The Deliverance of Evil (26 page)

The headlight turned down a dirt road. Then another flash of lightning lit up the scene. It wasn’t a motorcycle at all. It was a Giulia GT, struggling up the hill with only one headlight. Tatò’s car turned and began to follow it at a distance.

. . . .

Half an hour before 2005 ended, Angelo Dioguardi’s penthouse was overflowing, with about two dozen people squeezed into seven hundred square feet. A cold north wind was blowing. Balistreri and his host stood on the glassed-in terrace.

“Graziano called. He wants to play poker after all. He’ll join us around two with a friend, so there’ll be four of us.”

“That’s too bad. I guess he’s not getting Natalya into bed tonight after all.”

“Graziano takes his time.”

“That’s your bad influence, Angelo. The ideal woman is an immature delusion.”

It was one of those cutting remarks that Balistreri had made on many occasions, but this time Angelo took issue.

“At least I have my delusion, Michele. You don’t even have that much.”

Balistreri looked at him in surprise. It wasn’t in Angelo’s character to criticize. In fact what he read in Dioguardi’s eyes wasn’t an accusation, it was his sorrow for a friend who, while still alive, was already dead on the inside.

. . . .

You make certain decisions in a moment and they stay with you for the rest of your life. Piccolo was twelve years old on the beach at Palermo when she dived into the waves to save a little boy. She was fifteen when she flattened the best-looking guy in the school with a karate blow for copping an uninvited feel. She was seventeen when she first went to bed with a girl. Now she’d brought a male homosexual home and, with the onset of a fever, was about to face corrupt policemen and potential killers.

She drew her gun from its holster and placed it on the seat beside her. She started the car and turned to follow Tatò’s car, which she could only manage to see when the brake lights came on. There was no way they could see her. The important thing was not to lose them.

They turned where the Giulia GT had turned. The dirt road, all mud and puddles, wound around the dark hillside. Piccolo’s car slipped and went off the road, but she managed to get back on track.

Every so often she touched her gun for reassurance. She was breathing heavily because of her temperature and the tension. They passed several curves, then a crossroads. Now the potholes were enormous. She dropped back farther so they wouldn’t hear her car. The whole time she kept her eyes trained on the lights in the pitch black. Then all of a sudden the car ahead of her stopped abruptly. She braked and switched off the engine. The tail lights she’d been following completely disappeared and the darkness became total. There was only the wind whistling in the night and the distant sound of fireworks. It was biting cold and the dampness chilled her to the bone, but at least it was no longer raining. She looked at her watch, the only weak light in all that surrounding blackness: five minutes to midnight.

A flashlight came on and moved away from Tatò’s vehicle. Piccolo got out of her car. It would have been better to turn it around so that it was facing down the hill in case she needed to make a quick getaway, but there was no time. She grabbed her gun and began to follow the light of the flashlight. She slipped and fell into the mud, banging her knee.

She got to her feet and pressed on. She was dog-tired. Her legs felt like lead and her head was on fire, but she was determined not to lose them. One last bit of hill, and she arrived. The Giulia GT was parked on a patch of grass near an abandoned farmhouse. She could see the flickering light of an oil lamp inside, and she could hear male voices. She couldn’t make out what language they were speaking, but they were probably foreigners.

The flashlight had been switched off. Piccolo had no idea where Colajacono and Tatò were. Gripping her gun, she hid behind the last tree next to the clearing where the farmhouse stood. She covered her nose and mouth with her jacket to hide her breath as it condensed in the freezing air. Fireworks went off in rapid succession. She huddled behind the tree.

Her head was throbbing, her legs weak. She had to make a decision; she couldn’t stay here forever. She held her gun with both hands and ran behind the farmhouse. As she paused for breath, a hand was pressed over her mouth and an arm came around her from behind. Instinctively, she jerked her free hand back. She heard the cartilage of a nasal septum breaking and a curse in Roman dialect. She pointed her gun at Tatò, who was on his knees and groaning with a hand cupped over his nose.

The farmhouse door opened and two men stepped out carrying the oil lamp. One was armed with a knife and the other with a club. Piccolo moved behind Tatò and pointed her gun at them.

“Drop your weapons,” she ordered.

“Who the fuck are you, bitch?” the one with the club shouted in a heavy Eastern European accent.

“Police,” Piccolo shouted. She tried to keep her eyes on them and also look around for Colajacono.

The two men nodded at each other, then started to walk toward Piccolo.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” she warned.

Fifty feet away. They hesitated a moment, then resumed walking forward. Once they got within fifteen feet of her, it was all over. She had only a few seconds to decide.

She fired a single shot in the air. She couldn’t spare any more than that. The two men hesitated again.

“On the ground, now!” Colajacono shouted. The two men jumped at the noise.

They turned to face Colajacono, who stood with his legs apart and a gun held in both hands, his arms tensed. They looked at each other and began to run toward the path. Piccolo heard a shot and saw the Roma with the club fall over, holding his leg. The other one stopped.

In that moment Piccolo realized the not-too-distant sounds she heard weren’t fireworks, but the blades of a helicopter that was hovering over them. A spotlight illuminated the scene from above, while a voice from a loudspeaker warned the escaping man to stop and put his hands up. Sirens squealed and tires screeched as police cars raced up the hills. Their headlights lit up the road.

Colajacono turned to Tatò. “You’ll have to get your nose fixed thanks to this stupid bitch.”

Piccolo saw the slap coming. Under normal circumstances she’d have parried it with one arm while striking with the other. But the fever, the tension, and the cold had made her sluggish. The blow sent her reeling into the mud.

Sunday, January 1, 2006

Early morning on January 1

B
ALISTRERI RECEIVED A PHONE
call just after midnight. He listened in silence, then called Corvu and ordered him to take Natalya home and pick him up in a police car.

At one o’clock they were on top of the hill. Floodlights powered by photoelectric cells lit up the scene. As they drove up they met the ambulance taking away the shepherd wounded by Colajacono; the other was in handcuffs guarded by two policemen. A paramedic was taking care of Tatò’s nose.

Balistreri found Piccolo wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a police car.

“Corvu, go check out the farmhouse. Do you have your equipment?”

“Yes, sir.” He went off to get the gear he needed to analyze the scene without contaminating it.

Balistreri slipped into the backseat of the car, sitting next to Piccolo. He saw she was trembling, but didn’t ask her anything. She told him everything freely, except for the slap she received from Colajacono. She’d decided to think about that for awhile.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was afraid they’d get away and I didn’t know if Colajacono was on their side or ours.”

That was going to be hard to explain to Pasquali. Even harder to explain than Tatò’s nose.

“I’ll get someone to take you home,” Balistreri said.

“Let’s look for Nadia first,” she replied.

“We’ll look for her. You’re going home right now. I’m getting someone to take you.” It was an order that brooked no discussion and several minutes later Piccolo was in a car finally taking her home to Rudi’s lentils.

Balistreri turned to Colajacono.

“I’m sorry about Tatò’s nose. Anyway, there’ll be time to talk about that and what you were doing here.”

Colajacono looked at him with undisguised contempt. “Whenever you say, sir. Then you can explain why that crazy bitch was following us.”

Balistreri didn’t bat an eye. “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what you two were doing here.”

“The farmhouse is occupied by one of the Roma—that one,” he said, pointing to the young man in handcuffs. “They herd sheep out here. We got an anonymous tip that there was a Giulia GT with a broken headlight up here. The car is his.”

“Do you follow up that swiftly on every anonymous tip?”

“I told you, Captain Balistreri, we’re not in a fancy office like yours. We can’t afford to fuck around.”

Balistreri remained calm. “What about the other guy?”

“Another shepherd. He lives in a different abandoned farmhouse, on the other side of the hill, a mile or so away. They figured everybody would be out celebrating tonight, so they broke into a house nearby and stole a television, a stereo, a video camera, and some silver. It’s all in the trunk of the Giulia GT. This one’s name is Vasile Geoana. He’s Roma.”

Balistreri approached the shepherd. He was thin and bony and had a long beard. He wore a leather jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. He smelled like sheep and alcohol.

“Do you speak Italian?”

With a hard, sly look he nodded.

“Is that your car?”

“Yeah, mine.” His voice was rough, his accent guttural.

“Who did you buy it from?”

“Egyptian who makes pizza. Two hundred euros.”

“With a broken headlight?”

“What’s a ‘headlight’?”

“Front light.”

He shook his head. “No, got broken after. It was fine when I lent it, broken after.”

Corvu came out of the farmhouse. He went up to Balistreri and showed him two long blond hairs in a plastic bag. Balistreri showed them to the shepherd.

“Where’s the girl?” Colajacono asked him brusquely.

Vasile stared at the ground.

“What girl?”

“This girl,” persisted Colajacono, pointing to the bag with the hairs.

“I bring whores here sometimes.”

Colajacono placed his enormous hand around the shepherd’s handcuffed wrist. He howled in pain.

“The girl you picked up in your car on Via di Torricola. Where is she?” Colajacono asked. He squeezed the man’s wrist. Vasile screamed in pain, his face contorted. A gust of icy wind swept across the field. Tears were streaming down the shepherd’s face.

Balistreri turned to Colajacono. “Leave him alone,” he ordered.

Colajacono didn’t even look at him. His face was twisted in a grimace of cruel satisfaction.

“I don’t know,” the shepherd groaned. “I don’t know where she went.” He was on his knees.

“Leave him alone or I’ll place you under arrest,” Balistreri warned Colajacono.

This time Colajacono turned and looked at him mockingly.

“Oh, really? You think these animals who screw Italians over should be treated with kid gloves, do you?”

He spat on the ground. “Street sweepers in paradise. That’s all you are.”

Giving the shepherd’s knee such a powerful kick that he fell face down in the mud crying, Colajacono turned to Balistreri with a defiant air.

“I’ll leave him to you, Balistreri. See what you can do with all your nice ways of protecting civil liberties, your DNA, and your big words . . .”

Balistreri managed to keep himself under control—there were enough problems already.

Or perhaps I know that you’re partly right.

The ground was a mixture of water and mud. Going over it by the light of photoelectric cells would be difficult, but it had to be done. It was one thirty and dawn was five hours away. Balistreri gave instructions to Corvu to call for the dogs and make a start.

He lit his first cigarette of the year. He looked over the city, lit up by the last fireworks. He wanted to be sitting in Angelo’s warm apartment, playing a game of poker. Or else with Linda Nardi.

He drove the thought of her away angrily and set off through the freezing rain.

Morning

By dawn on the morning of January 1, they had found nothing. The wind had died down and the sky was a dense iron gray. Nevertheless, its light would help the search. The area was half deserted; the police were all out on the hill. As soon as Forensics had completed their examination, Balistreri went into the farmhouse with Corvu and the shepherd.

The place was a dump. It was rank with the smell of alcohol, sheep, and shit. An empty whiskey bottle and a half-full one sat next to a broken armchair. There was a stained mattress in a corner of the room. A television set and a satellite dish sat next to it.

“Tell me about the girl,” Balistreri said to the shepherd, who was still moaning and rubbing his wrist.

“I don’t know anything.”

“In Sardinia, we feed people like you to the pigs,” Corvu said.

Balistreri looked at him in surprise.

Hagi would have had them impaled; Colajacono would have liked to break every bone in their bodies; even the usually shy Corvu was talking about feeding them to the pigs. But Balistreri still felt that something was off.

They had examined the car. Besides the stolen goods there were more blond hairs, a hat, and a pair of sunglasses.

“Listen, Vasile,” Balistreri said, “this girl was seen getting into your car. You were wearing the hat and the sunglasses we found in your car.”

“Not my stuff. Girl was here, waiting for me.”

“She was here, waiting for you. When?”

“When I come back from house of friend. The one you shoot.”

“Why did you go to his house?”

“Afternoon I leave sheep with him. He has sheep pen and dog. Then we drink something and we talk. I come back always at seven.”

“You always come back at seven exactly?”

“
L’Eredità
television program start then. I always watch.”

Marvelous. The wonders of assimilation.

“And the girl was already here by seven. What day was this?”

“December 24. He said present for me.”

Balistreri decided to ignore the “he” for the time being and concentrate on the gift part.

“Why did he give you a present?”

“For the car,” Vasile replied quickly.

Balistreri pointed to some rags in a corner. Underneath them was a bucket with a rope attached to the handle.

“Is there a well here?”

“Yes, near my friend’s house, but well is not good now, water is not good.”

Corvu and Balistreri exchanged looks. Corvu hurried out the door.

“All right, Vasile,” Balistreri said, “a present in exchange for the car. Explain.”

“I lend him car, he give me one hundred euros and a whore to fuck.”

“And what did he do with your car?”

“He was moving a bed. My car has a luggage rack.”

A fast car, not registered to its actual owner, ideal for a robbery. And Vasile knew that. He also knew that he didn’t run much of a risk because the car wasn’t registered in his own name. It was a good deal: one hundred euros and a good time simply for lending his car.

“Where did you hand over the car to him?”

“No, I left it here unlocked with keys inside. He said he’d come and pick it up and then bring it back that evening.”

“So you never met this man?”

“No, he called my cell, offered deal. I said yes.”

“When did he call?”

“Day before—December 23.”

“Was he Italian?”

“He spoke Italian with Italian accent.”

“Then what?”

“On the evening of December 23 I come back and find one hundred euros here, as he promised. Then the morning of December 24 before I go out with sheep, I leave car with keys and when I come back at seven car is here, blonde whore is here. As he promised. She has two bottles of whiskey because he break light on car. We fuck. I drink a lot. I don’t remember when she go.” He pointed to the bottles on the floor.

“And the man who borrowed the car?”

“Nothing. He disappears.”

Balistreri heard Corvu’s footsteps approaching. He looked at Corvu’s face, and he knew.

“Come on,” Balistreri said to the shepherd, and they set off along the path behind Corvu. The three of them walked single file in silence through the mud. It was raining again. In the distance sheep were bleating. When they came within sight of the well surrounded by police, Balistreri stopped. He met Colajacono’s stare. “Stay close to this piece of shit here,” he told Corvu, pointing at Vasile. “No one lays a finger on him.”

Nadia’s body was in the water forty feet below. It was Corvu who climbed down the ladder. They hauled the body up with a rope. The girl was naked. Her legs jutted out at strange angles; they’d probably broken when she hit the bottom of the well. She looked as if she’d been there for a while, possibly a week. There were cuts and cigarette burns on her arms and thighs. The letter E, one inch high, had been carved in the middle of her forehead.

. . . .

At seven on the first morning of 2006, while they were returning to the city, Rome was deserted under a leaden sky and drizzle.

Balistreri called Pasquali on speakerphone. “The girl’s dead,” he said. Silence. Pasquali was waiting for the rest. “We have a suspect,” he added.

“How long has she been dead?” Pasquali’s voice was a whisper. First of all, of course, he was concerned about possible comments on their efficiency.

“Judging from the state of the body, several days. She was probably killed the evening she disappeared.”

“Thank goodness,” Pasquali said.

“It was a Roma shepherd in the country illegally.”

“More problems for the mayor,” Pasquali muttered. He would be happy that this news would damage the city’s center-left government.

“There’s something else,” Balistreri added.

Pasquali was silent.

“She had the letter E carved in the center of her forehead,” Balistreri said.

There was no sound on the other end. Pasquali was probably getting up and walking silently into his well-appointed bathroom. The letter E reopened a door that he thought had been shut tight.

Pasquali spoke, no longer whispering. “Michele, I’ll inform the chief of police, and you inform the public prosecutor. We’ll put out a short press release in the early afternoon. Meet me in my office in one hour.”

. . . .

At nine o’clock Rome was dull and deserted, the roads wet and covered in trash from the New Year’s Eve festivities. Despite the fact that it was a holiday and the office was half-empty, Pasquali was wearing an iron-gray suit with a blue polka dot tie, impeccable as usual and having already been to Mass.

Floris, the chief of police, was dressed less formally. Balistreri was still wearing what he’d put on the night before to go to Angelo’s. He was unshaven and his shoes were covered in mud.

They sat in Pasquali’s lounge. Balistreri gave a thorough recounting of events. It wouldn’t have helped to hide anything, as Colajacono would have ensured they knew everything anyway.

“How is Tatò now?” Floris asked.

“They’re resetting his nose this morning. It’s nothing serious.”

“Nothing? Deputy Piccolo attacked him,” Pasquali said.

Balistreri shook his head. “She didn’t attack him. She was in a dangerous situation. She reacted out of instinct. Tatò acted in an imprudent manner and was struck.”

“If Tatò was imprudent, what does that make Piccolo? She failed to inform her superiors of her activities.”

“There was no reception out there, Pasquali. She couldn’t inform anyone.”

“She wasn’t using her head. I’d like to know why she was following Colajacono and Tatò.”

“Because she had doubts about them, as I told you yesterday.”

Pasquali said, “And now we know she was wrong to doubt them. We have the vehicle, the girl’s body, and the guilty party thanks to Colajacono and Tatò who, as true professionals, radioed headquarters before going up that hill.”

“How did they know where to look for the car?” the chief asked.

Balistreri made a face. “An anonymous phone call came in about half past eight last night. Some guy had seen the Giulia GT with a broken headlight coming down the hill a little earlier. It was Vasile and his friend going off to commit a burglary. End of story. If we believe the story, that is.”

“We certainly do believe it,” Pasquali said. “Deputy Piccolo should stay out of this case from now on, for her own good.”

Balistreri said nothing. Pasquali looked a little nervous. He was twirling his glasses in his hands. Linda Nardi’s request had made him nervous.