Gianrico Carofiglio - Temporary Perfections

“Will he be looking at drug charges?”

“Yes. He’ll face charges of concealing a dead body, possession of narcotics with intent to distribute, and Article 586.”

“What’s Article 586?”

“Article 586 of the penal code: You should have studied that.”

She said nothing, so I went on.

“Death during commission of another crime. It’s a variation on a manslaughter charge, but less serious. The idea is that if you provide someone with drugs and the person dies from taking the drugs, you’re liable.”

“Will we have to take them to the place where we… will we have to go to the dump?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” I lied.

She wrung her hands. She scratched the left side of her neck with her right hand. She sniffed loudly, as if she’d been crying, not seeming to notice that she was making any noise. Then she ran her hand over face and looked up at me. Now her face was filled with sorrow and sincerity and remorse. She was a damned good actress, and she was preparing her last-ditch attempt in the form of a dramatic monologue.

“Guido, do I really have to? Manuela is dead and I’ll live with my remorse over what happened for the rest of my life. But it won’t bring her back to her family if I go and confess. The only thing I’ll succeed in doing is ruining my own life, without benefiting anyone else. What good would that do?”

An excellent question. The first and only answer that came to mind was that maybe that poor miserable soul would stop going to the station to meet trains. Maybe.

I could feel my determination wavering. I wondered if I’d been in too much of a hurry to call Navarra. Maybe she was right. Forcing her to confess would only ravage other lives, without doing anything to repair the lives that were already lying in ruins, irreparably.

What good would that do, indeed?

Then, like a flickering light in great darkness, I remembered something that Hannah Arendt wrote.

“The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.”

I’d be keeping a promise. Maybe that’s what good it would do. Anyway, it was all I had.

“You have to do it. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to insist.”

“What if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll go by myself, and it will be a lot worse. For everyone.”

“You can’t. You’re bound by attorney-client privilege to keep everything I told you secret.”

It was phrased as a statement, but it was actually a desperate question. And legally speaking, utter nonsense.

“You’re not my client.”

“What if I tell them you had sex with me? Will they kick you out of the bar association?”

“That would be unpleasant,” I admitted. “Unpleasant but nothing more. There would be no consequences for me. Like I said, you’re not my client, and you’re not even a minor.”

Caterina sat there for a minute without speaking, casting around for some final, desperate argument, but she came up empty-handed. She finally realized that this was the end.

“You’re a piece of shit. You’re giving me up because you want your clients to pay you. You don’t give a shit about them, about me, about anybody. The only thing you care about is getting your goddamned money.”

I put the car in gear and drove the few remaining blocks to the main gate of the Carabinieri barracks. Navarra was already there, and as I drove past him, we exchanged nods. I stopped about twenty yards up the street and parked the car next to a couple of small dumpsters.

“Before we go to the cops and flush my life down the toilet, there’s something I want to say to you.”

Her voice was seething with rage and violence. Perhaps she was expecting me to ask what it was she wanted to say. I didn’t, and that only stoked her fury.

“The only reason I had sex with you was to control you, to keep you from finding out about what we did.”

Well, then, perhaps we should say that it didn’t work out the way you planned, I thought as I nodded my head.

“It was a real effort. I was faking it the whole time. You disgust me. You’re old, and when you’re lying there with Alzheimer’s, pissing on yourself, or you’re hobbling down the street with a Moldavian caregiver holding you by the elbow, I’ll still be young and pretty, and I’ll think back with loathing on the day I let you lay your hands on my body.”

Now, hold on there a minute. You’re taking it a little too far, sweetheart. I’d like to remind you that there are twenty-two years between us, not forty. It’s a big difference, sure, but when my caregiver is taking me for a walk, you’re not exactly going to be in the first blush of youth yourself.

That’s not what I said, but I was seriously considering saying it when she put an end to my dilemma and the whole uncomfortable situation with a final flash of real class.

“Piece of shit,” she said, just in case the concept she had explicated a minute earlier hadn’t been clear to me. Then she spat in my face, jerked open the car door, and got out.

I sat there motionless, watching her walk down the sidewalk in my rearview mirror.

I saw her go up to Navarra and then vanish with him, once and for all, into the Carabinieri barracks.

Only then did I wipe my face clean and drive away.

For a few minutes, I thought I would give Fornelli a call, tell him what I’d uncovered, and leave it to him to inform Manuela’s parents.

After all, I’d done the job they’d hired me to do. In fact, I’d done much more. They had asked me-Fornelli’s words were still in my mind-to identify any further lines of investigation to suggest to the prosecutor, to keep him from closing the case. I had gone well beyond that request. I had done the further investigations myself. I had solved the case, and so I had more than fulfilled my responsibility.

It wasn’t my job to tell Manuela’s parents what had become of their daughter.

Like I said, for a few minutes that was my plan. During the course of those few minutes, I picked up my phone to call Fornelli repeatedly; each time, I put the phone back down. A lot of things went through my mind. And in the end, I remembered the time-it might have been two years ago-that Carmelo Tancredi invited me out for a spin in his inflatable motorboat.

It was a beautiful day in late May. The sea was calm, the light opalescent.

We set out from San Nicola wharf, steered north, and an hour later we were in the ancient port of Giovinazzo. It was a surreal place, almost metaphysical. There was no sign that time had passed over the last two or three centuries. There were no cars in sight, no antennas, no speedboats. Only rowboats, medieval ramparts, little boys in their underwear diving into the water, large seagulls gliding through the air, solitary and elegant.

We ate focaccia and drank beer. We sunbathed. And we talked a lot. As so often happens, we went from idle chitchat to deep discussion.

“Do you have rules, Guerrieri?” Tancredi asked me at one point.

“Rules? Never gave it much thought. I don’t think I have any explicit rules. But I imagine I have some, yes. What about you?”

“Yeah, I have some rules.”

“What are your rules?”

“I’m a cop. The first rule for a cop is never to humiliate the people you have to interact with in your job as a policeman. Power over other people is obscene, and the only way to make it tolerable is to show respect. That’s the most important rule. It’s also the easiest one to break. What about you?”

“Adorno said that the highest form of morality is never to feel at home, not even in one’s own home. I agree. You should never get too comfortable. You should always feel a little bit out of place.”