The smirk faded as his predicament flashed through his mind again. His wide shoulders bulged under his custom-made sharkskin jacket and his short squat body moved a little closer to the barrier. His long eyebrows frowned above the deep-set eyes in a round red face. He felt his balding head. His head wasn’t of much use to him now. It was only telling him that he might be in trouble, real trouble, and he hadn’t been in real trouble for a long time. The opposite was true, he had been doing very well. And he shouldn’t be at the airport now, it was lunchtime, he should be in the country restaurant he owned. He should be listening to Renata, the charming lady who ran the restaurant and who lived in the beautifully furnished apartment on its second floor, an apartment he was getting to know better than his own house. A commissaris with a cane. He saw an old man, a thin little old man, limping toward the barrier. The devil himself, the devil in paradise.
Pullini’s smile was soft and charming when he shook hands and took the commissaris’s overnight bag.
“You had a good flight, commissaire?”
“Yes, thank you. I slept.”
A few minutes later they sat on the rear seat of a large car, a new car of a make the commissaris didn’t recognize. The limousine was chauffeured by a dreamy young man in a turtleneck sweater of exactly the same tender blue shade as the car.
Pullini pulled down the armrest and his strong, suntanned hand, adorned with two rings, each holding a large diamond, dug into its soft upholstery. The commissaris’s eyes flitted up and observed Pullini’s face. Pullini’s heavy thoughts were filling the car. The commissaris was thinking too. He had planned his attack early that morning, in the garden with the turtle rummaging around his feet and his wife fussing in the kitchen, coming out every ten minutes to refill his coffee cup. He had looked forward to meeting Papa Pullini, but now that his prey was next to him, breathing heavily through nostrils bristling with long dark hairs, he didn’t feel like upsetting the man. Perhaps some rapport had been established between the two, for Pullini’s face turned slowly and his lips formed a single word.
“Non?”
“Non.”
Pullini’s grip on the armrest loosened.
“We go to hotel now. In Sesto San Giovanni. Saint Giovanni. Same name as me, but me no saint.” He laughed and the commissaris laughed too. A joke.
“Small hotel. Comfortable. One night, yes?”
“One night.”
“You have bath, sleep a little, go for a walk maybe, and then I come and we drink some wine. Good wine. Later we eat, we talk.”
Pullini’s smile was innocent, childlike, and hurt the commissaris. He was sure that Pullini had tried to contact his son immediately after their conversation of that morning. But there hadn’t been much time. Chances were that Pullini still knew very little. He would know about Mrs. Camet’s death, for Francesco would have reported such an important event in the connection between the Pullini and Gurnet firms.
“Did you speak to your son this morning, Mr. Pullini?”
“I try. I phone hotel. I phone Camet and Company. Francesco, he not there. I want to ask Francesco what happened that is so important mat Amsterdam police commissaire comes to see me in Milano. Police, they do not like to spend money, yes?”
“Yes.”
Pullini was holding his smile. The smile displayed a glitter of gold and very white artificial teeth, well made and suitably irregular. He raised his hands. “Commissaire, I know nothing.”
“Do you know what happened to Mrs. Carnet?”
The red face froze. “Yes. She dead. Francesco, he tell me. An accident, yes? Or maybe no? You do not travel to Italy for accident.”
An enormous truck pulling an equally enormous trailer zoomed past blasting its horn. The limousine’s chauffeur flicked his wheel. His employee’s equanimity seemed to calm Pullini.
“O.K.”
The word was out of place between the gigantic bill-boards screaming their advertising in poetic, flowing Italian on bom sides of the autostrada.
The car turned off the main road and began to follow a narrow cobblestoned path winding through fields planted with ripening corn. The nondescript office and factory buildings that had lined the autostrada gave way to long cracked-tiled divisions screening the rustic peace of the countryside. There were rows of high trees, a dam with a waterwheel, and a high bridge that had to be negotiated in low gear. The commissaris saw farmhouses built like low, square fortresses defending themselves behind forbidding walls, centered on courtyards overshadowed by umbrella-shaped chestnuts and tall poplars.
Pullini pointed out a low pink and gray building. “There I was born, not fanner’s son, laborer’s son, in shed. Shed no longer there. Burned in war.”
The simple elements that formed Pullini’s face proved to be capable of forming fairly complicated expressions, even combinations of opposites such as sadness and triumph.
“You were happy on the farm, Mr. Pullini?”
“No. My father, he works. My mother, she works. Me, I also work. Always. Feed pigs, shovel shit, pigshit, cow-shit, horseshit. Also chickenshit. Chickenshit, he worse. Chickenshit, he burns. All in same wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrow bad. Push like this.”
Pullini leaned over and groaned, trying to hold the wheelbarrow.
“Sometimes it falls over. Then I shovel same shit twice.” He held up two fingers. “But I had birds. Pheasants. Partridges. Beautiful birds. They walk around like mis: titch-titch-titch. Baby birds.”
His hand moved around on the floor of the car, making short, swift movements. “When they grow I sell to farmer. Farmer, he eats my birds. But every year new nests and new birds. One year I buy peacock, but only money for one, so no baby peacocks. Farmer, he takes peacock.”
“Did he pay your
Pullini laughed, a soft, full bellylaugh mat gurgled in his throat. “No. Farmer says peacock eats too much feed so he takes him for courtyard. Farmer looks at peacock, me, I listen. Peacock shouts, ‘Giovanni! Giovanni!’ and I listen. Then I know one day Pullini must work for Pullini. That better.”
The car turned sharply. They had come to a village. A man greeted the car, men two women who came out of a store, then another man from the doorway of a shop. The greetings were elaborate. The subjects waved and inclined their heads respectfully. Pullini raised his hand but he didn’t wave. He only showed his hand. The driver also reacted by lifting a finger of the hand holding the wheel. The car’s nose pointed at a three-story brick building and stopped. A neon sign above the building’s double front door Said RISTORANTEPULLINI.
“Very nice.” The commissaris pointed at the sign. “You have another restaurant, I hear, in the mountains somewhere, I believe?”
“Who tell you?” Pullini’s chest bent over the armrest; a whiff of garlic touched the commissaris’s face. “My son?”
“Mr. Bergen told me.”
Pullini’s gold fillings flashed. “Yes. Bergen, he eats very much, but kitchen has plenty of spaghetti, plenty of sauce, plenty of sausage. Also veal, tender veal from Holland, many lires a gram. Bergen, he likes meat. That restaurant in mountains same as this one here, same kitchen. This cook, he teaches cook in mountains. Before, restaurants were bad, just one dish, spaghetti and tomato sauce and sometimes fish, old fish. Now better. We try later to-night, yes?”
The car moved again, following a narrow side street with only centimeters to spare on each side, and emerged into a small sunlit square. A policeman in an olive uniform and carrying a gigantic sidearm in a dazzlingly white gun-belt came to attention. Pullini got out and shook the constable’s hand. The driver slid from behind the wheel. The commissaris rested on his cane. The square was quiet, medievally quiet, paved with gleaming yellow stones, dappled by the light caught and softened in die foliage of protecting oaks. Shrubs grew in enclaves on the narrow pavement and songbirds chirped from cages hung under the arc of a gate.