The Fatal Touch
Page 28
“Speaking of people who aren’t that bright, you hear about the hole Grattapaglia’s dug for himself ?”
“I heard that. He was unlucky. Of course, it’s very funny, too. A diplomat of all people. Can you make him the solver of some big case, make him look good? It’s all I can think of.”
“The thing they care most about now is the mugger who targets tourists and foreigners,” said Blume. “And we’re not getting anywhere with that. You haven’t got anything, have you?”
Paoloni licked a dollop of ketchup off a finger, then wiped the remaining orange stain onto the Formica of the tabletop. “Nope. Zilch. The only thing I can tell you is no one, and I mean no one, knows who this mugger is.”
“An outsider of some sort?”
“That’s the impression I get,” said Paoloni. “Definitely someone without a record. Works alone, too, which is weird—more a rapist’s profile. Now, tell me about these imaginary beings who are following you and why.”
Blume began with the Treacy investigation, skipping over most of the details and focusing on his meeting with Colonel Farinelli.
“Heard the name. Never met him, though,” said Paoloni. “Go on.”
Blume told Paoloni everything he thought was important. When he came to the part about the Colonel recording the two of them discussing the sale of the paintings, Paoloni interrupted him. “Were you thinking about it? You can tell me, you know.”
“I know I can,” said Blume. He swirled the ice cubes in his cup, then looked at the window, which the darkness outside and the brightness inside had turned into a mirror. “If I could use the paintings to catch the Colonel, then somehow still sell them, get a little extra, I don’t know. How bad would that be, given the context we work in? But thanks to Treacy’s notes, now I know they are probably worth little or not enough to justify the risk. So the temptation isn’t there anymore.”
Paoloni nodded understandingly and stood up. “I think I’ll have some McNuggets and a cheeseburger,” he said.
He was back a minute later saying, “The girl behind the counter says she’ll call me when the food’s ready. You’d think she’d bring it over. Doesn’t seem like she has much else on her hands, and she could definitely do with the exercise. I got a Happy Meal. Tell me more about Treacy and his notebooks.”
“I can do better than that,” said Blume. “Here. These are the notebooks themselves.” He slid them across the table.
Paoloni sucked a finger, and gingerly opened one and peered inside.
“It’s written in . . .?”
“English,” said Blume. “I told you.”
“Could be Arabic. You’re not expecting me to read these?”
“No. I want to leave them with you for safekeeping.”
“You told me the Colonel already has a copy. What’s the point?”
“I don’t want to be caught with them,” said Blume.
“So don’t get caught.”
“I don’t want them. They feel unlucky.”
“Alec! I’d never have guessed you were superstitious.”
“I’m not.”
“So you think the notebooks are jinxed, and that’s why you want me to have them?”
“I don’t believe in jinxes. I just don’t want them around for a while.”
“Fine, but your dog is more likely to read them before I do. So you’d better tell me a bit about what’s in them.”
Blume started talking about Treacy’s early life.
Paoloni was called for his Happy Meal and McNuggets. When he got back, he unwrapped his hamburger, flicked open the chicken box, and waved a magnanimous hand at the shining brown lumps inside.
“No thanks,” said Blume.
Paoloni bit into his hamburger. “You could eat this food even if you had no teeth,” he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then the back of his hand on the underside of the table, and said, “What the fuck do I care about Treacy’s early life? What do you care about it? Why were you even reading that?” He removed two slices of pickle. “What’s the basic structure?”
“Two volumes are autobiographical. A third is full of technical stuff about painting and forgeries, fixatives, different brushes, a history of pigments, papermaking, famous painters, styles, grounds, canvases, woodwork.”
“Sounds fascinating. You say he’s from Holland?”
“Ireland.”
“Yeah, well, one of those islands. Something’s made you get lost in the story of this guy’s life. I don’t know what it is. Seeing him dead or something. But you’re not working effectively. And another thing, who’s the chick you’re supposed to be studying these notebooks with?”
“Inspector Mattiola. She came in just before you quit.”
“Yeah, I think I got her. Brown hair, straight. Nice tits. Looks at you like this.” Paoloni popped a chicken chunk in his mouth, bent his head, and then raised it to give Blume a horrible leer.
“Not like that, no.”
“You know what I mean, puts her head down a bit, then looks at you from under her eyebrows, like she’s judging you. Good legs. Getting on a bit, though. So, what’s with you and her?”
“Nothing.”
“You just go to her house and read her bedtime stories, huh?”
“I think she’s got instinct,” said Blume.
“What makes you say that?”
Blume told him about Caterina’s trip to Pistoia that morning and her discoveries about Emma and Nightingale.
“You keep adding bits,” Paoloni complained. “Is that it, you’ve told me everything now?”
“More or less,” said Blume. He decided to hold back on the Velázquez angle for now.
“OK, but something’s still missing here, Alec. The Colonel’s stringing you along, just as you’re doing to him, but you both know the paintings aren’t worth all that much. The Colonel says he wants the notebooks because of what it says about what—Gladio agents, the CIA Stay Behind operation in the 1970s, his past dealings with Treacy—all that secret agent stuff. I don’t believe it. No one cares about that shit. Andreotti is a life senator, Cossiga got made a life senator, Berlusconi’s in power, there are seventy convicted criminals sitting in Parliament. No one gives a damn.”
“I forgot. There’s also this thing about the Colonel and Nightingale selling stuff to the Mafia.”
Paoloni turned and addressed the four empty bucket seats to his right. “Now he tells me.”
As Blume explained, Paoloni methodically shredded the food cartons on the table. Then, scooping them onto the tray, he placed the tray on the table next to them, crumpled his straw into his cup, and sucked his teeth.
“Except, it’s still bullshit, Alec. Maybe the Colonel found out about the notebooks through Nightingale, but if his main concern was about some minor Sicilian Don finding out he was swindled fifteen years ago, and the Colonel knows you’ve read the notebooks, then he’d have come to you, spoken to you about it, tried to buy or force your silence. But he didn’t do that. I don’t think he cares too much. The way you have told me this suggests the Colonel wanted to see what was in the notebooks, and he has some good reasons for not wanting them to go completely public. But he doesn’t seem all that worried that you have read them. It may have started out like that, but now it’s basically the other way around. You are more concerned about what he might find in them. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Blume watched the Russian sleepwalk in their direction wondering whether he was going to come to their table or walk right on by. The Russian could be a hit man. This could be a hit. No reason it should be, but it could be.
“I think he is looking for something else in there,” said Paoloni. “And I think that whatever it is, you have found it.”
The flip-flopped Russian walked right out.
Paoloni said, “You don’t want to tell me.”
Blume said nothing.
“Hey, Alec, we’re good friends, right?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Christ knows I’m glad you don’t,” said Blume.
“See? Friendship is all about not sharing,” said Paoloni. He floated his hand in the air, and Blume slapped it. “Maybe you’ll tell me later, huh?”
“Tell you what?” said Blume.
“That’s my man.”
Chapter 30
After four hours’ sleep, Blume stood under the shower listening to his cell phone ringing. When he had dried himself, mopped up the floor, and made his bed, he picked the phone up and pressed the callback button.
It was Inspector Rospo, who spoke in a tired voice with an undertow of insolence. He told Blume that at five in the morning Leporelli and Scariglia, accompanied by a lawyer, had presented themselves at the Corviale station and confessed to an accidental hit-and-run. The only thing greater than their panic at the time was their remorse now, according to their lawyer. They had agreed that Scariglia was the driver.
Already, it was no longer a police concern. From here on it was the prosecutor versus the lawyer. On past form, the prosecutor was not one to let them get away with it.
Rospo said he was ready for reassignment. The purpose of his phone call seemed to be to impress upon Blume the extent of his wasted effort. Blume told him to put himself at the disposition of Inspector Mattiola for the mugging investigation, and hung up.
Blume rinsed the floor cloth and decided to do the bedroom and hallway floors, too. He sprinkled pink alcohol down the hallway and mopped his way backwards into the sink, then set about washing and putting away the plates and saucepans from his Mexican failure. He wrung all the dirty water from the floor cloth into the washbasin then wiped the limescale and dirt from the aluminum using white vinegar. When the counters, steel furnishings, and fridge were shining, he opened the window to air and dry his house and to check if anyone was watching him. The higgledy-piggledy parked market vans below shone innocently back at him in the morning sun. He scrubbed his coffeepot till it gleamed, then made himself a good cup of Illy coffee, and sat down. The sunlight illuminated an annoying smudge on the window.
His phone rang again.
“Commissioner Blume?”
It was what’s-his-name, the Lieutenant Colonel from the Carabinieri Art Forgeries and Heritage Division. In his effort to remember the name, Blume failed to register what the man had said.
“What? Who?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Nicu Faedda.”
“Yes, I knew that. What do you want?”
Faedda transmitted an offended silence down the line.
Blume tapped the side of his phone with his thumb. One tap a millimeter or so to the left on the red button would close the conversation.
“I am calling you as an act of courtesy.”
Touchy formal bastard. Especially for one so young. It must be part of being Sard.
“Several hours ago, the paintings that the Colonel deposited in the storeroom were removed,” said Faedda.
“Removed by who? Colonel Farinelli?”
“Not personally. It’s not important who moved them. It was a Carabiniere who may have been acting in good faith and was certainly acting under orders. This is something that need not concern you and will someday be the subject of an internal inquiry.”
“How?” asked Blume, but he already knew the answer. Similar things had happened more than once with police evidence. All it took was someone with authorization to enter the storeroom.
“I think it was during the removal of a group of recovered Roman bas-reliefs which—it’s not important. They’ve gone, and they disappeared less than a day after you and I met. I believe the Colonel must have learned of our meeting.”
Finally it dawned on Blume that there was an implied accusation behind the information.
“You think I told the Colonel? You think I have something to do with this?”
Significant silence. Blume counted one beat, two beats, three, and just as the Carabiniere officer drew breath and began to speak, he hung up.
The market on Via Orvieto was already crammed with elderly women buying fish and prodding at vegetables. Although a shadow of what it was when Blume first arrived here as a child with his parents, it still reached down to the end of the street, which remained closed to traffic. You could park there the night before, but once the market opened you would be trapped until lunchtime. The only place to watch his apartment, therefore, was at the corner of Via La Spezia. Blume walked up to the bar on the corner, passing by a metallic green Ford Mondeo in which a man was studying something. As he sipped a cappuccino, Blume watched the man in the car suck a pen and make a mark in his book.
Blume went to the stall near his gate and bought himself a shiny sea bass. He could bake it in salt, boil three potatoes. Boil and fry them, maybe. The fishmonger asked if Blume wanted him to clean the fish. Blume nodded. Did anyone ever say no? Did any of the old women clean the fish themselves for the pleasure of it, or could you use the insides, like giblets?
The fish had good fine bright eyes and sparkling scales. It would keep two days. Three at a pinch. He took it up to his apartment, placed it in the fridge, straightened the sofa cushions, ran a Pledge grab-it cloth over the piano and television, then left.
The man in the Mondeo was still there.
Chapter 31
When blume walked into Paoloni’s apartment, the Cane Corso bounced like a huge happy ball into his arms, almost knocking him down.
Blume had not been in the house for a while, but despite Paoloni’s improved circumstances, little had changed. Paoloni had evidently chosen to invest his money in technology rather than furniture. The marmalade-colored settee was the same as before, and the pizzeria chair on which Blume sat spent most of its life folded in a corner with the others. The room was dominated by a massive TV. Two new laptops sat on the table.
Blume sat down and the dog came over and put its big black face in his lap. He ran his thumb slightly against the nap of the short hairs at the base of the beast’s skull. Two years had passed since he dumped the dog on Paoloni and gone to the USA to be with Kristin. He had met her, slept with her, talked with her and then they had both come back on separate flights to Italy. She went back to being a legate in the embassy, he to being a policeman in the Squadra Mobile of Rome. They still met. Their relationship had humor and life, but no future.
Paoloni stubbed out a cigarette in a square black ashtray in the middle of the table that bore the inscription: “With the compliments of the Jolly Hotel Cagliari.” Blume remembered that convention. Three days being taught how to build up crime maps and geographic profiling. It hadn’t been a bad course. And by happy coincidence they had been able to see Roma play Cagliari on the Sunday.
Blume told him about the man outside his building. “He’s definitely a Carabiniere. I think they’re only watching my place, not following me. Can you call someone, get them to check outside now. I know, it’s the second time I’ve asked you to do this.”
Paoloni seemed delighted, and immediately made a phone call.
“My cousin,” he explained. “He’s started working for me. Thirty-five an hour tax-free. He’s good at it, enjoys the work, and I trust him like a brother. Though not with money.”
Blume looked at his watch. He needed to get into the office.
“So how long will it take this cousin of yours?”
“He lives across the way. It’ll take him about fifteen minutes to see if anyone is watching us here.”
“Then he’ll go keep an eye on the guy who’s supposed to be watching me?”
“Yeah,” said Paoloni. “Unless you have a better idea.”
Blume felt he should, but none came to him.
Blume’s phone rang. It was Panebianco, who seemed to think it was OK to ask Blume where he w
as.
“That’s what I ask you,” said Blume. “Not vice versa.”
“Sorry, Commissioner. It’s what the Questore wanted to know. Then he told me to get in contact with you and tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“There was another mugging. It happened last night at around three.”
“Any more details?”
“The victim was not injured.”
“Another foreigner?”
“Yes. Inspector Mattiola is working a new angle. She says something she learned last night with Grattapaglia made her rethink the cases.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” said Blume.
Fifteen minutes later, Paoloni’s cousin called in to report, as Blume had imagined, that no one had followed him. He thanked Paoloni and left.
Just as he was pulling into the station, Paoloni called again to tell him the guy outside Blume’s house was still there, still watching and playing Sudoku. “More Sudoku than watching.”
“He may as well play Sudoku, seeing as he knows I’m not there,” said Blume. “Tell your cousin not to waste his time.”
“Let me handle this, Alec. My cousin’s entire life until now has been a waste of time.”
When he arrived at the station, Caterina was at the far end of the room, placing pins on a map of Trastevere. Grattapaglia sat nearby arms folded, face homicidal. His first meeting with the investigator was in the afternoon.
“Try to smile during the interview, Sovrintendente,” said Blume.
Grattapaglia bared his teeth and tightened his arms. He looked like a man trying to crush himself to death.
“Seriously. We’ll get you out of this. Just don’t intimidate or antagonize the investigator. Go out for a walk. Go on. I know it relaxes you. Have a drink, too, if it helps. Try to get some perspective on this.”