“Same to you, Amelia . . . Amelia what, by the way?”

“Amelia is enough.” She shot him a wink and walked away. Rocco forced himself not to turn to watch her ass as she walked off. He gave in after just three seconds.

She had two exquisitely perfect hemispheres.

LUCKILY, THE THIRD LIGHTER WORKED. HE’D GIVEN THE first two to Lupa, who liked to disassemble them, grasping them between her paws as she chewed on them. With his first long drag, he realized that the case he had before him was a tough one, and that it wasn’t going to be easy to crack it. Only a few cars were going by on Corso Battaglione Aosta. He opened his office window and tossed the roach out onto the canopy roof. His curiosity piqued, he looked out. Right there, outside the window and on top of the canopy over the front entrance to police headquarters, he noticed an indecent quantity of roaches from previous joints. All tossed out there by him, day after day, since September of the year before. They formed a pile that might attract attention. If the police chief happened to lean out his office window on the third floor, he would certainly ask just what those little dots of paper piled up down there might be. Rocco needed to tidy up after himself. He swung his leg over the windowsill and looked down. Less than a yard below him was the roof of the canopy that covered the entrance to police headquarters, protecting it from the unending rains of Val d’Aosta.

DEPUTY INSPECTOR CATERINA RISPOLI HAD CHOSEN TO WALK to the office that day. She was eating a diet bar as she crossed the street. Police headquarters was right there, in front of her. She was in a foul mood. The night before she had quarreled with Italo. The usual issues. The usual problems that plague young couples everywhere. Italo wanted them to move in together. To Caterina, that sounded worse than a threat. It wasn’t that she was afraid. Rather, quite simply, she preferred to leave things the way they were now. She liked living in her little apartment, with her own spaces and her own books. The mere idea of having Italo in her home—with his messiness, his underwear, his pee stains all over the toilet rim, his PlayStation constantly on—horrified her. Like having to live with a teenager.

“You’re afraid to take a perfectly simple and natural step that any two people who are in love ought to be willing to take without even having to talk about it,” Italo had shouted at her.

“The idea of living together makes me anxious,” she’d told him. “Then we’d start neglecting each other, taking each other for granted, and the next thing you know you’re going to bed in droopy pajamas and woolen slippers, bundled up like so many Santa Clauses. After which, it’s good-bye, sex.”