“Is what you have to tell me that serious, Signora?”
“Yes... that is, no... I mean... it’s embarrassing, quite embarrassing... but I thought it might help you with your investigation. Deep down, I’m sure Melina was always a good girl at heart...”
Tommaso D’Orso remained silent. Experience had taught him that sometimes saying nothing is the best way to get people to talk.
Signora Rosa Belli wiggled around some more and pulled out a white tissue from her aging purse to dry her forehead. Then she made a long sigh, staring for a moment into the commissioner’s deep blue eyes, and immediately looked down again.
“It was six months ago,” she muttered. “On a Wednesday. You know, in Rome on Wednesday cinemas are half price, so my friend Maria and I usually go. We’re both retired and money is tight...”
The commissioner gave her a look of comprehension that was lost on her grey hair since she had bowed her head as if she didn’t ever want to look up again.
“So, as I was saying,” she began again, mumbling, with her eyes down. “We always go to the cinema on Wednesday and that day, that day the curiosity was too much. Just open the newspaper and you’ll see... We worked up the courage together and we went in... We had to see one before we die, didn’t we? And she was the actress! You can imagine how I felt... my own neighbor, the one I had lunch with... there, on the screen... what shame, what shame...”
“I don’t understand. You knew that Miss Sardi worked in the film industry, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean you don’t understand, Commissioner!?” Signora Rosa exclaimed, looking up all of a sudden. “Melina Sardi made pornographic movies!”
So, thanks to Signora Rosa Belli, who perfectly remembered the title of the film, the plot, and even the director’s name, Commissioner D’Orso finally got his hands on Adolfo Cini, who had become a porn producer under another name.
Now Cini was standing in front of him and looked at him arrogantly.
“Melina was of age, Signor Commissioner. A consenting adult. I’m pretty damn good at keeping my nose clean, don’t you remember?”
Tommaso D’Orso remained impassive, but Officer Sorrento, who was taking the deposition, couldn’t help himself and snorted in disgust. People like him should rot in jail!
“Why do you use a fake name?”
“Fake? No, you’re mistaken. It’s my nom d’art. In my business, people don’t ask for your real name and, anyway, I don’t have any legal problems.”
“Nice business you’re in.”
“Yeah, it’s great. We’re always surrounded by a ton of good little girls. See, I’ve even learned to speak nicely.”
“Good little girls like Melina Sardi?” asked the commissioner without letting Cini’s provocations get to him.
“Exactly. She had talent in her field. She was a real goose with golden eggs...”
“So why did you kill her?”
“Kill her? Me?!” Cini was stunned. “Are you joking?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Cini. We know that you spent a lot of time with her, and we have witnesses who heard you fighting with her the other night and your car screeching off like a rocket. Right at the time of the homicide. Don’t you think that’ll be enough?”
“It’d be enough if I had killed her, but I didn’t. I only smacked her around a bit because she deserved it. I made the mistake of promising her a little part in a normal film and ever since then she wouldn’t leave me alone, she was always busting my balls.”
“And you had no intention of keeping that promise, did you?”
“You’ve got to keep girls like Melina on a leash, Signor Commissioner,” Cini explained as if he were talking to a small child. “Give them the stick one day and the carrot the next. Make them understand who is in control one day and make them promises the next, to keep them calm. And making promises isn’t illegal.”
“But murder is.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t have anything to gain from her death. The opposite! I told you she was a goose with golden eggs, didn’t I? Her films earned well. I only gave her a couple of smacks to shut her up and tore that stupid red dress off of her. She only put it on to get a rise out of me. She knew I hated that stupid little red dress.”
Officer Sorrento lifted the pencil from the notebook and looked at the commissioner. Tommaso D’Orso stared at him and clenched his teeth.
Melina Sardi’s body had been discovered with a pink robe on. The shredded red dress was found in her garbage bin.
Commissioner Tommaso D’Orso flipped through the photos of the cadaver for the umpteenth time. But as many times as he flipped through them, the pink robe remained a pink robe.
“Ugly business, Signor Commissioner,” sighed Officer Sorrento.
“Really ugly,” D’Orso answered. “Adolfo Cini isn’t smart enough to make up a story like that in order to look innocent.”
“Yeah,” said Sorrento, slumping down on the chair in front of the desk.
“He’s sly, but too crude to come up with such a plan,” continued D’Orso with an ominous air. “It’s impossible, absolutely impossible that he killed the girl while she was wearing the red dress and then ripped it off and redressed her in the robe, staining it with blood in just the right places, and then screeched off right at the end of the fight only to fake complete ignorance of the facts during an interrogation.”
“You’re sure it’s impossible?” said Sorrento.
The commissioner looked him right in the eyes, understood that they were thinking the same thing, and then shook his head.
“The red dress wasn’t bloody,” he said, resigned. “Plus, the victim was wearing red stiletto shoes. Shoes like that with a robe. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Yup,” said the officer. “It means that after her fight with Cini she took off the ripped-up dress and put on the robe, and she would have certainly put on her slippers if—”
“If the murderer hadn’t arrived,” concluded the commissioner darkly. “Someone she would open the door for late at night, even wearing a robe.”
Officer Sorrento shook his head.
“Go get me Raffaele Conte,” sighed Tommaso D’Orso.
“Yes sir,” answered Sorrento with a hint of hesitation in his voice.
Raffaele Conte’s eyes were even redder than the day before. When the commissioner asked him if he knew about his ex-girlfriend’s profession, he closed them and sighed.
“I found out the other night.” He trembled. “She told me.”
“From the window?” D’Orso interrogated him. Bitter.
“No. You’re right in treating me like this,” the boy answered weakly. “I lied. I was a coward, I was afraid. But it was all so horrible, so... sudden.”
“An instant of rage... dismay over what you learned... you lost your head and grabbed that bronze statue, didn’t you?” Sorrento interjected, charitably.
Raffaele Conte shook his head.
“No, no... that’s not what happened. The other night, after she yelled at me from the window to leave, I stayed below her apartment, waiting for I don’t know what. Maybe just to see her shadow through the window... I don’t know.
I saw that guy go up then. Half an hour later, I saw him come out. I was furious and he had left the door open and took off screeching. So I took advantage of the fact that the door was open and went up and knocked. Melina opened right away. She thought I was that other guy. She was all banged up, she had a black eye and bruises on her arms. I asked her what had happened and she told me to mind my own business and to go away. I told her I wasn’t leaving, because I loved her, that I had never stopped loving her. She laughed in my face. She was hysterical, out of her head. She asked me what I was going to do with a cheap whore who shot porn films. That’s how she said it, with those words. I was shocked, out of breath, I didn’t know how bad things had gotten... but then, then I told her I didn’t care, that I’d take her away, that we could start over, that we could forget the past.”