The Bastards of Pizzofalcone by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar

crowd, glaring at her, in search of other, more compliant, asses, less willing to defend themselves.
    It was about a kilometer from the funicular to home. The shops were all closed, but Ottavia still took longer than necessary. My feet, she thought, give my heart away. She pulled her keys out of her purse with an exaggerated calm, imagining that she was moving underwater. Then, with a sigh, she opened the door.
    â€œIs that you, my love?”
    How the fuck he managed to be so cheerful, loving, and affectionate, even after a hard day of work, Ottavia truly couldn’t understand.
    â€œYes, who else would it be? It’s me.”
    Her husband Gaetano appeared at the kitchen door with a cheerful expression on his face.
    â€œ
Ciao
! Have you seen the wind? The dish antenna is swinging around like a flag, we’re only getting cable. You want an aperitif?”
    As she was taking off her necklace and her earrings, Ottavia replied in a weary voice: “No, thanks. I’m shattered. I picked up something in the
rosticceria
; I just don’t feel like cooking tonight.”
    â€œCooking? Are you serious? I’ve already taken care of everything, my love. Just wait, it’s delicious! Fettuccine with mushrooms and cream, and lemon chicken scaloppini. I got a bottle of red, too, an Aglianico, the kind you like. It’ll be ready in five minutes, just relax until then.”
    Ottavia, standing in front of the bathroom mirror where she had gone to remove her makeup, thought to herself that being married to Superman was a curse greater than she could possibly bear. A highly respected and deeply educated engineer, he earned an enormous salary, had fifteen people reporting to him, and still found the time and energy to buy a bottle of Aglianico and cook
fettuccine ai funghi
. In any civilized country, she mused, he would have been executed by firing squad in the public square.
    She went into the dining room and shot a look at the sofa. Riccardo was there, as usual. As usual, with a pen in hand. As usual, doodling on a sheet of graph paper. As usual, closed up in a world that excluded everyone else.
    Gaetano walked in with a steaming tureen in his hands, and a fleck of cream on his cheek.
    â€œDinner’s ready! To the table, family! Riccardo, sweetheart, did you see? Mamma’s home!”
    Slowly, the boy lifted his face from the sheet of paper and looked vacantly around the room; then his eyes stopped on Ottavia, and in a cavernous voice he said:
“Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. Mammm
. . .
”
    From the corner of his mouth hung a streamer of drool. His hand went on methodically tracing circles on the sheet of graph paper, all of them concentric, all within the margins of the little squares, as if drawn with a compass.
Mamma
. The only word that he’d uttered in an intelligible manner in his thirteen years of life, amidst the indistinct murmurs he made as he watched his television shows. Nothing else. Nothing, ever. No window into the world of which he was the sole inhabitant.
    Ottavia went over to the boy and caressed the face that so closely resembled her own. She helped him to his feet and walked him to the table where Gaetano, chattering on about his wonderful day, ladled into each bowl a quantity of fettuccine that would have sated an entire soccer team, second-string players, too. Ottavia wondered what Commissario Palma was having for dinner that night.
    Mamma
,
mamma
, said Riccardo. Gaetano looked at her lovingly.
    Ottavia began eating, thinking how much she hated them both.

XI
    P alma had turned the old precinct house cafeteria into their new joint office by knocking down a drywall partition that someone had put up to transform a nice big bright room into two small dark depressing ones.
    The six desks had been arranged to as to allow each of them a certain degree of privacy if they spoke quietly on the phone; but each could easily attract the attention of the others. Lojacono,