Game for Five (5 page)

“Something wrong?”

“Kind of.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Oh it's nothing. The usual story. By the way, I almost forgot. This afternoon, while you were away, O.K. came in looking for you. He said it was important, and that he'd come back tomorrow.”

“The usual story” really was the usual story. Like many young women after a certain age, Tiziana was determined to get married. And like many young men when they heard the word marriage, her paramour Marchino tended to change the subject. Sometimes one of the two insisted too much, and they would quarrel and pretend for half a day that they didn't know each other. Then everything went back to being the way it was before.

“O.K.? That's strange. He never asks for anything. I wonder what he wants. Well, goodnight.”

“'Night.”

The alarm clock. Is that the alarm clock? Shit. All right, I'll get up. Now, my slippers. Where are my slippers? Nice slippers . . . Oh, thank God. Fuck, what a horrible taste in my mouth, it's like I've eaten a kilo of dust. Coffee, now. Thank God I've got coffee. Who was it who invented coffee? He must be a cousin of the genius who invented the bed. Nobel Prizes for both of them. For them, and for the person who invented Nutella. In church, instead of the statue of San Gaspare. At least then we'd see a bit more sincere devotion. All right, let's have a shower and then I'll go.

 

Wide awake after his shower, Massimo pushed open the glass door and walked into the bar. He hadn't seen Grandpa Ampelio or the three other musketeers outside at the tables.

Here was the explanation: they were inside, and had been waiting eagerly for him. Sitting at the table next to theirs, with both his elbows leaning on the edge of it, was a man who could best be described as a disaster zone. He was almost bald, but what little hair he still had was shoulder-length. He had a long beard, and in spite of the heat was wearing a padded black jacket and long pants. To complete the picture, the fingers of his right hand were missing, leaving only the thumb. In his left hand he was holding a cup of coffee, examining it with a doubtful air, almost as if wondering if it might not be risky to drink something non-alcoholic like this in the morning on an empty stomach.

“Hello everyone.”

“Nice to see you, son,” Ampelio greeted him. “We've been waiting for you for two hours. I guess you were scared they'd take away your pillow and you were hugging it for safekeeping.”

“Hello, O.K.,” Massimo said, going behind the counter. “I heard you were looking for me. Is it something important?”

Obviously it was important, Massimo thought. O.K. was so reserved that days might pass before he'd even think about speaking to anyone. The son of a fisherman and a fisherman's wife (which is a profession in itself, and not one of the most restful), Remo Carlini had been a peaceable, curious child who devoted all his waking hours to learning the secrets of nature. Many questions had come into his mind, such as “How long will it take this lizard to die after I've cut off its head?” “Why don't cats fall on their feet if you tie a weight to their tails?” and “What happens if I pick up that cone-shaped metal object?” The answer to this last question—sometimes the object explodes in your hand—had deprived him of four fingers, and the death of his parents a few years later had deprived him of board and lodgings. So Remo Carlini—known as O.K. because his right hand, equipped only with a thumb as it was, seemed always to be signaling that everything was fine, in a gesture typical of American films of the 1960s—was the only homeless person in Pineta. He ate what he could find in trash cans, especially those behind restaurants, and sometimes went into a bar and ordered a drink, which he paid for with coins picked up on the street. He didn't beg, and he didn't ask for company, except for the two or three childhood friends of his who were still alive.

In the early days of the bar, Massimo had noticed O.K. looking for leftovers in the trash can, and had wondered what he could do to give him something—he had been told that O.K. didn't accept charity and that it was practically impossible to talk to him. In the end he had gotten into the habit of taking the leftover sandwiches of the day and putting them neatly on a little tray that he then wrapped with the greatest care and placed on the top of the trash can. O.K. had noticed, and from then on if he met Massimo on the street he would greet him silently by pretending to take off his hat. Today must have been only the fourth or fifth time in three years that he had heard his voice.

“Oh, yes, it's very important. That girl in the trash can, right? She was put there later.”

“What do you mean?” Massimo asked, having understood nothing at all of O.K.'s confused speech. “Later than what?”

“Listen, but I mean, really listen. You found the dead girl, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. You found her at five fifty, right? Ampelio told me. But yesterday was Saturday, and the restaurants didn't have any leftovers. So by last night I was really starving. I looked in all the trash cans, everywhere, nothing. So I went to the pine wood, where people have picnics, maybe they'd left something. But there was nothing, even there. Nothing, got it? No chicken meat, no girl meat. Do you understand?”

I understand, I understand, Massimo thought.

“Goodbye then. You tell the police. Tell that idiot who tried to arrest me for vagrancy last year.”

So that was why he came here. Massimo remembered hearing about that. It was understandable if O.K. didn't trust the police.

“Wait, sorry. What time was this?”

“Oh, yes. It was four thirty.”

“By what watch?” Del Tacca asked dubiously. “Your gold Rolex?”

“No, the one I was given by that whore your mother, I like it so much I always keep it in the bank,” O.K. replied without skipping a beat. “I saw the time on the clock at the disco, the green one that flashes. You can see it from all over.”

He took his coffee, knocked it back in one go, stood up, and left the bar with his usual poise.

“It's true,” said Aldo. “The laser clock at the Imperiale. You can even see it from the beach. So, let's recap: the girl is killed between midnight and three, right?”

“Right,” Massimo replied, then in a loud voice, “Hello, doctor!”

“Hello.”

Dr. Carli closed the door that O.K. had left open, waved a greeting at the four old-timers, who were all now engrossed in their newspapers, walked straight to the counter, and sat down on a stool.

“Could I have a sweet aperitif, please?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, you can't. It's a mental aberration, having an aperitif at lunchtime. Especially an alcoholic one. You drink on an empty stomach, then you go out with your senses already dulled a little, you go from a temperature of seventy-five inside, with air conditioning, to a hundred degrees out on the sidewalk, it hits you, and you collapse on the ground. I mean, sorry to point this out, but you are a doctor.”

His curiosity aroused, the doctor looked at Massimo and decided to play along with him. “So what do you suggest, master?”

“At lunchtime, nothing. At dinner, maybe some sparkling wine or champagne.”

“Sweet?”

Massimo put his hand on his chest and feigned a slight heart attack.

With an anxious expression, the doctor moved closer to the counter. “Why? Isn't it possible? Has it become illegal?”

“No, it's just that sweet sparkling wine isn't drunk as an aperitif. Apart from the fact that, except for Asti, sweet sparkling wines are usually crap, you need something to whet the appetite, not kill it. A good brut has the right characteristics, a sickly sweet sparkling wine doesn't.”

The doctor seemed to weigh up this explanation, then resigned himself to a glass of mineral water. He seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been the morning he had seen the body. For him, the worst must be over. He looked around with a disinterested air, walked up behind Ampelio, who had opened the newspaper at random at a full-page article about supernovas, glanced at it and said, “Massimo knows his stuff when it comes to wines, doesn't he? Almost as much as Signor Griffa here.”

“Almost,” Aldo agreed solemnly.

“I'm no connoisseur, but we don't need a news commentator to figure out what you were discussing. It's no sin. You don't have to stop when I come in. What do you think, I'm going to tell Fusco?”

“All right, you caught us with our pants down,” Massimo said. “Is there any news?”

“What makes you think I'd know? O.K. didn't talk to me.”

How the hell is it that people always know what's going on? Massimo thought. What do they have in their homes, satellite receivers?

“Listen, we'll tell you what O.K. told us . . . ”

“That seems only fair, and I'll tell you what Fusco told me.”

Four timeworn necks craned towards the counter.

“I don't believe it!” Ampelio said. “Has he found something?”

“But keep it to yourselves as long as possible, please.”

Believe us, the four faces said, while Massimo's face made an effort to keep as deadpan as possible. The important thing, when you gossip, is to maintain a formal structure. The person spreading the gossip has to demand the maximum secrecy, and the listeners have to grant it. Obviously, they'll broadcast the news as widely as they can later. It's just a matter of time. If someone says, “Keep it to yourselves as long as possible,” he doesn't mean “Tell it to the fewest possible people,” but “Resist for at least a little while before coming out with it, that way it'll be harder to trace it back to me.”

“Fusco had the trash can searched, and found Alina's cell phone. He's been able to read all the texts in its memory and . . . ”

“ . . . and discovered that she had a date.”

The doctor looked at Massimo and raised an eyebrow.

The rest of the chorus turned their necks like a ballet of periscopes toward

Massimo, who had gone around to the other side of the counter to cut the focaccia into sandwiches for lunchtime.

“Fusco told me the other day, after he questioned me.”

And you didn't tell us anything, said the faces of the old man. Shame on you.

“But I don't know who the date was with. He kept that to himself.”

“I'm just getting to that,” the doctor said. “The inspector discovered that she sent three texts, one to a girl, and two to a boy. She also received four messages, all from the same boy as before. In addition, she spoke on the phone for the last time with a girl, the same one she'd sent a text to.”

“And what did these texts say?” Massimo asked.

“What the hell are these texts anyway?” Ampelio asked, feeling that he was losing out on the best part of it.

“Texts,” Dr. Carli, “are written messages that are sent through cell phones, computers or even your home phone if you have the right device. The kids use them a lot, partly because sending them is cheaper than calling. And besides, it's fashionable.”

Ampelio made a somewhat disparaging gesture with his chin and grunted, “The times we live in! When I was young, fortunately, it was fashionable to fuck . . . ”

“Anyway,” the doctor went on, ignoring these Ampelian regrets, “the first of the three messages told the girl that Alina might be going out to dinner with a guy. In the second, meant for the boy, she asked him if he was free for dinner. She also said they had to talk. In the third she asked him to pick her up from her place at ten, because her parents were out. As it happens, Arianna and her husband were at the same party I was at. We spent quite a while scrounging food from the Marquis and Marchioness Calvelli.”

“And the messages received?” Massimo asked, all the while imagining the doctor in a tuxedo, smiling at old Marchioness Ermenegilda Calvelli-Storani and murmuring under his breath,“Ihopeyoucroaksoonyoufatpig” as he kissed her hand.

“All four are from the boyfriend. In the first he confirms the date. In the second he tells her he'll wait outside her building. In the third he asks her where she is. In the fourth he tells her to go to hell. Prophetic, really.”

The doctor broke off, and took another cigarette from the pack. He lit it and was silent for a few moments. Nobody dared to speak.

“In between, there's the conversation with the girlfriend. Fusco's interviewing her now. Anyway, I have to go to the morgue. But as I'm here, I might as well eat here first. My wife isn't waiting for me today.”

“Where did you leave her?” Del Tacca asked cheerfully. “With her lover?”

“In Saturnia, at the spa. She goes there every three or four months, to do God knows what. But when she comes back, she feels better, she's actually calmer, more relaxed.”

And you're calmer too, Massimo thought, but you're ashamed of admitting it to yourself. Massimo's hadn't had these problems with his ex-wife. She'd let him do whatever he liked, as long as he didn't cheat on her. Actually, she was the one who'd cheated on him. The bitch.

“That's because she doesn't see you for a week,” Del Tacca said in the same cheerful tone. “Then she comes back, sees you again, and falls at your feet. Some things have an effect on a beautiful woman like your wife. Though God knows why she insists on coming back . . . ”

“I don't know, I just appreciate it. Massimo, can you make me a sandwich on foccaccia, whatever kind you like?”

“Just give me a moment. I have to make a couple of phone calls first.”

 

Massimo went out the back, took the phone from the wall, and dialed the number of the police station. A voice with a Sicilian accent said, “Pineta Police, hello.”

“Hello, this is Massimo Viviani. I'd like to speak with Dr. Fusco.”

He couldn't help it, it had just come out like that. Fortunately the switchboard operator played along with him.