The dogs of Rome cab-1

by Conor Fitzgerald

  Pernazzo knew he had to get to sleep now, or he would be unable to operate later. The coffee had been a terrible mistake. Something subconscious had been going on there. He’d think about it later. He reprogrammed the Amatrice route into the TomTom. Finally, it came up with another route.

  Pernazzo relaxed; the failure of the SatNav had been stressing him out. Now he felt able to lean back into the beige leather seat and drift.

  He overslept by a full hour and awoke with a spasm from a dream about Etruscan warrior tombs. Dribble had whitened the corner of his lip, and his mouth was dry as a thistle. Outside it had gotten bright, and Via La Spezia had filled with traffic. There was no air in the car. Pernazzo cracked open the window and checked his watch. It was six thirty, Sunday morning. He decided to wait until half past eight. He had had a bad sleep, and felt like he had been smacked around the head, but one essential question had been resolved. At some point during the night, he had decided to wait for the mocking policeman to come out of his house.

  49

  Blume felt he had never slept so well. When he awoke in the morning, his mind was clear, his body perfectly relaxed, his sore arm no longer so sore. Kristin was a quiet and still sleeper. He touched the hollow of her back with his hand. Her muscles tautened, her spine arched slightly inward, and her legs straightened She was also a watchful sleeper.

  He had decided to call Kristin the evening before as soon as he realized his operation was going to fail. If he could not catch Pernazzo, he would make something work out right that evening.

  The failure owed much to “upstream issues,” as Gallone might have put it. The way this worked was that the upstream people pissed into the water, and the downstream people like Blume had to drink it. The upstream people decreed that no technical team and not even one detective were available. Blume stood in front of Pernazzo’s house and cursed.

  A prosecutor, sights set on political glory by the time he was in his forties, had issued an order to clear out a housing project of all its Senegalese inhabitants. Dozens of police were spending the evening as temporary prison guards. The best Blume could get was a very reluctant promise from the Arvalia station to keep Angelo Pernazzo’s apartment under guard. Even for that, the Arvalia commissioner wanted a direct order from a magistrate within the hour or, he told Blume, he would pull his men out.

  When the agente scelto came up carrying a battering ram in a canvas bag, Blume ordered him to break down the door. This took longer than expected. Eventually, the woodwork splintered, the el derly neighbor with spindly legs opened his door again, squinted out, and asked if they needed any help. The cop with the battering ram yelled at the old man to step the fuck back into his apartment right now, and he did.

  Then they were in, but the suspect was not. Blume realized he had just entered very dubious legal territory. He took a cursory look around the stinking apartment, ignoring the looks of the other policemen that he felt radiating up and down his back like three electric heaters.

  He put a guard on the door and went downstairs, and it was then he decided to call Kristin. As for the rest of them, including Principe, he would drag them all here personally in the morning. Stick their faces in the evidence. All of a sudden, every injury sustained in the accident was making itself felt.

  He phoned Kristin without quite knowing what he was going to say. When she answered, he asked would she mind giving him a ride home. He gave her the address. She said, “Sure,” and hung up.

  Feeling energized again, Blume took the stairs to the third floor, told the agente scelto from Arvalia not to let anyone in for any reason. He went downstairs again, stood in front of the house, and tried to interpret the tone in which Kristin had said “sure.”

  As he stood there, it occurred to him that he should have posted someone at the front door before going up to the apartment. It was part of basic training, but Blume could no longer even recall the clarity of first principles and the strict rules he thought were observed everywhere when he first joined the force. At the back of his mind, but oozing forward as an undeniable truth, was the idea that he was not skilled at the tactical side of things.

  Kristin picked him up half an hour later in a ruby Alfa Romeo 159 with a radiator grille that looked like it was grinning at him. She winked the lights and he climbed in, correctly guessing she would not ask what he had been doing or why he had called her.

  Her driving style made no concession to the fact he had recently been in an accident. She accelerated through an amber light onto Via Silvestri, squeezed around a bus that had decided to merge no matter what, and said, “I’m going back to the States.”

  Blume stopped struggling with his seatbelt. “When?”

  “In a couple of weeks.”

  “When you say couple…”

  “I mean two.”

  “Because most people don’t mean two when they say a couple,” said Blume, “unless they’re referring to people.”

  “I know, but I do.” Kristin managed a right-angle turn without touching the brake.

  Blume surprised himself with his next statement. “I could come with you. Get my broken back teeth fixed. Americans are good at dentistry. Teeth are important there.”

  She turned and smiled. “You could.”

  “I’ve got a lot of saved holiday time. Sick leave, too, if I choose. I just need to finish this case.”

  “How’s that going?”

  Blume finally clicked his seatbelt into place. “Almost there. All we have to do is catch the person responsible.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. But I think everyone is more interested in closing the case as it is. I don’t think they want to believe in my killer.”

  “Your killer. That’s an unlucky way of putting it.” Kristin accelerated as a light turned amber, then thought better of it and braked hard. “So what d’you think of the wife? It’s almost like not catching her husband’s killer is a favor.”

  “It’s complicated. Well, the thing itself isn’t all that complicated. The people are. People are complicated.”

  “Corrupt, you mean.”

  “That, too,” he agreed. “Where in the States?”

  “New York, then Washington, and then Vermont.”

  “I used to be from Seattle,” said Blume.

  “Used to be. You don’t feel American?”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “Can you understand me if I say I am happy to be American?” Kristin emphasized her happiness by blasting the horn at two youths who were jay-walking their way across the road.

  Blume said, “Happy? I thought we were supposed to be proud to be American. Happiness is something we pursue. Like criminals.”

  “The sort of people who go around saying they’re proud to be American are embarrassing for those of us who have reason to be.”

  “ ‘An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it,’ ” quoted Blume. His plastered arm prevented him from grabbing on to the assist grip above the door, so he had to clutch the dashboard as Kristin took another left.

  “Very good. That’s Don Marquis. America used to have a lot more people like him in it.”

  “I didn’t know who had said it,” admitted Blume.

  “Now you do.”

  “Not really. I still don’t know who Don Marquis was.”

  “He was a midwesterner.”

  “Oh. Don as in… Don. Not a priest then.”

  Twenty minutes later, Kristin parked. She got out with him, accompanied him across the courtyard. When they arrived at the front door of Blume’s building, she remarked, “You look like Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon with your arm like that. Your nose helps, too. Maybe you want to have it seen to?”

  When they reached the apartment, Blume hurried into his parents’ study and leafed through their LPs. He put a scratched copy of Wavelength on the old Ferguson turntable, Van Morrison sang “Hungry for Your Love,” and she appeared in the frame of the door.

  Kristin smiled. “Y
ou’re supposed to seduce, then abandon, not the other way around.”

  She walked in, sat down beside him on the old velvet couch his mother used to like. Words alone are certain good, he thought, then couldn’t think of any. He and Kristin sat in the study studying one another. Her glances seemed tinged with hostility, but her knees were inches from his. Blume wanted to bury his neck and his breast and his arms in her bright hair.

  “I don’t like this shrine,” said Kristin.

  “What shrine?”

  “This place. Your parents’ undisturbed study. I don’t like it.”

  “Oh.”

  Kristin crossed her legs, brushing the side of his leg. She was wearing a simple black cotton skirt, and Blume felt his groin, stomach, and chest twinge and pulse as he glimpsed the inside of her thigh. He could see the underside of her calf tauten and relax as she circled her foot.

  “You have a big, lost, lonely, angry face.”

  She said it gently, without contempt.

  “No. I’m OK. I’ve been here a long time. I’m not lost anymore.” Blume switched to Italian, bringing out his Roman accent to the full: “Pure tu, pero, non c’hai nemmanco l’ombra di un’accento se non vuoi.”

  She touched the side of his face with the back of her hand. “I thought you’d prefer it if my Italian sounded a bit more beginner’s level, bring out your protective side. But, yes, I’m pretty good. I do a lot of interpreting of Italians who think they can speak English. It’s amazing how many of them believe that.”

  “You interpret into Italian, too? You can do that?”

  Kristin replied in perfect Roman dialect: “Er mestier mio e a fa’ capi’ fra loro du’ persone che parleno lingue differenti; e cosi ripeto a tutt’e due quello che je farebbe comodo d’ ave’ detto. I’m a diplomat.”

  “Ammazza,” said Blume. “You still look American, though.” He lowered his gaze to her ankles and the faded geometry on his mother’s thinning carpet, and said, “You said you were a legat. Do you carry an FBI badge around?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I bet you don’t.”

  Kristin stood up, undid the bottom button of her green silk blouse, and put her hand into the waistband of her skirt, briefly exposing her navel.

  Then she pulled out what Blume at first took to be part of the inner lining of the skirt, but turned out to be a black silk bag.

  “It’s not some special-issue FBI thing,” she said in response to his stare.

  “It’s a perfectly ordinary Eagle Creek money belt.”

  “I wasn’t looking at the belt.”

  She unzipped the bag, pulled out a plastic-covered ID badge, and tossed it to him. He could feel the warmth of her body on it. He cupped it in his hands, then examined the gold-and-blue emblem.

  “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” he read out. “The FBI seal is the same as the European Union flag.”

  “Here.” She held out her hand, and he put the card into it.

  Her green blouse still hung loose, and the silk money bag sat on the sofa between them like a discarded undergarment. Blume felt suddenly parched.

  “I’m going for a glass of water. Can I offer you something?” Blume moved over to the door.

  “No, thanks.”

  When he returned to the study holding a glass, Kristin had stood up and was standing in the doorway. The slight breeze flowing from the kitchen window rippled her blouse.

  “It’s stuffy in there.”

  “My shrine, as you called it.”

  He set down the glass and kissed her. A fractional thought or phrase crossed his mind, something to do with lips sucking forth his soul, but flew completely out of his mind when he felt her mouth part under the pressure. All thoughts drained out of him, to be replaced by a single, all-embracing sense of joyful disbelief. With his one functional arm, he fumbled at her blouse. The straps of her bra felt rough and tight against her skin. He pushed and she walked backward into the room. He guided her feet over the creases and furrows of the Persian carpet without allowing her to fall until they reached the sofa. He labored at unbuttoning her blouse, then pulled down her bra until it was below her breasts, plumping them up. Kristin held up a warning finger, sat up and deftly released the fastener at the back while Blume gazed transfixed by a whirl of light freckles running down from her right shoulder. He started pulling at her skirt. It bunched and folded and rose, but he did not seem to be able to reach the end of it. Frustrated, he pulled his arm out of its sling and tried to get a better purchase on the sofa.

  “Wait.” She stood up and stepped out of her skirt as if it were three sizes too large. Then she held out her hand to him. “Not in here,” she said. “Let’s go into your room.”

  Blume checked the clock. It was already seven forty-five. He should have gotten going earlier. He got up, showered, and dressed, then went into the kitchen, wondering what he could offer her for breakfast.

  He was standing at the open window of his kitchen, staring down at the street below, when Kristin touched him on the back.

  “It’s noisy in here,” she said, raising her voice above the traffic noise. She folded her arms across her breasts.

  “I know,” roared Blume as an ambulance went whooping by.

  “Why have you got all the windows open, then?”

  “Because of some rotten kitchen that was in the chicken fridge.”

  “What?”

  “Other way round. Rotten chicken in the kitchen fridge.” He closed the window. “I opened the fridge to get some milk for my coffee. The smell is pretty foul. Also, there’s no milk.”

  “Any other food in there?”

  “Not so as you’d recognize it.”

  Kristin wrinkled her nose. “How about we go out for breakfast?”

  “Good idea,” said Blume. “You get dressed, I’ve got some calls to make.”

  Kristin left to shower and dress, and Blume phoned Principe. This time he answered, though he sounded like he was still in bed. Blume said he needed to get a team into Pernazzo’s flat. Circumstances had changed, he said, even though they had not. Before Principe could raise any objections, Blume gave him the address and said he’d meet him there in ninety minutes. That way, Principe would have time to prepare the warrants or his excuses, and Blume would have time to have breakfast with Kristin.

  Then, at twenty past eight, they left the house together.

  50

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 8:22 A.M.

  Pernazzo was on the point of turning on the engine and driving away when his target, arm in a sling, appeared in front of the apartment building. Pernazzo took Alleva’s Davis P-32 out of Clemente’s backpack and climbed out, but held back to calculate line of sight, distance, and pace. The front door of the building opened again and a woman stepped out. She fell in beside the target and linked her arm through his good arm. The woman was an unforeseen element, but as she was blocking the commissioner’s only means of defense, her presence was almost certainly an advantage.

  He would simply walk up behind them and plug the two bullets into the back of his head, and plant the third one in his face if he came down backward-at the top of his spine if he went down forward. The woman would scream. Maybe two-two, one-one would be the best combination.

  Clack-clack, then people would look round in mild surprise and hear a soft pop, then another. He’d see the stupid looks of puzzlement on the faces of the passersby, like when he did that idiot outside the pizzeria. There would be disapproving frowns at the two people suddenly lolling on the sidewalk, then a gradual reappraisal and alarm. Some would even smile, as if recognizing something.

  Pernazzo stayed on the opposite side and allowed Blume and the woman to remain thirty paces ahead. Outside mobile telephone shops and take-out pizza outlets, entire committees of early-rising Sunday time-wasters loitered on the sidewalk.

  He glanced up and down the street and made a rapid count of the people he could see. Apart from the targets, he could see a pair of girls walking toward them and
him, five people standing outside or ready to enter their apartment buildings, four or maybe five people behind him.

  The bright marble statues of Jesus and John the Baptist poised on the top of the facade of San Giovanni were visible at the end of the street, their arms raised as if in gentle appeal to the traffic below to shut the fuck up just for once.

  Pernazzo crossed over to the same side of the street as his two targets and picked up his pace. A small knot of bus and tram drivers in blue stood on the sidewalk, for no visible purpose, and he passed them by rapidly. A fat man with a small dog stared at Pernazzo as he hurried by. Pernazzo stared at the dog, which was crapping right in the middle of the sidewalk. Four people, now five as a man with a plastic case came out of an apartment building, turned, and walked out of the scope of his vision. Twenty paces away now. Four people were between him and them.

  Pernazzo skipped slightly as he increased his pace, closing the gap to ten paces, then flapped out his shirt and slipped in his hand beneath. He felt the grainy polymer grip, at body temperature. He was close enough now to hear them and noticed they were speaking English.

  The commissioner with the broken arm was on the right, nearest the road. He had placed his good arm lightly against the small of the woman’s back, as if ushering her into a room.

  Trying to keep the movements fluid and leisurely, he extracted his firearm, cupped the grip with his left hand, and raised his arms, his finger already tightening around the trigger. It was a headshot from three paces.

  Blume would go down, the woman would half-turn around, and he would blow a hole through her temporal lobe.

  The moment he felt the blow under his wrist, he knew it was the woman who had hit him. He knew it because it was the lightest of blows, no more than a tap, but she had somehow managed to push his shooting arm up. As he brought it down again, adjusting his aim to shoot her first, her arm flashed out again, and made contact, harder this time, again with his wrist. It hurt no more than the last one, but to his intense surprise and rage, he felt his fingers jerk open and release the pistol. He tried to catch it with his left hand before it hit the ground, but even as he bent down slightly, he heard the blank clink of the Parkerized metal hitting the pavement. In the split second he was standing there with his left arm dangling stupidly between his knees groping for the pistol, she hit him twice. Even now, she was not inflicting any pain. It was as if she had stroked his face with the back of her hand. Pulling himself up again to full height, he found that the lumbering cop had finally maneuvered himself around and was now staring at him, a look of amazement on his face. Then she stuck her fingers into his eyes and the commissioner’s face was replaced with triangles of blinding pain. With a roar, he flung himself at her, ready to bite if need be, but came to a total standstill when she punched him in the throat, then pushed the flat of her hand into his nose.