The Crocodile (2 page)

There were a few items of clothing in the suitcase. And a pistol.

Lojacono checked his watch, for the hundredth time. He decided that 11:58 was the latest he could push it, especially because Giuffrè had finally left his desk. He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Hello?” said Sonia on the other end of the line.

In Lojacono’s mind, the deep sound of her voice triggered a succession of images that he hastily scrubbed out of existence as soon as they materialized: laughter, a soft breast, the sweet taste of her lips. All part of the distant past.

“Ciao, it’s me.”

“Ciao, you piece of shit. What the fuck do
you
want?”

Lojacono smiled bitterly. “I’m so happy to hear your voice too, my darling.”

The woman raised her voice. “Go ahead, joke about it while you’re at it. After the shame you’ve brought down upon us—on me and on your daughter. Only now are we finally able to leave the house, a full year after it happened. You coward. And you’re not supposed to call us; even the lawyer said that you’re not allowed. All you’re allowed to do is send us the money, understood?”

The inspector ran his hand over his eyes. Suddenly he just lacked the strength. “Please, Sonia. You know that I send the money, punctually. I’m giving you practically every penny I make, and you can’t even begin to imagine what a shitty life I’m living here. There’s no need for you to weigh in too.”

The woman burst into a long chorus of laughter that had nothing cheerful about it. “No need for me to weigh in? Do you have even the faintest idea of what you’ve done? If you’d been a successful mobster, at least, there’s no doubt that we’d be respected now if nothing else, Marinella and I, instead of having everyone, even our relatives, turn their backs on us. And we’re forced to live here, where nobody knows us, as if we were a couple of thieves or whores. You son of a bitch.”

Son of a bitch. How little it takes to become a son of a bitch.

“Anyway, I wanted to know how you were doing. And I wanted to talk to Marinella.”

Sonia lashed out angrily. “Forget it. Just forget it. She doesn’t want to talk to you, and it’s my duty to protect her from you. She’s only fifteen, and you’ve already destroyed her social life. Stop trying to get in touch with her. She has a different cell phone number now.”

Lojacono pounded the desktop hard with his hand, making pens and paper clips jump into the air. “Goddamn it to hell, she’s my daughter! And I haven’t heard the sound of her voice in ten months! No judge on earth can tell a father he has to be dead to his daughter!”

Sonia’s voice turned as chilly as a knife blade. “Well, you should have thought before handing information over to the Mafia, without taking so much as a penny in exchange. You’re a turd, and if some poor girl has a turd for a father, no one can force her to pay the price for the rest of her life. Just send us the money and leave us be.”

Lojacono found himself muttering incoherent words into the silent receiver, and when an embarrassed Giuffrè came back into the room, he stood up abruptly and went outside.

He’d known him: Alfonso Di Fede. They’d even attended school together, a couple of grades in elementary school, before Alfonso started herding sheep like the rest of his family. Lojacono remembered him as an oversized, silent, fierce-eyed boy. He never cracked a book, well aware of what fate had in store for him, evidently.

Of course, he’d followed the man’s career from a distance, so similar to so many others: the most ferocious and loyal get promoted, ratcheting upward rank by rank–the same as it is in the police, come to think of it. Arrested and released a couple of times, only to vanish into the fields between Gela and Canicattì, another courier with his sleeves rolled up, busily delivering messages and, when so ordered, death.

They’d never crossed paths. Di Fede hadn’t been one of the scattered few that they managed to round up on those scorching hot summer nights when they raided houses built in open violation of planning regulations, in out of the way parts of town, bursting into barren rooms littered with wine bottles and dirty magazines, where men sat deciding the fate of who-knows-who, who-knows-where.

But in the end, someone did manage to lay hands on him, in Germany of all places. And during the long interrogation sessions that finally led him to turn state’s witness, what had emerged? His name, the name of Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono, of the Agrigento major case squad, a golden boy with a glittering career ahead of him. The career might have been gilded, but unfortunately the golden boy lacked political protection.

Yes, said state’s witness Alfonso Di Fede, that’s right: Lojacono tipped us off, of course he did. He was how we knew everything the major case squad was going to do before they did it. We knew where it was safe to go and where it wasn’t. Can I have another espresso now?

Who could say where his name had come up, from what nook or cranny of Di Fede’s memory, prompted by what need to cover up someone else’s involvement? In the sleepless nights spent staring at the bedroom ceiling that followed his immediate suspension, Lojacono had puzzled over that one a thousand times.

The effect on his own life, and on Sonia and Marinella’s lives, had been devastating. No one was willing to speak to them now—some out of fear that the informant’s account was true, others out of fear that it wasn’t. As long as the matter remained in doubt, everyone kept their distance, and there the three of them were left, in the middle of nowhere.

He’d read the uncertainty in his wife’s and daughter’s eyes immediately. Not that he’d expected unwavering support. He’d seen this sort of thing happen far too often: he knew how rare it was, outside of books and movies, for families to remain steadfast allies in bad times as well as good. But he had hoped he’d at least be given an opportunity to explain, to defend his good name.

It would have been so much better if there’d actually been a trial. In that case, he would have had a chance to demolish the absurd accusation, revealing it for what it was—little more than vicious slander. But it was the very fact that there was no evidence that led to a dismissal of charges, meaning no lawyers, no courtroom hearings.

Advisability: that had been the operative term. No disciplinary measures, merely a matter of advisability.
Of course, there was a case file; in some dimly lit room somewhere there was a folder with his name on it, full of documents: copies of reports, interviews, judgments.
Fragments, relics of a policeman’s life, a life spent in one of the most complicated places on earth. Everything taken apart and archived, for reasons of “advisability.’’

“You have to understand, Lojacono,” the chief of police had told him, “I’m doing it for the good of the squad; I need your co-workers to feel safe. And for the good of your family, it’s not in anyone’s interest for you to stay here. You’re too exposed. A question of advisability.”

It had been deemed advisable to move Sonia and Marinella to Palermo. Why run the risk of extortion, or worse? There were families whose members had been killed at the hands of Di Fede and his men; no one could say what some hothead might decide to do to someone who had collaborated with them.

Marinella had been forced to change schools, lose all her best friends, even the little boy who liked her. Terrible things, at her age. The last thing he had heard in her voice was hatred.

The coffee up here was good. At least that was something.

The transfer had been advisable, of course. Far enough to put him out of play, but not far enough to make it look like a punishment, for something he might or might not have done, for something that couldn’t be proven, one way or another. Naples, San Gaetano police station, in the flabby belly of a city that was decomposing. Evidently they couldn’t find anything worse, at least nothing that was readily available.

The inspector had welcomed him in a meeting in his office. “You understand, Lojacono, given the situation, that it’s not advisable to put you in charge of investigations.” Advisable, not advisable, he’d mused as he listened. “So I’ll have to ask you not to get involved in anything that smacks of investigation.”

“Then what will I be doing?” he’d asked.

“Don’t worry about that, you won’t be asked to do anything. Check in with the Crime Reports Office and once you’re there, you can do what you like: read books, write your memoirs. Just stay there and don’t worry. It won’t last long, I can promise you that.”

Ten months. Enough to make you lose your mind. Phone call after phone call, in a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to talk to his daughter. From his hometown, from his home office, came only deafening silence. Suspended in time and space, sitting at an empty desk, playing poker against the computer, with no one to keep him company but Giuffrè, another outcast, a onetime driver for a member of parliament, and so on staff but in bureaucratic purdah, assigned to take down the deranged complaints of crazy old women, as he had that morning.

I shouldn’t think badly of Giuffrè, he told himself. After all, he’s the only one willing to talk to me.

Sweetheart, my darling,

I’m here. At last. I’m breathing your air. Perhaps, even as I write, here in this room, there might be a little left—air that once flowed into your lungs and then out again
.

The last few months were endless. She took so long to die, and in the end every breath she took was a desperate death rattle. I sat up all night at her bedside, hoping that noise would come to an end, that I’d finally be free. God, it took her forever.

She had become my prison. She wasted away in the bed, slowly, imperceptibly. No one came to see us after a while; the very sight of her was intolerable. A shipwreck of life.

Not me. I never let myself go. I had you, my darling.

The thought of you sustained me every second of the day; the idea that I could see you again, hold you again in my arms—that idea lifted me up and carried me away from my despair. You saved me, my darling. Your smile, your beauty, your blonde hair. The warmth of your hands on my face. I could feel you at night, in my half-waking state punctuated by that endless death rattle. I saw you with the eyes of my desire, like a lighthouse in the night, like a house in a tempest.

Sweetheart, my darling.

The sound of your name murmured in the silence gave me the strength it took to stay by her side right up to the end. Because I knew there was still a chance I could hold you close to me again.

I never wasted a second, you know that, right? I organized everything.

I learned how to surf the internet. People say that it’s hard for a man my age, but it wasn’t difficult at all. You’re smiling, aren’t you, my darling? You’re thinking that nothing could be as hard as these years I’ve lived without you. That’s right, that’s exactly how it is. Nothing is as hard as that.

It’s incredible how easy it is to organize everything. All you need is the time, and I had nothing but time. Then, your letters told me everything I needed to know. How many times I read them and reread them, my darling. Spreading them out before me like relics, taking care not to get them dirty, not to tear them. Touched only by your fingers and mine. No one else’s.

Your letters told me everything I needed to know: names, dates. And the computer did the rest. While she was struggling for death and waiting to die, I was finding addresses, locations, and timetables. You know you can find anything on the web, my darling. Anything. All you need is patience and determination; and you know how patient I can be.

It won’t be long now. And I’ll have finally done what needs doing if I hope to wrap you in my arms again, to stay with you, this time for good, without obstacles. It won’t be long.

I never had time to tell her, you know. And maybe I wouldn’t have, even if I had had the time. Why give her an extra cause for concern, or even a cause for sorrow? You know how emotional she could be.

Finally, I’m ready now. And I’m eager to get to work, immediately. Starting tonight, the hunt is on.

Mirko is smoking in front of the mirror. He’s checking his hair; he has a brand new Mohawk. He likes it. Nothing overstated, he knows it’s not a good idea to stand out in people’s memories; he’s smart, he thinks about this kind of thing, he’s not a child anymore. He’s sixteen years old now.

He can still feel the thrill that ran through his body a month ago, when Antonio first approached him. Antonio: a living legend to all the kids in the neighborhood. Antonio, who dates all the prettiest girls around. Antonio, who two years ago was a
scazzottiello
like the rest of them, just another punk kid playing football late at night in the Galleria, but now he’s got an enormous motorcycle with chrome-plated exhaust pipes that makes the shop windows rattle when it goes by.

So Antonio comes over to him, while he’s sitting on the wall with his friends talking about girls, and says to him: “
Guagliò
, come here, I want to talk to you.”

Mirko can still remember the look on his friends’ faces: surprise, envy, even concern. And the sound of his heart pounding in his ears as he broke away from his group and walked towards his destiny.

Antonio had locked arms with him. The way he would with a friend, with a peer. And he had told Mirko that he struck him as better than the others, smarter, wider awake. That he’d seen him on his motor scooter, and that he’d made a good impression. “You’re not the kind of guy that’s going to pull
strunzate
; you’re not a fuckup,” he’d said to him. “You’re chill, you just hang. That’s what we like. That’s what you need to be one of my guys.”

“One of your guys?” Mirko had asked, and his voice had barely squeaked out of his mouth.

Antonio had put Mirko to the test. One beep on his cell phone and Mirko came running. He’d carried a few packages around the city; one time, he even had a passenger, a young guy he’d never seen before, and he’d taken him from one neighborhood to another on the far side of town. Then, finally, Antonio had assigned him a couple of street vendors, black African immigrants who peddled CDs, and told him to make sure they didn’t pull anything slick, like pretending the police had confiscated their merchandise.