I took a room at the Excelsior, I telephoned New York, putting off all my appointments indefinitely, and stayed in Rome. Without even needing to think about it, I had found the solution, the only one possible. I knew the name of the journalist who was blackmailing her. I easily found a photograph and information about him on Google. His father, a businessman, had died some years earlier, leaving a substantial inheritance. He didn’t have money problems, or real career aspirations. He wasn’t a famous reporter, having been stuck at a desk all his life. Every so often he was interviewed on television about the activities of the secret services: from there, I imagined, came his propensity for blackmail. I discovered where he lived with his wife and two children — on the Lungotevere, a few hundred meters from the Pantheon — and that was how he had happened to see us on that cursed afternoon. Giulia had told me what sort of man he was. He didn’t get along with his wife, treated her badly, seemed to enjoy making fun of her in public, as if to demonstrate his superiority. The poor woman, at dinners of colleagues that Giulia had sometimes attended with her husband, took it and took it, then every so often they had a tremendous quarrel. One Saturday, I posted myself near the man’s house and saw the whole family go out together, father, mother, children. They went shopping in a small supermarket in the neighborhood. I didn’t at all like the way he behaved with her, not bothering to help her carry the heaviest bags, and, with the children, grumbling with irritation at their innocent whims. In my rented car with the tinted windows, I waited near his house another couple of evenings. He would come home on his motorino, as so many do here in Rome, a little after midnight — always at the same time. A time when the Lungotevere is deserted.
I have to digress here, in order to make what happened next understandable. I was the first in my family of Italian-American immigrants to get a college degree. My family would not have had the money, or the patience or the desire, to send me to college. When I finished high school, I enlisted in the Army. I went to the military academy, became an officer, and, with the rank of lieutenant, served in the Special Forces, the Green Berets. Besides teaching me to kill, the Army paid for the college education that my family could never have afforded. After I got my law degree, I waited a short time, then I resigned and returned to civilian life. Of my years in uniform, what remains is a medal for valor — I prefer not to speak of how and where I got it — and the techniques of hand-to-hand combat. My specialty was the knife.
It was simple to get one. In Rome you can find knives of all sizes in hunting and fishing stores. I chose the one suitable for my needs: a short but sharp blade. The following evening, I waited as usual near the house. When he got off his scooter I came alongside him in the car, asking through the window, in my halting Italian, where was the closest hospital, and waving a huge map of Rome. I coughed, I stuttered, I looked like someone who was about to have a heart attack. He was obviously annoyed, but he opened the car door and leaned in to show me on the map. Under the map I held the knife. With a quick movement, from right to left, I cut his throat and pulled him in toward me. He fell without a cry. I had covered the seat with plastic, and I used a towel to stanch the blood. I closed the door and drove off. I parked a kilometer farther on, along the Tiber, near a bridge. Not a soul in sight. I took his wallet and watch. The body made a thud, and was immediately swallowed up by the water. I threw the knife and the wallet, emptied of money, into the river, much farther on, from two different bridges. I cleaned the car, took it to a garage, slept in the hotel. The next morning I got on a plane and returned to New York, but not before changing my victim’s euros to dollars and destroying the watch.
Giulia, whom I hadn’t heard from since the day of our last, brief encounter, called me three days later. She didn’t want to tell me anything on the telephone. Only that she needed to see me urgently. I took the first plane. We met in one of our usual cafés. She followed me to one of our usual hotels. In the room, she told me everything: the mysterious disappearance of her colleague the blackmailer, the corpse retrieved from the river, the lack of a motive, the police groping for clues, the hypothesis of murder committed during a robbery by some tramp, drug addict, or radical — the only types who hung around under the bridges and along the banks of the Tiber late at night. No one had seen anything. The crime seemed destined to remain unsolved. Without another word we undressed, we made love, then we lay there, silent, close. Until, as if overcome by a profound weariness, we fell asleep. And when we woke, it was as if everything could resume exactly as before.
Like every Italian-American, I’d had a Catholic education. As an adult, I stopped going to church and confessing for Holy Communion, but I remember perfectly well that a man can sin and be forgiven. God has mercy for everything, even a mortal sin. It’s necessary, however, for the sinner to repent. And I didn’t repent. For some time I deluded myself: It was true, I had cancelled out a human life, but that man was a pig, an unworthy being, garbage. I took a husband from a woman who didn’t love him, a father from children who deserved better, I said to myself. But the illusion didn’t last. I had become a lawyer because the concept of justice fascinated me, the attempt by men to come as close as possible to the truth. And the truth, bare and crude, is that I killed a man, I executed him without a trial. And I did it all alone: I was prosecutor, judge, executioner. A monstrosity.
And still I do not repent. I am aware of my sin, and yet I do not repent. I say further: I would do it again. I’ve had many women in my life, many have loved me, but I never really loved any of them in return. As a young man, seducing women was a mark of distinction, a badge attesting to virility and courage. I was attracted to the two I married, but never really in love. With some others it was a fleeting infatuation. For the most part, not even that. Only now that my hair is turning gray do I truly love; for the first time in my life. And I don’t intend to stop. If the seal of our love is secrecy, if the precondition is to maintain a magic circle that includes her husband and children, I will be vigilant so that the circle doesn’t break. If one day someone else discovers us, I’ll get another knife. I will protect my love, however I can, as long as I can.
As a member of the legal profession, I know that the perfect crime doesn’t exist. Sooner or later almost all murderers are discovered. That’s why I’m writing these lines, this memoir. To set down in black-and-white that Giulia had nothing to do with it. Giulia didn’t ask me to do anything. Giulia would never have approved of what I did. She would probably leave me if she knew. But meanwhile, until then, until my crime is eventually discovered, Giulia is mine. Two days a month, twelve hours a day, in a certain sense always, Giulia is mine. My Roman holidays continue, they might continue like this for my whole life, I’d put my signature on it. Like the signature and date I now place at the end of this document: Jack Galiardo, Rome, March 21, first day of spring, sitting in a café between the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.
I check the time: My love is late today, ten minutes already. Could something have happened? If so, why didn’t she call me? I pay the bill. Light another cigarette. I smoke it with rapid, deep inhalations, eagerly scrutinizing the faces in the crowd, in search of hers. I take the last swallow of beer. I push the chair back, I get up. There she is.