Poisonville (19 page)

Alvise came to see me a couple of days later.

“I walked from one end of the town to the other,” he said. “With my head held high. And when anyone stopped to stare at me, I stopped and asked them what the fuck they were looking at. Do you think that one person had the courage to answer me?”

I knew the answer to that question and I did nothing more than look at him in an understanding manner. He was even sadder and more hopeless than before. “I’ve come to ask you for help,” he announced, taking a seat on the sofa.

“If there’s anything I can do, I’m glad to.”

“I want to do something to help Paola and Lucio, but I have no money, and I certainly can’t look for a job here in town,” he explained. “I’m going to have to go back to Argentina, but I don’t want to leave without finding out who killed Giovanna. But you could help them.”

“What can I do for them? And frankly, you know, they’re strangers to me.”

He seized me by the hand. “You have money and you’re a lawyer. Paola needs to go somewhere far away from that house and dry out. And Lucio needs a real lawyer. You wouldn’t want to leave him in the hands of that idiot . . .”

I wriggled my hand out of his grip. “How is Lucio?” I asked.

“He’s pretty beat up, but the doctors say he’ll recover,” he answered. Then he looked at me.

“I went to see him every day. At first he refused to talk to me. I didn’t push it, until finally today I found the courage to tell him about when I was in prison and couldn’t see Giovanna because Prunella kept her from coming to visit me. He asked me about prison, and I told him that it’s impossible to survive if there’s no one on the outside waiting for you.”

“What do you expect from me?” I cried, getting to my feet. “For fifteen years, you took no interest in either of them. But now you want someone else to take care of them, in your place, while you head back to Argentina. Pretty easy on you.”

“Lucio is so young,” he begged me. “He has only lived a tiny part of his life, a miserable part. But he can put that all behind him now. He has a right to a future.”

“I already said it, that’s not my job.”

He stood up and put on his heavy jacket. “It’s too bad Giovanna is dead,” he whispered as he slipped the oversized buttons into the buttonholes. “She would have helped them.”

I was surprised to see how many people attended the requiem mass commemorating the thirtieth day since Giovanna’s death. Alvise was the last to arrive and the first to leave the church, followed by Prunella’s baleful glare. When I walked over to speak to her, she made a big show of avoiding my embrace. “Get away from me!” she hissed at me, loud enough to attract attention. “It’s your fault that everyone is talking about us.”

I was about to deliver a sharp answer, but Carla took my arm and accompanied me out of the church.

“Look what I found,” she said. She pulled a handful of paper strips out of her purse and put them in my hand.

“What are they?”

“It’s what’s left of papers that were fed through a shredder. It’s all that’s left of the documentation concerning the Eco T.D.W. that was archived at the local health board,” she replied. “They’re cleaning house while we sit on our asses. I’m sick of doing nothing. I’m going to report them before it’s too late.”

“No. Come to my house. I have to talk to you.”

I had decided to level with her. She didn’t deserve to be lied to. When I finished telling her about my father’s plan, she smoked in silence for a while.

“You can’t ask me to become an accomplice to these people,” she said, puffing out a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“That’s not exactly what I’m asking you, and after all, the soil will be cleaned up, and the companies will move to Romania.”

She shook her head in disappointment. “And then everything will be fine, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Open your eyes, Francesco. They’re going to transform the clean-up into a way of making money. They’ll get funds from the regional government. Trevisan will probably get the contract for the job. And have you really not grasped why all these companies are moving to China or Romania? It’s not just so they can pay their workers lower wages. It’s also because there they can pollute all they want without regulation. In those countries, there are no laws protecting the environment, and they won’t even be obliged to make use of illegal waste management services anymore. People like Zuglio and Constantin will continue dealing in toxic waste for those who remain behind. Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘ecomafia’?”

“Sure. But that’s not what’s happening here.”

Carla wrinkled her face in a grimace of disgust. “You’re so afraid that your father might be in trouble with the law that you can’t see the way things really are. When he went into business with Trevisan, he became an accomplice to fraud.”

“That’s a serious accusation.”

“Ferrari destroyed the documentation that was in the local health board files because someone had warned him that the jig was up. It was certainly Trevisan, after his conversation with your father.”

“Papa is legal counsel to the Eco T.D.W.,” I tried to explain, though only half-heartedly. “In this case, he was acting in his own interest and in the interest of his client. And attorney-client privilege prevented him from talking to anyone about it. Now, what Trevisan chooses to do . . .”

Carla grabbed her purse and her down jacket and headed for the door. “I don’t want to sit here listening to this crap anymore.”

I grabbed her arm. “Let’s try to work out a solution.”

“What solution? You’re so eager to make your father happy that you’ve even forgotten that Giovanna may well have been murdered because she uncovered the fraud.”

I certainly hadn’t forgotten, but I didn’t think that it was plausible. I made a decision. “Come with me, I have something to show you.”

Carla refused to watch the video for a third time. She turned her back to the screen and lit a cigarette. “Why did you show me that?”

“So that you can understand that this was a crime of passion. Giovanna was the victim in a complicated sexual relationship. Does she strike you as the slut of the man who ruined her life?”

She turned and stared at me. “Maybe not. But Giovanna had stumbled on a toxic waste ring, and I want to find out everything there is to know. Murder and fraud may very well be linked here.”

“If you report this to the Carabinieri, you’ll ruin a good person’s life.”

“I don’t intend to go to the police immediately.”

“Why not?”

“I told you: I want to find out everything there is to know,” she replied. “By now Trevisan and his accomplices know that the toxic waste dump has been uncovered, and now they’ll have to move the waste somewhere else. I intend to find out where. Then I’ll turn them in.”

She opened the door and then turned back to speak: “Don’t tell your father about this,” she warned me. “Those people wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.”

* * *

“My mother did her best to toughen me up through a series of educational dinners. When I was just eleven, she forced me to eat meals while trying to enjoy conversations with middle-aged strangers. What a cruel thing to do. Some of the boys my age, in a bid to escape that sort of torture, allowed themselves to be shipped off to boarding schools, in Switzerland, of course, and then they enlisted in the army, choosing the special forces: the San Marco battalion of the Italian marines or the Folgore brigade of paratroopers. When they were discharged, they had been spiritually strengthened, and then they usually married a second cousin, the kind of woman who plays bridge with the curtains drawn because daylight gives her a migraine headache. Do you play bridge, doctor?”

Moroncini said nothing. He did no more, as usual, than to scrawl something incomprehensible in his Moleskine.

This was the twelfth session. Selvaggia had decided to intensify the therapy because so far she had not seen any results. Selvaggia was in a hurry. She was no longer going to tolerate Filippo’s laziness, and she was certainly not happy about all the hours he spent in the wine cellar, where Filippo devoted more and more of his time to perfecting his new Sauvignon, and in his studio, where that horrendous sculpture stood on a table, even though as far as she was concerned it had been finished long ago.

For his part, Moroncini had canceled his appointments with a couple of patients to make room for Filippo. It was impossible to say no to the Contessa, Filippo was certainly right about that.

Knowing perfectly well that the doctor would never answer him, Filippo went on:

“I don’t like closed curtains. They make me think of secrets to be kept, conspiracies to be concealed. They make me think of my mother.”

“Are you saying that you hate her?”

“What a ridiculous question. Does a prisoner hate his guards? Of course he does, but at the same time he depends on them. Especially if he hasn’t figured out an escape plan yet.”

“Then your attempted suicide two years ago was an unsuccessful escape plan?”

“Try to be a little less simplistic, doctor. That’s not what my mother pays you for. Believe it or not, I did it for love. And I was wrong, of course. My mother had warned me. You see? I always come back to her. Sooner or later, I’ll have to kill her . . .”

Filippo twisted around to enjoy the psychiatrist’s reaction; obviously, though, he remained expressionless.

So Filippo sat up on the couch and smiled at his doctor:

“Do you want to know why I hate my mother so much? Do you really want to know the truth?”

Moroncini continued to look at him with a neutral expression. He was all too experienced with this sort of trick from his patients.

Filippo persisted. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner and hissed:

“My mother is a murderer.”

Filippo Calchi Renier had left his office half an hour ago. Moroncini had no more patients scheduled for that day. He was done going through the notes for his latest book, a short work on the troubled youth of the families of the Northeast. Once he had brought a monkish order to his brier-root desktop, he dialed the number of the Contessa’s cellphone. Selvaggia answered on the third ring.

“I am very worried about Filippo.”

Selvaggia was sitting next to Professor Moroncini in the back seat of her Mercedes. The Romanian chauffeur had been ordered to drive slowly along seldom-used country roads. They had both agreed not to meet at Villa Selvaggia, lest Filippo happen to see them; as for Moroncini’s office, the Contessa was reluctant to allow rumors to spread about her mental health. In this, she was still a farmer’s daughter.

“How are the sessions proceeding?” asked Selvaggia, nodding slightly toward the psychiatrist.

“Rather well, I’d say,” Moroncini replied laconically.

“It doesn’t seem like it. He’s become so . . . embarrassing.”

“That’s a phase of the therapy. They learn to express their resentments.”

“You’re the expert,” commented Selvaggia with a hint of skepticism.

“The other day, for example, he told me that he wants to kill you.”

“And you call that progress?”

“Don’t you want to know why he hates you so much?”

“That’s why I pay you, isn’t it? So you’ll violate the bond of client-doctor privilege.”

“Certainly, but I believe that information of this nature demands a considerable modification of our initial agreement.”

“That depends on the nature of the information . . .”

Moroncini paused. It was a long pause. Pauses were one of his specialties.

“Well?” Selvaggia insisted.

“Filippo is convinced that you haven’t been entirely truthful about the murder of Giovanna Barovier . . .”

“Filippo is spouting nonsense as usual!”

“That may well be, but in his state of psychological distress, he might decide to talk to the Carabinieri . . .”

Selvaggia took off the dark glasses that she wore even on the cloudiest days. She turned a savage gaze on Moroncini. That gaze was truly terrifying, and it was one of
her
specialties.

“Your information,” she informed him, “is of no value. Filippo’s undependability is already well known to the investigators. Whatever statement he may choose to make will never undercut my version of events. In part because I have never stated anything but the truth. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this.”

Moroncini shrugged in a sign of surrender.

But Selvaggia hadn’t finished: “Unless . . .”

The psychiatrist looked at her with interest.

“Unless you are willing to help me have Filippo declared incompetent. A detailed psychiatric report might help to get a court order blocking him from the family business. In exchange, I could provide you with some very interesting and very private information about the new investments that the Foundation is undertaking in Romania.”

“To have him declared incompetent, we would have to demonstrate a complete inability to understand or to express intention. It would be disastrous for Filippo . . .”

“Oh, Filippo hates business anyway. He can’t take the pressure of responsibility. It would be a relief for him, trust me.”

“And it would mean that you would have unlimited control of the entire Calchi Renier estate,” Moroncini insinuated.

“Write that report, Professor. In exchange, Counselor Visentin will provide you with a list of companies that will double their capital within a year. Buy a nice bundle of shares immediately, and I assure you that you’ll be able to devote yourself to poetry for the rest of your life.”

Moroncini smiled. “Not poetry. Race cars.”

* * *

The sun had just set. The darkness had suddenly taken over the house, making it even gloomier and more silent. I felt the need to get out, to fill my lungs with bracing cold air. After a short walk, I stepped into a pastry shop that served the best hot chocolate with whipped cream in town. My father had been a regular client for years, and I was served with obsequious alacrity.

It had been four days since my last meeting with Carla. I hadn’t heard from her since then, and I hadn’t called her either. When she had asked me not to mention her to my father, lest I endanger her life, it was as if she had cracked a whip in my face. When my cell phone rang and I saw her name on the caller ID, I wasn’t sure whether or not to answer. When it rang for the fifth time, I looked up and saw that everyone in the shop was looking at me. They knew who I was and now they were wondering what mysterious reason I could have for staring at my cell phone without answering. I punched the green button.