The Faces of Angels (17 page)

I
HAVE WEIRD
fragmented dreams about Gianni's weasel face and devils hissing in the Spanish Chapel and finally, at three a.m., and despite my earlier resolutions not to use them any more, I get up and take a sleeping pill. And leave a note—right in the middle of the kitchen table where she can't miss it—asking Billy not to wake me for the morning field trip.

As I'd hoped, she's gone by the time I eventually get up, and as I make myself coffee the events of last night—Gianni and Marcello and pretty much everything else—recede like an outgoing rip tide at the prospect of dinner with Pierangelo. I blow off even the idea of lectures and spend the day shopping.

My appearance isn't something I've traditionally put an awful lot of effort into, but tonight I want to look as good as I possibly can.
Pierangelo went to Rome
, I tell myself over and over again.
He loves you
. But all day long, as I pick through dresses and try on shoes, I hear that woman in his apartment. ‘
Pronto. Pronto. Pronto
,' she says. As if she owns the place. As if she belongs there. By five, when I get home, Pierangelo's intercom might as well be in my head.

I have a long bath, wash my hair, and even go to the trouble of blow-drying it, rolling it out with my round brush so my pageboy falls just right, rounds up under my chin exactly the way the stylist promised it would. Then I spray gloss on my stripes so they shimmer. The woman who did them put a pink one down the left side, promising it would be ‘very fashionable, a surprise,' and in my desire to get rid of the old boring Mary, I let her. Now I swing my profile back and forth, trying to figure out how surprising I look.

I fuss and primp until seven-thirty, when finally, with Piero's wretched folder trapped safely in my shoulder bag, I set out, walking so I have time to compose myself in case of a possible ‘worst.' I need to remember that Florence is beautiful, with or without Pierangelo. It sounds good, but I'm not sure I believe it.

Above the river, the swallows dip and swirl. Tiny acrobatic jet fighters, they swoop down to kiss the water, and zoom up again to lose themselves in the darkening sky. A pink tinge kisses the façades of the buildings on the opposite bank and, as I watch, the floodlights come on and Santa Croce glows above the rooftops. I cross the street into Piazza Demidoff, a tiny park fringed by gravel walkways, and pass old men who have come out in the warm evening to sit on benches and read the papers and smoke cigars.

I eventually bought a new skirt and blouse and little matching half-jacket that I've been eyeing in the window of my favourite boutique. I did my nails and put on earrings, long dangly glass ones that I found in a tiny shop behind the Bargello. My shoes are new too, and they pinch. It's been a while since I've worn high heels. I stop and check myself out in the darkened window of a shop, smiling unconvincingly. High above my head on the yellow stucco wall, a bronze plaque marks the flood level from 1966.

Pierangelo drove to Rome this time, and a few minutes later, I spot his car parked opposite the restaurant. When I come in he's already at our table, and he sees me right away.

‘Very nice,
cara
!' Piero gets to his feet. He pivots me around, like a ballerina, complimenting me on my new outfit, so I can't study his face, look for what I really don't want to see. ‘It really suits you,' he says. ‘Clearly, I should go away more often.'

While we finish our aperitifs and peruse the menu, Pierangelo talks about D'Erreti, the politics in the Vatican, and the fact that he's finished now with his interviews.

‘All that's left is checking the background and getting the damn thing written before Easter week. It's coming out on Palm Sunday.'

I'd forgotten about Easter pretty much completely, but Pierangelo points out that it's coming up fast, which is a pain, because the city shuts down and tourists arrive, or, rather, more tourists than usual. ‘D'Erreti will be here to do his thing in the cathedral,' he says. ‘Big hoo-ha.'

The waitress, a thin girl with hair cropped so short it's almost a crew cut, finally takes our order and brings a bottle of wine. After she pours us each a glass, he raises his and smiles. ‘I hope this is all right. And I have to warn you,' he adds, ‘before we get home, I stopped to change and the apartment's a mess. It looks like a bomb hit it.'

I put my glass down and look at him, my stomach contracting. This is the lead-up, I can tell. Pierangelo is going to say he wasn't really in Rome. I'm quite certain now that if I had let myself into the building and gone down to the basement on Saturday night, I would have seen his car sitting there in the underground garage. Maybe Monika's would have been there too, in the space next to Piero's, which is usually empty. What will it be, I wonder. A Ferrari? An Alfa? A silver Porsche?

‘I don't know.' Pierangelo is still talking and shaking his head. ‘Graziella's impossible at the moment. It's this boyfriend, this Tommaso, he's a disaster. A complete horse's ass. But if I say anything, she'll probably marry him. So I guess there's nothing to do but wait, and hope he passes, like the flu.'

‘Graziella?' I have no idea what he's talking about.

‘I could kill her,' he says, ‘frankly. She's just behaving like a little slut. They left dishes in the sink, the bed unmade, everything. Who do they think I am, Dada the Maid?'

‘In your apartment?'

Pierangelo looks at me. ‘Yes,' he says. ‘Of course in my apartment. Where else, a hotel? Tommaso the Magnificent would have had to pay for that. There was some conference they wanted to go to, so good old Dada said
certo
. But I really didn't expect—' He stops talking, bemused, because I have begun to laugh. ‘What? You think I'd look cute in a frilly uniform? With a feather duster?' Pierangelo asks.

I have to put my glass down again. ‘Yes. Of course!' I say. ‘You'd be darling.' Then I add, ‘Oh God, Piero, I am sorry. Really. I have been such an idiot. You have no idea.'

I have no choice now but to tell him how I was outside on Saturday evening and saw the light, then rang the bell and heard the woman's voice on the intercom.

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' I say, ‘but I thought—'

‘You thought, once a philanderer, always a philanderer?' Pierangelo looks at me, his face suddenly serious. Then he puts his hand over mine. ‘You thought,' he says, ‘that because I was unfaithful with you, I'd be unfaithful to you.'

I don't know what to say because that's exactly what I thought, and he knows it. I feel an awful hot blush creeping up my face.

‘
Cara
,' Pierangelo says softly, ‘I married Monika because I had to. She was pregnant with the twins. But I didn't choose her. I never chose her. I did, however, choose you. Because I love you.'

The room seems to recede. The rest of the world has grown tiny. Pierangelo smiles and squeezes my hand. ‘Look,' he says, ‘I've brought you something.'

He doesn't ask for left or right this time, just reaches into his pocket and puts a blue velvet box on the table. Now he's grinning.

‘Go ahead, open it.' He nods as I lift the little hinged lid, and there, lying in a black satin nest, is a necklace. It's a spun cocoon of gold with a stone imprisoned inside.

‘Do you like it?' he asks.

‘I love it.'

‘It's a blood agate. They're supposed to bring good luck.' Pierangelo kisses the tips of my fingers, and fastens the chain round my neck.

We eat our meal and have ordered grappa, when I reach into my bag and pull out the folder. I know I don't need to do this, that I could sneak it back without him knowing, but I want the slate wiped clean.

‘I'm sorry.' I place the folder on the table in front of him. ‘I took this out of your desk, on Friday morning, after you left.'

Pierangelo looks at it for a second as though he doesn't recognize it, then flips open the cover and closes it again quickly as the waitress puts our grappa down.

‘I'm sorry,' I say again. ‘I just wanted to know what happened. It was this whole thing with the girl by the river, I guess.' This is not, of course, entirely true, given the manila envelope that rests in my bottom drawer, but I've already decided never to open that again. ‘I wanted to know about the other women.' It sounds so lame now, sitting here. Its only virtue is that it's true.

Piero thinks about what I've just said for a second, his hand resting on the cover of the folder. The place where his wedding band sat for twenty years is white against his olive skin, and I can feel my stomach sinking. It's on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything, to confess the way I confessed to Henry, but this time include the clippings I've been keeping, and my trip to the library, the pictures I took. I want to explain this need I had to know the other women.

‘You see,' I start, ‘I feel as if we're—' My words stumble and I realize I probably sound like one of his daughters when they were kids, making excuses for something bad they'd done. ‘I wasn't going to mention it,' I say. ‘I was just going to put it back in your desk, but—'

Pierangelo shakes his head. ‘I'm glad you told me. It's better. It's my fault,' he adds, ‘that you didn't feel you could ask me. I would have told you,
cara
. Anything you wanted to know.'

This only makes me feel worse.

‘I just didn't think you liked talking about this. I mean, with me.'

Piero laughs. ‘Well, I don't really like talking about it with anyone. Murdered women is hardly my favourite subject.'

The tension between us vanishes. I raise my glass. ‘Here's to that.' Then I add, ‘If you mean it, though, there is one thing.'

If I'm really going put this behind me, I might as well do it, once and for all.

Pierangelo sips his grappa. ‘Which is?' he asks.

‘The third woman, who was she? Caterina something.'

‘Tusarno.'

It may be my imagination, but it feels as though the room gets very still. Pierangelo puts his glass down. At first, I think he's not going to say anything more, then he says, ‘She was a prostitute. Thirty-two years old. Single mother. One child. Found in the Cascine.' He names the park that runs along the river in the west of the city. It's a huge place, site of the notorious squat that's been there for something like twenty years, and parts of it are pretty unsavoury, certainly after dark. Pierangelo looks at me. ‘You've seen the pictures, I guess,' he says. ‘Of the crime scene. When they found her.'

‘They found a bird? She was holding—' We both look at the folder, as if we can see through the paper covers to Caterina Fusarno's broken black fingernail and the tiny ball of feathers cradled in her palms.

Pierangelo knocks his grappa back and signals for another one. ‘A goldfinch,' he says. ‘She'd been attacked with a knife. Rather brutally, as a matter of fact. After that her hair had been brushed.'

I ask for another drink too. ‘So,' I ask finally, ‘was she the first? Before Eleanora? Or in between? Or after Benedetta?' He shakes his head. ‘After.'

I look at him. ‘Well, when?' Benedetta was killed in February. We arrived pretty soon after, and I don't remember anything in the papers.

The grappa arrives and Pierangelo looks at the folder as if he hopes it will suddenly speak for itself. ‘They found her on New Year's Day,' he says at last.

‘But you just said she was killed after Benedetta Lucchese.'

‘That's right.' He looks at me, but I still don't get it. ‘She was found in the Cascine on January first. Of this year.'

I don't know what to say. Surely I've misheard. ‘This year? You mean, four months ago?'

He nods.

‘Then she couldn't have been killed by Karel Indrizzio.'

‘No,' Pierangelo says. ‘She couldn't.'

We leave shortly after that, drive back with the headlights flooding the streets, turning the city black and white. Neither of us says anything, but when we cross the Ponte alle Grazie, I know we are both thinking about Ginevra Montelleone.

‘What do the police think?' I ask finally. ‘About Caterina Fusarno? I mean, there are similarities, right? Her hair. She was knifed. She was laid out. The bird.'

Piero shrugs, not taking his eyes off the traffic light in front of us that has abruptly decided to turn red. Pedestrians walk by. A boy pushing a bicycle, two girls, arm in arm, laughing.

‘They don't know,' he says. ‘I think that's why they're asking the papers not to say anything about this girl they found by the river. At first, they thought Caterina was just another dead whore. Or hoped she was. Now it looks a little different.'

‘Is that what you thought? That she was just another dead whore?'

‘No.' He shakes his head. ‘No, I didn't think that.' He glances at me. ‘You saw how she was holding the bird. Like Benedetta Lucchese's candle. And her hair. The grooming.'