The Crocodile

Europa Editions
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New York NY 10001
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www.europaeditions.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A.
First publication 2013 by Europa Editions
Translation by Antony Shugaar
Original Title:
Il metodo del coccodrillo
Translation copyright © 2013 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609451639

To Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, and the souls in darkness
.

Hush-a-bye baby,
Oh, I’ll give you a star.
Sleep pretty baby,
It’s the brightest by far.
Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,
Now do you want the world?
For the sweet love of God,
Go to sleep, darling girl
.

Death comes in on track three at 8:14 in the morning, seven minutes behind schedule.
He blends in with the commuters, jostled by backpacks and briefcases, suitcases wheeled and otherwise, none of them able to sense the icy chill of his breath.

Death walks hesitantly, protecting himself from the haste of others. Now he stands in the vast concourse of the train station, surrounded by shouting children and the odor of defrosting pastries from the snack shops. He takes a look around, wipes away a tear from behind the left lens of his eyeglasses with a quick motion, whereupon his tissue returns to its place in the breast pocket of his jacket.

He identifies the exit, from the noise and flow of the crowd, amid all the brand-new shops. He no longer recognizes the place: everything is different after all these years. He’s planned out everything to the smallest detail. This search for the exit will prove to be his one and only moment of hesitation.

No one notices him. A young man leans against a column smoking a cigarette; he runs his gaze over and past him as if he were transparent. It’s a clinical once-over look: nothing worth stealing, his down-at-heel shoes and unfashionable suit speaking as eloquently as the photosensitive lenses and the dark necktie. The young man’s eyes slide past him, coming to a halt on the half-open handbag dangling from the shoulder of a woman gesticulating frantically as she talks into her cell phone. No one else sees Death as he moves warily through the atrium of the train station.

Now he’s outdoors. Humidity, the smell of exhaust. It has just stopped raining and the sidewalk is slippery with oozing muck. A shaft of sunlight breaks through and Death squints in the sudden glare, wiping away another tear. He looks around and spots the taxi stand. He trudges along, his feet dragging.

He climbs into a battered vehicle. The interior stinks of stale smoke, the seat sags listlessly. He murmurs an address to the driver, who repeats it loudly in confirmation as he jerks the car into motion and pulls into the stream of traffic without a glance behind him. No one honks their horn.

Death has come to town.

Sergeant Luciano Giuffrè rubbed his face with both hands, pushing his glasses on to his forehead as he massaged his eyes.

“Signora, this is getting us nowhere. We have to come to some kind of understanding. We can’t have you coming in here and wasting our time. We have urgent work to do. So would you tell me exactly what happened?”

The woman compressed her lips, shooting a sidelong glance at the neighboring desk. “Signor Captain, don’t talk so loud. I don’t want
him
hearing things that are none of his business.”

Giuffrè raised both arms in a gesture of helplessness. “Listen, lady–for the last time, I’m not the station captain. I’m only a lowly sergeant with the hard luck to be assigned to this desk, where I’m in charge of taking crime reports. And
he
isn’t eavesdropping on things that are none of his business. He’s Inspector Lojacono, and he has the same job I do. But, as you can see, he’s been luckier than me. For some reason, no one seems to want to file their complaints with
him
.”

The man sitting at the other desk showed no sign of having heard Giuffrè’s tirade. He kept his eyes on the computer screen and his hand on the mouse, seemingly lost in thought.

The woman, a middle-aged, working-class matron with a small purse clutched in her plump hands, made a great show of ignoring him. “What can I tell you? Customers always go to the salesmen they trust.”

“What do you mean by talking about salesmen, signora? Now you’re going to make me lose my temper! Really, how dare you? This is a police station: show some respect! Customers, salesmen, where do you think you are—a butcher shop? Now, either you tell me immediately, in the next two minutes, exactly what happened, or I’ll have an officer show you out of here. Ready?”

The woman blinked her eyes rapidly. “Forgive me, Signor Captain. I must be a little tense this morning. What you need to know is that the woman downstairs has started taking in cats again. And now she has three, you understand? Three.”

Giuffrè sat staring at her. “
O.K.
, and what are we supposed to do about it?”

The woman leaned forward and muttered under her breath, “These cats meow.”

“Oh, Jesus, of course they meow—they’re cats. And there’s no law against cats meowing.”

“Then you’re determined not to understand me—those cats meow and they stink. I leaned over the balcony and I said to her, perfectly sweetly, I said: “Listen, you miserable good-for-nothing, will you get it through your thick skull once and for all that you need to move out of this building, you and your filthy creatures.’”

Giuffrè shook his head. “Damn, it’s a good thing you said it sweetly. And what did she say to you?”

The woman straightened her back against the chair, to underscore the depth of her indignation. “She told me to go fuck myself.”

Giuffrè nodded, agreeing with the spirit if not the letter of the cat-owner’s sentiments.

“Well?”

The woman opened her piggish eyes wide. “Well, now I want to file a criminal complaint, Signor Captain. You need to haul her in here and slap her in a cell, her and the cats she keeps. I want to report her for aggravated incitement to self-fucking.”

Giuffrè didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Signora, there are no cells in here, I’m not the station captain, and as far as I know, there’s no law against telling someone to go fuck themselves. Moreover, it strikes me that you called the woman downstairs a ‘miserable good-for-nothing’ first, am I right? Listen to me, why don’t you go home, try to keep your temper under wraps, and remember that a couple of cats never hurt anybody–they even catch mice. Go on, now. Please stop wasting our time.”

The woman got to her feet, rigid with disgust. “So that’s what we get for paying our taxes, is it? I always say to my husband he shouldn’t declare half of the merchandise he sells. Have a nice day.” And she stormed out.

Giuffrè took off his thick-lensed glasses and slammed them down on to his desk.

“I have to ask what I did wrong in a previous life to deserve this job. In a city where the first thing we do every morning is go out and count the dead bodies in the streets, how on earth could a woman like that decide to come into the police station to file a complaint against another woman who told her to go fuck herself? And the law says she has every right to do so, might I add. Does such a thing strike you as reasonable?”

The occupant of the neighboring desk glanced away from the monitor for a brief moment. His face had vaguely Asian features: dark, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and shapely, fleshy lips. Tousled, unkempt locks of hair dangled over his forehead. He was a little over forty, but sharp creases at the sides of his mouth and eyes spoke of much older sorrows and joys.

“Oh, come on, Giuffrè. That’s just part of the general nonsense. You need something to do if you want to make the time go by in here, don’t you?”

The sergeant shoved his glasses back on to the bridge of his nose, feigning astonishment. He was a very expressive little man whose every word was accompanied by an analogous gesture, as if the person listening were deaf.

“Oh, and what do we have here? Has Inspector Lojacono woken up from his beauty sleep? What would you like now—a cup of coffee and a pastry? Or would you rather I bring you your morning newspaper, so you can read up on what the nation did while you were slumbering?”

Lojacono gave a half-smile.

“I can’t help it if everyone who comes in here takes one look at me and then makes a beeline for your desk. You heard the fat lady, didn’t you? Customers develop a certain loyalty to their favorite salesmen.”

Giuffrè drew himself up to his full five feet five inches. “You realize that you’re stuck in the same leaky boat as me, don’t you? Or do you think you’re just passing through here? You know what everyone else calls this office? They call it the booby hatch. So what do you think, that they’re singling me out?”

Lojacono looked indifferent. “What the hell do I care? They can call this shithole whatever they like. I’m more disgusted with it than they ever will be.”

Lojacono turned back to his monitor, where there was a time and a date, right under the game of cards that he played obsessively against the computer. April 10, 2012. Ten months and a few days. That’s how long he’d been sitting there. In hell.

The girl at the reception desk had a pair of earbuds blaring out Beyoncé at full volume–after all, for four hundred fucking euros a month, under the table and with no benefits, what did those bastards even expect? On the other hand, the way things were these days, an easy job at the front desk of a small ten-room hotel in Posillipo, where she could get a little studying in on the side, wasn’t the sort of thing you’d put out with the trash. So damn boring, though.

She looked up and jumped in her seat. There was a man standing right in front of her, gazing at her across the counter.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. How can I help you?”

The first impression she had was of an old man. If she’d looked a little more closely, behind the antiquated suit of indeterminate color, behind the dark tie, behind the glasses with photosensitive lenses (God, how many years had it been since she’d seen a pair like that? Her grandfather wore those!), maybe she’d have revised her guess downward a couple of years. But with her final exam in public finance bearing down on her and Beyoncé howling out of the earbuds dangling around her neck, the anonymous, invisible client standing before her needed to be taken care of and dismissed as quickly as possible.

“I have a reservation for a room, I think room seven. But could you check? Thanks.”

Even his voice was nondescript, little more than a whisper. The man dug a paper tissue out of his breast pocket and quickly dabbed at his left eye. The girl assumed he had some allergy.

“Yes, here’s the reservation. Room nine has become available, though, if you’re interested. You can get a glimpse of the water from the window, while room seven is on the street. If you like we can—”

The old man broke in politely. “No, thanks. I’d rather confirm room seven, if it’s all the same to you. It might not be as noisy, and I’m here to get some rest. You do have a key to the downstairs door in case I stay out . . . late, don’t you? I read on your website that you offer that option, since there’s no night clerk.”

He’s here to get some rest, but he wants a key for the front door so he can stay out late. Filthy old pig.

“Of course, here you are, this key is for the night entry door and this one is the room key. How long will you be staying with us?”

A question she’d tossed in as an afterthought, a formality. The old man seemed to be thinking hard, trying to come up with the answer, his watery gaze wandering behind the lenses, a deep crease furrowing his forehead under the sparse white hair.

“I’m not sure. A month or so, maybe less. In any case, not long.”

“Whatever you prefer. Here’s your ID back. Have a pleasant stay.”

And Beyoncé rose in her ears again, the soundtrack to public finance.

Room number seven. Carefully selected from the hotel floor plan, studied obsessively on the internet. The single bed pushed against the wall, the bathroom with the shower and no bidet, the armoire with squeaky door hinges. A writing desk, a chair, a bedside table. Perfect. Perfect in every way.

The old man put his suitcase on the bed, unzipped it, and quickly checked its contents. Then he took off his jacket and carefully hung it up in the armoire, moved the writing desk over in front of the window, and raised the roller blind halfway. He looked across the narrow private street and nodded in satisfaction, then loosened his tie and sat down. He examined the pen and the stationery bearing the hotel’s pretentious coat of arms, glanced at the window again, and started writing.