Andrea Martina, besides being a friend of Runlovers, has a head that always produces stories and a hand (actually two!) that writes and tells them beautifully.
This is the story of a thief who has a brilliant idea.
Or so he thinks, because life is always unpredictable.
The trick was all there: finding a solid alibi.
Ever since Mrs. Lazzarin had opened her front door, pleading with him about that wasp nest on the balcony that was giving her grief, he had been tempted to return one day to that same house wearing a balaclava and a duffel bag to fill.
Tickling his fancy had been the postal passbook in plain view on a sideboard and a number of knick-knacks that surely had to be worth something-not to mention the surprises that certain ladies usually keep in the back of their drawers.
Six months he had been her across the street and no such idea had ever occurred to him.
Six months, the same that had passed since he had been released from prison, a detail that was best kept away from the other apartment buildings.
He had behaved well, had even tried to give himself two, three, four, countless new chances, but the nature of robbery could not drive it out of his head at all.
The how was simple, for someone like him.
The when needed work.
Like so many at that age, Mrs. Lazzarin cultivated that wholesome pastime of Sunday Mass, the only excuse that pushed her outside her friendly walls.
Even grocery shopping at the supermarket had been outsourced to the annoying attentions of a distant niece who, from time to time, visited her.
It was a simple affair, after all.
Every apparent downhill slope, however, has its pitfalls.
And he knew how it could turn out: the carabinieri would start asking the first questions among the apartment buildings, and it would take just one phone call to trace his criminal record and consign him straight to the throne of suspects with a very likely return to prison.
For that, an overwhelming alibi was needed.
He had dismissed the possibility of an accomplice out of hand, partly because of past experience and also because of the possibility of being faced with a meager loot that also had to be divided.
Intuition
The perfect plan came to him one morning while he was somewhere else and accidentally happened upon the finish line of a running event.
As the athletes crossed the finish line, the sound of a buzzer could be heard.
It didn’t take all this investigation to find out why: each athlete inserted a chip between their shoelaces that was activated by passing a sensor attached to the start line of the race and recorded each athlete’s time as they crossed the finish line.
It was one of those races where start and finish coincided at the same point, with a whole circuit to run in between.
He did not even have time to store the information, that immediately luck extended a hand: in two months’ time a half-marathon would be run in the city, on a Sunday morning of all days.
In a flash, a scenario materialized in which he would sign up for the half-marathon, start with the group, walk away from the course pointing toward his apartment building, climb the stairs, mug his neighbor momentarily at church, and, still in his running gear, return to the race course just a few kilometers before the finish line to show up and cross the finish line with great ease.
The chip would record that on that Sunday he had covered a distance of twenty-one and something kilometers in a couple of hours and that he could not possibly be the thief who had burglarized Mrs. Lazzarin’s house.
The frenzy of putting that perfect plan into practice clashed with the anticipation of the race.
Planning
It was necessary to be ready, to take care of every contingency, to plan.
How good he felt!
At last that sacred criminal thrill that he had feared he had lost had returned.
In the meantime, there was to register for the competition, and here arose the first snag, which consisted of a competitive medical examination-a practice he was familiar with given his brief stint as a provincial boxer.
That problem solved, the route had to be studied by identifying the exact spot where to disappear (that kiosk at the fourth kilometer was perfect) and reappear (the municipal park just before the sixteenth kilometer) without being conspicuous.
The two points also had the advantage of being quite close as the crow flies to his apartment building.
He had done all the calculations: it would take him just an hour or so to make the holdup and get back on the course, with a wide margin over Mrs. Lazzarin’s return from Sunday Mass.
The only detail: she would still have to run in the race for about ten kilometers.
He might as well start training.
His manic nature prompted him to choose the race route as his preferred training route.
He began dressing in fluorescent T-shirts and shorts, ready to blend in like a real runner.
On his way he encountered many other runners who, in greeting him, went a bit to threaten his desire to make himself invisible to suspicious eyes.
After the umpteenth greeting he realized that it was better to reciprocate and adhere to that kind of code, and he happened, without realizing it, to increase his pace every time he passed another runner, as if the greeting brought a surplus of energy.
Not only that, he slept better at night.
And then when he climbed the stairs he no longer felt the heaviness in his body and shortness of breath.
More than a few times it had happened to him, during a training session, to take his mind off the robbery of Mrs. Lazzarin for a moment and dig a little about himself: how he had ended up in jail, how hard it had been, some ideas for the future.
He was grinding out miles and miles that were a pleasure.
The race
Then race day arrived, and suddenly the criminal instincts came back overbearingly right from breakfast: a time table to be adhered to, everything calculated in detail, the certainty of having eliminated every source of risk.
Moments before the start, a photographer amused himself with a few shots of the athletes getting ready.
He jumped at the chance and even managed to get his picture taken, almost as if to say, “look, marshal, there are even photos that testify that I was on a different side.”
A great buzz was swirling among the runners, but he was focused on more than that.
The chip firmly strapped to his right shoe.
The countdown.
The go.
As if a switch had flipped in his brain, he began to zigzag his way through the flood of runners paving their way amid the cheers of a discreet crowd greeting their passage.
Out of sheer curiosity, during training, he had begun checking his times to see if he was improving.
Lo and behold: in the first few minutes of the race his pace was much faster than usual, dictated more by the excitement of the race than by his heartbeats.
A dragging force kept him glued to the asphalt, almost mesmerized in following the pace of those in front of him.
Not even the church bells, emphasizing the start of the mass Mrs. Lazzarin had gone to, could distract him.
And that kiosk at the fourth kilometer, a perfect point of escape from the race, he was passed in a hurry regardless of any calculation.
At eighteen kilometers he had a small crisis that forced him to slow his pace and walk.
Another runner came along who, with a few good words, invited him to react by offering to run with him for a while.
They ended up reaching the finish line together.
A girl put a medal around his neck.
It was not real gold, she could tell.
Yet it was worth something more. Andrea Martina