LITMIR.BIZ

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the police chief to transfer the officer to some police station in the Abruzzi where he would certainly be much more useful. Fortunately, that morning no one had come cheerfully out to greet him. The only person who’d said good morning was Scipioni, who was on duty at the front entrance. And Scipioni had limited his greeting to a bitter smile, and then lowered his eyes back to the papers he was going over. Rocco made it safely to his desk, where he smoked a nice fat joint. His healthy morning dose of grass. When he finally crushed the roach out in his ashtray, it was just past nine. Time to turn on his cell phone and begin the day. The phone immediately emitted an alert that meant he had a text message.

       Are you ever going to spend the night at my place?

      It was Nora. The woman he’d been exchanging bodily fluids with ever since he’d moved from Rome to Aosta. A shallow relationship, a sort of mutual aid society, but one that she was steering straight toward the breaking point—a demand for stability of some sort. Something that Rocco was unable and unwilling to face up to. He was perfectly fine with things the way they were. He didn’t need a girlfriend. His girlfriend was and always would be his wife, Marina. There was no room for another woman. Nora was beautiful and she helped to alleviate his loneliness. But he didn’t know how to resolve his psychological difficulties. People who go to an analyst do it because they want to get better. And there was no way that Rocco would ever set foot in an analyst’s office. No one walks a woman to the altar just for the exercise. If they go to the altar, it’s because they want to spend the rest of their lives with another person. Rocco had already taken that walk once years ago, and his intentions really had been sincere, the very best intentions. He was going to spend the rest of his life with Marina, and that was that. But sometimes things just don’t go the way you expect them to, they break, they unravel, and you can’t stitch them back together again. But that was a secondary problem. Rocco belonged to Marina, and Marina belonged to Rocco. Everything else was an afterthought, branches that could be pruned, autumn leaves.

      While Rocco was thinking about Nora’s face, her curves and her ankles, a sudden crushing realization hit him square in the forehead. He’d just remembered the words she had whispered to him the night before, as they lay curled up in bed. “Tomorrow I turn forty-three, and on my birthday I’m the queen. So you have to behave like a good boy,” and she had flashed him a smile, with her perfect white teeth.

      Rocco had continued kissing her and squeezing her large luscious breasts without a word. But even while he was enjoying Nora’s nude body, he understood that tomorrow he’d have to buy her a gift, and maybe even take her out to dinner, and certainly miss the Friday peek-ahead to Sunday’s Roma-Inter match.

      “No perfume,” she’d warned him, “and I hate all kinds of scarves and plants. I’ll buy my own earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, and the same goes for books. To say nothing of CDs. There, at least now you know what kind of presents not to get me, unless you’re actually trying to ruin my birthday.”

      What was left to bring as a gift? Nora had thrown him into a state of crisis. Or really she was forcing him to think, to reflect on what he should do. Giving presents, whether for birthdays or at Christmas, was one of the things that Rocco detested most intensely. He’d have to waste time on it, think of something, wander around from store to store like an asshole, and he didn’t feel like it in the slightest. But if he wanted to slip between the sheets and go on banqueting off that splendid female body, he’d need to dream up something. And he’d need to come up with it today, because today was Nora’s birthday.

      “What a pain in the ass,” he’d said under his breath, just as someone knocked at his office door. Rocco had lunged to yank open the window to air out the room, then like a bloodhound he’d sniffed at the ceiling and four walls to make sure you could no longer catch a whiff of cannabis, then he’d shouted “Avanti!” and Inspector Caterina Rispoli had walked in. The first thing she did was wrinkle her nose and make a face. “What’s that smell?”

      “I’m applying rosemary plasters for this cold I have!” Rocco had replied.

      “But you don’t seem to have a cold, sir.”

      “That’s because I use rosemary plasters. Which is why I don’t have a cold.”

      “Rosemary plasters? Never heard of them.”

      “Homeopathy, Caterina, it’s serious stuff.”

      “My grandmother taught me how to make plasters with eucalyptus nuts.”

      “What?”

      “Eucalyptus PLASTERS.”

      “My grandmother taught me how to make plasters too.”

      “With rosemary?”

      “No. With my own fucking business. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re doing in my office?”

      Caterina fluttered her long eyelashes for a moment and then, after regaining control of her nerves, she said: “There’s one crime report that might bear closer examination …” holding out a sheet of paper for Rocco to see. “In the park by the train station, somebody called to say that every night there’s a tremendous ruckus until three.”

      “Hookers?” Rocco had asked.

      “No.”

      “Drugs?”

      “That’s what I’m thinking.”

      Rocco gave the report a quick scan. “We ought to follow up on this …” Then a magnificent idea occurred to him that all by itself gave a brand-new meaning to the day. “Get me the cretins, right away.”

      “Get you the what?” Caterina asked.

      “D’Intino and Michele Deruta.”

      The inspector had nodded quickly and hurried out of the room. Rocco took that opportunity to close the window. It was freezing. But his excitement about the idea he’d just had made him forget about the chill that filled the room. Not five minutes later, D’Intino and Deruta, escorted by Caterina Rispoli, walked into his office.

      “D’Intino and Deruta,” Rocco said in a serious tone, “I have an important job for the two of you. It will require your utmost attention and sense of responsibility. Are you up to it?”

      Deruta had smiled and rocked back on his heels, balancing his 245 pounds of weight on his size 8 shoes. “Certainly, Dottore!”

      “Most assuredly, no doubt about it!” D’Intino backed him up.

      “Now listen carefully. I’m going to ask you to do a stakeout. At night.” The two officers were all ears. “In the park by the station. We suspect there’s drug dealing going on. We don’t know whether it’s smack or coke.”

      Deruta glanced at D’Intino in excitement. At last, an assignment worthy of their skills.

      “Find yourselves a place where you won’t be noticed. Requisition a camera, so you can take pictures and record everything you see. I want to know what they’re doing, how much narcotics they’re dealing, who’s doing the dealing, and in particular I want names. Are you up for it?”

      “Certainly,” D’Intino replied.

      “Well, though, I have to work at my wife’s bakery,” Deruta had objected. “You know that I often help her out, and we work until sunrise. Just last night I—”

      Snorting in disgust, Rocco stood up and cut off what the officer was saying. “Michele! It is a wonderful and admirable thing that you help your wife out at the bakery, and that you break your back with a second job. But first and foremost, you’re a sworn officer of the law, for fuck’s sake! Not a baker!”

      Deruta nodded.

      “You’ll both be reporting to Inspector Rispoli.”

      Deruta and D’Intino had swallowed the news unwillingly; it was clearly a bitter mouthful. “But why her? We always have to report to her!” D’Intino had the nerve to say.

      “First

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