The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (3 page)

The commissario's office was right at the top of the staircase. Behind the desk sat Palma, busy placing sheets of paper into a box file. Lojacono remembered him the minute he saw him, a man of about forty with a rumpled look, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a shadow of stubble on his face. More than sloppiness, however, the impression he gave was of someone who was constantly busy.

Commissario Palma noticed Lojacono and beamed a broad smile: “Ah, Lojacono, at last you're here! I was hoping to see you today. I would have called you, but the right thing to do was to let that old geezer Di Vincenzo talk to you first. Come right in, make yourself comfortable.”

The lieutenant took a step forward. The window was closed, but through the panes of glass, wet from the gusts of rain, it was possible to see the stormy sea, engaged in its thousand-year effort to demolish the tufa-stone castle perched over the waves. That city never ceased to surprise him, treating him to sudden spectacular glimpses of deceptive beauty.

“Nice, eh? A magnificent view, but let's not let ourselves get distracted: we have work to do. Go ahead, have a seat. You want a coffee?”

“No, thanks, commissario. How's everything going, sir?”

Palma threw open his arms: “No, no, that's no way to get started, Loja'! We need to be on a first-name basis here. It's just the four of us here and we all need to be rowing in the same direction. And after all, we're practically all new; I got here last Monday, the others have come in over the past three days, you're the last. In fact, now that you're here we can have our first meeting, what do you say? Or would you prefer to get settled in instead?”

The lieutenant was overwhelmed by the commissario's enthusiasm.

“No, that's not a problem, if you'd like, sir . . . I mean if you want, sure, right away . . .”

“Perfect, there's no time to waste, I was just waiting for you. Ottavia! Ottavia!”

A side door opened up and a woman in a skirt suit stepped out.

“Yes, sir, commissa'?”

“No, what is this ‘yes, sir'? Didn't we just say yesterday that we're all on a first-name basis around here? Come in, come in. This is Lieutenant Giuseppe Lojacono, the precinct's latest draft pick. Loja', allow me to introduce you to Deputy Sergeant Ottavia Calabrese, she was already here . . . she'll be an invaluable resource as we get ourselves situated.”

Calabrese took a step forward and Lojacono, who had stood up in the meantime, shook her hand. A good-looking woman a little over forty, serious, weary-looking, her hair pulled back.

“Welcome, lieutenant. If there's anything you need, sir, just let me know.”

Her voice, low and warm, was firm and nicely modulated. Lojacono liked to judge people based on first impressions, though he was always willing to change his mind if the facts seemed to warrant it. And he liked Deputy Sergeant Calabrese.

Palma laughed: “Well, there's no way around it, you can't seem to shake that formality, eh, Ottavia? Loja', Calabrese here is a computer genius. Anything you need on the Internet, she can find it for you. Ottavia, let's alert the others and have everyone gather in the meeting room, all right? Let's call down for some coffee and a bottle of mineral water, we're celebrating the new administration. Come on, Loja', let's head down and wait for the others.”

T
he walls. The walls of this room.

They're six and a half paces long; actually, eight and three quarter paces, to be precise. And it's eight paces on the other side. I remember from school, to measure the area of a rectangle you have to multiply the long side by the short side. I liked that, going to school. But then, of course, once I reached seventh grade, I stopped going.

To measure the short side you have to take into account the dresser against the wall, so to take that step you have to move a little to one side, which lengthens the distance by almost a quarter pace. And on the long side, there's a tile that's slightly chipped, right where you place your foot after the third pace.

You learn lots of things, staying here. From the windows on the balcony, for instance, you can see five apartments in the building across the way. If I could go out onto the balcony, I'd be able to see others, I think, but I'd better not. One time, he stuck a piece of paper in the French windows, and he looked to see if it was still there. It was, because I hadn't even thought of trying to open the bedroom windows: but then if it had been gone, what would I have said to him? It was my good luck I didn't open that window.

It's been fifteen days now. He came yesterday, who knows when he can come back. He said: let's hope it's soon. Sure, let's hope it's soon.

Eight and three quarter paces, if you ask me, is almost thirty feet.
An enormous room. All for me: and there's a bedroom, too, and a kitchen, and a bathroom. Back home, in our
basso
, the hovel I lived in, a space that's half the size of this, there were five of us, and we thought we were doing fine. I'm really a lucky girl.

But I am allowed to raise the shutters. Not all the way, he said I'd better not, even though there are curtains; but a little bit, I can. I like to look out the window, I pass my time watching what people do. For instance, on the fourth floor there's an old woman who likes to watch, same as I do. Once, I'm pretty sure she saw me.

Thirty feet long, twenty feet wide. More than 600 square feet,
for just one room. Mamma mia, I really am a lucky girl.

And he left me all sorts of provisions, I have a refrigerator that's about to collapse with all the food in it, and who's ever seen such bounty? It doesn't seem possible.

There are times, I'll admit, when I miss fresh air. He had an air conditioner installed, he gave me the remote control, and how we laughed, I just couldn't figure out how to make it work.

I even have a washing machine that dries the clothes after it washes them, who would ever have believed it, it seems like a miracle. I told him I don't need such a thing, the few items of clothing I have I can hang over the bathtub, but he wouldn't listen to a word I said, he told me that I ought to have everything I need. Like a queen. That's exactly what he said, like a queen. And who would ever have said such a thing about me, that I was going to be a queen!

I keep everything clean in here, even if nothing gets dirty. When he comes here, I don't ever want him to think that I'm neglecting the cleaning. When I'm done, I sit down to watch TV; now that's a remote control I have no trouble using. But I keep the voices very low, he made a point of telling me to be quiet, even if the voice people would hear would be the TV's, not mine.

I wait for him, I always wait for him. Every so often he calls me, he's the only one who even knows the number here. The last time he called he even let me say hello to Mamma, what a pleasure it was to hear her voice! She was so happy! She told me that he had bought her lots of nice things, that he even gave Papà a job, and work to my two brothers, that everyone's fine. She told me:
grazie
, Mammà's little sweetheart.
Grazie.
And I felt proud.

I need to eat now. He said I can't waste away, that I'm too beautiful and I need to be careful not to lose my looks, if I do he'll kick me out. He said it with a laugh, but I was scared. He said that I'm eighteen years old, and that at my age girls get ugly if they eat too much or they don't eat enough: and so he brought me the things I need to eat, and he wrote down what I should cook every day, and at what time.

I put the sheet of paper on the fridge, with the magnet in the shape of a ladybug, and I read it slowly and I cook and I eat according to the schedule.

A little while ago I looked out the window, and there was that old lady, looking right in my direction.

I'm afraid of her, that old lady.

I wonder what she wants with me.

 

N
ow, then,” said Palma, “here we are. Before holding this meeting, we waited for Lieutenant Lojacono, the last addition to the staff. Now that we're all here we can introduce ourselves.”

Lojacono hoped that the commissario's cheerful and amiable demeanor was meant to encourage the staff; that it wasn't dictated by any real and, in his opinion, unjustified optimism. The group looked pretty thrown together and it was, as Di Vincenzo had maliciously pointed out, made up of rejects from the city's various precincts; and those rejects were here to replace dirty, disloyal cops, who had muddied their colleagues' reputations by getting their faces splashed onto the front pages of the national press.

For that matter, Lojacono mused, he too was one of those rejects; and people had also accused him of being a dirty, disloyal cop.

Palma was still talking: “I'm not going to pretend that it will be an easy task: people warned me against taking this position, and the police chief himself debated, up to the very last minute, dissolving the precinct entirely. But I like daunting challenges, and so I accepted. It if turns out well, it'll turn out well for all of us: if not, it'll be bad for me in particular, because I doubt that any of you, for one reason or another, are interested in going back to where you came from.”

In the pause that followed, Lojacono shot a glance around the conference table, a long oval in light wood, coated with dust and scarred by cigarette burns. There were seven people, him included—all of various ages, genders, physical appearances, and expressions; he wondered what had brought them here, what stories haunted their pasts.

As if he'd read his mind, the commissario said: “I'd like you all to introduce yourselves, as if no one here knows anyone else. I'm Gigi Palma, the commissario of Pizzofalcone. I'm always available, I never close my office door, unless keeping it open is a problem for whoever is talking to me. I feel sure that if we work hard, and work honestly, in the end we'll see results, and they'll be good results. I try not to be prejudiced, and I don't give a damn about what the newspapers have said about any of you: I'm wiping the slate clean, starting today. Best of luck. I'd begin with those of you who were already here, if you want to tell us a little something . . .”

He gestured to the woman he'd introduced to Lojacono. She nodded and said, in a low, melodious voice: “Ottavia Calabrese, deputy sergeant. I'm in charge of computer research and the secreteriat, but also press relations, and recently that's been an especially nightmarish part of the job, believe me, even though some of the things . . . of the events that took place were handled by the police chief's spokesman. The station house has been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by the internal investigators, as you can imagine. We assumed they were just going to shut us down, so this reorganization came as a welcome surprise. Let's hope for the best.”

A collective nervous giggle greeted the woman's closing sigh.

The next to speak was a bald, elderly-looking man with a raspy voice: “Giorgio Pisanelli, deputy captain. Before you ask, let me tell you: I'm only sixty-one.”

There was another round of laughter, which the man accepted with calm detachment. He went on: “I've been here for fifteen years; I might have risen through the ranks, but my wife . . . well, I had some problems at home, and I decided to focus on other things. I'd say that I'm this place's institutional memory. I live in this neighborhood and I know more or less everyone. The internal investigators went over every single document that ever passed through my hands, to make sure I wasn't in cahoots with those who were here before you: I can therefore say that I am certainly an honest person, as I've just discovered.”

He was satisfied to see that everyone, including Palma, was chuckling. Lojacono decided that Pisanelli must be a smart guy, to have figured out the atmosphere needed lightening.

Palma waved his hand toward the only other female present, a slender young woman, dressed in a neat, nondescript fashion.

“My name is Di Nardo. Alessandra Di Nardo. Officer first class. I come from the Decumano Maggiore precinct.”

She'd spoken with her eyes straight ahead, addressing no one in particular and with no emotion in her voice.

Palma gestured toward Lojacono.

“Lieutenant Giuseppe Lojacono, from the San Gaetano precinct.”

The commissario pointed to a young man sitting near the lieutenant.

As if operated by a remote control, he snapped to his feet. He was a short little man, with a strange Elvis hairstyle that concealed an incipient bald spot at the top of his head, and two long sideburns. He wore a shirt that gaped open over his neatly shaved chest. His skin was of a vaguely orange hue, the product of long sessions under a sunlamp. With studied deliberation, he took off a pair of blue-tinted aviators, a gesture which only accentuated his ridiculous appearance, and said: “I'm Marco. Corporal Marco Aragona. I come from police headquarters.”

Lojacono decided that things were actually worse than he'd assumed; it wasn't going to be easy to get that station house up and running at even a barely decent level. Palma sighed, and it was the first time that the lieutenant had seen him waver as he considered his real chances of success.

“Well, okay then,” he said. “And what about you, down there at the end?”

At the far end of the table was a huge man, grim-faced, who hadn't joined in the comments or the laughter. He kept drumming the table softly with the fingers of his left hand, keeping his right hand in his lap. His hair was extremely short, his neck was thick, and his strongly marked jaw emphasized the dour expression in his eyes.

He spoke, with visible reluctance: “Francesco Romano, warrant officer. I come from the Posillipo precinct.”

Palma nodded.