The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (31 page)

The young woman behind the glass teller window looked up and met the two policemen's gazes; she furrowed her brow, looked back into the inner office, then pursed her lips and told the customer she was serving that he'd have to wait a moment. She stepped out of the booth, closing the door behind her with a bunch of keys that she carried with her, and walked over to the two men: “Hello, we were expecting you. We'd been told you were coming. Come with me, the notary is busy but he'll see you as soon as he can.”

She led them to the small room where they'd earlier interviewed the office employees. They had to go through the large open-plan office to get there, and noticed the vaguely hostile glances of the other three employees, all of whom were busy with clients. Suddenly Aragona elbowed Lojacono and whispered: “Get
her
.”

He was referring to Rea, the senior employee, who had undergone a genuine metamorphosis: the person she had once been, her hair streaked with gray, lips pursed, wrinkles, and tiny eyes behind Coke-bottle lenses, had been replaced by a very different woman, her hair, fresh from the hairdresser's, tinted a deep mahogany red, her lips expertly redesigned with lipstick, a thick layer of foundation covering up her wrinkles. She had, presumably, replaced her eyeglasses with contact lenses. Aragona took off his own glasses with his usual studied slowness and met the woman's malevolent gaze; then he observed to Lojacono, loud enough to be overheard: “She's convinced she's all hot now, but she's more of a double-bagger than she used to be.”

The phrase was immediately followed by a smile and a wink in Marina's direction; the cute blonde was registering a document on the computer, and she returned the smile with some embarrassment.

Lojacono waved hello to De Lucia, the employee who had occasionally worked as the victim's driver.

It occurred to him that, while they were waiting, they could use the time to ask a couple more questions that he'd thought of during the earlier sessions; so he asked Arace if she could arrange for them to talk to Rea and De Lucia as soon as they were free.

The young woman nodded, and hurried away: she must have been given instructions to that effect.

The first person to come see them was in fact De Lucia; he was unmistakably upset. Lojacono decided that the notary and his lawyer must have warned his employees not to reveal any information, and so he was forceful, right from the start: “Listen, De Lucia, while we're waiting to see the notary, we're going to ask you a few things, you and your coworker. You understand, I'm sure, that we'd rather do it this way than have you picked up and brought in to the station house. In a way, it's better for you, too, isn't it?”

The little man adjusted his comb-over, with a trembling hand: “Better for us, too, certainly, lieutenant. Ask away.”

Aragona rolled his eyes; he'd forgotten about the man's unfortunate habit of starting his reply by repeating the last few words uttered by his questioner.

“You sometimes worked as a driver for the signora, is that right?”

“I sometimes worked as a driver for the signora, yes. With the notary's car; when she asked to be driven somewhere, he'd always send me to take her where she wanted to go.”

“Do you remember, recently, whether you took her somewhere in particular, somewhere different from usual? I don't know, a clothing store she'd never been to, a doctor's office . . .”

The man searched his memory: “A clothing store, a doctor's office? No, I really don't think so. The signora always went to the same places, she was a creature of habit. The various charitable agencies, the store that sold snow globes on Via Duomo, occasionally to visit her friend, the Baroness Ruffolo. A couple of times to the yacht club, but she hadn't gone there in months. So just those few places, really.”

Lojacono nodded.

“And the last time you took her somewhere, when was that?”

“When was that? About ten days ago, I think. In the last week, the notary never sent me to pick up the signora.”

“And did she ever seem nervous or tense? Worried about anything?”

The man responded in the negative: “Worried about anything, no, she was always cheerful and courteous. The signora, as I told you last time, was a saint. She never lost her temper, she was always in a good mood. I never saw her angry. Poor signora.”

Lojacono sighed: all he needed was for the man to burst into tears right in front of him. He thanked him, told him he could go, and asked him to send his colleague in next.

The woman's metamorphosis wasn't limited to her face; as the two policemen had noticed when they'd first entered the office, Rea had tried everything imaginable and then some with the rest of her body. A tight-fitting dress, sexy in its intentions and ridiculous in its effects, put a number of stomach rolls on brutal display and jammed her thighs together as if in a vise, forcing the woman to walk like a geisha, a gait that was only aggravated by a pair of vertiginous stilettos. The overall effect really was grotesque.

Lojacono did his best to keep a straight face, while Aragona covered up an involuntary burst of laughter with a fake cough that fooled no one. The woman shot him a venomous glare and said: “You can just spare me the commentary, I've already got my colleagues laughing at me behind my back all day long. But I don't give a damn about what you all think; I've been concealing my femininity for too long. The time has come to flaunt it.”

Lojacono threw open his arms: “Madam, you are certainly free to do whatever you think best. I just wanted to ask a few simple questions about your position in the office.”

Rea stiffened with pride: “I'm the senior employee here, and the notary's most trusted collaborator. My professional standing here is above all suspicion, and I won't allow you to . . .”

The lieutenant held up a hand: “Good lord, no! No one is here to dispute that. It's just that, as the notary's closest collaborator, I thought you might be able to tell me something about the work he does here in the office and elsewhere. For example . . .”

The woman hissed back: “Do you really think that I'd be so unprofessional as to tell you things about the workings of this office without the notary's knowledge? As far as I'm concerned, the notary's best interests come before anything else, even my own reputation!”

Lojacono tried to calm her down: “No, signora, there must be some misunderstanding. I was just wondering whether, for instance, you had access to the notary's computer, if his work ever takes him outside his office, and, if so, who, if anyone, might accompany him. That's all.”

Rea looked at him, narrowing her eyes still more. She was the very picture of suspicion.

“Obviously De Lucia and I, since we've been here the longest, have full access to all the office's files, both digital and hard copy. Lanza, the most recent hire, is in charge of what's kept online. She's not very bright, all she understands is the Web; the office's important work happens elsewhere and she has no access to it.”

Aragona, hearing a woman who'd shown signs of finding him charming described as not very bright, took offense.

“Oh, is that so? And just what would the office's important work be, if I might ask?”

The woman replied with distaste, not even bothering to turn to look at him: “Probate cases are our important work; these involve documents drawn up by hand and recorded in a special ledger, accompanied by the year, date, and time at which they've been received. Mostly wills, but that's not all, and they must all be drawn up in the notary's presence. I'm in charge of them, the only one; and that's because I'm the most trusted employee in this office.”

Lojacono looked interested: “And how does that work? Does the notary meet with the clients and then call you to transcribe the document or deed?”

Rea snorted: “That's not all, of course. Sometimes he goes out to see them; some of them are terminally ill, terribly old people. And I'm the employee he takes with him when he does. Just the two of us, me and him.”

The last phrase was uttered in a saccharine tone. Aragona shot Lojacono a nauseated glare. The lieutenant added: “Which means that this ledger is really just a sort of notebook that contains a chronological list of these documents, is that correct?”

The woman nodded gravely, making the large, showy earrings she wore clink.

“That's right. Now, if you don't mind, I need to get back to my work before they manage to screw things up in there. I'll make arrangements for someone to call you, as soon as the notary is free.”

Aragona watched her leave the room. Then he said to Lojacono: “Loja', believe me, that woman would be truly evil if she weren't such an idiot. Believe me, now that his wife is dead, she's convinced that the notary is going to take her as a replacement.
Mamma mia
, she's ugly as sin!”

The lieutenant nodded in agreement: “That is exactly what she seems to believe. She might have some information that could prove useful to us, but I doubt she'd ever hand it over if she thought that it might harm her beloved notary.”

A few minutes later, De Lucia stuck his head in the door: “The notary is ready to see you now, if you'd like to come with me.”

H
ow different he looked, the notary Arturo Festa. How radically he had changed, in just a few hours.

The cheerful, athletic, youthful, suntanned, optimistic gentleman they'd seen enter his office at the end of an obviously enjoyable weekend had been replaced by an old man, wounded and heartbroken, whose spirit seemed to have been shattered. When he walked into the large office where the professional was waiting to speak to them, Lojacono had the impression that nothing would ever be the same for that man.

Not that that kept Lojacono from suspecting the notary of being the killer; in his professional experience he'd had plenty, indeed far too many, opportunities to see how murderers could sometimes be enormously damaged by the crimes they themselves had committed; and to see the way in which the victims, as they ventured into the darkness from which there was no return, often took with them a piece of the soul of the person who had sent them there, a person who was then left to struggle through life with a burden of remorse.

Festa was a wreck. His face had a grayish complexion and was marked by dark circles under his eyes; a network of wrinkles creased his features in a way that hadn't been evident just a few days earlier. Or they might very well have just appeared. His hair was tousled, his shirt collar hung open over a loosely knotted necktie; his jacket was rumpled, as if he'd picked it at random from the closet and then worn it uninterruptedly for days at a time.

When his eyes met Lojacono's, the notary grimaced sadly.

“Hello, lieutenant. Please, make yourself comfortable, and thank you for agreeing to come here, for the sake of my reputation. I certainly appreciate the kindness of Dottoressa Piras, who spared me a disagreeable trip to police headquarters. Those buzzards in the press are trying to crucify me; they can't wait to name me as the ‘prime suspect.'” He ran a trembling hand over his face: “Please forgive me, I haven't slept in three days. I just can't get to sleep. I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid of the dreams that will come, so I just don't sleep. And I'm especially afraid of that moment, you know, the moment when you wake up and you can't remember what's happened. And then everything rushes back into your mind. The awareness overwhelms you, and you feel all the grief, the same sensations all over again.”

Aragona took off his glasses, in what was perhaps meant as a show of solidarity. Lojacono asked: “Why did you ask to meet us, Notary Festa? Why did you change your mind?”

Festa stared at him, as if he hadn't understood the question. Then he picked up the phone on his desk and asked: “Would you like some coffee? I need some coffee. For the past three days I've been living on coffee.”

Lojacono and Aragona nodded, and he whispered the order into the receiver. Then he answered: “It occurred to me, quite simply, that it wasn't me. That I . . . I didn't do it, this terrible thing. And that, unfortunately, I don't have any way to prove that fact and so, if I told you the way things really are, you yourselves might be able to help me out of this absurd situation. And then . . .”

Aragona leaned in: “And then?”

“And then, I spoke to . . . to the person who was with me, the person that at first I didn't want to involve in this matter. And she told me that I should, in fact, that I
had
to speak with you. And tell you her name. Because, as I told you, we were together, she and I; we were together the whole time.”

Rea came in, carrying a tray with three demitasse cups and a bowl of sugar. She was perched precariously on a pair of ultra-high heels, and turned a smile that was meant to be seductive on the notary; he didn't even bother to glance in her direction. The notary said to her: “
Grazie
, Lina, we'll add the sugar. You can go.”

The woman left the room, with a vaguely offended air. Aragona watched her go, in disgust. Lojacono asked: “So that means you confirm the version of events you furnished Monday morning, is that right?”

The notary nodded, with conviction: “Of course I do, because it's the truth. I left for Sorrento Saturday morning, after telling poor Cecilia that I was going to Capri for a conference, knowing perfectly well that she'd never come with me, given her peculiar abhorrence of that sort of, shall we say, formal occasion. I swung by and picked up this person and then we went to the villa made available to me by my friends, who gave me the keys. They're wealthy Canadian businessmen, and they come here very rarely. We didn't leave the place until Monday morning, when we came back to town.”

Aragona, who was taking copious notes, asked: “Later, perhaps you can give us the names of these friends of yours and the address of the villa. Now, what is the name of this person?”