Italo made a face. Which escaped the notice of neither Rocco nor Italo’s girlfriend.

“Any particular problem, Italo?”

“I don’t like dogs!”

“What do you care? After all, she’s sleeping at my place, not at your place.”

“With a dog but not with me?”

“Oh, God, you’re relentless!”

“That’s enough!” the deputy chief interrupted them, clapping his hands. “That’s enough, listen to me carefully. Now we’re moving on to the hard part. There’s a man, Walter Cremonesi . . . he’s a former terrorist whom our nation’s correctional system seems unwilling to keep safely separate from the rest of society. Now he owns a vineyard just outside of Aosta, called Vini Primot.”

“Do I need to keep an eye on him?” asked Antonio.

Rocco nodded. “But be careful. He’s a vicious beast. Before tailing him, read up on his record. I’ll just say this: when you were still sucking on your mother’s tit, Cremonesi was already shooting people.” Rocco stood up. “One last thing. Give me the DVDs from the closed-circuit surveillance cameras. I’ll take them with me.”

“I’ll make sure you have them,” said Antonio. “How long are you going to be away?”

“I hope not long. It’s not as if they list Varallo prison as a Club Med vacation spot.”

TATIANA RANG THE BUZZER BY THE FRONT GATE FOR THE third time. She waited for ten seconds or so.

Nothing. Corrado wasn’t answering. Sitting behind the windowpane was the second-story neighbor, a little old lady with an enormous pair of eyeglasses whom Tatiana had never seen out on the streets of Francavilla al Mare. She waved to her to open her window. The woman seemed not to understand.

“Open the window!” she shouted. The woman got up out of her chair, slowly turned the handle, and pulled the window open.

“What is it?”

“Do you know Corrado Pizzuti? The guy who lives on the mezzanine floor?” And she pointed up at the closed windows.

The woman barely smiled. “Yes.”

“Do you know where he is? Have you seen him?”

“No.”

“Could you open the gate for me, please? That way I can cross the courtyard and go over to his staircase and call some other neighbor?”

“No.”

“There she is, the slut!” A high-pitched voice echoed across the courtyard behind Tatiana. She turned around. Another old woman had appeared in the second-story window of the apartment building facing the first, Staircase B. This woman’s hair color verged unexpectedly on pale green. “What are you doing sticking your face out the window, you slut!”

She had it in for the woman on the second floor of Staircase A. “Go back inside, you disgusting slut, you and your cats!”

The two women glared daggers at each other. Tatiana looked back and forth, first at one and then at the other, baffled.