Читать книгу Puppies - Maurizio De giovanni - Страница 19

It was immediately clear that Palma’s ideas, his belief that with a pinch of good luck they’d be able to track down the girl from the confessional, was based on an unwarranted wave of optimism. In reality, it was roughly akin to finding the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack.

In a hasty morning meeting, to which only Aragona had arrived late for a change, duties were assigned in accordance with specific skill sets. Ottavia was to search the web, with special attention to the social networks, seeking any element that could direct them to a pregnant woman from Eastern Europe who lived or worked in the Pizzofalcone area. Pisanelli would contact doormen, concierges, newsvendors, and shopkeepers in the quarter. Romano and Aragona would once again make the rounds of the hospitals and clinics, as well as neighborhood doctors, this time focusing on pregnancy exams or sonograms in the past five or six months, or any postpartum issues in the past twenty-four hours. Lojacono and Di Nardo would cover the various gathering spots frequented by Ukrainian, Romanian, or Bulgarian women who spent their days off together, in an attempt to find out if any of them, pregnant, had vanished from circulation for any period of time, only to reappear a few pounds lighter, perhaps after casually leaving their newborn daughter in the proximity of a dumpster. Palma himself got on the phone and reached out to his colleagues at the various other police stations, just in case any of them had detained or arrested for any reason a woman matching the features of the one they were looking for.

By lunchtime, they’d all covered considerable mileage, both physical and virtual, but had come up with the same result: zero. Pisanelli had gathered tons of useless gossip and backbiting, and the army of concierges working the long narrow vicolo that ran between Pizzofalcone and Montecalvario had provided him with a substantial list of alleged sluts from Eastern Europe who had likely been knocked up by the husbands of good Italian housewives who didn’t deserve to be cheated on like that. Romano had come dangerously close to murdering an Aragona who was even more inappropriate than usual, an Aragona who was asking doctors and male nurses if they’d had professional interactions with Eastern European prostitutes. Lojacono and Di Nardo had reported a general flight of women who may or may not have possessed valid visas and only a stubborn, hostile wall of silence from those who remained seated on their park benches, soaking up the April sun.

The afternoon, in other words, saw a series of morose negative reports come in on Ottavia’s phone, akin to the negative outcome of Palma and Ottavia’s information gathering, carried out alone back in the office.

The commissario stuck his head into the squad room, and when in response to his inquisitive glance, his colleague shot him a slow shake of the head, he flopped disconsolately into a chair.

“Nothing. We’re not going to come up with anything. And I can’t keep the whole squad on this case for long. It seems to me that we ought to resign ourselves to waiting for whoever abandoned the baby girl to be flushed out of the shadows by chance—whenever that might happen, in the course of other investigations. But it’s even more likely that we’ll never know who decided to abandon her, and that she’ll never know her real parents. Providing she survives. By the way, any news from the hospital?”

Ottavia sighed.

“No, Chief. Romano spent the night there, from what I understand, but there are no signs of any significant improvement. They won’t say much over the phone. They’re very buttoned up. Poor Francesco: the fact that he found the baby girl makes him feel that he’s responsible for her. Under that tough outer hide, there’s a good-hearted kid.”

Palma made a face.

“Well, maybe so, but if you read his personnel file, he sounds like a stone criminal. Though that’s true of more or less all of them, with the exception of you and Pisanelli; but you two aren’t the sweepings of other police stations.”

Ottavia Calabrese laughed bitterly.

“Forget about that. Giorgio and I have an original sin, the fact that we never noticed what was going on around us. I can assure you that that’s enough to brand us forever. Those four wretches went on selling the narcotics that they’d pretended to confiscate for months, splitting up the loot, while the two of us continued living in our own little wonderland.”

The commissario shrugged his shoulders.

“And how were you supposed to notice? They’d set up a perfect assembly line: one of them was in charge of the storage, another one handled the money that came in, and two others were in charge of retail peddling. And then there was the internal affairs investigation . . . ”

“ . . . The internal affairs investigation ran us through the X-ray machine, basically, because they couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed anything. Fine police officers, for real.”

Palma raised his voice.

“I’m not going to let you beat yourself up. You’re an ideal coworker: solid, intelligent, hardworking, and experienced in a sector where genuine professionals are very rare, and therefore all the more precious.”

Ottavia smiled sweetly.

“Maybe so, chief. Or at least now, I am. Because however incredible it may be, this ragtag, deformed group of miserable losers has turned into a fantastic squad. But not back then, believe me. Certainly, Giorgio and I had our all-too-human justifications. He hasn’t been the same since the death of his beloved Carmen, and he’s allowed himself to become obsessed with his theory about the suicides. As for me, Riccardo’s problems were especially serious at that point, and . . . ”

Palma stood up and walked over to her.

“I know about that. I know because I’ve had to examine the personnel files of everyone here. That makes this a good opportunity to tell you that, if and when you need days off to be with your son, you need only say the word, and I’ll be sure to cover you. Don’t give it a second thought. Seriously, not a second thought.”

The silence that fell was charged with emotions. It was clear to them both that for some time now they had been struggling to keep their relationship purely formal. They liked each other, and they wanted to get to know each other better, but Riccardo, with his limitations, was a presence that weighed her down like a blanket of lead.

“Thanks, chief,” Ottavia replied, at last. “I know. Luckily, his father’s around, he takes care of it. The Perfect Man. So that I can devote myself to my work, which I don’t mind one little bit.”

Palma’s face had reddened, unconsciously.

“Why do you call him the Perfect Man? It can’t be any easier for him than it is for you.”

The woman stared into the distance.

“Yes, that’s true. And he’s probably doing as much as he does for my sake, to keep me from having to feel the burden. But there are times . . . there are times when what I’d like to see most is his sadness. A hint of melancholy, or even of . . . of annoyance for a situation that has turned into a life sentence without parole. But no, he doesn’t show it. But I do, yes.”

Her voice had dropped in tone and was now riddled with suffering. Her eyes welled over with tears. Palma tried to steer the conversation somewhere else.

“I think this is a hard time for Romano, you know. His wife has left him, I heard that from my colleague in Posillipo, who heard it from the director of the bank where she went to shut down their joint account. Maybe the latest worsening of his mood is a result of that very same thing.”

“Really? I’m sorry to hear that. And now this trauma of finding the baby girl in the garbage: he’s grown so attached to the little one that he’s spending his nights in the hospital.” Ottavia stopped to think for a moment, then she added: “You know, chief, that’s why the squad is so important to us. Me, Giorgio, Francesco, Lojacono with his Sicilian homeland so far away, Alex expelled from her last workplace, Marco with his stupid arrogance, which is just a wall he’s built to defend against the rest of the world. All of us had pulled our anchors, all of us were drifting. Now we find ourselves together in this police station, and we feel eager and alive again, even good at what we do. And the credit is yours. All yours.”

Palma blushed again, this time with pleasure.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it. They wanted me to oversee the liquidation of the structure, just an ordinary piece of administration. But even a blind man could have seen how desperate you all were to survive, you had a grit and determination that needed to be exploited, to be allowed to operate at full capacity. Unfortunately, the issue of a shutdown hasn’t been resolved. It’s only been postponed. We still have a long way to go before they’ll stop thinking of us as the Bastards of Pizzofalcone.”

Ottavia laughed.

“Ah no, when it comes to that, we have to admit that that lunatic Marco has a point: We ought to be proud of being Bastards. Bastards we are and Bastards we will remain, because among other things, that way the team can go on working together. Plus, I love the nicknames Aragona has given us all: Mammina suits me down to the ground, while Giorgio really is the President.”

Palma joined in the laughter, going on with the list.

“And Lojacono really is the Chinaman, I challenge anyone to give him a better name. Romano can’t be anything but Hulk, because of how fast he loses his temper: maybe one of these days he’ll actually turn green. And Alex is an authentic Calamity Jane, always busy cleaning that Beretta of hers.”

Ottavia nodded.

“That’s why we have to go on solving the cases that turn up in the precinct, chief. We need this place. It would mean the end for us, if they split us up and sent us out as relief staff for other precincts. We’d lose our will to work, and probably even to live.”

The commissario threw both arms wide.

“Certain cases, though, can’t be solved by skill or even deductive reasoning. We’re not in a detective novel, you know, where all the clues line up at the end. Reality is much more complicated. In reality, every so often you need a stroke of luck, otherwise you just come up empty-handed.”

Palma wouldn’t have bet a single euro on it, and yet in just a few minutes’ time, Ottavia’s phone was going to ring, she was going to answer it, and her face was suddenly going to light up.

The stroke of luck was on its way.