The dogs of Rome cab-1

by Conor Fitzgerald

  “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 the 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 expose 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 expose 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 hea
d 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, Pernazzo 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.

  It would not stop anyone who knew what they were looking for, but it would hide the file for long enough. In two days, he would be in Argentina.

  He ran through the menus and a file name caught his attention: 08_ 28_Blume. wav. He opened the file.

  From behind him, Di Tivoli said: “This heat is killing me.”

  Pernazzo spun around and ran backward at the same time, almost crashing into the TV. Di Tivoli still lay slumped on the armchair, blood now dripping onto the floor.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” said a voice he recognized. Commissioner Blume. “You know, we’re practically neighbors. I live on Via La Spezia. Know it? On the corner of Via Orvieto, the one with the fish market?”

  The clever bastard had recorded the cops as they interviewed him.

  There was another person, a Neapolitan. Presumably another cop.

  Pernazzo sat on the sofa and listened through the entire interview. Then he went back to the start. Blume was saying, “You know, we’re practically neighbors…”

  48

  Pernazzo did not leave the apartment until half past three in the morning.

  He put his things into the backpack, including the unused pistol. He closed the door softly behind him and, to minimize the noise he made, slipped silently down the stairs without calling the elevator. His car was parked nearby, and he considered whether he should move it. The police would be looking for it by now. He decided against it. A legally parked car was almost invisible. The police would probably not find it for months.

  He had the key to Di Tivoli’s car, a Range Rover, and was looking forward to driving it. A second key with the FAAC trade name embossed on it was attached to the ring. A steep ramp to the left of the building led down to the basement and garages, and was closed off by an automatic gate. Pernazzo inserted the key and turned. He stood nervously in the shadows as two orange lights started flashing, but the gates swung open noiselessly. He made his way down the ramp and into the garage. He pressed the electronic key, and Di Tivoli’s Range Rover whooped and blinked.

  Pernazzo clambered aboard and drove up the ramp, turning the lights on to full glare to break through the blackness. He felt tall and heavy and important in the car. It had a TomTom SatNav device, and he turned it on. The screen mapped out a route to Padua. He pressed a button and another route leading out of Rome to Amatrice appeared. The address was the same as he had found on the scrap of paper in Clemente’s wallet. Stop one, Amatrice. Stop two, Bari. Stop three, Patros. Or maybe he’d go north, exit Italy by way of Slovenia or Austria.

  He found the large car difficult to handle. Concentrating on driving the vehicle, he got confused in the streets that lay in the shadow of the Tangenzia
le, the raised highway that led to the city ring road. He stopped by the side of the road, and got the TomTom to show him where he was.

  The navigator directed him to an access ramp that was blocked off with red and yellow road barriers. A sign that looked like it had been hanging there since the early eighties told him the closure was temporary. The TomTom seemed to know nothing about it.

  Pernazzo had to turn around several times. There were few cars on the roads at this hour, so it was not a problem. But he could not find an alternative way onto the Tangenziale. He decided to drive until the TomTom finally came up with another idea. The dashboard clock said quarter to five. He was going to have to postpone his next twenty-minute sleep.

  He pulled onto Via La Spezia and realized the TomTom had let him come too far. There was still almost no traffic, but to his left he saw lights.

  He could smell saltwater and fish from the Saturday market. He felt hungry.

  He could murder a cappuccino and a cornetto with apricot jam. The rules of polyphasic sleeping prohibited coffee, but Pernazzo was beginning to find Uberman’s sleep schedule tiresome. He would give it up once he reached Argentina. No, he would quit it the moment he got off Italian soil.

  He pulled into a parallel street and found a parking place large enough for the oversized vehicle he was commanding. He hesitated a moment, then decided to leave the backpack with its weapons and money under the driver’s seat. He took some cash from Di Tivoli’s wallet and put it into his own.

  The bar was an all-nighter for bus, tram, and train drivers. It was over-lit, and the counter was uncomfortably high, but the cappuccino was as good, perhaps better, than he had imagined it. The cornetto, too.

  It was time for another twenty-minute sleep, but Pernazzo was too buzzed with caffeine, sugar, and a new sense of purpose. It was surely no chance he found himself on this street.

  He climbed back into the Range Rover. In one of the buildings opposite him, the police commissioner was fast asleep. He did not know which one, but there were only two gates opposite the fish market, as the commissioner himself had said.