Cosi Fan Tutti

XVII

'She said that?'

'Those were her very words.'

'And you believe her?'

A shrug.

'Then why hasn't Orestina said anything about it to me?'

'Filomena said they'd sworn not to tell us,' Sabatino explained. 'She just blurted it out while we were talking this morning. She sounded a bit exhausted and emotional — apparently they'd been up most of the night — and she said she couldn't lie to me.'

Gesualdo, who was driving, made an unnecessarily vicious left turn.

'Oh, she couldn't, eh?'

Sabatino glanced at his partner in surprise.

'What's wrong with that?'

'And those little bitches bought into it?' yelled Gesualdo over an excruciatingly loud and dissonant blast of his horn at the mental incompetent at the wheel of the car ahead, who had very nearly caused an accident by suddenly stopping, without the slightest warning, at a stop light.

'For them, it meant a free trip to London,' Sabatino remarked in a conciliatory tone. 'Besides, Filomena said they knew they could trust us, so it didn't make any difference anyway.'

'Strunze 'e mmerdal Chi t' 'a date 'a patente?'

This to the driver in front, who was still blocking the street, even though the light had changed to green several nanoseconds earlier.

'So Orestina didn't mention this to you?' asked Sabatino.

Cutting out in front of an oncoming bus, the red Jaguar roared past the offending vehicle.

'We talked about other things,' Gesualdo replied combatitively. 'Like what?'

'Like none of your fucking business.'

'Oh, those things…'

Two blocks later, the Jaguar's precipitate progress ended in the constipated streets feeding into Piazza Garibaldi and the souks around the main railway station.

'Who set it up?' demanded Gesualdo. 'That Alfonso Zembla, I suppose.'

Sabatino waved negligently, the lordly dispenser of privileged information.

'He's got nothing to do with it. Apparently it's all their mother's doing. Her idea is that the girls are just in love with the idea of being in love for the first time, and that if they spend a few weeks away they'll forget all about us.

But it seems to have worked the other way round…'

A pause.

'… at least as far as Filomena's concerned. She said she's missing me so much she couldn't sleep all night.'

With a wary eye out for policemen, Gesualdo attached the flashing blue light to the roof and started to inch through the blockade.

'And what about you?' he asked aggressively. 'Did you tell your faithful Penelope about us moving into a house with two Albanian sex bombs who're willing, quote, to do anything to get ahead, unquote?'

Sabatino shrugged.

'Well, no…'

'Why not?'

'She wouldn't understand. You know how women are.'

Gesualdo shook his head.

'On the contrary.'

They rounded the piazza and entered the squalid streets behind the station.

'Odd that Orestina didn't trust you,' murmured Sabatino as though to himself.

'Still odder that you didn't trust Filomena,' Gesualdo shot back.

'It's not a question of trust! I've done nothing to be ashamed of.'

'So far.'

Sabatino gave his partner a look.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Gesualdo brought the Jaguar to a halt at the kerb.

'Well, now we know that the whole thing's just a trick…' he sniffed.

'What difference does that make?'

There was no answer.

'So is this it?' asked Sabatino at length.

Gesualdo opened the car door.

'This,' he said, 'is it.'

They crossed the street and entered one of a few remaining tenements which had survived both the war and the subsequent reconstruction. A steep internal staircase led to a dingy but spotlessly clean landing with an open window overlooking a small courtyard. Behind one of the two doors which opened off it, a child was crying insistently. Gesualdo rapped at the stout wood panelling.

'Who is it?' a woman called out.

Gesualdo cleared his throat respectfully.

'Good morning, signora. Excuse the disturbance. I'm a friend of Roberto.'

He glanced at Sabatino before adding, 'It's about a car.'

Dove sia nessun lo sa On the bench in the cavernous entrance hall of the police station, a laurel wreath the size of a tractor tyre rested against a wall mottled by dust which had collected in the pockmarked plaster. Red ribbons and the Italian flag flanked a grainy snapshot of Armando Bertolini as a raw recruit in uniform. The card below read: 'To Our Fallen Colleague, More in Sorrow Than in Anger, the Officers and Men of the Port Detachment'.

The building was completely silent and seemingly deserted. Zen walked upstairs, bellowing Caputo's name. His voice echoed hollowly. Then running footsteps sounded above, and the slight but virile figure of his subordinate appeared on the landing.

'What's going on?' demanded Zen, puffing slightly with the exertion of climbing the stairs. 'This place is as dead as some country railway station in Calabria.'

Caputo mimed deference tempered by grief.

'Most of them have taken the day off, chief. In the circumstances, it seemed only natural. Everyone's shocked by what happened to poor Armando. Even upstairs has closed.'

'What are you talking about?' Zen wheezed, having attained the landing. 'I've been given to understand that the upper floor of this building is disused.'

Caputo nodded.

'But today it's even more disused.'

'They've shut the whorehouse? Jesus!'

'As a mark of respect, dottore. It's only for one night, mind you, and Monday is always slim pickings.'

'I'm glad to hear that a spirit of pragmatism still prevails, Caputo.'

He led the way down the corridor to his office. When the door had shut behind them, he turned and looked his subordinate in the eye.

'Now then, what really happened?'

Caputo opened his mouth, closed it again, and shrugged.

'Like I told you on the phone, chief, we were driving along quietly, minding our own business and looking for a suitable opportunity to let Pastorelli pretend to escape…'

'No, I mean what really happened?' "I already told you, chief! These guys in the refuse truck jumped out and gunned down Bertolini before any of us could…'

'You're not listening, Caputo!'

Zen's face was a mask glowing with obscure passions.

'For the last time, what really happened?'

Caputo's eyes were fixed hypnotically on Zen's.

'Really?' he murmured, as though breaking a taboo by uttering the name of a divinity.

A pause, a shrug.

'The talk is that it was probably a hit team from one of the clans using a municipal vehicle as cover. When the accident occurred, they realized the operation might be jeopardized and decided to take the initiative. Either that or they just panicked. That's all I could find out. No one seems to know anything for sure. It's odd.'

Zen continued to hold Caputo's gaze for a long while in silence. Then he turned away abruptly.

'And the stabbing case?'

Immediately Caputo perked up.

'We've got movement on that one, chief! The Americans got back to me. They've identified the person whose fingerprints appeared on that cassette.'

'Excellent! Who is he? I need to speak to him immediately/ 'His name's John Viviani. But there's a problem.'

'A problem?'

Caputo's grin erupted and vanished with equal suddenness.

'His ship sailed last night.'

'Ah.'

'But the real problem is that this Viviani isn't aboard.'

'So where is he?'

'No one knows.'

It took Zen five minutes more to get the whole story.

Ensign John Viviani, a junior officer on the aircraft carrier, had been granted shore leave the previous day with orders to return to his vessel by three in the afternoon.

When the ship sailed at six that morning, Viviani had still not returned. He had been listed as absent without leave and his details circulated to the relevant authorities, but so far no trace of him had been discovered.

'What about Pastorelli?' demanded Zen.

'He finally called in. He got the cuffs off with the key we gave him and is lying low at home.'

'All right, here's what we do. Bertolini's killing is out of our hands. The Questura will handle that. As far as the stabbing goes, our line remains the same. The prisoner was being transported to hospital when a totally unforeseeable attack took place, as a result of which he fled without trace. Our investigations are on-going and we have no comment to make. Got it?'

A swift nod.

'Got it, chief.'

'I'm going to go and make some, er, parallel enquiries.'

But it turned out this wasn't so easy. When he got downstairs, Zen discovered a guard on the main door of the police station, a man he had never seen before, kitted out in battledress and machine-gun. Undeterred by Zen's imperious manner, he demanded to see his ID.

'I am Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen, in command of this detachment. And who might you be?'

'Landi, Proculo,' the man replied. 'Anti-Terrorist Squad/ He nodded towards a jeep parked outside, containing four men similarly equipped and armed.

'In view of the threat posed by the assault yesterday,'

Landi continued, 'we've been posted here until further notice with strict orders not to let anyone enter or leave without proper identification.'

It took Zen only a second to sum up the realities of the situation. The Questura had taken over. His little fief dom, such as it had ever been, was no more.

He walked back upstairs and tapped on an office door. Inside, Giovan Battista Caputo was in the middle of a telephone conversation in dialect. Zen turned idly towards a notice-board on the wall, feeling like a foreigner again, an alien intruder to be isolated and repelled. It was some time before he emerged from this slough of self-pity sufficiently to realize what he was looking at. The notice-board was covered in various official communications relating to events in which the local force was expected to take a professional interest.

Most had been there for some considerable time, judging by the colour of the paper.

But there were two new ones, freshly circulated by the Questura. One featured a mug shot of the escaped prisoner in the stabbing case, with a warning that he was to be regarded as armed and dangerous. The other featured a military-issue photograph of Viviani, John, a US naval officer presumed missing after failing to report to his ship. It showed a pleasant, open-faced lad in his twenties with crew-cut hair and the wary look of someone trying to appear tougher and more competent than he really felt himself to be. Zen detached both from the board, folded them carefully and put them away in his pocket.

'Don't waste your time, chief!' Caputo told him, hanging up the phone. 'Those guys always turn up after a couple of days on the town, once they sober up or run out of money/ 'I need to get out of here the back way,' Zen said. 'Like our prisoner did.'

Caputo barely raised an eyebrow.

'No problem.'

Zen went over to the desk and dialled a number.

'I'm coming home,' he said.

'Home?' queried Valeria.

"I need some money. My wallet got stolen. Do you have some cash? I'll pay you back.'

'How about lunch?'

A pause.

'If you're hungry/ added Valeria.

Unseen, Zen smiled.

'I'm always hungry/ 'Just the sort of man I like.'

Una donna che non vol due soldi Which was more than the whore at Via Francesco Proscopi 53c felt about either of the young men with hard eyes and tough bodies who had so rudely talked their way into her home.

She didn't like them calling her a whore, for a start-off, and particularly not in front of Daniele, who had immediately picked the word up and was now trumpeting it proudly about the apartment as he no doubt would later about the entire neighbourhood: 'Putta! Putta!'

Still less did she like them using Roberto's name to get past the door, when it was clear within seconds — but too late — that they had no connection with this local fixer and power-broker beyond knowing his name. Heaven only knew who they were connected to. Someone powerful, for sure, or they wouldn't have dared throw their weight around in this arrogant way. There was a name out there, all right, but she preferred not to think too much about who it might be.

But all this paled into insignificance compared with what happened next. She had admitted bringing the car to the underground depot run by Lorenzo, who ran the place for Roberto, who in turn ran all manner of things for…

'Where did you get it?' demanded one of the men.

He was the one she had been most afraid of all along wrongly, as it now turned out. For no sooner had she repeated the line she used with Lorenzo — 'I saw it on the street, unlocked and with the key in the ignition' — than the other man, to whom she hadn't so far paid much attention, grabbed Daniele as he ran past, still yelling 'Putta!', and hauled him up to perch on his knees. Then, still smiling, he took out a pistol and aimed it at the back of the child's head, which he was holding in such a playfully tight grip that Daniele had no idea what was happening. 'Putta!' he yelled, encouraged by this welcome male attention. 'Putta!'

'For Christ's sake, Sabatino!' the other man hissed, loud enough to be heard.

So that's the deal, she thought, the good cop and the bad cop. Not that they were cops, of course, but the pattern was the same.

'Oh, putta!' shouted the one called Sabatino, mimicking her son's voice and grinning from ear to ear. 'Where did you get it?'

If only there was a simple answer, she would have told them. But there wasn't. She'd seen the news, and knew now who the owner of the car was. And she knew — or rather, like everyone else, didn't know — what had become of him. All she was sure of was that some gang of terrorists was involved, and that the lean, cruel, unknown young man across the room had just cocked the revolver pointing at the nape of her son's neck, his blank eyes boring into her like some scary trick's cock.

'From a client!' she blurted out.

'When?'

'Friday night.'

'Who was he?'

"I don't know! I hardly saw him.'

'Putta! yelled Daniele merrily.

His mother started to weep. For the first time, the child looked alarmed. Sabatino slid his pistol back inside his jacket.

'Go and play outside,' he said.

Daniele glanced at his mother, who nodded.

'But no tricks!' warned the other man.

The woman held her arms open to her son, who came runnning.

'Go and see Aunt Clara,' she told him. 'But don't say anything about these men being here/ 'Same as usual?' lisped Daniele brightly.

His mother sighed and nodded gravely.

'Same as usual/ Daniele turned bravely away, pleased to be helpful. He went out, closing the door behind him, same as usual, leaving his mother alone with the strange men.

'I'd never seen him before/ the woman said. 'He asked for some very… unusual services. But the money was good, so I agreed. I got into his car and we were about to drive off to his place when the accident happened/ 'Accident?'

This from the other man, the one whose name she didn't know.

'A truck hit us from behind/ she replied, shrugging.

'One of those yellow ones that pick up the rubbish. My trick got out to argue with the driver. And that was the last I saw of him/ 'Oh, come on!' Sabatino jeered aggressively.

There was no telling what might have happened if the other man's mobile phone had not started beeping. With an expression of annoyance he flicked up the mouthpiece and started speaking quietly, turning away so as not to be overheard. That broke their rhythm and gave her a chance to regroup, not that she had any idea what to do with it.

'Did anyone else see this?' demanded the one calling himself Sabatino, more to stop her overhearing what his partner was saying than in hope of a positive answer.

'No, I was the only one on that.. /

She broke off with a frown.

'That's odd!'

The reply was brutal: 'What's odd?'

She looked up at him. This was the moment. They would either kill her now or not. At least Daniele would be safe.

'There're two femmenielli who usually work the opposite corner. But you know what? They haven't been there, the last couple of nights. I never thought about it until now. They've disappeared, just like…'

The other man snapped his mobile phone closed and stood up.

'Let's go!'

Sabatino frowned.

'What is it?'

'De Spino. He wants us now.'

They headed for the door. There the one who was not called Sabatino turned and stared levelly at the woman.

'Not a word of this to anyone else, or we'll be back. If not for you, then for your kid.'

She sat trembling as the door closed behind them. De Spino, she was thinking. She couldn't place anyone by that name except Dario, but he was just a small-time fixer and scam artist. It was a joke to think that someone like that could get a pair of ruthless thugs like these to drop everything and come running. It must be another De Spino. The old order was breaking down, and new men she had never heard of were taking over. She was out of tune with the times, with the new Italy. Soon no one would want her, even on the street.

It was only then that she realized that the two men had said nothing about the money Lorenzo gave her for the car. A slow smile spread across her tired face. Maybe it was time to pay a call on Grandma in Avellino. She was always complaining that she never got to see Daniele.

They would be safe enough there up in the mountains for a while, by which time the whole episode would hopefully have been forgotten.