Black Run by Antonio Manzini

don’t know a thing. Neither who he was nor how he died.”
    â€œSo what am I supposed to tell those guys?”
    It wasn’t that the chief of police had forgotten the word. It was just that he never named the city’s crew of print journalists. He always called them “those guys.” As if he weren’t willing to soil his lips with the common noun. He hated them. As far as he was concerned, they were a life form just one step up from the amoeba, the one flat note in the symphony orchestra of creation. That was how he felt about the print journalists. “Those other guys,” television reporters—he didn’t even consider them to be living entities.
    That hatred was rooted deep in his personal history. It had been almost eighteen years since his wife left him for an editorialist at La Stampa, and since then Corsi had been waging a senseless crusade against every member of the guild, irrespective of race, religion, or political creed.

    â€œDottore, that’s what we know. If they would be patient—if the gentlemen of the press would be so good as to patiently await the developments of the investigation . . . Otherwise, unfortunately, I have nothing to add.”
    â€œThose guys won’t wait. They’re lying in wait, eager to bite me in the ass.”
    â€œThat’s what you think, Chief. The press around here loves you,” Rocco said seriously.
    â€œWhat makes you say that?”
    â€œI hear what people say. They respect you. They need you.”
    There was a pause. The police chief was mulling over what his underling had just told him. And Rocco smiled, delighted to go on tangling the threads of the relationship between his boss and “those guys.”
    â€œCut the bullshit. I know those guys. Listen here, Schiavone, would you rule out categorically the possibility that last night’s death might have been accidental?”
    â€œWith my luck? Yeah, I’d rule it out.”
    Andrea Corsi took a deep breath. “When are you going to give me more comforting information?”
    â€œIn, let’s say, forty-eight hours?”
    â€œLet’s say twenty-four!”
    â€œOkay, we make it thirty-six and not another word on the subject.”
    â€œSchiavone, what do you think this is, the flea market at Porta Portese? If I give you twenty-four hours, you have twenty-four hours.”
    â€œI’ll call you this time tomorrow morning.”
    â€œI’ll believe it when my team Sampdoria wins the national championship.”

    â€œIf I haven’t called you back in twenty-four hours, then I swear I’ll get you free tickets for the Genoa–Sampdoria match.”
    â€œI’m the police chief. I don’t need your free tickets.”
    And he hung up the phone.
    â€œWhat a pain in the ass!” shouted Rocco, stretching his aching arms. He was looking at a mountain of work, work, work. That’s the way life was up here in Aosta. Serious folks, serious city, inhabited by serious people who work hard and mind their own business. And if they got high, at the very most it was with a round of grolle , local multi-spouted mugs of grappa and coffee, passed around communally. The days of Rome were over, a city where dope was processed as if on an assembly line. The days of decent opportunities, lucky breaks—those days were over. How much longer would he be forced to languish in this purgatory? He lived in the richest city in Italy, with a per capita income to rival Luxembourg’s, but after four months he had nothing to show for it. Then he thought about Sebastiano. Who would be coming up north tomorrow. And if Sebastiano was willing to take a plane all the way to Turin and then a train, in the middle of winter, there must be a reason, and a very good one.
    That thought electrified him to the point that he found himself on his feet, rubbing his hands together. Only when his hand was on the door handle did he remember the