The Bastards of Pizzofalcone by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page A

settling in by the window overlooking the castle jutting out into the sea, mentally recognized the commissario’s strategic skill in the deployment of resources: the only way to create solidarity of any kind in such a diverse group of people was to keep them together for as much time as possible.
    He noticed that the first to arrive had been Pisanelli, the deputy captain who was a veteran of Pizzofalcone. He’d hung a large corkboard behind his desk, and he was carefully pinning a series of photographs and newspaper clippings to it. Noticing his bewilderment, Calabrese, who was busy with the cables of two computers she was setting up on her desk, widened her eyes and whispered:
    â€œIt’s an obsession of his. Those are all the suicides that have taken place in this neighborhood over the past ten years. He’s convinced that they’re actually murders, and he’s been gathering material to prove it.”
    Pisanelli, from the back of the room, turned to look at them.
    â€œI heard you, you know, Ottavia. I know that you’re saying that I’m just a nutty old man.”
    He didn’t seem upset. If anything, sad. Calabrese replied: “Why, no, I’m saying no such thing, Giorgio. I was just explaining to him what all those newspaper clippings and photographs are for. Otherwise, Lojacono will think it’s to do with some complicated international plot.”
    The man spoke directly to the lieutenant, in a soft voice.
    â€œThe problem, my dear Lojacono, is that sometimes we can’t see past the tips of our own noses. We just take the easiest route. If someone wants us to think that someone killed themselves, all they need to do is leave a suicide note and there you go. I don’t think it’s right that just because a person is alone in the world, and maybe depressed, you can throw him out like a dirty old rag. I think that everyone deserves an investigation, a little research. That’s all.”
    Aragona, the suntanned young man, was carefully placing a silver paperweight, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Italian president’s office, on his desk; there, it simply made no sense. “As you can see,” he commented acidly, “there’s no real work for us to do here. If we’re just going to investigate suicides and pretend that they’re murders, then we might as well start playing contract bridge.”
    Pisanelli looked at him with unmistakable annoyance: “In that case, I hope that you live for a good many years, my friend. And that you turn into a lonely old man, like many of these here, on my bulletin board. And then, if someone ‘suicides’ you, you’ll be filed away in a hurry and no one will ever think of you again.”
    Ottavia opened her mouth as if to intervene, then shut it again and went back to untangling the welter of cables.
    The quiet girl, whom Lojacono remembered as Di Nardo, spoke in a low voice to Pisanelli: “And have any connections emerged to link the suicides? Have you found anything?”
    She seemed to be genuinely interested. The man studied her for a moment, making sure that she wasn’t just making fun of him. Then he said: “No, there aren’t any direct connections so far. And anyway, this is something I work on outside office hours. I keep most of the material at home; still, there are some details that make you think. The repeated use of certain words, in the suicide notes. The fact that many of them were written on a typewriter or a computer, which is something a person would be unlikely to do at such a desperate moment. The disconnect between the ways that some of the people . . . well, the ways that they did it, with respect to their personalities, their psychological profiles. A series of things that . . .”
    He was interrupted by Romano; the huge man had let himself flop down onto a chair and was now looking intently out the window: “If someone