that, Rocco? Are you planning something along those lines?”
They both laughed.
“You know something, Italo? If you ask me, you ought to grow a goatee or a beard.”
“You think? You know, I’d thought about that myself. I don’t have any lips.”
“Exactly. You’d look less like a weasel.”
“I look like a weasel?”
“I never told you that? I’ve met lots of people who look like weasels. But never on the police force.”
After a six-month acquaintance, the two men understood each other clearly. Rocco liked Italo. He trusted him after what the two of them had done some time ago, intercepting that load of marijuana on a Dutch semi and splitting a nice big haul of several thousand euros. Italo was young, and in him Rocco glimpsed the same motivation that had led the deputy police chief to undertake his police career: pure chance. At the fateful moment when the deputy police chief’s classmates were starting life on the streets, working with blades and bullets, he just happened to put on the lawman’s uniform. Nothing more than that. For people who were born in Trastevere at the start of the sixties into blue-collar families, with neighbors who were on a first-name basis with prison, there were only two paths available. Like the game they used to play at the parish after-school when they were kids, a little game of tag known as police and thieves. Except now it was real. Rocco had become a cop, and Furio, Brizio, Sebastiano, Stampella, and all the others had become thieves. But they’d remained the best of friends.
“How on earth is a gang of burglars going to barricade themselves in an apartment, Italo? It’s not as if it’s a bank, with hostages and everything.”
“I don’t get it either.”
“I mean, if the people reporting them are a half-deaf old man and a woman, then what’s to stop them from coming out of the apartment, clubbing them senseless, and taking off in less than a minute?”
“Maybe the old man’s armed. He is a retired army warrant officer, after all.”
“Absolutely crazy,” said Rocco, looking out the window at the cars screeching to a halt and honking furiously as the BMW with Italo at the wheel zoomed past.
“Listen, Rocco, don’t you think we should use the siren? At least that way people would know it was the police and we’d be less likely to crash into someone!”
“I hate sirens.”
So, racing at 75 miles per hour through the city streets, they pulled up in front of no. 22, Via Brocherel.
Rocco buttoned up his loden overcoat and, followed by Italo, walked over to the two people waving their arms outside the front door.
An elderly man and a woman in her early forties, with straw-blond hair, a large run in her stocking, and blood on her kneecap.
“Police, police!” the woman was screaming, and her Slavic accent was echoing down the deserted street. The street might have been deserted, but a few inquisitive faces appeared behind the glass of windows here and there. The old man immediately stopped the woman with a wave of his hand, freezing her in place, as if to say, “Better let me handle this, man to man.” At the old man’s feet, a tiny pug of a dog, its eyes bulging out of its head, was barking furiously at a NO PARKING sign.
“Police?” asked the man, eyeing Rocco and Italo.
“What do you think?”
“Normally the police have a flashing light and a siren on top of their squad cars.”
“Normally people are a little bit better at minding their own fucking business,” Rocco replied, seriously. “Are you the one who called?”
“Yes. I’m Warrant Officer Paolo Rastelli. The signora here is certain that a gang of burglars have barricaded themselves in the apartment.”
“Do you live here?” asked the deputy police chief.
“No,” replied the warrant officer.
“Then this is your house?” Rocco asked, turning to Irina.
“No, I just come here to clean, every Monday and Wednesday and Fridays too,” the woman replied.
“Shut up!” the old man shouted at the dog, jerking at its leash until the little critter’s already blind eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. “Forgive me, Commissario, but this dog just won’t stop barking and it really gets on my nerves.”
“It’s typical of dogs, you know?” the deputy police chief said calmly.
“What is?”
“Barking. It’s in their nature.” He squatted down and with a single pat on the head silenced Flipper; now the dog was wagging its tail and licking his hand. “And anyway I’m not a commissario. The rank of commissario no longer exists. Deputy Police Chief Schiavone.” Then he looked over at the woman, who still had a frightened look on her face and her hair standing straight up, held in place by some electrostatic force, probably emanating from her light blue nylon sweater.
“Give me the keys!” Rocco said to the woman.
“To the apartment?” the Russian woman asked naively.
“No, to the city. Certainly, to the apartment, for the love of Jesus!” the retired warrant officer barked. “Otherwise how are they supposed to get in?”
Irina dropped her gaze. “I forget inside the keys when I run away.”
“Oh hell,” muttered Rocco under his breath. “Okay, let’s do this: what floor is it?”
“There … fourth!” and Irina pointed at the apartment building. “You see? Window up there with curtains is living room, then there is other room next to it, with shutters pulled down: that is den. Then there is last on left, the half bath, then—”
“Signora, it’s not as if I want to buy the apartment. All I need to know is where it is,” the deputy police chief brusquely interrupted her. Then he jutted his chin and directed Pierron toward the fourth-floor apartment. “Italo, what do you say?”
“How am I supposed to climb up there, Dottore? What we need is a locksmith.”
Rocco sighed, then glanced at the woman, who seemed to have regained her composure. “What kind of lock is it?”
“There are two keyholes,” Irina replied.
Rocco rolled his eyes. “Sure, but what kind? Pick-proof, lever tumbler, drum lock?”
“No … I don’t know. Apartment door.”
Rocco pulled open the street door. “Do you know the apartment number, or not that either?”
“Eleven,” Irina replied with a broad smile, proud that she could finally provide the police with some actionable intelligence. “Eleven R.”
Italo followed the deputy police chief.
“What
