Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (29 page)

Alex felt relieved.

“Thanks. Thanks for the text, and for this phone call. For everything.”

“You're not getting off that easy, you know, Officer Di Nardo. You owe me a pizza, at the very least. I'll call you some night.”

“Yes. Some night. But it's my treat. I'd better keep you happy, you're a chief administrator, after all.”

“I'm sure you'll find some way of keeping me happy. Kisses, see you soon.”

T
hat morning, before leaving home, Giorgio Pisanelli had had a long conversation with Carmen. He did it all the time, but always taking proper precautions. He'd turn on the stereo and put on one of the symphonies by Mozart or Tchaikovsky that she'd so loved to make sure his neighbors wouldn't assume that loneliness had finally driven him crazy. Then he'd open the door to the bedroom, where he liked to imagine that she sat listening to him, and speak to his wife as if she were still alive. Of course he didn't raise his voice to make sure she heard him, and he didn't go in every five minutes to make sure she was resting easy, as he almost always had in the last few months of her life; he spoke in an undertone. There had to be some advantages to being in the afterlife.

He had told her about Signora Maria Musella, and of how he had picked her out of all the other potential future victims. You'd be surprised, my love, to know how many people there are in the neighborhood who make use of psychotropic drugs. They're the opposite of the tranquilizers you used to take to keep from suffering, do you remember? Oh, lord, not exactly the opposite, because these, too, in the end, put you to sleep. In fact, Signora Musella sleeps a lot, and most of the time she's in no danger.

This, he had told her, has been my crucial insight: I have to try to prevent another murder; to try to figure out where the killer's going to strike next. It's pointless to try to prove that those faked suicides are actually homicides; I've had to give up on that. Because you know, my love, whoever he is, he's really good, he's sly as a fox. He won't give himself away, he never uses the same method twice. He's good.

How can I be so sure that these are actually murders, you ask? I've explained that to you a thousand times, my love: I just know. These are people who lack the strength to live, but who haven't yet made up their minds to die. Not like you, when you couldn't stand it for one day, when you couldn't take the pain. Not like you.

And so, since everyone condescends to me and thinks that I'm just a senile old man, I focused on a potential victim, and I identified the individual who was, among all those who live close to the largest pharmacy in the neighborhood, the most dependent on drugs. I had to start somewhere.

Blowing Carmen a kiss, he'd left and gone by the office to see what was new. Palma, Romano, and Aragona had briefed him on their meeting with the Borrelli family the night before. A sad story: There are misfortunes that ought to bring people together, unite them before a shared sorrow, but often it's the reverse that happens. Even Carmen's death had created a chasm between him and his son Lorenzo. Though they still spoke on the phone every three days, the calls had become as automatic and perfunctory as the punching of a time clock; they were feeble moments of contact between two people who shared nothing but a sweet memory.

He'd chatted a bit with the Chinaman about Tore the Bulldog, the loan shark. An interesting character, Tore, in his way a modern entrepreneur, who'd expanded his tried and true tactics beyond the neighborhood's narrow confines. He organized full-fledged joint ventures with his colleagues from outside of the city, pooled operations, and cross-invested. Deputy Captain Pisanelli had explained to Lojacono that they'd been investigating Parascandolo for years, but the very fact that most of his earnings came from illegal lending done in other regions of the country had allowed him to get away with it. The fact that I'm supplying certain entrepreneurs, the Bulldog had explained in his high-pitched voice to a magistrate during a deposition, doesn't mean I know to whom they endorse their checks. And so all the clients of loan sharks on this side of the Alps wound up anonymously listed on Tore's accounts, while his victims turned up who knew where, and the cooperating banks looked the other way.

Giorgio Pisanelli liked Lojacono. And generally speaking, he liked the new atmosphere in the precinct since the restaffing. There was a healthy desire to get theirs back, the pleasure of being back in the thick of things, and Palma was putting everyone to use according to his or her skills and personality; even Aragona, who had at first seemed unserviceable.

He had the impression that the wrinkles furrowing his forehead were relaxing a little at the thought of the young man. There was some good in Aragona, he was sure of it. Though you did have to look hard for it.

He left the office, in the intoxicating May air that seemed as full of sparkling bubbles as a bottle of prosecco. He was determined and hopeful as he hadn't been in quite a while. He'd been working on the mystery of the suicides for years, but for the first time he felt he was getting close to the solution.

Not even a hundred yards from Musella's home, Giorgio Pisanelli ran into a good friend.

And the solution vanished into that air, deceitful and fragile as the scent of flowers in the spring.

 

Brother Leonardo was hurrying up a hill for the second time in two days. He was in a rush, and he'd be very irritated if he had to change his plans.

Signora Maria, who was all set to meet her fortunate fate—becoming, ahead of her time, and by Leonardo's hand, an angel of the Lord—would have to be removed from the ranks of his beneficiaries. So much effort, hours and hours of talking and reasoning in the cool air of the parish church, heavy with incense, careful study of the dosages of various drugs—all of it would go up in smoke. His friend Giorgio's stubborn obstinacy was threatening to become really annoying.

And yet, he said to himself, taking heart, he ought to be pleased, because he really had dodged a bullet. If his friend the policeman had seen him enter Musella's home and then emerge, and if the woman had then been found dead from an overdose, beside her a suicide note—a note that by the way he still had in the pocket of his habit—it would have been difficult to come up with a convincing explanation. Not impossible, but difficult.

The Lord, however had decided to help him by delaying Giorgio's arrival, or perhaps by moving up his by a couple of minutes, ensuring that they met just a hundred yards or so from Musella's apartment—further evidence of the sacred nature of his mission. His friend, delighted, had dragged him into a café, bought him an espresso, and proceeded to tell him his improbable but accurate theory. And just how accurate that theory was, no one could know better than Leonardo.

The little friar had put on his usual compassionate expression, demonstrating for the policeman's benefit an affectionate empathy for the latter's torment. It really was too bad, because it was nice to see the man cheerful and confident that he was right, sure that he'd finally understood it all, in the cheerful air of that May morning. He was almost tempted to go ahead and administer the contents of the vial he had with him to his beloved Signora Maria all the same.

But he, Brother Leonardo Calisi, parish priest of the church of the Santissima Annunziata and abbot of the adjoining monastery, had a sacred task to carry out, and he couldn't disregard it just to make a friend, however dear, happy. And so, wishing Giorgio all the best and expressing his hope that his friend's grim predictions would turn out not to be true, he'd headed off.

And now? If the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, had decided to give dear Maria a new lease on a pointless life, then He was certainly trying to tell Leonardo something. But what? That very evening the friar had retired to the cloister to pray, sniffing at the fresh smell of flowers opening up to a new life and to spring, and as always God had illuminated him, communicating His will to Leonardo. The task now assigned to him concerned Emilio D'Anna, a faithful member of the parish and a retired schoolteacher, hit hard by the loss of his wife and the indifference of his children, who could barely stand to talk to him and even refused to take his phone calls.

Yes, the Lord had answered his prayer. And at His suggestion poor D'Anna would begin, with the right guidance, to ask: What meaning does my life have? Why force me to suffer through long years of loneliness and silence, just because my heart stubbornly refuses to stop beating?

There was no doubt about it: Leonardo needed to pay more frequent visits to poor Emilio. And it was to see him that the pious monk went—his little legs pumping, his habit pulled up ever so slightly to keep from tripping—the following afternoon.

Delighting in the cool May air, to the greater glory of God.

D
odo has a fever again, and he's thinking about his mother.

Usually he thinks about his papà, but now that his throat is screaming in agony and his body is wracked with shivers, he wishes he had Mamma lying beside him in his little bed.

That's what Mamma does. When she sees that he's not well, or that he's feeling sad, she lies down next to him and strokes his hair; now and then she puts her lips on his forehead, a gesture that's midway between a kiss and a way of checking on his temperature.

She sees without being told that something's wrong, because he'd never tell her. Going to Mamma with a complaint is something little kids do, children who'll never grow up; but she notices right away, all it takes is a glance, and then she lies down next to Dodo and strokes his hair. She doesn't talk to him, she doesn't tell him stories like Papà does, stories that make you open your eyes wide and hold your breath, but now that his life is a painful waking dream, now that he's wrapped in a filthy blanket, in a warehouse that stinks of his own poop and hot pockets, what he wishes he could feel is his mother's hand running through his hair.

A little bit he thinks and a little bit he dreams, Dodo. He seems to remember Lena waking him up and giving him a pill with a drink of water. Just then, he'd thought she was Mamma, but it was Lena. He was confused by her blond hair, who knows why she dyed it, his pretty nanny from when he was little and used to go stay at his grandfather's. He liked her better the way she was, but everyone knows that that's what women do; every so often they like to change.

His papà told him that that's why Mamma lives with Manuel now, and not with him anymore. She told him that she wanted a change.

Dodo doesn't like Manuel. Dodo's not like those children of divorced couples who hate their parents' new partners on principle, and claim they've been mistreated even though they haven't been just to get an extra present or two and another pat on the head. Some of his classmates do it because they know that the other parent is happy when they say that Mamma's new boyfriend or Papà's new girlfriend is bad.

Manuel doesn't treat him badly. But he doesn't treat him well, either. At first, Mamma hoped the two of them would become friends, but then she realized that wasn't possible and she just settled for them not fighting; so many of her girlfriends had new boyfriends who fought with their children. So they started to put up with each other, Dodo and Manuel, and on certain evenings, when Mamma is home, they've gotten into the habit of curling up in front of the television, all three of them, even though it's not that fun, because nobody really has anything to say. So then he goes into his bedroom and plays with his action figures or reads comic books.

Sometimes, if Mamma can't do it, it's Manuel who goes to pick Dodo up at school. The nuns know him, and even if they don't like him because he isn't married to Mamma and that makes Jesus cry, they say hello to him all the same. In the car, on the way home, the two of them never speak. Each minds his own business.

Not Mamma. Mamma loves Dodo, and Dodo loves her back. Of course, she's a woman, which means there are certain things you can't talk to her about; and she's always studying him, trying to figure out how he feels, what he's thinking. Even when he goes to stay with Papà, either here or on vacation up north, she asks a whole bunch of questions to understand how Papà lives, how much money he has, whether he has a girlfriend. Papà, on the other hand, doesn't want to know anything about Mamma's life and never asks a single question. He's a man.

Now, Dodo thinks again in his waking dream, Mamma's the one who should be here. She'd be the one, lying next to him, warming him up with the heat of her own body, to make him smell that special, unique smell, that Mamma smell. Maybe she'd hum that sweet song that she's been singing to him since he was tiny, a lullaby he's never heard anywhere else.

Maybe she'd make him a cup of hot milk with honey, that burns his mouth a little but it's good and it makes his throat hurt less. Dodo's always had a problem with sore throats: Mamma says that's his weak spot.

He wonders how his mamma is. Who can say how worried she must be, how she's suffering without him.

When I'm home again, Dodo thinks to himself, for a couple of days I'll ask her not to make me go to school and not to go to her club. I'll ask her if she'll tell Manuel to stay somewhere else, in one of those places where he goes to play cards, and to give him a little extra money, so he can have fun and not come back.

I'll ask her to stay home alone with me for a while, curled up together in my bed, with hot milk and honey and her song, and her Mamma smell in my nostrils.

With her next to me, I don't feel hot or cold, Dodo thinks. With her next to me, the temperature's always just right.

You know, Batman, I'll whisper this in your ear and you keep it to yourself as a secret: When I go home, I want to be a little baby again. When I get home I want to hold tight my mamma.