Adam's Rib (16 page)

T
he music came from the last movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and it was being played by Rocco's Nokia, lying on the glass coffee table. First Rocco opened one eye, then the other. He was sprawled on the sofa, it was dark out, it had stopped raining, and his mouth was gummy and dry. He reached out his arm and grabbed the electronic device: “Who's busting my balls at this time of night?”

“Dottore, it's Caterina Rispoli. We have him here.”

Rocco dragged himself up to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes: “Who do you have where? What time is it?”

“It's three in the morning. And we have Gregorio Chevax out front of his warehouse. It might be a good idea for you to swing on by, sir.”

“He fell for it?”

“Like a fat chicken,” she said, using a common Italian phrase.

“Would you explain something to me, Caterina? Would
you tell me why people say someone falls for it like a fat chicken? Where is it these fat chickens fall from?”

“I don't know, it's just a figure of speech.”

“Well, it's bullshit.” He snapped shut his cell phone and got to his feet. He uncricked his neck and took a deep breath. “Well, let's go talk to this dumb cluck. Or maybe I should say, let's go talk to this triggerfish.”

The road was black and there wasn't a star in the sky. At the end of the straightaway, behind the crowns of the trees that concealed the curve, a glow of light broke the darkness, a milky white halo of illumination. It might have been a house on fire.

Instead it was the headlights of the police vehicle meeting the headlights of a Fiat panel van. The two vehicles parked outside the front gate of the bathroom supply warehouse seemed to be having a standoff, or a stare-down. Rocco stopped his car and got out. The air was chilly. It was possible to make out the black shadows of the mountains that loomed over the valley. A light breeze tossed the branches of the fir trees. The dirty slushy snow had withstood that day's rain and was piled high alongside the roadway.

Gregorio Chevax was leaning against the hood of the Fiat Ducato. Italo stood about a yard away from him, watching him and smoking a cigarette. Caterina was sitting in the car with the door open, one foot on the asphalt and the other inside the car. Rocco joined the group with a broad smile on his face. Caterina leaped out of the car. “Gregorio!” cried the deputy police chief, throwing both arms wide. “We meet again so soon!”

The man stood there without speaking. “Well, what happened?”

“Come take a look for yourself, Dottore,” said Italo, leaving Caterina to keep an eye on the reformed fence.

They walked around the panel van. The rear doors swung open. Italo switched on his flashlight. Inside were a couple of plastic-wrapped sinks, two sealed cartons, and an open aluminum toolkit. Inside the toolkit, though, were plastic bags instead of screwdrivers or drills.

“You want to see some?” asked Italo, picking up one of the bags. He opened it. Rocco peered inside and by flashlight there appeared rings, bracelets, and necklaces.

“It's full of this junk,” said Italo, picking up another bag and holding it up, open, in front of Rocco's face.

“Excellent.”

“Lot of stuff, eh?”

“There's only one thing in particular that interests me. Let's see if I can find it.” Rocco grabbed the flashlight out of Italo's hands and started rummaging through the little valise. He tossed aside coins, cuff links, and watches. Italo followed every single movement. “What are we going to do, Rocco?”

“What do you mean?” the deputy police chief replied, his face poking into a bag.

“I mean does all this go to headquarters?”

Rocco smiled. “Now, let me explain something, Italo: This is all stolen merchandise. That means it's been reported to the police. In thieves' argot you know what items like this are called? They say they're bent. That is, their value is limited
to the gold or precious stones you can get by dismantling them. Because a piece of jewelry like this can't be sold as it is.” He pulled out a beautiful brooch shaped like a peacock and studded with blue and green stones. “Look at this one, for instance: It's an antique. It ought to be worth, say, ten thousand euros, according to bill of sale et cetera et cetera. But if you break it up, you'd get little or nothing. No, Italo, this stuff goes straight to police headquarters.”

Italo looked crestfallen. He was hoping to put a little something aside, repay himself for that Saturday night spent roughing it. “Too bad. I was counting on it,” he said to Rocco.

“Now open up the boxes too. If you ask me, there's plenty more. For instance, look at those vertical ones. You'd have to guess those are paintings.”

ROCCO WENT BACK TO WHERE CATERINA WAS STANDING
guard over Gregorio. He was carrying the peacock-shaped brooch. “Well, well, well, Gregorio Chevax . . . I bet you feel like a bit of an asshole now, don't you?”

The man had lost all the arrogance and pride of just a few hours before. “Caterina, tell me just what happened.”

“Certainly. Chevax drove this delivery van out of his bathroom supplies warehouse at one forty-five
A.M.
And this is where we pulled him over. He immediately showed signs of extreme nervousness.”

Rocco gazed at the man with a broad smile, but Chevax stared stonily into the distance, somewhere among the trees. Caterina went on. “At that point my colleague and I became
suspicious and asked if we could take a look inside the van. And we found what you just saw, sir.”

Caterina had finished her story. Schiavone wasn't talking. He was staring at Gregorio Chevax and waiting for him to say something. But now the man not only resembled a fish; he also produced the same limited amount of sound. The light breeze whistled through the pine needles. Rocco lit a cigarette. “If you'd been a little more polite, Gregorio, we wouldn't be here now, at three in the morning, freezing our balls off in the cold and wasting our time interrogating you.”

Finally he raised his eyes. “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

“Did you call him?”

“Yes, but he didn't pick up,” Caterina broke in.

“What a shitty lawyer, eh? All right, let's turn this night around. You see if you can get in touch with your lawyer, and while you go on calling him, my officers are going to take you in.” Then he turned to Caterina. “Get a couple of squad cars up here. Let's take the delivery van in and impound it. And tell Deruta to draw up a list of the objects recovered, with plenty of pictures. One picture per item, that's important.”

“All right, Dottore.”

“Chevax, what's starting for you today is going to be an ordeal in comparison with which Our Lord's tribulations on Mount Calvary will seem like a Sunday jaunt.” He held up the peacock brooch. “I even told you, no? All I wanted was this, and I would have let you go back to your fucked-up pursuits. But you wouldn't lend me a hand . . . you had to prove that your dick was longer.”

“When my lawyer gets his hands on this story, maybe you're going to be the one experiencing the ordeal.”

Rocco smiled. “My friend, my life has already been an ordeal for the past six years, at least. You know what we say in Rome?
Lei mi fa una pippa
, Chevax. You're nothing but a jack-off to me. You and your lawyer. Shall I summarize the situation for you? You were caught red-handed with stolen goods in a legal police search, you have a rap sheet with prior convictions for theft and receiving stolen goods, and the only thing your lawyer can plead is mental infirmity. But I don't think he can pull that off. You see, you don't exactly have mental problems. What you have are problems with your IQ and I don't think those are considered valid grounds for clemency under criminal law.”

Gregorio's face had turned whiter than the headlights.

“Can we come to a deal of some sort?” he asked in a low voice.

“What did you have in mind?”

“You're interested in that brooch. What if I tell you who brought it to me and we just drop the whole thing?”

“Well, if you'd given me that information three hours ago I would have been delighted. But it's too late now. Put yourself in my shoes. How on earth can I cover all this up?” He pointed to the delivery van where Italo was unloading box after box. “And then there's something you don't know. I already knew who brought you that brooch. I just needed to be one hundred percent certain of it.” He buttoned up his overcoat. “Fucking freezing out, isn't it?”

Pulling up his collar, he went back to his car.

“SCHIAVONE! FIRST OFF: I DON'T LIKE BEING WOKEN
up at six in the morning. Moreover, when it's six in the morning on a Sunday, let's just say that my annoyance and irritation are elevated by a power of three. And second of all, I don't like being called at home.” Judge Baldi spoke on his phone with the groggy voice of a man yanked out of a deep sleep.

“I know, Dottore, but there are two inaccuracies in what you just said to me.”

“Let's hear them.”

“First of all, it's not six in the morning, it's seven thirty. Second, I'm not calling you at home, I'm calling you on your cell phone. And I have no idea whether or not your cell phone is necessarily at your home.”

“Normally, at seven thirty on a Sunday morning, it is.”

“I just assumed you were already poring over documents, Dottore. There's nothing I can do about it. I just have this picture of you.”

“Schiavone, you just can't bring yourself to be fully serious even for a moment, can you?”

“I'm completely serious, sir. And the reason I'm calling you is that I firmly believe in rules and institutions.”

“Go fuck yourself, but first tell me what you want.”

“Two arrest warrants. One for Gregorio Chevax and another for Hilmi Bastiany.”

“You want to tell me on what charges?”

“Sure. Chevax for receiving stolen goods. Hilmi for sale of narcotics, assault and battery on an officer of the law, and burglary.”

“And you call me at seven thirty on Sunday morning for nonsense like this?”

“Does it help if I tell you that Hilmi Bastiany committed the burglary in the apartment of Esther Baudo, our victim on Via Brocherel?”

Rocco heard Baldi cluck his tongue. “Fine. I'll make myself a cup of coffee . . . Are you going to send someone or come yourself?”

“I'll send someone.”

“Do me a favor. Don't send me that fat officer or the one from Abruzzo.”

“Don't worry. The fat guy's not on duty, and the other one is at the Umberto Parini.”

“What happened to him?”

“Hilmi sent him to the hospital, Dottore.”

“Let me get this straight, Schiavone. When did he do that?”

“I had sent my two intrepid officers out on a stakeout. There was a brawl. We even have it on video. The security camera in a pharmacy. In fact, I'll make a copy of it and send it to you for your information.”

“I know them. They're those surveillance videos in black-and-white, all speeded up. You'd need the forensic squad to even figure out what's happening.”

“Believe me, Dottor Baldi, watch this video and you'll thank me.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

“How long is it?”

“Three minutes. When you were a kid did you watch the Saturday afternoon comedy roundup,
Oggi le comiche
?”

“Certainly, like all the other kids, Saturday at midday, as soon as we got home from school. Why?”

“In comparison with this thing, Buster Keaton was strictly an amateur.”

“Schiavone, I want that video here at my home with all deliberate speed!”

HE'D SENT SCIPIONI AND ITALO TO GO PICK UP HILMI
and keep him in a room where he couldn't talk to anyone else, especially not his buddy Fabio Righetti, with whom he'd dealt drugs and assaulted the two police officers. Chevax's lawyer was out of town and wouldn't be back in Aosta until the next day. At eleven o'clock, Rocco had gotten into his car, set the GPS to the address in Ciriè, and taken the highway to Turin.

As soon as he drove into the Piedmont region the sky turned blue and the sun, tepid and pale, did its best to warm up the countryside. He lost himself in a reverie, staring at the low, dark vineyards bunched up at the foot of the mountains, and the bristling Savoy outpost forts, grim and threatening and squat, set among outcroppings of rock.

Skinny black carrion crows flew in lazy circles over the stubbly fields in search of food. Now and then one would
venture to the middle of the deserted roadway if there was roadkill to pick over. Rocco hated those birds. Even in Rome they'd shouldered aside the other bird species. They'd devour the eggs and ravage the nests of sparrows, robins, and goldfinches, and their population was booming. They were becoming the masters of the skies over Italy, and by now the only winged creatures that could stand up to them in Rome were the seagulls and the big green parrots that had colonized the major city parks. Now those were authentic birds of prey: they came from Brazil and when it came to ravenous appetites they could certainly hold their own with any common Italian carrion crow. Whenever he was in Villa Borghese or Villa Ada and saw those parrots flying overhead in formation like so many German Stukas, green and red, with their unpleasant cawing cries, he'd think of the first idiot who had opened a cage and let the alpha parrot out, the pioneer of what had now become an enormous deadly and aggressive colony that was systematically slaughtering Rome's sparrows and other small native species. That said, when it came to looks, the parrots certainly stood head and shoulders above those mangy awkward carrion crows. Rocco waited apprehensively for the day that some idiot in Rome decided to let an anaconda go free. The alpha anaconda. Then things would certainly get interesting. If nothing else, there would be a sharp drop in the Eternal City's eternal rat population, which were now rivaling Great Danes in sheer size. Roman cats would flee immediately at the sight of a rat. Now he'd like to see those swaggering rodent bullies faced with an anaconda from the
Amazon delta, thirty or so feet long, capable of swallowing a southern Italian water buffalo in minutes. This would be just one more collateral effect of globalization, and a positive one in Rocco Schiavone's opinion. Certainly, it would be a little complicated to deal with giant snakes draped over the branches of the plane trees along the banks of the Tiber, but there at least the enemy would be visible, less treacherous, handsome, and even poetic in a way. Moreover, those snakes don't carry the infectious diseases that rats do. Perhaps there'd even be a boom in the production of handbags and shoes. Who could say.