The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (33 page)

The two women eyed each other up close. Even without shoes, Nunzia was taller than Alex. Now that she was face-to-face with her, the policewoman discovered that she'd been so positive the girl would never open the door that she had no idea what to say.

“Forgive me for coming to see you. I didn't mean to intrude. It's just that . . . I thought that . . .”

The girl waved a hand in the air.

“That's his music. I don't get it, I like Tiziano Ferro. But all he has is this music here, so it's this or nothing.”

She took a few steps, moving with the melody, and gracefully sat down on the couch, tucking her legs up beneath her and reaching out for a potato chip.

Alex, on the other hand, felt uncomfortable. She felt as if she'd been caught off-balance, and she wondered what she was doing there. The person sitting in front of her was certainly no prisoner.

“Forgive me. I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry. I really thought . . .”

Nunzia gave her a serious look.

“I know exactly what you thought. What, did you assume that I wouldn't know? That's what I told him, when I called him. And he told me that he'd make sure to be here. You thought I wasn't allowed out of here. That I was in some sort of prison. Isn't that right?”

Alex nodded. Nunzia went on: “You know it better than me, signo'. Sometimes things seem to work one way, but instead they work in a different way. But then there are times when they're exactly what they seem. It's true, you know: I can't go out.”

Di Nardo didn't understand: was the girl pulling her leg? She looked at the door, and said: “But . . . you just opened the door and let me in!”

Instead of answering, Nunzia stood up and peeped out through the curtain.

“There she is. She's always there, motionless by the window. It's just me and her, the old woman. We look at each other, she looks at me and I look at her. Sometimes she falls asleep with her mouth wide open, and her dentures fall out. She's disgusting, inside and out.”

She turned to look at Alex: “He's out of his mind, you know. One time, a few months ago, he drove past the
basso
where we live. An enormous car, he was going to take a look at an old building he'd bought in the neighborhood, he says he wants to turn it into a residential hotel, very deluxe. If you ask me, it's idiotic; who would come to stay in a fine hotel in that shitty part of town?”

She sat back down and ate another potato chip.

“I have to be careful with these, otherwise I'll wind up worse than my mother; you've seen her, haven't you?”

She giggled, one hand over her mouth. Alex thought to herself that this was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen.

“Anyway, he was lost, he didn't know his way around. He stops, he leans out the window to ask directions. I was standing outside our downstairs door, waiting for a girlfriend of mine. He says that from the minute he saw me, he lost it. He went completely crazy. After that, he came back every day: once on foot, once by taxi, once he had someone else drive him.”

Alex had sat down in an armchair.

“What about you? What did you think of him?”

“What was I supposed to think about him, men had been doing the same thing to me for two years already. My brothers too, for that matter. But he was kind: he brought gifts, to me and to my family. Lots and lots of gifts. One time a pair of earrings, another time a bracelet. Then, one day, he asked my father if I could travel with him, for a couple of days, he had to go up north to visit a construction site. And my father said: fine, go ahead.”

Alex listened, entranced. The girl's tone of voice was nonchalant, as if she were talking about the weather.

“I thought he was going to have a heart attack, he's old. But he didn't. Still, the first time he saw me without my clothes, his eyes came that close to bugging right out of his head.”

She giggled again, as if she'd just told a funny joke. Then, as if an odd idea had occurred to her, she stood up, lithe and quick, and pulled open her dressing gown. Underneath, she was naked.

“Now, you're a woman, you tell me the truth: how do I look to you?”

Di Nardo snapped her mouth shut and gulped. Nunzia's body was perfect, with firm but full breasts, a flat belly, long thighs, and a triangle of Venus that was just barely visible.

“You're stunning. Stunning.”

The girl laughed, and refastened her dressing gown with a pirouette.

“I know. He tells me so all the time. That's why he doesn't want me to go out. He's jealous. He doesn't want anyone else to see me, because then men will start buzzing around here worse than horseflies around shit. He asked me, and I made him a promise. If you ask me, he's afraid someone will go tell his wife about me. I saw her one time, I went over to where he lives because I was curious:
mamma mia!
She's three years younger than he is, but she looks way older.”

“But if you know that he's married . . . why are you with him?”

Nunzia turned serious. Her voice dropped to just over a whisper.

“Have you looked around at this place? And did you see where I used to live? Have you seen my mother? And the
vicolo
, did you see that? What kind of question is that?”

“But he's old, and you're . . . you're so . . . I mean, you're young!”

“So what? All I care about is the apartment and the way he treats me. What, do you think I'd be better off with a young man who'll slap me around from dawn till dusk, who'll knock me up ten times and make me live in a rat-infested ground-floor hovel? He's kind, he's courteous, and he gives me presents all the time. And he even helped out my family; I'm happy for them. And then, as far as that other thing goes, it lasts a couple of minutes and then he falls asleep. I hardly even notice it's happening, I just try to think about something else. It strikes me as a pretty fair price for all this, no?”

Alex couldn't believe her ears.

“But what about freedom? Staying locked up in here all the time, not being able to go out. Don't you miss fresh air?”

Nunzia thought it over: “Sometimes, actually, yes I do. But it's just a matter of time. You know what I want to do? What my mother recommended.”

“What's that?”

“I want him to put this apartment in my name. For now it's a rental, but I want to get him to buy it and put it in my name. Then I'll open a checking account, and I'll tell him to put some money in it for me. And then, as we say where I come from, the pig's in my hands. In the meantime, though, I need to keep him happy, I have to give him what he wants. And if he wants me to stay home because he's jealous and he's afraid of his wife, that's fine with me, because in here I have a TV, a radio, and plenty of food. What else do I need?”

“I understand now. Sorry, I didn't get it the first time I came, but now I do. The other time, when I was here with my partner, it seemed to us that you were afraid. I mean, there was terror in your eyes. And we thought you needed help. That's all.”

“And you were right, no doubt about it, I was afraid, sure I was. I was afraid that he might decide that the whole thing was too risky, the police had even come thanks to that old bag of shit who can't mind her own business. And that he'd decide to take me back to that hovel of a
basso
, back to the horrible life I was living before. That's what I was afraid of. You should have seen him, the way he was trembling after you left, that partner of yours really scared him. But then I talked him out of it. I know exactly how to change his mind.”

She giggled with one hand in front of her mouth, once more the young girl she actually was.

Alex stood up suddenly. All she wanted now was to get out of there.

“Well, good, then, I'd better get going. I'll leave you my card, in case you . . . well, if you need anything, just reach out. My cell number's on it too.”

Nunzia stood up from the sofa with a graceful motion, went over to Alex, and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

“Come see me sometime, if you feel like it. He's hardly ever here, and only ever during the daytime. Maybe bring me a pizza when you come; I love pizza.”

S
omething.

Something was rattling around in Lojacono's mind, like an item not lashed down on the deck of a ship in open waters. It lay too far beneath the surface of his consciousness to be glimpsed, but it was still close enough to give him a sense of disorder, of irritation.

Something he'd heard? Something he'd seen? Something someone had said to him, or failed to say?

He did his best to focus as he pushed the pasta around in the bowl in front of him. Aragona looked at him from time to time but went on chatting. They'd stopped at a trattoria to have lunch before their appointment with the mysterious CPA Iolanda Russo, the notary's lover and a possible further source of information about the murder of Signora Cecilia.

The corporal was saying: “. . . so if they really want to organize a nice little robbery, they know how, you know. They're not just muggers, sometimes they can pull off capers that would make Italian professionals blush, I can assure you. So it's entirely possible that they went there with copies of the keys, they started scooping up silver from the first two rooms, then the signora showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket.”

Lojacono shot back promptly: “So you're saying they organize a job so well, with copies of the keys and so on, but it never occurs to them that on a Sunday night she'd be at home and getting ready to go to bed? And that they'd pick a time like that, late evening, when they could just as easily have used the keys to get in in the middle of the night, when they'd have no trouble sneaking around, no one to see or hear them, with the storm that was raging? No, I can't see it.”

Aragona, who was truly fond of the idea of a burglary, was clearly annoyed by the lieutenant's objections, to which he had no good response: “Oh well, yeah, probably they were druggies, weirdos, or drunks. Those guys get tanked up before going out on a job, and then they can't even see straight. They saw the woman, grabbed the first thing that came to hand, one of those glass balls, and killed her with it. And after all, the stolen silver is the only concrete piece of evidence that we have, isn't it?”

That, Lojacono was forced to admit, was true. Aside from the something that kept rattling around in his head, the something he couldn't quite grasp.

At least, not yet.

 

Russo's office was in the town's business district, the only part of the city, and it was a small one, that hinted at the fact that it was still a major financial hub. It was a large building, with an immense lobby that was, in the early afternoon, more or less empty.

In the absence of a doorman, a bronze plaque, lined up alongside a dozen others just like it, told them the floor and room number of their destination.

The woman answered the door herself: “
Buonasera
. Please, come this way. I asked you to come by at this time of day because my employees are on their lunch break; better to be discreet.”

Aragona admired the woman's derriere as she walked ahead of them toward an inside office.

She was quite a piece of work, Dottoressa Russo was: a luxuriant head of tawny hair, a pair of piercing green eyes, a tall, lithe body; she wore a short skirt that revealed a serious pair of legs. She was good-looking, knew it, and made no secret of the fact. But she was also rather aggressive, and this too she was happy to flaunt.

“Now then, I know that you've spoken to Arturo. That he told you where we were, last weekend, and what we were doing. Which means you know that we weren't in contact with anyone, and that we therefore have no witnesses.”

Aragona struck a pose, placing one elbow on the armrest of his chair and dropping his voice a few octaves: “And just why weren't you in contact with anyone?”

“Maybe I failed to make the situation clear. If a woman goes away for the weekend with a very prominent married man, who happens to have told his wife that he's going to be at an extremely boring conference on Capri, then she's not about to go for a stroll downtown while enjoying a gelato. I realize it's not the sort of thing that happens to you very often, officer, but still, that's the way it works.”

Aragona blinked repeatedly as if he'd just been slapped in the face. Lojacono asked: “How long have you known the notary Festa?”

“I first met him five years ago, but we've been seeing each other for a year and a few months. By which I mean, we've been a couple.”

The lieutenant appreciated the frank talk. The woman was willing to level with them, and at least she'd spare them pointless hypocrisies that would just be a waste of time.

“Did you know Signora Cecilia De Santis?”

“I've met her once or twice, in a social setting. Once at the Teatro San Carlo, and another time at a charity auction she organized, last Christmas. Arturo begged me not to go, he was terrified at the thought. I told him not to worry, that I wouldn't so much as peek in; but instead, at the last minute, I changed my mind and went. I have to have to say that she showed a readiness of spirit that I never would have expected.”

Aragona asked: “But wait, are you saying that the signora knew about the fact . . . about you and the notary?”

Once again, Russo gazed at him with an entomologist's detachment.

“Of course she knew about us. The whole city knew about us, it was and remains the number one topic of discussion for all the gossips that enliven the upper crust; do you think that she of all people wouldn't have heard? She'd known for months, oh, she knew. No doubt about it.”

Aragona was fascinated: “And did anything happen? Did the signora confront you, did you have a squabble, a fight?”

The woman threw her head back and laughed, displaying a perfect, healthy set of teeth, worthy of the beast of prey that she was: “Oh, please. She was smart enough to know that anything of the sort would have spelled her final defeat. It was precisely what I was hoping for, and it would have been wonderful. But she did no such thing. Instead, she thanked me graciously when I bought one of her horrible glass balls, at an exorbitant price.”