Adam's Rib (10 page)

Fabio nodded with an idiotic grin playing over his lips.

“Do you have a realist's morning prayer of your own, Fabio?”

The kid thought it over: “Francesca.”

“Who's that?”

“My girlfriend.”

“Good boy. You ever been behind bars?”

Fabio said nothing, and just shook his head no.

“All right, then. Let me give you a little useful information. Behind bars, you'll meet plenty of nasty people, and someone like you could become the realist's morning prayer for some guy standing six feet five and tipping the scales at close to three hundred pounds. But not three hundred pounds like Deruta, the one who arrested you. I'm talking about almost three hundred pounds of hard muscle, looking at a twenty-year sentence for murder, a guy who hasn't laid eyes on a woman for at least three years. You understand? That's no fun at all. And you're kind of cute, aside from the fucking zits you have, and I'm here to tell you that you should stop eating all that junk food. But in the slammer, behind bars, you're Miss Italy, believe me. Nope, no fun at all, no way. Trust me.” And he stubbed out the joint in the ashtray. “Now, I know that you can't actually give me the names. 'Cause if you do, you'll wind up lying in a gutter somewhere, sliced open like a baby lamb at Easter. And actually I'm not interested in knowing the names of the guys who give you the shit, not from you anyway. But you could give me the name of your friend, the kid who assaulted my officer. Now that might constitute a bargain. We could bring him in, bust his ass a little, and
if the two of you manage to keep from pulling any more fuckups for the next few years, you might even be able to lead a reasonably peaceful life in this town.”

“I don't even know the guy I was with. This was the first time I saw him.”

“Sure, and I'm a veteran of the First World War.”

“Really?” the dealer asked in a serious voice. Rocco glanced over at Italo, who spread both arms wide.

“It's late, I'm sick and tired, and I'm going to bed now. Pierron, lock him up and tomorrow we'll call the DA's office. A special-priority trial, one judge, no jury, and behind bars you go. So long, Righetti, say hi to Francesca for me when she brings you a dozen oranges. Actually, as long as she's coming to see you, ask her to bring you an extra-large tub of Vaseline. It'll make things easier.”

AS HE LEFT POLICE HEADQUARTERS HE RAN INTO
Officer Scipioni at the entrance: “What's up, Dottore? You going to the hospital to see D'Intino?”

“Not a chance. I'm going to bed. What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

“Shit,” he said. Even the highlights of the Roma-Inter game were shot by now. “Can you tell me how the game ended?”

“Two to nothing, Inter.”

“Hurrah. Take care of yourself, see you tomorrow.”

“You be well too, Dottore. And if you want a piece of
advice, pick a new soccer team. At least you'll get a little more fun out of life.”

“So I should take your lead and root for Juve?”

“What are you talking about? Juve? I root for Palermo.”

“If I ever start rooting for Palermo, make sure you send me to an analyst.
Buonanotte
, Scipio'.”

“YOU KNOW WHAT I WAS THINKING?” I SAY TO MARINA
the minute I walk in the door. I don't know where she is. Somewhere in the apartment, that much is certain. “What if I gave up the apartment and just stayed in a hotel? Wouldn't that be better?”

“You've never liked hotels,” she says to me. “You can't stand them, and you never could.”

She's right. I don't know why, but I'm always afraid someone is going to walk in with a vacuum cleaner when I'm naked or in my underwear. There's no real privacy in hotels. They know everything about you. What time you wake up, how you like your coffee, and even who you call on the phone.

I'm freezing. I take off my jacket, my sweater, and my flannel shirt, and I start trembling from the cold. This fucking chill has gotten deep inside me, and there's no way to get it out of my bones. You can't still have snow in March. “You can't still have snow in March,” I say to Marina when she appears in the door. She replies: “That's the way it is in Aosta. And if you ask me, you might still have snow in May if you're not careful.”

She's holding her notebook in one hand. She's always on the hunt for new words. She looks for them in the dictionary, or else maybe she reads them in books, writes them down, and learns them by heart. Once I looked in her notebook. It's half-empty. If you ask me, she tears the pages out, like a calendar. “You want to know the word for today?” she asks.

“Sure, go ahead and tell me.”

She runs toward the bed, barefoot. That's what Marina always does. She walks around barefoot at home, gets cold, and then dives under the blankets. She says it's more fun that way.

“All right then, the word for today is:
hemiplegia
. Paralysis of one side of the body.”

“Paralysis?”

“Yes. Physical. Or paralysis of the soul.”

“Am I hemiplegic?”

But she doesn't answer me. She puts her little notebook on the side table, pulls the blanket up to her chin, and says “Brrrr,” with laughing eyes. This is my moment, now it's my turn. I know that she'll get angry, but I also know that she's only pretending. I slip under the covers.

And sure enough, she gets angry.

“You stink of cigarettes!” and she tries to shove me away. But I just grab her tighter.

“Come on! At least take a shower first!”

Nothing doing, what are you thinking? I stay right there. And I wrap my arms around her. After all, it's always the same story. When we get in bed at night, she's always cold
and I'm always warm. Then during the night she steals all my heat and leaves me like this, frozen and alone on my half of the bed. In the morning, she's warm and I'm cold. And if I try to embrace her so I can warm up, she mutters and grumbles and turns her back on me. She always makes me laugh. Marina is possessive about her warmth.

She always has been.

I'm not possessive about mine. I'd give her every last bit of it.

I'd give her every last bit of it, if I could only wrap my arms around her again. Even just one last time. Just one last time, and after that, nothing.

D
'Intino was flat on his back in bed 14 in room 3 in the trauma ward at the Umberto Parini Hospital. His nose was wrapped in bandages and he had a gash on the right part of his forehead that the tincture of iodine made even more horrifying. He had both eyes closed and was breathing slowly. The physician on duty had accompanied the deputy police chief to the victim's bedside.

“Nasal fracture and a couple of shot ribs,” he'd told him.

Rocco looked at the patient. He was amazed to discover that he felt something that came dangerously close to pity for the poor man. Until just yesterday, he'd have happily shipped him off to some police station in the middle of the Maiella mountains, but now the sight of him, so helpless, in that hospital bed almost stirred a sense of tenderness. “How long will he have to stay here, Doctor?”

“We'll keep him here for a couple of days, then send him on bed rest. Those ribs have to heal up.”

Just then, D'Intino opened his eyes. “Deputy Police Chief . . .” he said in a faint voice, “have you seen what happened to me?”

“I sure have. At least now you can stay at home and rest up. You and Deruta were certainly on the job yesterday.”

“Thanks. But did you catch them?”

“Just one. Can you remember anything about the one who attacked you?”

D'Intino tried to change his position and a grimace of pain appeared on his badly dinged-up face. “Not much, Dotto'. That guy came straight at me and gave me a head butt right to the nose. It hurt so much that I saw literally all the stars in the sky, you know that?”

“Every last one?”

“Not one was missing. Then I hit the ground, and I think that must be when I fractured my ribs. Because I broke my ribs too.”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“Just barely. It was all dark out. When it's dark out, everybody looks the same. He had a hood over his head. He was dark. I think he was part black.”

“What does it mean that he was part black?”

“That he wasn't black. But he wasn't white either.”

D'Intino was dragging him into a nonsensical conversation, so the deputy police chief immediately changed tactics and spoke to the doctor. “That cut on his forehead?” He pointed to a slice about four inches long.

“I dunno, what can I tell you? It's a narrow cut, and it looks like someone did it with a metal object of some kind.”

“A knife blade?”

“Could be.”

Rocco snapped his fingers in front of D'Intino's face to get his attention. “Hey, D'Intino, look over here! Did your attacker have a knife?”

“No. No knife. Ran away.”

“I understand that part.”

“Fast, he was so fast.
Teneva lu foche a li pidi
,” he said, slipping briefly into dialect. “He truly had flames on his feet.” And he dropped off into sleep as if a sudden bout of narcolepsy had swept over him. They wouldn't be getting any more information out of that man.

Rocco shook the doctor's hand, added “thank you very much,” and then left the room that D'Intino was sharing with two young men with their legs in traction. “Break a leg!” Rocco called out to the two teenagers, and they both replied with their middle fingers held up in plain view.

As he was walking downstairs, he remembered that he still hadn't called Nora. To do that now would be a mistake, because he'd find her royally pissed off at him. But not to do it would be even worse, because it would mean putting an end to their relationship once and for all. As he was caught in that morass of Hamletic indecision, his cell phone rang. It wasn't Nora; the switchboard number from the office appeared on the display. “Hello?”

“This is Italo. We've had a piece of luck.”

“What in particular?”

“There was a security camera running in a pharmacy
last night, and it filmed what happened to D'Intino and Deruta. I've got it here at headquarters.”

“I'll be right there.”

“Okay, but get ready.”

“For what?”

“I've never laughed so hard in my life.”

BLACK-AND-WHITE, WITHOUT A SOUND TRACK: THAT'S
how the video recorded by the pharmacy security camera appeared on the deputy police chief's computer screen.

EXTERIOR NIGHT.

Darkness. A street. Traffic barriers surrounding an excavation site. Signs reading
MEN WORKING
. In the distance, a low wall, with two young men seated, chatting. A third young man sits astride a moped.

“HOLD ON A SECOND,” SAID ROCCO. CATERINA STOPPED
the video. “Are our guys in their car?”

“Look closely,” said Caterina, touching the tip of her pen to the right side of the computer screen. “Right there, you see? Here they are, behind this bush.”

“Ah, okay, right.” Rocco nodded.

Behind the black shade of a leafy hedge by the side of the road, it was just possible to make out the shapes of two figures. “They look like an illicit couple necking.”

“And to think, at their age . . .” added Italo.

“I told them to keep out of sight. This way they're not thirty feet away from the kids. Okay, why am I even surprised? It's Deruta and D'Intino. Go on, Caterina, start the video again.”

“Now you'll see Righetti and his little friend show up.”

Caterina pushed return on the keyboard and the video started up again.

STILL EXTERIOR NIGHT
.

From the end of the street suddenly two shadows emerge. Wearing hoodies.

The two new arrivals go over to the trio, who turn to greet them. Fist bumps and high-fives. Righetti and his partner stick their hands into their pockets and pull out baggies.

“NOW WATCH THIS, HERE'S WHERE IT HAPPENS,” SAID
Inspector Rispoli.

FROM THE HEDGE WHERE D'INTINO AND DERUTA ARE
hiding comes a camera flash.

“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL . . . ?” SAID ROCCO.

“They used a flash,” Caterina sadly admitted.

Italo shook his head. “That's just crazy. They used a flash.”

THE FIVE KIDS ALL TURN AT THE SAME TIME AND
look straight at the policemen's hiding place.

The stakeout is blown.

The three kids who have been quietly talking suddenly take off like lightning bolts, two on the moped and one on foot. At last D'Intino and Deruta shoot out of concealment. Righetti and his buddy stand there, frozen on the sidewalk, staring as those two cops emerge from behind the laurel branches. Deruta levels his pistol. D'Intino, on the other hand, is brandishing the camera, as if it were a pump-action rifle.

Righetti darts to one side and goes running headlong down the street, closely pursued by Deruta, who hauls his 285 pounds with considerable effort, while the other kid heads straight for D'Intino and knocks his camera to the ground.

Righetti in the meantime suddenly trips over the construction barriers. Deruta right behind him does the same thing, twisting and twirling like a bowling pin, landing on top of the dealer and losing his weapon as he falls.

The dealer's accomplice, on the other hand, is in the middle of a fight. He delivers a hard head butt straight to D'Intino's nose. As the policeman falls to the ground, his attacker folds over at the waist and grabs his face.

He's clearly in pain. There is no sound, but he's unmistakably cursing. The head butt hurt him too.

Nothing daunted, Deruta has grabbed Righetti by his trousers and, stretched out flat on the ground, is trying to drag the kid toward him while he unleashes a hail of kicks.
In the end, Righetti's jeans with the big side pockets slide down his legs and the dealer finds himself sitting in the middle of the street, in his underwear.

Across the street, the accomplice, bent at the waist and clearly in agony from the blow to his forehead, starts to run while D'Intino squirms on the pavement like an earthworm.

Now Righetti is back on his feet, in his underwear. He's lost a shoe as well as his pants. Deruta swings the pants in a circle overhead, like an Argentine bolo, and lets fly. The pair of jeans tumble between the fugitive's legs, and he trips and sprawls headlong across the asphalt.

The police officer gets a running start, leaps into a flying tackle, wobbling through the air like Rey Mysterio, the famous American professional wrestler, and lands with his almost three hundred pounds of bulk right on top of the hapless drug dealer, who succumbs, crushed under all that weight.

Officer Deruta starts bouncing up and down, his derriere crashing down on Righetti's stomach over and over; clearly unable to catch his breath, the dealer tries in vain to get that pachyderm off his belly.

D'Intino has finally gotten back on his feet; his face is covered with blood. He's managed to pick up his camera and he walks over to Deruta and Righetti, threatening the kid with his Canon. Then, in the blink of an eye, he vanishes, swallowed up by a hole in the ground.

He's dropped into the crater of the excavation, and now there's no sign of him on the screen.

Deruta, taking advantage of the fact that the kid is half-
unconscious, has managed to get his hands back on his pistol. He tosses it from one hand to the other as if it's a freshly caught fish. Suddenly, in the black-and-white of the video, a tongue of flame bursts from the muzzle of the Beretta and the glass of a front door nearby flies into a thousand shards.

Righetti freezes in terror. Now Deruta is all alone, in the middle of the street, and he's aiming his pistol at a kid in his underwear while the screen finally begins to populate with people. Various people, rubberneckers and passersby hurrying to lend a hand to the police. Behind Deruta and the boy trembling in his underwear, a pair of hands slowly emerge from the hole in the ground, behind the signs reading
MEN WORKING
. Connected to the hands are a pair of arms, and then at last D'Intino's head emerges, as he manages to clamber out of that urban sinkhole. Standing just on the edge of the excavation, he wobbles back and forth as if he's standing on the bowsprit of a ship, and finally he collapses to the ground.

Out cold.

Fade to black.

ROCCO, CATERINA, AND ITALO JUST SAT THERE,
Staring at the computer screen.

“This video is staying right here at headquarters, and it is never to leave the building, is that clear?” the deputy police chief said sternly.

“Certainly, Dottore.”

“Or if it does have to leave the building, I want to make sure I have a copy. It's one of the finest things this city has given me since the day I arrived. In comparison with this, Laurel and Hardy are, I don't know, Bergman's
The Seventh Seal
.”

And they all three burst out laughing.

“If you'd be so good, Caterina, go back to the point where D'Intino's attacker runs away.”

Rispoli dragged the mouse and started the video again.

Once again, you could see D'Intino bent over in pain and his attacker take to his heels.

“Start it from that exact point again, Caterì, and look carefully at the shoes.”

Italo and Inspector Rispoli concentrated on the screen.

“They sparkle,” said Pierron.

“That's right. There, you see? D'Intino did tell me that the guy's feet were on fire, and in effect, if you will . . .”

It was true. The fugitive seemed to be wearing shoes that sparkle and glowed.

“Those are the kind that are in fashion right now,” said Caterina. “They're American, you can see them in the dark, for when you go jogging in the middle of the street at night, for example.”

“Right, for example.” Rocco stood up at his desk. He nodded, silently. Italo and the inspector stood there looking at him.

“Very good!” the deputy police chief finally said. “All right then, let's get busy. Caterina, go have a few chats with the Baudos' neighbors. Try to understand their habits, who
they see, in other words, everything you can find out about that poor woman. Take Scipioni with you; he strikes me as a solid cop.”

“All right, I'm on my way.”

“Do you have civilian clothing you can put on?” he asked her.

“Why?”

“Because if people see you in civilian dress they're much more likely to talk. Didn't you know that?”

“I've got a change of clothes downstairs, in the locker room.”

“Get changed and go.”

“You learn something new every day,” the inspector said with a smile, then left the deputy police chief's office.

“So what are you and I going to do, Rocco?” asked Italo as soon as they were alone.

“You and I are going to go pay a call on Fumagalli at the hospital.”

“All right. Okay if I wait outside the morgue?”

“No. You need to get used to it.”

“Why?”

“Because it's part of your job, for Christ's sake. Do I really have to explain that to you every single time?”

Italo nodded his head, not particularly convinced, while Rocco went over to the window. He clasped his hands together behind his back and stood there, watching.

“Well? Aren't we going?” asked Italo, with his hand on the door handle.

“Wait five minutes.”

It had stopped snowing and the wind had died down a bit too. But the clouds still clung to the mountaintops, and the sun had to be out there somewhere, but it just couldn't penetrate that dense and cottony blanket. Rocco Schiavone watched people strolling blithely down the sidewalks, with the gait of a carefree Saturday morning. There were young people loading skis onto the roof of an off-road vehicle, and a man in his fifties walking an Irish setter; the dog held its head high, sniffing at the air. Its tail was straight and motionless: the dog had caught a whiff of something. The deputy police chief smiled at the thought of how closely he resembled that gundog. He'd spent most of his life identifying scents that shouldn't be there—a single sour note and the reason it smelled.