Antonio Manzini - A Cold Death

“Who was coming upstairs?”

“The young woman and a fat guy.”

Which meant Officer Deruta and Inspector Caterina Rispoli.

Rocco left the room and went to meet the two of them.

Deruta was already in the front hall, sweaty and panting. Caterina Rispoli, on the other hand, was still out on the landing. She was talking to Italo Pierron and twisting her police-issued gloves.

“Did you come up the stairs, Deruta?”

“No, I took the elevator.”

“Then why are you out of breath?”

Deruta ignored the question. “Dottore, I was just thinking—”

“And that right there is a wonderful piece of news, Deruta.”

“I was thinking … don’t you feel the sight of all this is a little too harsh?”

“For who?”

“For Inspector Rispoli?”

“The sight of what, Deruta? The sight of you at work?”

Deruta grimaced in annoyance. “Of course not! The sight of the dead body in there!”

Rocco looked at him. “Deruta, Inspector Rispoli is a police officer.”

“But Rispoli’s a woman!”

“Well, she can’t help that,” said the deputy police chief as he walked out onto the landing.

The minute he walked out the door, Caterina took a look at him. “Deputy Police Chief …”

“Go on in, Rispoli. Don’t leave me alone with Deruta; next thing you know, he’ll hang himself too.” Caterina smiled and walked into the apartment. “Ah, Dottore?”

“What is it, Rispoli?”

“I did come up with an idea for that gift.”

“Perfect. Let’s talk in ten minutes.” As Caterina disappeared into the living room, Rocco turned to look at Italo. “Let’s go get ourselves a cup of coffee.”

“If you don’t mind, Dottore,” said Italo, moving from a first-name basis to a more official term of respect, “I’d just as soon stay right here. My stomach’s kind of doing belly flops.”

Shaking his head, Rocco Schiavone went down the stairs.

Via Brocherel was crowded with people. People looking out their windows, people rubbernecking outside the front door. There was a muttering of conversation that sounded like a kettle on the boil. “A corpse? … There weren’t any burglars? Who is it? The Baudos …”

There was a brief moment of silence when the front door swung open and Rocco Schiavone, wrapped in his green overcoat, emerged. Officer Casella alone was keeping the rubberneckers at bay. “Commissario,” he said, saluting.

“It’s deputy police chief, Casella, deputy police chief, Jesus fucking Christ! You at least, seeing that you’re on the police force, ought to try to remember these things, no?”

He looked around but there was no sign of a café or a shop anywhere in sight. He went over to the retired warrant officer. “Excuse me! Could you tell me if there’s a café anywhere around here?”

“Say what?” asked the old man, adjusting his hearing aid.

“Café. Near here. Where.”

“Around the corner. Take Via Monte Emilus and go about a hundred yards, and you’ll see the Bar Alpi. Do you have any news, Dottore? Is it true that they found the lady hanging by a rope?”

Irina too stood gazing at him apprehensively.

“Can you keep a secret?” Rocco asked in an undertone.

“Certainly!” Paolo Rastelli replied, puffing his chest out proudly.

“I can too!” Irina chimed in.

“So what do you think, I can’t?” Rocco retorted and walked away, leaving them both openmouthed.

As was to be expected, the retired warrant officer’s dog, Flipper, promptly began barking again, this time at the NO PARKING sign. The former noncommissioned officer glared down at the yappy little mutt and brusquely switched off his hearing aid. At last, the world turned silent, muffled and cottony once again. A giant aquarium he could gaze at with detachment. With a smile and a slight forward tilt of the head, he bade farewell to Irina and resumed his daily stroll, heading for home and the crossword puzzle.

As the wind blew, pushing chilly gusts of air under his loden overcoat, Rocco decided that all things considered, it could have gone worse. A suicide just meant a series of bureaucratic procedures to get out of the way, the kind of thing you could take care of in an afternoon’s work. His plan was simple: leave the bureaucratic details to Casella, talk to Rispoli and find out what idea she’d come up with for Nora’s present, go home, get a half-hour nap, take a shower, go back out and buy the present, go out to dinner with Nora at eight, after an hour and a half pretend he had a crushing migraine, take Nora home, and then hurry back to his place to watch the second half of the Roma-Inter game. Acceptable.

Just as the wind died down and a fine chilly drizzle began to pepper the asphalt, cold as the fingers of a dead man’s hand, Rocco stepped into the Bar Alpi. A strong smell of alcohol and confectioner’s sugar washed over him, like a warm, welcome hug from a friend.

“ Buongiorno .”

The man behind the counter gave him a smile. “Hello. What’ll it be?”

“A nice hot espresso with a foamy cloud of milk … and I’d like a pastry. Do you have any left?”

“Sure … go ahead and take what you like, right there …” He pointed to a Plexiglas case with an electric heater where breakfast pastries were on display. Rocco grabbed a strudel while the barista ratcheted the porta-filter into place and punched the button that applied pressure to the boiling water. He heard the clack of billiard balls from the other room in the bar. Only now did he notice that the walls were covered with pictures of Juventus players and black-and-white team scarves. Rocco went over to the counter and poured half a pack of sugar into his coffee. It took awhile for the sugar to sink into the hot dense liquid. A clear sign that this was a good espresso. He took a sip. It really was good. “You make a first-rate espresso,” he told the barman, who was busy drying glasses.

“My wife taught me how.”

“Neapolitan?”

“No. Milanese. I’m the Neapolitan in the family.”

“So, you’re saying that you’re a Neapolitan who roots for Juventus and that a woman from Milan taught you how to make espresso?”

“Plus I’m tone deaf,” the man added. They both laughed.

Another sharp clack from the next room. Rocco turned around.

“You want to play some pool?”

“Why not?”

“Look out, those two are a pair of professional sharks.”

Rocco slurped down the last of his espresso and strode into the next room, finishing off his strudel in a shower of crumbs down the front of his overcoat.

There were two men. One wore the jumpsuit of a manual laborer, the other a suit and tie. They’d just set the cue ball down on the table and were about to begin a game of straight pool. When they saw Rocco they both smiled. “Care to play?” asked the man in the jumpsuit.

“No, you guys go ahead. Mind if I watch?”

“Not at all,” said the one who looked every bit the estate agent. “Just watch me dismantle Nino, here. Nino, today I’m not taking prisoners!”

“Ten euros on the best out of three games?” asked the manual laborer.

“No, ten euros a game!”

Nino smiled. “Then I’ve already made my end-of-year bonus,” he said, and shot the deputy police chief a wink.

The estate agent took off his jacket while the laborer chalked his pool stick with a vicious grin.

Clack! And the three ceiling lamps that illuminated the green felt of the billiards table went dark simultaneously.

“Well of all the damned … Gennaro!” shouted the estate agent. From the bar the proprietor called back: “The power always goes out when it’s windy like this!”

“Try paying your electric bill, and maybe that’ll stop it from happening!” called the man in the jumpsuit, and he and his friend shared a hearty laugh.