He held the line. His old police station in Rome, where he’d worked for years and where De Silvestri was still on duty, the senior officer who had watched him enter the police force, a man with the memory of a computer and the intelligence of a Nobel laureate. With the receiver of his cordless phone in one hand, he looked out the window. Gray and damp. It was threatening to rain from one moment to the next. But the glass of the windowpanes wasn’t fogged over, a sign that the outdoor temperature was finally catching up with the spring.

“Dottore? What’s happened?” De Silvestri began in his rheumy voice.

“You heard about it?”

“By pure chance, on the regional news broadcast. Someone had it in for you, didn’t they?”

“Yes. I need some help, Alfredo.”

“Anything I can do.”

“Anyone who’s been released recently?”

“What do you mean by ‘anyone’?”

“Anyone I might have put behind bars. I don’t know, anyone who might have it in for me?”

He heard the officer breathing. “Dottor Schiavone, are you asking me to reprint the yellow pages?”

“Okay, but forget about the little stuff. Misdemeanor thefts, cases of fraud, that kind of bullshit. Focus on the heavy stuff.”

“How long do I have?”

“As long as you need.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Rocco ended the call. He’d suddenly felt a pang of hunger. He woke up Lupa.

“Shall we go out?”

“CAN I GO UP AND SEE CHIARA?” ASKED MAX.

“All right, but don’t stay long, all right? She’s still very tired,” said Giuliana Berguet.

Max smiled with his perfect teeth, swept back his head of long blond hair, and climbed the stairs that led from the living room to the bedrooms. He hadn’t seen his girlfriend in days. He’d never once gone to the hospital to see her. Hospitals freaked Max out. All it took was a glance from a sick person and he started to feel each and every malady afflicting him. An amputated leg, a heart attack, appendicitis, there wasn’t a single pathology that would fail to infect the young man like a bad smell wafting into his nostrils.