The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (12 page)

As he was pointing to the office door to invite the police officers to leave, it opened, allowing a young, very beautiful woman to enter. She spoke in a strong Sardinian accent: “
Buongiorno
. I'm Laura Piras, a magistrate from the district attorney's office, and from this point on I'll be supervising this investigation.”

H
aving left Donna Amalia's apartment, Romano and Di Nardo lingered on the sidewalk, not sure what to do next. They both thought the old lady was a pathological liar, but what the warrant officer had said about the seriousness of criminal complaints had been true.

After a long silence, Di Nardo, in her usual deep tone of voice, suggested: “I'd go by and ring the doorbell. Just so we can say that we checked it out. The odds are 99.99 percent that they'll open the door and invite us in for a cup of coffee, and then we can go back to the old lady and tell her to calm down and stop making crank calls.”

Romano agreed. “Right, we're already here, what's the worst that could happen? Even though I feel like a fool, chasing after the hallucinations of a crazy woman.”

They went over to the intercom. There were two apartments per floor, and the only buzzer without a name was on the fifth floor. Romano pushed the button, waited, and then pressed it again, but there was no answer.

The two cops looked at each other, uncertain. Then Di Nardo, on impulse, pushed the button for the other fifth-floor apartment, which was marked “Casa Sprint Srl, Real Estate.” There was a buzz and the street door swung open with a click.

The elevator left them at a silent landing. There were two doors, one on either side of the hallway. One was shut tight, and one was open wide; inside was a desk behind which sat a young woman with dark hair. They realized that this was a real estate agency. The young woman greeted them politely.

“Hi there! Come on in. What kind of apartment are you looking for?”

Romano told her the real reason they were there: “No, thanks, signorina. We just need some information. Is the other apartment on this landing occupied?”

“It was recently renovated, and it's already occupied. I'm afraid they didn't use our agency, it was a private transaction.”

“And do you know who lives there? Have you ever seen anyone go in, or come out, or . . .”

The young woman sat pondering for a moment.

“No, now that you mention it, I've never run into anyone or seen people come in or leave. But I'm only here for a couple of hours every morning; then I take people around to view apartments. So I couldn't really say. But why are you interested? Who are you?”

Romano identified himself, flashing his badge: “Routine verification, you understand, for our files.”

Vague references to bureaucracy always reassure people, and the girl was no exception. She took a phone call. The two police officers took advantage of the opportunity to wave goodbye and leave.

They came to a halt outside the door of the other apartment on the landing. Romano rang the doorbell, and the sound echoed inside. Silence. They rang again. Silence. Romano threw his arms wide and turned to head for the elevator, but someone, inside the apartment, uttered a faint: “Who is it?”

At first, they both thought that they'd had some kind of auditory hallucination; then each realized that the other had heard it, too. A woman's voice, very faint. Romano brought his face close to the door.

“
Buongiorno
, signora. Could you please open the door? We need to verify a few details.”

A long pause. Then:

“You need to verify? What do you need to verify? Who are you?”

Di Nardo stepped in at this point, thinking that a woman's voice might reassure whoever was inside.

“We're from the police, signora. Go ahead and open the door, there's no danger.”

“The police? Why? What's happened?”

Romano replied: “No, signora. Nothing serious. We're just doing a routine check. Could you open the door, please?”

Another pause. Then: “No, I can't.”

“You can't?”

Absolute silence, not a sound. The woman on the other side of the door said nothing for a long time, then: “I don't want to. I don't want to open the door. I don't know who you are, and I don't want to open the door.”

“You said that you can't. What do you mean?”

“I made a mistake. I said that I didn't want to. Go away, thank you, I don't need anything.”

“Signora, who lives with you? Is someone there? Signora?”

After another silence, the answer: “No. There's no one here. I'm alone. I don't need anything. I have to go now.”

They heard footsteps moving away from the door, then the sound of music coming from a radio or the television. They knocked again, and the music got louder. They turned and headed for the elevator.

Once they were back in the street, Di Nardo asked: “Now what do we do?”

Romano thought it over. “Technically we checked it out, didn't we? That is, we went to the place in question, we had a conversation with whoever lives in the apartment, and we heard the actual voice of the supposed victim of the crime tell us that no crime has taken place. Which means we don't have to investigate any further.”

The young woman was having none of it: “Well, so what? If it's true what Guardascione claims, that is, that this woman is being held prisoner, that maybe she's being threatened, she would have responded precisely the way she did. Do you think that having quote-unquote checked it out is enough?”

“Explain to me then, what do you want to do now? At what point would you consider yourself satisfied?”

Alex had no doubts: “I want to see what's going in that apartment, that's what I want. If the police come and knock on your door in broad daylight and you don't have anything to hide, you open the door and you let them in and you offer them a cup of coffee. You joke around with them, you rhetorically wave bye-bye to the nosy old bat, and that night you tell your friends the story down at the bar.”

Romano resisted, but without much conviction: “Maybe she thought we weren't really cops—these days it's dangerous to open the door to strangers, even if they identify themselves; or she's an illegal immigrant, or something like that, and she's afraid of getting in trouble; or else she's living in someone else's apartment and doesn't have permission to open the door to anyone.”

“Don't you think all of these hypotheses deserve to be investigated? Plus there's this: first she said, ‘I can't open the door,' and then she said, ‘I don't want to open the door.' A telltale slip of the tongue, as far as I'm concerned. Come on, Romano, this smells fishy to you, too. I agree with you, maybe it's nothing; but maybe there is something going on. And violence against women is unfortunately all too common a phenomenon. Please, let's get a warrant to go in there, so we can put our minds at rest.”

Romano saw Giorgia, fast asleep, her brow furrowed and her lip swollen; a muscle twitched in his jaw.

“All right then. Let's go back to the station and talk it over with Palma. We'll ask the magistrate for a warrant and then we'll come back and see what's going on.”

I
t was that damned old woman. I know it was her.

That evil gaze, the minute I saw it, I knew it could only bring trouble.

What am I going to do, what am I going to do, now what am I going to do . . .

Police, they said. Maybe it wasn't true, maybe they were just trying to sell something, trying to rob me, maybe they wanted to do one of those interviews, how would I know . . . Or else they really were two police officers. That's what I think, that they were two police officers, and the old woman sent them here, the old woman who always watches my windows, from dawn till dark, what the fuck does she want from me? Why doesn't she just mind her own business, and let me live my own life?

And now what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do . . .

He gave me that number, but he told me never to call it. Then why are you even giving it to me? I asked. And he told me: only if something really serious happens, something very, very serious. It's not my number, he told me. Someone else will answer, you tell him your name, and he'll let me know. He knows how to get in touch with me.

Now, is this or isn't this something serious? How would I know?

I can't afford to lose everything. If for one reason or another he decides that I'm more trouble than I'm worth, that I'm not what he says I am, something beautiful and that's it, he'll just trade me in. He'll get another girl; can you imagine how many girls much better than me he could find? And I'll be plunged back into the shit, and my family will be ruined, and my brothers won't have work anymore. It wouldn't take much. If I call, maybe he'll send me away and replace me with another girl.

But what if I don't call and those two come back? And what if it's like in the movies on TV, and they come back and knock down the door? What would I tell them—who I am and why I'm here?

What am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do . . .

If they come back and force open the door, they might arrest me, and that would certainly be worse, even though I'd never tell them his name.

But if they arrest me, then he'll definitely find another girl to take my place.

No, I'm sure: I have to warn him.

Where is that slip of paper with the number? Here it is. He told me: the only number you can call is this one. No other number. Just this one.

So I'm going to call this number. In a hurry.

Damned old woman, I hope you burn in the fires of hell.

 

 

L
eaving Aragona to keep an eye on the notary's office, Piras and Lojacono walked out of the building and into the wind that continued to lash the streets.

The magistrate had taken the situation in hand with energy and expertise, sparing the policeman the sad embarrassment of having to put the investigative machinery into reverse in order to get them all out of a bind. The bureaucratic process would take a few more hours, and the notary would have the chance to consult a lawyer, but at least the computer had been seized and, in the meanwhile, they'd be able to proceed with the questioning of anyone they felt it necessary to talk to, first and foremost the employees in that office.

“You see, Laura: from the attitudes I observed, the glances, the expressions, I'm convinced that they know a lot about the notary's private life. If we leave them alone, they'll come up with a single, agreed-upon version and we won't be able to get a thing out of them. That's why your arrival was so crucial and timely. Thanks.”

“If I waited around for you to show up,” the woman retorted mischievously, “I'd be an old woman. Thank your commissario, who reached out to us as soon as he guessed what was going on. And you can also thank your lucky stars that I was on duty; if one of my colleagues had heard ‘Pizzofalcone,' he might have just decided to hand the whole thing off to the Carabinieri. For that matter, good old Palma had the good sense not to come here himself. He just let you do your job; that's not what everybody would have done, you know, there are those who would have hurried over to grab the credit for themselves.”

Lojacono had to admit that she had a point.

“True. You know, all things considered, this Palma isn't a bad guy. Compared with that asshole Di Vincenzo he's certainly a cut above; but tell me the truth, this thing in Pizzofalcone . . . is it a sort of punishment, internal exile, or what? Aragona told me a little something about why the others are here, and I have to say that what he said really struck me.”

The woman wrinkled her nose. She was, Lojacono thought to himself, irresistible.

“Aragona is out of his mind, I'm pondering whether or not to take his driver's license away entirely; when he was my bodyguard and driver he almost killed me, and I don't like the idea of you sitting in his passenger seat. Pizzofalcone has a bad reputation, and it's understandable that they're not exactly lining up for a shot at a job here; and it's equally understandable that the other precincts should have sent over people that, for one reason or another, they wanted to get rid of. But that doesn't mean anything. You just do the kind of work I know you can do, and everything will turn out fine.”

For a while, Lojacono watched her as she clutched the collar of her coat to her neck, the wind tousling her hair. He wished he'd met her in another life, a life in which he wasn't afraid, in which he believed in himself so completely that he could imagine a woman like her being interested in him.

Piras in turn was thinking that Lojacono was the first man she'd found at all interesting since the death of Carlo, the only man she'd ever had, so many years ago. And that her work was no longer enough to fill her life, as it had always been able to. She stared at him for a while, his almond-shaped eyes, his high cheekbones, his sleek black hair; he was a good eight inches taller than her, even in heels. Her imagination filled her mind with filthy fantasies, and she struggled to control them.

Lojacono was struck by the rapt expression on her face.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I'm thinking that you're back in the field. And that maybe you have a chance to revive a career you'd assumed was dead.”

“That's bullshit. And you know I don't give a damn about my career, and I didn't give a damn about it before all that happened. I like doing this work, which by the way is the only kind of work I know how to do; I mean, I'm not someone who belongs behind a desk.”

“I don't believe you. Another thing you like is not having bosses over you telling you what to do, and so, the fact is, you need to rise in the ranks so you can do what you want. And after all, didn't you want to go back home a winner? Aren't you happy to be able to show that the things that were said about you weren't true?”