A Cold Death

Are you ever going to spend the night at my place?

It was Nora. The woman he’d been exchanging bodily fluids with ever since he’d moved from Rome to Aosta. A shallow relationship, a sort of mutual aid society, but one that she was steering straight toward the breaking point—a demand for stability of some sort. Something that Rocco was unable and unwilling to face up to. He was perfectly fine with things the way they were. He didn’t need a girlfriend. His girlfriend was and always would be his wife, Marina. There was no room for another woman. Nora was beautiful and she helped to alleviate his loneliness. But he didn’t know how to resolve his psychological difficulties. People who go to an analyst do it because they want to get better. And there was no way that Rocco would ever set foot in an analyst’s office. No one walks a woman to the altar just for the exercise. If they go to the altar, it’s because they want to spend the rest of their lives with another person. Rocco had already taken that walk once years ago, and his intentions really had been sincere, the very best intentions. He was going to spend the rest of his life with Marina, and that was that. But sometimes things just don’t go the way you expect them to, they break, they unravel, and you can’t stitch them back together again. But that was a secondary problem. Rocco belonged to Marina, and Marina belonged to Rocco. Everything else was an afterthought, branches that could be pruned, autumn leaves.

While Rocco was thinking about Nora’s face, her curves and her ankles, a sudden crushing realization hit him square in the forehead. He’d just remembered the words she had whispered to him the night before, as they lay curled up in bed. “Tomorrow I turn forty-three, and on my birthday I’m the queen. So you have to behave like a good boy,” and she had flashed him a smile, with her perfect white teeth.

Rocco had continued kissing her and squeezing her large luscious breasts without a word. But even while he was enjoying Nora’s nude body, he understood that tomorrow he’d have to buy her a gift, and maybe even take her out to dinner, and certainly miss the Friday peek-ahead to Sunday’s Roma-Inter match.

“No perfume,” she’d warned him, “and I hate all kinds of scarves and plants. I’ll buy my own earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, and the same goes for books. To say nothing of CDs. There, at least now you know what kind of presents not to get me, unless you’re actually trying to ruin my birthday.”

What was left to bring as a gift? Nora had thrown him into a state of crisis. Or really she was forcing him to think, to reflect on what he should do. Giving presents, whether for birthdays or at Christmas, was one of the things that Rocco detested most intensely. He’d have to waste time on it, think of something, wander around from store to store like an asshole, and he didn’t feel like it in the slightest. But if he wanted to slip between the sheets and go on banqueting off that splendid female body, he’d need to dream up something. And he’d need to come up with it today, because today was Nora’s birthday.

“What a pain in the ass,” he’d said under his breath, just as someone knocked at his office door. Rocco had lunged to yank open the window to air out the room, then like a bloodhound he’d sniffed at the ceiling and four walls to make sure you could no longer catch a whiff of cannabis, then he’d shouted “Avanti!” and Inspector Caterina Rispoli had walked in. The first thing she did was wrinkle her nose and make a face. “What’s that smell?”

“I’m applying rosemary plasters for this cold I have!” Rocco had replied.

“But you don’t seem to have a cold, sir.”

“That’s because I use rosemary plasters. Which is why I don’t have a cold.”

“Rosemary plasters? Never heard of them.”

“Homeopathy, Caterina, it’s serious stuff.”

“My grandmother taught me how to make plasters with eucalyptus nuts.”

“What?”

“Eucalyptus PLASTERS.”

“My grandmother taught me how to make plasters too.”

“With rosemary?”

“No. With my own fucking business. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re doing in my office?”

Caterina fluttered her long eyelashes for a moment and then, after regaining control of her nerves, she said: “There’s one crime report that might bear closer examination …” holding out a sheet of paper for Rocco to see. “In the park by the train station, somebody called to say that every night there’s a tremendous ruckus until three.”

“Hookers?” Rocco had asked.

“No.”

“Drugs?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Rocco gave the report a quick scan. “We ought to follow up on this …” Then a magnificent idea occurred to him that all by itself gave a brand-new meaning to the day. “Get me the cretins, right away.”

“Get you the what?” Caterina asked.

“D’Intino and Michele Deruta.”

The inspector had nodded quickly and hurried out of the room. Rocco took that opportunity to close the window. It was freezing. But his excitement about the idea he’d just had made him forget about the chill that filled the room. Not five minutes later, D’Intino and Deruta, escorted by Caterina Rispoli, walked into his office.

“D’Intino and Deruta,” Rocco said in a serious tone, “I have an important job for the two of you. It will require your utmost attention and sense of responsibility. Are you up to it?”

Deruta had smiled and rocked back on his heels, balancing his 245 pounds of weight on his size 8 shoes. “Certainly, Dottore!”

“Most assuredly, no doubt about it!” D’Intino backed him up.

“Now listen carefully. I’m going to ask you to do a stakeout. At night.” The two officers were all ears. “In the park by the station. We suspect there’s drug dealing going on. We don’t know whether it’s smack or coke.”

Deruta glanced at D’Intino in excitement. At last, an assignment worthy of their skills.

“Find yourselves a place where you won’t be noticed. Requisition a camera, so you can take pictures and record everything you see. I want to know what they’re doing, how much narcotics they’re dealing, who’s doing the dealing, and in particular I want names. Are you up for it?”

“Certainly,” D’Intino replied.

“Well, though, I have to work at my wife’s bakery,” Deruta had objected. “You know that I often help her out, and we work until sunrise. Just last night I—”

Snorting in disgust, Rocco stood up and cut off what the officer was saying. “Michele! It is a wonderful and admirable thing that you help your wife out at the bakery, and that you break your back with a second job. But first and foremost, you’re a sworn officer of the law, for fuck’s sake! Not a baker!”

Deruta nodded.

“You’ll both be reporting to Inspector Rispoli.”

Deruta and D’Intino had swallowed the news unwillingly; it was clearly a bitter mouthful. “But why her? We always have to report to her!” D’Intino had the nerve to say.

“First of all, Rispoli is an inspector and you aren’t. Second, she’s a woman and I’m not going to send her out into the field to do a challenging stakeout like the one to which I’ve assigned the two of you. Third, and this is a fundamental thing, you will do exactly what I tell you to do, D’Intino, or else I will kick your ass from here to Chieti. Is that quite clear?”

D’Intino and Deruta nodded their heads in unison. “When do we start?”

“Tonight. Now get out of here. I need to have a talk with Rispoli.” The inspector had said nothing, standing off to one side. As the two male officers filed out of the room, they’d glared angrily at her.

“Dottore, now you’re putting me in an awkward position with those two.”

“Don’t worry, Rispoli, this way we’ve got them out from underfoot. What I need now is some advice. Sit down.”

Caterina did as she was told.

“I have to get a gift.”

“Birthday?”

“Exactly. I’ll give you the information. It’s a woman, age forty-three, in good shape, sells wedding dresses for a living; she’s from Aosta, she has good taste, and she’s quite well-off.”

The inspector took a moment to think it over. “Personal friend?”

“That’s my fucking business.”

“Understood.”

“Rule out flowers, scarves, plants, jewelry, books, perfume, and CDs.”

“I need to know more about her. Is this Nora Tardioli? The one with the shop in the center of town?”

Rocco nodded, without a word.

“Congratulations, Dottore, nice get.”

“Thanks, but as per aforementioned comment, my own fucking business.”

“How far out on a limb are you interested in going?”

“Not far. Just consider it a tactical move, keeping the status quo. Why?”

“Because, otherwise, you could give her a diamond ring.”

“That’s not going far. That’s handing yourself over to the enemy bound hand and foot.”

Caterina smiled. “Let me think it over. Does she have any hobbies?”

“As far as I know? She likes to go to the movies, but I’d avoid DVDs. She goes swimming twice a week, and works out three times a week. She’s a cross-country skier. And I think she bikes too.”

“Who are we talking about here? Lindsey Vonn?”

“Right now it’s …” Rocco glanced at his watch. “Ten fifteen. Do you think you can come up with an idea by noon?”

“I’ll do my best!”

Just then, Officer Italo Pierron threw open the door and strode into the room. Along with Rispoli, Pierron was the only other officer Rocco considered worthy of being on the force. He was allowed to walk into the deputy police chief’s office without knocking and address him by his first name outside the four walls of police headquarters. He glanced briefly at Caterina and nodded hello.

“Dottore?”

The young officer’s face was pale and alarmed. Rocco asked: “Italo, what’s wrong?”

“Something urgent.”

“Go on.”

“A call came in. Apparently a gang of burglars have barricaded themselves in the apartment of Patrizio and Esther Baudo on Via Brocherel.”

“Barricaded themselves?”

“That’s the term used by Paolo Rastelli, a retired warrant officer who’s also half-deaf. That’s what I managed to piece out, but in the background I could hear a woman screaming: ‘They’re inside! They’re inside! They’ve turned the place upside down!’”

Rocco nodded. “Let’s go …”

“Can I come too?” asked Caterina.

“Better not. I need you here. Stay close to the telephone.”

“Roger.”

As they zipped through city intersections with their siren off, Rocco pulled a cigarette out of Italo’s pack and looked out at the perfectly plowed streets. “The city government does its job up here, eh? In Rome you get a couple of flakes of snow and there are more deaths than from the start of the August vacations.” Then he lit the cigarette. “Why don’t you buy Camels? I think Chesterfields are disgusting.”

Italo nodded silently. “I know that, Rocco, but I like Chesterfields.”

“Make sure you don’t drive into a wall or run over any old ladies.”

Italo turned into Corso Battaglione Aosta, downshifted, passed a truck, and accelerated sharply.

“If you weren’t a cop, you’d be a perfect getaway driver for an armored car robbery.”

“Why do you say that, Rocco? Are you planning something along those lines?”

They both laughed.

“You know something, Italo? If you ask me, you ought to grow a goatee or a beard.”

“You think? You know, I’d thought about that myself. I don’t have any lips.”

“Exactly. You’d look less like a weasel.”

“I look like a weasel?”

“I never told you that? I’ve met lots of people who look like weasels. But never on the police force.”

After a six-month acquaintance, the two men understood each other clearly. Rocco liked Italo. He trusted him after what the two of them had done some time ago, intercepting that load of marijuana on a Dutch semi and splitting a nice big haul of several thousand euros. Italo was young, and in him Rocco glimpsed the same motivation that had led the deputy police chief to undertake his police career: pure chance. At the fateful moment when the deputy police chief’s classmates were starting life on the streets, working with blades and bullets, he just happened to put on the lawman’s uniform. Nothing more than that. For people who were born in Trastevere at the start of the sixties into blue-collar families, with neighbors who were on a first-name basis with prison, there were only two paths available. Like the game they used to play at the parish after-school when they were kids, a little game of tag known as police and thieves. Except now it was real. Rocco had become a cop, and Furio, Brizio, Sebastiano, Stampella, and all the others had become thieves. But they’d remained the best of friends.

“How on earth is a gang of burglars going to barricade themselves in an apartment, Italo? It’s not as if it’s a bank, with hostages and everything.”

“I don’t get it either.”

“I mean, if the people reporting them are a half-deaf old man and a woman, then what’s to stop them from coming out of the apartment, clubbing them senseless, and taking off in less than a minute?”

“Maybe the old man’s armed. He is a retired army warrant officer, after all.”

“Absolutely crazy,” said Rocco, looking out the window at the cars screeching to a halt and honking furiously as the BMW with Italo at the wheel zoomed past.

“Listen, Rocco, don’t you think we should use the siren? At least that way people would know it was the police and we’d be less likely to crash into someone!”

“I hate sirens.”

So, racing at 75 miles per hour through the city streets, they pulled up in front of no. 22, Via Brocherel.

Rocco buttoned up his loden overcoat and, followed by Italo, walked over to the two people waving their arms outside the front door.

An elderly man and a woman in her early forties, with straw-blond hair, a large run in her stocking, and blood on her kneecap.

“Police, police!” the woman was screaming, and her Slavic accent was echoing down the deserted street. The street might have been deserted, but a few inquisitive faces appeared behind the glass of windows here and there. The old man immediately stopped the woman with a wave of his hand, freezing her in place, as if to say, “Better let me handle this, man to man.” At the old man’s feet, a tiny pug of a dog, its eyes bulging out of its head, was barking furiously at a NO PARKING sign.

“Police?” asked the man, eyeing Rocco and Italo.

“What do you think?”

“Normally the police have a flashing light and a siren on top of their squad cars.”

“Normally people are a little bit better at minding their own fucking business,” Rocco replied, seriously. “Are you the one who called?”

“Yes. I’m Warrant Officer Paolo Rastelli. The signora here is certain that a gang of burglars have barricaded themselves in the apartment.”

“Do you live here?” asked the deputy police chief.

“No,” replied the warrant officer.

“Then this is your house?” Rocco asked, turning to Irina.

“No, I just come here to clean, every Monday and Wednesday and Fridays too,” the woman replied.

“Shut up!” the old man shouted at the dog, jerking at its leash until the little critter’s already blind eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. “Forgive me, Commissario, but this dog just won’t stop barking and it really gets on my nerves.”

“It’s typical of dogs, you know?” the deputy police chief said calmly.

“What is?”

“Barking. It’s in their nature.” He squatted down and with a single pat on the head silenced Flipper; now the dog was wagging its tail and licking his hand. “And anyway I’m not a commissario. The rank of commissario no longer exists. Deputy Police Chief Schiavone.” Then he looked over at the woman, who still had a frightened look on her face and her hair standing straight up, held in place by some electrostatic force, probably emanating from her light blue nylon sweater.

“Give me the keys!” Rocco said to the woman.

“To the apartment?” the Russian woman asked naively.

“No, to the city. Certainly, to the apartment, for the love of Jesus!” the retired warrant officer barked. “Otherwise how are they supposed to get in?”

Irina dropped her gaze. “I forget inside the keys when I run away.”

“Oh hell,” muttered Rocco under his breath. “Okay, let’s do this: what floor is it?”

“There … fourth!” and Irina pointed at the apartment building. “You see? Window up there with curtains is living room, then there is other room next to it, with shutters pulled down: that is den. Then there is last on left, the half bath, then—”

“Signora, it’s not as if I want to buy the apartment. All I need to know is where it is,” the deputy police chief brusquely interrupted her. Then he jutted his chin and directed Pierron toward the fourth-floor apartment. “Italo, what do you say?”

“How am I supposed to climb up there, Dottore? What we need is a locksmith.”

Rocco sighed, then glanced at the woman, who seemed to have regained her composure. “What kind of lock is it?”

“There are two keyholes,” Irina replied.

Rocco rolled his eyes. “Sure, but what kind? Pick-proof, lever tumbler, drum lock?”

“No … I don’t know. Apartment door.”

Rocco pulled open the street door. “Do you know the apartment number, or not that either?”

“Eleven,” Irina replied with a broad smile, proud that she could finally provide the police with some actionable intelligence. “Eleven R.”

Italo followed the deputy police chief.

“What should I do?” asked the retired warrant officer.

“You stay here and wait for reinforcements!” Rocco shouted. And he almost had the impression that the old man promptly clicked his heels in response.

As soon as the metal elevator doors swung open, Rocco went to the right, Italo to the left.

“Apartment 11R is right here,” said Italo. The deputy police chief caught up with him. “It’s an old Cisa lock. Excellent.”

Rocco put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the keys to his own apartment.

“What are you doing?” asked Italo.

“Hold on.” On his key ring, Rocco had a little Swiss Army knife, the kind that has about twelve thousand blades and clippers. He carefully pried open the little screwdriver. He bent over and started working on the lock. He removed the two screws that held the plate, then extracted the fingernail file. “You see? If you can just open a space between the wood and the lock mechanism …” He slid the file into the opening. He applied pressure, once, then a second time. “It’s a hollow-core door. In Rome, you don’t find front doors like this anymore. Nobody has them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re so damned easy to get open.” And with that the deputy police chief popped the lock open. Italo smiled. “You really picked the wrong line of work!”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that.” And Rocco swung open the door. Italo stopped him with one arm. “Shall I go first?” he asked, as he unholstered his pistol. “I mean, what if there really is someone barricaded in there?”

“Who do you think is barricaded, Italo? Come on, let’s not talk bullshit.” And he strode in.

They walked through the sliding door and found themselves in the living room. Italo headed for the kitchen. The deputy police chief continued down the hallway and took a look in the bedroom. The bed was unmade. He kept walking. At the end of the hall was another room. The door was shut. Italo caught up with Rocco just as his hand closed around the door handle. “No one in the kitchen. The place is a mess, but no one’s there. It looks like a tornado hit it.”

Rocco nodded, then threw open the door.

Darkness.

The wooden blinds were lowered, and it was impossible to make out anything in the shadows. But the deputy police chief caught a whiff of something ugly. Sickly sweet, with hints of puke and piss. He found the light switch and flipped it on. A bright glare lit up the room for a second. Then a short circuit knocked out the power as a handful of sparks showered down through the dark like so many party streamers. The room was plunged back into shadow. But that flare of electric light, like a photographer’s camera flash, had seared a hair-raising image into the deputy police chief’s retina. “Shit! Italo, call the main switchboard. And tell them to get Fumagalli right over here.”

“Dr. Fumagalli? The medical examiner? Why? What is it? Rocco, what did you see?”

“Just do what I told you!”

Italo backed a few steps out into the hallway, pulled out his cell phone, and did his best to punch in the main number for the hospital, but with the Beretta in his hand, it was no simple matter.

Rocco groped his way forward and ventured in warily, one hand on the wall.

His fingers brushed the edge of a bookshelf, then the wall again, then the corner of the room. He ran his hand over the wallpaper, pushed the curtain aside, and finally grasped the strap to raise the wooden roller blind. He gripped hard and gave it a first hard tug. Slowly the gray light of day filtered into the room. From below. As he hoisted the blind, the light first covered the floor, revealing an overturned step stool. With the second tug, daylight illuminated a pair of dangling bare feet; with the third, two legs, a pair of arms dangling alongside the body; and finally, once the roller blind was fully raised, the scene appeared before his eyes in all its macabre squalor. The woman was hanging from the lamp hook on the ceiling by a slender cable. Her head slumped forward, her chin rested against her chest, while her curly chestnut hair covered her face. There was a stain on the hardwood floor.

“Oh Madonna.” The words came out of Italo’s mouth like a hiss, as he stood there with his phone pressed to his ear.

“Call Fumagalli, I told you,” said Rocco. He moved away from the window and walked over to the woman’s body. Her bony, skinny feet reminded him of the feet of a Christ on the cross. Pale, faintly greenish. All that was missing were the nail holes; otherwise those feet could have come straight out of a painting by Grünewald. The knees were scraped, like the knees of a little girl coming home from her first bicycle ride. She wore a nightgown. Sea green. One of the shoulder straps had torn free. The stitching had come unraveled under the armpit and a small gap revealed a patch of flesh and the rib cage beneath. Rocco avoided looking her in the face. He turned on his heel and left the room. As he went past Officer Pierron, he grabbed the packet of Chesterfields out of his pocket and yanked out a smoke, just as Italo finally managed to get the hospital on the phone. “This is Officer Pierron … put me through to Fumagalli. It’s urgent.”

“Come smoke a cigarette, Italo; otherwise the sight will get etched into your retinas and you won’t be able to see anything else for the next two weeks.”

Italo followed Rocco like a robot, the cell phone in his left hand, his pistol in his right. “And holster your piece,” Rocco added. “Who the fuck are you planning to shoot, anyway?”

Esther Baudo and her husband were the subject of every framed photograph arranged on the top of an upright piano. There was a wedding picture, pictures on a beach, pictures under a palm tree, and even a picture in front of the Colosseum. In a single glance Rocco saw it had been taken from the corner of Via Capo d’Africa, where there was a seafood restaurant that he and Marina inevitably chose when they had something to celebrate. The last time—and it had been more than five years ago—was when they’d completed the purchase of the penthouse in Monteverde Vecchio. Esther Baudo was smiling in every picture. But only with her mouth. Never with her eyes. Her eyes were always lackluster, dead, dark, and deep, never sparkling with laughter. Not even on the day of her wedding.

Her husband was just the opposite. He always smiled into the lens. Happily. The hair had vanished from the top of his cranium and now adorned only the sides of his head. White, straight teeth gleamed in his small, rosebud mouth. He had small jug ears.