Converging Parallels (28 page)

They went inside.

The brothel was called Albergo Belsole and behind the chipped ormolu reception desk, between the rows of hanging keys, there was a trusty plaster statue of a north African soldier in his loose baggy trousers, a kepi pushed back from his forehead and his tunicked arm leaning on an upright musket. A woman—blonde, with bright lipstick that made her lips look like colored rubber bands—emerged from behind a curtain of hanging plastic ribbons.

“Signora Cucina?” Magagna asked peremptorily.

She nodded.

“Pubblica Sicurezza. We received your call. Where is he?” Magagna did not even show his card. Trotti could sense that he was ill at ease and he wondered why.

“At last,” the woman said in a low, masculine voice. The short hairs along the upper lip were dark. She made a prodding movement with a finger; a rough finger hardened by work and a fingernail with dark varnish. “Over there, on the third floor.”

She watched them leave and cross the narrow road.

Somebody, somewhere, was singing an aria from Tosca. From an open door, further down the road, there was the sound of a hammer regularly striking hard metal. They went into a small courtyard and up an outside stairway.

“It was the woman who phoned,” Magagna said, slightly out of breath.

Beneath their feet the stairs were thin slabs of flint; the flint had begun to splinter and beneath the slabs, nothing but the emptiness of the stairwell.

They stopped at the landing of the third floor.

The dirty brown door was not closed; they pushed against the fissured wood and entered the apartment.

A smell of encrusted dirt, old wine, garlic and blocked drains. A single flyblown lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The window giving onto the street was open and there was a bed along the wall. Shafts of sunlight formed parallels on the grime of the floor, across the tiles that had once been black and white but were now crossed and creased with dirt and dried mud. A radio, an old-fashioned box of walnut with warped inlay, and cloaked in dust, blinked hopefully, the amber dial glowing. The sound of Tosca filled the room, echoing off the soiled plaster of the empty walls.

The old man was listening to the music. He was slumped in a broken armchair. His head lolled forward, his chin propped by the swelling of a goiter. His eyes were open, bloodshot. He looked up slowly at his two visitors. Trotti turned off the radio.

“I killed her,” the old man said.

His feet were propped against a stool; he lowered the naked feet onto the floor. The toes were ill-formed and grimy; the pale flesh of the instep lined with protruding blue veins.

“Pubblica Sicurezza.”

“I was expecting you.” He had not shaved for several days and white bristles had sprouted from the leather of his deformed jaw. “She deserved it, the stupid whore.”

“Who?”

“A stupid old cow.” He spat onto the floor and then wiped the damp lips with the back of his hand.

“That’s no reason to kill her.”

“And you’re a fool.” The bloodshot eyes looked at Magagna. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He leaned in the chair and an outstretched hand tapped the floor. There was a dark green bottle and beside it an empty, crumpled packet of Calipso cigarettes. The hand found the packet and the old man uncrumpled it like a banker smoothing a valuable banknote. “Christ.” He looked at his visitors and attempted a smile.

Several teeth were missing; those that remained were badly stained. “A cigarette?”

Magagna produced his packet and held out a single cigarette. The man took it, looked at it, sniffed it and snorted. Then he snapped off the filter tip and stuck the end of crumbling Virginia tobacco in his old mouth. His eyes remained on his visitors.

Magagna held out a light.

“Christ.” He breathed in deeply. “Christ, that’s better.”

“Why did you kill her?” Trotti had moved towards the wall near the window to be near the fresh air; it was hot in the room.

“I didn’t say I killed anybody.”

Magagna and Trotti gave each other a glance. Magagna raised an eyebrow.

“Signor Gerevini, we know you killed her.”

A silence while the old man smoked; then he started to laugh. “Who told you, then?” He laughed again.

“You lived with her, didn’t you?” Trotti replied.

The smile vanished fast. “The worst mistake of my rotten life.” Again he spat, the spittle landing in the same place. “She was a pain in the arse. She spent all her money on herself and she was a lazy, dirty old cow.” He shook his head. He held the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and the twirling smoke caused his eyes to water.

“Her money.”

“She earned it. We were married, weren’t we?” The old voice squealed with outrage.

Trotti was amazed. “Married?” He moved away from the wall and approached the man.

“Of course. We were living together, her and me. We were together.”

“Except when she was working.”

He now looked at Magagna with hatred in his watery, red eyes. “You think I can work? What am I supposed to do? A pension that the government refuses to give me. What do you want? To beg.” He pointed a finger at the goiter. “With this? It’s all right for you—you’re young and you’ve got your health. But me, what am I supposed to do?”

Trotti asked, “You loved her?”

A pause while the man still stared angrily at Magagna; then he shrugged. “She was useful, wasn’t she?” He lowered his voice. “And there were times when she needed me. Just like in any marriage.”

Magagna spoke softly, “You shared the same bed.”

“Of course,” Gerevini replied without looking at him. “You think I’m a cripple? But more recently … she was busier and when she came back, she was tired.”

“Wasn’t she getting a bit old for the game?”

The laugh was cold. Cold and humorless. “Old—of course she was old, but that’s what they all want. They’re perverts, aren’t they? Vicious and depraved; the older the flesh, the more flabby it is, the more they like it. Perverts.” He stopped to stub out the cigarette on the dirty floor; it continued to smolder, the smoke curling towards the open window. “She thought it was love, the silly cow.”

“Love?”

“She was like a child; still believed in all that fairy tale shit. She fell for him. The silly old hag, she was old enough to be his mother—and certainly stupid enough.” He gave a rasping laugh. “Could have been his grandmother but she believed him.”

He then rose to his feet; he was unsteady and he tottered slightly; his naked, runnelled feet on the cold floor. He moved towards a large refrigerator that had once been white. He pulled open the battered door and took a can of Peroni beer from the unlit inside. He returned to his seat, ripped the can open and threw the steel ring out of the window. “A soldier, a kid from Reggio Calabria,” he said, after taking a swig at the can of beer. “She thought he loved her. She was going to leave with him.
When his military service was over. You realize”—he threw up a hand; a movement of frustration and poorly assimilated amazement—“they were going to live in the south. Work the land and be together. Grow artichokes.”

“Who was this man?”

“You think I know? You think I met him? I would have killed him, the lying, fornicating southern bastard.” He looked at Magagna; there was no hostility in his eyes. “A cigarette?”

Magagna gave him another and again he snapped off the filter. He breathed in the smoke gratefully. “She knew I’d kill him. I told her so.”

“So you killed her instead?”

“She was mad.” He shrugged, the shoulder touched the growth on his neck. “I was doing her a favor. A big favor.” More beer, a drag on the cigarette. “In love. She told me she was in love. She didn’t understand that all he wanted was to get it free. Love her? Of course he didn’t love her. She was a fat, ugly old fool. But she was easy pickings for a southern peasant.” Saliva and beer and smoke caught in his throat and he started to cough. Slowly at first and then the cough, like a fire, caught at his body and the thin frame within the dirty pajamas and stained T-shirt began to shake. Magagna found a plastic mug—it was lying under the bed—and filled it with water. The old man pushed away the proffered cup and continued to cough for several minutes. When he ceased, there were more tears in his eyes and beer-tinted saliva dribbled down the stubbly old chin in two lines, like snail tracks.

“When did you murder her?”

“Murder?” The word hovered, filling the dirty room.

“You killed her, didn’t you?” Magagna asked brusquely.

“It wasn’t murder.” He appeared offended, the running eyes glaring at Magagna. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It was a mistake, an accident. You see, she made me angry. She did it on purpose. Taunting me; she called me an old man, an old wreck. She—nearly fifteen years younger than me and breasts down to here?” The old hands tapped at his skinny belly. “And she called me an old man. Not up to it, she said. Past it, time I was put out to grass.” He snorted, his eyes angry, and made an obscene
gesture with his forearm. “Like steel. An old man but I can get it up with the best of them. Sixty years old and then some but I can get it up all right.” He glared at both of them. “Probably harder and longer than you—the younger generation, they’re all queers. Tempered steel.” He tapped at his groin and the stained pajama. “Tempered steel.”

“How did you kill her?” Trotti was unsmiling.

“An accident. She killed herself.” The eyes were now cunning. “She fell.”

“Where?”

“On the stairs. She was drunk, like the slut that she was; and she was late. She’d been with him, hadn’t she, and he had got her drunk and screwed her senseless. But I was waiting for her.” He now stared at the floor. “I didn’t mean to harm her. The old fool. Just a lesson, that’s all I wanted to give her. I hit her.” He shrugged. “I’d hit her before, she was used to it, but this time she fell. Must’ve cracked her head. Fell down two flights.” He repeated, “Two flights.”

“What time was this?”

“Six in the morning,” he answered hurriedly as though irritated by the interruption. “And when I picked her up—I’m not a young man, I can’t move fast—when I picked her up, she was dead. I’ve seen dead people often enough and I knew she was dead. There was blood in her mouth and her eyes were staring. The silly bitch, it was all her own fault.”

“So what did you do?”

“She was dead—what could I do? It wasn’t my fault, was it? Was it? But nobody had seen me and I thought—well, when I was in prison, I used to work in the kitchen and I had learned a little about butchering.”

He grinned. “I carried her back upstairs. Not easy, but I didn’t make much noise. And the next day—she was lying on the bed, there, Commissario, but with her head in a funny position and her neck was bloated. The next day I bought a couple of knives. A large one, a chopper, and a smaller one.” He pulled again at the cigarette and drank some more beer. Then he slowly got down onto his knees. He began to cough again, spitting light flecks of
spittle onto the floor. This time the coughing bout was short and once he had regained control over his trembling body, he pulled a cardboard suitcase from under the bed. He opened it; a few paper clippings, a photograph of the Pope and almost hidden by brown wrapping paper, the glinting steel edge of a knife.

“I cut her up, Commissario.” He gave Trotti a smile—a craftsman pleased with his work. “I cut her up here on the floor.”

T
ROTTI WAS DEPRESSED
.

While Magagna had been interviewing the Guerra girl—Trotti had not felt up to it, he knew he could not face the young arrogance and self-righteousness of the revolutionary—he had spent two hours in a stuffy room, thick with smoke, listening to the old man’s confession while a uniformed policeman banged away at an old typewriter. The sporadic rhythm of the machine, the bittersweet tobacco smoke, the smell of the old man’s unwashed body—they were like burning spikes in his brain. He wanted to go home. He had had enough of other people’s suffering.

Trotti recognized the tall clumsy figure coming up the steps. He turned away.

“Commissario!”

Ermagni lurched towards him and Trotti, realizing there was no escape, gave a weary smile.

“I should be working,” Ermagni said as they shook hands. The large cow-eyes were now red and were underlined by black half-circles. “I had to see you.” A quick, appeasing smile.

“I’m busy, I’m afraid.” Hearing the harshness of his reply, Trotti added, “My wife is waiting for me.”

“They won’t let me see her.”

They were standing at the top of the stairs outside the Questura. It was evening and after a long day, the air was beginning to cool. A few passers-by in Strada Nuova, some eating ice
creams. There was a smell of honeysuckle blossom and fumes from the buses.

“Come.” He pulled at Trotti’s arm. The yellow taxi, its plastic signal already switched on, was parked on the pavement by the typewriter shop. “Come—it won’t take long.”

“I’ve got to go home.” Trotti tried to shrug off the large, hairy hand on his arm. “My wife’s waiting for me.”

“They won’t let me see her.” Ermagni did not let go but instead, pulling Trotti, led him towards the taxi. “They say that I’m not reliable. They’ve told her that I killed her mother.” He opened the car door. “That I killed my wife.”

“Look.” Trotti resisted the hand that was pushing him into the front seat. “I can’t come. You understand? I can’t come. I’m busy, I’ve got to go home.”

“But you must.” His eyes were strangely innocent; and though his breath was heavy with alcohol, he was not drunk. “I’m asking you for Anna’s sake.”

“I’ve done enough for Anna. She’s alive, isn’t she? Alive and well. What more do you want?”

The large eyes looked at him; large, bloodshot eyes that failed to understand the reluctance in Trotti. “You’re her godfather. A policeman. They’ll listen to you.” He tapped his chest; he was wearing a yellow sweater. “They despise me because I’m a taxi driver. Not good enough for them or for their daughter.”

“There’s nothing I can do. My wife is waiting for me.” He pushed the hand away and at the same time placed a hand on the shoulder of Ermagni’s jacket. “I’ve had a busy day. Understand me. I’m sorry.”