The Deliverance of Evil (33 page)

He was exhausted from thinking about it. He couldn’t shake the powerful image of Colajacono trembling and pale as a ghost. He had to do something to stop what he himself had set in motion. He picked up the phone and called Linda Nardi.

. . . .

Both the police and the carabinieri armed themselves with the Beretta 92 nine-millimeter Parabellum. The gun was military issue and not available to civilians. The 92FS was the latest version; that was what most police officers with fewer than fifteen years of service carried. Balistreri had the 92SB, a model that was a little older but still in use.

Reluctantly, he took the weapon from his office safe. He cleaned it, loaded it, put the safety catch on, and slipped it into his holster, which he fastened under his left armpit. He’d learned to shoot when he was a kid, but guns weren’t associated with happy memories for him. He hadn’t touched a weapon with the intention of shooting it for many years. But now old ghosts, the dangerous crowd he’d run with before, were looming on the horizon.

He made his way through the city center on foot, while a few customers were leaving the shops that were about to close and people shivering with cold were beginning to slip into restaurants. There was a pleasant drizzle again, and when he got to the Pantheon his hair was wet and plastered to his forehead.

She was already there. She was wearing a dowdy raincoat and below it a sweater and baggy pants. The contrast between her childlike face and her old-lady clothes was greater than usual. Yet Linda Nardi was thirty-six, neither a child nor an old lady.

He got straight to the point.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Ms. Nardi?”

She considered that for a moment, as if it were a serious question. “Pretty soon no one will give any thought to Nadia, or Samantha, or the other young victims, or the family members who mourn them.”

He stared at her. A beautiful woman, polite and kind, but incorruptible in her principles and therefore dangerous. In her eyes was the steady calmness of those who are right.

The eyes of someone I loved, the values that I lost
.

The thought took him back forty years. Something collapsed inside him. It felt like the distant shock of an explosion at the bottom of the ocean when it finally reaches the shore.

“You’re crazy.”

They both knew what that “crazy” meant. The word that had slipped out was an impossible bridge over the raging torrent between them.

What do you think you’re doing, Balistreri? You’re an old man. Don’t make yourself any more ridiculous to others than you already are to yourself.

She smiled at him, the first real smile she’d given him since they’d met.

“Finding out the truth is part of my life, part of what I am. I never knew my father, and I still don’t know why. I was an aggressive child. I used to hit my classmates, boys and girls.”

Balistreri said, “I don’t believe you.”

“I can show you pictures. I was an early bloomer, physically and psychologically. I was fully developed at age eleven. I went to a private middle school, the Charlemagne School. The upper school was there as well, the older boys. I didn’t have a father, so I went looking for an older boy to take his place. At least that’s what the psychologist said when all the trouble began.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She shook her head, lost in an unwelcome memory. Balistreri knew how hard those could be to dispel.

“There was a problem and I had to leave the school. Fortunately, love heals all wounds. My mother’s love, that is. She helped me get better. She took care of me until I was able to go back to school. And I got good grades once I went back. It turns out I really am intelligent.”

“And it’s precisely because you’re intelligent that you should understand that tracking down a murderer isn’t a journalist’s job. Leave it to the police.”

She nodded. “Colajacono is going to give me the name before midnight. I promise I’ll give it to you immediately.”

He paused. He really didn’t want to ask for anything more, but he had to. “I need another favor.”

This time again she listened to him without any interruption. She placed no conditions on doing what he asked. They left each other soon after in the Pantheon’s deserted piazza. He had wanted to hug her in the rain but instead let her go with a brief good-bye.

. . . .

While he was walking home in the rain he was struck by a feeling of disquiet. Halfway there, he decided to stop in a bar that was still open near the Termini main railway station. It was full of foreigners. The Asians were crowded round the slot machines, the East Europeans were drinking shots of spirits, and the Africans were trying to sell counterfeit designer bags to the few passersby shivering with cold. All of them were smoking, not caring in the slightest that it wasn’t allowed in the bar.

Balistreri lit his last cigarette of the day. The surrounding square was intermittently illuminated by the headlights of the few cars in circulation. It was a little after midnight.

He called Coppola. “Colajacono’s still in the station. He went out to the little restaurant opposite with Tatò and then they came back. I promise I won’t lose him.”

“Thanks, Coppola. That’s great.”

Coppola added, “By the way, my son scored thirty-two points and his team won.”

“Are you sure he’s really yours, Coppola?” They laughed and hung up.

Then he called Mastroianni.

“I’m with Ramona. We’re coming in from the airport now.”

“Mastroianni, I want to talk to her immediately. Meet me at the bar on the Via Marsala side of Termini station.”

. . . .

He had of course imagined a different and more private setting for questioning Ramona Iordanescu, but there was no time to lose. An official interrogation in the barracks or in the office was impossible without the public prosecutor present, so they found themselves sitting at a little table in the bar filled with people, smoke, and muffled voices.

The photo with Nadia taken in front of St. Peter’s hadn’t done justice to the girl’s statuesque figure. The harsh features of her face were immediately belied by her adolescent’s manners. She was making eyes at Mastroianni, which was no surprise. She asked for two cream-filled pastries.

“I just love these,” she said, wiping a bit of the filling from the corner of her mouth.

“You can have as many as you like,” Mastroianni said.

“All right,” Balistreri cut in, “but meanwhile let’s have a little chat.”

Ramona nodded, her mouth full of cream and flaky pastry.

“You don’t need to worry about this. Tomorrow we’ll have a meeting with you and Deputy Captain Colajacono. Immediately after that, Mastroianni will take you to the airport and you can go back home,” Balistreri said.

He read the fear in the young woman’s eyes. “He’ll go straight to prison on the charge of being an accessory to Nadia’s murder and won’t come out for many years,” he said, trying to comfort her.

Mastroianni and Ramona both looked startled. “Accessory to murder, really?” Mastroianni asked.

Balistreri ignored him and spoke directly to Ramona.

“Tell me about the apartment near Cristal. Did it have a false ceiling or a real one?”

“I don’t understand,” Ramona said. Mastroianni explained the question to her.

“I don’t know. How can you tell?”

“By the lights. Where the ceiling wasn’t covered by the mirror was there a regular light fixture or spotlights?”

“Spotlights?”

Another explanation from Mastroianni.

“Yes, pink spotlights.”

For filming from above. Real pros.

“All right, then what happened?”

“I did as Colajacono said. Well-dressed man at Cristal offered me a drink. We went to apartment. He wanted to be slave. I did my job. He was very happy and gave me hundred-euro tip, then went away.”

“Would you recognize this man if you saw him again?”

“Every bit of him,” she said. She giggled.

Balistreri took out his BlackBerry and looked for the e-mail Mastroianni had sent from Iasi. He frowned as he read.

“Ramona, you said that Colajacono wanted to convince you that Nadia was safe with the man she got into the car with. Is that exactly what he said?”

He felt Mastroianni was about to interrupt and signaled him to keep quiet.

“Yes, I’m sure. He said exactly that.”

“And you told him that she had gotten into a car?”

Mastroianni was rhythmically tapping his cup against the saucer. Balistreri shot him a warning glance.

Ramona appeared to be making an effort to remember. “Well, I said that Nadia and I worked as pair, that we didn’t get into car ever if other not there. Then I told him I was away with limp-dick client and on return I found Nadia gone. And that I waited and also asked other girls about her.”

“Did you tell him what the other girls said to you?”

“No, he said not to piss him off.”

Mastroianni was shifting in his chair. Balistreri, irritated, leaned over and whispered to him, “If you have to go to the bathroom, go ahead.” Mastroianni stood and left the table.

“What’s happening?” Ramona asked, disconcerted.

“Nothing. He has to go to the bathroom. So, you hadn’t told him about the car.”

This is what happens when you delegate questioning to the inexperienced and you sit in your comfortable office and read about it via e-mail. You’re a fool, Balistreri. And stupid Mastroianni thinks he can get the right answers from a woman without asking the right questions.

Then he remembered the mess Corvu had made, and Piccolo. In the end, the only one who hadn’t messed up was Coppola. He really should have thanked Coppola rather than teasing him. He picked up his cell phone to call Coppola, but at that moment a loud cry of joy rose up from the Romanians. They began cheering and toasting each other.

Balistreri turned to look at the television, expecting to see a replay of a goal in a soccer game. Instead, the face of a news anchor filled the screen. He managed to hear the closing words.

“By only one vote, the city council has postponed moving Casilino 900 and the other camps, committing itself however to seeking a path forward with all the concerned parties having input. The council has received the Vatican’s approval.”

He leaned closer to catch the interviews that followed. The mayor said that he had been pleasantly surprised by De Rossi’s unexpected vote against the move. A brief interview with De Rossi followed.

“Deputy mayor,” the journalist said, “the vast majority of voters, including those you represent, did not wish to see the move postponed.”

“Each one of us must answer not only to voters, but to his own conscience,” De Rossi said pompously, staring into the television camera.

Now even more furious, Balistreri turned away and found Ramona opposite him looking at the screen in astonishment.

“But that—” she stammered, pointing to De Rossi—“that’s my dirty pig from Cristal.”

Balistreri was already dialing Coppola’s number. Coppola answered immediately. His car engine was audible on the other end.

“Where are you?” Balistreri shouted so loudly that the whole bar turned to look.

“Take it easy, Captain. Everything’s okay. I’m following those two bastards.”

Balistreri took a deep breath, trying to control himself. “Can you tell me where you are?”

Coppola’s voice was just above a whisper. “Colajacono and Tatò are driving to the shepherd’s old farmhouse, where we found Nadia. I can barely hear you. I’m losing you.”

The line went dead. Balistreri felt a sharp pain in his chest that left him breathless. He leaned against the table, his sight dim and his hands trembling.

What an inglorious death, Balistreri. A heart attack in this shithole. Maybe you’ll crap your pants as you go.

But he didn’t die. Mastroianni came back. Balistreri said, “Give me your keys—I need a car with a siren. You can call a taxi. Take Ramona to the station, and don’t either one of you move from there.” Thirty seconds later he was driving at breakneck speed through the pouring rain toward the city’s eastern outskirts.

He was there in twelve minutes, at ten to one, consumed with anxiety. He parked in the same place as Piccolo did on the night of San Silvestro, halfway up the hill, where the potholed road became a boggy unpaved lane. Coppola’s car was now parked up there, and a little ahead, in the same place as a few nights earlier, was Colajacono and Tatò’s car. He tried calling Corvu’s number. There was no signal. He swore—Piccolo had already told him about that. The nightmare was repeating itself.

It was a good thing Coppola always had his gun. He remembered what Coppola had said on the subject: “It makes me feel taller. Plus, my son thinks I’m important when I come home and take my holster off from under my jacket.”

Balistreri had no flashlight. He took off his jacket and his holster and began to run up the hill with his gun in his right hand and his cell phone in his left to light the way. His shoes slipped in the mud. Drizzling rain wet his forehead and the leaves on the low trees scratched his face.

He realized he was afraid, and the thought made him even more afraid. He was afraid for Coppola and for himself. He was afraid of dying too soon, before he had atoned for what he’d done wrong.

He was about to start up the hill toward the clearing when he heard Coppola’s voice at the top.

“Put your hands up.”

There was total silence for a few seconds, then all hell broke loose, with gunshots and shouting. He looked toward the clearing, which was dimly lit by an oil lamp. Tatò was lying on his back by the door. The shots were coming from inside the farmhouse and behind it and from an oak tree twenty yards ahead on the left. That had to be where Coppola was. He made it up there and saw Colajacono, terrified and in handcuffs, taking refuge behind the trunk of the huge tree.

Mircea was giving orders in Romanian—he heard him calling out to Greg, Adrian, and Giorgi. He managed to understand what he was saying—“There’s only one.” He was tempted to call out to Coppola, but that would have been doubly damaging, revealing not only that he was present but exactly where he was.