Blume stopped and told the young cop, “I’m staying here outside the main door to make sure our man doesn’t leave the building. You go back to your partner, call in backup, then wait for them to arrive. Just say you’re acting under my orders, and anyone wants to know, they can talk to me. I’ll see about the warrants.” He felt confident.
47
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 9:35 P.M.
ANGELO PERNAZZO SLOWED to a walk as soon as he came out the apartment building, not so stupid as to draw attention to himself. He managed only a few steps before he had to bend down and adjust his cotton and rope espadrilles, which were threatening to trip him up. He had almost lost them completely in his rush down the stairs to beat the two idiot policemen in the elevator. He pulled up his foot, crooked his thumb, and snapped the fabric back up over his heels. He hefted Clemente’s gray backpack onto his shoulder, and turned sharply as he heard the front door to his apartment block snap shut again. He saw a cop in the car across the street looking straight at him, but not really seeing him.
He heard footsteps behind. They were after him. He chanced a backward glance. A uniformed policeman was following him. Walking, not running.
Now the cop cut diagonally across the street to his partner in the car, ignoring Pernazzo. No sign of the commissioner who had tried to look the wrong way through the peephole.
Pernazzo had prepared the backpack after seeing Di Tivoli’s documentary on Wednesday night. In went his knife, the embosser, the passports, Alleva’s little gun, and Clemente’s wallet, which still had his ID papers and credit cards. Alleva’s mushroom book, bank codes. A perfect compact escape kit. What was in there was enough to take him away from Italy to anywhere he wanted. On Thursday he visited a photo booth, took twenty-four pictures of himself for the passports, and added them to the kit. He spent the afternoon looking at Google Earth images of Argentina, then called Tecno-casa and announced he wanted to put his house on the market. They said they would send someone around the next day.
No wonder Commissioner Blume had not returned. He had to be busy collecting evidence against Innocenzi. But even as the credits were rolling on the documentary, Pernazzo began to feel frustrated at the continuing failure of recognition. He needed to talk to Di Tivoli about this. Give Di Tivoli the full story, then make good his escape, maybe.
Or he could kill Di Tivoli. That would be interesting, because then everyone would be convinced it was Innocenzi revenging himself for the exposé about his daughter.
He’d play it by ear.
Pernazzo did a phone directory search for Taddeo Di Tivoli from the Virgilio Web site, and there he was. Journalists like being contacted.
On Friday night, for the first time ever, Pernazzo got bored with his online gaming. All of a sudden, it did not seem real. He logged out of World of Warcraft, played a bit of EverQuest, with the same result. Later on, he found he could not sleep when he wanted, and when he did, it was for far more than the twenty minutes that Uberman allowed.
When the doorbell rang that Saturday, he almost brought up his dinner from shock. Time to run. He crept to the door and peered through the peephole and saw a uniformed policeman leaning on the banisters.
He stayed still, staring out the peephole, unable to move in case Blume noticed a flicker in the light. Then the cops, who could just as easily have been killers sent by Innocenzi, took the elevator down. Pernazzo seized his one last chance, grabbed the backpack, and ran headlong down the stairs, only realizing he was wearing cotton-and-cord slippers when he slipped on the first landing. As he picked himself up, the slowly descending elevator drew level with him. He hoisted the bag onto his shoulders and took the stairs four at a time, gaining on, overtaking, and leaving the old elevator, Blume, and the policeman behind.
Pernazzo’s Opel Tigra was parked two streets away. He hoped the traffic would not be against him. He drove as fast as he could, releasing some of the tension. He considered going carefully, stopping when lights were amber, touching the brake pedal every few seconds like his mother used to do—she even signaled to go around double-parked cars—but there was no point. No policeman in Rome ever pulled anyone over for reckless driving. They considered it demeaning.
It took him thirty-five minutes to reach Di Tivoli’s house. He found a parking place less than five minutes away and walked as quickly as his slippers allowed.
It was now ten o’clock and quite dark. He had fifteen minutes before he needed to hypersleep. He took Alleva’s Davis P-32 out of the backpack, slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers.
The front door to Di Tivoli’s apartment block was closed. He pressed the intercom button below Di Tivoli’s. A woman answered.
“Who is it?”
“Signora, I have some materials here from RAI to deliver to Dottor Di Tivoli, but it seems that either he is out or the buzzer is not working. Thing is, I have to get other deliveries of urgent news tapes done and so I’d like to just drop them off outside his—”
The woman got bored with listening and buzzed open the door without a word.
Pernazzo called the elevator. With just three floors in the building, the stairs would have been quicker, but he preferred not to walk by the door of the woman on the second floor in case she was watching. The marble in the building gleamed under the lights. The elevator was old, wooden, large enough to take a bed. It was suffused with yellow light from a series of low-watt bulbs and smelled of beeswax.
Pernazzo stepped out, closed the brass gates, and beat softly with his fist on Di Tivoli’s thick door.
“Di Tivoli! C’mon, open up. Open. Hurry up,” he said in an urgent whisper. He kept hammering the door, softly but incessantly. Eventually he heard footsteps.
“Who is it?” said Di Tivoli, but opened the door before waiting for a response. As soon as it was open a crack, Pernazzo dropped his bag into the gap. The metal embosser made a louder thud than he had expected. He would have to be careful about the noise, given the presence of the woman in the apartment below. Then, with the bag acting as a stop, he squeezed himself in with such speed that Di Tivoli had to turn around before he realized who had just entered.
“What?” said Di Tivoli. “Who are you?”
Pernazzo saw a look of disgust and contempt on Di Tivoli’s face, but then he caught the gratifying whiff of fear.
“Are you alone?” Pernazzo asked.
“Yes . . . That is to say, no. I’m expecting someone . . .”
Di Tivoli could not think whom he was expecting. Pernazzo moved over to a bookcase, leaned against it, and waited as Di Tivoli’s eyes looked him over. The pistol sat squat and safe inside his pocket. No need to brandish it about.
Speaking from the hallway, Di Tivoli said, “I want you out. I don’t know what you think you’re doing. I just got back . . . I am very tired.”
Pernazzo lifted his bag, moved into the living room and said, “The police are looking for me.”
Di Tivoli followed. He was wearing a silk dressing gown with a gold paisley pattern. “Well it’s hardly my doing . . . Have I seen you before?” He dipped his hand into a square pocket, trying to be master of the situation, lord of his own house.
“There’s only one reason I can think the police are after me,” continued Pernazzo. He moved his hand behind his back, and enjoyed the spectacle of Di Tivoli trying to monitor every micro-movement while retaining a casual demeanor.
“And that is?”
Pernazzo said, “You put them on to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, or who you are.”
“I know. You see, I’m Angelo Pernazzo. I am the person who killed Clemente.”
Di Tivoli paled, then sat down slowly in an armchair. Even more slowly, he picked up a remote control.
“What are you doing?”
“Turning up the air-conditioning,” said Di Tivoli. “You killed Clemente?”
Pernazzo watched him carefully as he pointed it at an air-conditioning unit with a winking green light above th
e window.
“It’s fine. Leave it,” said Pernazzo. He did not like the idea of Di Tivoli holding anything in his hand.
Di Tivoli dropped the remote into armchair cushions behind him, made a steeple out of his fingers, and arched his eyebrows. His forehead was wet. He said, “You don’t have to tell me any more than you want to, but how do you figure I put the police on you? I don’t even know who you are.”
“I worked it out. The police found my name because I was detained when the Carabinieri raided a dog fight, and the only reason they raided the dog fight was because TV cameras were running. Yours.”
“The raid was Clemente’s idea,” said Di Tivoli. “I’d have just filmed the fight, no police or Carabinieri.”
“And, like I said, I’ve dealt with Clemente.”
“Arturo was . . . He was all sorts of things, but he was also my friend,” said Di Tivoli.
“You did a hell of a job on his reputation with your exposé about his affair. For a friend.”
“He’s dead now. It makes no difference.”
“His widow probably didn’t like it.”
“No, she didn’t, and she told me. Also, I risked my life with that program. I exposed a connection with the most powerful criminal family in Rome.”
“That was brave.”
“I am a journalist,” declared Di Tivoli. He brought his hands together as if considering a proposition. “It is my job to tell the truth, to speak truth to power.”
Di Tivoli’s voice had become louder and clearer. Pernazzo reckoned the man was gaining in confidence, so he snapped the pistol out from behind his back and pointed it straight at Di Tivoli’s stomach.
Di Tivoli’s steepled fingers interlocked, and he brought his hands down toward his groin. “Can you not point the gun at me, please?”
Pernazzo lowered the pistol. He wasn’t going to use it, anyway. He tucked the gun back into his trousers.
Di Tivoli assumed a slightly less slumped position on the armchair and said, “You should leave now, Angelo. That’s your name, isn’t it? Make a break for it. The police still think Alleva had Clemente killed. They won’t be looking for you.”
“I just told you they were.”
“Probably not for the murder—you don’t mind me using that word?”
“It’s the right word. And if they’re not looking for me, how come that commissioner was at my house this evening? He called in a whole raiding party.”
Di Tivoli asked, “What commissioner?”
“His name is Blume,” said Pernazzo. “He took a real dislike to me the moment we met.”
“Blume?” Di Tivoli’s voice lifted slightly. “He’s not on the Clemente case now.”
“You know a lot about what’s going on.”
“I have my sources.” Di Tivoli made his first attempt at a smile, but it did not come off.
“Well your sources are wrong. Because the commissioner came to my house just now.”
“I’m telling you, Blume is not working your case. The police don’t know anything about you.”
“Sure, they do. And now so do you.”
“I don’t get it,” said Di Tivoli. “They found Alleva and Massoni. The dog-fight organizer and—”
“I know who they are.”
“Sorry,” said Di Tivoli. “I hear they’ve been found dead. So maybe the case will be closed now.”
“That’s what you think?”
“Gangland slaying. Those guys, they sure don’t mess around, do they?” said Di Tivoli, his voice taking on some of the syncopated rhythm of a hard Roman accent. “Maybe Alleva was skimming the bosses, and they whacked him. What do you think?”
Pernazzo tapped himself on the shoulder and smiled. “I did that to them. It was me. It’s something . . . I don’t know. I’ve gained strength, learned from my mistakes, but I don’t have my own style yet. And I don’t know where to go from here.”
Di Tivoli opened his mouth as if to say something, but only managed to suck in a stream of air that caught at the back of his throat.
Pernazzo pictured him dead in the armchair. What would it look like? A few days after an exposé of Innocenzi, TV show host found dead in home, from . . . He’d work out the details in a moment. Unnatural causes. They would have to look into Innocenzi, forget about him. Maybe all the killings could be pinned on Innocenzi.
Pernazzo turned around to look at the bookcase behind him. “You know, since I came in here, that thing has been staring at the back of my head. What is it?”
“It’s an Etruscan head,” said Di Tivoli.
Pernazzo reached up, took it in his hands, and holding it, walked over to him. “This is wood? It feels like steel. It’s so heavy. This head is bigger than mine.” He held it aloft, and Di Tivoli began to move forward in his seat. He lowered it, then made as if to throw it at Di Tivoli, who flinched and flung his arm up protectively.
Pernazzo laughed.
“So is this like one of those house hold gods? A protector?”
He walked behind the armchair on which Di Tivoli sat. “Do you believe in that sort of thing?”
“Not really . . . Look . . .” Di Tivoli began to turn his head.
“No, stay looking forward. So, has this mean-looking bastard protected you?”
“Yes. Until now,” said Di Tivoli.
“Right. Until now.”
Pernazzo held the bust aloft in both arms like a trophy. He put so much downward swing into the blow that his feet slipped from under him and he toppled halfway over the back of the chair. The impact as the scowling wooden face hit the back of Di Tivoli’s skull jerked the bust out of his hands. It bounced against the back of the armchair cushion, tumbled down the arms, dropped onto the Persian carpet on the floor, and rolled a little farther with a dull rumble.
That and the crack of impact were almost all the noise.
Di Tivoli had made hardly a sound. Just a sort of farting noise came out of his mouth.
Pernazzo picked himself up. The back of Di Tivoli’s head was visibly caved in. Di Tivoli was bent forward as if examining his navel, and a steady bright stream of blood was rolling off the side of his face, dripping onto the armchair cushions and darkening there.
It had been far easier than he had imagined. And far quieter than a pistol. Pernazzo went over to the matching beige sofa opposite the armchair, lay down, and slept.
When he awoke twenty minutes later, the Etruscan head was watching him from the floor. The nose was chipped, and Pernazzo wondered if he had done that. Di Tivoli was in precisely the same position as before.
Di Tivoli’s car keys were easy to find, but he could not find the man’s wallet anywhere. When he found himself opening kitchen cupboards at random, he stopped. He went back to the bedroom, which he had already searched, checked the bedside table again, slid his hand under the mattress, slid open the mirror-fronted wardrobe and looked for clothes that might have been recently worn. Still no wallet. Di Tivoli had a small room dedicated entirely to shoes, but the man had feet like canal barges. Pernazzo tried on a few pairs, but he simply stepped in and out of them. He continued to hunt, hurling the shoes out of the alcove into the bedroom. He came across a few pairs of women’s shoes. They fit him, but had high heels.
Then he had an idea, and went over to Di Tivoli’s bent body. He inserted his hand into the dressing gown pocket, and found the wallet. Not only that, but it was stuffed with cash. Pernazzo counted 950 euros, including a 500-euro note. He had never seen one before. He put the wallet into his own pocket and went into Di Tivoli’s study. It had the same color scheme as the living room: beige, white, gray. Pernazzo appreciated the style. It was like an expensive hotel for executives. Three widescreen monitors sat next to each other on a buffed steel desk with a matte black finish. Pernazzo wondered for a moment if Di Tivoli had been a hardcore gamer, then remembered he worked in television. He did not bother switching on the machine. It would be password-protected, and he did not have time to hack.
In the hallway, Pe
rnazzo found keys to the apartment and another bunch on a ring. They included two short padlock keys and two long, old-fashioned rusting keys that might be used for a garden door. If Di Tivoli had a place outside Rome, he could go there, lie low for a day, while the investigators concentrated on questioning Innocenzi.
He went back into the living room. Another impressive bank of technology. He switched on the massive TV and channel-surfed for a bit, familiarizing himself with the large remote control.
“You got Sky satellite,” he told the slouched figure in the armchair. “Doesn’t that count as helping the competition? But, hey, there’s nothing good on RAI anymore.”
Good surround-sound effects, too. Speakers all over the room. Not so obvious, either. Great plasma TV. Pity he couldn’t just take it all home with him. He checked the cables at the back and saw the screen was hooked up to a small-format computer.
The computer seemed to be on. Pressing AV on the remote control gave him a screen with Windows XP Media Center. He had never seen the Windows logo so large. Nice. Even if it was Mickeyware. A Red Hat OS was what was needed here. There was the recorded TV menu. He could not find the remote control for this, and hunted around. He found a Daikin remote control for the air-conditioning.
Wait a minute. He went over to the armchair and pushed Di Tivoli’s inert body sideways. Di Tivoli’s head lolled over the side of the armchair, and the blood worked its way around so that it now seemed to be dripping from his ear onto the floor. Pernazzo felt for the remote control Di Tivoli had shoved behind the cushions, and pulled it out. He looked at it.
“You sneaky fucker,” he said. He pressed a button and looked at the on-screen menu.
Di Tivoli had been recording. The microphone was right in front of him. So obvious that it was invisible.
Pernazzo stopped the recording, saved it as a file, which he named “deleteme.” He rejected the suggested “.wav” ending and added an .xls suffix instead. Then he deleted the misnamed audio file and emptied the trash.
THE DOGS of ROME Page 36