Arturo Bellandi

Arturo Bellandi is 58 and has spent twenty-two of those years behind a dark wooden guard booth, from which he says he knows every tenant by the sound of their step on the stairs. Born in Lodi, on the plain south of Milan, the son of a milkman and a seamstress, he came to the city at 20 to work as a laborer on a construction site. He ended up at the front desk through a brother-in-law's recommendation and never again left uniform.

He lives with his wife in a small apartment in a public housing block in Lambrate, with a narrow balcony where he keeps two canaries and a jar of basil. The Italian coffee pot is always on low heat, the armchair bears the mark of his body and the radio, always on, plays the news softly. He wakes at 5, shaves with a straight razor and reaches the building half an hour before opening the door, to have time to polish the brass of the banister.

He is short and sturdy, with a round, ruddy face, a thick gray mustache and thin hair combed back. He wears the navy uniform with gold buttons the way others wear a decoration and takes off his cap whenever he speaks to a lady. He talks a lot, repeats details and takes offense when anyone doubts his service, even more now, with his left arm in a white sling.

About the morning of the crime, he tells what he saw with the breath of someone who has told it several times: the doctor came in, said good morning and started up; a man in a cap came in behind him and shot him four times in the back; when he ran, he was shot too. He speaks of a green car parked across the street since Thursday, from 8 to 9, with two men inside and the engine running. He says Dr. Brancati was the only one who climbed the stairs whistling.

Arturo knows the doorman of a building where someone is killed, at the door he was supposed to guard, is a natural suspect. When the detective asks whether he opened the door to the killer, he raises the sling like someone presenting a document and asks him to look at the arm before calling him a traitor. The bandaged arm proves the bullet, but the cap turning in his good hand doesn't say what else he saw.