The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (4 page)

“All right, now we've all introduced ourselves. The one shortcoming that we have, compared to other investigative teams, is that here most of you are new to the precinct; that means we can't have that team spirit, that reciprocal familiarity that normally constitutes an advantage.”

The suntanned young man snickered and said: “Maybe we should just say that they overdid it with the team spirit, the four cops who pulled that filthy move with the drugs.”

Palma glared at him, and Lojacono caught a glimpse of what the commissario could be like, once he doffed the mask of jovial benevolence at all costs.

“Officer Aragona, one more comment like that and I'll kick your ass straight back to where you came from. And believe me, I can kick hard.”

Aragona sank down into his chair as if he wanted to disappear. Palma resumed: “So we need to make a special effort to get to know each other as soon as possible. The investigations will be conducted, case by case, strictly by two-person teams. For now, so as to better coordinate things and offer support from here, Pisanelli and Calabrese, who know the precinct, will remain on desk duty. The rest of you will take turns working outside, relying on these two. Is that all clear?”

Having registered the general nod of assent, he proceeded, satisfied.

“Very good. I've had a large room set up for you, with six desks. You'll all be sitting together, so you can get to know each other. Break a leg.”

And he stood up.

 

A few minutes later, alone in his office, Commissario Luigi Palma, better known as Gigi, reviewed for the umpteenth time the confidential personnel files HR at headquarters had sent to him.

There wasn't much to know about Pisanelli and Calabrese, the two who had been here when he arrived. As the deputy captain had said, their professional lives had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and if nothing had been found, that meant there was nothing there. But it was also true that they were both desk jockeys, and neither of them had much experience working in the field.

Di Nardo was young; she'd just recently turned twenty-eight; an aptitude for firearms, top scores on all her marksmanship tests, and it was this very enthusiasm that had proved her undoing, a shot discharged from her pistol in the police station where she worked, in circumstances that remained murky.

Romano was a hothead: he'd grabbed a suspect by the throat, and then proceeded to blacken the eye of a fellow cop who had tried—successfully—to keep him from making a real mess of things.

Palma let out a long sigh, and scratched his head. Aragona, the suntanned young man striking the ridiculous poses, was the product of nepotism, the grandson of the prefect of a city in Basilicata. He drove like a bat out of hell, and he'd been kicked off two bodyguard details, for two different magistrates. At police headquarters, they'd been only too delighted to be rid of him.

What about Lojacono? Well, he had that ugly episode on his record—the state's witness who'd fingered him as a corrupt cop back in Sicily. But Palma had seen him in action on the Crocodile case, and he'd liked what he'd seen. It was Palma who had wanted him, even more than his fellow commissario Di Vincenzo had wanted to wash his hands of him. He had a strong hunch that the man was a smart cop. And an honest one.

Commissario Luigi Palma, better known as Gigi, hoped he wasn't making a mistake.

He hoped it with all his heart.

S
eated on her throne, Donna Amalia kept her eyes focused on the fifth floor of the building across the way. On the balcony, to be precise: and Donna Amalia, everyone knew, was precise. Quite precise indeed.

She'd noticed something odd almost immediately, seventeen days ago. She'd paid close attention to the renovation work being done in the apartment, which had been done quickly but extremely well, at least as far as she could tell from her vantage point. They must have spent a considerable amount of money. Donna Amalia had even mentioned the fact to Irina, and as usual that slut had said sure, sure, but she'd actually been thinking about her own business: maybe about some wealthy old man she ducked in and serviced while she was out shopping for groceries, to make ends meet. She never seemed to have enough money, that slut. What with the money she spent here in the city and the money she sent home to her village, which was no doubt a complete shithole. Irina had showed her pictures, and even in photographs the place looked like a pigsty, in real life just imagine.

Donna Amalia was all but paralyzed, she couldn't stand up. She had osteoarthritis, a particularly grave form of osteoarthritis, she would declaim with tragic pride: the pain came in excruciating waves, and she could barely make it to the bathroom, but she wasn't going to let that slut bring her a bedpan; she'd make it if she had to crawl. To make a long story short, when she got up every morning she accepted the slut's help getting dressed, then she hobbled to her throne with the three-legged cane, and there she would sit. She'd spend the day with the television on, peering out the window.

Her son was in Milan, and these days he had an array of excuses to explain why he couldn't come see her, even on the holidays. He was dating some girl, no doubt another slut, who wouldn't even let him come see his
mamma
who'd made so many sacrifices for him. He thought he'd ease his conscience by sending her money, the piece of shit. As if money was enough.

Donna Amalia's legs might not work, but her head did. Her head was as fresh as the flowers in May, and all her cogs and gears were spinning merrily. She paid attention to the world, and when things changed she knew. Then she'd tell that slut Irina about it, and Irina would say sure, sure, but Irina didn't understand a thing, didn't know that it's the changes that tell you where the world is headed. All changes, from the smallest to the biggest, had a meaning in the larger picture.

Did that lady with a man's voice, on Channel 5, do a program with old people? That was a sign. Was the new pope an Argentine? That was a sign. Did a soldier murder his wife because he was having an affair with a lady soldier? That was a sign. The hard thing, my dear Ukrainian slut, was to put all those signs together. Interpretation, that was the key. To understand the system of signs, and therefore the changes.

The apartment in the building across the way, for instance, was a sign. An important sign. Very important.

A normal family used to live there. A horrible family, but a normal one. A father who was never at home. A mother, a vulgar tub of lard, who spent her days yacking on the phone; she could see her pacing back and forth in front of every window, gesticulating with the receiver cradled between her ear and her shoulder: how the woman managed not to develop curvature of the spine was more than Donna Amalia could figure out. Two kids in their teens, a girl who brought home boyfriends and locked herself in her room with them, and a boy who instead of doing his homework played the guitar and snuck cigarettes on the balcony.

Then they'd left, all of a sudden. They must have received an attractive offer, because Donna Amalia hadn't seen any of the usual warning signs of an impending move: a moving truck had shown up out of the blue, and in barely two days' time they had packed up and left, bag and baggage, headed who knows where. Donna Amalia certainly wouldn't miss them, there was never anything new to watch, by now she knew them too well.

The renovations had been done in a hurry because, from what she was able to see, there were a lot of workers in that apartment, for many hours every day. From her vantage point, she could see into nearly all the rooms, and the construction workers kept all the windows and balcony doors flung wide open. They'd even installed air conditioners in every room. Very fancy. She'd been asking that stingy son of hers to put air conditioners in every room for months now, but he'd only had one installed in the living room: according to him, they were bad for her bones. As if Donna Amalia's bones could possibly get any worse.

Then
she'd
arrived. A single person, a young woman.

She must have come during the night, because Donna Amalia hadn't noticed a thing, and Donna Amalia sat sentinel all day long, from sunup to late evening. First they'd moved in the furniture, every stick of it new; then a couple of crates of linen, and Donna Amalia had recognized the logo of a famous shop downtown. And suddenly, a few lights had come on and the pale blue glow of the television set could be seen.

One time, the window of what must have been the bedroom swung open, and a dark-haired guy had fiddled around with the handle; then it had swung shut, and since then, the curtains hadn't been pushed aside once. The curtains in the
whole apartment
. That wasn't right.

The guy at the window hadn't been seen since. She could only see a girl go by, behind the curtains. She recognized her silhouette. Another time the girl had poked her face up close to the glass of the French doors that gave onto the living room balcony, and Donna Amalia had been left breathless because she seemed pretty. Beautiful, in fact. Even Donna Amalia, who knew how to find even the smallest flaws in anyone, was forced to admit that the girl's face was perfect. But then she'd vanished, and never appeared again.

Donna Amalia, through that slut Irina, had arranged for a few discreet questions to be asked of the local shopkeepers. No one, absolutely no one, knew who lived in that apartment. No one supplied the place, no one delivered groceries, no one had a new customer who happened to be a stunningly beautiful young woman. No one.

As signs go, Donna Amalia thought to herself, this one was hard to interpret. Tremendously hard. Which meant there had to be something going on, something big, because when the signs didn't fit into a system, that meant she was missing some detail.

Donna Amalia waited. Then she waited some more. Everything else in the neighborhood went on as usual, but the apartment across the street continued not to fit into any known system. She even tried talking to her son about it, during the one weekly conversation she managed to pry out of him, but he said the same thing the slut Irina always said: sure, sure. And with some excuse, he ended the phone call.

It all seemed so strange that, in the end, Donna Amalia sent that slut Irina to buzz the intercom. She'd coached her to perfection: Irina was to say that she was looking for Signora Esposito, the one who lived on the second floor. And then, as soon as they answered, she was to say, very innocently: oh, I'm so sorry, I must have rung the wrong buzzer, and then, finally, she was to rush back to describe to Donna Amalia the voice that had answered. But no one had answered, even though that slut Irina claimed she'd rung twice. And yet the girl was home, because Donna Amalia had seen her go by behind the curtains. So she hadn't answered the buzzer—why? Maybe the buzzer was broken, that certainly wouldn't be anything new. Damned modern technology: years ago it would have been simple enough just to ask the doorman a few questions, but these days, doormen, with what they cost—well, no one had them anymore.

Behind the living room window, while the wind and the rain howled through the streets, driving the pedestrians into the shelter of the doorways, Donna Amalia narrowed her eyes: when a sign defied interpretion, then it didn't fit into the system. And someone had to be informed.

She called for the slut Irina, and told her to bring her the telephone.

B
efore going out for dinner at his usual place, Lojacono got the phone call from Marinella.

These days he talked to his daughter every day, ever since they'd reconciled after months of painful silence. It was still too soon for an actual visit, but there had been unmistakable progress: from a refusal to speak, to one-syllable answers, and then on to the occasional chilly report on the life the girl was leading, the progress of their conversations had been slow and difficult.

Lojacono loved his daughter dearly, and being apart from her had all but sent him over the edge; but in the aftermath of his trial and reassignment into exile, his wife hadn't hesitated in turning against him, not so much because she actually thought Lojacono was guilty of the charges that had been brought, but because of the social penalities that had come with them. To feel like a pariah, to see doors slammed in her face, to know that her friends were avoiding her: she wore a scarlet letter, and that meant no verdict could diminish her pain.

Even worse, Sonia and Marinella had been moved to Palermo as a precaution against any possible retaliation: Lojacono couldn't imagine why anyone would take revenge against his family for something he hadn't done, but everyone had to comply with the judge's decisions.

Marinella was fifteen years old, and along with the standard array of behavioral issues common to teenagers, she was an introvert, reluctant to try new things and meet new people; being uprooted from the life that was familiar to her, from a small city like Agrigento, where everyone had known everyone else for generations, had been like dropping an atomic bomb on a tropical atoll. Hearing her mother spew venom against her father and blame him for even the smallest of their new problems had done the rest, and Lojacono lost all contact with the girl.

But when he was confronted with the innocent blood of the Crocodile's victims, his daughter's absence from his life had suddenly seemed intolerable; and so, violating the terms of the divorce and his own good sense, he had phoned her, expecting her not to pick up.

Marinella had surprised him, not only taking his call but reestablishing regular phone conversations. Little by little, she had told him about the trouble she was having fitting into her new life, the challenges of getting along with her new classmates and teachers. Then Lojacono had listened as a few budding acquaintances blossomed into friendships: a girl her age who lived nearby and walked to school with her, another girl in their class who'd started walking with them. Now Marinella had a group of friends she went out with on a regular basis: to the movies, to get a pizza.