Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone Read Online Free Page A

floor. Next to the door stood a suitcase and a leather trolley bag, both shut.
    â€œThe luggage belongs to the homeowners,” Rispo said. “They came back from Ischia this morning and found the place turned upside down. They’re in there, in the living room.”
    Alex pointed out to Lojacono the discreet security cameras, just like the ones outside, each with sensors connected to the alarm system. You certainly couldn’t say that S. Parascandolo, whoever that was, thought safety was of little importance. Even though all that attention didn’t seem to have done a lot of good.
    From the living room came rhythmic sobbing. Someone was crying.
    Lojacono started off, followed by Alex.

V
    N ot all the calls that come into a precinct house are the same.
    The phone rings all the time, and there’s always someone who answers it, someone who tries to make themselves heard over the cacophony of so many people all talking at the same time. In a precinct house’s bullpen, powerful emotions, passions, and sentiments clash: and so voices are raised, there’s confusion, there’s agitation. In precinct houses people shout, like in some circle of hell.
    When Ottavia Calabrese picked up on the second ring, everyone was talking. Aragona was shouting into his own receiver, asking Guida, the officer on duty at the front door, for a coffee; Romano was asking Pisanelli whether he knew of any one-bedroom apartments for rent near the precinct, and Pisanelli was giving him the name of a real estate agency run by a friend of his; Palma had just stuck his head out of his office to say good morning to everyone.
    But as soon as Ottavia, who had put one hand up to her ear to shut out the noise, said: “What? Someone took a child?” the room fell into a frozen silence. Calabrese grabbed a pen and started taking notes, her face taut, her voice cold and efficient. Only her eyes betrayed emotion.
    Palma took a step forward and came up to her desk, worried. A child. A child had been taken.
    Ottavia hung up. Everyone was looking at her.
    â€œA little boy is missing from a school field trip that was visiting Villa Rosenberg’s art gallery, not far from here. They’d just arrived and he vanished right away. One of the teachers made the call, a nun; it’s a private school on Via Petrarca.”
    She spoke in a low voice, distressed but still professional. She was staring straight at Palma, even though she was talking to the group at large. A child.
    Palma asked: “How do they know that he was taken? Couldn’t he have just wandered off, or be hiding somewhere, or something like that?”
    â€œOne of his classmates was with him. The boy said that he walked off with a woman. A blonde woman.”
    Silence. Tension, anxiety. Palma heaved a sigh.
    â€œAll right, let’s not waste time. Romano, Aragona, go straight there: Take the car. Pisanelli, get the name of the child, see what you can find out about the family, and if you can, let them know. Ottavia, call Villa Rosenberg back, tell them not to let anyone move: no one is to enter, no one is to leave. I’ll inform the operations center and have them send over a couple of squad cars from headquarters. Let’s get busy.”
    Â 
    To his usual crazy driving, Aragona had now added an embarrassed silence. He didn’t much like Francesco Romano, aka Hulk. Something about his gaze, often lost in space, his expression of vague suffering, frightened him; and his buzz cut, his bull neck, his jutting jaw, gave an impression of power held back, ready to explode at any moment. For that matter, what little he knew about him wasn’t especially reassuring: A friend of his, a uniformed police officer, had told Aragona that this Hulk had grabbed a suspect who was mocking him by the neck and sent him to the hospital. “Marcu’,” he’d said to him, “I was there, and it took three men to pry that guy loose from his hands;