Three-Card Monte (6 page)

What this meant in practice was that the sidewalks of the streets running alongside the sea and those leading into them had been adorned with yellow lines that ran parallel to the bottoms of the buildings, as well as a few signs showing a man on a bicycle and shamelessly renamed “bicycle lanes.”

With this stroke of genius, the municipality had managed to expropriate the money that the European Community, systematically underestimating the imagination and inventiveness of the Italian mind, had earmarked for the provision of bicycle lanes, giving so much per mile of lane installed. The fact that cobbled sidewalks were not ideal for bicycles, as well as the fact that there were already natural bicycle lanes, amply exploited by the townspeople, in the form of the paths that wound through the pine grove, had not affected the municipality's plans in the slightest. In any case, the locals had continued happily using the paths and the unfortunate Pineta-Roubaix cycling track was used only by tourists, giving rise to the occasional accident.

For this and other reasons, driving a car in the middle of Pineta had become a kind of obstacle course, and Massimo tried to avoid it whenever he could. And so, again wrapping himself in his oilskin sarcophagus, he set out for the police station.

 

As he walked through the storm, the rain so strong that he could distinctly feel the liquid smack of each drop on his skin through the raincoat, Massimo was thinking about what reason Fusco could possibly have to summon him. And as often happened when he was alone, he thought out loud and his thoughts started to drift.

“So. For Fusco to call me at this hour it must be something important . . . And something criminal . . . Not the bar. It can't have anything to do with the bar. There haven't been any shady characters using the bar for a long time . . . apart from Councilor Curioni, of course . . . he'd sell his own father to get votes, if he could find him . . . I wonder how some people manage to sleep at night . . . and he's so vulgar . . . how can somebody so ignorant become a politician? . . . No, better not to think about it . . . it'll only make my blood boil . . . I graduated college and I'm working as a barman, whereas a man like that who wouldn't know a subjunctive if it hit him in the eye is a councilor . . . Let's get back to us. I haven't murdered anybody. My grandfather must have wished a few thousand people dead, but that's no crime . . . I can't see Tiziana killing anyone . . . What else have I done lately? Almost nothing . . . I'm still at the conference . . . Oh, my God, the conference . . . Something happened at the conference . . . Something happened, yes, shit, a man died . . . But from natural causes . . . I don't see why Fusco should be involved . . . Inspector Fusco . . . Strange, I don't even need to call him Inspector Fusco to distinguish him from any other Fusco . . . there's only one Fusco . . . thank goodness for that . . . Oh, look, we're here . . .”

 

As soon as Massimo walked into the police station, dripping water like a giant umbrella, a young, skinny, bespectacled officer, a kind of seminarian in uniform, emerged from the porter's lodge and came up to him.

“Massimo Viviani?” the officer asked, in the same Venetian-accented voice Massimo had earlier heard on the phone.

“All present and correct.”

“Good morning. I'm Officer Galan. Inspector Fusco has asked me to take you straight to him. This way, please.”

Still dripping, Massimo entered the office of Inspector Fusco—or Dr. Fusco, as the inspector, having a degree, liked to think of himself—and stopped just inside the doorway. Standing there by the window, looking out in silence, was the man himself.

Since Fusco was not saying a word, Massimo started taking off his raincoat. As he was trying to separate his shoes from the hems of his pants, Fusco turned and looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the window and said, “Do you know the law, Signor Viviani?”

“More or less.”

I know the basics, Massimo thought as he finished extracting his own foot from the cloth trap. Whereas you don't even know the basics of politeness. Good morning, please take a seat, I'm sorry to have made you come here at this ungodly hour, especially in a hurricane. That's the least to expect. Go figure.

Fusco moved away from the window and starting walking up and down the room. “The law,” he resumed, “says that when a person dies, a doctor must ascertain the cause of death. And if the cause of death is clear, he issues a certificate, and that's the end of it. If on the other hand it isn't clear, or can't immediately be attributed to natural causes, the doctor doesn't sign the death certificate and calls in the legal authorities.”

All well and good, Massimo thought. And why should I give a damn?

“That's why, just to take a random example, if an elderly Japanese professor, just to give him a nationality, dies after hitting his head on the edge of a piece of furniture, the doctor can either sign the certificate or not sign it. And if he doesn't sign it, he calls in the legal authorities. In other words, me.”

Oh, shit.

“Now, this is how things stand. Professor”—Fusco looked at a sheet of paper—“Ki-mi-no-bu A-sa-ha-ra, seventy-four years old, was pronounced dead yesterday afternoon at Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa from respiratory arrest following a severe cranial trauma.”

“I'm sorry,” Massimo said. “I didn't quite catch that. Respi­ratory arrest following a cranial trauma?”

Fusco raised his cowlike eyes and looked at him. “Precisely. In practical terms, the poor man slipped on a rug and hit his head. Following the blow, he seemed confused, and so his colleagues thought it wise to take him to the hospital. But he never got to the hospital, or rather, he was dead by the time he got there. The doctor who saw him established that he was dead. Initial examination suggested that death was due to respiratory arrest.”

“I don't understand.”

“Neither do I. And neither did the doctor. That's why, along with Dr. Cattoni, our pathologist, he ordered a postmortem.”

Fusco went to the desk and rested his buttocks on the edge, directly facing Massimo.

“I don't yet have the postmortem report, so there's nothing official. But in essence, the two doctors agreed that a sudden respiratory arrest in a man in good health is somewhat unlikely, and so they looked for a cause. By chance, they found a card with medical instructions in the professor's billfold. You know, one of those cards epileptics carry with them, or people who have some disease or allergy that means they absolutely have to avoid certain medicines, and which describe what to do if they have an attack. To cut a long story short, Professor Asahara suffered from quite a rare neurological disease called . . . ”—Fusco consulted the sheet of paper—“ . . . called myasthenia gravis. And here comes the good part.”

“Which is?” Massimo asked, since Fusco seemed to need encouraging.

“Which is that, as if things weren't already complicated enough, the doctors still aren't happy. The disease is one thing, they say, but the dead man's general condition wasn't compatible with a death of that kind. He didn't have one foot in the grave. He walked around, gave lectures, didn't have any obvious symptoms of the disease. In other words, as far as the doctors are concerned, if he'd only had that disease, the professor, who was otherwise in excellent health, would have lasted quite a while longer.”

Remarkable, Massimo thought. A man who looked about a hundred and six and could barely keep awake was, according to the doctors, in the peak of condition. What constitutions the Japanese have. Obviously sushi, green tea, and puffer fish keep you fit even if you lead a crap life. Getting up in the morning, the subway, the work, the bowing . . . Fortunately, while one hemisphere of Massimo's brain was coming up with this stream of nonsense, the other woke up suddenly and suggested a possible reason for Fusco to have summoned him.

“To cut a long story short,” Fusco went on, “the blood tests show that the dead man had taken a massive dose of lorazepam, which is a kind of tranquilizer.”

I know it. They sell it as Tavor.

“In other words, a drug that no conscientious doctor would ever have prescribed for a patient with the illness I mentioned earlier. Apart from anything else, from a few discreet questions asked of some of his colleagues, it seems there's nothing to indicate that the professor ever suffered from anxiety attacks, depression, or any other behavioral disorders.”

“I get it,” Massimo said. Oh, yes, he thought, give me a prize. At least my brain's still working.

“And there you are.” Fusco got up from the edge of the desk and went and sat down behind it. “According to the doctors, in a man suffering from myasthenia gravis, a drug like lorazepam can cause motor difficulties and mental confusion. That explains both why the poor man slipped and also why after slipping, and probably even earlier, he seemed a little dazed. But above all, if the patient falls asleep or loses consciousness, the drug can cause respiratory arrest.”

Which explains the death, Massimo thought without saying it.

Fusco was silent for a moment, looked at the palms of his hands, sighed, then resumed, “Now, I realize there isn't anything official yet, but as you know, in some things timing is of the essence. I can't wait for the postmortem report to . . . ”—and here Fusco broke off, looked away from Massimo, and made a sign with his hand that seemed to mean, “Just look what a mess I've gotten myself into.”

Massimo met him halfway. “To ask me if, from behind the tables, I saw someone put something in a glass and take it to Professor Asahara during the coffee break?”

“That's exactly it. As I'm sure you realize, I don't have any reason to ask you this officially. But the more time I let pass, the likelier it is that you'll forget what you saw during the break. If you saw anything, of course. That's why I asked you to come here.”

You got it, Fusco, Massimo thought. This time you took aim and hit the target. Congratulations. But that was all. Massimo was in no position to help him.

“I understand. I didn't see anything. But that doesn't mean that nothing happened. On the contrary. When the break starts, people crowd around the refreshment tables. For a few minutes, there are about twenty people at each table, and they're constantly changing. I can't rule out the possibility that it happened there.”

I can't rule out the possibility that it happened there or I can't rule out the possibility that it didn't happen there? Maybe both.

“I see,” Fusco said. “Actually, I didn't expect a different answer. Well, let's say I was hoping for one, but hope doesn't get you very far . . . Anyway, I have neither the intention nor the possibility of questioning you now. If there's an investigation, of course, I'll have to question you officially. That's why I must ask you to try to remember even the smallest detail that may have struck you.”

“I'll try. But . . . ”

“In any case, I must also ask you not to say a word to anybody about what I've told you. For the moment, I repeat, there's nothing official. There might well be another explanation for the whole thing. Although I doubt it. So, not a word about this, please.”

“Of course. Don't worry.”

Fusco nodded, then pressed a button on his intercom. After a few seconds, the door of the office opened and the unmistakable seminarian's voice said devoutly, “Yes, sir?”

“Good morning, Galan. Please see Signor Viviani out and bring the other one in here.”

As the ineffable Galan was carrying him in procession to the exit, Massimo saw Aldo sitting in the waiting room, calmly reading a glossy magazine. Seeing Massimo, Aldo closed the magazine and stood up. He didn't seem surprised.

“Good morning, Aldo. I didn't know you enjoyed reading that crap.”

“What, this?” Aldo said, looking at the first page of the magazine, which promised the inside scoop on the love lives of TV personalities and heirs to the throne throughout the world. “I found it here. I usually read the
Corriere della Sera
. I got it this morning and put it in my pocket. Then I walked here in the rain. Right now I have a watery seven percent solution of newspaper in my pocket. Did Fusco ask you about the dead man at the conference?”

“I'm sorry,” the seminarian cut in as Massimo was about to open his mouth, “I don't think it's right for two people who've been summoned here to confer among themselves. Please follow me, Signor Griffa.”

“I'm coming, I'm coming. 'Bye, Massimo. See you at the bar.”

T
ragedy at the Conference, Professor Hits His Head and Dies. By Pericle Bartolini.' Poor guy, whenever anything terrible happens, they always send him. Even the priest turns tail and runs when he sees him. ‘Pineta. It seemed like a simple accident, but what happened yesterday at the Hotel Santa Bona soon turned to tragedy. The first day of the Twelfth International Conference on Macrolecul, no, Macromolecul and Biomacro . . . ,' anyway, you know the one he means, ‘was coming to an end when the audience of scientists was informed by one of the organizers of the sudden death of . . . '”—Ampelio paused—“‘ . . . Kiimiinoobu Asaahara, a Japanese scientist known throughout the world for his work in the field of biotechnology. After lunch, Professor Asahara had suffered what at first was considered merely a small accident.' Put like that, anyone'd think he shit in his pants. ‘Having apparently slipped on a rug, he had hit his head on the edge of a piece of furniture, suffering contusions to the side of his skull. A simple accident indeed. But, as he was being taken to his room as a precautionary measure, the elderly professor suddenly lost consciousness. Having been informed by telephone, the doctors in Emergency,' the ones who were in the bar, ‘could do nothing but advise those with the professor to wait for an ambulance. Unfortunately, they could not postpone the inevitable.'”