Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (19 page)

Dodo is afraid, very afraid; but it seems to him that Lena is even more afraid than he is. In his pocket he clutches the Batman action figure: Hero, you're a hero.

“Then we'll do what he wants, and we'll be free again. Don't be afraid, Lena: You're a woman, and we men know what we have to do.”

In the darkness he can feel Lena's smile under his fingertips.

“My little one, you've gotten so big. I almost didn't recognize you at the museum, but you'll always be my little boy, like when you played with me at your grandfather's, do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. But I recognized you right away, even if you dyed your hair and became a blonde.”

“He made me do it, you understand, Dodo. He made me. He told me: Go get the boy, we'll go for a drive, I'll take you to get an ice cream and then we'll take him back before the nun even notices; we'll go nearby, someplace I know. But instead he brought us here and put us in different shacks; if you only knew how dirty it is where he keeps me . . . And he does things to me . . . I can't even tell you, the things he does to me . . .”

Lena starts sobbing again, in despair. Dodo feels a twinge in his heart.

“But has he told you what he wants? What do we have to do so we can go home?”

The woman sits up; it takes considerable effort. She whispers: “Money, he just wants some money. As soon as he gets it, he'll let us go. But we can't make him think that we want to run away. Anyway, this place where he's keeping us is far away from everything. Even if we managed to get out of here, we wouldn't know which way to run.”

Dodo has a vague memory of the trip in the car: Lena sitting in the back with him, talking to him sweetly, Stromboli driving slowly. It had taken them some time to get there, driving along roads he'd never seen before.

“Then what should we do?”

“We need to keep quiet and do what he tells us: eat, drink, everything. And then he wants your grandfather's telephone number, the private number. You know it, don't you?”

“Of course I know it. I talk to him every day. Even Mamma, if she needs to tell him something, asks me to call him, that way he'll answer. But why does he want to talk to him?”

“Maybe he wants to ask him for money. How is your grandfather? I haven't seen him since he . . . since I stopped working for him.”

“He's sick, you know that. But he's strong, he's holding on.”

Lena caresses his face: “And you're strong too, little one. So strong. And your grandfather would be proud of you, if he could see how brave you are.”

“Listen, Lena: We can't be afraid. You'll see, someone will come get us, and it'll be my papà. My papà won't let anything stop him.”

“Dodo, no one knows where we are, not even your father. This is the second night we've been here. The longer we're here, the angrier he gets. Give me the number, I'm begging you.”

Dodo thinks it over. He's seen it on so many TV shows and in cartoons, too: At times like these, the thing to do is stall.

“All right. But tell him that if he tries to hurt us he'll be sorry. Understood, Lena? He'd better not hurt us, otherwise my father will make him pay a heavy price.”

Once she has the number, the woman crawls toward the door and knocks softly. Stromboli throws the door open again, slamming it against the sheet metal, and shouts: “Well? You are done? Woman, you have number?”

Lena nods, sobbing, and he grabs her and drags her out of the room.

Dodo pulls the Batman action figure out of his pocket. Batman, Batman, he murmurs. You see, poor Lena is a prisoner, too. Do you remember Lena, who lived with us before I started school, when I spent mornings with my grandfather? Lena, who used to tell me fairy tales, who played with me, who used to take me to the park. That's right, Lena, who we never saw again because once I started school they didn't need her anymore and my grandfather fired her. Stromboli has taken her, too.

He's a bad man, Stromboli. Just like Two-Face, or the Joker, or Bane. A terribly bad man. My papà is going to have to be very strong to defeat him.

But my papà will do it, you know, Batman. You know it, heroes stop at nothing. Heroes are the stubbornest, strongest people in the world; they have no weaknesses. That's why we have to hold out, Batman. Because even if someone isn't born a hero, he can become one. Heroes exist, Batman. Even if in the real world, even I know this, you don't see them flying from one building to another or zooming down the street.

I remember asking my papa about it once, because I'd never seen them. And he told me: My little one, it's because in the real world, heroes don't seem like heroes. They have to hide.

Out in the world, Batman, there are a bunch of heroes, you know.

Lots of heroes.

H
eroes.

There are lots of different kinds of heroes, you know. There's not just one kind.

Heroes are courageous, they never get lost. They know what they're up against, they look their enemies in the face and take them on, fearlessly. Heroes never hesitate.

Because if they had doubts, fears, they wouldn't be heroes. In a black-and-white world, heroes know where to go.

You can recognize heroes right away.

They're the strong ones, capable of crushing evil in one fist and throwing it away.

They're the ones without fear, heroes are.

 

You've been lucky, Francesco Romano. When it comes to stakeouts, as everyone knows, it's all a matter of luck. This time there was even a parking place right behind a delivery van, which means you can keep an eye on the front entrance without being seen.

When they teach you police procedure, they never take luck into account, you think to yourself; but actually luck is everything. Not only in stakeouts, truth be told. In life, too, it's all a matter of luck.

Roll your car window up a bit. May is a dangerous month, at night the temperature can drop as much as twenty degrees and you can catch a cold before you even know you're sneezing. And you, after all, Francesco Romano, even though you're big and strong and muscular, even if you're capable of choking a man one-handed and sometimes you're even tempted to do so and you have to stop yourself and you do, you stop yourself just in the nick of time, you still catch colds at the drop of a hat. Do you remember how she used to wrap a scarf around your neck before you went out? Remember how she'd stand on tiptoes to kiss your reddened nose? Remember how she'd unwrap the chocolates and surprise you by popping them into your mouth, and then she'd read you the little slip of paper with the stupid romantic phrase and say, it's true, it's really true? You can remember plenty of other things, for that matter. You can remember everything.

You can even remember the letter she left on the table that night you came home and she wasn't there anymore. The letter that begins, “Dear Francesco,” just like that, as if it were some stranger writing you, someone you barely know. Not Giorgia, your Gio, the girl that set the world on fire to get to know you back when you were at university, the same girl who couldn't stop crying tears of joy the day of your wedding, the same one who hopped around the house like a kangaroo for a solid hour the day you were promoted to the detective squad. Dear Francesco. It's just funny she didn't end the letter with “all my best.”

That's no way to end a romance is it, Francesco Romano? Just because a poor hardworking man, in a moment of anger, raised his hand almost without knowing what he was doing. And what the hell, that was little more than a love tap, after all. It's not your fault, Francesco Romano, if she's so delicate that she got a black eye and a bruise on her cheek from nothing more than a love tap.

And you can't say that you're not a respectable person, Francesco Romano. An honest and upstanding man; it's no accident that you decided to be a policeman. Good men become policemen, don't they? Not criminals. Criminals, by definition, are bad men; they rob, they rape, they kill. And the policemen chase them, catch them; they don't do what those bad men do.

While you stare at the road that cuts through the night in silence, with your sleepless eyes wide open, illuminated by the streetlights, staring at dumpsters and parked cars, you think to yourself that no woman should leave an honest and upstanding man because once, just once, his hand got the better of him. A man, however honest and upstanding, can have some troubled times when they kick him out of his precinct just because some asshole criminal got under his skin. What were you supposed to do, Francesco Romano, should you have just sat there smiling when that two-bit criminal said to you, Hey superintendent, I'll get out of here before you do tonight, because I pay my lawyer more in an hour than you make in two months?

And in the meantime, she's left you, Francesco Romano. And here you are, sitting outside her mother's apartment building, spending your night in the car since you can't sleep at home anyway, that apartment is too fucking big for just one person, and noisy at night, so noisy you can't get a wink of sleep. So you might as well sit in your car, looking up at the apartment where that bitch of your mother-in-law lives; neither of you could ever stand the other. You can just guess how she's brainwashing her daughter now, you can almost hear her voice: You see, he's violent, he's a nut, I told you this is how it would end, I never even wanted you to marry him.

But that's not right, Giorgia my love. I'm the man for you, the only man for you, the same way you are and always will be the only woman for me. If only we'd had the child you wanted; if only for once fate had helped me instead of tripping me up. If we'd had a baby of our own, a boy, with your looks and your kindness, and my strength and my determination.

Your thoughts turn to the kidnapped child; and for that matter, Giorgia always says that someone with your job never stops working. That poor innocent little boy; he had the money, and the beautiful homes, and the school for rich kids, and even so, some stupid asshole just took him and carried him off to who knows where, and no one stopped it.

I wish I could tell you all about it, Gio, my love. I wish I could talk to you, now, in our bed, after making love desperately, searching for some way to assuage the pain that I carry inside me, that never gives me peace. How I wish I could tell you about my day, and hear your delicate voice utter words of relief.

I'm strong; I am, you know. I'm a strong policeman, honest and competent.

A hero.

A hero who, without you, is weaker than a kidnapped child. At least he has someone who loves him, at least he can hope to come back to his old life.

Not you, Francesco Romano, you have no hope.

And no life to go back to.

It's a good thing there's a delivery van parked here in front. And that no one, hurrying past to get through the night, can see a man in a car watching a front entrance and crying.

 

Heroes.

Who, while everyone else is asleep, watch over us. Who scan the night in search of something that's just a little off, in search of wrongs to set right.

Who sometimes live in caves so no one can see them.

Or who live in our midst, in a luxurious penthouse, ready to throw on a special outfit at a moment's notice, or to take off in a souped-up car that looks like an ordinary automobile, but which actually flies, shoots, and can even travel underwater.

Heroes who know that evil can lurk anywhere, who can always duck into a phone booth, change clothes, and sally forth against the enemy in their brightly colored costumes: handsome, powerful, and invulnerable.

The night is the right place for heroes.

 

Marco Aragona walks unhurriedly, straight down the center of the sidewalk.

He left his car in the garage. The usual spectacular entrance: tires screeching, brakes slamming. The sleepy nighttime parking attendant's usual jerk into wakefulness, the usual resentful glare, the usual forced smile:
Buonanotte
, Dottore. He knows, that Moroccan asshole, that Marco's a cop. He knows that if he so much as thought of saying something, Corporal Marco Aragona would kick his ass sideways.

Striding smugly down the deserted street, Marco Aragona feels like the master of the night. The terror of all the two-bit sewer rats who populate this city, the rats who emerge from their holes only when darkness comes to shelter them. It wouldn't be hard to clean up this city, if there were a hundred Marco Aragonas, a special squad with license to come down heavy. That broom would sweep clean: So long, faggots, sluts, thieves, and illegals.

Marco thinks that all the mealymouthed optimism politicians, priests, and humanitarian associations spout is bound to be the ruin of the country. We ought to be
less
tolerant, he always says. A little spring-cleaning and then you'd see.

No fear of the night for Corporal Marco Aragona. And not much desire to sleep, as far as that goes. He takes the long way around, he feels like thinking. Hard day. The whole thing with the kidnapped boy really is brutal.

At first, he'd assumed this would be a good career opportunity: It's not like kidnappings come along every day. But then the idea of having to partner up with Hulk had almost convinced him to foist the thing off onto someone else. Working with that guy was like sitting on a crate of explosives, you never knew what might happen. And dealing with the little kid's family made him uneasy, too. Everyone's nerves balanced on a knife's edge, everyone ready to take offense or act all scandalized; and yet this was a kidnapping, not a palace ball. The quicker they got that straight, the better it would be, both for the investigation and for that poor little kid.

He stops before the front door of his home. Actually, it's not really a home at all. Aragona lives at the Hotel Mediterraneo, midway between police headquarters, where he'd been assigned when he first moved to the city, and Pizzofalcone's precinct house.