The Deliverance of Evil (52 page)

He put on surgical gloves and a cap. They were probably unnecessary; no one would be looking for his DNA. Then he set off on his last mission. The front door opened for him easily. He went up on foot. Every step on those stairs took him away from his age-old unbearable pain and brought him closer back to life.

If things had gone differently that first time with her, maybe I wouldn’t have killed the others. I often wondered about that in the beginning. After all these years I don’t even know how many I’ve killed anymore, and I ask myself a different question: Would I be a better person if I had killed only her in that single moment of madness?

. . . .

While Corvu and the policemen searched the house and Piccolo tended to Fiorella Romani, Balistreri filled in the chief of police and asked him to send a helicopter for them. A few minutes later, at six forty five, he, Corvu, Piccolo, and Fiorella Romani were in the air.

Clouds were gathering in the sky and promised to deliver one of the intense storms he loved. But this summer rain also brought to mind that gray dawn when Ulla dei Banchi di Aglieno had jumped from her penthouse.

Unsettled, Balistreri put on his headset and looked out the window. Down below beachgoers were running for cover as the first drops of rain hit the beach.

The first letter is a Y. And the last one isn’t for Fiorella Romani. YOUAREEVI_.

Suddenly, he remembered where he’d seen it before: YOU ARE EVIL.

It was where he’d felt he should look right from the beginning. Right back in 1982.

“Linda,” he said aloud.

A living death. Eternal punishment.

. . . .

At six forty, the Invisible Man entered the apartment with no trouble and without making any noise. It was calm and quiet.

The setting sun was shining in from the French windows leading onto the terrace. She was sitting out there, her back to the living room, looking over to St. Peter’s.

“Hello, Linda,” the Invisible Man said. He had waited twenty-four years to say those two words again to his first victim, Y.

She turned slowly, her face calm. “Hello, Manfredi.”

She had seen photos of him with his new face, handsome, smiling and official in his white coat, as he was opening the hospital wing in Nairobi on Christmas morning, only a few hours after he’d killed Nadia in Rome.

When they’d met at the Charlemagne School, they had much in common: both were young, intelligent, sensitive, and lonely. He suffered due to his deformity and his impossible father, while she had never known her own father. He was a tortured adolescent looking for love to make life was worth living.

Over the years, Linda had often reflected on this.

If, on that first occasion with him, things had gone differently, if I’d only considered how intelligent and sensitive he was and hadn’t rejected him because of his deformity, perhaps Manfredi wouldn’t have killed all the others.

But in the last twelve months she’d understood that, by now, whatever the change in Manfredi’s face, nothing could change what that lonely adolescent had become: a benefactor of Africa’s poorest and a killer of innocent women. The boy beast who wanted to become the handsome prince was now a handsome prince with a caged beast inside him that could never stop killing. A deliverer of pain and death to punish the world that had rejected him.

Manfredi came toward her. “I gave you notice I’d come.”

“Yes, I got your card last year. Then the murders started. I knew you’d get here sooner or later. But I was surprised you’d be so careless.”

This was true, he thought. That card had been a weakness, and careless of him. But the desire to terrorize her had been too strong in him. And then, after all, he was invincible.

“Good, Linda. Luckily we have some time for what I have in mind. Do you like my face a little better now?”

“I’ve already seen many photos of you, Manfredi, taken in Africa.”

“Really? And who gave them to you?”

“Angelo Dioguardi. He went in search of you for me in Kenya ten days ago. And he discovered about all those young Kenyans killed and disfigured over these past twenty-four years.”

Manfredi laughed. “That was my training for you, Linda. It wasn’t so much fun with the natives, but I made up for it with Samantha, Nadia, Selina, and Ornella.”

“If you kill me, Angelo Dioguardi will report you.”

Manfredi looked at the gun in his hand and felt the scalpel in his pocket. This was going to be fun.

“Today I’m settling scores with my old enemies and untrustworthy accomplices. I disemboweled one before lunch, and then I paid a visit to Father Paul, Elisa’s confidante. Before killing him, I forced him to call Angelo and ask him to come over. I wasn’t planning to hurt Angelo, because he was the only one who didn’t turn on me in 1982, but if I have to I will. Right now, though, I’m going to concentrate on you. I’ll take care of him later.”

Linda’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and then at Manfredi. “It’s Michele Balistreri.”

Any one of them could have found himself in my place that first time. And it is to these men who have lived without remorse or honor that I intend to dedicate myself. And to one in particular.

It’s too soon. There must have been some hitch with Hagi, Manfredi thought, mildly unsettled. Then he decided instead that it was a magnificent occasion. Indeed, an irresistible one.

He knew he was committing a small error, another act of arrogance like the card he’d sent a year ago to Linda. Two flaws in a genius plan. But they were justifiable risks. The thought of delivering terror to Linda Nardi and Michele Balistreri brought pure joy to his heart.

He took Linda’s cell phone and hit the answer button.

“Hello? Linda!” Balistreri’s voice was desperate as he shouted over the deafening roar of what sounded like helicopter blades.

“No,” Manfredi said calmly.

“Is that you, Angelo?” Balistreri asked.

“No, Balistreri. We met that night on the hill. My name is death.”

Manfredi hung up and pointed his gun at Linda. He was a little displeased because now he would have to hurry. He had been hoping to spend more time with her. But that conversation had made it all worth it. Balistreri would spend the rest of his life cursing himself.

“I’m sorry, Linda, unfortunately I have to hurry. In a little while Balistreri will be here to shed tears over your corpse.”

She hesitated. She still felt a few pangs of sympathy for him, for all the suffering that being what he was had brought him. It was her rejection of him that had pushed him into violence and to his first criminal act. A very sweet adolescent who had really loved Linda. She had rejected him only because of his deformed face, and he had wiped her out and set off on his journey of death.

It’s not a vendetta for what you did to me. It’s for all those murdered girls. For all the ones you’d murder still. Because you are the deliverer of evil, Manfredi.

Linda closed her eyes. “Kill him,” she said softly.

Manfredi felt the voice at his back before even hearing it.

“I’m here, Manfredi.”

He recognized the voice and smiled. He certainly wasn’t afraid of that big kid with no guts, he who had never been afraid of anyone. He turned round slowly, in no hurry, preparing to shoot.

But Angelo Dioguardi had been ready for this moment for a long time. His Beretta Combat Combo, 40 caliber, exploded five times in rapid succession.

. . . .

Balistreri landed on the ministry roof at seven. While Piccolo took Fiorella Romani to their office, he and Corvu rushed over to Linda Nardi’s apartment, sirens wailing. They arrived in less than ten minutes. “Wait for me downstairs, Corvu. Don’t let anyone up.”

Corvu protested, but Balistreri was already running up the stairs, gun in hand, his heart pounding.

Linda’s dead. And so is my life
.

The apartment door was ajar. He rushed in and came to a sudden stop. Linda was on the sofa. Angelo Dioguardi was sitting stiffly next to her, his eyes swollen with tears, his hands trembling, the Beretta Combat Combo at his feet. Manfredi’s body was stretched face down on the tile floor in a pool of blood.

Tears stung Balistreri’s eyes. His legs gave way from the release of tension and what felt like a lifetime of fatigue. He slowly sank onto his knees before them.

He wanted to hug them both but couldn’t manage to lift his arms. He wanted to take part in their desperation and their joy but couldn’t manage to open his mouth.

Now he knew. What had happened today was clear, but he also saw what pain had buried over time. He looked at his own hands, then at Angelo, then at Manfredi’s corpse.

Any one of us could have found himself in his place that first time. We’re all capable of killing. Me, Hagi, Manfredi, even Angelo.

Then Angelo, who was staring into space, spoke. “Michele, there’s never been anything between Linda and me.”

The words were pathetic, misplaced, pointless, and yet indispensable. That was Angelo Dioguardi. The likable big kid, good humored, a bit crazy and simple minded, who had become a poker player of international fame, and a man who would help anyone who needed it, exactly like Manfredi.

He had shared twenty-four years—nights of poker and talks till dawn in the car—with this man. And now Angelo had done for Linda what Balistreri had refused to do.

I only kill when forced to do so. But she wanted him dead, not in prison. And Angelo was the right man for the job.

“I know, Angelo. You were protecting her. But you should have told me. I should have been the one to do it.”

“This was the right thing to do. I had to do it.”

Balistreri bowed his head and squeezed Angelo’s arm. Then he looked at Linda, but she would not return his gaze. She would never look at him again. She was holding Angelo’s hand as if he were a small child who needed to be protected.

. . . .

Instead of calling the police, Balistreri told Corvu to come up. Then Linda and Angelo told them everything.

Linda was extremely calm. She held Angelo’s hand and told her story without looking at Balistreri. “We were both students at the Charlemagne School. I was in middle school, and he was in high school. Manfredi was an intelligent, sensitive kid. He was so understanding.”

Balistreri looked into her eyes, but there was nothing there for him.

“We were both in pain. I had no father, he had a domineering one. And that disfigured face.”

Linda was quiet, as if she were searching for the right words.

“One day, at the beginning of spring in 1982, we were taking a walk in a distant corner of the Villa Borghese Park. Manfredi declared his love for me and tried to kiss me. I smiled to play down the rejection, but he felt I was mocking him and he slapped me, then he started lashing out at me.”

She paused again, then continued.

“He tried to rape me, but he was impotent. Then he lost it. He started screaming about his face and said that all girls were teases. He took a razor out of his pocket and carved a Y between my breasts.”

Her hand flew up to her breastbone. When Balistreri had attacked her, she’d crossed her arms over her chest, he recalled. “Finally he left me there. I went to the emergency room. I told the police I’d been beaten up by a group of drug addicts. Only my mother knew the truth.”

“Why didn’t you report him?”

“I was a mixed-up kid. I smoked a lot of pot, and I slept around. He was the only boy I ever rejected, and he was the only one who really loved me. But I wouldn’t touch him because of his face.”

“You had every right, Linda. It was up to you to choose.”

Finally, she turned to look at him. “Oh, sure, it was up to me to choose. But I gave him no choice, neither then nor today.”

“Didn’t you worry that he might do the same thing to other girls?”

“Not at first. That’s why I didn’t report him. Then, when they reported on the news that he’d been arrested for Elisa Sordi’s murder, I wanted to report him, but before I could come forward his mother committed suicide, and they said it’d all been a big mistake.”

“And he never contacted you again in person?”

“No. Manfredi went to Africa and I started to live again, and with a lot of help from my mother I tried to forget. For years I thought of Manfredi not as a monster but as a victim. My victim.”

By now he knew Linda Nardi. She had accepted the evil that Manfredi had done her with the tolerance of St. Agnes.

“Then he came back,” said Balistreri.

Linda nodded. “A year ago, the day after Samantha Rossi’s death, I found a card in the letterbox. It said:
I’M
BACK
.”

The Invisible Man’s one mistake. His desire to terrorize Linda Nardi had been too strong to ignore.

“Why didn’t you report the letter to the police?” Balistreri asked.

“At first I wasn’t even sure it was from him. You wouldn’t tell me whether a letter had been carved on Samantha. I had a private investigator make some inquiries, but Manfredi didn’t seem to have been in Italy when Samantha and Nadia died.”

“Then I told you that Ramona’s client was impotent, and you knew it was him,” Balistreri said.

“Yes. And you told me about Alina Hagi’s death and I made the connection to Elisa Sordi. After Giovanna Sordi’s suicide, I knew he had to be stopped. Forever.”

Because your tolerance is equal to your decisiveness. I would have arrested him, and you wanted him dead.

She read his mind once again. “Thanks to his father they would have judged him to be mentally unstable and put him in the psychiatric ward instead of prison. Then he would have escaped to Africa and killed more women.”

Balistreri looked at Angelo Dioguardi. “And you persuaded Angelo to help you.”

“I couldn’t do it on my own. I explained the situation to Angelo. The idea was mine alone; he bears no responsibility.”

Angelo made a feeble protest, but she continued.

“He accepted, and we prepared. Angelo was with me always. We expected Manfredi to come forward in some way. Today, when Father Paul’s call came, we knew it was him. Angelo went out to show himself to Manfredi, then he came back in via the garage before he came up and hid himself in the kitchen.”