d forgotten his wallet.

“Oh, damn, Guido. I’m sorry. I offered to buy you a cup of coffee and here I am without any money. So sorry.”

I paid. We left the bar, and De Bellis extracted an MS cigarette from a packet that was as rumpled as his suit. Healthy living, no question about it. He took my arm as we started walking toward the Piazza del Popolo. Along the way, he decided to brief me on all the options that modern medicine offered in terms of therapy for erectile dysfunction. He was—to his credit—impressively well-informed on the topic.

After explaining to me the various options available—from pills of all sorts and injections worthy of a horror film, up to and including a hydraulic apparatus that would have intrigued Doctor Frankenstein—he added that when it came right down to it, the best thing for us was whores or, even better, DIY. A nice free porn video on the Internet, five minutes of effort, and it’s taken care of. No problem, no worries about performance. Because that medicine isn’t so good for you. I mean, Guido, you’re in good shape, but I’m a few pounds overweight. I’ll start a diet one of these days. Anyway, afterward there’s no need to make nice and have a smoke together and make plans to see each other again. It’s all hydraulics. Prostate maintenance.

I felt like throwing up. I bent down to tie a shoelace that didn’t need tying, just to get free of his grasp.

“Can I ask you a favor, Guido? We’ve always been good friends, and that means a lot to me.”

Actually, we hadn’t ever been good friends. I knew he was going to ask for money.

“I need to make a payment today. As I told you, I’ve been through some tough times, but I’m getting back on my feet. I have an incredible project I’d love to tell you about one day when you have time. Maybe we can go out for a drink next time you’re in Rome and I’ll tell you all about it. Here, take my card.”

His business card was the type you print on cheap paper at a vending machine. It read
ENRICO DE BELLIS, FINANCIAL AND CORPORATE CONSULTING
. No address, just a cell phone number. Financial and corporate consulting? What did that mean? I guess he had to put something on the business card, and he couldn’t write
ENRICO DE BELLIS, CON ARTIST, GRIFTER, AND EXTORTIONIST
.

“If you could make me a small loan, I’d pay it back within a week. It’s money that I owe to some people who … well, let’s just say, it’s not a good idea to make them angry. I don’t have to tell you, you’re a big criminal lawyer. By the way, I haven’t congratulated you on your brilliant career. But it was obvious when we were boys that you’d do whatever you set your mind to. I remember that you always said you wanted to be a criminal lawyer, that you were going to grow up to be someone. You’re a big success, and you’ve earned it.”

I’d never said I wanted to be a criminal lawyer when I grew up. Certainly not when De Bellis and I knew each other, back when we were kids.

“I need a thousand Euros. Like I said, I’d pay you back in a few days. I can mail you a check, or if you give me your account number, I’ll wire the money to you.”

Why of course. I’ll just give you my account number, and I’m sure I’ll receive full payment, with a little extra for interest, in just a day or two.

“I’m sorry, Enrico, but as you can imagine, I don’t walk around with that much cash in my pocket.”

“Maybe you could write me a check.”

“I hardly ever use checks anymore. I put everything on a credit card.”

“Of course. You probably have one of those platinum cards with unlimited credit. I’m sure you have no use for cash or checks. Then maybe we could swing by an ATM—there’s one on every corner—and you could withdraw a thousand Euros. You can rest assured that in a week, ten days at the most, I’ll pay it all back. What do you say?”

What I said was nothing. I pulled out my wallet, opened it, extracted three fifty-Euro banknotes, and handed them to him.

“I’m sorry, Enrico, I’m really in a hurry. As I told you, I’m here in Rome on business.”

He took the money without a word and slipped it quickly into the pocket of his rumpled jacket. We stood there face to face in silence for a few seconds. He was weighing the odds of getting anything more out of me. At last, when he had resigned himself to the fact that I wasn’t going to give him another cent, the light went out of his eyes and his face went blank. I no longer had anything to offer him, so he could turn and go now.

“All right then, if you really have to go I won’t keep you.”

He barely bothered to say good-bye as he turned and left, without thanking me and without promising to pay me back. He walked off with a lumbering gait, lighting another cigarette as he went. I imagined him searching for someone
else to give him money. It was part of his daily struggle for survival, as well as his never-ending attempt to fend off the desperation that nipped at his heels, ready to catch him by the ankles and swallow him whole.

A few hours later, Caterina and I were on a plane back to Bari.

Just as she had been the night before, during the flight she was perfectly at ease—comfortable, spontaneous, and relaxed. She acted as if nothing had happened or, rather, as if we were a long-standing couple. I, on the other hand, felt increasingly confused and awkward. I kept having the feeling—simultaneously vague and sharp—that there was something obvious that I was overlooking.

When I left her outside her apartment building on Rione Madonnella, near the Cinema Esedra, she gave me a kiss and told me to call her soon, because she was eager to see me again.

My disorientation didn’t get any better that afternoon in the office. I turned off my cell phone, asked Pasquale not to put through any calls. Then I sat at my desk and put my nose to the grindstone. I worked my way through all the problems and annoyances that had sprung up in the two days I’d been away. Still, I couldn’t really focus on what I was doing. The same thing happened that sometimes keeps me from sleeping at night: I thought I could hear a faint noise—a rustling or a dripping—but I couldn’t pin down the source.

When I finally took a break, I decided to identify what I knew for sure, since I was apparently incapable of identifying the metaphorical noises inside me.

I took a notepad and began writing.

I paused for a good long while before I wrote the next sentence.

It would almost have been better if I hadn’t found out anything at all, I told myself. If I hadn’t discovered anything, I wouldn’t be upset. Everything would be the way it was supposed to be. I wasn’t cut out to be an investigator. I would return the Ferraros’ money. I’d tell them that I was very sorry but there was nothing to be done—at least, nothing that I could do—and I would be free of that whole situation.

Instead, I had discovered some things, and I thought I could intuit some others, even if I couldn’t yet seem to make them all fit together. I couldn’t walk away.

I had been turning this concept over and looking at it from different angles for at least a half an hour when Pasquale walked into my room.

“Counselor, there’s a young woman who wants to talk to you. She’s phoned a number of times, but you told us not to put any calls through. Now she’s here, in the office. What should I do?”

Caterina, I assumed. And I felt embarrassed at the idea that she was here, in the office, after everything that had happened. It struck me as an intrusion—yet another intrusion—and I didn’t know how to react.

“It’s Signorina Salvemini, concerning the Ferraro case.”

Salvemini? Anita. What could Anita want?

“That’s fine, Pasquale. Please send her in. Thank you.”

Anita was dressed exactly the same as the last time I’d seen her. That clothing seemed to be a sort of uniform for her.

“I tried to call you on the cell number you gave me, but it was always turned off.”

“Sorry. I’ve had an incredibly busy afternoon, so I turned it off.”

“Sorry if I’m bothering you, but I remembered something and I wanted to tell you. It’s probably nothing, but you said to call you if I remembered anything, anything at all.”

“You’re not bothering me, absolutely not. And I’m glad you came by. I really appreciate it. What did you remember?”

“Manuela had two phones.”

“Excuse me?”

“I remembered that Manuela had two cell phones, not just one.”

“Two cell phones.”

I processed this piece of information. It seemed like it could be important. The call records in the prosecuting attorney’s official file were for only one phone number.

“What made you remember that?”

“I told you that during the drive from the
trulli
to Ostuni, Manuela kept fooling around with her cell phone, and that at a certain point I thought she might have received a message.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“When she received the message, she was holding a phone in her hand, but then she rummaged through her purse to find another phone. The scene came back clearly to me because this morning I happened to hear a cell phone that had the same message alert tone as Manuela’s phone—the sound I heard that afternoon in the car.”

“What sound was it?”

“It was a strange noise. Like a small glass object—a light bulb or a tiny bottle—breaking. I had forgotten that sound, but it came back to me when I heard it again. It was as if hearing the sound allowed me to recover the rest of the memory.”

She said the last few words almost apologetically. Either apologizing for giving me a piece of unimportant information, or apologizing because she was coming up with an important piece of information too late.