Police Sergeant Blanca Occhiuzzi removed one of the earbuds that were driving Mozart right into the furthest corner of her brain.
She’d detected, in spite of the Mozart, a commotion out in the street, excessive even considering it was rush hour.
She lived in Fuorigrotta, across from the San Paolo Stadium, and she was accustomed to the sound of voices and cars, but that morning the noises outside indicated something out of the ordinary. She pulled the other earbud out of her other ear.
She made her way out to her balcony, and to her eyes the daylight was transformed into nothing more than a brighter shadow. She touched the railing, felt the warm metal. She leaned over.
She was on vacation, and she’d worked all summer long. In August Nini, her foster daughter, had left for London: fifteen years old and this was her first trip alone. Blanca had lost all appetite for vacation and solved a couple of cases instead.
She’d urged Nini to go, and now she was working overtime to compensate for eyes that knew only partial darkness. It wasn’t reasonable.
The first night Nini was away, the sergeant went to sniff her pillow, the wisteria scent of Nini. The surviving senses had sharpened, and Blanca dominated the jurisdictions of sound, smell, and touch. She’d lost most of her sight and a great deal more in a fire when she was thirteen.
She sniffed at Nini’s pillow. Then she promised herself that she wouldn’t do it again.
“You and I have both lost too much already. There’s no need to keep you from seeing everything you deserve to see, just so I can have a part of it.”
The sergeant took advantage of Nini’s absence to seek an assistant, something she’d never wanted before. She came to an agreement with Sergio Manzione, a twenty-something student from out of town. She’d chosen him for his irreverent manners; far better that than the usual unctuous pathos. She bought a compact car and began preparing to loosen her ties with Nini, at least in part.
The sounds from the street grew louder: sirens and screeching brakes and slamming car doors. From below the smell of gasoline and burning wafted up to her, gusts of the odor of frying mixed with the scent of rotting food. Blanca raised the sleeve of her sweater to cover the smell, then picked up the telephone, counted until she got to the speed dial button.
“Sergio, what’s happening?”
“What do I know? I was asleep. Why don’t you ask Nini?”
“Nini’s at school. But don’t you ever do any studying?”
“Don’t even say it, Auntie, I ask myself the same thing all the time.”
“Don’t call me Auntie.”
“Then you stop thinking about my failures in higher education. After all, what good’s a degree in classical literature? Sheesh.”
“Of course, they tied you up and blindfolded you when it was time to pick your major.”
“What can I do for you, Blanca?”
“Come on by here, I have to go downstairs to see what’s going on.”
Sergio knocked on the door fifteen minutes later. Blanca ignored the arm that the young man offered her and they headed down the stairs.
The woman walked with soft footsteps. Her body seemed to sense obstacles before brushing against or past them. Blanca’s beauty lay not in the individual parts, but in the composition of contrasts. Her voice was younger than she was. Her short hair emphasized the femininity of her features. The beautiful sensuous lips protected irregular, slightly protruding incisors; when they opened into a smile it was unclear whether they were offering a bite or a kiss.
“Stay close to me but don’t touch me. I’ll reach out for you.”
“Ah, if they could only hear you now, Auntie!”
“Shut up. You make me nostalgic for my dog.”
“And I love you too.”
The two of them were out on the street. Sergio explained to Blanca that there were policemen everywhere and crowds of people.
The sergeant tilted her head back.
“They’re saying that someone killed Jerry Vialdi, the singer. They found the dead body between one set of goalposts of the San Paolo Stadium. Take me to a policeman, but pick me one who looks intelligent.”
“How on earth did you manage to pick all that out with all this hubbub?”
“I can read lips.”
“Touché.”
After talking with a detective from the Fuorigrotta police station, Blanca Occhiuzzi asked Sergio to take her to her office in Pozzuoli:
“Summer vacation is over.”