Temporary Perfections (31 page)

“You had plans to meet, that Sunday afternoon, didn’t you?”

She nodded without speaking.

“You’d made those plans the day before.”

She nodded again.

“Did you go pick her up at the station, when she arrived from Ostuni?”

“No. I was at Duilio’s house, and she was supposed to come meet us there.”

“And did she?”

“Yes, she got there around six, maybe a little later. She took a cab there from the train station and asked if she could take a shower.”

“Does Duilio live alone?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Where?”

“Well, now he’s moved. He didn’t want to live in that apartment anymore.”

“And that apartment would be where?”

“He used to live up by the lighthouse, in one of those new apartment buildings facing the sea. Now he’s in the center of town.”

“Why had you made plans to meet?”

“Manuela was going back to Rome, and she wanted to stock up.”

I swallowed, gulping uncomfortably. It was what I had expected to hear, but I still didn’t like it.

“You mean, she wanted to stock up on cocaine?”

“That’s right.”

“Was the cocaine only for her personal use?”

“No, she sold coke, too, so she could pay for all the coke she was using.”

“Did she sell it in Rome?”

“Mostly. But I don’t know who her customers were.”

“Did Nicoletta know? I mean, did she know that Manuela was dealing drugs?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it. What she told you when we went to see her is all she knows. More or less.”

“So she came over to Duilio’s apartment to buy some cocaine to take with her to Rome.”

“That’s right.”

“How much was she going to get?”

“I don’t know. She bought fifty, even a hundred grams at a time. They had an agreement. If she had the money, she paid right away. Otherwise, Duilio fronted her the money.”

“What does Duilio do for a living?”

“He has a car dealership. That is, he works at his father’s car dealership, but he’s involved in politics, too.”

“And he makes a little extra by selling cocaine.”

Once again, she nodded.

“And how old is this gentleman?”

“Thirty-two.”

I took a few seconds to get my mental bearings, and then I continued questioning her.

“So, Manuela came over to Duilio’s house, and you were there, too. She took a shower, and then what happened?”

“The plan had been to go out for dinner, but first Manuela wanted to try some of the coke. It was from a new shipment that Duilio had just received the day before.”

“And she had come for that purpose?”

“That’s right. She’d been out of coke for a few days. She’d hoped to find some at the
trulli
, but nobody had any that weekend. So when she arrived she had only one thing in mind.”

It occurred to me that Anita was a sharp-eyed observer. What was it she had said?
Manuela didn’t strike me as an easygoing person. She seemed a little speedy
.

“What are you saying? Was she an addict?”

“Well, she used almost every day. At first, she took other people’s coke, just at parties. Then gifts of a gram here and there and lines at parties weren’t enough anymore. And that’s why she started having to deal coke. She definitely couldn’t pay for all the coke she consumed with the money her parents gave her.”

“Go on.”

“She took a shower and then we decided to do a few lines before going out. That coke was incredible, like the best I’ve ever had. After two or three lines we were ready to go out, but she wanted more. She snorted more and more, and I told her to stop, that she was overdoing it. But she told me she hadn’t had any in days, and that it had been depressing and she needed to make up for lost time. She
was laughing and looked a little crazy. At a certain point, Duilio started to get worried too.”

“Then what happened?”

“Duilio said that’s enough, and he tried to take the bag away from her. She got mad at him, started shouting, and said that unless he gave her some more, she’d start screaming, she’d tear the house apart. I’m telling you, it seemed like she’d lost her mind.”

For a few seconds, I stopped listening to Caterina’s words and concentrated instead on the sound of her voice. There was no emotion; the cadence was monotonous. It didn’t seem like she was telling a story that was rushing ineluctably toward a tragic ending. It didn’t sound at all like the voice of a young woman describing the death of her closest friend. I shook my head and shoulders as a shiver ran through me.

“Could you repeat that last part, please? I’m sorry, I got distracted for a second.”

“He told her he’d give her one more line and that was it. He was pouring the coke onto the table and his hand must have slipped. Like I said, she’d already had way too much cocaine, and then she took everything that had spilled out. It wasn’t the first time she’d gone over the top like that.”

“And then?”

“And then, a little while later, she started to feel sick. She was sweating and shaking and her heart was racing. It was like she’d suddenly come down with a fever. Her pupils were so dilated, it was scary to look her in the eye.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to call 911, but Duilio said we should wait. He’d seen people in that condition before, and after a little while they always got better. He said, ‘Come on, let’s wait.
It happens sometimes. If you call 911, the police will come and we’ll be in deep shit. You’ll see. She’ll feel better in a minute.’ At a certain point, she stopped shaking and closed her eyes. We were so relieved, because it seemed like she’d fallen asleep. We thought it was over.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“After a few minutes, we realized she’d stopped breathing.”

She still had the same neutral, flat tone of voice, no intensity to it. It was frightening.

I had believed from the very outset that Manuela was dead. But now that I knew it, really knew it, now that a person who’d watched her die was telling me that she was dead, I had a hard time believing it. I tried to put my finger on the feeling and I realized that the whole time, even though I was convinced that Manuela was dead, I’d always imagined her alive.

She
was
alive, in one of those parallel worlds where our imaginations create and keep their stories. The stories that we tell other people and the stories, so much more powerful and deceptive, that we tell ourselves.

“So what did you do then?”

“Duilio tried to give her mouth-to-mouth. Then he massaged her heart, but it didn’t do any good. So I said that we had to call the police immediately. I was starting to freak out.”

I refrained from telling her that I found that difficult to believe, considering the cool, matter-of-fact way that she was relating the horrifying tale.

“But you didn’t call.”

“Duilio said it would be stupid. He said we’d both wind up in jail for no good reason. He said it had been an accident
and that, after all was said and done, it had been Manuela’s fault for shoving all that cocaine up her nose. We couldn’t bring her back to life, and we’d just destroy our own lives.”

“So what did you do next?”

She told me what they did next. She told me how they got rid of Manuela’s body. They wrapped her in a carpet, just like in a B movie, took her to an illegal dump, in a distant corner of the Murgia highlands, and burned her with her possessions on a stack of old car tires. Duilio told her that was the best method to get rid of a body. It was what Mafia hit men did. The tires burn completely, down to the smallest particle, and when they’re done burning there’s nothing left.

As I listened, I was struck with a terrifying, dizzying feeling of unreality.

This can’t be happening. This is a nightmare. Any minute now I’ll wake up in my own bed, drenched with sweat, and I’ll realize that none of this really happened. I’ll get out of bed, drink a glass of water, and then I’ll very slowly get dressed and go out for a walk, even though it’s dark out. The way I used to sometimes when I couldn’t sleep.

Then I felt an overwhelming urge to punch her and free myself of her. My right hand formed a fist up on the seat. I thought that if it was unbearable for me to hear these things, for Manuela’s parents it would be torture.

I didn’t hit her. I kept asking questions, because there were still things that I needed to know. Details. Or maybe not.

“Didn’t you think the police would catch up with you eventually?”

“No. Manuela had that second cell phone, the one you found out about. It had a memory card that she asked some guy in Rome to buy for her. That was Duilio’s idea. Duilio was really paranoid about wiretaps and eavesdropping, both
because of the drugs and because of his political activity. She only used that phone to talk to me, Duilio, and, I think, the people she sold drugs to in Rome. The phone wasn’t in her name, and even her parents didn’t know about it. So we were pretty sure that no one could ever find the number and trace it back to us by checking the calls. No one knew we were going to see her that afternoon.”

There was nothing else to say. It was banal—almost bureaucratic, almost perfect.

Almost.

“Why did you agree to talk to me?”

“What else could I do? Manuela’s mother asked me to, and I couldn’t refuse. You all would have gotten suspicious, the way you got suspicious when Michele refused to meet with you.”

“Then why did you decide to help me? To the extent that you did, of course.”

Caterina took a deep breath, pulled out another cigarette, and lit it.

“When I found out that I was going to have to meet with you, I called Duilio. We hadn’t talked for months. We got together and planned how I should act. I was supposed to confirm everything I’d already told the Carabinieri, and if by chance you asked me what I’d done that evening, I would tell you that I’d been with Duilio, that we went out to dinner, and that the last time I’d seen Manuela was a few days before that. I didn’t expect you to bring up the subject of drugs. When you did, I just kind of lost it. I had no idea you already knew about the cocaine.”

And in fact I didn’t. I just bluffed, and you fell for it.

I should have felt proud of myself, but I couldn’t feel good about anything. My mouth was dry and sour.

“Once you told me that Michele had refused to meet with you, that his lawyer had threatened to take action against you, I thought I could push the whole drug thing onto Michele and keep you from looking any further.”

“And, of course, Michele had nothing to do with any of this.”

“He had nothing to do with Manuela’s death, but he had plenty to do with the cocaine. He got her started on it, and he was in business with Duilio. That’s why his lawyer wouldn’t let him meet with you, because he has a lot to hide.”

“Does he know what happened to Manuela?”

“No. When he got back from his trip, he asked Duilio if he knew what had happened. Duilio told him that he didn’t know a thing, and Michele let it go. It’s possible he didn’t believe him, but Michele is such an asshole that he only cares about his own comfort and convenience. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody else. Everything I told you about him is true.”

“Why did you persuade Nicoletta to talk to me?”

“One way or another, you would have gotten in touch with her. So Duilio and I thought it would be a good idea for me to convince you I could help. If I pretended to help you in your investigation, it would be easier for me to control what you were doing and maybe I could even feed you false leads. There was the Michele thing, and then my suggesting that Manuela might have disappeared in Rome and not in Puglia.”

She suddenly shut her mouth and stopped talking. In fact, I thought, there’s nothing left to say.

It was getting dark.

Not just outside.

“What happens now?” she asked after several long minutes of silence, reviving me from the troubled torpor into which I had drifted.

“Excuse me for a moment,” I replied, opening my door and getting out of the car.

A wind had sprung up and was gusting the sky clean of clouds. The air was clear, briny, tragic.

I walked back to the restaurant and stepped inside to make sure that she couldn’t see or hear me. I called Navarra and he answered almost immediately, on the second or third ring.

“
Buona sera
, Counselor.”

“
Buona sera
, Officer.”

“You’re not calling to tell me you found out what happened to the girl, are you?” he asked jokingly, just to start the conversation. I said nothing. The silence dragged on.

“Counselor?” The playful tone was gone from his voice.

“I’m here. I assume you’re at home.”

“No, I’m still at the office, but I was about to leave. It’s been a brutal day.”

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, you’ll have to stay in the office a little longer.”

“What happened?”

“In a short while, I’m going to bring someone in to see you. You should get in touch with the public defender currently on duty while you wait for me. We’re going to need him.”

There was a long, heavy pause.

“So, the girl is dead?”

“Yes.”

“The day she disappeared?”

“Yes.”

I told him the bare bones of the story and we agreed that in forty-five minutes he would be waiting outside the Carabinieri barracks. Then I hung up and went back out to the car.

Caterina was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch. I got back in the car, started the engine, and pulled out. She didn’t ask me again what was going to happen next. She didn’t say a thing. Neither of us spoke until we were back in the city and I stopped the car a few blocks away from the Carabinieri barracks.

“You’re going to have to tell the Carabinieri the things you told me.”

Before she said anything, she gave me a long look that I was unable to decipher.

“Will they arrest me?”

“No. First of all, you weren’t caught in the act, and the basic elements for arrest are lacking. Second, you’re turning yourself in voluntarily, and most importantly, the cocaine wasn’t yours. You didn’t give it to Manuela. You’ll just face charges of being an accomplice to concealing a dead body. You’ll get off with a plea bargain and probation.”