Poisonville (9 page)

As the special report on Antenna N/E was about to make its triumphant début, three young men entered the café. They looked like club-goers with a homicidal edge. They had gotten out of a Jeep Cherokee; Beggiolin had noticed them outside the tavern window.

They burst into the place whooping like wild Indians, and showing off for their supposed audience.

Instead of obtaining the desired effect, and that is, frightening the clientele for pure fun, they were rudely hushed by Maso, that is Tommaso Nadal, the moving man.

“Why, what’s on, a soccer game?” the skinniest of the three asked in some wonderment. He was the only one of the group that Beggiolin thought he recognized. His name was Denis, and his father was an insurance salesman.

“Ah, shut up and sit down,” somebody yelled from the back of the tavern.

The three of them considered the situation. The tavern was packed, but there were little old ladies, and lots of pants-wetters, like that guy over there, that loudmouth from the TV, leaning on the bar.

If they wanted to, they could have really caused some mayhem.

Rocco was already grabbing a chair while the audience was shouting more loudly for quiet, but Lucio stopped him, putting one hand on his wrist and jutting his chin at the television.

Rocco turned to look at the TV, and Denis did the same thing, in sheep-like emulation.

On the big screen, Elide had just managed to stop sobbing, and she had been replaced by an old woman in a pink dressing gown standing in front of a hospital bed. She was pointing a knobby, trembling finger at an imaginary attacker (Lucio felt as if she were pointing directly at him), cursing him and calling down the agonies of the inferno upon him, because: “It’s not right to do things like that to a poor old woman, you shouldn’t beat a defenseless grandmother, you shouldn’t steal her life savings—she’s just a poor woman with no one to protect her.” In conclusion, with a surprising upwelling of strength, displaying her yellowed teeth and faceful of wrinkles, she hissed repeatedly, an uncounted number of times: “Criminals.”

She was unquestionably having a certain effect on her audience.

Lucio looked around. The customers of the tavern had leapt to their feet, and several were clapping the television guy on his shoulder as he stood leaning against the bar.

Everyone was shouting so loud that no one could understand a word.

Rocco was mystified, and so was Denis.

But Lucio was the boss. And he had understood perfectly.

He started shouting loudest of all: “Let’s give ’em a lesson, these black bastards!”

It had the desired effect. With a single harsh command, he had managed to channel that rancorous muttering, that sterile frenzy into a brutal, ferocious, and even joyful explosion of fury.

Lucio and Beggiolin’s eyes locked in a rapid flash, and it was as if they had recognized one another.

Then the wave washed away from Beggiolin, surging toward the three young men who had arrived in the Cherokee; they threw open the door and left the tavern, followed by all the men under sixty-five years of age.

The hunt was officially on.

Babacar Ngoup was about to make a momentous decision. He was fed up with trying to sell carved hardwood elephants and bootleg CDs; eighty percent of the take went to the district manager; what was left over was barely enough for room and board. He could barely spare anything for remittances, and back home, his little sister was about to get married.

Babacar was a tall, skinny, young man, with a small shapely nose that drove the women crazy, especially certain Italian women.

He had never studied. It wasn’t because he had lacked the opportunity, though. It was because he didn’t feel like it. Like all the young people he’d grown up with in Senegal, he wanted to make music, he wanted to become a star like Youssou N’Dour and sing duets with a babe like Neneh Cherry. He was sick and fucking tired of humping that duffel bag back and forth all day in the fog that chilled your bones. The fog weighed him down with a melancholy that took away any desire to sing. He had what it took to be a star, but what he lacked was everything else. Lately, he didn’t even have a girlfriend, and that had never happened before—not even in Italy. He came from a family of
tombeurs de femmes
, lady-killers. His father had had five wives. His grandfather had fifteen, plus lots of others. His grandfather was a griot, a storyteller. He had a way with words. He told beautiful stories—ghost stories and love stories—and he knew how to enchant anyone, especially the women. The women gobbled him up with their eyes from the front doors of their houses.

Babacar had the gift of words too, but what good was that in a town where hardly anyone even spoke French?
Merde!
It was eight in the evening, and there wasn’t a living soul in sight. Back in Dakar, life was just beginning at that time of night.

Je me suis emmerdé
, he thought. He was really sick and tired.

So he’d made up his mind: That night, he would tuck twenty grams of cocaine into his duffel bag. He’d sell the coke, use the money to produce his first CD, and buy a ticket to Paris.

That noise made him uneasy. What was it? A pack of ghosts, that’s how his grandfather would have described it. He’d lived in that town for two years, and every night for the past two years he’d waited at the same bus stop for his ride home. He’d never heard anything like this. Voices, footsteps, and a roaring undertone, like feedback from an electric bass. Whatever it was, the best thing to do was to
aller vite
. He’d never had problems before, but
il y a toujours une première fois
.

He picked up the duffel bag, which just then weighed him down as if it were as heavy as a boulder.

He took a step backward, peering into the fog.

He felt the beams of automobile headlights on his face; these beams were unusually high. The bright lights immediately made him feel vaguely guilty. On either side of the car, blurry shadows were moving toward him, like so many zombies. They did not seem to be walking on the ground.

Babacar stumbled and fell backward, landing on the edge of the sidewalk in a seated position. He could feel the wet pavement through the cloth of his trousers. He immediately tried to get up, but something hard hit him on the ear. He fell back to the ground, stunned. The zombies shouted something he couldn’t understand. The doors of the tall automobile swung open, and two more shadows got out.

“
Arretez
,” he yelled, but the pack had caught his scent, the scent of blood.

He saw one of the shadows that had stepped out of the vehicle raise a weirdly long arm.

He heard the shadow say: “Ciao, brother.”

Then the long arm swung down at him, striking him between his neck and his shoulder.

He hurled himself onto his duffel bag. He desperately clawed at the outer pocket in search of his knife, only to feel his knuckles crunch under the heel of a cowboy boot. A sharp kick to the base of his spine throttled the scream in his throat. He understood that this was only the beginning. Kicks, clubs, and chains rained down on his ribs and kidneys. A crowbar shattered one of his legs, a sharp kick to the face broke the bridge of his nose.

He lost consciousness.

Then someone poured some water on him. He thought to himself they must be trying to wake him back up so he could feel more pain. But it wasn’t water. His jacket reeked of gasoline. As one of his grandfather’s songs pointed out: “With a bit of good luck, there’s always a can of gas in someone’s truck.” He screamed, and it sounded to his ears like the cry of a lobster being dropped into boiling water. It must have startled someone, because instead of burning him, they set fire to his duffel bag.

Or maybe it was the siren of the arriving police car that sent them scattering.

Curled up on the ground, he heard the roar of the turbo diesel engine as the car disappeared into the distance and running footsteps moving away in all directions.

He managed to open one eye—he could only open the one—and he saw an absurd little man, wearing an enormous heavy jacket and with the rumpled hair of a madman, dancing gleefully around the flaming duffel bag. He seemed like a chimpanzee terrified by fire.

When the Carabiniere squad car pulled up beside the bus stop, the fog was tinged the bluish color of the car’s emergency lights. Just before he passed out again, Babacar saw the chimpanzee vanish, in a series of outlandish leaps, under the porticoes.

The chimpanzee was the village fool. No one even remembered his name. Everyone called him “El Mato”—the lunatic. He survived through the charity of parishioners. As long as anyone could remember, he’d worn an old green parka, and no one knew exactly where he lived. He never bothered anyone. From time to time he’d shout out disconnected phrases, but everyone ignored him.

El Mato, prancing along under the porticoes, ran into a man who was pushing an old bicycle beside him. Hanging from the handlebars was a plastic shopping bag, from which protruded the neck of a large wine bottle. El Mato eyed the man curiously. The man wore his long grey hair gathered into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

“It’s you. I recognize you. Now I understand! Now I’ve figured it out!” he started yelling, pointing the man out to an imaginary crowd.

The man looked around. He thought of hitting the little man to make him shut up, but getting drawn into a brawl was too risky. He got on his bicycle and pedaled quickly away, looking back as he went to make sure that no one was looking out a window. Then he was gone.

Behind him, the madman continued shouting, “Now I understand! Now I’ve figured it out!”

Hunched over the handlebars, the man knew instantly that that obsessive mantra would keep from him sleeping for the rest of the night.

* * *

My father came to get me immediately after dinner. A sharp honk of the car horn told me he had arrived. During the trip we rode in silence. It was only after he turned the key, stilling the Jaguar’s engine, that he warned me to keep my cool, whatever the cost.

The butler led us into the Contessa’s study. Selvaggia was intent on a game of two-handed pinochle with Filippo. She stood up, greeted my father with a kiss, and then gave me a chilly hug, producing a series of formal phrases. Filippo kept his back turned to us, and only turned around to face us when scolded by his mother.

He looked at me with scorn. “So now we’re inviting murderers to dinner, too?”

I turned toward Papa. “I told you this would be a waste of time.”

“I am not interested in the petty quarrels of you two spoiled brats,” the Contessa said in a calm, almost bored tone of voice. “You both wound up on the television news for a disgusting brawl, and the time has come to settle things.”

“I hope they give you a life sentence, without parole,” Filippo hissed.

Selvaggia lost her patience. “That night you weren’t at home. If you insist, I’ll go personally to see the prosecutor and tell him you’re lying. And if you weren’t with Francesco, exactly where were you at that time of night?”

“Filippo, please try to reason,” my father broke in with a harsh tone of voice. “Each of you represents the other’s alibi. You could come under suspicion yourself, everyone knows about your disappointment over Giovanna. You might have felt resentment after the car crash . . .”

Selvaggia grabbed Filippo by the shoulders. “Giovanna was murdered while you two boys were together, and if you make an effort, you will surely remember that you parted company after 3
A.M.
”

Filippo hung his head, in a mute gesture of capitulation. His mother stroked his head.

“All settled, then,” my father said with satisfaction. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go to see Zan and you’ll correct all your earlier statements.”

Filippo looked at me with contempt. “I told you that Giovanna would betray you too.”

“Shut your mouth,” I said flatly.

“There’s no question about the matter,” the Contessa broke in. “You have to admit and deal with it, Francesco.”

“Please, Selvaggia,” my father grumbled.

“I’m telling him for his own good,” the Contessa continued. “Francesco will have to face the town. The inconsolable cuckold is a role for losers.”

I turned on my heel and left without saying goodbye. My father caught up with me a few minutes later.

“You know what Selvaggia’s like,” he said, justifying her, as he got in the car. “She never liked Giovanna.”

I didn’t answer. That woman was a snake, but my mind was occupied by very different thoughts.

“It could have been him,” I suddenly said.

“Him who?”

“Filippo.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Just like me, he has no alibi. Giovanna would have let him into her house even at that time of night, and most important—he had a motive.”

“Oh, come on, can you imagine Filippo killing someone?”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “Yes,” I answered with conviction.

Papa sighed. “You’re not planning to talk about this to Zan or Mele, are you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because, tomorrow Filippo is going to supply an alibi for both of you. You were together until after three in the morning.”

“But what if it really was him who killed her?”

Papa huffed impatiently. “Well, there needs to be other evidence to prove that.”

We rode in silence until the Jaguar pulled up outside my front door. As I reached out to open the car door, I was suddenly struck by a thought. “And if that evidence emerged, and if Filippo wound up in jail, Selvaggia would ask you to defend him, wouldn’t she?”

“Probably.”

“And would you take the case?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. There would probably be a conflict of interest. Giovanna was a lawyer in my law firm . . .”

“She was also my fiancée,” I pointed out, angrily.

“Certainly, your fiancée,” he hastily agreed. “But now stop obsessing about these fanciful ideas and let the detectives do their work.”

Papa pushed his foot down on the acclerator and the Jaguar slid away into the night. My father was wrong. Tomorrow, Filippo would cease to be a suspect for the investigators, once and for all. The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed that he might be the killer. Now that I was out of the picture, Mele and Zan would wonder about him, too. But they wouldn’t waste time investigating him as a lead. Filippo had an alibi now. And I had provided that alibi.