Big Italy

The Inspector Piero Trotti Novels
Converging Parallels
The Puppeteer
Persona Non Grata
Black August

The Anne Marie Laveaud Novels
Another Sun
The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe

ANTISOFISTICAZIONE: Nucleo Antisofisticazione, Italy’s health and safety department

ARMA: Arma dei Carabinieri, a military corps with police duties

AVVOCATO: lawyer

BUONA SERA: good evening

CAMORRA: a Neapolitan criminal organization

CARABINIERI: Italian national police force

CASA CIRCONDARIALE DI CUSTODIA PREVENTIVA: remand prison

CASA DI RECLUSIONE: prison

CASERMA: station

CASSA DEL MEZZOGIORNO: a government-funded endeavor to stimulate economic growth in Southern Italy

CELERE: riot police

CHI L’HA VISTO: a television program dedicated to missing persons and unsolved mysteries

CHINO: Elisir di China, a hot drink

DEMOCRAZIA CRISTIANA: a Christian democratic political party, the successor to the Italian People’s Party

DESTRA NAZIONALE: an Italian right-wing political party

DIRETTRICE: director (f.)

DONNAIOLO: womanizer

DOPOLAVORO: after-work recreational club

ESCHIMESE: a hooded anorak popular among left-wingers in 1970s Italy

FESTA PADRONALE: annual festival of saints

FIGLIO DELLA LUPA: the youngest sector of the Fascist party youth group (ages 6-8)

FOTOROMANZO: comic book

LA GIOCONDA: the
Mona Lisa

I PROMESSI SPOSI: an Italian historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni, published in the 1820s

IN BOCCA CHIUSA NON ENTRÒ MAI MOSCA: a proverb directly translating to, “A fly never entered a closed mouth,” implying that silence is often best

INGEGNERE: engineer

LANGHE: a hilly region in Piedmont

LASCIA O RADDOPPIA: an Italian game show, translating to
Leave It or Double It
, that aired from 1955–1959

LEGA: alliance/union, often short for Lega Nord, a regionalist party centered around the Po

LEGA LOMBARDA: a regionalist political party in Lombardy

LEGHISTI: belonging to a
lega
(see two above), especially Lega Nord

LOTTA CONTINUA: a non-terrorist extreme leftist group

LOTTIZZAZIONE: government-mandated allotment of funds

MANI PULITE: a national judicial investigation into Italian political corruption in the early 1990s

MATURITÀ: high school diploma

MEZZOGIORNO: Southern Italy

MINESTRA: soup; the same old stuff (idiom)

MINISTERO DELL’ INTERNO: Department of Internal Affairs

MINISTERO DELLA GIUSTIZIA: Justice Department

‘NDRANGHETA: an Italian criminal organization based in Calabria

OSPEDALE: hospital

OSTETRICA: maternity ward

PALAZZO DI GIUSTIZIA: courthouse

PARTITOCRAZIA: the hijacking of institutions by the party system

PENETRAZIONE MAFIOSA: pervasive mafia thinking

PIANO REGOLATORE: city planning

PIZZAIOLO: pizza chef

POLICLINICO: hospital

POLIZIA DI STATO: national police force

POLIZIA STRADALE: highway patrol

PROCURATORE: prosecutor

PRONTUARIO: short for
Prontuario farmaceutico
, or the Physicians’ Drug Index

PSICHIATRIA: psychiatric ward

PUBBLICA SICUREZZA: Italian police force

PUBBLICO MINISTERO: public prosecutor

QUESTORE: chief inspector

QUESTURA: police headquarters

REPARTO OMICIDI: homicide division

REPUBBLICHINO: Republican

REPARTO RIANIMAZIONE: intensive care unit

SANGUE DI GIUDA: a sparkling red Italian wine

SANITÀ: health

SACRA CORONA UNITÀ: a criminal organization from the Puglia region in Southern Italy

SCUOLA MEDIA: middle school

SEZIONE FEMMINILE: women’s branch

SEZIONE VIOLENZA INFANTILE: child abuse division

SEZIONE VIOLENZA SESSUALE: sexual assault division

SOCIOLOGIA: sociology

SOSTITUTO PROCURATORE: deputy prosecutor

STAZIONE CENTRALE: central station

TANGENTOPOLI: the network of corruption revealed by Mani Pulite, deriving from the Italian term
tangente
, which means “kickback”

TANGENZIALE: an expressway common to urban areas that allows vehicles to circumvent city traffic

TENENTE: lieutenant

TERZA MEDIA: the eighth grade

TORRE CIVICA: a tower equipped with bells (not to be confused with a bell tower, which has religious implications) that became symbolic of economic and military power in European cities

VU COMPRÀ: a term for immigrant street vendors, directly translating to, “Do you want to buy?” in a Neapolitan dialect

S
IGNORA
S
COLA HAD
left a message asking him to ring her, but an Elisir di China was what Trotti most needed now.

There had been a time when Trotti used to stay in the Questura working until all hours of the night. In those days, Agnese and Pioppi frequently dined without him and he would creep, tired and hungry, into a sleeping house. When Pioppi was a student at the liceo, months could go by without his ever seeing his daughter.

Now Commissario Piero Trotti rarely got home late.

In the last few years he had imposed a routine upon himself. He normally returned to the empty house in via Milano before eight o’clock.

A china before supper, he told himself, and then the walk home to burn off the extra calories. He knew he was putting on weight, but during the winter months Trotti enjoyed the feeling of warmth the hot toddy produced in him.

One of the rare pleasures of life.

He came out of the main entrance of the Questura and the burly policeman saluted briskly. “Buona sera, Signor Commissario.” He wore a leather jacket and his beret was pulled down to his ear.

“I hope you’re wearing tights under those trousers, agente.”

“I’m from Bolzano.” The man laughed. “Never been afraid of the cold.”

“Salve!” Trotti gave him a wave. He pulled on the zipper of his English waxed jacket as he went down the steps into Strada Nuova.

It was dark and the overhead lamps cast their tinted light into
the foggy street. Trotti turned right, pulling his scarf up to his chin and headed towards the Po.

His last winter in the Polizia di Stato.

After a lifetime in the Questura, Trotti could now enjoy those simple luxuries that he had systematically denied himself. Money in his wallet and no longer anybody to tell him what to do. Even Pioppi, now that she had a child of her own, had ceased to give orders to her father.

He softly whistled an air from
Andrea Chénier
to himself.

Although Strada Nuova was the center of the pedestrian zone, it was full of evening traffic. Rush hour and the municipal buses rumbled past, heavy with their load of passengers and misted glass. Passengers going home to minestra, Berlusconi and bed.

Trotti took the turning right and let the noise of the Strada Nuova fade behind him. Here the fog dulled every sound, dulled the fall of his shoes on the wet cobblestones.

Two hundred meters.

He could feel the damp fog working into his trousers and he longed for the dry cold of the hills.

He turned into Piazza Vittoria and along the empty, echoing porticoes. The door of the Bar Duomo was misted and twinkled with the light beyond. Trotti pushed the brass handle, to be met by the familiar smell of coffee, spirits, moist clothes and by the soft music of the radio.

“Buona sera, commissario,” the barman said cheerfully, catching sight of Trotti through the crowd. “You’re on time.”

The barman stood in front of a serried row of bottles. Advertisements—Amaro Ramazzotti and playing cards from Treviso—had been carefully stuck to the tinted glass of a long mirror.

The mirror threw back Trotti’s unsmiling image.

One or two coated backs moved aside and one or two heads nodded an evening salutation as Trotti went past, heading to a far table where nobody was sitting.