His replies were perfunctory and abstracted, and he kept glancing in the rear-view mirror. His driving had become uncharacteristically erratic, too, involving apparently unmotivated stops, last-minute turns down side streets, and several complete rotations of a roundabout.
'Have you got an escort, duttd?' he asked at length.
'An escort?'
'Couple of men detailed to follow you about in a red Alfa. No, don't look round!'
Zen shook his head.
'Hmm/ said Pasquale.
They drove along the seafront to Via Partenope, where Pasquale abruptly pulled up in front of one of the luxury hotels facing the bay.
'Get out here/ he told Zen. 'Make as though you're paying me off. Then go into the hotel and walk straight through the lobby to the rear exit. I'll meet you there.'
Bemused but compliant, Zen got out and pretended to hand Pasquale some money through the window. On the other side of the street, a red Alfa Romeo had come to a stop opposite them. Zen turned and entered the hotel while Pasquale roared away, ignoring the pleas of a waiting couple who needed a ride to the airport. Through the revolving door, a wide strip of carpet led across a marble lobby with lots of uncomfortable-looking reproduction antique chairs. A doorman in livery loomed. Zen handed him a 10,000-lire note and pointed outside, where the youth in dark glasses and the Lacoste shirt was trying to cross against the ferocious traffic.
'That rent boy's trying to blackmail me,' Zen whispered.
'He's threatening to tell my wife if I don't pay him twice what we agreed. Can you kindly stop him pestering me?'
'No problem, sir,' the man replied suavely. 'But in future, kindly consult the concierge. He can provide someone whose discretion is guaranteed, twenty-four hours a day, with room service if desired/ As Zen retreated towards the lifts, the doorman moved to block the path of the youth in the Lacoste shirt, who was now marching towards the revolving door. But instead of retreating in awe of this formidable personage, the intruder merely paused briefly and murmured something in his ear. The effect was electric. The doorman appeared to shrink visibly, like a leaking balloon. His look became glassy and his limbs seemed unsteady.
The youth walked by as though he were not there and ran swiftly past the registration desk and around the corner to the stairs and lifts. The right-hand lift was open and ready for use, but its companion, according to the illuminated indicator, was ascending past the second floor to come to rest at the third. The youth sprinted up the stairs, taking the shallow carpeted steps four at a time.
Just beyond the lifts and the stairs, an illuminated green sign suspended from the ceiling read 'Emergency Exit'. Below the sign was a closed door fitted with a metal push-bar. On the other side stood Aurelio Zen, looking down the narrow alley behind the hotel. At the far end, a yellow Fiat taxi was just turning in from the main street.
'Who do you reckon they are, duttd?' asked Pasquale once they were under way again.
"I can't imagine. Probably they mistook me for someone else. Anyway, we've lost them, thanks to you. Now then, as I was saying, I have another commission for you.'
He handed Pasquale the poster of John Viviani he removed earlier from the notice-board at the police station.
'This man went missing yesterday. Run off copies of this poster and distribute them to as many of your colleagues as possible. If any of them recognize him, and above all if they pick him up, have them get in touch. I'll make it worth their while.'
Pasquale nodded absently.
'Very good, duttd. Just the same, I wish we knew who those two in the Alfa were.'
He glanced suspiciously at a car coming in the oncoming lane. It was also red, and the two men aboard were young and tough-looking. But the car was some sort of flashy import, the men were dressed differently, and, in any case, they were going at high speed in the opposite direction and showed no interest whatsoever in the yellow taxi.
XIX
Stelle, un bacio?
'It worked, didn't it?'
'Oh, sure! If you'd held her feet over the gas burner, that would have worked too. Jesus!'
'The woman was obviously frightened/ "I don't blame her, with some maniac holding a gun to her son's head!'
'For Christ's sake, Gesua! I mean she was frightened of talking, frightened of getting involved. So I gave her something to be even more frightened of, and it worked. As for the kid, he never even knew what was happening. He thought it was all a big game.'
Gesualdo shook his head and said nothing.
'Anyway, since when have you been so particular about the methods we use?' demanded Sabatino. 'We shouldn't be driving around in this goddamn Jaguar, for a start-off.
It's about as conspicuous as a carnival float, and we now know that it's hot as well. The last thing we want is someone tying us into the Vallifuoco hit/ 'On the contrary, that's exactly what we want.'
Sabatino shrugged and stared out of the window.
'She said it was a refuse truck, right?' he said at length.
'What?'
'The vehicle that rammed them from behind before Don Ermanno got a chance to do the same or worse to her.
They did a nice job fixing the damage, by the way/ 'Lorenzo only hires the best. He has to, given his clients and turn-around times. Anyway, what about the truck?'
'Two things. First off, what the hell was a city garbage crew doing around there at that time of night? Those guys knock off strictly at six, even assuming they bother to show up for work at all.'
Gesualdo considered this in silence.
'And the second thing?' "That shooting last night on Via Duomo/ said Sabatino.
'We damn nearly got caught up in that ourselves, you know. Talk about luck. We must have passed the spot just before it happened. Anyway, that was a refuse truck too.'
'So?'
'So, what's this new terrorist group calling itself?'
Gesualdo snapped his fingers.
'"Clean Streets". Christ, I think we may be on to something!'
He frowned.
'But we won't be the only ones. The police are bound to make the same connection. It's just too obvious.'
'It is just too obvious/ murmured Sabatino. "I wonder why.'
Gesualdo didn't seem to hear.
'And meanwhile/ he said, bringing the car to a halt at the top of the Scalini del Petraio, 'instead of following this thing up and grabbing a piece of the action while we can, we have to drop everything to go and hold Dario's hand.
Jesus!'
Sabatino sighed and got out of the car.
'You were the one who took the call, Gesua. If it'd been me, I'd have told him to look after his own problems.'
'He sounded so desperate. Said it was a matter of life and death/ * If he's pissing us about, it will be. His.'
They ran down the steps three at a time, through the little square where a boy was chasing a chicken which had escaped from its wire enclosure, and on down the final precipitous alley to their temporary home. Dario De Spino was standing at the door, rubbing his hands anxiously.
'Thank God you're here!' he blurted out. 'They're threatening to kill themselves! I would have called the cops, but I didn't think you'd want them snooping around. Besides, their papers aren't in order and I don't want to make matters worse.'
'Who?' demanded Gesualdo.
'Why, your new neighbours on the first floor, of course!'
Sabatino blasphemed loudly.
'You dragged us all the way over here for that? Let them kill themselves, if that's what they want.'
'Of course they won't kill themselves!' snapped Gesualdo.
'That's all talk. Your problem, Dario, is you don't understand women.'
'Certainly not these ones,' De Spino replied with a touch of pique. 'Albanians aren't flexible like us. Everything's gloom and doom, blood and guts. They scare the hell out of me, to tell you the truth.'
'That's your problem,' returned Sabatino. 'You're the one who decided to take them under your protection. If the
y've gone hysterical, you deal with it. It's got nothing to do with us.'
De Spino shook his head pityingly.
'You're trying to ingratiate yourself with the Squillace family by keeping an eye on the property, right? Well, how do you think it's going to look if two illegal immigrants top themselves in the place on your shift, eh?'
Gesualdo pushed impatiently past.
'Well, since we've come all this way, we may as well take a look/ He led the way upstairs and knocked on the door of the lower apartment. There was no reply. He tried the handle, but the door was locked. Sabatino leant out of the window at the end of the landing. A narrow ledge ran from this to a balcony outside the rear bedroom. With the air of someone to whom such feats are part of the job, he climbed out of the window and stepped out along the ledge, pulled himself over to the balcony and looked in through the window.
'Holy Christ!'
'What is it?' demanded Gesualdo. 'Break the door down!' Sabatino yelled urgently, clambering back in through the window.
They put their shoulders to it, and when that didn't work Gesualdo pulled his pistol and shot the lock off.
Then he kicked the door open, ran across the room and threw open the door to the bedroom. Libera and Iolanda were lying stretched out on the floor, each grasping a length of wire bared at one end and plugged into a wall socket at the other. Their eyes were closed and their mouths agape, tongues extended.
Gesualdo circled the bodies cautiously and unplugged the lengths of wire from the wall. The other end was still grasped tightly in the victims' fingers. He pried these open, revealing extensive blackening. Meanwhile Sabatino was feeling for a pulse.
'This one's alive!' he said, bending over Libera.
Gesualdo put his hand on Iolanda's bosom, then leant down and proceeded to administer the kiss of life.
Sabatino did likewise with Libera. After a long interval, the victims began to show feeble signs of animation. The two men immediately redoubled their efforts, squatting astride the women's supine bodies and pumping their chests vigorously.
Dario De Spino, all this while, had been looking on from the doorway. He appeared to be holding his breath, for some reason, as a result of which his face had turned bright red.
XX
Possibil non par
Professor Esposito had arranged to meet Aurelio Zen in Piazza del Duomo, but when Pasquale dropped his passenger off there was no sign of the professor. Pasquale was sceptical as to the chances of his ever reappearing.
'Your watch must have cost — what? — three, four times what you owe him? Why should he let you redeem a pledge which is worth more than the debt it secures?'
This verdict was delivered with the gravity and assurance of an economist explaining why the government's fiscal policies are doomed to failure. Zen had no answer to its implacable logic, but he decided to wait for fifteen minutes anyway. Before dismissing Pasquale, he broke the mobile phone out of the box and, as a test, dialled his answering machine, which was taking calls for the disconnected phone.
There were two messages. The first was from Gilberto Nieddu, asking him to get in touch 'as a matter of the gravest urgency'. The other was from someone called Luisella, who just said she would callback. Zen switched off the portable and was about to put it away when he realized who Luisella was. He closed his eyes and uttered a curse.
'How's that, duttd?' asked Pasquale with a worried look.
'This thing brings bad luck/ muttered Zen, holding up the mobile phone.
Pasquale seemed to take this complaint literally.
"I can change it for another, if you want. But what's the problem, exactly?'
'My ex-wife just called me.'
'Ah!' said Pasquale, as though everything was now clear. 'That's not the phone, duttd. That's the moon.'
'The moon?'
'It'll be full tonight.'
Zen shrugged.
'That happens every month, Pasquale. I haven't heard from my wife for seven years. Why now?'
'Because it's also the solstice, duttd. When the solstice and the full moon fall on the same day, even San Gennaro is overmatched.'
With this thought, Pasquale went off to circulate the poster of John Viviani amongst his fellow tassisti. Professor Esposito still had not appeared, so Zen dialled Gilberto Nieddu's number in Rome — or rather the number of a printing shop in the outskirts of the city belonging to a distant relative whom Nieddu had roped in on a 'Sardinians versus the Rest of the World' ticket when times got tough.
Zen left a message and his number with this cut-out, then held the line until Gilberto was put through.
'Aurelio! Thank God you called.'
From the tone of his friend's voice, Zen gathered that his message had been something more than mere hyperbole.
'What's happened?'
'It's your mother, Aurelio. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but… well, she seems not to be at home.'
Behind Zen's back, a chorus of car horns played a brassy big-band fanfare.
'That's impossible! She never leaves except to come and visit your kids.'
'Exactly. That's when we first suspected something was wrong. She was supposed to come over this morning, but when I called for her there was no answer. Then Maria Grazia, the housekeeper, showed up and we went inside.
It was empty, Aurelio. No Giustiniana, no note, no nothing. I was hoping that perhaps you knew where she was/ Zen felt his head spinning.
'Look, I can't come up to Rome just now. Maybe tomorrow, I don't know. Can you make a few enquiries? Ask the porter, the other people in the building.. / "I wish I could, Aurelio, but I have to go abroad. I'm flying out of Fiumicino in a couple of hours. Abusiness trip/ 'But you told me you'd had to surrender your passport/ 'Oh, and one final thing,' Nieddu said in an oddly strained voice. 'You remember that video-game cassette you brought me to look at?'
'What about it?'
'I've just discovered there was some sort of mix-up.
Apparently the one I gave you back wasn't the same one you gave me. There were a bunch of them lying around in this place I went to test it. I suppose I must have picked up the wrong one.'
'Are you joking? Jesus Christ, Gilberto! So where's the original?'
'Don't worry, it's in safe hands. Well, I've got to go, Aurelio. I hope your mother gets in touch soon. Ciao!'
The line went dead. Zen frantically redialled the number in Rome, but there was no reply. He was trying Gilberto's home number when a figure standing meaningfully close caught his attention. Professor Esposito bowed politely.
'I'd given up on you/ Zen said ungraciously. The news of his mother's disappearance had shaken him more than he had yet appreciated. He imagined her having slipped out of her mind, as effortlessly as a dust-ball carried through an open window by the draught. She might even now be wandering around the traffic-ridden streets and addict-haunted parks of the capital, babbling to herself and accosting strangers under the illusion that she was back home in Venice, where everywhere was safe and everyone knew everyone.
'We had an appointment,' the professor remarked in a puzzled but slightly hurt tone.
'The cab driver who brought me here said you'd never show. "The watch is worth more than what you owe him," he told me. "Why should he bother to give it back?"'
Professor Esposito looked pained.
'Evidently he must be a low and ignorant class of person.
It is true that I could have realized a short-term profit on the transaction by retaining your watch, but only at the cost of forfeiting your custom in the future and injuring the good name I have been at such pains to build up over the years.'
Zen nodded vaguely, but he wasn't listening. He had to find his mother, but he also had to find the escaped prisoner — and, above all, the US naval ensign who had gone AWOL. If what Gilberto had told him about the videogame cassette was even half true, then John Viviani was potentially in deadly danger.
'"Never make an enemy unnecessarily, nor neglect an opportuni
ty to make a friend,'" observed Professor Esposito sententiously, '"for enemies can harm you and friends help you in ways and on occasions that you can never imagine." Francesco Guiccardini.'
He slipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and produced a watch which he handed to Zen.
"I happened to notice it had a tendency to lose time, so I took the liberty of showing it to a friend of mine who cleaned it thoroughly. Then I thought, Genna, Genna, what have you done? Is it likely that the dottore wouldn't have got the watch fixed himself, if he wanted to be on time? If he has omitted to do so, it can only be because he wants it to run slow so as to provide an excuse when he's late for some professional or social appointment. And now you've ruined everything for him. What an idiot you are,Gennaro!' Zen thanked the professor for this thoughtful and ingenious hypothesis, but assured him that he had just never got around to getting the watch repaired. He then handed over the money he owed. The professor bowed again.
'You have my card/ he said. 'If you ever have any other little matters which need sorting out, you know where to find me/ 'Actually…'
Professor Esposito was instantly all attention.
'Yes?'
Zen shook his head.
'No, it's nothing.'
Neither man moved.
'That card of yours/ Zen said at last. 'It mentioned various services of an, er, supernatural variety/ 'Yes/ 'Would they include tracing someone who has disappeared?'
XXI
Bisogna consolarle
The kiss of life having proved effective, Gesualdo was all for calling a doctor to check the two girls' condition, and then an ambulance to take them straight to hospital 'and off our hands'. But the mere suggestion was enough to set off another crisis.
'First I cut her throat!' screamed Libera, grabbing a bread knife and holding it to Iolanda's neck. 'Then my own!'
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