Maybe the time had come to go pay a call on this journalist. The woman wouldn’t stop attacking him. But there was one thing he’d learned in all these years: Never respond. Never dive into the fray. That was exactly what Buccellato wanted. She was seeking a reaction, and if he stumbled into the trap, the woman would dine out on it for another three months. Instead, Schiavone had chosen the silent approach. Remote and unapproachable. Ignore those articles, go high when she went low, and thereby reduce those journalistic cannonades to mere blanks, loud bangs with no projectiles. To an attentive reader who had never seen a response from the deputy chief in the pages of that newspaper, it would be clear that the policeman wasn’t going to waste his time getting into snarling matches, but instead was at his desk, working hard, bringing in results and earning his salary. Still, his fingers were itching. He’d love to get his hands on her. If the journalist had been a man, he would have gone straight up to the newsroom, he’d have grabbed him by the lapels, and he would have given him a sharp, hard head butt right to his nasal septum. But that wasn’t something he could do with Sandra Buccellato. He crumpled up the newspaper and stood up from the little café table. “Let’s go, Lupa!” The dog followed him, her muzzle dirty with pastry crumbs from the sidewalk.

HE SMOKED THE JOINT ON THE WAY FROM PIAZZA CHANOUX to the courthouse. It wasn’t as nice as sprawling listlessly in his leather office chair, but it was still better than nothing. When he entered the prosecutor’s office, the jolt of adrenaline prompted in the staff by the arrests of the day before hadn’t entirely subsided. Dozens of people were circulating from one office to another, voices chased after each other in the hallways, a couple of Carabinieri in uniform were transporting file folders along with a court clerk. The door to Baldi’s office was wide-open. The judge stood, bent over his desk, checking documents. Lupa lunged at the carpet to continue her labors where she’d left off.

“Schiavone!” Baldi walked over to greet him with a broad smile on his face—“What a day!”—and shook his hand.

“Yes, a really beautiful day. The sun is shining and—”

Baldi burst out laughing. “Who gives a damn about the sunshine! I was talking about the arrests!”

“Right. But there is still one thing—”

“Don’t ruin it for me, please. I have some wonderful news for you. The public works contract is back on the table and Pietro Berguet is in the running. Happy?”

“Delighted. But now listen—”

“What?”

“The Cuntrera case.”