They walked through a living room the size of an apartment and approached the wine table, where Laura Turrini was chatting with a woman well into her seventies. A spiderweb of wrinkles on the face clashed with the lips newly redone by a cosmetic surgeon. “Laura, guess who’s here?”

“Anna!” Laura broke away from the table with a glance of apology to the older woman. “Anna, how nice to see you.” They embraced. Then Laura’s gaze turned sad when she saw Rocco. “Dottor Schiavone . . .”

“So you’ve already met?” Berardo asked.

“Yes,” Rocco replied. “How are you, Dottoressa Turrini?”

“Tonight we can be on a first-name basis.”

“How’s it going, Laura?”

“Fine. I see you’re in fine form!”

“Don’t lie,” Anna broke in. “He looks as if he’s just gotten off a forty-eight-hour stakeout!”

“Have you seen the Berguets lately?”

Laura turned pale. Her husband took it upon himself to intervene. “Don’t even talk about it . . . What happened to them . . . was . . . unpleasant?”

“Just ‘unpleasant’?”

“Well, of course. Is ‘terrible’ more like it?” asked Berardo.

Laura regained her normal coloring. “What do you think? I’m so sorry for what happened to the Berguets! I’ve been friends with Giuliana and Pietro for years now. The bank that I represent has always been close to the Berguets.”

“Except for the last little while.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Excuse me. Rocco, do you really think this is the time and place to talk about this sort of thing? We’re at a party!”

“Anna’s right!” Turrini added. “I have other guests, please excuse me . . .” And displaying a mouthful of teeth that gleamed like ivory, he abandoned the trio.

“May I offer you some wine?”

“Gladly,” said Anna, and chatting in a low voice with Laura, she walked away from Rocco. The deputy chief didn’t follow the two women. He stood there watching them as they approached the buffet table.

What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself.

SOMEWHERE THERE HAD TO BE SPEAKERS PLAYING MUSIC. IF the master of the house showed a certain eye for the visual arts, the same could not be said of his ears. Rocco thought he could recognize the saccharine notes of “Strangers in the Night” as mangled by the Italian saxophonist Fausto Papetti. He scrutinized the faces of the guests. The men were atomizing sheer arrogance from the pores of their skin. The women, in contrast, were exuding botulinum toxin. All the women seemed to have the same face. A face that had been re-created in an operating room. A democratic standardization of facial features, eliminating any diversity of race or physiognomy, making those faces smooth, glistening, and expressionless. A house full of reptiles.

“Well, are you going to take the apartment?”

The friendly voice of Police Chief Costa made him turn around to look at one of the three big windows that dominated the room. “Dottore, buonasera.”