the bib. “I mean, I’m not a pediatrician. But she doesn’t look healthy to me. At least, if a child of my own were in this condition, I’d have taken her to the hospital. She’s purple, just look.”
In fact, once freed of the onesie, the skin of the little girl was displaying a sickly coloring. What’s more, she seemed stunned, could barely breathe, and was moving sluggishly.
Romano felt his heart leap into his mouth. He had no experience with children, especially not newborn babies, and finding that tiny speck of life amidst the garbage had had the unpredictable effect of terrifying him.
“Let’s call an ambulance,” he said in a determined voice.
Just then, Deputy Chief Ottavia Calabrese came in.
“Hey, what are you two doing here already? I usually get in before . . . ”
The words got stuck in her throat. “Who’s this?” she asked after a moment of bafflement.
Guida replied as he continued to massage the newborn baby’s body to try to restore some warmth.
“Otta’, we need someone here right away, this baby isn’t well.”
Ottavia stared at Romano.
“But whose baby is it? Who brought her here?”
“I found her,” he replied in a flat tone. “Right by the dumpsters out front. And she isn’t . . . Guida says she isn’t at all well.”
Ottavia stepped closer, abruptly shoving her colleagues aside.
“Let me see. And yes, he’s right. Call an ambulance. Jesus, I don’t think she’s even breathing anymore—” She picked the baby up, shaking her gently. The little one emitted only a lament. “No, no, she’s breathing. But hurry, hurry!”
With no warning whatsoever, Romano burst into tears, while Guida shouted into the phone with all the urgency in the world.
VI
Officer Marco Aragona entered the squad room just as the clock struck eight.
“Punctuality is one of the fundamental qualities of a real policeman, there’s no two ways about it. And now, let me see who’s here and who isn’t . . . ” The broad smile that beamed from beneath his blue-tinted glasses vanished immediately. “What is this, are you all here already?”
Basically, the entire team stood around Ottavia’s desk: Commissario Palma, Lojacono, Di Nardo, Pisanelli; at the center stood Guida, who was in the middle of saying something. The only one missing was Romano, and when Aragona finished a quick headcount and noticed that fact, he regained some of his brashness.
“Okay, though, I’m not the last one in. Good old Hulk is running late this morning, unless one of our colleagues already hauled him in for brawling in the middle of the night.”
Pisanelli turned to look at him. He was the oldest member of the team, by now almost of retirement age and, along with Ottavia, the sole survivor of the earthquake of the real Bastards, the ones who had been peddling the confiscated shipments of narcotics. He spoke in the tone of voice of a weary high school teacher addressing a simple-minded student.
“Oh, hey Marco, welcome to the office. I was just asking myself why it was so pleasant in here, this morning. And in any case, not that you ask, Romano was the first one in: it wasn’t even seven yet when he arrived. Right now, he’s at the hospital.”
Aragona started in surprise, but he immediately shifted into defensive mode: there was always the possibility that they were pulling his leg, as usual, and he didn’t want them to think that he’d fallen for it.
“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” he asked, speaking to everyone, more or less. “At the hospital? Why would he be at the hospital, I’d like to know? Did he manage to get himself shot?”
Palma stared at him, disheartened, then quickly brought him up to date on the latest occurrences. Then he pointed at Guida.
“And in fact, Guida here was just telling us about how he saw him come through the door with a baby girl in his arms.”
Guida nodded.
“That’s right, Commissa’. The little creature was having trouble breathing. I noticed it and did my best to clear her throat. Then Ottavia came in and we called 911.”
The deputy chief confirmed and added: “Romano wouldn’t take no for an answer: he got in the ambulance. First of all the ambulance attendant said he couldn’t ride, then he took one look at his face and . . . ”
“Oh, I can imagine that they let him ride,” said Aragona. “But who left this baby girl by the dumpsters?”
Alex heaved a sigh. Petite and taciturn, she was wearing a jacket over a pair of grey trousers.
“Who can say,” she replied. Then she turned and spoke to Palma. “That’s really the point, isn’t it, chief? We need to find whoever abandoned her.”
Palma ran a hand over his cheek. He was letting his beard grow, but he still wasn’t used to feeling the whiskers on his face.
“Well, of course. First of all, though, we need to inform the magistrate, naturally. Then we’ll start searching. Ottavia, you said that the little one couldn’t be more than a few days old, right?”
Ottavia shook her head.
“No, she was teeny-tiny. How can anyone bring themselves to leave a newborn baby in the street? Plus, she was sick!”
“And why would they have left her near a police station, and not at a hospital?” Alex pointed out.
In a low voice, Lojacono spoke up. As always, when he was concentrating on something, his face was expressionless; his almond-shaped eyes, narrowed to slits, gave him the appearance of a sleepy Asian immersed in some religious meditation.
“Maybe someone abandoned her precisely because she was sick. I hope I’m wrong, chief, but I doubt it’s going to be easy to track down the mother. If she’d given birth in a clinic, a hospital, or in any public facility with a professional staff, all she would have had to do was refuse to recognize the baby as her own, and they would have let her leave, certain that the baby would be cared for. Most likely, whoever abandoned this baby just couldn’t handle the situation, and that’s why she did what she did.”
“Fine, but why leave her here?” asked Palma. “What do the police have to do with this kind of matter?”
Aragona shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe this was just the first dumpster they stumbled upon. In fact, maybe it’s even someone who lives right around here. We could knock on doors in the buildings all around the neighborhood.”
“Sure we could,” Pisanelli said with a sigh of annoyance, “but the least they could have done was drop off a note with their address, at least that way we could have saved the time.”
Aragona considered the idea, scratching his chest, fresh from the waxing parlor and the sunlamp booth, through the opening in his unbuttoned shirt.
“No, that would strike me as excessive, actually leaving a note with the address. But maybe all we need to do is ask around a little bit, and . . . ”
Palma was stunned.
“Incredible, Arago’: you’re such an idiot that you don’t even notice when people are making fun of you.” He spoke to Lojacono. “So, you don’t think that we’ll find any trace of the baby girl in the hospital records?”
The lieutenant shook his head slightly.
“I can’t swear to it, but I’d be surprised. It wouldn’t make any sense, don’t you agree, chief? I can’t make head nor tails of why they’d leave her here, either. Like you said, no one thinks of the police if they’re planning to abandon a baby girl in hopes of saving her life. If