The Fatal Touch

by Conor Fitzgerald

  Caterina explained, and Grattapaglia listened attentively, bending down in a way that reminded her a bit of Blume. Tall men, the two of them. Broad, too, though Grattapaglia was out of shape.

  “Now I know who I’m talking about, I might be able to ask better questions. Maybe I should have been told before now. You seem to be in a privileged position with the Commissioner.”

  Caterina was glad of the dark that hid her face. She changed subject as casually as she could manage. “The bartender you were just talking to, was he working that night?”

  “Porcaccia la misera! I forgot to ask.”

  He was jerking her about, but he was also doing what she had asked and so she kept quiet.

  He walked on a bit, then said, “Yes, he was working that night. No, he didn’t see them.”

  In the next bar, on Piazza Santa Maria, a bartender in a starched white outfit with gold buttons glanced at the photos and became immediately adamant that Treacy had not been there. About the girl he knew nothing.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  The bartender sprayed blue detergent on the zinc counter and wiped it even cleaner.

  “I’m not saying I don’t know him. I do. That’s why he doesn’t come here anymore.”

  “You won’t serve him?”

  The bartender touched his toothbrush mustache with his finger, and spoke in soft and confessional tones, throwing an anxious glance at two well-dressed men with briefcases seated at the table outside. “He threw up vomit and blood all over a table of Germans. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but a guy that age and that sick should know better than to drink like that. Is he dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not surprised,” said the bartender, and dried droplets from the sink.

  They left the piazza and reached the third bar. A fug of marijuana sat above the fifty or so people sitting outside.

  A thin skinhead Roma soccer “Ultra” with blue arms was trying to stare them down.

  Grattapaglia led the way toward the farther of the two ancient tin tables to his left, which was occupied by three men, two of whom had hardly taken their eyes off them since they arrived.

  Grattapaglia said, “Let’s have something here. It’s always very informative.”

  Caterina was not so sure, but she sat down and ordered a granita while Grattapaglia ordered a beer. When the bartender came back, Grattapaglia asked him who had been here on the previous Friday night.

  “Can’t say,” said the bartender, bending down to put the beer and granita on the table. Caterina pulled out the photos but Grattapaglia forestalled her, placing his outsized hand on her arm.

  “No. First the muggings. Also, not here. You can’t ask Danilo questions in full view of everyone. He could be telling us anything, as far as they’re concerned. So the only move open to him is to tell us nothing and make sure they all see him saying nothing. Do you follow?”

  “I think so,” said Caterina.

  “OK.” He handed her back the photos. “You keep these. This is your gig, and I want them to understand that. Now, see that Brazilian over there?”

  Emma looked and saw a small guy dressed in a Brazil soccer strip wearing a baseball cap.

  “Every time we meet that guy, we yank off his cap and throw it away. Then he has to buy one, to hide the fact his head is the size of a pin. He’s so sensitive about it.” Grattapaglia spluttered into his glass, evidently recalling the last time this fun had taken place.

  Beside him sat a sagging fiftyish man with long curling locks of gray hair and an unfinished mustache over dead lips.

  “That’s Fabio the Failure,” said Grattapaglia. “Whenever I’m depressed at still being a sovrintendente at this age, and think I’ve made a mess of my life, I just think of Fabio, and it cheers me up. In the 1970s, Fabio got a walk-on part in a film and has been living on the glory ever since. Well, the glory, a disability allowance, and a little extra from some casual housebreaking. Uh-oh, what have we here?”

  A third person, the one ostentatiously not looking at Grattapaglia and Caterina, sported a tight-fitting T-shirt and large orange glasses with pimp jewelry and ethnic tattoos on his arms. His underpants were hitched up to his stomach, the waistline of his jeans rested halfway down his backside. The other two treated him with the deference due to a prince.

  Grattapaglia picked up his beer and walked up to the table, big smile on his face. He looked like he belonged. He waved Caterina over to join him and his friends.

  “Weather’s changeable, isn’t it?” said Grattapaglia. “Hot one minute. Raining the next. Empty the contents of your pockets and place them on the table.”

  “Go fuck your mother,” said the tiny Brazilian, glancing sideways to see if Orange Glasses appreciated how hardassed he could be. Caterina noticed the Brazilian lisped slightly.

  Grattapaglia reached out suddenly and snatched the baseball cap off the Brazilian’s head, then just as quickly put it back on again.

  “Still no hair, Luis?” he said sympathetically, then turned his attention to Orange Glasses who was surveying faraway rooftops with regal indifference. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  No reply.

  “Ah, pardon,” said Grattapaglia, putting a real French accent into the word. “You speak shqiptar, right?”

  The gaze moved down from the rooftops and locked on Grattapaglia’s face. He had eyes like a carrion crow. Caterina was glad she was not receiving the stare.

  Grattapaglia, however, seemed to find the stare funny. After beaming at the face in front of him for a while, he reached over and gently removed the orange glasses, put them on the metal table. She felt the other two shifting outwards, away from the center, and she did the same.

  “Hey,” said Grattapaglia, “maybe you can help me. I’m looking for Albanian translators. We can hardly cope, all these Albanian pimps and housebreakers. We looked everywhere for an Albanian teacher. Can’t seem to find one. My girlfriend here says there’s no such thing, says you can’t teach Albanians anything. Unless it involves goats.”

  The Albanian kept his movements measured as he turned and studied Grattapaglia’s face, as if previewing a lingering death scene. Then he said, “She’s not your girlfriend. You’re married. Remember that next time you insult me.”

  Grattapaglia raised an imaginary glass. “Gëzuar, my friend. Danilo!” he roared as the bartender passed. “Sit down here.”

  The bartender sat down, his eyes wary.

  “There have been muggings in our area,” said Grattapaglia. “Now I distinctly recall telling people a while ago that these muggings had to stop. But they didn’t, did they?”

  The Albanian yawned.

  “And now it’s too late. Stopping is no longer good enough. We need the fucker who’s been doing them, and we need him fast.”

  Caterina looked at the faces of the men around the table. None of them seemed to be taking in a word that Grattapaglia was saying. They had all assumed the expression of commuters on a crowded train. Even the hostility was gone.

  “Hear about the Indian guy and his kid got killed?” said Grattapaglia.

  It would seem that no one had. But Grattapaglia talked on regardless. “I wouldn’t want to be the guys who did that. Dead on Arrival, sometime tomorrow. Just you wait.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk about the muggings, not the dead Indian and his kid,” said Danilo.

  “Who says they’re not connected?”

  “Look, I’ve got work to do,” said Danilo, making as if to get up.

  “Hold on, Danilo. Inspector, show the gentlemen the photographs. Now these, you may be interested to learn, have nothing to do with the muggings, or the hit-and-run. We have so much shit on our plate we need you guys to help us eat it.”

  Caterina put the photos of Treacy and Emma on the table. The Albanian glanced at them for a moment, stood up, picked up his glasses, and wandered off, dead casual, like he had just now thought of it. Grattapaglia did not even look up as he left.<
br />
  “Well?” Grattapaglia snatched the baseball cap off the Brazilian again, stuffed it in his pocket. “Well, you two?”

  “That man is dead,” said Fabio the Failure, pointing at Treacy.

  “We know that, Fabio. All we want to know is whether he was here on Friday night.”

  Fabio shrugged. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “You, Danilo? Did you serve him or her?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t here Friday,” said the Brazilian. Grattapaglia held up a restraining hand. “We’re talking, Luis. Can’t you see we’re talking? Please.”

  Suddenly the bartender grinned.

  “I know her. Who wouldn’t remember her? Most of what she orders here she gets on the house, and I still haven’t managed to get her to look at me properly. Maybe when she does, she’ll like what she sees.”

  “Those lips round my cock,” said the Brazilian.

  “Danilo, was she here on Friday night with Treacy?” Grattapaglia looked at Caterina. “That’s the main thing we need to know, isn’t it?”

  Caterina nodded.

  “Yes, she was here,” said Danilo. “I served them at least five drinks.”

  “I see, and were they on their own?” said Grattapaglia, leaning back and stretching his arms lazily above his head. Coming out of the posture, he suddenly smashed his elbow into the Brazilian’s ear. “You mind your language in front of Inspector Mattiola, Luis.” The Brazilian opened his mouth wide in pain, but made little noise. Caterina noticed all his bottom teeth were missing.

  Grattapaglia smiled at the bartender. “I asked you, were they on their own?”

  “Don’t do that here. You’ll lose us customers.”

  “No one noticed,” said Grattapaglia. “Luis is too small to see.”

  “Sometimes she is with one of those university types. But not on Friday night. Manuela and Henry were alone.”

  Caterina looked at him sharply. “You know their names?”

  “Henry practically lived here. As for Manuela, I learned her name the first day I set eyes on her. Ask around, and I bet you wouldn’t find one male customer who doesn’t know her name. Looks like that get you noticed. I hope she wasn’t screwing that old guy. It would be such a waste.”

  “One last question,” said Grattapaglia. “What time did they leave?”

  “Closing time. One thirty.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t even here that night,” repeated the Brazilian.

  “Too bad, Luis. No baseball cap for you, then,” said Grattapaglia. “Fabio, were you here—why, what am I saying? Are you ever anywhere else? I think we’ll keep this table, now. So you’ll have to move.”

  Before leaving, Fabio spilled beer on his chair, and Luis hacked up mucus and a shining silver glob on to the cobbles. Grattapaglia sat back and seemed to enjoy soaking up the hostility radiating from the customers around him.

  “The Albanian saw the photos and let them all know he didn’t care what they said. It has nothing to do with their trade, so he’ll be fine with it, and Danilo, the bartender, has nothing to worry about, you see. It was the only way to ask. But did you see the way Danilo said the killing of the Indian had nothing to do with the muggings?”

  “I noticed that, yes.”

  “To know that, he must know something. Someone needs to talk to him, and it can’t be me, since I’m getting suspended thanks to you.”

  She let that pass.

  “Yeah, so, anyway . . . You should follow that up. Not on your own, of course.”

  “Right,” said Caterina. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” said Grattapaglia, standing up. “Well, that’s my duty done for the day, maybe for the next three months, maybe forever.” He touched a slight bulge in his jacket pocket. “Hey, where are you going now?”

  Caterina felt a lurch in her stomach like she had just lost her grip on a height. A slight thawing in their relationship and now Grattapaglia thought he could make a move on her?

  “Me? I am going home.”

  “Directly?”

  “Yes. Straight home. I’m tired.” No, that was worse. Don’t make excuses.

  “Right,” Grattapaglia grinned at her. “You have a son, right?”

  “I do have a son. Yes.”

  Grattapaglia pulled out the bulge from his pocket. “Could he use a baseball cap?”

  Chapter 28

  Elia was asleep on his feet as she steered him toward the apartment. His grandmother thought it unforgivable that Caterina should insist on dragging him out of bed and back to his own house. But Caterina wanted him at home.

  Because he is my son, she told her mother.

  As she was opening the front door of their apartment building, a dark figure she had noticed standing at the street corner began to walk quickly toward them.

  “Get in,” she told Elia. She handed him the house keys. “Here, can you open the front door by yourself ?”

  “No.”

  “Take the elevator. Wait for me upstairs . . . Go on!”

  Reluctantly the child entered the building and she pulled the front door shut behind him, stood back, and moved her hand down to her weapon, then back again to a more relaxed position as she recognized the tall shape and sloping gait of the man.

  “Grattapaglia phoned me to say you were going straight home,” said Blume as he arrived. “But you took longer than I expected. You had to pick up Elia.”

  Caterina stood away from the door. “And now he has the keys, and we’re locked out.”

  “Wait till he’s in the apartment, and then ring the intercom,” said Blume.

  “He can’t open the apartment door. He’ll be standing in the corridor as I stand here outside. Why didn’t you just phone?”

  “I wanted to see you in person, and I am a little distrustful of my cell phone. Do you have a neighbor who stays up late?”

  “The woman above me, she brings men home sometimes, and they clump about above my head and worse until late. She owes me.”

  Caterina pressed the intercom button and, after some time, got a very belligerent challenge before the door clicked open.

  “She doesn’t have a man tonight, I guess,” said Blume.

  Caterina held the door open with her foot. “You had better come in.”

  She called the elevator, and they squeezed in together. Caterina pressed the button to the third floor. When they got out, Elia was leaning his head against the front door, with his eyes closed.

  “We’ll talk in a minute.” She put Elia to bed, kissed his forehead, already clammy. She felt his hands. Slightly waxy. Harder than they used to be, bigger, too. His breath was OK. A child in his class had diabetes. Elia didn’t, of course. She shouldn’t worry.

  When she returned to the living room, Blume began speaking as if they had been in mid-conversation, as if it was not half past eleven at night in her apartment after a long and stress-laden day, the day in which her son had briefly disappeared, she had betrayed her own principles . . . She closed her eyes.

  “So,” said Blume, sounding inappropriately cheerful, “the Colonel has had a copy of the notebooks since this morning.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I should have told you everything at once,” said Caterina.

  “What you did was justifiable, though I don’t think it was right, or wise. I’ve brought the originals with me. I’m going to put them in a safe place.”

  Caterina sighed and stood up.

  “You’re tired. Make some coffee. I’ll have some, too.”

  “You want coffee, you make it,” said Caterina.

  A few minutes later, she was seated on her sofa. Blume’s voice, careless of sleeping child, boomed out from behind the kitchen partition at the far end of the room. “Tell me what you discovered about Emma this evening,” he poked his head around the corner and looked in.

  Caterina opened her eyes wide. “Grattapaglia was reporting to you on me?”

  “I asked him to tell me when you were going home. He volunteered the rest of the information about Emma and
Treacy being seen together at the bar. He also told me you seem to have learned something from one of those drop-out kids, but that it could not have had anything to do with the muggings, since you said nothing. Where’s the coffeepot?”

  “On the stove, straight in front of you. No! Straight in front as in Straight. In. Front. Well done.”

  She summarized Sandro’s brief account of the old man and the young woman in the piazza, as Blume washed the pot and spent some time looking for the garbage can for the coffee grounds.

  “If we connect that to the evidence that Emma was with Treacy at the bar beforehand,” said Caterina. “We’ve got the bartender as a witness and, well, there’s something else.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Second shelf, left, in a blue box with golden stars on it.”

  “Got it,” called Blume. “What’s the other thing?”

  “Emma’s got one of those BlackBerry phones. It would be easy to track her movements using phone mast triangulation and GPS positioning. We can check whether she was at the bar and whether she was at the piazza when Treacy was killed. We should have checked before now.”

  “You’re right,” said Blume. “Except we don’t have a magistrate to issue an order to the phone company. The Colonel does.”

  “But there are ways of getting the information without a magistrate’s sanction.”

  “Sure,” said Blume. “As long as we don’t try to use it as evidence. But you are right. The Colonel will already have that information.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable with the Colonel knowing this about Emma. I think he’ll misuse it.”

  “Eventually. But I think he is going to be distracted by something else in Treacy’s writings. Unless he knew already, which is possible since Treacy was a drunk, and drunkards like to boast, reveal themselves, and then forget . . . How do you turn on this gas? I mean light the gas. I think I turned it on some time ago.”

  “Press the black button but first . . .”

  A blue flame flashed and the thump of the displacement of air was forceful enough to rock the crockery in the cupboards above.

  “Found it,” said Blume. He spent some time turning the gas knobs in an effort to lower the heat. Then he rubbed his hands, in anticipation of the coffee and in satisfaction at a job well done.