Black Run

“I want to have a talk with the guy who found the corpse,” Rocco replied, and turned toward the cableway administrative offices. Italo followed him like a bloodhound.

The offices of Monterosa Ski were deserted at that time of night. Aside from a young woman in a skirt suit and a policeman dressed for skiing, both seated in the lobby. The fluorescent lights made their faces look worn. But while the policeman had the handsome tan of someone who spends hours on the slopes, the shapely young woman looked pale and exhausted. Slightly overweight, but not someone you’d kick out of bed, thought Rocco as soon as he saw her, coming in through the double glass doors with Pierron. The skiing policeman snapped to attention. At his feet was a small puddle of water, evidence that the snow clinging to his Nordica ski boots had melted. And an unmistakable sign that the officer had been sitting there for quite some time now.

“Officer De Marinis.”

Rocco looked him up and down. “So why aren’t you with your Neapolitan colleague, Caciuoppolo, guarding the scene of the murder?”

“I was here with Amedeo, the one who found the corpse,” the cop explained.

“What are you, a babysitter? Get your skis and go on up and lend a hand.”

“Right away, Dottore.”

With the loud clapping of ski boots on the floor, De Marinis left the building.

“Where is he?” Rocco asked the young woman.

“Come this way; Amedeo’s in there,” the clerk replied, pointing to a shut door behind her. “I brought him a cup of hot tea.”

“Good work … Margherita,” said Rocco, reading the name on the badge pinned to her lapel. “Good work. Could you bring a ­couple more for the two of us, please?”

The young woman nodded her head and left.

Amedeo was sitting in a Naugahyde chair. His eyes were puffy, and his hair was flattened to his head. He’d set his cap and gloves down on the table, and he was staring at the floor. Rocco and Italo grabbed two office chairs with wheels and sat down facing him. Finally Amedeo looked up. “Who are you?” he asked in a faint voice.

“Deputy Police Chief Schiavone. Do you feel up to answering a ­couple of questions?”

“Christ on a crutch. I still can’t believe it. I heard a crack and—­”

Rocco stopped him with an upheld hand. “Do me a favor, Amedeo. Let’s take things one at a time. So, now, you work on the thingies, the … snowcats, right?”

“Yes, for the past few months. Luigi, my boss, got me the job. He’s a good friend of mine.”

“He’s the one who took us up, Dottore,” Italo added. Rocco nodded.

“I’d just finished doing the piste near the top. There was a wall and—­”

“A wall?” Schiavone asked with a grimace.

“When the slope turns really steep, that’s what we call it. A wall. Or a black piste,” Italo offered, coming to his aid.

“Go on, Amedeo.”

“The wall is just too steep. You can’t take it. It’s dangerous, and narrow, and if you’re not super-­skillful and experienced, it can end badly. Luckily my boss, Luigi, gave me a call and told me I could head down and finish the last part of the piste, where it comes into town.”

“And?”

“And so I headed back. It’s just that to go back down to town, we don’t drive over the runs we’ve just groomed. We take the shortcut, the Crest shortcut.”

“Do all of you use it?”

“Use what?”

“This Crest shortcut,” replied Rocco.

“When our shift is over, yes. Otherwise we’d ruin all the work we’ve done. I got done early, because basically I’m the one with the least experience. So you take the shortcut through Crest, which is that little village of just a few houses. From there, at the fountain, the shortcut runs through the woods and downhill.”

“And that’s where you ran over the corpse.”

Amedeo said nothing. He looked down.

“And then from the shortcut where do you go?” Rocco asked.

“You wind up in the middle of the piste that runs down to town. Which is the last one we do. And then our shift is over.”

“Understood. You go through one at a time, and the last one down grooms it so it’s ready for the next day’s skiing,” Rocco concluded. “So if it hadn’t been you, somebody else was bound to run over the corpse. You just had the bad luck to be first, Amedeo.”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. That’s all clear,” said Rocco, just as Margherita walked into the room with two small steaming plastic cups. Rocco took one. “Thanks for the tea, Margherita,” he said and gulped it down.

It tasted like dish soap. But at least it was hot. Margherita was about to leave when Rocco stopped her. “Tell me something, Margherita.”

The young woman turned around. “Certainly, Dottore.”

“How many ­people live in Champoluc?”

“Leaving out the tourists?”

“Just residents, I mean.”

“Not even four hundred.”

“Just one big family, right?”

“Right. We’re practically all related, really. For instance, me and Amedeo are cousins.”

Amedeo nodded in confirmation. Margherita, seeing that the deputy police chief had no other questions, left with a smile.

Rocco slapped the snowcat driver on the knee. This was the first time Italo had ever seen his boss make an affectionate gesture toward a stranger. Amedeo jerked in fright. “All right, then, Amedeo, now it’s time for you to head home. Get some sleep if you can. In fact, you want some advice? Get drunk—­tie one on. And don’t ever think about it again. After all, it wasn’t your fault, was it?”

“No. That’s the truth. I was driving, then all of a sudden I heard this super-­loud cracking sound and I slammed on the brakes. I didn’t know what it was. A root, or a rock. But when I got out, all that blood … I hadn’t seen the body at all!”

Rocco tilted his head slightly to one side, then reached one hand out toward the breast pocket of the young man’s windbreaker. He inserted two fingers and pulled out a pack of Rizla cigarette papers.

“You didn’t see it—­unless you had smoked yourself blind,” Rocco said, sniffing the papers. “Grass. At least grass keeps your spirits up. How many joints did you smoke while you were up grooming the snow?”

“One,” Amedeo muttered with a groan.

“Plus you can throw in a ­couple of jiggers of grappa for good measure, and then that poor sucker might have been trying to cross the road and you would never have seen him, would you?”

“No, Dottore! No! I swear that I just didn’t see that person at all. The snowcat has seven spotlights bolted to its roof; if he’d been crossing in front of me, I’d definitely have seen him!”

Wide-­eyed, Amedeo looked first at Rocco and then at Italo, in search of an understanding gaze. “When I got out, I thought I’d run over a chicken, or a turkey, even if there are no chickens or turkeys up here. But there were feathers and down everywhere, a sea of feathers.”

Rocco smiled faintly. “It could have been a down comforter from Ikea, no?”

“Believe me, Dottore. I didn’t see him!”

“How the fuck do you know it was a man?” Rocco snapped, and the sudden shift in mood frightened even Italo Pierron.

Amedeo seemed to shrink into his chair. “I don’t know. I just said that, for no reason.”

Rocco stared at the young man in silence for at least ten seconds. Amedeo was sweating. The fingers of his hands gripped the little table, shaking.

“Amedeo Gunelli, believe me, if I find out that he was out walking and you ran him over, it’ll be manslaughter at the very least. You’ll be looking at a nice long stretch in lockup, you know that?”

“When the deputy police chief says ‘lockup,’ he means prison,” Italo translated. Having spent the past four months listening to Rocco, he was starting to understand the way ­people talked in Rome.

Amedeo’s jaw dropped as if someone had just pulled a string.

“Remember one thing, Amedeo,” said Rocco as he got up from his chair. “The police can be your friend or your worst nightmare. That’s up to you.”

Outside, the wind slapped the two cops in the face with its icy palms. Italo trotted over to the deputy police chief. “Why did you say that to him? Do you think he ran him down?”

“I wish he had. The case would be closed. No, he’s not the one who did it. The snowcat up there has no dents or scrapes on the front section. If he’d hit him straight on, there would have been something. But there’s nothing.”

“Well?” asked Italo, who was baffled.

“You see, Italo, if you scare them, they’ll always be eager to help. He’s a good kid—­he might turn out to be useful. It’s always better for them to be afraid of us, trust me.”

Italo nodded with conviction.

“But there is one thing we’ll need to keep in mind: even with those blindingly powerful spotlights, he didn’t see that poor guy’s body lying on the ground. That’s something we need to give some thought to.”

“A sign that the body was covered with snow?”

“Nice going, Italo. You’re starting to catch on.”

Rocco and Officer Pierron were about to get into the car when a dark blue Lancia Gamma screeched to a halt thirty feet away.

Rocco rolled his eyes. There was no mistaking it: dark blue Lancia equals attorney general’s office.

A man got out of the car, five foot six tops, bundled in a down coat that hung below his knees. He wore a fur hat that almost covered his eyes. He strode rapidly over to Rocco Schiavone, right hand extended. “Name is Baldi. Pleased to meet you.”

Rocco shook his hand. “Schiavone, deputy police chief of the mobile squad.”

“Well, can you tell me what we’re looking at here?”

Rocco looked him up and down. The man looked like a veteran of the Italian army in Russia, but he was the investigating magistrate on duty. “Are you the investigating magistrate?”

“No. I’m your grandmother. You bet your ass I’m the investigating magistrate.”

This is beginning well, thought Rocco.

Dottor Baldi seemed to have an even shorter fuse than Rocco did. He was on duty and now he too had landed this tremendous pain in the ass. In a way, it made Rocco happy—­it meant he wasn’t the only one who’d been dragged out of a warm bed on a quiet night at home and sent rudely out into the snow at an elevation of five thousand feet above sea level.

“Well, there’s a corpse up there. A man. Between forty and fifty years old.”

“Who is it?”

“If I knew that, I would have told you first name and last.”

“No ID?”

“Nothing. We’re just guessing that it’s a man. I don’t know if I convey the idea.”

“No, you don’t convey it at all,” the magistrate replied. “Why don’t you stop beating about the bush. Get to the point. Dottor Schiavone: how can you tell that it’s a man? Describe clearly exactly what we’re dealing with, because I’m already pissed off.”

Schiavone cleared his throat. “Because the snowcat ran over him and churned him to bits with its tillers. You see, the head was crushed, with resulting expulsion of brain matter; from the thoracic cavity there was a generalized and random expulsion of shreds of lung particles and other visceral matter that even Fumagalli, our medical examiner, was hard put to identify. One hand lay thirty feet from the body, an arm was ripped loose, the legs were bent in a manner that defies nature roundly, and have, therefore, clearly been shattered in numerous places. The stomach has been twisted into an array of bloody coils and …”

“That’ll do!” shouted the magistrate. “What, is this your idea of fun?”

Rocco smiled. “Sir, you requested a detailed description of what we have up there, and I’m just providing you with it.”

Maurizio Baldi nodded repeatedly, looking around him as if in search of a question to ask or an answer to give. “I’ll be at the courthouse. I’ll see you around. Let’s hope that this was an accidental death.”

“Let’s hope so, but I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a sense about it. I haven’t had a lot of luck in a while now.”

“You’re telling me. The last thing I’m looking for is a murder case underfoot.”

“Ditto, exactly.”

The investigating magistrate glanced at the deputy police chief. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

“Certainly.”

“If what you say is true and this is not an accident, you’ll have to work up here. Dressed the way you are, there’s a good chance you’ll develop frostbite, then gangrene, and we’ll have to amputate your hands and feet.”

Rocco nodded. “Thanks for the advice.”

The magistrate looked Rocco in the eye. “I know you, Dottor Schiavone. I know lots of things about you.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “So let me warn you: avoid pulling any of your bullshit.”

“I’ve never pulled any.”

“I happen to have different information.”

“We’ll see you on the banks of the River Don, Dottore.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

Without bothering to shake hands with the magistrate, Rocco went back to the car, where Pierron was waiting for him. Maurizio Baldi, on the other hand, walked to the base of the cableway. Still, under that fur hat, a faint smile had played briefly across his face.

“That’s Dottor Baldi, isn’t it?” asked Pierron. Rocco said nothing. He didn’t need to. “He’s half crazy, did you know that?” asked Italo as they got into the car.

“You feel like putting this thing in gear and getting me out of here, or do I have to call a taxi?”

Pierron obeyed immediately.

It’s forty-­five minutes past midnight. A person can’t come home half-­frozen at forty-­five minutes past midnight. The minute I open the door I realize that I left the lights on. In the hall and in the bathroom. Forty-­five minutes past midnight and I look down at my half-­frozen feet. Shoes and socks aren’t worth keeping. It doesn’t matter; I have three other pairs of desert boots. My big toe is still black. That idiot D’Intino. I’ll have to get him transferred, get him transferred as soon as possible. It’s a question of my psychophysical equilibrium. If I’ve ever had such a thing.

I turn on the water. I slip my feet into it. It’s hot—­boiling hot. Only it takes a good three minutes before I can even tell how hot it is. I run hot water over my ankles, between my toes, and even over my black toenail. At least that doesn’t hurt.

“Keep that up and you’ll get chilblains.”

I turn around.

It’s Marina. In her nightgown. I think I must have woken her up. If there’s one thing that annoys me (one thing? there are thousands), it’s when I wake up my wife. She sleeps like a rock, but she seems to have a sixth sense when she hears me up and about.

“Ciao, my love.”

She looks at me with her sleepy gray eyes. “You woke me up,” she says.

I know. “I know. Sorry.”

She leans on the doorjamb, arms folded across her chest. She’s ready to listen. She wants to know more. “We found a corpse in the middle of a ski run, buried in the snow. In Champoluc. A tremendous pain in the ass, my love.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be staying up there for a while?”

“Not on your life. It’s an hour’s drive. Let’s just hope it turns out to be a case of accidental death.”

Marina looks at me. I keep my feet submerged in the bidet, which smokes like a pot of spaghetti. “Sure, but tomorrow morning you’re buying yourself a pair of decent shoes. Otherwise, in a ­couple of days they’ll have to amputate your feet for gangrene.”

“The investigating magistrate said the same thing. Anyway, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s sensible shoes.”

“Have you eaten?”

“A piece of stale pizza on the way.”

Marina has vanished behind the door. She’s gone to bed. I dry my feet and go into the kitchen. I hate this furnished apartment. The kitchen is the only decent room in the apartment. I wish I could understand the way other ­people live. Most of their apartments and homes are furnished in a way that evokes pity, nothing else. Only in the kitchen do they spend vast sums, furnishing the place with electric appliances of all kinds: ovens, microwaves, and dishwashers like something out of the Starship Enterprise. Instead, in the living room, arte povera and paintings of clowns hanging on the walls.

It’s a mystery.

Every once in a while, I compare it with my home, in Rome. On the Janiculum Hill. I look out over the city, and on a windy day, when the air is clear, I can see St. Peter’s, Piazza Venezia, and the mountains in the distance. Furio suggested I should rent it out. Instead of leaving it empty. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t stand the idea of strangers walking over the parquet floors that Marina chose, or opening the drawers of the Indian credenzas that we bought years ago in Viterbo. To say nothing of the bathrooms. Strangers’ asses planted on my toilet, in my bath, strange faces admiring their reflections in my Mexican mirrors. It’s out of the question. I get myself a bottle of cool water. Otherwise I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a throat and tongue that resemble two pieces of sandpaper.

Marina is under the blankets. As always, she’s reading the dictionary.

“Isn’t it a little late for reading?”

“It’s the only way I can get to sleep.”

“What’s the new word for today?”

Marina has a little black notebook that she keeps in her lap with a pencil. She opens to her bookmark and reads. “Stitch—­transitive verb: To sew or embroider something. It can also be used of one who sews with no particular enthusiasm.” She sets down her notebook.

The mattress is comfortable. It’s called memory foam. A material developed by NASA for astronauts in the sixties. It envelops you like a glove because it remembers the shape of your body. That’s what it says in the pamphlet that came with it.

“Could you say that I’m stitching in Aosta?” I ask Marina.

“No. You’re not a tailor. I’m the one who knows how to sew.”

The mattress is comfortable. But the bed is cold as ice. I wrap myself around Marina. Looking for a little heat. But her side is as cold as mine.

I close my eyes.

And I finally put an end to this shitty day.

FRIDAY

The telephone drilled through the silence that double-­pane windows and the absence of traffic gave to Deputy Police Chief Schia­vone’s apartment on Rue Piave. Rocco leaped like a hooked bass and opened his eyes wide. Despite the scream of the cell phone on his nightstand, he was still able to gather his thoughts: it was morning, he was at home, in his own bed after spending the night out in the snow. He wasn’t actually lying underneath Eva Mendes, and she wasn’t actually wearing nothing but a pair of dizzyingly high stiletto heels and dancing like a sinuous serpent, tossing her hair to and fro. That image was nothing but a cobweb that the telephone had scorched with its deranged shrieks.

“Who’s busting my balls at seven in the morning?”

“Me.”

“Me who?”

“Sebastiano!”

Rocco smiled as he ran one hand over his face. “Sebastiano! How you doing?”

“Fine, fine.” And now his friend’s croupy voice had become recognizable. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“I haven’t heard from you in months!”

“Four months and ten days, but who’s counting?”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine, fine.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’m coming up north.”

Rocco shifted comfortably on the memory foam mattress. “You’re coming up? When?”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll be on the seven o’clock train from Turin. Are you going to be around?”

“Of course I will. I’ll meet you at the station.”

“Excellent. Will it be cold up there?”

“What can I tell you, Seba? Bone-­chilling cold.”

“All right, then I’ll wear a down jacket.”

“And insulated shoes—­take my word for it,” Rocco added.

“I don’t have those. What kind of shoes do you wear up there?”

“A pair of Clarks desert boots.”

“Are they insulated?”

“No. Which is why I’m telling you to wear a pair of insulated shoes. My feet are like a ­couple of ice cubes.”

“Then why don’t you get yourself a pair?”

“I can’t stand the things.”

“Well, you do what you like. I’m going to swing by Decathlon and get a pair. So—­see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow.”

And Sebastiano hung up the phone.

Rocco dropped his cell phone on his down jacket. If Sebastiano Cecchetti, known to his friends as Seba, was coming to Aosta, then matters were becoming distinctly interesting.

When Rocco walked into police headquarters at 8:15 a.m., Special Agent Michele Deruta walked up to him immediately. He was moving his tiny feet as fast as his two-­hundred-­plus pounds allowed him, and he was panting like an old steam locomotive. His chin was sweaty and his thinning white hair, combed specially to conceal his bald spot, was glittering, oiled by who-­knows-­what pomade.

“Dottore?”

Rocco stopped suddenly in the middle of the hallway. “Your face and hair are damp. Why damp, Deruta? Did you stick your face into a barrel of oil?”

Deruta pulled out his handkerchief and tried to dry himself off. “I wouldn’t know, Dottore.”

“But still, you’re damp. Do you take a shower in the morning?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But you don’t dry off.”

“No, it’s just that before coming to work, I help my wife at her bakery.”

Officer Deruta, getting close to retirement age, started talking about his wife’s bakery just outside of town, the work in the predawn hours, the yeast and the flour. Rocco Schiavone paid no attention to a word he said. He just watched his damp, loose lips, his hair streaked with white, and his bovine, bulging eyes.

“What’s surprising,” said the deputy police chief, interrupting his special agent’s monologue, “is not that you work at your wife’s bakery, Deruta. It’s that you have a wife at all—­that’s what’s truly extraordinary.”

Deruta fell silent. It wasn’t as if he expected special praise for his daily sacrifice of working a double job, but a kind word, something like “You’re wearing yourself out, Deruta. What a good man you are,” or, “If only there were more ­people like you.” Instead he got nothing. A scornful lack of consideration was all his superior officer could offer him.

“Aside from your double shift, is there anything important you need to tell me?” asked the deputy police chief.

“The chief of police has already called three times this morning. He needs to speak to the press.”

“So?”

“First he wants to hear from you.”

Rocco nodded and turned away, leaving Deruta there; still, the officer chased after him on his dainty feet. To watch the heft of his 225 pounds bounce along on his size 7½ men’s shoes, you’d expect him to roll headlong across the floor at any moment. “The chief of police isn’t in town, Dottore. There’s no point in you going up to see him. You’ll have to call him.”

Rocco stopped and turned to look at Officer Deruta. “I see. Well, now, listen to me and listen good. Two things. First of all, start getting some exercise and put yourself on a diet. Second: later on, I’ve got an important job for you.” He furrowed his brow and looked Deruta in the eye. “Very important. Can I rely on you? Do you feel up to it?”

Deruta’s eyes opened wide and became even bigger than usual. “Certainly, Dottore!” he said, and flashed him a bright, thirty-­two-­tooth smile. Actually, a twenty-­four-­tooth smile, because there were several gaps. “Certainly, Dottor Schiavone. You can trust me blindly!”