A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery)

by Aaron Elkins

  There were some cardboard trays stacked hip-high at the side of the stand, and I had managed to get my fingers around the rim of one. As he took another step forward I swung it sharply at his head. It startled him, as it was meant to. His crossed hands flew a few inches higher, and as the cardboard bounced harmlessly off his wrists I drove in with a blow to his midsection. This one had everything I had behind it, and it landed just where I'd aimed it; in the center of his flat, hard abdomen. He doubled over instantly, and I managed to get in a second punch, this one not much more than a sloppy swipe at his head as he was going down.

  But even when he was on the pavement in a heap, Ettore was formidable. As he hit the tile he twisted like a cat into a compact ball, catching my ankles between his arms and legs. "Pietro!" he shouted.

  While I was struggling to get free something snaked around me from behind; an enormously thick, iron-like arm that pressed the breath out of me with a single squeeze, then kept on squeezing. Pietro had arrived. I panicked, beating with both fists at the gargantuan forearm. If he kept it up for one more second, my ribs would crack.

  He didn't. He shifted his hold, plucked me easily from Ettore's grasp, and threw me—simply heaved me—a good eight or ten feet out into the street. On the fly. I didn't even hear him grunt with the effort. I managed to break my fall with my arms and jump quickly if unsteadily to my feet. I was muddled, though, facing in the wrong direction. I turned dizzily, almost losing my balance, until I found the two of them again. Ettore was up now. He and the monster were standing together, next to the flower stand, looking quietly at me again. Ettore had something in his hand that looked like a piece of metal pipe. Max was moaning softly on the ground behind them. The rain drifted lazily down onto my face.

  There was a sudden roar to my right, only a dozen or so feet away. Startled, I spun around and found myself facing a small, dark car with its headlights off. I could see a figure behind the wheel.

  The car . . . I'd forgotten the car—

  Even now, it still seems to me as if the thing literally sprang at me, like a tiger at a deer. And even if I hadn't been as frozen as a terror-stricken deer, there wouldn't have been time to get out of the way. I put out my hands feebly in an absurd effort to keep it off.

  And astonishingly I did, after a fashion. When my hands hit the front of it and I pushed, I was bumped upward, not downward, and an instant later I was doing a handstand, or at least a rolling shoulder stand, on the hood while it moved under me. I slid heavily into the windshield, or rather it slid into me—thank God, it didn't break—and then, somehow, I was flipped over and up, landing on the roof.

  That was the most painful part, because I landed sharply on the base of my spine and also managed to bang the back of my head somewhere along the way. I felt the car speed up under me, and I skidded the length of the roof on my back, slithered down over the trunk without doing much additional damage, and landed back in the street, amazingly enough on my feet.

  I hit hard on both heels, jarring every bone and joint in my body, and then juddered crazily over the pavement, my teeth rattling, until I tripped over the curb and fell onto the terrazzo. On instinct, I dragged myself between two columns, out of reach of the car, then sat shaking, not comprehending what had happened. I had been caught by surprise, after all, and the whole thing couldn't have taken even two seconds. And believe me, it was a lot less intelligible in the experiencing than in the telling. Besides, from the moment I'd seen the car, I'd expected to be killed. Sitting there, I wasn't sure I hadn't been.

  A wave of nausea billowed over me, and I leaned sideways and put my forehead down against the smooth tile. My teeth ached appallingly. Something warm was flowing thickly by my ear and along my neck. I saw the column next to me tilt slowly and begin to revolve. I must have passed out then, for how long I'm not sure, but I remember jerking awake with a start at the sound of an approaching siren.

  The thugs were gone. The car, too. But Max was still lying there; alive, thank God. He was painfully trying to haul himself to his elbows. His legs, flaccid and boneless-looking, seemed not to belong to him. For the first time, I noticed he was lying beneath the darkened windows of Bologna's newest restaurant, opened a few weeks before on the busy downtown corner of Indipendenza and Ugo Bassi, across from the venerable Piazza Nettuno.

  McDonald's.

  Chapter 5

  The next time I was aware of anything at all I was drifting in and out of cottony, white clouds. I was quite comfortable. Happy, in fact. I was in the Ospedale Maggiore; so I'd been given to understand, and I was going to be just fine. I certainly felt fine. Solicitous, cheerful men and women in white hovered about me, making pleasant sounds and occasionally sticking needles in me with great gentleness. It was very pleasant to simply lie back and be fussed over.

  At one indeterminate point I surfaced—or rather descended from somewhere around ceiling level—to find myself listening to someone speaking in Italian with quiet confidence.

  "—was named Ettore. I remember because the other one, Pietro, called him that." The voice was pleasant and familiar.

  I was lying peacefully on my back with my eyes closed, and I waited with interest to hear what would follow. Whoever it was, he was talking about the two thugs. Had there been a witness, then?

  Another person spoke, also in Italian. "Thank you. Now I would like to ask another question. Tell me, why did you, signor Scoccimarro, and signor Caboto go out drinking?"

  I waited. The question was a little complex. I yawned and settled myself farther into the bed. Time passed. I began to float off again.

  "Signor Norgren?"

  I started. "Yes?"

  "Why did you, signor Scoccimarro, and signor Caboto go out drinking?"

  I opened my eyes. I was in a cranked-up hospital bed. Through the lowered window blinds I could see daylight. Was it Tuesday morning already? To my side were two young, blue- uniformed policemen in chairs, one of them with a pad. On the bedside table, a couple of feet from my face, a tape recorder was whirring softly. I realized belatedly why the first voice had sounded so pleasant and familiar. It was mine.

  "How long have we been talking?" I asked.

  The two policemen looked at each other. "About twenty minutes," the one without the pad said. He seemed to be in charge; a long-limbed, athletic-looking man in his late twenties. "We won't keep you much longer. Will you answer the question, please?"

  The question. I searched my mind for it. "Uh, out drinking?" I said lamely. Where was that quiet confidence now that I was awake?

  "The three of you had several brandies at the Nepentha. I would like to know why."

  "Why? Why did we have several brandies? Well, we were old friends, and it was the first time we'd seen each other in a while."

  "Who suggested it?"

  I thought back. My mind was beginning to clear. "Ugo. To celebrate old times."

  "And are you all really such good friends as that?"

  "As what?" I think a note of irritation must have crept into my voice. Even half-zonked on whatever the doctors had been sticking in my arm, I could see where he was leading: If Max had been set up, then wasn't it likely that it had been by one of the two people he'd left the restaurant with? And if it wasn't me, he was thinking, then it must have been Ugo.

  I suppose I would have been in contention, too, had I not been fortunate enough to have nearly gotten killed in the melee myself. I shifted my shoulders with a grimace. The clear headedness was coming at a price. I was starting to ache at every joint, and a few other places, too. I thought of asking the cops to get a nurse to give me something but decided I'd be better off undoped for the rest of the interview. It had already occurred to me that I couldn't be in a very serious condition. For one thing, there were no bandages, no tubes going in or out of me, no oxygen tent. For another, the hospital had permitted the police to interview me.

  What I thought the young cop was thinking didn't make me happy. Ugo Scoccimarro was probably the most straightforward, a
boveboard person I knew. Coarse sometimes, ignorant sometimes—how could he not be, with four years of schooling all told?—but unfailingly honest and openhearted.

  "Yes," I said, "we're good friends." We had, in fact, met perhaps half a dozen times.

  "Did you ever go out drinking together before, or was this the first time?"

  I didn't like this "go out drinking" business either. I began to object, but caught myself as a chorus of "0 Sole Mio" in the Piazza Maggiore flashed before my eyes. Maybe the guy had a point.

  "Well, this is the first time that it was just the three of us, as I recall, but—"

  "Tell me, did you actually see signor Scoccimarro leave Bologna?"

  "We walked him right to the train station."

  "But did you actually see him leave?"

  I tried to recall. Things had been pretty muddled by then. "Yes," I said, finally remembering. "He was on the 1:04. "

  We had gone to the wrong platform first, and Ugo had almost boarded a train heading toward Rome. Then we had found the train to Milan, helped him up the steps of the first- class car, and seen him fall happily into a seat. His next breath had been a snore, and Max and I had left.

  "Then you didn't actually watch the train leave?" the officer persisted.

  I thought it over. "No, I guess not, but the man was sound asleep when we left." What was he suggesting? That Ugo, soused as he was, had hired the two thugs and crept back to town to mastermind the attack? Perhaps even that he had been behind the wheel of the car? What for? Surely Ugo wasn't on Max's list of five.

  "I don't understand why you're concentrating on Ugo. Fifty other people could have overheard Max talking about going to the police. Max was practically shouting— "

  The other policeman, older and softer, held up his pencil and shook his head. He looked tired. "You have told us already."

  Gingerly I readjusted myself on the pillow. I was tired, too. And I was beginning to hurt quite a lot. My joints were like wood when I moved them, and my teeth felt as if they'd all gone through root canal explorations. Maybe another shot wouldn't be a bad idea after all.

  Even as I was thinking it the curtains around my bed parted and a nurse came in with a broad smile and a hypodermic at the ready. The staff was all very happy here. I was ready enough for her, but I hesitated. "Maybe I'd better finish answering these gentlemen's questions," I said.

  But at a nod from the younger man the soft one had closed up his pad and was reaching for the STOP button on the tape recorder. "We have everything we need, signore. You've been very helpful. We'll bring a transcript of this for you to see, and if you can think of something else you can tell us at the time."

  By then it didn't matter very much. The needle had been eased in and I was already four feet above the bed, on my way to the soft, white clouds. I felt my chin touch my chest.

  "It's really not so amazing," Dr. Tolomeo explained pleasantly. "Generally speaking, an adult pedestrian hit by an automobile is not run over; not unless he is struck by a tall vehicle such as a truck—or he is lying down at the time." He chuckled benignly. "No, generally speaking, a pedestrian hit by an automobile is run under." The easily amused physician chuckled some more. "It's a simple matter of centers of gravity."

  "Oh," I said, not very graciously. By this time—it was one o'clock in the afternoon–I had convinced myself that my escape from certain death by vaulting over an onrushing automobile had been a feat of iron nerves, extraordinary coordination, and lightning-quick reactions. In an inspired moment I had just described it to him as having been something like the remarkable bull-vaulting paintings that have come down to us from the Cretans. And here he was telling me it had nothing to do with me at all; it was merely an example of the inalterable laws of physics. The same thing would have happened to me if I'd been a sack of potatoes, given a high enough center of gravity.

  Dr. Tolomeo was a man highly sensitive to the needs of his patients. "Of course," he added quickly, "it was miraculous that you were able to land on your feet and escape with no more than a mild concussion and a few strains. Usually, it is the other end that hits the road. There are terrible spinal injuries, and scalp and facial skin is often shredded from road friction. And often, from being thrown onto the hood, there is tearing of the fatty tissue, with perforations of—"

  With a grimace I held up my hand. That kind of solace I could do without. I was still in my hospital room. Dr. Tolomeo had come in a few minutes before to tell me that the prodding of my bodily parts and the analysis of my bodily functions had revealed no serious injury. I was free to get out of bed, get dressed, and go. There might be a little lingering achiness, but he had prescribed something for that And he would advise bed rest for at least a day. My body needed time to compose itself.

  "I don't suppose you know if they caught the two men? Three men, rather," I added, thinking of the car's driver.

  "No," he said, then added with some eagerness, "but I know that there was a terrific chase across Bologna, with two police cars in pursuit, guns blazing. You heard none of it?"

  I shook my head. "Just a siren. How is Max . . . Massimiliano Caboto doing?"

  The doctor's round, sunny face darkened. "Your friend will be all right in time. He will adjust."

  "Adjust?" I stared at him with a sudden, sick twisting in my abdomen. I'd asked some of the other staff about him earlier, but they had just shrugged and gone on with their work. I'd taken it to mean that he was all right, that he'd already been sent home. "What's the matter with him?"

  "His legs," Dr. Tolomeo said softly. "They—"

  "Legs—!" All I'd seen was the one punch to his face. I hadn't known there'd been anything else. But now I remembered that boneless, flaccid look below his hips. I also remembered the piece of pipe in Franco's hand. "They .. . smashed them with that pipe?" I asked. My chest was tight and empty.

  "Apparently so. The abraded margins of the wounds, the compacted underlying tissue, the smashed bones, all suggest such a weapon."

  "My God," I said to Dr. Tolomeo, "I've got to see him. Where is he?"

  The physician shook his head. "Not today. He just came from surgery, and it was a difficult procedure. Perhaps tomorrow. Better yet, the day after."

  "When you say 'smashed,' " I said slowly to Dr. Tolomeo, "how bad. . . ?"

  "The knee is an extremely delicate joint," Dr. Tolomeo said gently. "Even under the normal stresses of life it often fails. In a case like this—" He spread his hands. "Each leg was brutally struck several times. The fractures are multiple and complex, and there was much damage to the cartilages and soft tissue. The patellas themselves... " He shrugged.

  "Will he be able to walk?"

  Dr. Tolomeo looked uncomfortable. "You must understand that a long, somewhat painful course of therapy will be required. More operations may be necessary." He sighed. "He will never walk as he did before."

  Depressed, utterly washed out, I took a taxi from the hospital to the Hotel Europa and followed Dr. Tolomeo's advice; I slept away the rest of the day, waking up every few hours to grope for the bottle of pain capsules. At about 10:00 P.M. I dragged myself out for a bowl of soup and a plate of spaghetti and clam sauce at the first trattoria I came to, then went back to my room, fell onto the bed again, and slept through until eight the next morning.

  When I awakened I could tell the worst was over. My body had composed itself. The lingering aches that Dr. Tolomeo had promised were there, all right, but I was more stiff than hurting, as long as I didn't do anything silly such as stamping my foot on the floor or clamping my teeth together. It wasn't bad enough to endure the spaciness that went along with the painkillers, so I threw the bottle away, relying on aspirin instead. I showered for the first time since Monday, the day before yesterday, finding some bruises and contusions I hadn't realized were there, then called the hospital to see if I could talk to Max.

  I couldn't. He had spent a restless night, I was told, and he was asleep. Try again in the afternoon.

  Half an hour
later, over caffè latte, rolls, and jam in the hotel breakfast room, I was trying to concentrate on my exhibition notes, but thinking about Max instead—worrying about him and also nursing a highly unaccustomed feeling: the desire for vengeance on his behalf. On mine, too, for that matter. The obvious connection between Max's announcement that he was about to tell the police everything he knew, and the attack on him just a few hours later, had not escaped me.

  It had not escaped the two policemen who had interviewed me, either, and we had spent substantial time reconstructing the scene. Amedeo Di Vecchio and Benedetto Luca, who'd been Max's and my tablemates, had to be formally considered as suspects, unlikely as it seemed on the face of it. Beyond that, who could say? There had been about fifty people in the room and, given Max's pickled state and robust voice, none of them had been out of earshot. I had suggested that the policemen get a guest list from Di Vecchio, and they had said they would.

  Thinking hard, I broke open the second crisp breakfast roll. Was there anything I was forgetting, anything I'd neglected to tell them, anything that might help find Max's attackers? I had described the thugs, told them their names, described the car as well as I could, which was pitifully— "small, purple or red, or dark anyway, no hood ornament." (According to Dr. Tolomeo, it was the absence of a hood ornament that had saved me from those nasty perforations.) What was I forgetting—?

  I sat up with a start, almost spilling my coffee. What I was forgetting was my appointment with Colonel Antuono. Yesterday's dreamy haze had constituted a sort of nonday, and I'd forgotten this was Wednesday. I was due in less than an hour. I gulped down the rest of the coffee, went upstairs to grab a jacket, and ran—or as near to it as I could, given the state of my joints—off to my meeting with Cesare Antuono.

  If the Eagle of Lombardy couldn't help, who could?