“Hey, Beppe, let’s do this: I’ll buy something, and while I’m paying, I’ll distract the checkout girl, so you guys can just stroll out without any problems.”
He looked at me for a few seconds with a puzzled expression on his face. He was trying to figure it out. Was I a shrewd son of a bitch or-as must have seemed far more likely-a complete pussy who was trying to pull one over on his friends? He probably couldn’t come up with a clear answer, but there was no more time to waste.
“Okay, I’ll tell the other guys. In a couple of minutes, you go to the cash register and while you pay, we’ll walk out. Then we’ll meet up back at my house.”
I felt an enormous wave of relief. I’d found the perfect solution: I wouldn’t come off as an incompetent fuck-up (a description that my friends had applied to me more than once, and with good reason), yet I was taking practically no risk, and I wasn’t committing a crime-or so I thought at the time. At that age, I still hadn’t grasped the concept of being an accomplice to a crime, much less the fundamental principals of aiding and abetting someone in the commission of a crime.
Thirty minutes later, we were all at Beppe’s house, and the dining room table was literally covered with cookies, cans of Coca-Cola, fruit juice cartons, chocolate bars, hard candies, snack cakes, cheese packs, and even a couple of salamis. In the middle of that cornucopia of junk food, solitary and pathetic, was the chocolate bar with puffed rice that I had bought and paid for with my own money.
I guess it was all pretty ridiculous, but back then I had a hard time seeing the fun in it. Once I got over my sense of relief, I was stuck facing the unpleasant truth: I’d abetted a theft, and I was just as much a thief as the others, just a much more cowardly one.
The other boys were eating, drinking, and recalling their daring deeds. I was terrified that someone might bring up my role in the raid and figure out my underlying motivations. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but I soon became too uncomfortable to stay. I invented an excuse that no one cared about anyway and left with my tail between my legs. I left the chocolate bar I’d bought on the dining room table.
“Guido, are you listening to me?”
“I’m sorry, Consuelo, I just got distracted. I remembered something I had forgotten about and…”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“You seemed a little spaced out.”
“It happens to me from time to time. Though lately it’s been happening a little more often, I have to admit.”
She said nothing. It seemed as if she were trying to find the words or work up the courage to ask a question but then couldn’t.
“Nothing to worry about, in any case. You can ask Maria Teresa. Every so often I seem like I’ve lost it, but I’m harmless.”
More or less.
22.
I gave no further signs of being mentally unbalanced. We finished going over the file, and Consuelo went back to her office. A short while later, a little earlier than we had agreed, Caterina arrived. Pasquale poked his head into my office and asked if he should send in the young lady now or have her wait until the time scheduled for her appointment. I told him to send her in, of course, even though her failure to be punctual annoyed me ever so slightly.
“I’m a little early. I can wait. By the way, I realized that I”-she hemmed and hawed here, uncertain whether to stick with the informal tu or go back to the stiff formal lei -“used the informal with you on the phone,” she said, as she made herself comfortable in the seat across from my desk. “Maybe that was overly familiar.”
“No worries. I’m done with what I was working on, and be as familiar as you like.”
No worries? Listen to yourself, Guerrieri. Have you lost your mind? After “no worries,” there are just three more steps-“just a sec,” “irregardless,” and “you and I” as the object of a transitive verb. After that, you’re well on your way down the road to hell that’s paved with slipshod grammar, where you’ll end up in the infernal circle of the murderers of language.
“I had a couple of errands to run, and I got them done earlier than I expected, so I thought I’d drop by. If you were still busy, I figured I could just wait.”
I nodded, forcing myself to look at her face and not at the white, menswear-style shirt, extensively unbuttoned, that she was wearing under a black leather jacket. I am inclined to imagine that my expression was not the most intelligent.
“So you told me on the phone that Nicoletta didn’t want to get involved. Is that really how she put it?”
“Yes, that’s what she said. She was pretty worked up.”
“But why? What’s she afraid of?”
“That I can’t say. I figured it might not be a good idea to press her about it on the phone. It seemed to me that if I wanted to help you, my first job was to convince her to agree to meet with you. Then you could ask her everything directly, yourself.”
“And was it her idea for you to be present?”
Before answering, Caterina brushed her hair off her forehead and tilted her head back slightly.
“She didn’t ask, and I didn’t suggest it. What I mean is, we talked, and I could tell that she was feeling uncomfortable, and the idea just kind of came to me that I should be there when you meet.”
There was something about what Caterina was saying and the way she was saying it that I couldn’t pin down, something I couldn’t quite get into focus, that made me slightly uncomfortable. I felt as if something were out of place in the scene, but I couldn’t identify what it was. As if the situation was eluding my control.
“So how did you leave things with her?”
“I told her we’d come down to Rome, that we’d all meet, that you’d ask her a few questions, and that basically it wouldn’t be much of a time commitment.”
“Did she ask you what kind of questions I have?”
“I told her what you asked me, because I figured you’d ask her the same things.”
Evidently, we’d have to do what she’d already decided and planned out. Almost without realizing it, I decided that I’d have to take care of making the reservations and buying the plane tickets myself. I certainly couldn’t ask Pasquale, much less Maria Teresa, to do it. The very idea of the red-faced explanations I’d have to give struck me as intolerable. I decided to use a different travel agency than the one we usually went to, in order to avoid any questions. I was caught up in a whirl of paranoid scheming. Caterina broke into my thoughts.
“So, in the meantime, have you talked to anyone else? Have you uncovered anything?”
“Uncovered might not be exactly the right word. I’m checking out some ideas I have about the role that drugs might have played, though I can’t say where that’s leading.”
“What do you mean, checking out some ideas?”
“Well, I’m a lawyer. I have some contacts, so I’m asking around a little bit.”
“You mean you’re talking to drug dealers?” asked Caterina, putting both hands on my desk and leaning toward me. I was about to tell her about Quintavalle, when it occurred to me that it might not be a good idea to go into too much detail.
“Like I said, I’m asking around, here and there, to see if anything interesting turns up.”
Caterina stayed there for a few seconds, leaning against my desk, looking at me. I thought I saw a gleam in her eye, and I guessed that she was about to press for more information, and in that instant I understood that she had decided to use me. To discover what had happened to her friend, I told myself. That idea gave me an unusual sensation, which I tried to decipher but couldn’t. Long seconds tiptoed past before she broke the silence.