Prova a prendermi - Try to catch me

"No. This is a whole different story," she says. At first, the tear rolling down to her chin is ambiguous — but the doubt doesn't last long. "Hold me!" The embrace is so tight that something creaks. It's always like this at the end of a story, because it makes sense: everything must come to a close. And the story of Wosh, of the kidnapped girls, and of lovers with too much trouble between them, will end that night. How, we shall find out.

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"Shall we put one more record on the turntable? The last one, I promise! We've stayed up late, but I can feel good vibrations in the air — as though our listeners don't want to go to sleep just yet. There's something magical tonight, don't you think? The smell that announces snowfall is always the same, the one we learned to love as children, and yet every time, believe me, it's as though it were the first. And when it happens, everyone has their own rituals. Some wait for the first flakes outside in the street, to feel them settle on their face. Some fix their gaze on the nearest lamp post, waiting for the cone of light to turn into one of those glass snow globes you shake whenever you want to repeat the miracle. Others simply go down to the courtyard to lift the windscreen wipers. Me? I put on my pyjamas with the little cartoon figures and fall asleep with the idea that tomorrow I'll go for a long walk. And what better way to ease yourself into a good night's sleep than a famous track from a few years back — guitar strings pulled taut, reverb, and that wonderfully vintage atmosphere? Beautiful, isn't it? I'm Lady J., the airwaves are those of Radio Bardo, and she is Nancy Sinatra. Bang Bang."

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Un colpo solo - One shot

A provincial town, too small to be entertaining, large enough to allow a serial killer to strike and vanish without a trace. Three murders at the onset of autumn, always carried out under cover of darkness and always following the same, cold-blooded method: a single gunshot to the heart. The new Commissioner, a young woman fighting to earn the respect of her superiors and colleagues. The senator, a cunning, selfish, and unfaithful man, often away from home due to the important positions he holds. The crime boss, who bribes officials and invests in the construction of a bypass road where none should exist. The crime boss's spokesperson, a young and attractive man who turns up at the least predictable times and places. The bodyguards, the prosecutor with no leads, the frightened people, and the city closing in on itself. The unsolved murder of a young prostitute, committed a few years earlier, coming to light just days after the new Commissioner takes office. Few clues and not a single piece of evidence. No one has the faintest idea who the killer might be — someone who could be hiding anywhere...

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The sleeve caught on the thorns.

They cut into the skin of her arm and held a blue strip of fabric.

It was a dense bush, grown beside a road sign warning drivers to slow down for animals.

The stylized deer appeared swallowed by the leaves. The plate below, bent by some vandal's show of force, indicated that the hazard would continue for at least a kilometer.

Blood soaked the intact part of the sleeve, trickled down to the leather strap of the small watch, and fell in wide warm drops onto the uncertain edge of the roadside.

One direction led deep into the woods, the other would have seen the vegetation gradually thin out, giving way to the houses that preceded the town proper. Miriana stood there, surrounded by the smell of damp earth and trampled grass. Indecision eroded her small advantage like a storm over sand.

To get away from the damned bastard who had beaten her with the butt of his pistol, she had run, cutting like the wind through the uncertainties of a forgotten wood: a succession of trees fallen to the ground, branches tangled like barbed wire, and treacherous ditches camouflaged by dead leaves. She had leaped over the stream while a stabbing pain in her chest spread down to her bare legs. She had risked her heart bursting, and now her shoes — so flat and flimsy they would have struggled on a poorly maintained pavement — were torturing her wounded feet.

Her socks alternated mud stains with purplish blotches, and the laces had collected the sticky little burrs that cling like hedgehogs.

The short socks, together with the brief skirt now reduced to a rag, had allowed grass, thorns, and nettles to reduce her bare legs to a lunar landscape. The tendril of a weed had wound itself into the dark, unkempt tangle of her dishevelled hair.

She looked left.

The road seemed to narrow where the tall grass met the asphalt. The summer-heavy branches bent until they reached their twins on the opposite side. The late afternoon sun filtered through the boughs in a thousand blinding blades of light. To the right, a mirror image of that same view, with a slight rise breaking the monotony a few hundred metres ahead.

Right.

The hard surface of the asphalt accepted no negotiations. Every step was an ordeal.

Miriana listened to the sounds behind her. She could hear water flowing and birds singing. She could hear the sound of the wind harmonising with millions of leaves, and the distant croaking of a frog.

Right.

She heard footsteps — heavy and deliberate — and the birds fell silent.

She moved to the centre of the road and asked her exhausted body for more. Her breath, reduced to a thread, began to wheeze like the brakes of a car at the bottom of a hill. A sickly warmth took hold of her neck.

She looked back and saw the road sign from behind, beside the sharp branch that had kept the scrap of fabric and a little of her skin.

She tried to run but the adrenaline was no match for the pain. Her feet felt as though they had been through a press; her knees creaked like an old boat on the open sea. The rise, distorted by a play of light, shadow, and heat, gave the impression of having moved further away.

The stretches of asphalt where the sun had managed to break through burned like hell beneath her thin soles, and a thirst of a thousand years and a thousand miles added itself to the foul taste in her mouth. Miriana did not know it, but a thick white foam had clotted at the corners of her mouth, making her look even more wretched. The bruise beneath her now-swollen eye had filled with a yellowish fluid and forced her mouth into a grotesque grimace.

When she realised that the rolling blur of light and reflections was a car, she threw her mouth open in a cry and found the strength to wave her arms.

She planted herself in the centre of the road and prayed to God that whoever was driving might help her. The car swerved and bounced, preceded by a shriek of tyres and metal, grazed her with its wing mirror inside a foul-smelling rush of air, and disappeared accelerating beyond the road sign. She watched it regain its line and dissolve into the shadow.

Left.

The footsteps following her struck the edge of the road without hesitation.

Six full minutes passed, and who knows how many cars.

Her heart struggled not to abandon her; her blood completed its circuit at least ten times. Fear crept under her skin, corroded her nerves, confused her senses. She saw a windscreen explode with reflected light, wheels lock up before her only to pull away the moment her face — ravaged by violence and exhaustion — came into focus. There were imperious swerves, engine roars, the smell of burning clutch. Sneering grilles bearing down on her, forcing her to jump aside.

She could feel her killer's eyes on her.

A few metres before the rise — deemed impossible to clear — she chose the woods.

After all, the woods had protected her, and she was certain they would do so again.

Before stepping in she caught her breath, leaning against the concrete pole of an old power line. She breathed, rubbed her hands over her face, and freed herself of the watch that was now torturing her swollen, bleeding, wounded wrist. She unclasped it and it fell on the edge of the asphalt together with the small gold case.

It broke the moment it touched the ground.

Invisibile - Invisible - The cases of Elettra Keita

It is all true. For years, every seven years, a young woman in Bardonecchia vanishes without a trace. The predator has finally emerged, and he is more dangerous than ever. Elettra and her partner, Piero, find themselves lost in a maze of confusion, where anger often threatens to cloud their judgment. As autumn settles over the mountains, the investigation reaches a chilling deadlock. "Know your enemy," says the ancient Eastern wisdom. Within these pages, you will witness the genesis of a monster—but only by paying the closest attention will you discover his one fatal weakness.

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Read the first chapter of the series:

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La regola del sette - The rule of seven - The cases of Elettra Keita

Elettra Keita is a Lieutenant in the Carabinieri. To the world, she is simply on vacation in the alpine resort of Bardonecchia, but in reality, she is conducting an undercover investigation. No one suspects a thing, yet in certain esoteric circles, a dark rumor persists: since 1986, every seven years, a young girl—often just passing through—vanishes without a trace. Accustomed to the high-stakes world of counter-terrorism and drug trafficking, Elettra starts by simply observing. The evidence for these crimes is thin, and her superiors view the mission as a mere formality—a "working holiday" to recover from the dangers of her previous assignments and a tactical move to silence local gossip. But in the shadows of the mountains, the truth may be far more sinister than anyone imagined.

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To write you need to be physically fit, with strong legs and a sturdy heart. You need to sleep well and eat properly. There's no point hammering at the keyboard like a blacksmith and forcing yourself through eight hours of work, and it's equally pointless to skip breaks or start a new chapter when what you really should be doing is taking a walk through the pine forest. Smoking or drinking is ruinous — never mind that Bukowski or Hemingway always kept a good bottle on their desk; they belonged to a different category entirely.

To succeed you need a strong opening, a good story that holds together, and a touch of cruelty. Clear away the distractions, the irritating noises, and the people who can't keep quiet. The television will be switched off without exception, and the place, above all, must be the right one.

Piero is sitting in the half-light of a room that smells of stale air, furnished with pieces from the eighties and covered in photographs and memories. A 2001 calendar, nailed beside the key hook, is frozen on the month of September. Seated in a swivel chair that creaks when it turns right, he rests his bare feet on the carpet, and the thin light filtering through the half-closed shutters makes the keys of the keyboard just legible. A bottle of water with a little lemon is all he needs to feel content, and at the foot of the desk sits an Invicta backpack in a serious shade of military green, packed with care. From the main pocket protrudes the paper-wrapped tube holding the last seven Ringo Ferrero biscuits, which must last the entire day.

Two chapters, four pages, three hundred words. The right pace to reach the end of the day with the calm of the righteous and the appetite for a decent dinner. The inspiration is good, the ideas are flowing and his fingers are galloping — but the walls are too thin. On the other side of the partition there must be a CD player set on loop. For a good half hour it has been repeating the same track, and with each repetition the volume rises slightly, until Piero's Shazam identifies the song in under three seconds. It's a disco track by Hot Chocolate. It's called "Every 1's a Winner" and it's packed with effects and synthesisers as though it had been composed by an electrician. But so far, so good.

The chapter is nearly finished. All that remains is to complete a series of dialogues and find the right closing line — but the track starts again: Never could believe the things you do to me, never could believe the way you are.

The apartment has the advantage of being at the end of a long corridor, on the fourth floor of an enormous building, a block with three units that has the air of having been designed by someone with a nostalgia for the former Soviet Union. Even though the façade was recently refreshed, those windows — small and closely spaced — do no justice to the beauty of the village or its enchanting mountain backdrop, and the bold architecture of the roof, with its overlapping and interlocking pitches, does little to compensate. Hot Chocolate raises its voice again.

Sometimes it's a small detail that ruins the atmosphere, and Piero gives up trying to continue and reads back what he has written so far. There is a spacing error, a double letter with one keystroke stuck, and a word that repeats itself after only three lines. He returns to the description of his protagonist and wonders whether he should plump up her lips a little.

The doorbell of the neighbouring apartment rings. Not a polite, brief, gentle tap — more like an air-raid siren. Piero grips the armrests to stop himself jumping out of the creaking chair and takes hold of the backpack strap. The gap between the first and second ring is only a few seconds. The second lasts an eternity.

"Clizia, sweetheart, I know you're in there," pleads the voice of a boy who can't be more than twenty. "Open up, please, I... I can't keep it all inside. I need to see you" — and the volume rises again, and it feels like being transported back to the disco era, with strobes and mirror balls scattering light across the room and girls in tight trousers dancing beneath mountains of hair styled in the most daring perms.

He whimpers: "Please, Clizia."

Piero would love to say something — to advise the broken heart to seek comfort elsewhere, to explain a couple of things he has learned about women. The boy gives up on the doorbell and knocks.

"Again today, sweetheart, just one last time" — but it's clear that door will never open, and that wounded women can hold out longer than a castle under siege, and that if poor Clizia has retreated to Bardonecchia in the off-season, it's because, evidently, she wants to be left alone.

To write you need physical stamina — that has already been established — but shipwrecked love affairs played out half a metre from your front door are corrosive and ruinous, and the effect on inspiration is fatal.

"For God's sake, kid, someone's going to have to tell you that Clizia doesn't want you anymore..." Piero would like to say — but he merely murmurs it, keeps it all to himself.

The opportunity to stay silent should always be seized.

I casi di Elettra Keita - La collezione The Cases of Electra Keita - The Collection

Elettra Keita: l'ufficiale che non sa ubbidire, in una Valsusa dove il silenzio uccide." 

"Elettra Keita: a rebel in uniform, solving crimes where the mountains meet the law.

Love Italian Crime but can't read Italian? You can easily translate the EPUB version of my books using AI tools like DeepL or Immersive Translate. They preserve the formatting, allowing you to enjoy Elettra Keita's adventures in English, French, or German with professional-grade fluency.

🇮🇹 Ami il Noir ma non parli italiano? Non fermarti alla lingua. Puoi leggere le avventure di Elettra Keita usando traduttori AI avanzati DeepL or Immersive Translate , che mantengono il formato originale del tuo eBook.

 

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Read the Italian Noir original atmosphere with professional-grade AI translation.

Pista fredda - I casi di Elettra Keita - Capitolo finale

 

Valsusa. Quattro scomparsi in ventidue anni. Nessun corpo.

Elettra Keita, Capitano dei Carabinieri, non crede alle coincidenze. Quando scopre che tutte le vittime si erano fotografate davanti alla stessa casa abbandonata, capisce: c’è un pattern.

C’è un killer. E nessuno lo sta cercando.

Per prenderlo, Elettra recluta un team di geni: un ex militare, un’americana con troppi segreti, una criminologa. Li tiene sotto ricatto. Li usa come armi e costruisce una trappola usando l’unica cosa alla quale il killer non può resistere: una nuova vittima.

Ma il mostro che stanno cacciando ha ucciso per venticinque anni senza lasciare tracce.

Ha un rituale.

Ha una logica.

E sa aspettare.

Valsusa. Four disappearances over twenty-two years. No bodies.

Elettra Keita, Captain of the Carabinieri, doesn't believe in coincidences. When she discovers that all the victims had photographed themselves in front of the same abandoned house, she understands: there is a pattern.

There is a killer. And no one is looking for him.

To catch him, Elettra recruits a team of geniuses: a former soldier, an American woman with too many secrets, a criminologist. She keeps them under blackmail. She uses them as weapons and builds a trap using the one thing the killer cannot resist: a new victim.

But the monster they are hunting has killed for twenty-five years without leaving a trace.

He has a ritual.

He has a logic.

And he knows how to wait.

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Thriller and its siblings - Video Arte e Arti Winter Edition

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W1DqmrSg5js

 

The Winner Takes It All

The soaked girl enters the bar and closes the door behind her. The wind, swollen with rain, charges the door with the force of an explosion and the effort to close it is doubled. She pushes, leans with all her weight and finally the lock clicks shut, keeping out the deluge. She's ashamed of her hair plastered to her face, of the dirty white raincoat reduced to a rag and of her makeup gone to hell. She's ashamed of the puddle next to the doormat, which she fed upon entering and which now spreads toward the center of the small establishment and up to the floral-patterned curtain covering the niche in the old wall. It's soaked half a meter high and the sawdust, which should have absorbed the water, has gathered into many soggy little heaps scattered everywhere.

The barmaid behind the counter, under thirty, with dark and unruly hair gathered with a scarf around her forehead, flashy ceramic earrings and intelligent eyes enhanced by a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows, is rinsing dried chocolate from the rim of a cup. Steam rises from the sink and fogs the glass of the liquor display case. The smell of coffee, cookies and hot punch reaches the tables and the customers, all of them, are soaked like wet chicks. There's a chilled pharmaceutical rep with the face of a defeated man and his leather briefcase set to dry next to the radiator, an elderly couple in their bare feet, huddled in their jackets waiting for their shoes to warm up again, and a hunter in full camouflage with his cap pulled down over his forehead. The rifle, dark green and apparently heavy as a hoe, rests on the table next to a cup of tea accompanied by a small plate of assorted cookies, and the two things clash like a drag queen at a nursery school party. The barrel's bore, large and dark, is pointed toward the window that frames the few parked cars and the courtyard turned into a lake. The girl, worried, looks at the weapon with a grimace of disgust. It's kept outside its case, abandoned on the bench, and it's so, so menacing. She can't censor the expression between indignation and fear.

The television, a large Samsung that occupies a third of the ochre-colored wall opposite the one with the niche and soaked curtain, broadcasts the local news. It talks about the bad weather, about the water bomb that unleashed without warning over half the province, bringing traffic to its knees. A reporter, under an orange raincoat and the feeble shelter of a small umbrella, no longer trusts his low shoes. He tries, together with his faithful cameraman, to frame what remains of the Roman bridge that for two thousand years, until just a few minutes before, had arched like a cat's back over the stream. You can make out a shapeless mass of uprooted stones and a waterfall of water and mud conquering the meadows. It slides out of the riverbed like lava from a volcano. The girl in the raincoat points to the screen and turns pale. Her voice, unlike the raging river, comes out in a thread.

"I... I crossed that bridge less than twenty minutes ago."

"It was predictable," comments the hunter while chewing a cookie. "That bridge is older than my mother-in-law and that stream doesn't know middle ground. We knew it would soon get a kick in the ass."

The girl in the raincoat remembers it. It reduced the roadway to a single lane and she, disciplined as always, had approached the sign at the beginning of the span to interpret the right of way. It was raining with such violence that the windshield wipers, at maximum speed, hadn't managed to keep the windshield clean. She had passed and heard the roar of the water and the stones crackling in the rushing current. She thought she saw a large tree floating. She thought she saw a dead, bloated animal rolling among the waves. All the customers are convinced she was lucky to have found that lost bar at the roadside. The elderly woman takes the words from her husband's mouth, rubs her hands and asks.

"But why did you arrive on foot, miss?"

She feels the cold in her back. "The car stopped suddenly and fortunately I wasn't far from here!"

The barmaid approaches. She takes off her raincoat and hangs it up. A clean towel is ready for her and the complicity between women is put into practice in the best way.

"Thank you!"

"Don't mention it," she says, while taking charge of the purse with the intention of hanging it on the radiator. "What happened to your car?"

The question is interesting and the pharmaceutical rep stops scrolling on his phone screen and waits.

"I don't know. I don't understand anything about it but the engine stopped suddenly and now it's parked in a clearing by the roadside, a place so hidden that I hope to find it still there when..."

The barmaid laughs. She has white, clean teeth that enhance the healthy color of her complexion. "When engines stop suddenly, it often means you're broke."

She laughs. "You're not wrong. I'm almost penniless..."

The elderly gentleman gets up to stretch his legs constrained in wet pants. He helps himself by placing his open palms on his lower back and walks limping to the wet curtain. He still wears those pants with an exaggeratedly high waist. "And it stopped just like that, without warning?"

"Without warning," she confirms.

She's beautiful, her regular face welcomes well the curve of her nose and even better the thin lips above the delicate chin. She has a long neck and the natural blonde of her hair, which is drying, intersects with a piece of costume jewelry, sober but elegant. She has the air of being a gentle person. The hunter leans over the rifle and shows he knows what he's talking about.

"Old car?"

She blushes. That old wreck from the '80s always embarrasses her. "A blue UNO, but a faded blue, by now..."

"Fire engine, then?"

"I... I wouldn't know."

It seems the rep wants to have his say but the hunter anticipates him. He's one of those bullies who starts the conversation, finishes it and in the spare time shoots deer. "The distributor cap..."

"I don't know anything about..."

The hunter gesticulates as if he wants to screw on the lid of a jam jar. "Engines of that type have a distributor cap that's not very waterproof and when you go through too many puddles you end up stranded." he pronounces, while the rep nods. "To start again, miss, whether you like it or not, you'll have to dry the cap with a rag."

The girl thanks him for the advice and turns to the television, where a worried-looking meteorologist lingers with his pointer on a black vortex. "Then I'll have to wait quite a while. I'll take... I'll take a cappuccino with a cannolo." she forces herself to smile. "Do you have the ones with zabaglione?"

"A cappuccino for me too," adds the rep.

The barmaid opens the pastry container and lingers for a few seconds, focusing her eyes on the bottom, after the sugar-dusted croissants on the surface. The cannolo is lying right there, soft and sinful. Her smile is reassuring. "Here it is, I had one left." She takes it, helping herself with a paper napkin, looks behind her for a small plate next to the coffee machine and organizes herself to prepare the cappuccino. While she fidgets with knobs and levers, the news continues from the studio. The guest, a state official in jacket and tie, says that the alert level is at maximum and that in the entire area around provincial road 23, only one bridge remains passable but that as a precaution it will be open only to rescue services and law enforcement. He expresses himself in cold, technical bureaucratese.

The elderly woman addresses the hunter. "Is this provincial road 23?"

"I don't know the area like the back of my hand, madam, but in this valley there's room for only one road, and it must be provincial road 23. Like you, I ended up here to escape the deluge and I'm stuck inside to avoid drowning and indeed, I see our barmaid is busy with cappuccinos and almost, if I were in time..."

The barmaid puts down the milk carton and lingers on the steam indicator. The display of white, perfect teeth is one of those that embarrasses men. "As soon as this contraption decides to get up to speed..."

"I have to warn my wife," blurts out the rep who's careful not to go outside and goes to make a phone call in the bathroom, taking his briefcase with the samples with him. The old lady feels her feet and resigns herself to waiting much longer before they dry. "Just think that we had gone out for a mountain trip and look at this disaster. We were smart to understand in time that those dark clouds brought misfortune and nothing, Gerlando drove as long as he could but in the end it seemed like being under a waterfall. Right, love?"

He huffs. Gerlando huffs and doesn't want to answer. His mood is bad because his hearing aid has batteries that are about to die and he won't be home for the game and for all those bad news that television doesn't stop giving. This time the scenario is blood and desperation. There are corpses covered with sheets that under the livid light of neon appear like piles of dirty laundry. The police wander nervously through the premises while a crowd of photographers pushes against the windows.

"Oh my Lord! But what happened?" exclaims the elderly woman while her husband begs her not to get agitated. "Lucia, my dear," he whispers to her. "You know the doctor recommended..."

The cappuccinos arrive for the girl and for the rep and the same service is for the hunter, who shows he has an extra gear and surprises everyone. "What happened? Easy. This morning there was a bank robbery in the town up there and things got out of hand. A hell of a shitty day for this area."

"You mean hostages died?" asks the pharmaceutical rep as he returns from the bathroom with his leather bag tucked under his arm.

"I mean a couple of crazy people improvised as gunmen and pulled out weapons when they shouldn't have and the robber reacted badly. He was alone and apparently very clever. He had his face covered with a Jimmy Carter mask, just like the one they used in that old movie."

"Point Break?" asks the blonde, though sure she hadn't made a mistake.

"Right, I don't watch that nonsense but I remember the title well and yes, it seems that son of a bitch was faster than Sundance Kid." he mimics a pistol with his large, hairy hand "He took down two plus one on the house, just to make things clear and they say he got away with six hundred thousand bills."

"And how did you know?" asks the barmaid, who's gotten into it and behind the counter is preparing a cappuccino for herself too.

"Fresh news, on the radio. I was listening to it in the car while coming down and having trouble distinguishing the curves and then I saw the bar and decided that today, I'd had enough troubles." he taps on the rifle that wobbles on the table. "Now you understand why he's ready to have his say, since on the radio they also said that the bandit and his accomplice who was waiting outside squealed away with a black Bravo and that a security guard put a bullet in the windshield. It seems he didn't hit anyone, since there's no more news of that car."

Lucia, the elderly lady, is scandalized like a novice in the stadium curve. "And he thinks..."

"He thinks they might need hostages to cover their escape and maybe look for them in an isolated bar."

"Good, what's your name?"

"Antonio," answers the rep, proud of his intuition, while running his hand through his hair that the rain has made wavy. He knows he's a good salesman, he's used to running around and visiting many doctors and many pharmacists for each trip. He has to earn as much as possible because his wife is pregnant with their second child and there are the car tires to change and the house roof that demands a touch-up. He'd be tempted to leave, to hit the road to get back to work while the rain is thick as a cement pour but then he reflects. "They said we're isolated, that the bridge downstream is closed and only cops, firefighters and ambulances pass through. It would be stupid to leave now. Do you think like me?"

The blonde shrugs and takes a sip. "With such good cappuccino I can stay for dinner... By the way, my name is Gisella."

"I'm Marta," intervenes the barmaid after raising her hand like a schoolgirl.

The lightning that no one expects splits the sky in two and Gisella, frightened, crashes into the wet curtain. Embarrassed, she struggles free, apologizing, and takes two steps forward, careful to avoid the usual puddle.

"If you want to stay for dinner, make yourself comfortable," says the barmaid indicating the stool at the counter. It's one of those minimalist pieces of furniture, with red padding over a chrome steel frame. Gisella obeys. She drags it toward herself, sits down and shows off a nice pair of legs.

The hunter consolidates his position as alpha male. "You like mountain walking, I see..."

"No, not in the mountains. I like running in the park."

"The reason?"

"I hate wild boars and I'm afraid some hunter might mistake me for one of them."

The barmaid's crooked grin is reflected in the glass behind the liquors.

---

The black Bravo, with the fake flashing light on the roof and shock absorbers tired like old wrecks, crosses the courtyard with wheels half-submerged and splashes water on the window without regard. Inside it feels like receiving a slap and Gerlando and Lucia jump to their feet.

The two who get out don't care about etiquette: one is tall and hunched and the other short, short-legged, thick-wristed and elegant as a ram at a fashion show. Both wear black windbreakers and dark caps that brush their eyebrows. They enter the establishment dripping and displaying police badges even before greeting. The short one presents the show with an unexpectedly effeminate voice. "No panic, we're patrolling the area to get our hands on some criminals."

"The ones from the bank robbery?" asks Antonio while pulling his precious sample case toward himself, but gets no answer. Gisella, on the stool, presses her thighs together and turns pale. Marta places her open hands on the counter. "Well, friends, you've got the wrong address. This is the last meeting of the wet feet, a tribe on the verge of extinction that bad pale faces persecute even in its natural habitat. Would you like something hot?"

The tall cop steps forward and Marta instinctively raises her hands. Unlike his stocky colleague, he displays a tenor voice. "We're not here to joke around. Documents, miss!"

"Okay," Marta responds, wiggling her fingers. "Okay. Can I lower these to my purse?"

"Well, we have things to do, we're not here to primp dolls or exchange compliments. Mario, go take a look at the john..." The short policeman shuffles to the bathroom door, looks inside and while he's at it, goes in for a piss.

"As we were saying, miss. Documents..." then he surveys the horizon, draws his pistol from the holster and raises it so everyone can see it. "You too. All of you, come on!"

Lucia trembles while rummaging in her purse and the rep Antonio does the same, working on the lock of his precious bag. It's at that point that the hunter's rifle rises and aims straight at the cop's stomach.

"No, no documents. I don't even know what he's called, he entered without wiping his shoes and didn't ask me if weapons make me nervous. I'd say first of all you two should introduce yourselves." a brief glance at the television and then again as before, ready to shoot. "The reporter up there said the bandits escaped aboard a black Bravo and if I'm not mistaken." he glances at Gerlando. "Move the curtain so we can see better. If I'm not mistaken, I was saying, you two just arrived with a beautiful, let me see, a beautiful black Bravo, 2005 I'd say. Those are the combinations that make you tighten your finger on the trigger, a bit like a column with ten nice fat deer."

When he comes out of the bathroom, the short agent already has his pistol drawn and that's when a Glock 17 emerges from the rep's briefcase, weathered enough to suggest the owner has learned to shoot. Marta's laughter is sincere. "Mexican standoff! I've been waiting my whole life to see one live..."

The tall cop, who meanwhile has put the hunter's heart in his sights, gathers saliva in his mouth and spits in the puddle. "Then enjoy it..."

"Then guns down, otherwise we all go to shit!" shouts the agent with the eunuch voice but the beauty comes when Marta uses Gisella's shoulder to rest the sawed-off shotgun that appeared from under the counter like a magic trick, and aims at the nearby target. The tall cop, now, is held at gunpoint by two weapons. He doesn't lose his cool and indeed, since his bargaining power has collapsed, he tries to retract.

"Well, at this point in the movie we all have a laugh and friends like before, agreed?"

The hunter won't have it. His face is carved with wrinkles and his skin rough and thick like an elephant's. His eyes express tension and fierce determination. "I instead say that my friend Gerlando puts on his shoes to avoid a toothache, takes an umbrella and goes to see if the windshield of your beautiful car is pierced by a bullet, just to get an idea of the cards we have on the table." he doesn't turn and seems to speak only with the corner of his mouth. "Do you agree, Gerlando?"

As before, Gerlando gets up helping himself with his arms that he immediately presses on his aching back. The still wet shoes are at the foot of the table. He taps on the hearing aid that's starting to malfunction and presses his wrinkled lips in a grimace. "It's good that this story ends soon and if getting rheumatism will help end it, then I'll get it."

"Oh my God, Gerlando, be careful!"

He puts on his shoes without lacing them, crosses the establishment with his soul on his shoulder and opens the door that lets in a gust of wind truck-sized with trailer. Before going out, he fishes an umbrella at random from those leaning against the wall, looks at his wife and reassures her with a kiss with a smack, something he must have learned when young. "I'm going, dear. I'm going and coming back."

Marta, without lowering the rifle, winks at the tall cop and with her head, insistently, indicates the curtain in front of the niche. She looks at the hunter and does the same with the other policeman and the ritual is repeated also with the rep. Lip reading is easy to interpret and those kissable lips, trust me, help pay attention.

They whisper: "The bandit is behind the curtain."

And after a gesture of understanding with the hunter, the tall cop tears the curtain with a decisive blow and he appears: Jimmy Carter.

He's broad-shouldered, robust, steady on his shapely legs that the jeans wet to the waist make appear in all their power. The mask has that forced smile that arouses nervousness, the empty eye sockets, the whitened sideburns and the abundant, soft cheeks. In the rush everyone recoils and the fat agent is the first to notice that black pistol sticking out of the pants pocket and shouts with all the breath he has in his throat and his voice comes out like a child's again.

"Hands up, bastard! Don't try to touch the weapon or I'll put a hole in your face!"

But Jimmy Carter is cold as a statue. Masks, you know, have that fixed, inscrutable expression that can make a poker player's fortune but irritates half of humanity. Impossible to interpret his intentions from body movements, indeed, to tell the truth he's motionless as a statue. At the bank, after all, he proved to be a purebred killer and an infallible shooter and that's when his hand approaches the pistol and then the establishment transforms into a shooting range.

The skinny cop shoots, the fat cop shoots. The pharmaceutical rep shoots and the hunter shoots, who with too much zeal hits the thin one in the neck who vainly tries to contain the jet of blood from his carotid. The bullet, which continues its ignorant course, plunges into the stacked plates on the shelves behind Jimmy Carter who at that point flips over like a foosball player and falls to the ground dead, in a din of shattered ceramics, screams, shots and curses. He remains there, to match the agent who spurts blood like the fountain in the square.

The stocky policeman has seen everything, and understands. The hunter must be one of the bandits because he shot his colleague aiming at his head. He took advantage of the confusion and now only waits for the right moment to turn around and stick some lead in his stomach and so he decides. Blinded by panic, he crosses the room and sees flowing with the corner of his eye the protagonists of the shootout: the man with the leather bag who dropped his Glock on the ground, the old lady hungry for air and pale, and the hunter. From behind he's just a mass of camouflage green and now dead flesh. Before shooting him in the neck, he notices the tuft of sparse, greasy hair sticking out from under the cap.

The bullet exits through his mouth and embeds in the table. The hunter remains still, with his head bowed, the rifle still shouldered and a jet of blood gushing from his nose that seems never to end. The detail that brings him back to reality is that pair of incisors, shot onto the chair back and stuck there together with a piece of gum.

He realizes too late about the sawed-off shotgun attached to his ear and when he turns to understand who it is, the cartridge explodes in his face.

"Sorry for the mess."

Says Gisella, who has taken the double-barrel from Marta and who now is sorry for the offal that has invaded the wall and for that butcher shop smell that has taken possession of the establishment.

Marta is cold as a pair of feet in winter. She grips a revolver, keeps the rep under fire and immediately understands he has no intention of picking up his Glock. Gerlando, hard of hearing for quite a while, enters the bar as if nothing happened and pronounces:

"There's no hole in the windshield."

---

"How many are there?"

"Well, four hundred and fifty thousand..." and she smiles while, under the car's courtesy light, she's committed to keeping the bundles balanced on her legs. Gisella has that naive girl look that helps her camouflage herself, to get away with it every time. No one ever suspects her and thanks to her pretty face she's always managed to get by well in the underworld.

Marta took a good breath once past the roadblock and crossed the only passable bridge under that cataclysm of water and wind that exhausted men and things. The police, as soon as they saw one of their cars with the flashing light on the roof, let her pass without even looking inside, exactly as they had predicted. Now she's light as a sparrow in spring and a bit richer than before.

They would have avoided killing the bartender and hanging him in the niche with the coat hanger hook planted in his back. They would have avoided it if only he hadn't welcomed them shouldering the sawed-off shotgun. That news about the black Bravo with the pierced windshield must have reached his ears listening to the same radio news that had informed the hunter.

Spontaneous streams descend from the slopes dragging grass, leaves and earth with them and the water has transformed the road into a torrent. At the first darkness of evening, the increasingly close lightning paints specters everywhere. Gisella, who has just put the money back in the bag, fears she left too many traces.

"Will they believe the story that the bartender went crazy and redid the cop's features? That there was one rifle too many and too much tension to manage, too much for a hunter without cold blood used to crouching among mushrooms?"

"Until they have a better story to believe..."

"Will those three keep the secret?"

Marta rubs her eyes. "We'll find out soon but what did you want, to kill them too?"

Gisella gets impatient. Her killer's composure is crumbling. The day has been heavy and she not only had to shoot at the bank because those customers wanted to play gunmen but also get soaked to the bone to make the car disappear. She had driven it to the slippery river bank to push it in, and it had been a struggle. At best they would have found it after months, it and its hole in the windshield. Marta reassures her. "We left them fifty thousand each and all of them, trust me, gave the impression of needing it badly, especially that guy with the briefcase and the Glock."

"Yes, that rep made me feel sorry for him, a pathetic little man!"

"To tell the truth, the Glock became mine," Marta responds amused, waving the rep's pistol. "The winner takes all."

Gisella makes a face of disappointment. That worn-out nine caliber would have pleased her, who after all had taken charge of the most unpleasant tasks. "Who said that?"

"What, that the winner takes all?"

"Yes..."

"Ah, a bunch of people. ABBA even sang it..."

Gisella remembers seeing the movie with Meryl Streep and tries to bring the tune to mind but it slips away like a live fish in wet hands. "And the two old folks?"

"The lady's heart didn't explode and he remained standing without even getting sick to his stomach. They'll go home happy to be alive and proud to have told all those lies to the cops. They'll say some prayers to be forgiven and then off, they'll change the battery in the hearing aid and leave for a nice seaside vacation without spending their entire pension."

The mountains with their destructive load of rain are behind them. The black Bravo, their special passport, foreseen in their cold criminal calculations and stolen from the agents, is anonymous as a worm in wet clods. Gisella has those mood swings that jump like the electrocardiogram of a sick heart.

"Will they find my DNA on Jimmy's mask and maybe some of my hair around?"

Marta is concentrated on driving. She nods her head. "It's very likely."

"And fingerprints. And then I drank the cappuccino you made for me." she darkens. "In the rush we didn't even wash the cups."

Marta slows down. It's strange, because after hours the rain is thinning and the road appears clear beyond the dry windshield. Come to think of it, she had her hair gathered in a scarf and had rinsed the cup carefully.

Gisella darkens.

It won't be possible to make other hits and not even hope for good luck anymore. The money obtained is little and in a few years she and Marta will have to reinvent themselves to survive, or...

"The winner takes all," says Marta as the car stops at the roadside. She hums in tune that piece that ABBA had brought to success so many years before. It spoke of a separation, hard but inevitable. It's incredible how sometimes melodies disappear from the mind without apparent remedy, to return forcefully like a record at maximum volume as soon as the first notes are hinted at:

"I apologize If it makes you feel bad Seeing me so tense No self-confidence But you see The winner takes it all"

The Glock, resting on her ribs, trembles, and Gisella this time, understands. The money is too little for both of them.

Her last look at the world is a blood-red sunset that elbows its way through the exhausted clouds.

© All rights reserved

La macchina nera

 

Nella bassa Valsusa, sotto una pioggia torrenziale, un’auto nera misteriosa semina il terrore, investendo deliberatamente i giovani del posto. La comunità è paralizzata dalla paura mentre il Capitano Elettra Keita, Comandante dei Carabinieri di Susa, è determinata a scoprire l’identità del killer e il movente dietro questa furia omicida.

Ignorando gli ordini superiori, Elettra e la sua amica, Commissario Vittoria Carpi della Polizia di Stato, si immergono in una lunga notte di indagini, sfidando l’oscurità e il diluvio incessante. La loro caccia all’assassino porterà a galla segreti sepolti e verità sconvolgenti, mettendo a dura prova non solo le loro capacità investigative, ma anche il loro legame di amicizia.

Un thriller italiano avvincente, dove la tensione sale con ogni goccia di pioggia e l’oscurità nasconde pericoli inimmaginabili, culminando in un colpo di scena che sovvertirà ogni certezza.

In the lower Susa valley, under torrential rain, a mysterious black car spreads terror by deliberately running over local young people. The community is paralyzed with fear while Captain Elettra Keita, Commander of the Carabinieri in Susa, is determined to uncover the killer's identity and the motive behind this homicidal rage.

Ignoring orders from above, Elettra and her friend, Commissioner Vittoria Carpi of the State Police, immerse themselves in a long night of investigation, defying darkness and the relentless downpour. Their hunt for the assassin will bring buried secrets and shocking truths to the surface, testing not only their investigative skills but also their bond of friendship.

A compelling Italian thriller where tension rises with every raindrop and darkness conceals unimaginable dangers, culminating in a twist that will overturn every certainty.

They Will Never Arrive - The lie we tell ourselves when the world ends

 

Claudio makes a vulgar gesture, the simple one that works for all occasions.
He closes one eye and the white skyscraper disappears behind his finger. He has never tolerated that building that looks like a refrigerator, and who could blame him. It seems to have plummeted from a distant galaxy amidst a sprawl of low buildings, ruining the harmony sought over years of history by happy architects. The rest of the city shivers under the afternoon heat wave, and the first two bottles of beer are finished. The shadow of the plane tree, alone, isn't enough to cool the cast iron bars of the bench. "They'll never arrive," he says, as he bends down to drag the cooler. As soon as it's opened, the smell of salami sandwiches sneaks straight into my nostrils, and I take advantage to place my hand on the biggest one. It's wrapped in a foil bundle and I'd bet on it: when I open it, they'll see it shining down there, from the streets downtown, from the bridges over the Po, and from the parks. I'll cause panic, for sure, many will start running and will trample the less fortunate like a herd of crazed buffalo. I only respond after the Heineken cap has popped off and rolled downhill for a few meters before slipping into a drain. "I think they will arrive, instead." It's always been like this. Whether talking about soccer or women, Claudio doesn't consider the possibility of being wrong. He raises his voice without realizing it and gains a few inches of bench to intimidate me. "You should read fewer books and pedal more. You don't keep half the world under your heel if you're not capable, and if you are capable, you deserve respect anyway, at least on this earth." "What respect? I think they're disgusting." 

"I don't make the rules, but apparently, in this game, on this table, with these players, they win and they will always win." 

His emerald green eyes are those of someone asking for an armed truce and they say much more than his rare words, doled out like a special whisky. He gives me a pat on the shoulder and clarifies. "I don't enjoy it, you know! It's just pragmatism on my part." Meanwhile, acid rises up my throat and I remedy with a bite of the sandwich. The Milano salami is arranged in numerous layers that the butter makes easy to tame. Given the limited time we had, this could be called great cuisine or the latest miracle. The first bite goes down almost whole, with a sip of beer chasing it and pushing back the stomach's reflux. The second, I savor: it calms me like a caress and I close my eyes to think of something beautiful. The ocean, for example. Claudio and I had been skilled and lucky enough to ride the wave, from the beginning to the end of the beach, while Katy and Eleanor ran barefoot to follow our surfboards. They had arrived just seconds later, when our muscles excited by the sea pulled like sails in the wind and our wet shorts clung to all our zest for life. It was us, the Maui volcanoes that seemed ready to explode, and the two wonders. Katy wore a light blue swimsuit, so minimalist that if she had paid for it by square centimeters, she would have gotten away with spending less than half a dollar. Eleanor had chosen a red tending toward amaranth, with a bra capable of supporting the abundance only thanks to the elegant combination of white cords that crossed on her tanned back. That evening we had eaten at a restaurant on the beach. While the sunset set the sea ablaze, the chef cooked fish on large stones on the terrace and suggested washing down dinner with a French white wine that tasted of fruit or with certain wines from the California hills. Customers arrived in dribs and drabs while a band of long-haired guys in Hawaiian shirts performed a surf rock repertoire ranging from the Surfaris to the Ventures, and passing through the Beach Boys. The arrangement of Sloop John B, I remember, had been hypnotic: Call for the Captain ashore Let me go home, let me go home I want to go home, yeah yeah But I certainly didn't want to go home, and neither did Claudio. Our two friends still had so much to give us, and not just morally. Katy had kept me awake until morning, and while I tried to catch up on a few hours of sleep, she had whispered in my ears all the songs she could remember. She came from New Orleans, Louisiana. I remember, she said she preferred the enormous waves of the Pacific to the still and muddy waters of the Mississippi that wind through the swamps where alligators swim. It was for that reason, and because she hated mosquitoes, that she spent three months a year on the beaches around Kahului, and so as not to be overcome by nostalgia, she had memorized Fats Domino's entire repertoire and had fallen asleep too, while struggling to remember the second verse of Blue Monday Sunday mornin' my head is bad But it's worth it for the time that I had But I've got to get my rest... Claudio can read my mind. 

"Are you thinking about Katy?" 

I close my eyes and imagine her sitting on the beach staring at the sky, but in the middle of the night. I'm sure Eleanor is with her, waiting. 

"And are you thinking about Eleanor?" 

"I'm thinking that she's part of that system and that despite being a drop in the ocean, maybe she could have done more." 

Because not everyone is like that and they don't deserve to be remembered as those who..." 

Something explodes down in the city. Firecrackers, gunshots, or police tear gas. I don't know, but my sweaty backside jumps on the bench. The authorities don't allow disorder because they think exactly like Claudio: they'll never arrive. Judging by the column of smoke rising from the intersection, they can only be poisonous tear gas. The news broadcasts have tried to reassure us in every way, but by now everyone has learned to understand how many lies they tell. Over the years, they've specialized in reading, reciting, any communiqué, and theirs were entirely similar to my friend's thought:
They'll never arrive - Claudio gulps down the last sip from the bottle and throws it over the hedge. We hear it shatter on the asphalt of the hairpin turn, and just like that, the time it takes to formulate a thought, and there he is with his back bent, rummaging in the bag. "One for the road?" he asks, waving the last two blondes with cold condensation on the glass. My legs are weak and I have a slight headache, but I don't back down. A flock of military planes flies over the houses with a boom and suddenly veers toward the sun. The question comes when the noise hasn't yet completely faded. "Do you remember Paul?" He was Eleanor's brother, a young man barely over twenty, beautiful like the sun of his land and covered in tattoos that made him look like the frescoed vault of a dome. In the morning, he delivered packages, flying on a Vespa from one end of the island to the other. In the afternoon and evening, he shot short films, hiring friends as actors. He knew musicians who lent themselves to soundtracks and also singers ready to perform for him. In the evening, he edited, and from one day to the next, he offered always new shows that he projected, as soon as it got dark, in the backyard of the house. "Yeah, Paul. He had an enormous talent for cinema." And the first tear of the afternoon is for him, for that first short film of his that had earned applause at Sundance and a decent public success. He had died the following year, with his lungs sliced by his own ribs, hit by a grandmother at the wheel of a white Prius. She had run the red light to avoid being late for her grandson's birthday, and the packages to be delivered had ended up scattered on the asphalt for dozens of meters along with the pieces of the scooter. "He would have been the best to film everything, to document." Only he was the lead actor and the death was real, like when a bullet had killed Brandon Lee on set. No mattresses and boxes to fall on, tomato sauce, and craftsmanship. Just hearts that stopped beating. "Anyway, they'll never arrive!" comments Claudio, who had a real friendship with Paul. It had seemed incredible to him that Paul wasn't jealous of his sister, and it had seemed equally incredible that such a young man could know the history of cinema by heart. Dr. Strangelove. He talked about it often, especially when he strummed his Taylor in front of the fire while the ocean waves turned to foam on the wet sand. Dr. Strangelove rode an atomic missile to arrive with it on the target and was the metaphor of a mad race that would never stop and the phallic symbol par excellence.
A bank of clouds moderates the sun that summer has placed as high as possible, and here's another flock of airplanes. They fly in a disorderly formation, and the last two seem delayed like the weakest cubs of the pack. The roar of the engines covers the screams of terror that seem to rise from the city and that I imagine coming from throats parched by the heat. Some take refuge in cellars, some seek escape in the countryside, but the ring road has turned sideways, mischievously, and now it's just a snake of smoke, curses, and hot bodywork gleaming on the horizon. Some have been placed safely under fifty meters of rock, but they are few and they are rich and important. 

"At the end of everything, they will still be few, but no longer rich and not even important," 

I reason aloud while Claudio enjoys his sandwich with crumbs caught in his mustache. He's monotonous like a stuck record: 

"They'll never arrive." 

I almost feel sorry for having disturbed him while he's chewing, for having risked making him choke.
And yet they arrive. From the east.
Comets, meteorites, long trails of smoke that slice the sky and go far, toward the south. The first one disappears behind the mountains, and it's there that Claudio, disappointed, spits out his bite to avoid choking. The wait is interminable, and once again he firmly believes in his god and points to that not-better-defined spot behind the crests and repeats to himself: 

"They'll never arrive!" And I would like to believe him, to hope not to be like a match before someone strikes it on sandpaper or like a drop of water about to fall on a hot plate. My voice tastes of the grave, and I speak with breath that escapes with difficulty through my throat contracted in terror. 

They're ours. They're intercepting them, you'll see, and they won't arrive..." The light is more intense than the sun that watches from up there, and Claudio is no longer tanned as usual. He's like an X-ray lazily laid on the light box in the doctor's office, and his emerald green eyes are a pair of transparent crystals, and the mountains: how small they appear compared to that ball of fire! They have arrived. Claudio hurries to finish his beer, and I walk back and forth. I resemble the little bear at the shooting gallery that struggles not to be hit but knows very well that his space for escape is reduced to a rail with the imminent end of the line, and the sky is full of bad news. The last one arrives together with the boom of the first explosion that has taken the time it needed to cross half the region, and it falls much closer. This time there are no mountains to dominate the wind, and after the flash, which pierces through my hands pressed against my eyes, comes the noise of a thousand trains running toward us, of continents rolling over pebbles, of screams of pain and desperation, of the world turning upside down with everything inside it. And then the wind. It's hot like a furnace and runs like a frightened horse and pushes us away like dry leaves in the storm, onto the lawn and onto the pavement that spreads at the feet of the basilica. The faithful who had gathered to pray have been laid down like grass by a scythe. I'm bleeding, breathing poison. The cough starts from my lungs and shakes me. I feel pain everywhere. I seem to be chewing sand at the foot of the volcano and I think of Maui, of surfing, of drinks on the beach while a friendly fire caresses our desire for love. Of Katy. Goodbye, Katy. Goodbye Eleanor, goodbye Hawaii. The good part of that wonderful people bends to the will of a few madmen, and no more restaurants on the beach, rock concerts, films, actors, singers, and stuntmen. No more guitars to embrace and make yours like a one-night companion. No more fires in front of the sea. The basilica's windows explode, and the dome's slabs fly away. It seems that a large blender is preparing something to drink. The portal opens wide, and finally, the pressure makes the walls collapse. They swell like the cheeks of a rude child about to make a raspberry, and the columns wobble, and the marble slabs detach, and the spires break. The plain is the racetrack of winds at a thousand kilometers per hour, and flames have replaced forests. The water of the Po reflects the ashen color of the sky. 

"They'll never arrive." 

Claudio consoles me as blood boils in his mouth. He wasn't quick enough to protect his eyes, and now he's blind. No more emerald green, just a white, milky film that resembles a burn. The funny thing is that the bread crumbs are still stuck in his mustache and roasted like a pizza forgotten in the oven. We embrace, and yes, I admit he's right. Hell has broken loose all around, but the city has been spared. The roofs have been stripped of tiles and reduced to skeletons, columns of smoke rise where gas depots have exploded, and the streets are flooded. In the end, the postcard that was meant for us wasn't delivered, intercepted by some missile that our allies managed to launch in time. The air stinks of hot iron and the screams in the background are those that Dante must have imagined for one of the lower circles. I let myself fall onto the lawn and look at the clouds remixed by the deadly wind.
The guttural sound of a large bomber insinuates itself in my ears like the vibration of a phone, and a black silhouette that appears like an insect on glass moves slowly in front of four long, fat condensation trails. Soon it will be exactly over the center of the city, over the vertical of that skyscraper that Claudio hates so much and that he can no longer see. I want to believe it's friendly. I want to believe it's not carrying a surprise package just for us. I want to believe they'll never arrive.