They decided to go separately, each under their own power.
Piras, who had been summoned directly by the police chief, was expecting a car from the district attorney’s office; Lojacono, who’d been alerted by Palma, had his own car.
When it had become clear to them that, for the second time, they were going to have to separate, just when things were about to turn especially nice, they’d indulged in one long last look. Then she had caressed his face and he had given her a fleeting smile.
“I’m right here,” she had said, quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Me either,” Lojacono had replied. And now he was driving through the night toward police headquarters, where he knew Alex would be waiting for him.
He felt he was seething inside. His desire for Laura, the beauty of the evening, and, especially, the cheerfulness, the youthful enthusiasm he’d experienced, had taken him back in time, restoring hope: he could be happy again. But afterward he had been jerked roughly back into the reality of his work as a policeman, who found himself faced on a daily basis with murders and horrors: the big city was a difficult place, and now Marinella, too, was in the big city.
The thought of his daughter came naturally into his mind, as a logical consequence, any time a crime was especially horrific. Every time he found himself investigating the murder of an innocent victim. Every time he had to deal with the effects of madness and evil.
It was just as he was thinking about her that he actually spotted her.
At first, he thought it must be a trick of the mind: your eyes follow a thought and trick themselves that they’re seeing something that’s not there.
He was stuck in traffic at the beginning of the waterfront esplanade, where at that time of night the city’s movida was in full fling and thousands of people were flowing toward the beachside “chalets,” stands and kiosks selling iced beverages, even in the midst of that terrible cold snap. His compact car was inching along in the second of the four lanes, and she was walking toward him, in the opposite direction, about thirty feet away.
A more careful scrutiny, free of extraneous thoughts, confirmed that he wasn’t suffering from a hallucination. It was Marinella, no doubt about it. She was laughing, her hair blowing free in the wind. She was laughing, joyous in a way he didn’t remember ever having seen her. She was laughing, her happy tip-tilted eyes turned upward. Turned up toward the face, vaguely familiar suddenly, of a tall, taut young man who was gesticulating as he told who knows what story.
Behind Lojacono the car horns blared impatiently, and he was forced to put the car in motion.
He looked around in search of a place to park. He was going to run and grab his daughter by the lapels she was clutching close around her neck, he’d demand to know why on earth she was out wandering the streets in the middle of the night in the company of a potential rapist in a city swarming with potential rapists, instead of sleeping peacefully in a warm bed, her arms wrapped around her teddy bear. But there was nowhere to park, nor double-park, or even triple-park—not the tiniest nook or cranny to leave his car. And they were expecting him at police headquarters.
He pulled the cell phone out of his inside jacket pocket, with some difficulty because his fingers were stiff with the cold, cursing under his breath as he fumbled with it. He dialed his daughter’s number, only to find that that cunning little Lucrezia Borgia had turned off her phone. In the meantime the river of cars had swept him far away.
Bewilderment was giving way to rage. He’d entrusted his daughter to someone. He’d placed his trust in someone. Tapping feverishly at his phone, he found Letizia’s number in his directory. He was moving forward in jerks and starts, urged along by an unfortunate automobile behind him occupied by four young men who were increasingly impatient with his distraction; they’d have much preferred someone with better reaction times in gobbling up the few yards of forward space that opened up from time to time.
It was the waiter who answered. From the music and the voices he understood that, in spite of the late hour, the trattoria was still buzzing.
Letizia came to the receiver. Her voice was upset, or at least so it seemed to Lojacono.
“Letizia? Ciao, it’s me. How is everything, all right?”
“Ah, ciao. Yes, of course, everything’s fine, why? And you, how are you? Are you having a good time?”
“Me? Yes, certainly, thanks. Could you pass me Marinella, please?”
“Marinella? Why? Has something happened?”
“No. I just want to speak to her. She’s there, isn’t she?”
“Here? Of course she’s here. But she had a bit of a headache, so she decided to go to sleep. I wouldn’t want to wake her up . . . ”
Lojacono let a moment of thoughtful silence flow past, then he said: “I think trust is the foundation of any good friendship, don’t you? I think that two friends need to know they can rely upon each other. If there’s no trust, then there can’t be any friendship, either.”
The woman’s voice was trembling with tears.
“Peppe, I never . . . believe me, I love Marinella as if she were my own daughter. I’d never do anything to hurt her, I wouldn’t let her run risks. I—”
The lieutenant felt the anger surge into his brain.
“First, don’t you ever call me Peppe again. Second, Marinella isn’t your daughter, she’s mine. And it’s up to me to decide whether something’s risky or not. I’m responsible for what might happen to her, and right now she’s out on the street with someone I don’t know, in the middle of the night, in a very dangerous city. And all of this is your fault, and my fault too, for thinking that you were different, somehow.”
He hung up, and when not even a second later, Letizia tried to call back, he angrily rejected the call. He had to focus on his work, this fraud concocted behind his back by his daughter and his friend was getting in the way of his professional responsibility: another unforgivable betrayal.
He’d just parked in the courtyard of police headquarters when he received Marinella’s call. In the background, he could hear the noise of traffic and people in the street: obviously the young woman had turned her phone back on and had quickly learned what had happened.
“Papà, ciao, it’s me. I’m sorry . . . ”
Standing, in the gusting wind and right before the eyes of the two policemen on duty at the front door, Lojacono hissed: “Go straight home. Now, do you understand?”
“But . . . Papà,” she stammered, “I haven’t done anything wrong, I went to the movies and got myself a sandwich! All my girlfriends at school go out at night, and—”
“I don’t care what your girlfriends do. Go straight home. We’ll talk later. And as soon as you get there, call me from the land line, that way I’ll know you’re really there.”
“But if I tell you that I’m going, don’t you trust me? You need to check up on me? I—”
“It was you who showed me that I can’t trust you. And apparently I can’t trust Letizia, either.”
Now the strains of frustration could be heard in Marinella’s voice.
“It’s not Letizia’s fault. I’m a woman, Papà, I’m not a little girl anymore, but you don’t want to accept it. For fuck’s sake, I just went out to see a movie! I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Lojacono stared grimly at the two policemen, who turned their eyes away.
“I’m responsible for you, with respect to your mother as well. And I have work to do, I can’t chase after you the way a girl your age needs to be chased after. I think it might be better if you pack your bags and head back to Sicily.”
He pressed the red button, ended the call, and strode briskly through the front door.