The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (2 page)

Di Vincenzo started to get to his feet, only to drop back into his chair, lips stretched taut.

“I had no doubt you'd be well briefed on procedures. Typical of good-for-nothings, to be intimately acquainted with union regulations. Yes, it's true. But it's also true that, if you don't accept, I can assign you to any task I please; and this special treatment that you're being given on account of the Crocodile won't last forever.”

Lojacono let a moment pass, then he said:

“Then tell me more about this assignment. Who knows, I might even accept.”

The commissario perked up at the idea of being able to free himself of that Sicilian with the inscrutable expression, whom he was afraid to really go after because he feared Piras's reaction; moreover, if Lojacono decided to get stubborn and refuse, he might be forced to give up some other man he trusted, and it was already hard enough keeping up with his work, given the limited resources at his disposal. He needed to convince him. He did his best to appear conciliatory.

“Well, it's a professional challenge, in a certain sense. Have you ever heard of the precinct of Pizzofalcone?”

Lojacono continued staring at the commissario, who finally decided to go on:

“The precinct isn't big, but it's crowded; it encompasses a part of the Spanish Quarter and stretches on down to the waterfront. Four different worlds, in other words: the lumpenproletariat, as we used to say in the old days; the white-collar middle class; the businessmen of the upper middle class; and the aristocracy. Everything except manufacturing, in an area barely three kilometers on a side. One of the oldest police districts in the city, small but strategic.” Di Vincenzo furrowed his brow and his tone of voice changed: he must have remembered something unpleasant. “A year or so, give or take, there was a major drug raid. A shipment of uncut cocaine was confiscated, just after it arrived in the Spanish Quarter; a massive shipment, really huge. But well under half was officially logged in.”

Lojacono asked, in a low voice: “Who?”

“It was discovered late. There were four partners, all of them detectives. A well-run operation, the information was cross-referenced, an ambush was set, and their timing was perfect: just moments after the delivery, not so early that they came up empty-handed, but not so late that the criminals had a chance to organize a defense. A clean, fast, bloodless raid. And of course, it was in everyone's interest to officially log much less product than was actually confiscated: in the interest of the gangsters, because it meant the sentences they would face would be sharply reduced, and also, unfortunately, in the interest of the cops, who proceeded to set themselves up in the cocaine business.”

The lieutenant sat in silence, for once sharing the commissario's feelings. A nasty story. Truly nasty. For any honest cop.

Di Vincenzo went on: “One of them had a very sick son—cancer. Another was divorced, and his ex-wife had basically bled him dry. The third's father was a shopkeeper who had just been forced into bankruptcy, and the fourth gambled. They exchanged a glance, and that was that. I knew two of them, and I would have walked through fire for them. Go figure . . . In any case, when you alter the market equilibrium of the local narcotics trade with that much product, it becomes necessary to go out and get permission and authorization from the local dealers, and sooner or later word filters back. And their special investigations counterparts over at DIGOS figured it out. It took months of wiretaps, photography, surveillance videos. In they end, they took them down. All four of them.”

A sudden gust of wind shook the window.

Lojacono said: “Got it. An ugly situation.”

Di Vincenzo sighed.

“The commissario went down with them: Ruoppolo, a longtime colleague just about to retire, a great guy I knew very well. Honest, sure, no doubt about it: but certain areas of oversight fell to him. So he took his pension a little quicker than he would have otherwise. For a couple of months the police chief wondered whether he should just shut down the Pizzofalcone precinct entirely, and enlarge the jurisdictions of the surrounding precincts. Then he decided differently.”

“And that's where we come in.”

“Exactly. They need four investigators, and they've reached out to the four biggest precincts. The new commissario is Palma, a young guy on his way up. He comes from Vomero, you might remember having seen him at the meeting for the Crocodile. If I were him, I would never have accepted. There's no upside.”

Lojacono made a face: “So you volunteered me.”

Di Vincenzo raised an eyebrow: “That's what I would have done, if I'd been quick enough: in cases like this, you always take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of your bad apples. But Palma himself asked for you: apparently, you made quite an impression on him at that very same meeting. He's an idiot, I guessed it at the time. Obviously, I immediately agreed to the request. So, what do you think?”

The lieutenant sat silently for a good long time. Then he asked: “So what do I risk, if I accept? What could I be up against?”

Di Vincenzo snorted, losing control and slamming one hand down on his desk, scattering papers, pens, pencils, and eyeglasses: “That the attempt to keep this precinct operating fails. If worst comes to worst, they liquidate the station and the staff and send you all back where you came from. Or maybe they send you somewhere else, which is what I'm hoping, because in the meantime all four precincts will be busy trying to get replacements. And, of course, you'd be joining a group made up of people who aren't welcome where they are now, whose commanding officers are eager to get rid of them. Renegades, bastards, or screwups, every last one of them!”

Lojacono showed no visible reaction: “Commissario, I would have accepted a transfer to Patagonia in order to get out of here. But I wanted to keep you guessing. When do I report for duty in my new precinct?”

T
he woman enters, and slams the door behind her.

Before the door slams shut, he manages to glimpse astonishment on the faces of a couple of employees, fixed as if in some hyperrealistic painting meant to depict amazement, embarrassment, and terror, all in a single expression. One of them was actually halfway out of his chair, as if he meant to try to stop the intrusion. As if that was even possible.

The man heaves a sigh and tucks his head between his shoulders in order to absorb the loud banging of the door against the jamb; it sounds like its structural integrity is being tested.

“Well, what the fuck are you planning to do? Have you made up your mind? Don't I have a right to know?”

Hands on her hips, long legs braced, jaw clenched tight. Her red hair glows as if it's on fire, and so do her eyes. She's beautiful, the man thinks to himself. Beautiful, even when she's furious.

Which seems to be the case more often than not these days, truth be told.

“Lower your voice. Have you lost your mind? What are you trying to do now, air all our dirty laundry?”

She does lower the volume; but not by much.

“I need to know what you plan to do. Because enough is enough: I refuse to become that pathetic cliché—the poor idiot duped by the older professional. I'm a girl who'll knock you flat on your ass; that's exactly what I'll do, and you know it. I can't believe it, can't believe I've let this go on so long.”

He knows perfectly well that if he starts whimpering now, she'll just get angrier. He does his best to think quickly.

“It's not a matter of anyone trying to dupe you. This is a complicated situation. A whole lifetime together . . . We own property together, a lot of it in her name, for tax purposes. And then it's a moral issue, it's not like I can just get up one morning and kick her out the door, not someone like . . . someone like her. And there are all our friends, our contacts, some of them politicians . . . It's not a simple matter.”

“Friends? Politicians? I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK about your contacts, do you get that? I will humiliate you in front of the whole world! Do you seriously think I don't know that everything you have comes to you from the curia? What do you think His Eminence would say, if he knew that . . . if he knew about me, about my
condition
? He'd send you straight to hell, that's where he'd send you!”

He shifts to get more comfortable in his chair, threading his fingers together in front of his face, his expression pensive. He needs to keep cool.

“Well done. That way we'll both lose everything. Is that what's in your best interest? And is that in . . . well, I mean, is that in
our
best interest? Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for the right time? Maybe we can get someone else to solve the whole problem for us. I'll talk to her, I told you. I'll do it. No matter what, I'll have to do it. She's reasonable, you know; she's certainly no fool.”

She watches him, unblinking, with those green eyes of hers. Her breasts heave with her still rapid breaths. He can't help but stare at her in fascination.

“You'd better do it, and for real. Otherwise I'll do it for you, and I'll look her straight in the eye when I tell her. Maybe we women understand each other better, without a lot of fancy phrases. Maybe I'll bring her a present, and then I'll tell her: that it's not a very good idea to try to get in the way of someone like me.”

He knows perfectly well that she would do it. That she's good, very good, at facing situations head-on.

“If you don't lower your voice, goddammit, you won't even need to go see her. Do you have any idea how many spies she has, here in this office? It wouldn't do you a bit of good, anyway. She'd never say yes to you. She'd just decide that there's a battle to be fought, and maybe she'd talk herself into believing that, since I wasn't the one who came to talk to her, I don't have the courage to leave her, and that therefore she might stand a chance of winning me back. God forbid. We'd get swallowed up in legal maneuverings that would never end. Her father is a retired judge who still has plenty of influence. No, I'm going to have to talk to her.”

The woman walks closer to the desk, feline, like a tiger about to pounce on its prey. She places both hands flat on the desktop, long red fingernails pointing straight at him.

T
he entrance to the police station of Pizzofalcone was situated in the courtyard of an old palazzo, its façade covered with flaking plaster that had been patched in more than one place. The impression Lojacono got was of decay and neglect, which was so often the case in the city's older neighborhoods.

After a brisk wave goodbye to his driver, who roared off, tires squealing and siren wailing, he climbed a short flight of stairs that led into a small antechamber lit by fluorescent lights: even in the middle of the day, sunlight couldn't make its way into that room.

Behind the counter an officer sat sprawled in a swivel chair, deep in the pages of the sports section. There was the smell of coffee in the air, clearly emanating from a vending machine where two cops stood talking and laughing. The man behind the front desk didn't even bother to look up. Lojacono drew closer without a word and waited, staring at the uniformed officer.

After a while, the officer looked up from his paper and assumed a quizzical expression: “Yes?”

“I'm Lieutenant Lojacono. I believe the commissario is expecting me.”

The man neither put down his paper nor shifted position.

“Second floor, room at the end of the hall.”

Lojacono didn't move.

“On your feet,” he murmured.

“What?” asked the policeman.

“Stand up on your own two feet, asshole. Give me your last name, first name, and rank. And do it fast, or I'll jump straight over this counter and kick your ass black and blue.”

The lieutenant hadn't changed his tone of voice or his expression, but it was as if he had shouted. The two men drinking coffee exchanged a quick glance and then left the room, quickly and quietly.

The officer struggled out of the chair, displaying a jacket half unbuttoned over a prominent gut and a loosened belt. His collar was half undone, and the knot of his tie hung slack. He snapped to attention, his gaze fixed on the empty air before him.

“Officer Giovanni Guida, Pizzofalcone Police Precinct.”

Lojacono continued to stare at him.

“Now you listen to me, Giovanni Guida of the Pizzofalcone police precinct. You're the first thing people see when they walk in here, so of course they'll assume that we're all filthy pigs, because you're a filthy pig. And I don't like it when people think that I'm a filthy pig.”

The man said nothing, and his eyes remained expressionless. One of the two cops who had been drinking coffee stuck his head in for a moment, then vanished.

“If I see you looking like I found you just now ever again, I'll kick your ass for one solid hour out in the courtyard. Is that clear? And then you can write me up for it.”

Officer Guida murmured softly: “Forgive me, lieutenant. It won't happen again. It's just that, these days, practically no one even comes in here anymore. People prefer . . . people go to the carabinieri, when they want to report something. They seem to prefer going there since . . . for a while now.”

“I don't care about that,” Lojacono replied. “Even if they turn this place into a cloistered monastery, you still need to present yourself looking the way you're supposed to look.”

He went through the internal door as Guida was stuffing his shirttails into his trousers, red-faced and swearing under his breath.

A short hallway led to the stairs. Out of the corner of his eye Lojacono took in sloppiness, disorder, and neglect. He felt distress rise within him, and he wondered if he'd ever again experience the excitement he used to feel for his profession.