The Fatal Touch

by Conor Fitzgerald

  Grattapaglia came over. “Once you’re in there, just talk to the small guy with the brown hairpiece. Don’t look at his hairpiece though. Whatever you do, don’t let him know you know. Then if he likes you, his friend won’t hardly touch you.”

  “Why did you tell me about it? If you hadn’t mentioned the hairpiece, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed. Now he’ll see me looking.”

  “Managgia. I should have thought of that,” said Grattapaglia. “They don’t teach criminal psychology to people of my rank.”

  “Wait!” said Pietro, glancing around at Caterina.

  Caterina stood there twirling the plastic bracelets, a perplexed expression creasing her brow. “What?”

  “Can’t we just talk in here?”

  “In here?” She looked confused. “You mean a voluntary witness statement? Sure. But we can only do that if there is full cooperation. Once it becomes antagonistic, we go from interview to interrogation, which means . . . ” She spun the plastic cuffs absentmindedly on her finger.

  “I get that.”

  “So when I start asking questions, you tell me what I need to know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Show me you’re serious about cooperating,” said Caterina. “Prove it.”

  “How can I prove it? What am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know. OK, let’s start over. Manuela Ludovisi. Do you know who she is?”

  “Like I said, she’s my girlfriend.”

  “Good. And Emma Solazzi?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  Caterina looked into his eyes which darted back and forth as he avoided her gaze.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! You have to have the wrong person. I know Manuela, but not this Emma.”

  “OK, let’s forget about Emma. You just said you were with Manuela on Friday night, all night. Was that true? Just say ‘yes’ if it is, ‘no’ if not.”

  “No.”

  “A second ago you said you were. Manuela told me you were. What’s going on here?”

  “I was doing her a favor. But I wasn’t with her.”

  “Fine. But now I’m going to ask you another question that may put you in a difficult moral quandary. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Manuela is citing you as an alibi for that evening. Do you still say you weren’t with her?”

  “I was not with her.”

  “She’ll get into trouble, you know. She’s sort of depending on you to say yes.”

  “I can’t say yes, you just told me to be honest!”

  “Well then, she’s in trouble.”

  Pietro looked at his feet under the table.

  “So where were you?”

  “I wasn’t even in Rome that night. I was with friends in Terracina. I was there for the whole week.”

  “Can your friends corroborate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me their names.”

  Pietro obliged and Caterina noted them down. Then she dismissed him.

  “Where do I go now?”

  “I don’t care. Back to the reptile house or wherever it is you live.”

  Pietro made his way unsteadily out of the office, and Caterina picked up her bag. Grattapaglia was still standing at his desk, smiling.

  “Thanks for helping out. That was quick and inspired thinking, Sovrintendente.”

  Grattapaglia looked at her. “That was pretty funny. I’ve never seen someone break down a suspect so fast.”

  “He was not a suspect, only a witness.”

  “Little shit. I wish we had thrown him into a holding cell. Who was he?”

  “Emma’s boyfriend,” said Caterina. “I’d prefer to see my son wrongly jailed than turn out like that.”

  Chapter 34

  Caterina called rospo on his cell, told him to meet her on Via Jandolo in twenty minutes, but thirty-five minutes passed and there was no sign of him, and he wasn’t answering. She called dispatch, gave them the address, told them to refer it to Rospo when he called in.

  Now she stood alone in front of an imposing but graffiti-scored door. There was just one buzzer, and it looked as if it had not been used in years. She pressed it anyhow. She waited for three full minutes, giving the buzzer the occasional dab of her finger, convinced now that it was out of order. Just as she was turning to go to find someone who could tell her how to contact the occupants, if there were any, the door scraped open and a tall old man stood framed in the darkness, blinking papery eyelids at her and the sun.

  “Inspector Mattiola, Police,” declared Caterina. “Are you Alfonso Corsi?”

  “Conte Alfonso Corsi, and there is no need to raise your voice.” He sighed and tutted his tongue, but surprised her by stepping aside and elegantly ushering her in, then closing the door behind her, enclosing her in a corridor that smelled of damp brick and rust. The long old man, his pace far quicker than she had expected, overtook her, and proceeded with sharp footfalls down a corridor of black and red hexagon tiles.

  “Wait.”

  But Caterina was not sure she had spoken loud enough. She increased her pace to catch up, but already he had reached a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor, and ascended it with efficient, light, insect-like leaps, leaving her plodding and heavy below. As she rounded the first landing where the staircase doubled back on itself, she worried that he might leap out at her. But he was already at the top, and calling down.

  “They have kept me fit all these years.”

  By the time she reached the second floor, Conte Corsi had entered a high-ceilinged room with yellowed windows and no furniture save for a writing desk and a few chairs at the end. Behind him, a double-leaved door stood slightly ajar, allowing in a thin bar of brighter light. She had the feeling that the room behind was just as large and just as empty. She came over and took a seat, glancing behind at the echoing room. The Count turned his bone-white smooth countenance toward her and said, “Not much left, is there? Someone will have to build up the family fortunes, but it won’t be me. I am eighty years of age. I can trace my lineage back to Enea Silvio Piccolomini on one side and Jacopo Corsi on the other. Do you know who they were?”

  Caterina shook her head. “I’ve heard of Piccolomini. Wasn’t he an artist or something?”

  The Count shook his head sadly and from his desk picked up a pair of reading glasses, held them up like a glittering fish in the light from the window, then perched them on his nose. “Let me see what you have, then.”

  He reached his hand across the desk.

  “I just want to ask some questions,” said Caterina.

  “You have not brought warrants?”

  “No,” said Caterina. She drew in breath to disguise the thrill his question had caused her. “Not yet, but they’ll be coming, if we need them.” Her father had once told her the best way of keeping the tremor of excitement from the voice was to imagine you had coated your mouth and throat with honey, thick blobs of it, slowly sinking down your throat, smoothing the ripples in your voice. Speak slowly, deliberately, calmly. She could taste the honey now and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat, as the old man lowered his arm onto the desk and took off his glasses to observe her with disapproving coffee-colored eyes.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Good question. Sprightly though he was, this eighty-year-old man did not hold tourists up at knife-point. And yet he was expecting warrants.

  She took a leap of faith.

  “Well, first of all, we know the stolen goods were never marketed. Can they be returned to the tourists?”

  “You think that might help?”

  “Yes, definitely.” Had she sounded too eager? She instilled greater formality and severity into her tone. “Cooperation is very important in these cases. What I write in my report will have an enormous effect on the judge’s decisions. Even better would be direct evidence of cooperation on your part. Repentance. Regret.”

  “I have that in abundance,” said the old man. “What
will happen to him?”

  “What do you mean?” The real question, the only question, was not what but who. He had invested her with knowledge she did not have, but was moments away from acquiring. It was vital not to break the spell. One mistimed comment and she would disclose the full extent of her ignorance, but the Count seemed more interested in asking his own questions, like a catastrophic lawyer demolishing his own case.

  “How many years? Is it possible for him to avoid prison?”

  And now she understood. What was going on began to take shape. She understood who the old man was talking about and trying to argue for. She knew who the mugger was and what it meant to the Count. As the realization came upon her, she noticed a darkening in the air around the old man. The bar of light from behind the door had dimmed and become shadow, and the shadow moved.

  Caterina sprang out of her seat and moved behind it, just as the door swung open and a heavyset but short man with square shoulders and a smooth, well-fed face emerged from behind. He stood behind the Count on whose shoulder he placed a pudgy babyish hand. He seemed to be pushing the old man into his chair.

  “You called the police, Papà,” he said.

  “It had to stop, Agnolo. Someone was going to get hurt. And I did not call them. They found out by themselves, as they were bound to in the end. Ask the policewoman here.”

  The younger man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, stared over his father’s bald head at Caterina, but asked her nothing. Slowly, he moved to the side of the desk, and Caterina shifted her chair slightly to keep it between them. Then he put his palms outward to show he was not armed, and grinned.

  “The Noantri’s bookings are down seventy percent this year. It won’t recover. Reputation is everything. Mark my words. We are a family not to be crossed.”

  “Move behind the desk, please, and keep your hands visible,” she said. There was no honey taste now, just a sensation of tomato skins and copper at the back of her throat. Her hand was trembling slightly. The man turned his back with what seemed a shrug, then whipped around again, a thin blade in his right hand. The metal caught the faint sunbeam streaming through the faraway window and seemed to harden and brighten it.

  But Caterina was pointing her Beretta directly at him, her hands steady, her finger on the trigger, the bluish barrel pointing directly at his forehead. Slowly, slowly, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she lowered the aim to the middle of his chest. Stopping power, greater surface area, easier target, no hesitation, squeeze trigger don’t pull, beautiful Elia with his soft cheeks needs you alive.

  “No!” The Count, unnoticed by either, had arisen from his chair and, with the same surprising agility, interposed himself between his son and Caterina.

  “Drop your weapon,” said Caterina. “Drop your weapon, drop your weapon! I will shoot, drop your weapon, I will shoot; drop your weapon now!” Caterina repeated the command and threat in another burst of three, allowing the barrel of the pistol to shift left and right while steadying against pitch and roll in her aim. She would not miss, and the Count was so thin and his son so broad that the odds were . . . but she did not want to shoot.

  “You betrayed me.”

  “No, son,” said the Count. “But you have so disappointed me.”

  “Drop your weapon. Signor Conte, stand aside. Stand aside now.”

  With a balletic movement, the Count bent his knee and slipped sideways and downwards out of the line of fire, and Caterina drew a bead on the son’s broad chest. In his hand, he still held the thin knife, now glossy and sticky at its tip.

  The Count lay on the dark floor and groaned, and a small gleaming pool ran from under him.

  Caterina began to squeeze the trigger, but at that moment the man dropped his knife and fell to his knees on the floor beside his father.

  “I’m sorry, Papà. I panicked.”

  Caterina followed his trajectory, pointing at the back of his bowed head, her finger easing its tension.

  “It’s very painful, Agnolo. Very painful.”

  “I just meant to push you away. I don’t think it went in deep. I don’t . . . ” He wiped his fingers on the floor. “Where is all this blood coming from?” He looked over at Caterina. “Help us. Please, help. O Signore, perdonami.”

  She edged over. “Move away.”

  “He needs me.”

  “Move away from the knife. I’ll take the knife, and you can go back to him. Understood?”

  “Do as she says, Agnolo,” whispered the old man. “I’ll be fine in a moment. The pain is fading already.”

  Obediently, without standing up, Agnolo Corsi moved backwards on his knees. Caterina kicked at the knife with her foot, then retrieved it, and backed away. The son, now oblivious of her, leaned over his father, and buried his large head against the thin bird-like breast. Caterina took her left hand off the butt of the Beretta and used it to pull out her phone. She called an ambulance and backup, ordering them to break down the front door, because, against regulations, she had come in here alone and was trapped. For fifteen minutes she stood there in silence, her pistol loosely trained on the bunches of curly hair at the back of Agnolo Corsi’s head as he wept over his bleeding father.

  Half an hour later, Agnolo was led out like trussed lamb preceded by his chalk-white father on an orange stretcher. Caterina ignored the questions of the two patrolmen who had arrived on the scene, both of whom had immediately started asking where her male partner was. She ordered them to stay where they were and walked into the room from which Agnolo had emerged. It was brighter but smaller, and devoid of all furniture except for tissue-thin Persian carpets on the floor.

  “That was his weapon?” asked the patrolman, pointing at the tapered stiletto that Caterina had placed on the desk. He reached out to touch it.

  “No! Contamination of evidence,” said Caterina.

  “You said you picked it up. You’ve already held it.”

  “Even so,” said Caterina. “Leave it.” She looked at the thin knife. Its grip seemed to be made of dull silver. The blood on its tip had already coagulated and was beginning to brown. It was hard to resist the temptation to wipe it clean again.

  “It’s a lovely knife,” said the patrolman, his hand still hovering nearby.

  “You can bag it, if you want,” said Caterina. “Once it’s in plastic you can examine it.”

  “Thanks. See the markings on the handle, the lion on the hilt? It’s an antique.”

  “A stiletto,” said Caterina.

  “It’s called a misericordia,” said the patrolman. “A weapon of mercy. It was used to kill off the mortally wounded after a battle. I have a replica at home, but this looks like the genuine article.”

  “Bag it carefully,” said Caterina.

  A low doorway on the right seemed to lead deeper into the house, and pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she turned the handle, and peered into darkness. She found a light switch, turned it on. A red and white porphyry font sat in the middle of the room, its bowl filled with a shining heap of watches, necklaces, chains, earrings, bangles. On the floor in a corner, like a pile of animal pelts, lay handbags, wallets, some of them flung open and showing off their gold, silver, and green credit cards. She began to pick her way through the pile, then pulled out and held aloft a silver crucifix on a chain. She dropped it into her pocket and called Grattapaglia.

  “I think I’ve found a way for you to please a Spaniard,” she said when he answered.

  Chapter 35

  “As long as they don’t enter my parents’ study,” said Blume. “And even then, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “I think it is a good idea. I never thought my cousin had so much imagination. Maybe I’ll promote him,” said Paoloni.

  Blume moved his phone into his left hand to change gear. “It’s not responsible behavior.”

  “That’s why it’s fun,” said Paoloni. “More to the point, it’s unexpected and will throw the Colonel.”

  “I don’t know. How long w
ill it take them?”

  “He says they can be in and out of there in fifteen minutes.”

  “They won’t trash my parents’ study?”

  “My cousin will impress the importance of that upon them.”

  “And we’re sure about what happened?” said Blume. “I think I might need to see for myself.”

  “That makes no sense. As soon as you go into your own place, he’ll spring the trap,” said Paoloni. “My cousin’s idea is by far the best. Amazing, really when you think who his father is. Did I ever tell you about my uncle Filippo and the five-way parlay at the Appian hippodrome?”

  “Not now, Beppe. I need to think.”

  According to Paoloni’s cousin, Agent Sudoku, as Paoloni had taken to calling the Carabiniere watching Blume’s apartment, was joined by a second man fifteen minutes after Paoloni’s cousin started watching the watcher. Together, followed discreetly by the cousin, Captain Sudoku and the new arrival collected four cardboard tubes from the back of a Peugeot 305, then slipped into Blume’s apartment building, taking advantage of a woman coming out to let themselves in. The cousin waited ten minutes before someone else coming out allowed him to get in, then took the stairs, and walked the hallways till he passed the apartment with Blume’s name on it. Then he went halfway up the next flight of steps and waited. Two minutes later the two came out. The cousin heard them locking the door behind them. When he was sure they had gone, he examined the door carefully.

  “They had keys, or they were very professional,” Paoloni told Blume. “You just have an ordinary H-key deadlock, right? Not milled down the center or anything difficult?”

  “No. But it’s still easier to break in by lifting the door with a foot lever and wedge, and hitting the strike plate,” said Blume. “So they did not want to leave a trace.”

  “Right,” said Paoloni. “And my cousin says he saw the other man toss the tubes into a dumpster before getting into his car. Then he left, and Agent Sudoku resumed his post, watching your apartment. Whatever was in those tubes is now in your house waiting for you to find them. Or, since we know what we’re dealing with, waiting for you to be found with them. You tell me they are the paintings from Treacy’s flat, planted by the Colonel, I give you a fantastic idea, and you object.”