‘It’s nothing,’ the star interrupted, jerking both hands outwards as though to symbolise the jettisoning of redundant cargo. ‘I don’t need any praise or applause. The great artist is always a great critic as well. Today I was magnificent. I know that instinctively, in my belly, in my heart!’
He grasped her arm and broke into the gaping, toothy, beard-framed smile that was one of his professional hallmarks, an image of which featured on the labels for the evergrowing list of sauces, oils, cookware and other products branded under the Lo Chef trademark.
‘I’m getting better and better, Delia,’ he confided. ‘This is only the beginning of the rich, prolific middle period for which I shall always be remembered. The years to come…’
Lost for words to describe adequately the splendours of the future that awaited him, he relapsed into a long heartfelt sigh. Delia patted his shoulder.
‘I understand, Romano, and I completely agree. Now you go and get changed, and then we must have a brief discussion. I realise that this is a difficult moment for you, after putting on such a superb performance, but there are some very important and urgent issues that we need to address.’
6
‘Yes, yes! Give it to me! Give it to me hot and hard!’
King Antonio perched naked on his throne, sweating, groaning, imploring. Then his expression changed to one of alarm, almost of fear.
‘Oh my God, it’s coming! Ah! Oh! No, I can’t! It’s too big! It’ll tear me apart! Please God, I can’t take it!’
At the last moment, just when he knew from the pangs below that he was about to do himself a serious injury, his sphincter relaxed that crucial millimetre or so. After that there were only the gasps, tears and moans, followed by a triumphal flush and the glowing sense of absolute fulfilment.
Next came an invigorating shower, but Tony emerged totally uninvigorated. After a moment’s reflection, he swallowed six paracetamol tablets washed down with water gulped from the hand-basin tap. They wouldn’t do his liver any good, particularly given his rigid regime of a bottle of bourbon a day, but at least they would ease the vicious headache that had been with him since he awoke.
Straightening up, he caught sight of himself in the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet. The reflected image was a shock. His forehead was swollen to twice its normal size and, when he touched it, proved very sensitive. Tony immediately thought about malignant cysts, but the thing definitely hadn’t been there the day before, so a bruise seemed the more likely solution. The skin was a rainbow in shades of pink, red, purple, blue and black, but didn’t seem to be broken.
He walked through to the bedroom, trying to calm down and get the situation into perspective. It was all part of the job, after all. Being the top investigatore privato in Bologna was tough work, but somebody had to do it. Still, he wished he could recall a little more clearly what had happened the previous night. He knew that he had fired his current girlfriend, but only because he did that to whoever happened to occupy that position on the last day of each month. Private eyes couldn’t have stable, long-term affairs. They were complex, alienated loners who had to walk the mean streets of the big city, men who might be flawed but were neither tarnished nor afraid. Above all, they had to suffer.
Tony Speranza was certainly suffering as he laboriously put on his clothes and went through to the kitchen to make coffee. The resulting brew produced still more suffering, to alleviate which Tony lit an unfiltered Camel, cracked open the Jack Daniels and knocked back a stiff shot. What the hell had happened last night, apart from the screaming match with Ingrid or whatever her name was?
Screaming match. Football match. Of course, he’d been to the stadium to check up on the target’s pals. Photograph them at the bar afterwards with that ultra-cool digital camera he’d just bought, barely bigger than a matchbox. It had taken all the experience of the total pro he was to do so without being spotted, but he’d accomplished his mission. Now it was just a matter of downloading the picture files to his desktop and emailing them to l’avvocato. Only where was the camera? He checked his overcoat pockets, then patted his suit. His wallet and keys, notebook and pen, were all present and correct. But not the camera. And not…
Oh shit, he thought. Oh fuck. Oh my God.
To be honest, Tony didn’t really need a gun. Ninety-nine per cent of his work came from divorce cases, jealous husbands, and keeping tabs on the children of local families worried that their costly offspring were getting into bad company and worse habits. La sicurezza di sapere tutto, sempre!!! was the slogan he used for his ad in the Yellow Pages and on the fliers stuck under the windscreen wipers of parked cars. The work itself was mostly a question of being equipped with the latest surveillance technology, and occasionally putting in a sleepless night staked out in front of the property where an adulterous liaison or drug party was going on. There was almost never any violence, certainly none involving firearms.
But Tony Speranza knew and respected the rules of the genre. Private eyes have to have a gun, so he had acquired one from a Serbian former special policeman who had done some freelance work for him at one time. It was an M-57 semi-automatic, manufactured to the highest specifications in strictly limited quantities by the Zastava State Arsenal. The pistol fitted unobtrusively into the capacious pockets of the double-breasted trench coat and had a gorgeous walnut grip and silky blued finish into which Tony had had his name engraved in fancy cursive script. A little beauty, in short. The only problem was that he didn’t seem to have it any more. ‘The assurance of knowing everything, always’. Ha! Right now, Tony would have settled for feeling reasonably sure about anything, once in a while.
This train of thought was derailed by the phone.
‘Tony Speranza, investigatore privato,’ he said automatically.
‘This is the office of Avvocato Giulio Amadori,’ a female voice stated.
Tony laughed and took a hit of bourbon.
‘Hey, I never talked to an office before!’
‘Avvocato Amadori wishes to be informed of the current status of the unresolved issues in the matter in which he has employed you.’
‘Put him on, darling, put him on.’
‘Avvocato Amadori is presently away from his desk.’
‘Then let me speak with the desk.’
‘It concerns the photographic evidence which you and he have discussed.’
Tony laughed again and lit another Camel.
‘You know what? I bet you’re not an office at all. You were just kidding around. I see you as a ravishing blonde with a come-hither look that can melt platinum at twenty metres, who knows where all the bodies are buried, and has the murder weapon tucked into her garter belt.’
‘To ensure quality service and for your protection, this conversation is being recorded. If Avvocato Amadori considers your attitude inappropriate, he reserves the right to take the necessary steps.’
‘Oh yeah? What does he do when he gets mad, run up the bell tower of San Petronio and make like Quasimodo?’
‘Thank you. Avvocato Amadori will be informed of your response in due course.’
‘Listen, I’m on the job, okay? But discretion is of the essence and so far a suitable opportunity has not presented itself.’
But he was talking to a dead line.
He put the phone down and poured himself another bourbon. I knew the Amadori case would be trouble from the beginning, he fantasised. Of all the PI offices in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. In point of hard fact, it was a routine surveillance operation for a fortyish yuppy whose kid had left home and was refusing to communicate with him. Giulio Amadori’s main worry seemed to be that Vincenzo would end up in trouble with the cops and that this would reflect badly on his own law practice, although he had made a cursory gesture towards fashionable sentimentality by foregrounding the family reputation and his wife’s feelings. He was prepared to pay five hundred up front for details of his son’s whereabouts, habits and associates, with the possibility of more to
come for follow-up investigations or interventions based on the primary information.
Tony Speranza would much rather have been hired to look into a seemingly casual disappearance that led him to a sexy but dangerous babe with plenty to hide both physically and criminally, but in his experience that sort of thing rarely happened in Bologna. All he had to go on was a snapshot of the young man and the information that he affected to be a diehard supporter of the Bologna football club. Such fans invariably had season tickets at the Curva San Luca end of the ground, and sure enough when Tony headed out to the stadium on Via Costa the evening of the next home fixture he soon identified Vincenzo emerging in a group of his fellow ultras from one of the stepped concrete culverts leading down from the stands. He had then followed them through prolonged post-game festivities in various bars and clubs before tailing the target home to an apartment right in the centre of the city.
Thanks to his superb professional skills, Tony had remained unobserved by Vincenzo and his associates on this occasion, but he knew that it would be too risky to repeat the operation regularly enough to provide the total surveillance which his client expected. A remote device was therefore called for, and the question became where to install it. The most convenient location was the target’s car, but Tony had already established that Vincenzo didn’t own one. The normal alternative was some personal possession or item of clothing in frequent use, and here Tony had better luck.
The Amadori kid spent a lot of time asleep or hanging around the apartment he shared with one Rodolfo Mattioli, a harmless, ineffectual graduate student who didn’t appear to socialise with the target. There was also a girl involved, a red-headed stunner that Tony had tracked to her nest and planned to visit in the very near future, but the activities that l’avvocato was concerned with invariably involved some or all of the crew of football fans, and when he went out with them Vincenzo equally invariably donned a rough-looking black leather jacket, the back of which was decorated with an oval of shiny metal studs surrounding a painted image of the official club logo and the heading BFC 1909.
The next problem was access. Tony considered various possibilities, but in the end fate handed the solution to him on a plate. The occasion was a home game against the mighty Juventus, for which the Renato Dall’Ara stadium was packed to capacity. In the end Bologna lost to a disputed penalty, so the mood of the emerging fans was far from serene. The police were present in force and made an attempt to direct the tifosi of either team away from the stadium separately, but the hardcore elements on either side had had long experience of much more ruthless crowd control than the local authorities, accustomed to keeping a low profile in left-wing Bologna, could bring themselves to impose. Pretty soon those who had come not just to watch the match but to get into a fight managed to drift away down side streets and alleys, reassembling in the car park of a nearby Coop supermarket as soon as the police dispersed. Tony Speranza followed the group that included Vincenzo, keeping a discreet distance and trying to look like an ordinary citizen on his way home.
When they reached the deserted, dimly lit car park, it became apparent that the Juve supporters outnumbered their opponents by about two to one. This advantage increased as some of the rossoblu yobs disappeared into the bushes screening off the street, on the pretext of needing to pee, and did not return. It soon became clear that they had made a wise decision. The brawl lasted no more than two minutes, at the end of which the Bologna contingent slunk away to the jeers and laughter of the Torinese. All except Vincenzo Amadori. He stood his ground, hurling obscenities and abuse at his enemies and taunting them to come and get him. This they duly did. Amadori ended up in a foetal crouch on the bare asphalt, where he received a few more vicious kicks before the aggressors tired of the sport and trooped off up the street.
Tony Speranza had been concealed behind a delivery van parked in the far corner of the lot. He now emerged and ran quickly over to Vincenzo Amadori, who was groaning feebly. None of his companions seemed to be coming to his assistance, so Tony unzipped and folded back one side of the leather jacket. The satin lining was quilted in a diamond pattern. Tony took out an Xacto knife and made a small incision in the stitching of one of the diamonds, then inserted the handle of the knife and tore the opening a little more. Into it he slipped an object about the size of a cigarette packet, but as smoothly rounded as a pebble on the seashore and weighing no more. This he positioned in the centre of the padded sac, then pressed both sides hard so that the Velcro wrap would adhere to the fabric. Thirty seconds later he was in a phone box further up Via Costa, summoning an ambulance anonymously to the Coop parking lot. Now the bug was successfully planted, it was in his interests to get Amadori back on his feet and active again as soon as possible.
The device in question was essentially the innards of a mobile phone, stripped of its cumbersome microphone, speaker and other frills, but containing microchips responsive to a number of different networks. Once an hour the unit turned itself on and made contact with the nearest receiver-transmitter mast for each company and then phoned the data in to the computer in Tony’s office, where a nifty bit of software translated the resulting triangulation into a time-dated map with a star indicating the position of the target at that moment. Tony was therefore covered if any questions arose about Vincenzo’s whereabouts at any particular moment, and without the tedious and potentially tricky chore of actually following the little bastard and his mates around.
So two elements of the assignment had been completed. The third was the set of photographs that he had taken the previous evening, but which had gone missing when he had been mugged and his miniaturised camera and gun stolen. How the hell had that happened? Vincenzo Amadori and his pals certainly hadn’t spotted him, Tony reflected as he slipped on the double-breasted trench coat, trilby and aviator shades he had bought online from an American retailer specialising in 1930s retro gear. He would have known instantly if they had. A trained investigator could always tell when he’d been ‘made’, to use the technical term.
He let himself out of the apartment and walked downstairs to the street. The windscreen of his battered Fiat was dusted with a coating of grey, granular snow from which a parking ticket protruded, one end trapped under the wiper blade. Comune di Ancona, it was headed. Below that, in handwriting, appeared the amount of the fine payable within thirty days under penalty of…He groaned as the details of the previous evening finally came back to him. Of course! He had indeed been to a football match, only not at the stadium here in Bologna. The fixture, played midweek for some reason, had been an away game with local rivals Ancona, and Tony had duly driven down to that city with a view to completing the photographic record of Vincenzo’s cronies.
He started up the car, blotting out the view in a dense pall of exhaust fumes. He had it now, he thought. He’d located the clique he sought, despite the fact that for some reason the target wasn’t wearing his leather jacket. After the game he had followed them to a bar and very cautiously taken good-quality shots of the whole group. Mission accomplished, he had then gone to the lavatory at the rear of the bar for a quick pee before heading home.
After that, he had only a confused memory of the door bursting open and someone slamming his head forward against the tiled wall. When he recovered his senses, it had been to find himself on his hands and knees with his face in the trough of the urinal. By the time he had cleaned himself up and returned to the bar, Vincenzo Amadori and his friends were no longer there. Tony had ordered a couple of large whiskies to fortify himself, and must somehow have driven home and got into his apartment before passing out fully clothed on the bed.
In short, he had made one mistake, he thought with some satisfaction as he put the car in gear and backed out of the parking slot. So intent had he been on snapping the circle standing around Vincenzo Amadori without being observed by them that he had overlooked the fact that there were other people in the bar. This wouldn’t have mattered in law-abiding Bologna, but Ancona was a port city, crawli
ng with down-and-outs, illegal migrants and criminal elements of every description. One of them must have noted the chic little Nikon nestling in Tony’s fingers and determined to make it his own.
He shrugged nonchalantly as he turned right on to the main road into town. All things considered, it was no big deal. He could buy a new camera and didn’t really need the gun. Indeed, the lone thief had actually done him a favour. Incidents like that merely validated his status as an authentic investigatore privato. Everyone knew that private eyes got sapped all the time. It was part of the job description, particularly if you had to operate in a tough, pitiless part of the world like Emilia-Romagna.
7
There had always been aspects of life that Aurelio Zen had found problematic, even in the halcyon years before his midlife medical crisis had multiplied their number virtually to infinity. One of them was being brutally woken out of deep sleep, another was talking to total strangers on the phone. The morning following his return from Rome he got both.
He was first bawled and battered into consciousness by a sinister figure in a white hooded robe, who turned out on closer inspection to be Gemma. She had been washing her hair in the shower when the phone rang, and her exertions to rouse Zen caused a secondary shower to splash down on his face, which still bore the traces of a rapidly fading expression of blissful ignorance.
‘It’s for you!’ Gemma shouted, waving the telephone she was holding in one hand while covering the mouthpiece of the receiver with the other. ‘Your work! They say it’s urgent!’
She emphasised this fact with a kick, which went wide as Zen rolled over in bed at that moment. Gemma promptly lost her balance, dropped the phone in a failed attempt to steady herself, then sat down rather suddenly on the floor. This caused her to swear, and Zen to feel the onset of a rising tide of laughter which soon floated him back to full wakefulness.
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