Temporary Perfections (26 page)

It took Nicoletta more than a minute to come to the door.

She was a tall, skinny young woman, pale and attractive, but dull looking. The kind who always looks much better with the right clothing and the right makeup. She had an expression that was neither amiable nor particularly intelligent. Caterina gave her a hug, wrapping her arms around her and holding her tight for what seemed like a long time. Then she introduced us. Nicoletta’s handshake was limp. The apartment smelled faintly of mothballs. There was no sign of anyone living there besides Nicoletta.

We walked down a dimly lit hallway to the kitchen and sat down around an old Formica kitchen table. There was something impersonal and a little stale about the apartment. There was something disagreeable—though hard to pin down—about its tenant. I thought a good investigator would ask to take a look at Manuela’s bedroom, even though all her things had probably been removed some time ago and there was probably a new roommate living in it now.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Nicoletta offered in the tone of someone who is obliged to provide the minimum required level of hospitality—but no more. We accepted, and she served us coffee in a mismatched set of old chipped demitasses and saucers. After finishing her espresso, Caterina lit a cigarette, leaving her cigarette case on the table. Nicoletta took one, too, and lit it with a series of overly feminine gestures entirely in keeping with her feeble handshake.

“All right, Nico. Counselor Guerrieri is going to ask you a few questions. Don’t worry, and answer them to the best of your ability. You’re not in any trouble. Like I told you, Counselor Guerrieri is a lawyer hired by Manu’s parents to find out if there are any leads that the prosecutors or the
Carabinieri might have overlooked. That’s why he needs to talk to me, to you, in other words, to anybody who was close to Manu. But I repeat, you have no reason for concern of any kind.”

Caterina had taken on the posture and even the tone of voice of a cop with years of experience. It was an amazing thing to see.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” said Nicoletta, with a less-than-enthusiastic expression on her face. Now it was my turn.

“First of all, let me thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I’ll try not to take up any more of your time than necessary.”

She nodded, though it wasn’t clear whether she meant it as a gesture of courtesy or to indicate that it was best not to take up too much of her time. I asked her more or less the same questions I had asked Caterina, and she gave me more or less the same answers. Then we came to the point.

“Now, Nicoletta, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you to tell me a few things about Manuela’s ex-boyfriend, Michele Cantalupi.”

“What do you want to know about him?”

I wondered for a second if I should circle around a little bit and approach the subject slowly. But I told myself there was no reason to beat around the bush.

“Everything you can tell me about him and drugs. Before you say anything more, let me remind you that this conversation is completely confidential, and that I won’t repeat anything you’re about to tell me to anyone—least of all, to the police. I’m just trying to figure out whether and how Michele Cantalupi might have had anything to do, directly or indirectly, with Manuela’s disappearance.”

“I have no idea whether Michele had anything to do with Manuela’s disappearance.”

“Tell me about the cocaine.”

Nicoletta hesitated, then she looked over at Caterina, who nodded her head as if giving permission. Nicoletta sighed and answered.

“Well, let me begin by saying that I only know what happened while Manuela and Michele were dating.”

“Are you talking about what happened with cocaine?”

“That’s right.”

“Go ahead.”

“He always had cocaine.”

“Did he have a lot?”

“I never saw how much he had, but he always had it.”

Something about the way she answered that question told me that she wasn’t telling the truth. I felt sure that Nicoletta had seen the cocaine, and she’d seen that there was a lot of it.

“Did he bring it here, to your apartment?”

She hesitated again, then nodded.

“Was Manuela using?”

“I think so.”

“You only think so?”

“She used it sometimes.”

“Here?”

“Once or twice.”

“Together with Michele?”

“That’s right.”

Based on the way she answered me and the growing tension I could sense, I decided to change the subject, for a few minutes anyway.

“After she broke up with Michele, Manuela was dating someone else here in Rome, wasn’t she?”

She relaxed visibly.

“She went out with a guy for a few weeks, but she wasn’t serious about him.”

“Did you meet this guy?”

“I only met him once. He came over for dinner one evening.”

“How long did they date?”

“They stopped seeing each other before the summer. Manuela didn’t really like him. She just went out with him a few times because she was bored. It was a way of passing the time.”

“Were there any repercussions to that relationship?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it an easy breakup, or was there a lot of conflict, the way there was with Michele?”

“The two of them were never even together. They went out a few times, that’s all. It wasn’t a relationship, just a few dates. I think that after a few weeks Manuela told him that she didn’t want to see him again. It just ended. No conflict at all.”

“When you and Caterina spoke, you both theorized that Michele might have had something to do with Manuela’s disappearance. Is that right?”

Nicoletta looked over at Caterina, who once again nodded, giving her permission to answer.

“Yes, but that was just something we said. Michele is a violent guy, and their relationship ended on an ugly note.…”

“Is he a drug dealer?”

“I don’t know, I swear.”

I had a sudden idea.

“Did Manuela ever have cocaine of her own, independent of Cantalupi? Did she ever bring coke here, even when he wasn’t in Rome?”

Caterina shifted in her chair, changing position, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that she seemed less at ease. Nicoletta slouched and the expression on her face was unmistakable: She knew she should never have agreed to talk with me. It had been a mistake, and she was already regretting it.

“Let me ask you again: Did Manuela have a way of getting cocaine, independent of Cantalupi? This information could be very important.”

Still no answer.

“She brought some here, and you both used it, on more than one occasion. Isn’t that right?”

After another long pause, she finally spoke.

“Once or twice,” she said in a voice I could barely hear.

“Did that happen after she broke up with Cantalupi?”

“Yes.”

“So Manuela knew how to get cocaine without having to rely on Cantalupi. Did she get it in Rome or Bari?”

“I don’t know how or where she got it, I swear.”

She was starting to make me mad. If the things she was telling me—and everything that she was still keeping from me—had been reported to the Carabinieri months ago, maybe the investigation would have gone differently. I didn’t like this one bit.

“I swear I have no idea where she got the coke,” she said again.

“And you didn’t say a word to the Carabinieri about all this. Didn’t it occur to you that this information could have
been helpful to their investigation? It could have made a difference.”

“I didn’t know who she was getting her coke from. Even if I’d said something to the Carabinieri, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

It took all my self-control to suppress a growing wave of anger inside me. I wanted so badly to tell her what an idiot she was. If the Carabinieri had known that Manuela was involved in drug dealing, however tangentially, they would have shifted their investigation in that direction. Maybe that wouldn’t have changed anything, but at least there might have been a chance to find out what happened to her.

“You didn’t say anything because you didn’t want to admit that you’d used cocaine. You didn’t want your parents to know, isn’t that right?”

She nodded. Now that I thought about it, I decided that stupidity had nothing to do with her behavior. Nicoletta was a small-minded, selfish coward, and the only reason she said nothing to the Carabinieri was to avoid any inconvenience to herself. That her close friend, roommate, companion in studies and everyday life, had vanished into thin air meant less to her than the mere risk that she might have to do some explaining to her parents about doing a line or two—was it a line or two?—of cocaine.

“I need to understand something, Nicoletta, and I’m going to ask you to tell me the truth, without holding anything back. I need to know if Manuela continued to get cocaine from the same people after she and Michele broke up. By ‘same people,’ I mean the people she met through Michele.”

“I swear that I don’t know how she got it. I asked once, and she told me to mind my own business.”

“What did she say?”

“She was kind of mean about it. She let me know it was none of my business and asking could be dangerous.”

“Is that what you understood her to mean, or is that what Manuela actually said to you?”

“I don’t remember her exact words, but that was certainly how she made it sound.”

A few minutes of complete silence followed. Caterina lit another cigarette. Nicoletta rubbed a hand over her face and sighed deeply. For a minute I thought she was about to burst into tears, but she didn’t. I was trying to think of anything else I might be able to get out of her. Nothing came to mind, so I asked if I could see Manuela’s bedroom.

“There’s nothing of hers left in the room,” Nicoletta said.

“Does another girl live in the room now?”

“No, the landlady hasn’t found another tenant yet, so I’m living here alone.”

“Then you won’t mind if I take a look.”

Nicoletta shrugged and stood up without a word. Manuela’s bedroom was halfway down the hall and, I noticed, the door was locked; Nicoletta turned the key in the lock before opening the door. As I walked into the room, I felt my pulse quicken, as if the information that would solve the case was hidden in that room, and I was about to find it.

But I wasn’t. It was just as Nicoletta had said. Nothing in the room was connected with Manuela. There was a single bed. There was a desk with empty drawers. There was an armoire, which was also empty. A series of small, bad watercolors hung on the walls. They appeared to have been part of the original furnishings of the bedroom and of the apartment.

“What happened to Manuela’s things?”

“The Carabinieri came and searched the room and then, a few weeks later, Manuela’s mother took all her things away.”

I decided that the Carabinieri hadn’t, technically, performed a search. Among other things, there was no mention of a search in the file. They had gone to the apartment and, as so often happens in these cases, they had taken a look around, found nothing useful, and left.

“Why were her parents in such a hurry to get her stuff out of the room?”

“The landlady asked them if they wanted to keep paying the rent on the room, and of course they didn’t. So Manuela’s mother, with one of Manuela’s aunts, or maybe just a friend, came and took all her things away.”

When Nicoletta was done talking, I walked over to the window and looked out. I saw that it overlooked a dirty gray courtyard. I half-closed my eyes and tried to sense Manuela’s presence, her voice. Perhaps, in that slightly dreary seventies-style bedroom, I might receive a message from the missing girl.

Fortunately, I acted the fool for a few seconds only, and neither Caterina nor Nicoletta noticed anything. Is your brain turning to mush, Guerrieri? Who do you think you are, Dylan Dog, paranormal investigator? I berated myself loudly, albeit internally, as I left the room, upset with myself.

Ten minutes later, Caterina and I were back out on the street, as darkness fell.

“Did you know all of that already?”

“More or less, though not the details,” Caterina replied.

“So why didn’t you tell me any of it?”

We were already in a taxi on our way back to the hotel. Rome’s traffic was at its spectacular worst. Caterina took a deep breath before answering.

“Try to see it from my point of view. These were things that concerned Nicoletta, and she is a friend of mine, even if we don’t hang out anymore. I did what I could so the two of you could meet and she could be the one to tell you about it. It seemed to me like the best solution.”

“What if Nicoletta hadn’t told me anything?”

“I don’t believe that would have happened, but if it had, I would have stepped in.”

There wasn’t a thing wrong with what Caterina was saying. She’d behaved impeccably. She’d helped me without betraying the trust of a friend.

So why was I feeling so annoyed, as if we were playing a game and I wasn’t privy to the rules?

I should have asked her if she had ever tried cocaine herself and if there was anything that she had forgotten to tell me. I was trying to find the words when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket but didn’t answer.

“Go ahead and answer if you like,” I said.

“It’s a friend of mine. I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to tell her I’m in Rome. I’ll text her later,” she said, shrugging as she pushed a button that silenced the phone. I decided I was uncomfortable asking that question, and that it probably wasn’t important. I could ask her some other time.

“In your opinion, did Nicoletta tell me everything she knows?”

“Probably not, but she told you what you wanted to know, and I doubt very much that she knows anything specific about Manuela’s disappearance.”

She was right, I thought, as I looked at her.

She also had beautiful skin, I thought, as I continued to look at her, until I realized that I had become, shall we say, somewhat distracted.

“What do you think? Do you think Manuela’s disappearance might have something to do with cocaine?”

Even though the cabbie seemed to be completely absorbed in a soccer game on the radio and completely uninterested in us, I instinctively lowered my voice.