Читать книгу Puppies - Maurizio De giovanni - Страница 11

There had been a time when Officer Giovanni Guida was a real policeman, one with legitimate career aspirations. Then he had married, fathered three children, put on weight, and veered toward more comfortable ambitions.

This, at least, was how he preferred to think of it. In actual fact, it was a slightly too-lax attitude, a lack of combativeness, and a healthy dose of inborn laziness that had finally provoked his superiors to relieve him of duties where he was more likely than not to cause harm and, eventually, to transfer him to the Pizzofalcone precinct, which, rumor had it, was about to be shuttered.

At first Guida, assigned to stand watch—or sit watch, really—at the front entrance and to accept crime reports, had done his best to confirm the worst that everybody seemed to think of him, spending most of his day with his shoes propped up on the desk and the sports newspaper spread out in front of him. A few months earlier, the new investigative team had come on line, replacing the notorious Bastards of Pizzofalcone, the four police officers who had decided to set up shop on their own, peddling confiscated narcotics. The case had aroused quite the uproar and the press had taken cowardly advantage of the opportunity to sling shit into the fan. As a result, the higher-ups in law enforcement had made clear, loudly and in chorus, their utter disgust for the dirty cops—some of them a bit hypocritically, seeing that they weren’t without sins of their own—and they’d called for the elimination of the venerable little police station and its precinct located in the heart of the city.

Actually, Guida suspected that Pizzofalcone had been slated for elimination for some time now, Bastards or no Bastards. Close to police headquarters as it was, crushed between two major precincts like San Gaetano and Torretta, its existence didn’t really make all that much sense. And so, when replacements had been found for the arrested officers, it immediately struck him as obvious that the criterion for recruitment had been the same as the one that had led to his transfer: relegate to that precinct all those employees who could be sacrificed elsewhere, and perhaps with tremendous relief.

It had in fact been one of these new arrivals, none other than Lieutenant Lojacono, who on his first day of service in the precinct had harshly upbraided him for his slovenliness, as if placing him face-to-face with his own image in a mirror, making him feel like the very emblem of degradation and dissolution, uselessness made flesh.

Since then, Guida had never again showed up looking slovenly, not even when he was certain that no one could possibly be observing him. He’d even gone on a diet, and he’d started carefully shaving the scattered hair that still grew at the base of his gleaming skull. His wife, after overcoming an initial phase of bafflement and suspicion that Guida might have found himself a girlfriend, had been delighted with the transformation, and now, at night, after those three devils they had for children had finally gone off to sleep, she rewarded him with a renewed enthusiasm in their sexual relations.

Palma, the young new commissario, had already paid him a number of compliments. The only one who didn’t seem to notice the change was, to his immense chagrin, none other than Lojacono. But sooner or later, Guida felt certain, he’d win accolades from the lieutenant, too. It was just a matter of time.

One of the key factors was punctuality. A good front-entrance guard had to be at his post earlier than all the others, he had to constitute an anchor for the rest of the structure. That was fundamental. And so Guida, to avoid traffic, had developed the habit of showing up for work even before the clock struck seven.

That morning he was lining up the various forms for reporting crimes on the counter when a shadow fell over the daylight from the front entrance: it was Hulk, hurrying in with what looked like a doll cradled in his arms.

Guida had no special fondness for Warrant Officer Romano, a cop with a perennially grim expression, and he’d heard terrible stories about him. But what he spotted in Romano’s eyes was bewilderment, profound concern, and, above all, a desperate need for help. He emerged from his booth and walked toward him.

“Guida, Guida,” Romano shouted, “it’s a baby. A real, live baby, and it was in the . . . oh my God, it was in the garbage, you hear me? In the garbage!”

The officer, who had held babies in his arms for more nights than he cared to remember, carefully took the baby from Romano’s hands.

“Give it here, Roma’, give it to me. Let’s take it upstairs to your offices, that way we can keep it warm. Actually, now that I look at it, it strikes me as a baby girl, unless they dressed her all backwards.”

Romano shot a glance at the little bundle and only now seemed to notice the pink onesie and the bib upon which a little pink embroidered puppy, looking girlish and with a ribbon between its ears, was winking a long-lashed eye.

Upstairs, no one was in yet. They turned on the lights. Romano took off his jacket and Guida lay the baby girl on top of it. She emitted a faint lament.

“How is she?” asked the warrant officer.

“How am I supposed to know?” Guida replied as he tried to untie the bib. “I mean, I’m not a pediatrician. But she doesn’t look healthy to me. At least, if a child of my own were in this condition, I’d have taken her to the hospital. She’s purple, just look.”

In fact, once freed of the onesie, the skin of the little girl was displaying a sickly coloring. What’s more, she seemed stunned, could barely breathe, and was moving sluggishly.

Romano felt his heart leap into his mouth. He had no experience with children, especially not newborn babies, and finding that tiny speck of life amidst the garbage had had the unpredictable effect of terrifying him.

“Let’s call an ambulance,” he said in a determined voice.

Just then, Deputy Chief Ottavia Calabrese came in.

“Hey, what are you two doing here already? I usually get in before . . . ”

The words got stuck in her throat. “Who’s this?” she asked after a moment of bafflement.

Guida replied as he continued to massage the newborn baby’s body to try to restore some warmth.

“Otta’, we need someone here right away, this baby isn’t well.”

Ottavia stared at Romano.

“But whose baby is it? Who brought her here?”

“I found her,” he replied in a flat tone. “Right by the dumpsters out front. And she isn’t . . . Guida says she isn’t at all well.”

Ottavia stepped closer, abruptly shoving her colleagues aside.

“Let me see. And yes, he’s right. Call an ambulance. Jesus, I don’t think she’s even breathing anymore—” She picked the baby up, shaking her gently. The little one emitted only a lament. “No, no, she’s breathing. But hurry, hurry!”

With no warning whatsoever, Romano burst into tears, while Guida shouted into the phone with all the urgency in the world.