Captain Malanò climbed onto his Ducati Multistrada after checking carefully to make sure it was exactly as he had left it when he parked it. Intact.
At forty he still felt like a boy: studio apartment with a galley kitchen on Via Posillipo in the space that was once his father’s ground floor concierge booth; a rapid climb upward through the ranks thanks to remarkable scholarly exploits integrated with, and actually carried out during, police operations; civil service exam passed successfully and on to the next thing; undergraduate degree achieved with the same techniques: studying at night, working by day, and vice versa.
Small daisy chains of discreet favors performed helped him along the road to, first, his degree, and afterward, the captainship of the Fuorigrotta police station.
Now life lay before him: he was multistrada, suitable for both paved and unpaved roads, just like his flame red Ducati; the serial killer case was sure to shorten his wait in the bureaucratic antechamber for the position of deputy police chief.
Here’s what people had to say about him:
“Handsome and amiable, let no one deny it, easy on the eyes and easy to talk to. But don’t you ever try to get between him and whatever stewpot he has his eyes on, because he’ll tear you limb from limb, or have you torn limb from limb by someone he sends to do the job.”
And here’s what Malanò had to say about himself:
“My life begins at age forty.” He liked nothing so much as a trite cliché. “As a boy I studied and I helped my father, then I had to beef up my shoulders, bowed from years of studying, then I went on working and studying, and progressed from that to studying and working. All this after being orphaned of my mother at age six. Only one love in my life, a bastard woman who’s still lodged firmly right here, in my heart.” Malanò was no fan of sophisticated lyrics in music. “So much the better, it just means that all the other bastard women on the prowl will find that vacancy occupied. Now my life, finally, belongs to me.”
He revved the bike and shot off toward the morgue. He meant to have a conversation with Dr. Grimaldi about the autopsy performed on the notorious corpse, which fate—well aware of the sacrifices he had made—had been so kind to lay on his doorstep. Fate, duly informed of the situation, had chosen one particular doorstep, smack in the heart of the soccer stadium where, in the earliest days of his career as a cop, choruses and choruses of soccer fans had hollered into his face chi non salta celerino è, è!—an old anti-cop soccer fight song.
Captain Malanò couldn’t have explained how or why he was happy when he rode his motorcycle. Just, very simply, that he was happy.
The beltway gave him a turbocharged itch for speed, an itch he was all too happy to scratch, with gusto. He started singing Vialdi’s biggest hit: Tu, solo tu, sei tu. Sei il sole al mattino, la luna la sera. Tu, solo tu, sei tu. Il mio cuore sbagliato se ne va e poi ritorna. Perchéééé tu, solo tu, sei tu. Because it’s you, only you, just you.
Dr. Carmine Grimaldi welcomed Malanò like a thorn in the trachea.
There was nothing he liked about the man: not the unseasonal leather jacket, not the oversized motorcycle, not the bandanna, an even brighter red than the motorcycle, not the beefed up body with its bulging bands of muscle, not the swagger, not the hand that kept wandering back to the holstered pistol as if it were a woman’s breast, reassuring simply because it had chosen him. Him and no one else but him.
He also didn’t like the words the man used: they came out of Malanò’s mouth with their party suits rumpled and torn. Those rips revealed threadbare, filthy linings.
Grimaldi’s almost seventy years made him think that the police captain of Fuorigrotta had a long-term goal that was the fruit of irritating ambition and unremarkable intelligence.
“You’re here,” was his greeting. “I can tell you immediately that the results will take a while, we can’t seem to establish the cause of death. From a quick initial glance I’d be inclined toward heart attack, but further investigation is called for. One thing is clear: the singer experienced sleep, followed by death.”
“And that’s it?”
“And that’s it.”
“Why can’t you identify the cause of death?”
“Why do most murders go unsolved?”
“The same old story, Grimaldi. You say the same thing every murder they bring you, you’re getting old.”
The doctor looked down at his hands. He studied, as if they weren’t his own, the spots, the wrinkles, the skin that folded over the clenched knuckles and the fragility that was consuming his fingernails.
“Right. Unless you have any other questions, I’ll be going.”
“Wait! Wait. Is it possible that the corpse was transported from the road to the stadium goalposts by a single person?”
“Anything’s possible. I’ll provide you with a full report on the facts, you all can have your fun with your theories.”
“It’s more than a theory. A dead body propped up on a soccer goalpost with grass stuffed in its mouth necessarily makes one think serial killer. Come on!”
“Ah, so you really like this idea of a serial killer: you’re forgetting where we are, even killers need someone to issue a permit of residency. And you’re not the office they turn to. Take good care of yourself, Malanò.”
The captain returned to his red motorcycle and checked it before throwing his leg over the seat. He did it again. He did it every time.