“But you’d have done it? Put a bullet in him?”
“I’m not talking moral choices here,” said Paoloni. “I only mean it would have been hard for me to get away with it. The other guys with me, they weren’t there to carry out an assassination. If Alleva and Massoni resisted, they would not have asked too many questions about lethal force, but if Alleva surrendered immediately and I killed him, that would have been a problem.”
“Come on, Beppe. You don’t expect me to believe that. The four of you went with one mind and one intention. There’s no point in protecting them. And you’re all on film.”
“Innocenzi gave me a copy,” said Paoloni. “We look like idiots, don’t we? Go there intending to revenge a colleague, leave there looking like the Marx Brothers.”
“I haven’t watched it. I don’t think I will. So, you were with—who—Zambotto and . . .”
“Two other guys I used to work with in Corviale.”
“Names?”
Paoloni seemed to be distracted by the football game.
“Names, Beppe.” Blume repeated. “You think it’s OK Innocenzi knows and I don’t? Anyhow, it’s all on film.”
“Genovese and Badero. They’re sort of inseparable. Mean bastards both.”
“I was protecting you, and you did this,” said Blume. “What would you do now? Are you even listening?”
Paoloni was watching the game again. “I don’t know what I’d do if I was you,” he said. “Me, I’d look the other way, but that’s the whole problem isn’t it? I’ve looked the other way too many times. I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve gotten sucked in. There’s no longer any real difference between me and them. But I wasn’t on the take. Well, I was, but I used all of it—most of it—to buy information.”
Blume thought of Paoloni’s rented apartment and believed him. More or less.
“What happened to all that guilt about Ferrucci?”
Paoloni spat, lit a cigarette, and said, “That was real. That’s still there. It’s the main reason I wanted to get Massoni and Alleva.”
“I don’t think I can let this go, Beppe. I can’t pretend this didn’t happen.”
“I know,” said Paoloni, staring forward, eyes still fixed on the footballers. “That’s the difference between us. At the beginning, it wasn’t like that. We were basically the same, but you never got streetwise. That’s because you have always been . . .” Paoloni suddenly stood up, tossed his cigarette aside, and punched the air. “See that?”
“What?”
“That goal!”
A skin-headed youth with black lines tattooed down his arms ran up to the fence, pointed at his chest, plucked at his jersey. Paoloni gave him a thumbs-up, and shouted: “Brilliant header. Fucking brilliant!” His face bright, smiling, Paoloni turned to Blume and said, “That’s my son Fabio. Lives with his mother. He’s the best.”
“You’ve been here watching your son play football all this time?”
“Yeah. Parish legate quarterfinals, under-sixteens. That’s Ottaviano they’re playing against. Hey, I was listening, too,” said Paoloni.
“You could have told me.”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“You’re not so good at telling me things, Beppe. You can’t even come clean about wanting to watch your son play football.”
“You might have said no. Anyhow, does it make a difference to what you’re going to say?”
Blume looked at the teenagers running around in front of them. They almost looked like professionals, almost looked like men, except they ran around too much. All that energy and enthusiasm.
“I want you to quit the force. If you do that, I’ll look after you from inside, make sure none of this comes out.”
Paoloni said, “I thought that might be what you’d do.”
“It’s a favor, Beppe. A big one. And you will still owe me.”
“I know. Maybe I needed to get out anyhow. Alleva and Massoni, they’d have been my first murders. Others would have followed. Once you start, you know.”
“Yeah,” said Blume. He took out his wallet, extracted the memory card, gave it to Paoloni.
“I don’t need to see this. Destroy it. The fewer copies the better.”
“Thanks.” Paoloni slipped it into his jeans. “I destroyed my copy already. But Innocenzi will have distributed it. That’s how he does things.”
“If you’re off the force, he won’t have much use for it,” said Blume.
They sat in silence for a few moments, both of them watching the match, Paoloni intently.
“That winger’s fast,” said Paoloni eventually.
“Yeah. But he crosses too wide,” said Blume. “Your son’s very good. He plays a lot?”
“More than he studies. Dumb bastard smokes, though. Cigarettes. Ganja, too. Pops a few pills on Friday night before he goes out dancing. Thinks I don’t know.”
The other team scored.
“We’re all attack, no defense,” said Paoloni.
“What are you going to do?” said Blume. “For money, I mean. It’s going to be hard finding work at your age.”
“That’s OK. I have something lined up,” said Paoloni. “Through a friend who quit a while ago. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, and now I’ve decided.”
“What?”
“It’s not a great job.”
“Yeah, but what?
“I’m going to become a bank guard.”
60
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 4:30 P.M.
BLUME SPENT THE morning and early afternoon airing his parents’ study, shifting out some of the more useless pieces of furniture, and sorting through their papers, many of which were infested with silverfish and dust. He had dumped a lot of paper, and his newly freed arm was aching from the effort.
Last week he had phoned Kristin to tell her he was cleaning out the study, and she didn’t hang up. A few days later, she said she knew a good dentist near New York, if he wanted to come over to the States to have his chipped teeth seen to.
“It’s not as expensive as they say. I’d be interested in seeing you back in context. Anyhow, you decide. The embassy books my flights, so if you’re thinking of coming, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Blume went straight online and booked a ticket to New York. He’d phone her from there. As he logged off, the dog padded into the kitchen in the hope of food.
“Oh, great,” said Blume.
The smell of the dust in the study reminded him powerfully of something he couldn’t remember. It was a frustrating sensation. Like when he tried to recall his mother’s face, now fading fast from his mind.
The two policemen and policewoman came back the following afternoon, hours after he had identified his parents’ bodies. He didn’t faint or cry or make a scene at the mortuary or there with them. He had invited them in for coffee, which felt like a grown-up thing to do. But they didn’t want to come in, and they had no more information to give. He left the door open and went into the sitting room, where he had decided to do his school assignment because if his parents had been able to see this, they would have been proud of him, comforted to see him so maturely getting on with life. When the police left, he turned on the television and watched young girls in short skirts as they danced with Ambra. Ambra Angiolini, the schoolgirl Lolita with a headset microphone and shiny thighs.
The police came back in the evening. A policeman accompanied by two women. One was in uniform and wore too much makeup. The other had no uniform and reminded him of his geography teacher. She wanted to know who his nearest relatives were. He told her that his nearest relatives were his parents. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, she specified. Not that he knew of. Maybe an aunt on his mother’s side. His father had been an only child, like him. His parents’ parents were dead, like his were now. No, he did not have anywhere else to go.
“Still hurts?” asked Principe.
Blume sat in the magistrate’s office scratching his arm.
“Not really. It itches like hell. It began itching when they took off the binding. I’m going insane.”
“Don’t worry about it. The itching is a sign.”
“Of what? Liver cancer?”
“Healing, Alec. Which reminds me, did you hear about Manuela Innocenzi?”
“No. What?”
“She flipped her car. She must have been doing one hell of a speed. They could still smell the alcohol on her when they got there. She’s in a bad way, apparently. No loss, I suppose.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Last night. On Via La Spezia. That’s near where you live, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re leaving us for a long holiday? It’s well for some.”
“I’ve added holiday time to sick leave. I’m going to Rye first, then on to Vermont.”
“RAI?”
“Rye,” said Blume, and spelled it. “It’s a place in upstate New York. Kristin has a dentist there. Says he’s the best there is. Thing is, it means I’ve got to get rid of a dog.”
“Get rid of it? As in put it down?” said Principe.
“It’s a Cane Corso. Stupid, quiet, possibly dangerous around children, given to bouts of salivating. Do you want to look after it for me? I’ll be gone for a month.”
“Very funny,” said Principe.
“See what I mean? No one wants a dog like that. The law says I was supposed to register it by today, ten days after taking it in. Officially, it was supposed to be put down anyhow. So, if I decide to—you know—there’s no problem, or shouldn’t be. I can’t see any difficulties with the paperwork for its . . .”
“Execution?”
“I see no choice,” said Blume.
“You know, Alec, I’ve known Kristin for about two years, though I can’t say I know her well. She phones up sometimes, keeps up to date, angles for inside information, is greedy for gossip, hands out invitations to seminars in the States, organizes a few short conference breaks in lakeside hotels for prosecutors, policemen—all paid for, or else at special discount rates. The sort of legal, gentle corruption that drug companies use on doctors. She is a fine-looking woman, tough and terrifyingly intelligent.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Keep the dog.”
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 9:30 A.M.
Flight AZ 645 bound for JFK banked suddenly over the sea above Fiumicino, sending a fairground thrill and nervous laughter down the aisles.
For a split second, Blume felt weightless. As he looked directly down at bright blue water and imagined himself falling in and slipping under, the back of his throat tightened. Then the wing of the plane came up again, and Ostia slid down the window behind it, into the shimmering dome of heat and smog that covered Rome.
Then the plane started to climb again and move north. After only ten minutes, the coastline of Tuscany was briefly visible. Blume sat bolt upright and craned his head so that he could continue to look back for as long as possible, causing the ache in his neck to return. He ran his tongue over the jagged edges of his soon-to-be-fixed back teeth.
He was chasing after a woman who did not admire him, and leaving behind two junior partners who had both abandoned him in their own ways. First D’Amico, then Paoloni. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Paoloni’s desertion had hurt most. A potential killer, an unreliable partner, a corrupt cop, and—somehow—a friend.
The plane passed over an unfamiliar group of minor islands whose names the other schoolchildren had learned before Blume arrived. Within four months the American kid had mastered the language, within six months he had the accent, too, and they forgot how alien he had once been.
Paoloni was quitting the force. Blume dropped by a few days later. He found his former partner alone in his flat, in a state of deep depression, and left him perhaps even more depressed, but no longer alone. Paoloni said he couldn’t keep a dog for a month without knowing what to call it, and Blume told him he could call it by any name he wanted.
The plane banked again, more gently this time, and leveled out in a northwest direction. Italy was now behind him. He sat forward in his seat.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Conor Fitzgerald has lived in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy. He has worked as an arts editor, produced a current affairs journal for foreign embassies based in Rome, and founded a successful translation company. He is married with two children and lives in Rome.
Copyright © 2010 by Conor Fitzgerald
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Fitzgerald, Conor.
The dogs of Rome : a Commissario Alec Blume novel / Conor Fitzgerald.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60819-015-7 (alk. paper hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-60819-015-3 (alk. paper hardcover)
1. Police—Italy—Rome—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Americans—
Italy—Fiction. 4. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9120.9.F58U53 2010
823'.914—dc22
2009049430
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2010
This e-book edition published in 2010
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-115-4
www.bloomsburyusa.com
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
THE DOGS of ROME Page 43
