Free Temporary Perfections by Gianrico Carofiglio Page A

man.
    I stopped punching. I stood there, face-to-face with Mister Bag, trying to regain control of my breathing, feeling the violent throbbing in my temples, as a desperate, fondness for the man-child I’d been, lying awake in the darkness, wrapped in my blanket, looking forward to what was yet to come, swept over me.
    When the swaying of the bag and my own breathing slowed, I shook myself out of that trance.
    Nico and the Velvet Underground were singing “I’ll Be Your Mirror.”
    “Okay, Mister Bag, I’m going to go take a shower and then I’m going to sleep. I hope. Anyway, it’s always a pleasure to spend a little time with you.”
    He nodded, swinging, understanding. He loved me, too, in spite of everything.

10.
    Inspector Navarra is a likable guy. He doesn’t particularly look like a policeman, and he looks even less like a military man. He has the face of a slightly overweight kid. He’s certainly not someone you’d imagine kicking in doors, gun in hand, to round up a ring of drug dealers, or interrogating suspects and slapping them around. His wife is an engineer who works as a researcher at National Research Council. He met her in college when he was studying engineering himself. Then he took the civil service exam to become a non-commissioned Carabinieri officer, passed, and stopped his university studies. He has three children, a dog, a hint of melancholy in his eyes, and a hobby that he loves: making paper airplanes.
    That sounds like a hobby for little kids, like a way of passing the time in a doctor’s waiting room.
    But not the way he does it. For every plane he builds, he spends days developing rough sketches, and then refining the blueprints, and then building prototypes and smoothing the rough edges, until the airplane flies just the way he wants. And when I say “flies,” I mean it in the truest sense of the word. Long, soaring flights, incredibly long, as if there were an engine and a pilot in the plane, or as if the plane were alive. As a way of thanking me for some legal advice I once gave his sister, he gave me one of his airplanes.I still have it, and I have to say it’s one of the few objects with which I’d really hate to part.
    I had Navarra’s cell phone number, so the following morning I gave him a call.
    “Inspector Navarra, it’s Counselor Guerrieri.”
    “Hello, counselor, how are you doing? Do you still have the paper plane I gave you?”
    “Of course I do. From time to time I look at it and wonder how you manage to create something like that out of pieces of paper.”
    “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked.
    “Yes, there is. I’d like to talk to you for half an hour. Could we meet somewhere?”
    “What’s it about?”
    “The disappearance of Manuela Ferraro. Her parents came to see me a few days ago and I’ve read the file. I’d like to discuss it with you if you have a minute.”
    “Are you going to court today?”
    “I don’t have any hearings, but if you’re going to be in court, we could meet there.”
    “If you’re coming just to talk to me, then don’t go to the trouble. Let’s do it this way: I’ll go to my hearing, I’ll ask if I can testify first thing, and when I’m done I’ll give you a call and then I’ll drop by your office.”
    I told him I didn’t want to impose on him; he replied that it was a pleasure for him to come and see me. He said that he liked me, which he couldn’t say for most of my colleagues, and that, in his opinion, I should have been a prosecutor. He liked the way I had argued on behalf of the plaintiff in a trial for usury for which he’d conducted the police investigations. He said that if it had been up to the prosecutor, the bastard who was on trial would have gottenoff scot-free. If the judges sentenced that band of loan sharks to hard prison time, it was to my credit, he said. It would be a pleasure to come see me, he said again.
    He called me earlier than I expected. His trial had been adjourned