Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (28 page)

Irina looked at him and he put on an expression that suggested he was engrossed in thought—the one he liked best because it seemed to speak of some secret sorrow—and, to complete the effect, gazed off at the distant horizon. Sensitive soul that she most assuredly was, she'd wonder about the cause of his subtle suffering, and she'd immediately set out to offer some remedy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her approach; his pulse quickened. He pretended not to notice her presence until she spoke, in the low, warm voice that so excited him. “Coffee?” she asked.

It was the only word she'd ever spoken to him. And every morning he replied: “Double corto espresso in a large mug, thank you.”

The longest sentence he could think of concerning a cup of coffee.

She smiled at him, as she did every morning, and as she did every morning, she went off to fulfill his wishes. At least as far as the coffee went.

Who knew where Irina came from. Who knew if that was her real name or just a nickname. And who knew where she lived, if when her shift was over she had other jobs, if she had to walk through neighborhoods where she risked being robbed or raped. Whether she needed the protection of superhero.

If I could only speak to her, thought Aragona. If I could only manage to say two fucking words to her other than “double corto espresso in a large mug.”

Irina continued to flit between the three occupied tables, serving sweet pastries and
caffelattes
, smiling at everyone but, Marco felt sure, at no one as much as at him.

He knew it, he could sense it: Irina liked him, the same as he liked her. It was just a matter of time. They were destined to be together.

One of the bratty little boys got up and, hopping on one foot like a lame pigeon, went over to the waitress: “Will you bring me another pastry?”

“Certainly.”

The little brat wasn't done: “Hey, will you tell me where you're from?”

Aragona saw her tilt her head to one side. The sun played over her hair, kicking up a cloud of gold dust.

The girl patted the little kid's cheek and said: “Montenegro. I come from Montenegro, but I've been here for a long time.”

That must be a wonderful place, Montenegro, Marco thought to himself, as he took in this new, fundamental piece of information with fascination. Creatures of her sort could only come from an earthly paradise.

“So, does that mean you're a gypsy?” the boy asked, and Marco would gladly have tossed him headfirst over the railing of the roof garden.

Irina laughed, and her laughter was like a cascade of stars.

“No, I'm not a gypsy. I'm just a south Slav.”

At last the child's mother realized how much of an all-around pain in the ass her son was being and, lifting her snout from the dish of butter, jam, and honey she was rooting around in, called him back to the table. Irina went back to the counter to get Aragona's coffee, but before she did, to his immense surprise, she turned around and shot him a look.

Marco's heart stopped: Why had she looked at him? What was she trying to tell him, with that look?

Perhaps she meant for him to understand something. Perhaps the short conversation with the pestiferous child had been designed for his use and consumption, to tell him something about her.

He sighed, enchanted, lost in a reverie.

In the meantime, however, something had wormed its way into his brain, forcing him to think of the kidnapped child. Was it because of the little boy who had asked the indiscreet questions? No. It had been something else, like a dark outline moving beneath the surface of a pond, rapid but unmistakable.

What was it? What had jogged his mind?

Smiling at the wonderful Irina, who was bringing him a double corto espresso in a large mug, the light illuminating her from behind, Corporal Marco Aragona began, deep in his subconscious, his working day.

W
ell? Anything yet?”

“No.”

“The boy still has a fever, though I think it's come down a little. I gave him the antibiotics.”

“It'll pass. That's certainly not our fault.”

“Yes, but he told us that nothing was to happen to him . . .”

“He also said that he'd call twelve hours ago.”

“Something must have come up.”

“Something that's lasted twelve hours.”

“Do you think something could have happened?”

“I don't want to talk about it. He'll call. Let's just wait.”

“What does that mean, you don't want to talk about it? What could have happened?”

“Nothing. He'll call.”

“No, now you're going to tell me why you're worried! I threw my old life away to do this job with you. Nothing can go wrong!”

“Stay calm. I told you he'll call.”

“You've been sitting here since dawn, drinking and staring at that fucking cell phone on the table, you look terrible, and you're telling me to stay calm?”

“Fucking hell, he'll call! I said that we need to wait, and we'll wait! Do you want to ruin everything just because a stupid phone call's a little late?”

“What if . . . Let's say they figured it out, that someone found everything out. Let's say the police . . .”

“Shut up, you slut! The police haven't figured anything out, no one's going to figure anything out, and everything's going to turn out perfectly, according to plan!”

“Then why isn't he calling?”

“He'll call. You'll see, he'll call. You said it yourself, no? Something must have come up.”

“And you answered: Something that's lasted twelve hours?”

“Okay then, what do you want to do? What do you think we should do?”

“Have we come to this point? Do we need to come up with a Plan B?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Oh, yes, you did.”

“He'll call. We . . . we have the kid. He'll have to call.”

“Or else the police will show up and throw us in prison. And we'll never get out again. Do you know what they do to people like us who kidnap a child? It's what they're most afraid of, to them we're all gypsies . . .”

“Shut up. I told you, he'll call.”

“Even in prison, they don't leave people like us alone. They'll throw us into solitary, they'll . . .”

“Fuck, that's enough! That's enough! Dammit, shut up! You got me into this mess, and now you're telling me that instead of going to South America to live like a king I'm going to wind up in prison! What did we do wrong? We followed his instructions to the letter, we've been perfect. So he'll respect the agreement, won't he?”

“Listen, raising your voice to me isn't going to solve anything. And when I offered you the job, you accepted immediately, I didn't put a gun to your head, so don't blame me. We need to start thinking about what to do if things don't work out. Getting drunk and angry won't do any good.”

“He'll call. He'll call. It's just a matter of waiting.”

“And thinking. Thinking fast.”

“He'll call. We have the kid, don't forget.”

“Exactly. Which is the serious thing, the dangerous thing. Remember that he knows who I am, he knows my name.”

“Shut up. We have to wait, I told you. He'll call.”

“You wait. I'll think.”

T
he phone call came first thing in the morning, unexpectedly, like everything one anxiously awaits.

Alex was reading the file on Mario Vincenzo Esposito, also known as Marvin, the heavily tattooed Pilates instructor and Signora Susy Parascandolo's presumed boy toy. A story just like a thousand others she'd seen in her time. He'd quit school in fifth grade, been arrested for shoplifting here and there, had snatched his first purse at age fourteen, been put in a group home, had been set free and then again arrested, a brief but intense stay in a reform school, a little drug dealing, and then his first grown-up crime: a burglary in an apartment in a well-to-do neighborhood.

The heist had been reasonably well organized: They'd lowered themselves from the second highest floor, the only one without bars on the windows, and they'd gotten in through a balcony. Too bad that in the building across the street a retired magistrate with insomnia was looking out his bathroom window, sneaking a cigarette without his wife's knowledge.

Three years later, after a few mistaken summonses and time off for good behavior, here was Marvin back out on the street, determined to stick to the straight and narrow. At least as much as possible.

The cell phone vibrated on the desk just as she was closing the file. Alex had saved the number under the name “Forensics,” in a pathetic attempt to keep the relationship professional, but her heart, unaware of that admirable intention, leapt into her mouth.

She waited for the third ring, at once hoping and fearing that this would turn out to be a wrong number. Pisanelli was about to go out; Ottavia, deep in thought as always, was typing furiously at her keyboard; Aragona and Lojacono were talking in low voices about the kidnapping. She decided to go out into the hall to answer.

“Hello?”

“
Ciao
. Is this a bad time?”

“No, no, not at all. I'm at the station house, but I stepped out of the office.”

Idiot, she thought. I'm an idiot. What the hell does she care, that I left the office? And after all, why should I leave the office to take a work call? She also realized that she'd addressed a chief administrator with the informal “
tu
” without asking permission.

She tried to make up for it: “Forgive me, Dottoressa, ma'am, I used the informal ‘
tu
' without thinking . . .”

Martone laughed. God, she had a beautiful laugh.

“Come on, of course you should be informal with me. And I'm glad that you left the office to talk.”

There, she'd noticed, of course she had. Doing her best to make up lost ground, Alex assumed a flawlessly correct tone: “So tell me.”

“Yes, I'll tell you, and then perhaps you can report to Lojacono, all right? Now then, as I'd mentioned before, I ordered a second, more thorough, inspection of the Parascandolo apartment. And we hit pay dirt. In certain rooms, especially the bathroom and bedroom, we found both partial and complete fingerprints that belong neither to the couple nor to the housekeeper. And the fantastic thing is that we actually have these fingerprints on file. They belong to an ex-con, who answers to the name of . . .”

“Esposito, Mario Vincenzo, born in the city on March 16, 1987, convicted of burglary in 2009, out of jail since February of last year.”

Martone seemed disappointed: “You already know? How did you find out?”

“Let's just say we figured it out by chance. So his fingerprints are actually there? You're saying that Esposito left traces of his presence everywhere but on the safe he broke into?”

“So it would seem, at first glance. But the prints we found are from before the burglary. Esposito is a somewhat, shall we say, intimate . . . guest of the house.”

“Which means?”

“Some of the prints are on the headboard of the bed; bilateral, by the way. We can therefore safely assume that our ex-con, before going into the bathroom, grabbed the top part of the couple's bed with both hands. And pretty forcefully, too, judging from how strongly the fingerprints were impressed onto the wood.”

Di Nardo thought it over while she responded to a wave from Romano, who was just coming back in.

“Yes, in fact we suspect he's Susy Parascandolo's lover.”

Rosaria snickered: “Well, he could also be
his
lover, judging from the probable position.”

The explicit reference to a homosexual relationship struck Alex, who felt her stomach do a somersault.

“No, no, we're pretty sure that the relationship is with the woman.”

Martone laughed again. “I was kidding, Di Nardo. I was only kidding. Anyway, now you have your evidence. Esposito can't deny that he was there, and with his priors it won't take you long to pin it on him.”

“Yes, though we still need to figure out what role the woman played: Did he drag her into it or did she organize the burglary herself, with the young man's help.”

“Certainly.”

That was the end of the conversation. Alex wondered whether she should say a formal goodbye or go with a more casual one and, weighing her options, said nothing. Rosaria too fell silent.

At last, in a low voice, the chief administrator said: “You got my text yesterday, didn't you?”

Alex's mouth went immediately dry.

“Yes. I got it.”

“But you didn't answer.”

She needed to let her know how ridiculously happy that message had made her. She needed to tell her that she'd spent the rest of that night staring at the ceiling, fantasizing about the spectacular body she'd guessed at under the lab coat.

“No. But I . . . I was very happy. Very.”

Again, silence. Then: “I know who you are, Di Nardo. I understood it the minute our eyes locked. And you know who I am. Am I right?”

Alex would have given her whole paycheck for a glass of water. Ottavia, who was walking down the hall on her way to the bathroom, gave her a puzzled look. Everything okay? she mouthed. The young woman gave her a thumbs-up, but couldn't keep herself from blushing.

“That's true. Yes, that's true, that's how it is. But I . . . I don't talk about it, you know. It's something I keep to myself.”

Had she lost her mind? Here she was, confessing to a stranger, on the phone, something she wouldn't have told anyone else on earth, not even under torture.

Martone replied with a kind of veiled sweetness: “I know. I understand. I don't advertise it either. It can be tough, sometimes. But certain sensations, certain glances, are rare things, you know. Very rare. And it's not right to let them slip away. That's all. That's why I texted you that message.”