Black Run. Antonio Manzini
of the realist’s morning prayer was to roll a fat joint to put his mind at peace with the world and the fact that he’d been forced to live all this distance from Rome for the past four months. And the knowledge that there was no way to get back there.
Not that he had anything against Aosta. Quite the opposite. It was a lovely city, and the people were all nice and polite. But it wouldn’t have been any different if they’d stationed him in Salerno, or Mantua, or Venice. The end result would be the same. It wasn’t a matter of the destination. What he missed above all was his native city, his existential stomping grounds, his home base.
He pulled the key out from under the framed photograph of Marina on his desk and pulled open the top drawer on the right. Inside sat a wooden box with a dozen handsome fatties, all ready to go. He lit one and, as he twisted the key shut in the drawer lock, took a long, generous drag that went straight to his lungs.
Funny how this small everyday gesture helped to soothe his brain. With the third puff, he gained a sense of lucidity and started planning out his day.
First thing: call the chief of police.
Then the hospital.
And then Nora.
He laid the half-smoked joint down in his ashtray. He was just reaching out for the receiver when the phone started to ring.
“Pronto, sì?”
“Corsi speaking!”
It was the police chief.
“Ah, Dottore, I was just about to call you.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“But this time it’s the truth.”
“Then you’re saying all the other times you were lying to me?”
“Sure.”
“All right, Schiavone, go ahead.”
“We still don’t know a thing. Neither who he was nor how he died.”
“So what am I supposed to tell those guys?”
It wasn’t that the chief of police had forgotten the word. It was just that he never named the city’s crew of print journalists. He always called them “those guys.” As if he weren’t willing to soil his lips with the common noun. He hated them. As far as he was concerned, they were a life form just one step up from the amoeba, the one flat note in the symphony orchestra of creation. That was how he felt about the print journalists. “Those other guys,” television reporters—he didn’t even consider them to be living entities.
That hatred was rooted deep in his personal history. It had been almost eighteen years since his wife left him for an editorialist at La Stampa, and since then Corsi had been waging a senseless crusade against every member of the guild, irrespective of race, religion, or political creed.
“Dottore, that’s what we know. If they would be patient—if the gentlemen of the press would be so good as to patiently await the developments of the investigation … Otherwise, unfortunately, I have nothing to add.”
“Those guys won’t wait. They’re lying in wait, eager to bite me in the ass.”
“That’s what you think, Chief. The press around here loves you,” Rocco said seriously.
“What makes you say that?”
“I hear what people say. They respect you. They need you.”
There was a pause. The police chief was mulling over what his underling had just told him. And Rocco smiled, delighted to go on tangling the threads of the relationship between his boss and “those guys.”
“Cut the bullshit. I know those guys. Listen here, Schiavone, would you rule out categorically the possibility that last night’s death might have been accidental?”
“With my luck? Yeah, I’d rule it out.”
Andrea Corsi took a deep breath. “When are you going to give me more comforting information?”
“In, let’s say, forty-eight hours?”
“Let’s say twenty-four!”
“Okay, we make it thirty-six and not another word on the subject.”
“Schiavone, what do you think this is, the flea market at Porta Portese? If I give you twenty-four hours, you have twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll call you this time tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll believe it when my team Sampdoria wins the national championship.”
“If I haven’t called you back in twenty-four hours, then I swear I’ll get you free tickets for the Genoa–Sampdoria match.”
“I’m the police chief. I don’t need your free tickets.”
And he hung up the phone.
“What a pain in the ass!” shouted Rocco, stretching his aching arms. He was looking at a mountain of work, work, work. That’s the way life was up here in Aosta. Serious folks, serious city, inhabited by serious people who work hard and mind their own business. And if they got high, at the very most it was with a round of grolle, local multi-spouted mugs of grappa and coffee, passed around communally. The days of Rome were over, a city where dope was processed as if on an assembly line. The days of decent opportunities, lucky breaks—those days were over. How much longer would he be forced to languish in this purgatory? He lived in the richest city in Italy, with a per capita income to rival Luxembourg’s, but after four months he had nothing to show for it. Then he thought about Sebastiano. Who would be coming up north tomorrow. And if Sebastiano was willing to take a plane all the way to Turin and then a train, in the middle of winter, there must be a reason, and a very good one.
That thought electrified him to the point that he found himself on his feet, rubbing his hands together. Only when his hand was on the door handle did he remember the joint with a homemade filter sitting in his ashtray. He went back, slipped it into his pocket, and finally left his office.
The streets were deserted. The cloudy gray sky promised more snow to come, and the black lava rock mountains seemed ready to swallow the landscape all around them. Italo Pierron drove, eyes on the road, while Rocco was on his cell phone.
“And yet it’s not that hard, D’Intino! Listen to me carefully.” Rocco spoke slowly and clearly, as if he were addressing a none-too-bright child. “Find out whether, in the city or province of Aosta, especially in Val d’Ayas, there have been any missing-person reports, people who didn’t come home, you see what I mean? Not just since yesterday; let’s say in the past month.” Rocco rolled his eyes. Then, with infinite patience, he repeated the concept: “D’Intino, listen: for the past month. Is that clear? Over and out.”
He punched the OFF button and looked at Italo, whose eyes were glued to the road ahead. “Tell me, is D’Intino playing with me or is he really that dumb?”
Italo smiled.
“Where’s he from?”
“He’s Abruzzese. From the province of Chieti.”
“Doesn’t he have any pull down there? No connections? Couldn’t he go back down there and stop busting our balls?”
“I don’t know, Dottore.”
“Everyone in Italy has a connection. I had to wind up with the one brain-damaged mental defective who doesn’t even have a relative or friend who can pull some strings for him.”
They left the car in a parking space at the hospital, even though a security guard had told them not to because that was the chief physician’s spot. Schiavone did nothing more than pull out his badge and shut up the zealous functionary of the Health Ministry.
They walked downstairs and past the laboratories until they finally reached the double glass