Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (7 page)

The spring air carried the notes of the unknown neomelodic song, along with the disorderly racket of the bustling street below. A kid started crying and an exasperated woman began shouting at him. It was almost dinnertime, and the air was beginning to fill with the scent of minced garlic.

God, how she loved that city.

A
nyone who entered the large bullpen out of which Pizzofalcone's investigative team worked would have found himself face-to-face with an odd spectacle. All of the officers, plus Commissario Palma, and even Guida, who manned the front desk and had magically chosen just the right moment to be temporarily relieved, were crowded around Ottavia Calabrese's desk, watching the recordings from Villa Rosenberg's security cameras, which she had digitized.

Romano and Aragona had the rumpled appearance of men who had worked hard and come up empty. They'd gone over the art gallery, the grounds, the surrounding area, and even the lobbies of the apartment buildings on the far side of the piazza with a fine-toothed comb, and they'd found nothing. They'd questioned the museum staff, the local shopkeepers, the traffic cops working the streets in the neighborhood, and even a few old men who'd hoped to enjoy a little spring air, but instead were sitting on benches getting lungfuls of smog. Nothing. No one had seen a little boy leave the museum, alone or accompanied, and head off somewhere else. It was as if Dodo—what a terrible nickname, Aragona had thought to himself—had vanished into thin air, had turned to dust and been blown away on the spring breeze all the way down to the sea.

To eliminate any lingering doubts, they'd forced the two nuns to answer about a hundred questions. Did they remember whether the child's behavior had changed in the past few weeks? Had he said anything odd, unusual? Had there been any changes in his academic performance? What about his mood? Nothing, nothing at all. If Dodo had been unhappy, if he'd planned to run away from home, to do something foolish, he'd shown no warning signs. Everything had been perfectly normal, everything had gone just as usual, everything had been calm.

Except for the fact that Dodo had just vanished into thin air.

The original footage, in black and white, was pretty grainy; to be fair, the cameras were meant to catch someone removing paintings from the museum without permission, not people kidnapping children. Ottavia had done a little digital magic and managed to improve the resolution ever so slightly, and now they were all watching video coverage of a sleepy morning at the museum as if it were an adrenaline-charged thriller.

Before putting on his glasses to see from the sideline to which he'd been relegated, Pisanelli had closed the shutters, bringing darkness a little earlier than the impending nightfall would have.

“Guida, make yourself useful,” Lojacono had said brusquely, “turn the light off.”

It had become a kind of sadistic game to berate Guida, a sloppy, lazy beat cop who'd been kicked off his beat for manifest incompetence and put on front desk duty at the precinct house. On his first day at Pizzofalcone, Lojacono had dressed him down quite sharply for the state of his uniform and the informality of his salute, and since then, Guida had lived in holy terror of the lieutenant and been absolutely determined to reestablish his lost professional standing. With a single, sharp reproof, the Chinaman had achieved the objective that had eluded dozens of senior officers: He'd turned Guida into a perfect, spit-polished policeman, his salute timely and decisive. The metamorphosis had earned Guida the mockery of many of his coworkers and the approval of Palma, Pisanelli, and Ottavia, who'd all known him for years: Lojacono alone pretended not to notice the change, to Guida's immense chagrin and the others' endless amusement.

At the lieutenant's command, therefore, Guida sprang into action, and then trotted back to his previous location from where, if he craned his neck, he could glimpse the computer screen.

Ottavia hit fast-forward, and for nearly a minute the picture remained unchanged, unruffled by any human presence, until a museum guard appeared and jetted back and forth across the room like a rocket. Calabrese slowed the film back down to normal speed and said: “There. The museum's open now.”

The lightning-fast guard turned human again, sleepy and slow. He turned on the light, checked the paintings on the walls, stuck his hand down his pants, and yawned as he scratched himself. “And to think,” Aragona said bitterly, “I shook hands with him when we left, that piece of shit.”

Guida snickered, but was then instantly silenced by a glare from Pisanelli. The screen emptied out again, then, after another five minutes telescoped into a few seconds by the magic of technology, it was filled by Sister Beatrice and her group of schoolchildren.

The teacher stopped in front of each painting to listen to the docent's explanations. The children trailed after her, looking bored; some of them lagged behind the larger group, trading soccer cards. Just as they were all about to move on into the next room, the silhouette of Christian Datola, Dodo's friend, appeared.

“There, stop it here,” said Romano. “This is the little boy who hung back with the child we're interested in. It's been exactly . . .” and here he looked down at the video's time stamp, “. . . seven minutes. The boy, his name is Christian, said that the last time he saw Dodo the child was still waving, from a distance, at this blonde woman we've all heard about. That means that, at this same point in time, the security camera at the front entrance ought to have recorded something.”

Ottavia waited for the group of schoolchildren led by Sister Beatrice to leave the room to make sure that no one had entered the camera's field of view in the few minutes that followed; then she started the other video.

The tension became palpable: The small ad hoc audience was about to make the visual acquaintance of the little boy who might have been kidnapped. Almost imperceptibly, everyone moved a few inches closer to the screen, and Ottavia felt her arm come into contact with Palma, who was standing next to her. She felt a shiver, or rather an electric shock. She focused on the video controls.

The security camera offered a partial view of the atrium, from the door that led out to the grounds to the door that gave onto the first hall of the art gallery. But anyone who came in or went out would certainly have been caught in the frame.

There were a number of tourists with cameras around their necks, a young woman eating something, a father bouncing a child on his shoulders. Like the other footage, this was also in black and white and pretty grainy. People came in, people left. Suddenly a figure appeared, dressed in a gray sweatshirt; the hood was pulled over the figure's head.

Aragona snorted: “A hood, in this heat? Who is that?”

Alex, standing beside him, narrowed her eyes to focus better and said: “It's a woman.”

“How can you be so sure?”

The female officer pointed at the screen: “You can just see her breasts, look there. And the shoes have a bit of heel too. That's a woman.”

They followed her with their eyes as she walked through the atrium and stopped just short of the entrance proper and the clerk taking tickets. She kept her hands in her pockets and peeked into the first hall. She stood there like that, motionless, for almost two minutes; then she raised her right hand and started to wave. The clerk, who was no more than a yard away, was chatting amiably with the young woman who was eating; he was leaning forward from the waist, his body language making it obvious he was hitting on her.

Romano snarled: “Look at that idiot. Just inches away there's some woman waving her head off at a little boy inside the museum and this numbskull's busy flirting with a girl.”

Lojacono, fully focused on the video, replied: “Well, he's not a security guard.”

The grainy figure waved one last time, as if inviting someone to come over, then put her hand back in her pocket. A moment later, Dodo appeared.

There he is.

A small child, whose diminutive height made him look younger than his years. He wore dark clothing, a pair of long pants, maybe jeans, tennis shoes, and a light jacket. His hair was tousled, and he looked slightly lost. He went over to the figure in the sweatshirt, who patted him lightly on the cheek, took him by the hand, and then headed with him toward the exit.

They slowly crossed the atrium with no trouble at all; they might as well have been invisible. All around them, everyone went on walking and talking, taking pictures and munching food, all absolutely indifferent.

“Stop them, damn it!” whispered Guida, as if that were still possible. Instead the two of them headed off without a hitch. Just before they went through the door and vanished from the frame, the little boy, for no apparent reason, turned to look at the security camera, as if he wanted to say a silent goodbye to his dear friends at the precinct house of Pizzofalcone.

The unexpected glance hit everyone watching like a punch to the gut. Ottavia murmured: “Sweet mother of God!” while Guida took in a sharp, noisy breath and Lojacono clutched his head with both hands.

Dodo's face was expressionless; in that moment, looking into the lens of the security camera, he betrayed neither fear, nor discomfort, nor pain. He seemed fine. Then he vanished from sight.

Aragona asked Ottavia to run the footage back and freeze on the frame in which the two of them were closest to the security camera.

“Can you zoom in on the boy's hand?”

Ottavia made a face: “Sure, but the picture is already very low-resolution. You won't see a thing, just a series of black and white dots.”

She tried anyway. Dodo had something in his hand.

“What is that?” asked Aragona.

No one said a word. At last, Alex murmured: “An action figure. It's a plastic action figure.”

N
ighttime. Now it's nighttime.

Dodo can tell from the chink in the wall.

One of the walls in the place where they've locked him up is made of sheet metal, that wall he knocked his fist against; the noise scares him, so he stays away. But there's a gap, and a little light ought to filter in through it. But there's no light now. So it's nighttime.

Dodo doesn't really understand what's happening to him. He knows that someone took him, and he knows that he'd better keep quiet and not try to run away or call for help, because that man is horrible and enormous, with that big mustache and long hair.

Dodo remembers a movie he used to watch when he was little, a version of
Pinocchio
in which Stromboli was played by an actor who looked exactly like the man. Dodo was both afraid of and at the same time fascinated by him: He'd play the DVD over and over so he could see him defeated again and again. This time, who knew how it would end.

Lena had come to get him. Dodo loved Lena, he'd been sorry not to see her anymore. When he'd recognized her, waving to him from far away, he'd gone over: What else should he have done? She was smiling at him, she was so nice. Then they'd left the museum grounds and when they got to the car, Stromboli was there. Lena had signaled to Dodo with her eyes, as if to say: Be careful, let's not make him angry. And he spoke that strange language, in a deep, harsh voice.

The two of them had gotten into the car and sat in the back, side by side, him and Lena. Who could say, maybe Stromboli had taken Lena too. And if Lena's afraid, big and strong as she is, then it really would be best to be good, extra special good.

He'd brought him something to eat.

Hot pockets. But cold.

Dodo likes hot pockets; but he doesn't like them cold. He ate one and a half. Now his stomach hurts, he doesn't much feel like eating anymore. Plus now it's nighttime. Too bad, too, because with the passing hours his eyes had grown accustomed, and it hadn't seemed quite so dark.

The sheet metal wall scares him, but the wall that scares him most is the one with the door that Stromboli came through when he brought the water and the cold hot pockets. God, how big he is. He practically didn't fit through the door. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness, he looked around. He shouted: You where?

Dodo, curled up in the far corner, said: Here.

Then Stromboli laid the plate and the water bottle down on the ground and locked the door back up behind him.

Batman, Dodo murmured to the action figure. Batman, don't be afraid. It's just a matter of time. And after all, if he wanted to hurt us, the last thing he'd do is feed us, right? We just need to wait here, be calm and stay quiet.

Let's make believe that it's dark because we're in the Batcave. Let's make believe that we're the masters of the night, that darkness is our home and we're not afraid. Let's make believe that we're close, tight together, and that we're waiting for day to dawn.

Let's make believe that with our brain waves we can send a signal to my papà and that he'll come right away to get us, and he'll defeat Stromboli in a terrible battle, bare-handed. Or, even better, that Papà shows up with policemen who have guns, because Stromboli is strong, so strong.

I wonder where Lena is, Batman. I wonder where Stromboli threw her. He's clever, that one is, he knows that if he keeps us together we might come up with a way to escape.

Poor Lena, let's hope that he doesn't hurt her. I wish she could be here, I was happy with her. I remember the strange fairy tales she used to tell me when I couldn't fall asleep and Mamma and Papà had gone out to the theater.

You remember how much fun that was, Batman? On Sundays when Papà was home and he'd play with me all day long. And we'd play Avengers, and I was always you, Batman. You're my oldest action figure, you've been with me since then, since when my papà lived with us, since before he and Mamma started fighting. You've been with me since then. And I'll never let you go. Never.