They went back to the car. They didn’t say another word the whole way back. Caterina held the package with the perfume; Rocco smoked a cigarette. He had been transformed. His eyes had turned sad, glazed over, and the corners of his mouth twisted downward in a bitter frown. Even his hair seemed to have lost its body.

“Where . . . where are we going?”

“You’re going back to the office. I’ll take care of this on my own.”

“Why have you gone all sad?”

“Because I’ll never get used to reality, Caterina. The years go by, I see the filth over and over again, but I can never get used to it.”

“What reality . . . What are you talking about?”

“Finding the truth, Caterì. That’s my profession. That’s what they pay me to do. Not much, but they do pay me. And every time I discover the truth, I wish I could close my eyes and pretend that it wasn’t. But the facts speak loudly, my young friend, and they’re unmistakable.”

Caterina couldn’t understand. She was looking at the deputy chief, and he had transformed right in front of her eyes.

“It’s the shit, Deputy Inspector Rispoli. The shit that is constantly overflowing, and I can’t stand the stench anymore. That’s all.”

THE SECRETARY HAD KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE PRESIDENT’S office. She’d gone in. Then she’d reemerged with a bright smile on her face. “Please, Dottor Schiavone . . .” And Rocco went in.

Pietro Berguet stood up from his desk and walked toward him, arms thrown wide. “I owe you my thanks, Dottor Schiavone! Thanks to you and the prosecutor’s office, my company—”

Rocco interrupted him with a brusque gesture, raising his hand flat in front of him. Pietro stopped halfway, as if he’d just been punched in the nose. The two men looked into each other’s eyes.

“Why?” asked Rocco.

“Why am I thanking you?”

“No. Why did you do it?”

A timid smile appeared on Pietro’s face as he held his breath. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

“Amelia Abela. The escort.”

Pietro exhaled and relaxed. “Dottore, I know. But we’re all men, and I wouldn’t want you to think of me as a . . . a whoremonger, that’s the word. It was a moment of weakness, I beg you to—”

“Pietro, I’m not here from the vice squad. I don’t care either way who you go around screwing. I’m asking you why you were in cahoots with Amelia Abela and her brother.”

“In cahoots about what?”

“About Mimmo Cuntrera, Berguet. You were the mastermind.”

Those words landed with a glacial frost in the room. “The mastermind? I ask you, have you lost your mind?”