Black Run (12 page)

Ten o'clock. It's ten o'clock at night, and I feel as if it's three in the morning. I even left the television going and all the lights on. What a mess.

“Nice! In this photo you're magnificent. You have the sensual charge of a real top model.”

There's a woman on TV, black, beautiful, with smooth hair. If you ask me, it's a wig. A famous ex-model. Her name is Tyra Banks. I sit on the sofa and watch her. It's a competition of some kind. There's a group of breathtaking babes who want to become America's next top model.

“Nice, Jeannie . . . you gave it your all.”

What a fucked-up show. One ex–top model, a transsexual, and a couple of assholes deciding who wins. Jesus, it's ridiculous. “Why are you watching it?” I ask Marina, who's sprawled in the armchair. Marina smiles at me, but she doesn't say a word.

“I saw Sebastiano. He's here on business, but he has to leave right away.”

“You could have invited him to stay with us,” Marina says to me.

“He got a room. He said he'd rather stay in a hotel.”

Marina shrugs. She doesn't ask. She doesn't want to know. She's never wanted to know.

“You see, Elizabeth? In this photo you didn't give it your all,” Tyra Banks says to one of the competitors. “You look dull, no energy.”

“How's Sebastiano?”

“Excellent. Big and taciturn. He wants to leave Rome.”

Marina smiles. She knows that bear will never leave its den. Sebastiano will die in Rome.

Marina looks at me. Now she wants to know. So I tell her.

“He was named Leone Miccichè. Someone killed him. For now I have nothing. Only that he was Sicilian and that he had a handkerchief in his mouth.”

“A handkerchief in his mouth?”

“I know what you're thinking. But this has nothing to do with the Mafia or some fucked-up vendetta.”

“Why not?”

“For two reasons. First, if the Mafia kills you, either the corpse is never found or else, if they're trying to send a message or make a point, you'll find the dead man in the middle of a street or on a sidewalk or under a bridge. Everyone's supposed to see it, no? They're not going to leave it in the middle of a forest, on a shortcut used only by snowcats.”

“What's the second reason?”

“They don't leave a neckerchief, a bandanna, in someone's mouth. They put a rock, which means someone talked too much, or else they just put the guy's own cock in his mouth. No. Whoever killed him is from here. In fact, it's someone from Champoluc.”

“Nice, Eveline,” says Tyra Banks as she looks at a photo of an anorexic girl as tall as a lamppost. “Here you're finally yourself!”

“I'm sick of this program,” says Marina. “Change the channel, see if there's anything else on.”

“Then why were you watching it?” I ask.

Marina smiles. “Because the girls are pretty. Stupid, but pretty. They remind me of when I was their age.”

“You were pretty, but you weren't stupid.”

Marina looks at me. “Correct that. ‘You were pretty, but you
aren't
stupid.' It sounds better, no?”

“It's true, you aren't,” I tell her. Then my eyes fill up with some kind of liquid. I have to squeeze them once, twice, three times, otherwise I can't even see the sofa I'm sitting on.

“Don't cry, Rocco. It's not worth it. I'm going to bed now.”

She gets up, collects her legal pad, and heads off down the hall. “Will you turn off the lights?”

“Sure,” I say. “What do we have today?”

“Today the word is
sanious.
It's an adjective for a discharge of purulent pus.”

“Who's discharging purulent pus, Marì?”

“Usually someone who's been stitching and pricks themselves.”

Stitching. Wasting time. Sanious. A discharge of purulent pus. “Is that me, Marì?”

But she's already gone to the bedroom, to bed, to sleep.

I turn off the television, and silence falls over the apartment, like a half-ton of lead. I turn off the lights, too. I stand there, looking at the living room. It's strange. The television's off. But it still emits a faint halo of light, illuminating the darkness. And in the end it becomes clear to me: either I toss out this television set or I have to get another one. One of those new ones, plasma, HD. But I'm just too fond of this set. It reminds me of lots of things.

Memories.

Those are the things that have always failed me.

There was a German poet who said that the past is a dead person without a corpse.

It's not true.

The past is a dead person whose corpse never stops coming to see you. By night and by day. And you're even happy that it does. Because the day that the past doesn't show up at your front door is the day that you belong to the past. You yourself have become the past.

Maybe I need to get more sex.

Domenico and Lia Miccichè, the dead man's brother and sister-in-law, were sitting in the green-velvet-upholstered lobby of the Hotel Europe. Domenico was fat. So was his wife. And they both wore sad expressions. But it was that slightly generic sadness, a cheap one-size-fits-all sadness that's as suitable for a child's bad report card as it is for a car so badly damaged in a crash that it's not worth repairing.

As soon as they saw Rocco Schiavone, they introduced themselves. The policeman didn't miss the whiff of alcohol on the sister-in-law's breath. Domenico Miccichè announced his name through clenched teeth. As if he were ashamed of it. He'd already been to the morgue. He'd taken care of the bureaucratic procedures, and he seemed to be eager to get back to his vineyards. They talked about the cold and the snow, until Domenico asked: “Why?”

Rocco shook his head. “For now, all I can tell you is when and what time of night. For
why
and
who,
I'm not ready yet.”

Domenico Miccichè sat down in the velvet armchair, and his wife followed suit. Rocco had no choice but to do the same thing. “Still, I have a couple of things I'd like to ask you.”

“If it can help with the investigation,” said Domenico. His face protruded from his turtleneck sweater, as red as a buoy. On his forehead, at the exact beginning of his curly head of hair, there was an oily patina. It might have been sweat, or it could have been hair oil. His watch was a Rolex with a stainless steel case. And wedged among the black hairs of his wrist was a gold bracelet.

“Your brother Leone had been here three years. He'd moved into a chalet with—”

“Luisa.” Lia finished the sentence, caressing her double chin and jingling a necklace that she wore over her white cardigan.

“Right. Luisa Pec. Financially, it appears that things were going just fine. But there's something I'd like you to help me understand. According to what his wife told me, you and your brother had a fight on the telephone a couple of days ago.”

Domenico huffed. “It's always the same thing. You see, I bought out his part of the company years ago. Now we still jointly own a couple of properties. Leone wanted to sell them.”

“What kind of properties?”

“A
maso
that needs renovation, outside of Erice, and a
dammuso
on Pantelleria.”

“How much money are we talking about, Signor Miccichè?”

“A million, roughly. Between us, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Domenico settled comfortably into his armchair. “Listen, Dottore. My company invoices more than six million euros a year, as you can verify on our tax returns. You're not suggesting that for less than 500,000 euros I would—”

Rocco stopped him with a simple wave of the hand. “I'm not suggesting anything, Signor Miccichè. I just want to understand what happened. And by providing me with this information, you'd be saving me a little time. So your brother wanted to sell and you didn't?”

“That's not exactly how it was.”

“That's what Luisa says,” Lia Miccichè broke in.

“Please, Lia. Would you let me talk? This is about my brother!”

Lia dropped her eyes.

“Excuse me, Dottore. Now, as I was saying, that's not exactly right. I'd have been willing to sell, but at the right price. Or else buy back the other half. You see, Leone wanted 500,000 euros, and I don't know what he intended to do with it. It's just that we couldn't come to an understanding. You know how it is between brothers.”

“No. I don't. Why don't you tell me.”

“Stratifications, Mr. Deputy Police Chief. Stories going back years, things that rot and develop gangrene, until you can't even remember how or when they got started. I'm five years older than Leone. And he was always the hothead in the house. When Mamma and Papà died, if I hadn't been there, he would have run through the whole company. Well, that was Leone. He just put his head down and ran, without considering the pros and cons. That's the way he lived, chasing after whatever he most liked at that instant.”

“Do you know how much money he had left when he died?”

“No. I don't know.”

“Knowing the way he was, I doubt it was much,” Lia broke back in. “In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were debts to pay.”

Rocco looked at the woman, with her small mouth and moist lips set in a pale, buttery face. “A
dammuso
and a
maso
ought to be more than enough, don't you think, Signora Miccichè?”

“No. Because those properties are not inherited by Leone's wife. I'm surprised that a policeman like you wouldn't know about such basic matters of the law!”

“Maybe you'll be even more surprised to learn, signora, that a wife does inherit property—and not only that, but debts. So that will be a problem for Luisa Pec, don't you think?”

Lia Miccichè closed her mouth. Her husband glared at her moodily. If his eyes had been daggers, Lia Miccichè would already be a ghost, and for some time now.

Rocco couldn't take sitting there with those two any longer. His underwear was prickly, and he wanted to give himself a good hard scratch, take a walk, smoke a cigarette.

“My brother and I were never very close,” Domenico suddenly said. “Never. I hoped that maybe one day, who knows, that things might take care of themselves. But nothing took care of itself at all. And now it's too late.”

“Yeah, it's too late,” admitted Rocco, “and by the way, it's pretty late for me, too.”

The café at the foot of the cableway had been poor Leone Miccichè's favorite place in town. It was the haunt of snowcat drivers and ski instructors. The dead man had spent his evenings there talking with Mario and Michael, who ran the place. At that hour of the morning, only Mario was there. Rocco had taken a seat on the wooden bench, placed both elbows on the counter—a single length of tree, carved and shaped—and proceeded to look out at the street through the large, fogged plate-glass window, still decked with Christmas decorations on the sill. Mario had his back to him as he filled the coffee grinder with fresh beans. Ignoring the man who'd been sitting at the counter for a while now, with his loden overcoat and his weary face.

“Does a person have to issue a subpoena to get an espresso?” said Rocco, still looking out the window. Mario turned around, smiled, and went over to the bar. “
Buon giorno
, what'll it be, an espresso?”

“No, three ounces of aged prosciutto. Of course I want an espresso. This is a café, isn't it?”

Mario smirked and went over to the Faema espresso machine.

“Are you Mario?” asked Rocco. The man nodded his head as he set an espresso cup under the arm of the espresso machine.

“You knew Leone, didn't you?”

“Yes. He was in here all the time. Poor guy. What a nasty way to die.”

“Make it strong. What was he like?”

“Who, Leone?”

“Exactly.”

“He was a guy with plenty of energy, you know?” He set the espresso down on the bar. Rocco put in half an envelope of sugar. “When he got here, he'd never seen a mountain in his life. Nevertheless, after not even a couple of years he was skiing, and climbing in the summer. There's lots of great climbs around here, did you know that?”

“Listen, though. Who had he pissed off?”

The barman gave the deputy police chief a blank look.

“Was there anyone who hated Leone?” Rocco drank the espresso. It was good and foamy.

“Ah, no. No one. And why would they? He always minded his own business. He was always courteous. He lived with Luisa, and they opened that wonderful hut up at Cuneaz.”

“Any business competitors?”

“Here in Champoluc? No. There's plenty of money for everyone, you know. No, they were nice and everyone liked them, both him and Luisa. They were going to start a family. Poor things. And they'd almost done it, did you know?”

“Almost done what?”

“Luisa's expecting Leone's baby. She discovered it a month ago, Deputy Police Chief Schiavone.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“I've seen you before. The night of the murder. Luigi took you up to Crest with the snowcat. Luigi Bionaz is one of my best friends, and he's also the cousin of my partner, Michael. We're all sort of related here in Champoluc. We natives, I mean to say—you understand.”

Rocco licked the little spoon. “Excellent espresso, this.
Grazie
. Listen, Mario. What's the cheapest ski shop in town?”

“You go out, continue another hundred yards, and on the same side of the street there's a store. It's excellent, and it's the cheapest one in town, you know?”

“Is the woman who runs it your cousin?”

Mario laughed. “No. She's just a friend of mine.”

“You're all sort of related here, no?”

“Nearly all of us, you know?”

“Well, then, would you explain to me why, if you're all related, someone decided to kill Leone?”

“Who says it was someone from here? It could have been someone from the outside, no?”

“No, it's someone from here, trust me. I just have to figure out why.”

Rocco took a euro out of his pocket and put it on the bar, got up off the barstool, and left the place without saying good-bye.

The air was thin, and it burned his lungs. The deputy police chief looked at the houses with their pitched roofs and the icy, dirty snow lining the street. A car went past, its chains jangling on the asphalt. A little supermarket was packed with English shoppers, each of them with two beers in hand, lining up at the cash register. The plate-glass window of Mario's friend's shop was decorated with fake polystyrene snowflakes covered with glitter. On display was an array of brightly colored skis. Rocco was impressed by the prices. It was hard to find anything for less than eight hundred euros.

He walked in.

A bell jingled to alert the shopkeeper that a customer had just come in. Rocco looked around, but there was no sign of the proprietor. There were shelves, a counter with a cash register, sweaters, fleeces, hats, gloves, pants, ski suits, and ski boots.

“Hello! Is anyone here?”

Nothing. No reply. He thought about what would have become of that unguarded store on any street in Rome. They would have sucked it dry as a chicken bone. He went over to the cash register. At least that wasn't lying open. The air was filled with a pleasant scent of wood and resin. And if he sniffed carefully, there was also a faint aroma of cherry marmalade. His footsteps creaked on the wooden floor. A nice hardwood parquet. That bright, light-colored floor would have been nice in a beach house.

Oak
, Rocco mused,
without knots. A nice choice.

Next to the cash register was a laptop computer, turned on. The latest Vaio, the first thing that would be stolen in Rome, without a second thought. On the screen, the deputy police chief recognized the picture of the cableway terminal, up at 6,500 feet. He could see a corner of the large garage where the snowcats were parked, as well as the office used by the ski instructors. Rocco walked over to the computer. The browser was showing the Monterosa Ski website.

He was looking at the still image when the bell on the door jingled. A woman about thirty-five years old, tall, with short brown hair and jutting cheekbones, came in with a smile. “
Buon giorno
. What can I do for you?”

Rocco took an immediate liking to the proprietor. He moved away from the counter. “Hi. Just take a look at these shoes of mine,” he said and pointed to the Clarks desert boots, which by now were shoes only in name. “Your friend Mario told me that you have the lowest prices in Champoluc.”

“He told you the truth. The best prices and superior quality. That's my motto. I have lots of different models—what size do you wear?”

“Forty-fours.”

The woman vanished behind a pillar lined with mirrors plastered with decals.

“Come on back,” said the proprietor of the shop from behind a screen, and Rocco walked over.

She had bent over to get a couple of styles of boots that were on the lowest shelf. As she did so, her tight black trousers slid down, revealing the elastic band of her panties. Floral-patterned.

A thong, Rocco decided.

“Here, I can show you the various styles of shoe. Do you prefer leather or technical materials?”

“Please, no plastic.”

The woman smiled. She showed him two pairs of snow boots. One pair was big and solid and black with red laces. “These are very popular.”

Rocco gazed at the boots skeptically. “More like they
were
very popular. They remind me of the shoes the Alpine troops wore on the Tofane Mountains in the First World War!”

The woman laughed heartily and showed him another pair of boots. They were a little more understated. Brown leather. A pair of ugly city shoes.