Game for Five (4 page)

Sometimes he was so curious about these people that he felt like going up to them and getting into conversation, just to see what kind of people they were. He'd actually done so sometimes, and the experience hadn't really been worth it.

“Planet Earth calling Massimo. Come in, Massimo!”

Massimo gave a start. Aldo had been standing there with his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. Now he put them down and nodded at Massimo.

“What is it?”

“So now you have to go see Fusco?”

“Yes, in half an hour. Why?”

“Shouldn't he come here?”

Ampelio came to his aid. “Yes, he should. You're working. If he just wants to ask you a couple of questions he could come here without the hassle of you having to go there! Don't you think so?”

Massimo smiled and shook his head. “Grandpa, he has to interview me at the station so that someone can take down my statement. And if he did come here, can you imagine? In ten minutes, the whole town would know everything the inspector knows. More, in fact. And don't give me those martyred looks!”

“Well . . . ” Pilade sprawled back on his chair, in the typical attitude of someone about to reveal something. He grabbed the pack of Stop cigarettes, took one out (how can you smoke something like that? Massimo always thought) and lit it as he started speaking, so that the cigarette between his lips bobbed up and down to the rhythm of the words. “You know the neat thing about this whole business, my dear Massimo? It's that the town already knows more than the inspector. Firstly, because Fusco is a fool”—all those present nodded in unison—“and secondly, because if something happens in this town, to someone from the town, then someone else must know something about it. Maybe someone who saw something but doesn't know what it meant. In my opinion, Massimo, Fusco should come to the bar and talk to all the people who drop in here, then go to see all the women in their homes, then go to the market, and so on. Nobody'll go straight to him. But, I tell you, by the time I left home at ten past two my wife had already been on the phone for an hour and twenty minutes. And when I go home again you can be sure she'll be pounding my eardrums with the murder.”

Massimo laughed. Pilade was right: the old women's brainstorming sessions were so fearsome that nobody would escape the deductions of all these would-be Miss Marples shut up at home telephoning everybody they knew.

Just as long as they don't accuse me, he thought.

Name?”
“Massimo Viviani.”
“Born?”

“Of course, or else I wouldn't be here.”

“Would you mind telling me exactly where and when?”

“Pisa, February 5, 1969.”

“Thank you. Profession?”

“Barman.”

Massimo's bad mood at having to go to the police station had gotten significantly worse. He had waited almost an hour for the inspector (who he hoped was in the grip of a binding commitment of the intestinal kind) in a gloomy little room with a glass door, a photograph of President Ciampi, and a brochure on the usefulness and importance of bomb disposal experts. After reading it two or three times and looking for printing errors (not a single one, which was unusual) he had lit a cigarette and let his mind wander until the moment he was called. One of the three subordinates had come to fetch him and had showed him into his lord and master's office, unfortunately vacant as said lord and master was obviously still in the toilet.

The inspector had arrived only after fifteen intentional minutes, thus giving Massimo time to memorize the details of all the police uniforms from 1890 to the present day, as depicted on a poster that was the only concession to art in the room. If Fusco had questioned him about it, he would have been able to describe them all in reverse order. Instead of which the inspector lowered his clasped hands from in front of his face, placed them on the desk, and asked, “Could you tell me about the events of the morning of August 12?”

“Well, I got up about four. I took my car and arrived here in Pineta about ten before five.”

“Right, you live in the city. Simone Tonfoni, the person who found the body, maintains that he entered your bar at 5.10. Can you confirm that?”

“Yes.”

“After he entered, he says he phoned this station to report finding the body. The officer on duty at the switchboard thought it was a joke and hung up. Then . . . ”

“Then I asked him to show me where the body was. We went to the parking lot, I saw the scene, went back to the bar and—”

“Please just answer my questions and don't interrupt,” the inspector said calmly. “Did you phone the station at 5.20
A.M
.?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go back to the parking lot immediately after the phone call?” “Yes.”

“Was the scene of the crime exactly as it had been the first time?”

“Yes.”

“Did you wait for the police to arrive, without leaving the spot?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure about what you're telling me?”

“Yes.”

“Is yes the only word you know?”

“No.”

Fusco looked at him for a moment with a cow-like expression, then stood up silently from his chair (as he was an inspector, he had a chair on castors, whereas the other officers were allocated ordinary chairs without castors, and so to indulge in their frequent diversion of competing to see who could get from the waiting room to the filing cabinets on a chair the quickest, they were forced to use Fusco's, when he was out, of course) and went and placed himself in front of the window, turning his back on the room. There he stood, his hands behind his back, in a knowing posture. It struck Massimo that even this was something rehearsed over and over by Fusco, probably inspired by Chazz Palminteri in
The Usual Suspects
. Massimo found it amusing, this parody of an American cop. Blessed are the simple, he thought, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven and police stations on Earth.

He was about to ask if he could use the bathroom for a moment, but before he could the inspector asked, in a less formal tone of voice, “Did you know the victim, Signor Viviani?”

Massimo shifted on his chair to make himself more comfortable. “I may have seen her in the bar a few times, but I don't remember. I know her name was Alina Costa and that she lived in the building next to the Luna Rossa offices.”

“Do you know if anyone knew her well?”

“No idea,” Massimo said. “I didn't know her, I don't even know who she went around with. Dr. Carli knows her mother well, and I'm sure he knew her too, but only because she was her mother's daughter. You'd better ask him.”

“How does the doctor happen to know Signora Costa?”

“She'd been the best friend of the woman who later became his wife, when he was at university. His wife forced all her dreadful friends on him before they were married, and made him keep seeing them afterwards. From what Dr. Carli says, Arianna Costa is the only decent person among those his wife allows him to see.”

“How come? I mean, how come Signora Carli is so . . . ”

The inspector couldn't find the right word, so Massimo kindly helped him out. “Selective? Domineering? Such a pain in the ass?”

“All three would do. Anyway how come?”

Massimo heaved a long, eloquent sigh. This was something he felt competent to speak about. Ever since he had started working as a barman on the coast, this kind of subject was a constant topic of conversation.

“Practically speaking, when the two of them met she had lots of money, whereas he, although he wasn't too badly off, wasn't all that well off either. So they had different habits, vacationed in different places, met different people. But while he would never have dreamed of taking her to his friends' homes to watch soccer matches, she started introducing him into her world. She took him to the Rotary Club, she took him to regattas, she took him to Forte dei Marmi, and so on. Along the same lines, if his friends phoned the house, she wouldn't put them through to him. I know that sounds very Victorian, but that's the way it is. She won't allow intruders into her gilded world.”

Fusco had now turned and was leaning on the window sill with his hands on the edge. “And he lets her?”

Massimo leaned back in his chair and started to swing his legs slightly. “Obviously, it's not as bad as it sounds. To hear him tell it, he seems to live in a novel by Wodehouse, full of characters who don't do a stroke of work from morning to night and keep their brains under wraps for fear that they might get damaged, seeing that they don't have a lot there in the first place. It's not surprising he became friendly with Arianna Costa: she was the only person from his wife's circle who has any idea what's going on. She's a snob, but she's intelligent.”

Fusco rose from the window sill. The conversation was obviously drawing to a close.

Thank God, Massimo thought. I have to rush to the bathroom or I'll do it in my pants.

“So, in conclusion, you can't tell me anything about the victim.”

It wasn't a question, and Massimo didn't bother to reply. He was only waiting to be dismissed, given that his bladder was close to exploding, so he also stood up and walked toward the door. In a sudden fit of kindness, Fusco got to the door first and opened it for him. “Please. I really would like to know something about the victim.”

Massimo, who had been about to go out, stopped in the doorway. He pretended to ponder the inspector's words, nodding slowly, then made as if to move and was again blocked by the inspector.

“Often, it's by finding out about the victim that we track down his murderer.”

“I'm sure that's right. So can I—”

“Look, let me tell you something. But please, try to keep it to yourself.”

Massimo resigned himself and leaned back against the doorpost. “That's getting harder by the minute. No, sorry, I was thinking of something else. Go on.”

“The girl didn't show up for a date last night, but that was almost two hours before she was killed. We need to find out where she was. If you hear anything about it, don't tell anyone, come straight to me. Anything might be important. Goodbye, Signor Viviani.”

 

When he left the station, Massimo set off on foot for the center of town, where the bar was located.

If she hadn't kept a date, he thought, that meant there were two possibilities. The first, that she had gone to the place where she was killed. The second . . . well, the second was that she was already dead. No, the hour of death ruled that out. But there was a second possibility all the same, he thought. The person who said they had a date with her might not have been telling the truth. Why? To cover for someone? Or to create an alibi for himself? I really don't know anything about these things, he thought.

A passing woman gave him a curious look, and only then did Massimo realize that he has been thinking aloud, talking to himself.

Massimo often talked to himself when he was thinking: a habit he had gotten into when he was revising for his exams in the first years of university. He would imagine that he had his professor physically there in front of him and would interact with him so realistically as to even exchange, for example, a few remarks about the weather. That was how he had discovered that, by pretending to present an argument to someone, the ideas came to him with greater clarity: it was like forcing his thoughts to travel at the right speed. All the same, he didn't like being noticed talking to himself on the street, so he didn't think about anything more until he got to the bar.

 

It was not until after two that the last couple of people left the bar, when Massimo had already started putting the chairs upside down on the tables and counting out loud. It was only to be expected: if a murder takes place in a seaside resort in the middle of summer, everybody talks about it. If you then happen to find yourself in the very bar whose owner discovered the corpse, it's party time. Every now and again someone, erroneously convinced that he had an original idea, would shout out over the voices of whichever group of debauchees he was with, “Hey, did you know it was Massimo who found the body this morning? Why don't you tell us how it happened? Come on . . . ”

He had told it a dozen times, each time adding new details so that at least he didn't get too bored.

 

“Massimo, I can come tomorrow morning if you like, if you want to get some sleep. Then I'll leave at noon and come back about six, six thirty. Is that okay?”

Tiziana, the girl who helped Massimo in the bar, was finishing sweeping while Massimo threw away the night's leftover appetizers. Tall, with good posture, a redhead as her name suggested, she had been hired by Massimo because she possessed two perfect attributes for working in a bar. Firstly, she wasn't clumsy. Secondly, she had beautiful breasts, which she concealed with little success inside tight-fitting sweaters or blouses with the buttons undone but knotted at the bottom. By now Massimo was used to it, but in the early days he had often found himself looking inadvertently at her chest as he spoke to her, unable to take his eyes off it, as if drawn there by a magnet, while continuing to talk as if everything was normal. Fortunately, she had laughed it off. The customers unconditionally approved of her presence, although Francesca Ferrucci, who had the tobacconist's opposite the bar, had once objected that basically it was unfair that the spectacle behind the counter reserved for the female public was not on the same level as that for the male public. That had made Massimo feel very ugly, and for some time he had served the woman a deliberately undrinkable type of coffee.

“Thanks, Tiziana, that'd be great. I'm not too tired, but I would like to sleep in tomorrow. Aren't you going out with Marchino tonight?”

That was a gaffe, as he immediately realized from the renewed vigor with which Tiziana continued her sweeping.