Now, then,” said Palma, “here we are. Before holding this meeting, we waited for Lieutenant Lojacono, the last addition to the staff. Now that we’re all here we can introduce ourselves.”
Lojacono hoped that the commissario’s cheerful and amiable demeanor was meant to encourage the staff; that it wasn’t dictated by any real and, in his opinion, unjustified optimism. The group looked pretty thrown together and it was, as Di Vincenzo had maliciously pointed out, made up of rejects from the city’s various precincts; and those rejects were here to replace dirty, disloyal cops, who had muddied their colleagues’ reputations by getting their faces splashed onto the front pages of the national press.
For that matter, Lojacono mused, he too was one of those rejects; and people had also accused him of being a dirty, disloyal cop.
Palma was still talking: “I’m not going to pretend that it will be an easy task: people warned me against taking this position, and the police chief himself debated, up to the very last minute, dissolving the precinct entirely. But I like daunting challenges, and so I accepted. It if turns out well, it’ll turn out well for all of us: if not, it’ll be bad for me in particular, because I doubt that any of you, for one reason or another, are interested in going back to where you came from.”
In the pause that followed, Lojacono shot a glance around the conference table, a long oval in light wood, coated with dust and scarred by cigarette burns. There were seven people, him included—all of various ages, genders, physical appearances, and expressions; he wondered what had brought them here, what stories haunted their pasts.
As if he’d read his mind, the commissario said: “I’d like you all to introduce yourselves, as if no one here knows anyone else. I’m Gigi Palma, the commissario of Pizzofalcone. I’m always available, I never close my office door, unless keeping it open is a problem for whoever is talking to me. I feel sure that if we work hard, and work honestly, in the end we’ll see results, and they’ll be good results. I try not to be prejudiced, and I don’t give a damn about what the newspapers have said about any of you: I’m wiping the slate clean, starting today. Best of luck. I’d begin with those of you who were already here, if you want to tell us a little something . . .”
He gestured to the woman he’d introduced to Lojacono. She nodded and said, in a low, melodious voice: “Ottavia Calabrese, deputy sergeant. I’m in charge of computer research and the secreteriat, but also press relations, and recently that’s been an especially nightmarish part of the job, believe me, even though some of the things . . . of the events that took place were handled by the police chief’s spokesman. The station house has been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by the internal investigators, as you can imagine. We assumed they were just going to shut us down, so this reorganization came as a welcome surprise. Let’s hope for the best.”
A collective nervous giggle greeted the woman’s closing sigh.
The next to speak was a bald, elderly-looking man with a raspy voice: “Giorgio Pisanelli, deputy captain. Before you ask, let me tell you: I’m only sixty-one.”
There was another round of laughter, which the man accepted with calm detachment. He went on: “I’ve been here for fifteen years; I might have risen through the ranks, but my wife . . . well, I had some problems at home, and I decided to focus on other things. I’d say that I’m this place’s institutional memory. I live in this neighborhood and I know more or less everyone. The internal investigators went over every single document that ever passed through my hands, to make sure I wasn’t in cahoots with those who were here before you: I can therefore say that I am certainly an honest person, as I’ve just discovered.”
He was satisfied to see that everyone, including Palma, was chuckling. Lojacono decided that Pisanelli must be a smart guy, to have figured out the atmosphere needed lightening.
Palma waved his hand toward the only other female present, a slender young woman, dressed in a neat, nondescript fashion.
“My name is Di Nardo. Alessandra Di Nardo. Officer first class. I come from the Decumano Maggiore precinct.”
She’d spoken with her eyes straight ahead, addressing no one in particular and with no emotion in her voice.
Palma gestured toward Lojacono.
“Lieutenant Giuseppe Lojacono, from the San Gaetano precinct.”
The commissario pointed to a young man sitting near the lieutenant.
As if operated by a remote control, he snapped to his feet. He was a short little man, with a strange Elvis hairstyle that concealed an incipient bald spot at the top of his head, and two long sideburns. He wore a shirt that gaped open over his neatly shaved chest. His skin was of a vaguely orange hue, the product of long sessions under a sunlamp. With studied deliberation, he took off a pair of blue-tinted aviators, a gesture which only accentuated his ridiculous appearance, and said: “I’m Marco. Corporal Marco Aragona. I come from police headquarters.”
Lojacono decided that things were actually worse than he’d assumed; it wasn’t going to be easy to get that station house up and running at even a barely decent level. Palma sighed, and it was the first time that the lieutenant had seen him waver as he considered his real chances of success.
“Well, okay then,” he said. “And what about you, down there at the end?”
At the far end of the table was a huge man, grim-faced, who hadn’t joined in the comments or the laughter. He kept drumming the table softly with the fingers of his left hand, keeping his right hand in his lap. His hair was extremely short, his neck was thick, and his strongly marked jaw emphasized the dour expression in his eyes.
He spoke, with visible reluctance: “Francesco Romano, warrant officer. I come from the Posillipo precinct.”
Palma nodded.
“All right, now we’ve all introduced ourselves. The one shortcoming that we have, compared to other investigative teams, is that here most of you are new to the precinct; that means we can’t have that team spirit, that reciprocal familiarity that normally constitutes an advantage.”
The suntanned young man snickered and said: “Maybe we should just say that they overdid it with the team spirit, the four cops who pulled that filthy move with the drugs.”
Palma glared at him, and Lojacono caught a glimpse of what the commissario could be like, once he doffed the mask of jovial benevolence at all costs.
“Officer Aragona, one more comment like that and I’ll kick your ass straight back to where you came from. And believe me, I can kick hard.”
Aragona sank down into his chair as if he wanted to disappear. Palma resumed: “So we need to make a special effort to get to know each other as soon as possible. The investigations will be conducted, case by case, strictly by two-person teams. For now, so as to better coordinate things and offer support from here, Pisanelli and Calabrese, who know the precinct, will remain on desk duty. The rest of you will take turns working outside, relying on these two. Is that all clear?”
Having registered the general nod of assent, he proceeded, satisfied.
“Very good. I’ve had a large room set up for you, with six desks. You’ll all be sitting together, so you can get to know each other. Break a leg.”
And he stood up.
A few minutes later, alone in his office, Commissario Luigi Palma, better known as Gigi, reviewed for the umpteenth time the confidential personnel files HR at headquarters had sent to him.
There wasn’t much to know about Pisanelli and Calabrese, the two who had been here when he arrived. As the deputy captain had said, their professional lives had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and if nothing had been found, that meant there was nothing there. But it was also true that they were both desk jockeys, and neither of them had much experience working in the field.
Di Nardo was young; she’d just recently turned twenty-eight; an aptitude for firearms, top scores on all her marksmanship tests, and it was this very enthusiasm that had proved her undoing, a shot discharged from her pistol in the police station where she worked, in circumstances that remained murky.
Romano was a hothead: he’d grabbed a suspect by the throat, and then proceeded to blacken the eye of a fellow cop who had tried—successfully—to keep him from making a real mess of things.
Palma let out a long sigh, and scratched his head. Aragona, the suntanned young man striking the ridiculous poses, was the product of nepotism, the grandson of the prefect of a city in Basilicata. He drove like a bat out of hell, and he’d been kicked off two bodyguard details, for two different magistrates. At police headquarters, they’d been only too delighted to be rid of him.
What about Lojacono? Well, he had that ugly episode on his record—the state’s witness who’d fingered him as a corrupt cop back in Sicily. But Palma had seen him in action on the Crocodile case, and he’d liked what he’d seen. It was Palma who had wanted him, even more than his fellow commissario Di Vincenzo had wanted to wash his hands of him. He had a strong hunch that the man was a smart cop. And an honest one.
Commissario Luigi Palma, better known as Gigi, hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.
He hoped it with all his heart.