THE DOGS of ROME

by Conor Fitzgerald

  “That’s what I want to know, Nando. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “What were you doing at Clemente’s office?”

  D’Amico ran his hand over his chin, then stooped a little as if to examine his stubble in the car wing mirror. “Who says that’s where I was?”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Helping. It’s not as if you’ve got so much manpower you can do without help, is it?”

  “You are not a judicially appointed investigator.”

  “This attention to rules, Alec. Is it something new? Because I don’t remember you being averse to closing an eye now and again.”

  “If it helped a case to progress, sometimes. This is different.”

  “No. It’s not. Anyhow, your grunt Zambotto was there. He seemed surprised to see me. I can tell you right now, there’s no point in considering the place a secondary crime scene. Nothing there.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “We picked up the keys from Clemente’s secretary on the way. Ferrucci found her address for us.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “No.”

  “Where is she?”

  D’Amico consulted his wrist. “In bed I suppose. It’s almost one in the morning. We brought the keys, not her. We’ll question her tomorrow.”

  “We?”

  “You, then,” said D’Amico.

  Blume pulled out his mobile and called Ferrucci.

  “Who are you calling?” said D’Amico.

  “Shut up.” Blume let it ring until the young man’s voice came on the line. “You gave D’Amico the address of Clemente’s secretary?”

  There was a pause as Ferrucci worked out the tone of the question.

  Blume repeated it.

  “I shouldn’t have?”

  “Answer yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About half an hour after you left.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Commissioner D’Amico told me not to.”

  “And you did what D’Amico said?”

  “He’s a superior officer . . .” Ferrucci’s voice trailed off.

  “Did he say why you weren’t to tell me?”

  “He said you had enough on your plate already. He wanted to do you a favor, not force you halfway across town.”

  “That was thoughtful. From now on, Ferrucci, everything, and I mean everything, filters through me first. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Almost home.”

  “Get to bed before you do any more damage. Give me her name.”

  Ferrucci did so, and Blume hung up.

  “Satisfied?” said D’Amico.

  “No. I am the opposite of satisfied.”

  “That is part of your character. Now I think we should be going.”

  “You will go when I say.”

  “Alec, I think you’re forgetting I am not your junior partner anymore. You can’t order me. If anything . . .”

  “Shut up, Nando. I want you to go and get that secretary. Go back to wherever she lives, drag her out of bed, bring her straight here. If she protests, threaten her. Just get her here. Then I want you to promise me you’ll keep out of my investigation.”

  “I’m sorry, Alec. Really. But I can’t keep out . . . I see you haven’t changed yet.”

  “What do you mean yet?”

  “You’re still dressed for jogging.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “You should bring a change of clothes into the station. Almost everyone else does. Come here.”

  D’Amico hooked his elbow under Blume’s arm. Blume felt his entire body stiffen in response. Italians touched too much. Especially southerners like Nando.

  D’Amico led him out of earshot of the two uniformed policemen.

  “It comes all the way from the top. I have to monitor the case. I was just hoping I could be useful to you while I did it.”

  “Was taking the wife’s mobile phone your way of being helpful?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact it was.” D’Amico’s handsome profile went from black to blue and back again as the light bars on the police car flashed. “You know why they sent me?”

  “Because you are my former partner and I’m supposed to trust you?”

  “You can trust me, but that’s not what I meant,” said D’Amico.

  One of the policemen came over to ask D’Amico permission to move the cars off the middle of the road.

  “Fine,” said Blume. “And turn off the flashing blue on your vehicle, too. It’s pointless.”

  The uniformed officer hesitated, awaiting a nod from D’Amico.

  “Move it, for God’s sake,” ordered Blume.

  D’Amico gave a quick nod of sanction. When the policeman had left them, he said, “I didn’t mean why they sent me in par ticu lar. Why do you think they assigned someone to monitor the case?”

  “The wife is a politician. She’s got contacts,” said Blume. “She’s applying pressure to some important people.”

  The flashing lights went off. D’Amico spoke into the darkness. “I was worried you hadn’t grasped that fact.”

  “It’s not that hard.”

  “No, it’s not, but sometimes you act as if you didn’t know how things work here.”

  “Here where?”

  “Here in Italy.”

  Blume laughed. “Like I haven’t lived here?” I’ve been on the force for longer than some of the recruits have lived. Or almost. People who vote weren’t even born when I came here.”

  “The Ministry doesn’t want talk about a proper investigation not being done into the murder of an opposition MP’s husband. She has friends everywhere. Did you know her father was an MP, too?”

  “No.”

  “Christian Democrats. And she’s got an uncle who helped found Forza Italia, and a cousin who’s something big in local politics in Mantua. It doesn’t matter that her own partic ular political party is small. She’ll change when it suits.”

  “So she is piling the pressure on,” said Blume. “What does she want?”

  “We’re not sure. For now, it looks like she wants as little publicity as possible. She was estranged from her husband. At least that’s what I heard.”

  “Sounds to me like she could have something to do with it.”

  “I doubt it, but that’s why I took her phone. To check the records on it, see who she called, what numbers she has, what numbers she deleted.”

  “That was my work.”

  “Or Principe’s. Anyhow, the work has been done for you. The Ministry has to know if there is any likelihood of her turning out an embarrassment. Nobody wants to be found out doing favors for someone who had her husband killed.”

  “The phone isn’t evidence enough,” said Blume.

  “No, but she was a pretty damned unlikely suspect to begin with. Her husband didn’t even have any money of his own.”

  “She doesn’t want publicity. Is that all?” asked Blume.

  “Far as we can tell. Thing is, she’s calling in favors. It’s important to find out anything compromising about her in case she calls in too many. Or starts threatening scandal.”

  “She was having an affair, you said.”

  “Maybe. It was rumored. A young PR man in Padua. It’s not much, especially since she’s a liberated leftist feminist who shouldn’t be too worried about a story getting out. But it’s something.”

  “And what about the victim, Clemente? What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing. That’s up to you.”

  “I don’t believe you know nothing.”

  “I am sorry to hear you say that.”

  “Nando, go get that secretary. Bring her here.”

  “It could take an hour, maybe more,” said D’Amico.

  “I’ll wait.”

  “OK,” said D’Amico.

  “Give me the keys
to the office.”

  “I left them with Zambotto.”

  Blume had almost forgotten about him.

  “OK. One other thing, Nando.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to brief her about what to say. I’ll know if you do. I taught you, remember?”

  “I remember,” said Nando, disappearing into the darkness.

  8

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1:15 A.M.

  ZAMBOTTO WAS WAITING, leaning against a curving white marble wall smoking a cigarette. Even from twenty meters away, the smoke found its way into Blume’s sinuses and made him feel sick, but from somewhere near the pit of his stomach, he also felt a craving. As Blume walked over, Zambotto ground his cigarette out on the wall.

  “That was a long three minutes,” said Zambotto.

  “I needed to talk to D’Amico.”

  “Clemente’s office is on the second floor,” said Zambotto.

  “What will I find there?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Did it look like D’Amico had been there long when you arrived?”

  Zambotto did not seem to understand the question.

  “You know, was he finishing off, or did he continue looking around when you arrived? That sort of thing.”

  “He arrived twenty minutes before me,” said Zambotto.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked the patrolmen who brought him.”

  “Well done.”

  “Sure.”

  Blume sat down on the doorstep. It was dirty, but pleasantly chilly against his bare legs.

  “What time is it?”

  “One fifteen.”

  “You can go home if you want, Cristian. Get some sleep. There’s a meeting tomorrow morning at eight.”

  “You want the keys?”

  Blume held out his hand, and Zambotto handed him a ring with two heavy and one light key on it before ambling off, like an incurious ox.

  Blume took out his phone and called Paoloni. This time he got an answer.

  “I got nothing,” said Paoloni picking up on the second ring.

  “Were we expecting anything?”

  “No. I was ninety percent sure it was no gangland slaying, now I’m one hundred percent sure. No one knew what I was talking about.”

  “Make that ninety-nine percent,” said Blume. “There is nothing certain in life, except death and taxes.”

  “I’ve heard you say that before. I don’t get the bit about the taxes.”

  “Who did you ask?”

  “I used an Albanian guy I know as my main source,” said Paoloni. “He owes me a lot. Owes me more than a man should be able to live with. But I got nothing. Not even a suspicious blink. The other people I met this evening either know nothing at all about this Clemente or they’re keeping very quiet. I’ll talk to some more people tomorrow, but I don’t see this going anywhere.”

  Blume said, “Either they know something but are scared of speaking, which suggests professional gang involvement, or this was a haphazard event from someone outside the loop, and they really know nothing.”

  “Weren’t you listening? They know nothing. Tomorrow I’m going to meet more know-nothings. This is a dead end.”

  “OK,” said Blume. “You know what you’re doing. You saw the apartment. Give me an adjective for the crime scene.”

  “An adjective?”

  “Just the one, mind you.”

  “Haphazard,” said Paoloni.

  “I just used that,” said Blume, “but it’s a very good adjective. By the way, did you know anything about D’Amico visiting Clemente’s office?”

  “How should I know what he gets up to nowadays? Is that where you are now? Clemente’s office?”

  “Yes.”

  “With D’Amico?”

  “No, D’Amico’s gone now.”

  “Want me to come around?”

  Blume considered. “No,” he said at last. “I’ll do this myself.”

  Blume hung up and looked at the clock on his phone. It was nearing two in the morning.

  There was nothing to do but wait. Blume fished in his shorts pocket and pulled out his badly dented Transcend MP3 player. The headphones were in the other pocket, and they took a while to disentangle. He had been planning a soft run, and had loaded the player with precise but sleek and laid-back music, the stuff his father used to listen to, a frictionless quality sound that no one in Italy knew anything about.

  The first track was “I.G.Y.” by Donald Fagen. Clear, forward-looking optimistic music. His mother, from the East Coast, never quite got it.

  She had bent down over his bed, early on a Friday morning, when he was half-awake, kissed him and told him to behave while they were gone.

  She left a scent of Marseille soap and oranges, her European smell, as she straightened up. There was an art historians’ conference in Spoleto. They were staying overnight. His father had stroked his forehead. All he had to do was open his eyes and sit up, smile and bid them a proper goodbye. They could have exchanged an embrace, if he had still been doing that. But he lay there, a stinking, useless, lazy teenager, irritated at having been woken.

  Fagen segued into Boston, who told Blume to lose himself in a familiar song, close his eyes and slip away, and from Boston to Clapton, to “Horse with No Name,” Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Doobie Brothers, Kansas, “Dust in the Wind,” Van Morrison (whom his father knew all about before they discovered him in Europe), Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Neil Young, and “Blinded by the Light,” which he never understood.

  His parents never made it out of the city. Both were shot dead, along with a third customer, during a heist on the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro on Via Cristoforo Colombo. They had not even mentioned they were going to the bank. One of the bank robbers had been shot dead, too. The one who didn’t do the shooting.

  The police came to his school to find him, but he had skipped out with five friends and spent the afternoon smoking weed on an embankment in Villa Borghese, flicking butts and roaches on the cars passing below on Viale del Muro Torto. The police went to his apartment building and left word with the neighbors to call when they heard Blume return. They posted a policeman outside his apartment to wait, but pulled him out to deal with a reported assault.

  When Blume and his loud friends came back at nine in the evening, nobody was there waiting for him. It was the woman in the apartment below who called.

  When the police came, Blume and his buddies were crammed into the apartment, getting buzzed, listening to the Clash. He opened the door and saw them there, a policeman and a policewoman. Some of his friends lounging on the couch saw the uniforms.

  -Wooo! Heavy!

  -Pigs on the loose!

  -Fascists!

  Blume played it punky and hard, and started closing the door on them before they had even spoken, saying yeah, yeah, the music would be turned down.

  “Fuck this,” the policeman had said, and stuck his foot inside the door, bouncing it back open, almost slamming the edge against Blume’s temple.

  Blume looked up in surprise and straight into the policewoman’s dark eyes brimming with pity.

  It was past two when the patrol car returned. D’Amico was not in it. He had evidently got himself a lift home while Blume sat waiting.

  One of the patrolmen waved to Blume before opening the back door to deposit a young woman in the middle of the road. Then he drove off.

  Blume stood up. “Over here.”

  She hesitated, then turned in his direction and walked over.

  She was young, with thick glasses. Blume might have found her attractive had she been a little older.

  “When they arrived the first time, they didn’t tell me what happened,” she said. “Then they came back.”

  “I know. I sent them.”

  “I refused to cooperate till they told me,” she paused and looked at him. “Is it true?”

  “What did they say?”

  “That Arturo has been killed.”<
br />
  “Yes. It is true.”

  “I need time to process this.”

  “I’m sorry, but there isn’t time. We have to move as quickly as we can. There will be follow-ups. For now, I want you to lead me into the office, and tell me what if anything is out of place to you. If nothing is out of place, then I want you just to show me around. Do you think you can do that?” Blume held out the keys.

  The office was on the second floor. They used the broad, winding staircase instead of the elevator, almost as if they had silently agreed not to make more noise than necessary.

  “Who else is here?”

  “All offices. Lawyers, a museum ticketing company, a travel agency, and, on the top floor, an accountant.”

  They walked into the office. She switched on fluorescent lights, which cast a fizzy whiteness that Blume found unpleasant after the dark street.

  The office was matte gray and characterless. Some of the IKEA-style furniture was garishly colored to give a faux ethnic or northern European bohemian look, but the room they were in was dominated by an outsized photocopying machine whose wheels and multiple paper trays made it look like a robot with fins. The wall behind contained white shelves lined with green Oxford binders.

  On top of a white desk sat a graceless Apple computer made with see-through plastic.

  “Is this where you work?”

  She nodded.

  “Anything out of place?”

  She shook her head.

  Blume took one long step into a truncated corridor with two doors on the right.

  “Clemente’s office is behind one of those doors?”

  She nodded again.

  “And the other?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Right.” He walked down, opened the first door. The bathroom was long and narrow. It looked unused. To the left was a shower. Blume imagined the plea sure of stepping under it.

  “Boot up your computer, then show me his office.”

  “You haven’t even asked my name.”

  “I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I thought. I am Commissioner Alec Blume. I already know your name. It’s Federica. Right?”

  “I didn’t even ask to see your identification.”

  “Want to see it now?”

  “No, it’s OK. I trust you. You look . . .”

  “Tired. I look tired.”