One day Ignoto01 calls me personally on my mobile (never happened before or after this event) and asks if I can urgently stop by his office. Full of joy, I think he finally wants to follow up on at least some of the horrifying situations described in my reports, so I tell him that in the evening, as soon as I finish work, I’ll rush over to him, and so I do.
When I meet him, Ignoto01 doesn’t mention my reports at all, but instead he shows me a women’s bicycle, asks me if by any chance that bike had been seen near my apartment building and if I knew who might have taken it. I tell him I know absolutely nothing, but that I would ask around among my contacts and, since it isn’t allowed to take photos of stolen goods in a law-enforcement office, with his permission I move closer to the bike and try to fix as many details as possible in my mind.
Before taking my leave I dare to ask Ignoto01 whether the investigative activities following my reports are moving forward; he assures me they are and adds: “but no more reports now, we’ve got too much work,” and he seems genuinely sorry when I reply, “but actually I’d only just started, those were only the most serious cases, the ones involving minors.”
Once home I make a few phone calls and I UNDERSTAND why ... so much fuss over a bicycle.
I’m told that an important mafia boss living in the area had bought two beautiful identical bicycles and had given them as gifts to two of his favorites (not to his wife, obviously, to the two preferred favorites, editor’s note). These bicycles had become a kind of badge, a trophy, a real “status symbol” for the two women, and all in all with good reason: there had been many “favorites” of the boss, but only those two had that bike... can you imagine?
Then, as time went by, the relationship with one of the two had worn out—let’s call her “favorite02” to distinguish her from the other, favorite01, who instead kept on “favoring” the boss.
Well, Favorite02 had the nerve to lend her bicycle to another person with whom, in the meantime, she had started a relationship—another local mafioso, but absolutely NOT a boss!
Favorite01 spotted the traitor riding the twin bike of hers, immediately went to the boss to mock him, and drove him into a rage; it’s said she said something like: “Now there will be serious consequences!”, implying that those consequences could even be... extreme!
The Boss set about tracking down the traitor and of course the bike. In the meantime the traitor had been informed of the boss’s fury and got rid of the bike near my home, where it was found by one of the law-enforcement patrols deployed for the search.
I want to reassure the reader about the “happy ending,” in the sense that at least the affair was resolved without serious consequences for anyone, and the bike was returned intact to its rightful owner.
At this point I invite the reader to ask what an officer of high rank in the local law-enforcement has to do with the bike of an ex-favorite-of-an-important-boss and why the search for a bike—moreover never stolen from anyone and certainly never the subject of a report—received so much attention and involved a sizable number of investigators.
I then ask the reader to try to answer the question based on simple logic, drawing their own personal conclusions about the affair!