by Tobias Jones
‘It’s in Testaccio.’
‘I should get round there.’
We walked down the staircase. I saw her running her hands along the wide flat bannisters as if searching for support.
‘Allora?’ shouted Biondi before we were even at the bottom. ‘Did you find anything?’
‘Of course we didn’t,’ the sister interrupted.
‘Then why did you go up there?’
‘Please, Father.’ She slammed a hand on the circle of wood at the end of the bannister. ‘Try and be civil. He’s trying to build up a picture of who he’s looking for.’
Biondi stared at me like he was already disappointed. ‘Va bene, va bene,’ he said, though he didn’t sound convinced. ‘Come into my study and we’ll sort out your fee.’
I nodded at Chiara by way of goodbye and followed Biondi into a room at the end of the house. There were more untouched tomes in here and a large desk with a green leather inlay. The room’s rug looked like an heirloom from the Middle Ages.
‘How much?’
I told him my daily rate and he pulled out a drawer and counted some notes.
‘I’ll need expenses as well.’
‘Of course you will,’ he said sarcastically.
If I hadn’t been concerned about the fate of a young girl, I would have walked out there and then. I was tired of his rudeness and discourtesy but I bit my tongue and said nothing. He was the kind of man who got his own way but no pleasure from it. His face at rest was a scowl, and when animated was a grimace. He seemed to hold a grudge against the world. He was abrupt and discourteous, but very openly so, and I wondered if there was an honesty there, if maybe Biondi’s causticity wasn’t preferable to the mellifluous deceit I had seen so many times before. It was the wrong time to judge him anyway. He looked like the type who was always highly strung, and – with his daughter missing – he seemed about to snap.
I thanked him as he passed me a thin wad of notes.
‘Please find her. Bring her home.’
‘I’ll do everything I can.’
He stood up and we shook hands. He took mine in both of his, a rare show of solidarity or encouragement. ‘Please . . .’ he said beseechingly.
As we walked back into the large reception room the frail wife came stumbling towards us. ‘I’m going to try and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘Good night.’ She offered me her fingers again. I clasped them and gave a slight deferential bow.
Biondi walked me towards the front door repeating his wife’s phrase: ‘“Going to try and get some sleep” . . . the amount of pills she takes, it’s a wonder she ever wakes up.’
‘What does she take them for?’
‘The pills? To sleep, to wake up, to get out of bed, to digest, to regress. There’s hardly any activity that isn’t accompanied by some pill being knocked back.’
‘It must be a very trying time.’ It sounded condescending or false and he nodded brusquely.
‘Buonanotte,’ he said, reaching to his right to open the monumental gate that kept the swarming city at bay.
I got back in the car and looked up at the sad house once more. I saw the mother, Giovanna, silhouetted in an upstairs window. The window looked twice her height as she drew the curtains. The car crunched on the gravel and the gate closed behind me as I waited for a space to enter the busy Saturday night traffic.
The three-lane road ran parallel to the Tiber. Motorbikes kept roaring past me, weaving between the traffic as the tyres swayed out flamboyantly from under the drivers. It was a warm night and most cars had their windows down. Each time we stopped at traffic lights I heard their thumping music and felt the vibrations through my seat. It was as if each car was competing with the next to impose their beat. Men were leaning out of windows trying to make the girls in other cars laugh. Someone on a moped recognised a friend on another moped and they bumped gloved knuckles like boxers before a bout.
It was a long time since I had been in Rome. I had forgotten the energy and noise of the place. It seemed to come alive at night like the throbbing, insistent sound of cicadas after sunset. I sped past ancient floodlit monuments, past the august cupolas and famous ruins. Immaculate shop displays were illuminated and there were small crowds even now, nocturnal window shopping under the palm trees.
I tried to remember which bridge I needed to cross to get to Testaccio. I overshot and had to turn round and go back up the river the other way: more traffic lights, more loud music, more banter.
There was a procession of drivers looking for somewhere to park. Most of the cars around here seemed abandoned rather than parked. They had just put a wheel or two on the pavement and left it at that. I went up and down narrow cobbled streets and eventually found a small patch of pavement I could claim as my own. I ripped the snap of Simona out of the magazine and twisted my body sideways to get out of the car.
There was a bar on the corner of the street. It was one of those expensive, sedate places where the waiters wore uniforms. I sat down and ordered a coffee. The guy came back with a small steaming thimble and the scontrino.
‘You know where the Oro nightclub is?’ I asked as I passed him some coins.
‘Sure,’ he said, nodding cheerfully like he wished he was there. He gave me directions and then looked at me with his head cocked to one side. ‘With respect, you don’t look like the usual Oro punter.’
I ran my hand across my short greying hair and looked at my clothes. I was wearing an old pair of trousers and a shirt that had seen better days. ‘Underdressed?’ I asked.
‘Underdressed and overage,’ he smiled.
‘It’s a young crowd in there?’
He nodded. ‘Young and pretty wild.’
I told him I was looking for my daughter. I showed him the photo of Simona and he took it and held it towards the old-fashioned lantern advertising a beer brand that was hanging from a corner of the awning. He shook his head and wished me luck.
I picked up the sachet from the saucer, ripped off the corner and poured in some sugar. I stirred and knocked back the scalding rich liquid. There were young kids playing on the steps of a monument in the middle of the small square. Behind them were the pillars and pediment of an ancient church.
The man’s directions led me towards a main road on the other side of the suburb’s narrow streets. There were a few dolled-up kids waiting to cross the road with me and I followed them to what looked like an abandoned industrial complex sandwiched in the fork between two roads.
The name of the place, Oro, was written in illuminated golden letters. I could hear the thumping music reverberating outside. There must have been about a hundred people in the queue, all chattering away. The men looked like they were dressed for a day’s work in the bank: white shirts, stiff collars, smart shoes, immaculately combed hair. The women were more exotic. Under their jackets, most of them seemed to be wearing more make-up than clothing.
I took out the snap of Simona and started walking up and down the queue, asking if anyone had seen her. One man joked that he wouldn’t mind getting to know her and his friends guffawed. Another, a young girl with glitter on her powdered cheeks, said that she looked familiar. No one said anything useful. I joined the back of the queue.
It took almost an hour to get in. Two bouncers with transparent plastic earpieces and microphones on the lapels of their jackets clearly enjoyed their power. They unhooked a thick red rope occasionally to let a couple of people in and then hooked it back up for another ten minutes, ignoring the impatient punters. Both had shaved heads like blond sandpaper.
When I finally got to the front of the queue the two men looked at me with obvious disdain.
‘You sure you’re in the right place?’ one of them asked.
‘This is Oro, right?’
He nodded as if it were obvious. The back of his neck created rolls like thick sausages as he rocked his head back and forth.
‘Then I’m in the right place.’
‘Right place, wrong clothes,’ he said. ‘We can’t let you in dre
ssed like that.’
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my badge. It was a licence to practise as a private detective. I put a couple of Biondi’s notes underneath it and passed it over.
‘I’m looking for a girl,’ I said as he pocketed the notes and passed back the badge.
‘Aren’t we all?’ He smiled.
‘Have you seen this one? She’s called Simona.’
He took the snap out of my hand and shook his head.
‘You?’ I said to his uninterested colleague. He reached over, took the snap, and passed it back. He clicked his tongue and put his head to one side as he lifted the twisted red rope and let me in.
As soon as I went through the double doors the temperature and volume soared. People were checking in their coats and their modesty in a booth to the right. As I went through the next set of doors the music became deafening. I could feel it booming inside my ribcage as I watched random limbs illuminated by strobe lighting. Most of the dancers had their hands in the air and all those arms looked like waving underwater seaweed.
The girls were dressed for the beach: bikinis with mini sarongs wrapped round their waists. Some had exotic headgear on: feathers or sombreros. One or two of the men had taken their tops off and everywhere I looked I could see skin dripping with oil or sweat. There were vertical poles on plinths where various women were cavorting, wrapping their thighs around the golden metal and grinding to the music.
I tried to ask a couple of people if they recognised the photograph but no one could hear what I was saying. I showed it to one girl who put her hands straight in the air and danced around me until her elbows were on my shoulders. She moved her arms backwards and forwards so that her bosom bounced against my midriff. I stood there motionless as she started to move up and down me. She shouted something in my ear but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She turned round, dancing away from me while looking over her shoulder. The few people managing to make conversation were having to shout into each other’s ears so that they almost ended up embracing, touching each other’s bodies to balance themselves.
There was a slightly quieter side-room behind the pulsating dance floor where people were lounging around on sofas. Behind them a scratchy film of some urban underpass was being projected onto the wall. There was a couple making out on an armchair, their hands exploring each other’s bodies. Everyone seemed to be holding small plastic bottles of water.
I sat down on a bar stool and watched the strange film being projected onto the opposite wall. The underpass was in shade, but the light beyond it was so bright that the edges of the overhead road were blurred, like the camera was deliberately overexposing. I guessed it was LA or somewhere in California. Nothing much happened. Occasionally some rubbish was thrown from above, or an animal wandered into view trying to find food amongst the detritus. It seemed pointless, but maybe that was the point.
‘May I?’ a voice said to my right.
I looked over and a young girl was standing there asking if she could sit next to me. I gestured to say ‘no problem’.
‘This looks interesting,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure if she was serious. I turned to look at her. She was beautiful. Probably still a teenager. As undressed as everyone else. Her skin was dark, but I could just see the tan lines on her breasts which, judging by the way she was leaning forward, was what I was supposed to see.
‘I’m Sara,’ she said.
‘Casta.’
‘Who are you with?’
‘No one.’
‘You’re on your own?’ She seemed incredulous.
I nodded. ‘I’m looking for a girl.’
She misunderstood, seeming to think I was there just for a crude pick-up, and looked disconcerted. So I showed her the snap.
‘Who’s that?’ She read the caption. ‘Simona Biondi. Who’s she?’
‘She’s gone missing. She was in here a week or two ago when this was taken.’
‘Never seen her. Sorry. She your daughter?’
‘Do I look that old?’
She looked me over. ‘Who is she?’
‘Just a girl,’ I said.
She sat next to me for a while and we watched the weird film. Eventually she stood up and announced she was going to have a dance. I told her I would see her around.
The bar was three deep and the only way to get served was to waft a note in the air. People at the front retreated from the bar with bottles held above their heads. I was pushed forward by impatient punters.
After an uncomfortable quarter of an hour, the sweating barman offered me his ear, hoping to hear my order.
‘Have you seen her?’ I shouted, pointing down at the photo and showing him my badge.
He looked down at it and then at me. He pulled himself up onto the bar, resting his stomach on the wet chrome surface to yell something in my ear. I shook my head to tell him I hadn’t heard. He tried again, but all I got were strange sounds and some spit.
He jumped back down to the floor and beckoned me towards the end of the bar. He gestured to his white-shirted colleagues that he was heading off for two minutes and then lifted up a hinged section of the bar, shooing people off it. He nodded with his head, telling me to come in. He ignored the wall of arms holding notes towards him between the taps and led me up some stairs behind the bar.
‘Cazzo,’ he said, turning round to wait for me at the top of the steps. ‘I’ll be deaf by the time I’m thirty if I stay working here.’
He led me into a small office with a large window overlooking the dance floor. ‘What is it with this girl?’ he said, turning to face me. He was a young, good-looking lad with dark curls as if a haircut was a month or two overdue.
‘How do you mean?’ I said, intrigued.
‘Just the other day I had an old man coming round here with that same photo, asking exactly the same question.’
‘Asking what exactly?’
‘If I had seen the girl.’
‘And had you?’
He shrugged. ‘I serve hundreds of people every night. Probably a few thousand a week. Chances are I’ve served her if she’s been in here.’
The boy had a southern accent. Somewhere from Puglia, I guessed.
‘And what did you tell the man?’
‘Exactly that. That I had probably served her.’ He shrugged again impatiently, as if there was nothing more to say.
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He offered me two hundred to call him if she ever came in again. Left me a copy of that photo and a number to call him on.’
‘You still got that number?’
‘Sure. If it was worth two hundred, I wasn’t going to lose it.’
I raised my chin to tell him to get it. He stood up and went over to a wall of jackets and bags. He found his own and unzipped an inside pocket. He showed me the copy of the magazine snap and passed me a piece of paper: Massimo Mori was written in biro, with, underneath, Hotel del Fiume. Room 13. There was a mobile number below that.
‘Hotel del Fiume? Where’s that?’ I asked, holding up the paper.
‘Boh,’ he said, throwing his thumbs out sideways to say he didn’t know. ‘He just told me to call him on that number if I ever saw her. I didn’t see her so I didn’t call him.’
‘Massimo Mori, eh? That’s his name?’
‘That’s what he said. I didn’t think any more about it until you came in.’ He looked at me with curiosity. ‘What’s all this about.’
‘Describe the man, this Mori,’ I said, ignoring his question.
He stared vacantly at the wall. ‘He looked a bit like an ageing rocker. You know, he must have been middle-aged or more but he had his grey hair in a ponytail. We occasionally get types like that in here: the older crowd who come in looking to pick up a girl.’
‘Doesn’t seem very hard to do around here.’
‘No.’ He chuckled, his gaze losing focus as he smiled.
I looked through the window and onto the dance floor.
Down below there were two girls dancing with their wrists together above their heads, moving them left and right with their eyes closed. Each had a bare thigh between the other’s legs. I watched them as they started kissing, a circle of spectators egging them on.
‘He was short, I remember that much. Short with a grey ponytail. That’s about it.’
‘Did he say why he was looking for the girl?’
‘He said,’ he looked at me through his eyebrows as if he weren’t sure, ‘that she was his daughter. We get that in here. Some sad father who is looking for a wayward child.’
‘Or a wayward wife?’
‘And that.’ He chuckled again. ‘I didn’t buy it. I mean, he looked dodgy to me. There was something about him I didn’t trust.’
‘Why not?’
‘I get to see a whole lot of faces every night. You get quite good at judging them after a while. You know what they’re like somehow. And he looked dodgy, that’s all. To be honest, I’m not certain I would have called him even if she had turned up. I mean, sure, I need the money, but he wasn’t her father. Even I knew that. He had the wrong face, the wrong attitude.’
‘What about my face?’ I asked. ‘Would you call me if she came in again?’
He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. ‘You look like a tough nut. But that limp you’ve got makes you seem like you’ve been through it.’ He was serious now, like he might have been through it, whatever it was, himself. ‘Why do you want her?’
‘Because she’s gone missing. She didn’t come home last night. I’m a private detective hired by her parents to bring her home.’ I showed him my badge.
‘So that guy wasn’t her father?’
I shook my head.
‘Didn’t think so.’ He looked suddenly sheepish. ‘I sure could have done with that money though.’
I reached into my pocket a passed him a note. ‘I’ll keep this card,’ I said, holding up the business card from the Hotel del Fiume. ‘If you see this Massimo Mori, or the girl again, call me immediately and I’ll give you that two hundred.’ I ripped a page out of my notebook and wrote my number on it. ‘There’s no CCTV here?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think the owners would want that.’