Game for Five Read Online Free

couldn’t stop himself from asking, “But where do the Albanians fit in?”
    Gino looked up at him, gave an upward jerk of his chin (an age-old gesture, intended to reinforce one’s own opinions almost as if invoking divine knowledge for oneself: it is indispensable in barroom arguments, especially when dealing with subjects about which there might be a number of different viewpoints, such as the performance of a center-forward, a woman’s familiarity with oral-genital practices, and so on) and said, “Why, don’t you agree? Do you think it’s right for all these people to come here, without papers so you don’t even know who they are, and I’m supposed to believe they’re all decent people? They’re all crooks! They deal drugs, they steal, they think they’re God knows who . . . ”
    â€œWhat I meant,” Massimo continued wickedly, “was where do they fit in this time? Can you explain to me why every time something happens you bring up the Albanians, even when that woman had her bag snatched outside the Lomi baths?”
    Gino flushed and for a moment lost the thread of what he was saying. Three weeks earlier, a woman bather had been robbed of her bag outside that particular bathing establishment, and the old man had held forth for two days about the Albanian peril, prophesying every kind of misfortune and demanding that the government take action. It had gone on until the evening of the third day, when it emerged that the thief was the grandson of one of his neighbors.
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    ***
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    Taking advantage of the moment, Pilade now joined in the debate. “How do you know about the slippers?”
    â€œMassimo was telling us before you got here,” Gino said somewhat stiffly. “He was the one who found the poor girl.”
    â€œSo now you’ve dropped the Albanians and you suspect me?”
    â€œYou found her, did you?”
    â€œNot exactly, a guy who was near the trash can found her. When he found her he tried to call the police, but his cell phone was flat. As this bar was the only place open at 5:15 he came here to call the police, only he was dead drunk, so the switchboard operator thought it was a joke and hung up. I went with him to see where the body was, and then I called the police. They arrived five minutes later, they identified the girl within ten minutes, and since they’d already called the doctor they all looked a bit . . . ”
    Massimo broke off for a moment, passed the cloth over the table, and shook it over the bucket. He didn’t have to make an effort to remember that morning: he recalled everything very distinctly.
    He liked Dr. Carli, all things considered, and when he arrived at the parking lot by the pine wood Massimo was curious to see how he would react to seeing someone he knew in the trash can. He did know her, even if only by sight, because she was the daughter of a good friend of his.
    The doctor had lived up to his reputation of being a seraphic person: he had immediately recognized the girl, and had only stood there for a moment, looking at the body, before shaking his head dubiously.
    He hadn’t seemed upset: he may already have suspected something when he arrived. Nobody had had the presence of mind to look him in the eyes after he got out of the car and greeted the police officers. Only after examining the body, with a delicacy that was unusual in him, had he let himself go a little.
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    â€œYou know what the problem is?”
    Massimo said nothing, continuing to look the doctor in the eyes—eyes that now betrayed a touch of anxiety. It was clear that he had no desire to go home: most likely, he preferred the role of the efficient doctor to that of the grief-stricken friend.
    â€œThe problem is that I have to tell Arianna.”
    Precisely, Massimo thought.
    â€œAnd you don’t want to?” he asked. It was a stupid question, but he couldn’t just stand there and