Adam's Rib (4 page)

“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.

Rocco left the living room and went to look at the kitchen. Right at the threshold of the kitchen door was a shattered cell phone. He picked it up. The screen was chipped, the battery was missing, and who could even say where the SIM chip had wound up. Then he looked around the rest of the room. Italo was right. The place really was a mess. It looked like a herd of buffalo had trampled through. The ground was a crazy hodgepodge of boxes, tin cans, packages of pasta, silverware, and a bread knife. He placed the shattered cell phone on the marble countertop, next to a plastic scale.

He turned to look toward the room at the end of the hall: the den. And slowly, inexorably pulled toward it, as if by a magnet, he walked back to it. The woman still hung there. Rocco was tempted to lower her to the ground. To see her dangling there like a butchered animal was more than he could take. He bit his lip and stepped closer. The first thing that caught his eye was the swollen face. It was puffy, with
a split lip from which the blood had flowed. One eye was open, staring; the other was shut and swollen to the size of a plum. The cable around her neck was a metal clothesline. The woman had run it over the hook that held up the ceiling lamp and then anchored it to the floor, tying it to the foot of an armoire. Like a ten-foot guywire, to make sure it would support the weight. Actually, though, it hadn't—her weight had torn loose the electric wiring and caused a short circuit. There was a stool lying on the floor. A three-legged stool, like a piano stool. When it overturned, the cushion had torn loose. Maybe Esther kicked it in the last instant of her life, when she made up her mind that her time on this planet Earth had come to its logical conclusion. The skin on her neck was pale, but not around her throat. There a purple band ran, a little less than an inch across. Purple like the stain on the hardwood floor.

“It's the third damned suicide this month,” said the medical examiner from behind him, snorting in annoyance. Rocco didn't even bother turning around, and both men, faithful to the routine they'd developed over the months, exchanged no greeting.

“Who found her? You?”

Schiavone nodded. Alberto stepped closer and stood, surveying the body. They looked like a pair of tourists visiting MoMA, admiring an art installation.

“A woman, about thirty-five, probable cause of death strangulation,” said the doctor. Rocco nodded: “And they gave you a medical degree for that?”

“I'm just kidding.”

“How can you kid about this?”

“With the work I do, if you can't kid around, you're done for,” and Alberto tilted his head toward the corpse.

Rocco asked, “Are you going to take the corpse down?”

“I'd say so . . . I'll wait for a couple of your people and then we'll take her down.”

“Who was coming upstairs?”

“The young woman and a fat guy.”

Which meant Officer Deruta and Inspector Caterina Rispoli.

Rocco left the room and went to meet the two of them.

DERUTA WAS ALREADY IN THE FRONT HALL, SWEATY
and panting. Caterina Rispoli, on the other hand, was still out on the landing. She was talking to Italo Pierron and twisting her police-issued gloves.

“Did you come up the stairs, Deruta?”

“No, I took the elevator.”

“Then why are you out of breath?”

Deruta ignored the question. “Dottore, I was just thinking—”

“And that right there is a wonderful piece of news, Deruta.”

“I was thinking . . . don't you feel the sight of all this is a little too harsh?”

“For who?”

“For Inspector Rispoli?”

“The sight of what, Deruta? The sight of you at work?”

Deruta grimaced in annoyance. “Of course not! The sight of the dead body in there!”

Rocco looked at him. “Deruta, Inspector Rispoli is a police officer.”

“But Rispoli's a woman!”

“Well, she can't help that,” said the deputy police chief as he walked out onto the landing.

The minute he walked out the door, Caterina took a look at him. “Deputy Police Chief . . .”

“Go on in, Rispoli. Don't leave me alone with Deruta; next thing you know, he'll hang himself too.” Caterina smiled and walked into the apartment. “Ah, Dottore?”

“What is it, Rispoli?”

“I did come up with an idea for that gift.”

“Perfect. Let's talk in ten minutes.” As Caterina disappeared into the living room, Rocco turned to look at Italo. “Let's go get ourselves a cup of coffee.”

“If you don't mind, Dottore,” said Italo, moving from a first-name basis to a more official term of respect, “I'd just as soon stay right here. My stomach's kind of doing belly flops.”

Shaking his head, Rocco Schiavone went down the stairs.

VIA BROCHEREL WAS CROWDED WITH PEOPLE. PEOPLE
looking out their windows, people rubbernecking outside the front door. There was a muttering of conversation that sounded like a kettle on the boil. “A corpse? . . . There weren't any burglars? Who is it? The Baudos . . .”

There was a brief moment of silence when the front door swung open and Rocco Schiavone, wrapped in his loden green overcoat, emerged. Officer Casella alone was keeping the rubberneckers at bay. “Commissario,” he said, saluting.

“It's deputy police chief, Casella, deputy police chief, Jesus fucking Christ! You at least, seeing that you're on the police force, ought to try to remember these things, no?”

He looked around but there was no sign of a café or a shop anywhere in sight. He went over to the retired warrant officer. “Excuse me! Could you tell me if there's a café anywhere around here?”

“Say what?” asked the old man, adjusting his hearing aid.

“Café. Near here. Where.”

“Around the corner. Take Via Monte Emilus and go about a hundred yards, and you'll see the Bar Alpi. Do you have any news, Dottore? Is it true that they found the lady hanging by a rope?”

Irina too stood gazing at him apprehensively.

“Can you keep a secret?” Rocco asked in an undertone.

“Certainly!” Paolo Rastelli replied, puffing his chest out proudly.

“I can too!” Irina chimed in.

“So what do you think, I can't?” Rocco retorted and walked away, leaving them both openmouthed.

As was to be expected, the retired warrant officer's dog, Flipper, promptly began barking again, this time at the
NO PARKING
sign. The former noncommissioned officer glared down at the yappy little mutt and brusquely
switched off his hearing aid. At last, the world turned silent, muffled and cottony once again. A giant aquarium he could gaze at with detachment. With a smile and a slight forward tilt of the head, he bade farewell to Irina and resumed his daily stroll, heading for home and the crossword puzzle.

AS THE WIND BLEW, PUSHING CHILLY GUSTS OF AIR
under his loden overcoat, Rocco decided that all things considered, it could have gone worse. A suicide just meant a series of bureaucratic procedures to get out of the way, the kind of thing you could take care of in an afternoon's work. His plan was simple: leave the bureaucratic details to Casella, talk to Rispoli and find out what idea she'd come up with for Nora's present, go home, get a half-hour nap, take a shower, go back out and buy the present, go out to dinner with Nora at eight, after an hour and a half pretend he had a crushing migraine, take Nora home, and then hurry back to his place to watch the second half of the Roma-Inter game. Acceptable.

Just as the wind died down and a fine chilly drizzle began to pepper the asphalt, cold as the fingers of a dead man's hand, Rocco stepped into the Bar Alpi. A strong smell of alcohol and confectioner's sugar washed over him, like a warm, welcome hug from a friend.

“Buongiorno.”

The man behind the counter gave him a smile. “Hello. What'll it be?”

“A nice hot espresso with a foamy cloud of milk . . . and I'd like a pastry. Do you have any left?”

“Sure . . . go ahead and take what you like, right there . . .” He pointed to a Plexiglas case with an electric heater where breakfast pastries were on display. Rocco grabbed a strudel while the barista ratcheted the porta-filter into place and punched the button that applied pressure to the boiling water. He heard the clack of billiard balls from the other room in the bar. Only now did he notice that the walls were covered with pictures of Juventus players and black-and-white team scarves. Rocco went over to the counter and poured half a pack of sugar into his coffee. It took awhile for the sugar to sink into the hot dense liquid. A clear sign that this was a good espresso. He took a sip. It really was good. “You make a first-rate espresso,” he told the barman, who was busy drying glasses.

“My wife taught me how.”

“Neapolitan?”

“No. Milanese. I'm the Neapolitan in the family.”

“So, you're saying that you're a Neapolitan who roots for Juventus and that a woman from Milan taught you how to make espresso?”

“Plus I'm tone deaf,” the man added. They both laughed.

Another sharp clack from the next room. Rocco turned around.

“You want to play some pool?”

“Why not?”

“Look out, those two are a pair of professional sharks.”

Rocco slurped down the last of his espresso and strode
into the next room, finishing off his strudel in a shower of crumbs down the front of his loden overcoat.

THERE WERE TWO MEN. ONE WORE THE JUMPSUIT OF
a manual laborer, the other a suit and tie. They'd just set the cue ball down on the table and were about to begin a game of straight pool. When they saw Rocco they both smiled. “Care to play?” asked the man in the jumpsuit.

“No, you guys go ahead. Mind if I watch?”

“Not at all,” said the one who looked every bit the realtor. “Just watch me dismantle Nino, here. Nino, today I'm not taking prisoners!”

“Ten euros on the best out of three games?” asked the manual laborer.

“No, ten euros a game!”

Nino smiled. “Then I've already made my end-of-year bonus,” he said, and shot the deputy police chief a wink.

The realtor took off his jacket while the laborer chalked his pool stick with a vicious grin.

Clack!
And the three ceiling lamps that illuminated the green felt of the billiards table went dark simultaneously.

“Well of all the damned . . . Gennaro!” shouted the realtor. From the bar the proprietor called back: “The power always goes out when it's windy like this!”

“Try paying your electric bill, and maybe that'll stop it from happening!” called the man in the jumpsuit, and he and his friend shared a hearty laugh.

But Rocco remained straight-faced, leaning against the
wall, lost in thought. “Holy shit!” he said, between clenched teeth. “I'm an idiot! Why didn't I think of it? What a shitty profession this is!” Cursing, he left the game room before the astonished eyes of the two pool players.

“ALBE', TELL ME THAT WHAT I'M THINKING DOESN'T
hold up!”

“Run it by me again, Rocco,” said the medical examiner, as he leaned over Signora Baudo's corpse.

“When I walked in, I switched on the light. And it short-circuited. So that means it was turned off before, right?”

“Okay, Rocco, I'm with you.”

“Obviously, when she fell the poor woman yanked loose a couple of wires. When I flipped the switch I caused a short circuit. What does that mean? That she hanged herself in the dark. How did she do it? She lowered the blinds, fastened the noose, and let herself drop?”