The Namesake cab-3

by Conor Fitzgerald

  When he was finishing up, he gathered up the lantern again, then roared and instinctively flung the lamp beside him at the corpse. The head that had been staring up at the roof of the cavern had turned and was watching him as he squatted. The mouth was grinning, and making a sound.

  The lantern bounced, cracked and went out and the dark arrived at the speed of light. The totality of the darkness caught him unprepared again. He struggled upright, brought his fingers up to his face, and touched his eyelids a few times, checking that his eyes were in fact open. By rubbing them, he could produce deep purple blots that floated in the air and comforted him a little. Pietro’s face had been so white it must surely still be visible, yet it, too, had been completely swallowed by the darkness. He closed his eyes, opened them: no difference. But the tiny buzzing sound persisted.

  If rigor mortis had just worn off, it was perfectly possible for the head to move, the jaws to slacken. The faint buzz he had heard had not necessarily come from the mouth, and it was still going on. Faraway flies made that sound. He thought he could smell the beginning of the decay, or maybe it was just the smell that Pietro had carried with him in life. How much time had passed?

  Extending his hands in front of him, he took a careful step forward and immediately almost tripped on the irregular surface. He needed to take baby steps. He could not afford to fall and injure himself. In his mind’s eye, he tried to replay where he had hurled the lamp, how it had illuminated the corpse, then dashed itself against the rock behind. It made better sense for him to get back to the table, which still had two more lamps. But the table was so far away and he was not sure of the right direction.

  He reckoned he was a third of the way back when his foot stepped on something soft and yielding. He poked at it for a moment, then kicked in frustration and heard something like an exhalation followed by a sloshing sound. He had hardly made any progress and was only now drawing level with the corpse. He edged his way past, tapping at it with his feet, finally finding the skull, and then took a larger step into the darkness.

  His foot tried to find purchase in empty space and he found himself falling, banging his knees and elbow. To save his face he put out his hands. He heard his skin rip, and felt pain, but it was poorly localized. He could not tell which hand he had damaged until he felt the blood tickling his left arm. He lay there for some time, promising himself that he would not panic. All he had to do was cover twenty paces. The length from his desk in his office to Caterina’s desk in the next room. How he missed that now. He wanted back all that he thought he hated about Rome: the extravagant noise, the idiots outside bars broadcasting their opinions. He thought of the vile cologne-scented politicians striding by in silver suits and fluffed-up ties who passed through Piazza Collegio Romano, bawling obscenities into their phones, mainly for the benefit of the people they knew were watching. He even missed that. He missed people.

  At a certain point — he had no idea how long it had been since he started his interminable journey across the floor of the cave — he sat down and gave up. It had been long enough for the blood to stop flowing so freely down his arm and turn sticky and hard. The costive trickle of water was no longer functioning as a point of reference. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. The sensible thing was to catch some sleep and rest his mind.

  His hand found a smooth slab. The rocks behind were jagged, but the slab was comfortable, if cold. Lying down might be dangerous: he was exhausted, he had lost blood, he had not slept properly and all he had eaten was a can of cold soup. He could taste its saltiness now, and he dearly wished he had had another. He decided just to sit for a while, without sleeping, and let his thoughts collect themselves. He had read somewhere that it took only a few days after the onset of blindness before the brain started remapping some of the mind’s spatial functions to the ears. Or maybe a few months. Whatever: he’d be dead before he was Batman.

  He wondered how Caterina was getting on. She was probably in bed now, deep asleep and warm. He could have taken the suitcase stuffed with his parents’ memories round to her place a few days earlier. Sort of like inviting the dead parents round. What had made him throw it into a camper van travelling south? Those were among the last things he had belonging to them. Except… he put his bloody hand into his pocket and felt the three rings.

  There was the buzzing again, so faint it was no more than a whine, but it interfered with the sound of the water. Two sounds plus his own breathing, and sometimes, he had noticed, he talked out loud to himself. He sniffed at the darkness, but could not smell. Was the whole cavern impregnated with the stench of death and he no longer noticed? Not noticing could be a sign that he, too, was dead. He opened his mouth and swallowed the air, as black as the inside of Pietro’s mouth. No, I am still alive. Cogito ergo sum.

  It was evident that he would never get to sleep and evident that he would never be found. What sort of death would he have chosen instead of this?

  ‘A painful death?’ he said out loud, hearing his voice at once echoed and muffled. ‘Stabbing?’ He held up his injured hand, stared at it, put it to his nose, and tried to smell its shape and colour.

  ‘Dying in a bed surrounded by weeping children, wives?’

  Wives. That’s very funny. Five wives. Seven! Let’s see, there would be, in order of good sex, Kristin, Emilia, Daria, Caterina of course. It’s a pity Caterina wasn’t higher up the sex list. Top place for everything else, of course. He could call them up, all his exes one by one, out of the blue.

  ‘Who shall I call first?’

  ‘Why me, of course,’ said Caterina. ‘You never call.’

  ‘I will from now on,’ said Blume. ‘Promise.’

  ‘You don’t even answer when I call.’

  ‘That’s because I have it on silent.’

  ‘But it buzzes, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I met a beautiful woman who cured me with licorice. She had a handsome son with blue eyes and a white smile. But then her husband put me in a cave.’

  ‘If this is a bedtime story for Elia, he’s too old for that.’

  ‘Old enough to betray. To call his father, who comes along to put me in a cave.’

  ‘Elia’s father is dead. He can’t be called.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Blume.

  The buzzing grew louder. The air seemed to press in on itself. He felt it had become so thick it would block his lungs, so he held his breath. Now the only sounds were his heartbeat, the dripping water and a footfall. Three heartbeats, one footfall. Coming in his direction.

  ‘Caterina? You’re here?’

  The footsteps stopped. The thick air smelled of sewage, gutted hare, boar.

  The voice that spoke to him was hoarse with rage. ‘Answer and you’ll find out who’s calling you.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Coward.’

  ‘They confiscated my phone. I can’t answer.’

  ‘Open your eyes, infame,’ ordered the voice.

  ‘My eyes are open.’

  ‘Then you can see me.’

  Pietro was standing several paces off, taller than Blume remembered him. His blackened tongue poked out between his teeth. The darkness hid his lips. Walking sure-footed and soundlessly over the rock, he approached Blume and held out his arm, which was blue marbled on top, livid below. He grinned showing his missing eyeteeth, opened his stinking mouth, and said, ‘They’re calling you.’

  Blume stared into Pietro’s misted eyes, the blasted forehead, through which a whirl of black air was passing.

  ‘There is nothing in your hand, Pietro.’ Blume checked his own hand, but it was invisible in the dark, which had a significance he couldn’t quite work out.

  ‘ Infame di merda. Where did you get that gun? I took it off you. I destroyed your phone, gave your pistol to Curmaci. How did that happen? This place stinks of treachery. Do you think Agazio is coming back for you?’

  ‘He promised he would.’

  ‘Answer the phone.’

  �
�I am under tons of rock. There’s no signal down here. It cannot be ringing. This is some diabolic trick.’

  ‘Such a logical line of thought. Logical to the very end. But look who you’re talking to, where’s the logic in that?’

  ‘No one is calling me.’

  ‘Where is the buzzing coming from then? You’ll have to frisk me to find the phone. Watch out for the mushy bits. Those flies, tiny creatures now, but just you wait. They’ll like your fresh blood better than mine. Lick it off your arm. Before the flies eat you.’

  ‘I won’t touch you. The dead are unclean.’

  ‘Dereliction of duty. Dead people are what pay your salary.’

  ‘The Calabrian dead mean nothing to me.’

  ‘As a people we have noticed that. A lot of the trouble stems from just that.’

  Pietro glided back, illuminating the cavern as he went. When he had returned to the place where he had fallen, he lay down, getting right back into his previous position with absolute precision. He turned his head once to grin at Blume, before becoming perfectly immobile and then dimmed the light around him until he had returned to invisibility.

  Polsi, Calabria

  The bishop bent down with some difficulty and picked up the silver crown, which he held up so it flashed in the light of the sun. He kissed it, then placed it on the head of the Christ Child. A vigorous cheer went up. He repeated the gesture, kissing the far larger crown of the Madonna three times, straining as he reached up to put it on her head, turning it to screw it into place. A cheer, wilder now, greeted the action, and the bishop smiled and patted his stomach, pleased with the acclamation.

  The Madonna was lifted onto the processional throne supported by long oak beams carried on the shoulders of the faithful. Basile would be there towards the end, at the steepest part of the hill, his hands pushing the Virgin and Child skywards as they were carried back to their place of sanctuary. The slaughter and butchering of kids, lambs and calves began. Already Curmaci could smell the spices in the copper pots ready to receive the fresh meat. Children ran around. Some women wept. Some men, too. The musicians were here, the tambourines jangling. They would dance the tarantella. No matter how fat, old or powerful, everyone always had a go at the tarantella. No youth was allowed to feel the dance was below his dignity or that he was above tradition. The dance was for everyone.

  He could see his son Ruggiero standing there, at ease, laughing, joking, suddenly solemn as the Mother and Child were borne aloft, now joking and pushing and messing around again. Everyone clapped as the procession passed, after which they followed behind.

  A hand on his shoulder. Tony Megale.

  ‘I am overjoyed to see you here. I thought we had lost you in Germany.’

  ‘No, I’m here. I’ll tell you all about it afterwards.’

  ‘My brother’s missing.’

  ‘Pietro? Do you think he’s on a binge?’

  ‘I’m worried. God help anyone who’s harmed him.’

  ‘Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Tony. Maybe he’s in the crowd somewhere with too much wine and veal stew in his stomach.’

  ‘Agazio, will everything be all right?’

  Curmaci clasped the back of Tony’s neck, pushed his friend’s head forwards into a bow, and kissed him on the brow. ‘Everything will be fine. Whatever changes are to come, we’ll both be part of it, won’t we?’

  Milan

  ‘You should have ordered the fish. It’s very good.’

  ‘It’s very childish of me, Giudice,’ said Caterina. ‘But I can’t eat fish. I never learned to like it. I think it’s the fact that you see the entire dead animal on the plate. The eyes, the little teeth jutting out…’

  Bazza put down his fork and held up a hand. ‘Please.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to put you off.’

  The magistrate did not speak to her again until he had quite finished. Caterina pushed away her own plate and waited for him, registering in the back of her mind that she had already forgotten what she had just eaten.

  ‘How well do you know Massimiliano Massimiliani?’ asked Bazza eventually.

  ‘Not very well. Not at all. Commissioner Blume had a new mobile phone number, which I called. Massimiliani answered, and I told him I was worried about Blume who wasn’t answering his proper phone either. He told me not to worry. That’s the extent of our conversations so far. Massimiliani gave me another number to contact him on and told me the number I had just called would be deactivated.’

  The word was so full of ill omen that she wanted to say something about Massimiliani but failed to think of a way that didn’t make her sound superstitious and foolish.

  ‘I don’t know much about Massimiliani, either,’ said Bazza. ‘What I do know, I don’t like. Nor do I much like what I know of Commissioner Blume. But I like you.’

  Whether as a woman or an investigator was left ambiguous. She remained silent and held her head firm, neither nodding in stupid acquiescence nor shaking it in embarrassed modesty until Bazza himself became uncomfortable.

  ‘As an investigator, of course.’

  Caterina allowed her neck muscles to loosen a little.

  ‘I called you up to Milan, not because I need you to do any more investigative work but, on the contrary, because I don’t want you to persist with your inquiries.’

  ‘And to apologize.’

  ‘Apologize?’ Bazza smiled generously. ‘Not at all. Your investigative work, the way you tracked down the van used to transport Arconti’s corpse, was exemplary. We could do with people like you in Milan. There is nothing to apologize about.’

  ‘Not me to you. You need to apologize to me.’

  Bazza opened his mouth in a way that reminded her of the fish he had just consumed.

  ‘For holding back on the discovery of the bodies in Sesto San Giovanni. For allowing me and my team to spend a weekend away from our families working our asses off to track down people who you knew were dead. All it would have taken was a call.’

  ‘Don’t be insolent!’ Bazza raised his voice loud enough to cause the only other occupied table in the dreary velvet-curtained trattoria to glance over at them. ‘That was confidential information. Phone up a bunch of policemen in Rome and tell them where our investigation is going? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘In fact, I demand to know who told you that we had found the bodies of the van driver and his accomplice.’

  ‘Nobody. I just phoned up the Chief Prosecutor, gave him my name, explained I was working with you, and asked him to have you call me once you had the autopsy report on the victims in the van. He didn’t ask me what van. So I knew. Then, on Monday, you called and let me know the investigation was out of our hands. I’ve been following progress ever since, making a few calls here and there. Another magistrate, a former colleague of yours, found Arconti’s ring. I won’t say I have all the details, but I do know enough to say that your story about a gang of East European kidnappers is risible and transparent.’

  ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think maybe more than you.’

  ‘Have Blume and Massimiliani been giving you details? If so, I need to know.’

  ‘Is that why you called me here, Magistrate?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Bazza. He wiped his brow with his napkin. ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. I called you because I need your help. I need you to sign off on a simplified story about an East European kidnap gang. I know you know better, but I need you to help persuade other people that it’s true.’

  ‘What other people?’

  ‘Your colleagues in Rome, the press, and, above all, the victim’s family. We have already told them it was an East European gang that was trying to intimidate Magistrate Arconti.’

  ‘What difference does it make for the family? An East European gang murdering their husband and father because he happens to share a name with a magistrate, or an Italian criminal organization doing exactly the
same? How could one version possibly be better than the other?’

  ‘We need to let Curmaci go. We want to give him rope to hang himself. In any case, he is untouchable for the Arconti killing, and possibly unconnected. It is hard to tell. Now that we are watching him very closely and know a bit more about him, we wish him success in a way, because it is good to know the enemy. So we let him walk away from this. For now. You understand that this is part of what we have to do.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Caterina.

  ‘You know, you’re wrong about the story making no difference for the family, because as far as they know, the people who dreamed up and carried out this atrocity are dead. They think they have had their revenge, and so they have closure. If they were to find out it was the Ndrangheta…’

  ‘What would happen if they found out?’

  ‘Then,’ said Ezio Bazza, Deputy Director of the Milan section of the Anti-Mafia Prosecution Bureau, ‘they would know Arconti was the victim of an organization that Italy can never defeat.’

  Polsi

  Towards the end of the day, Basile raised a glass of wine, and said, ‘I am a man of peace. A man of peace must know how to turn the other cheek. I know that many of you are outraged at the desecration that the authorities, accompanied by a horde of Germans and journalists, intend to visit upon this holy site tomorrow, but we shall not rise to the bait. It is not in our interest. Let them provoke us all they like, for now. We shall have other occasions to show them the error of their ways.’

  The sixteen men seated below had feasted, negotiated, drunk and danced all day, and now sat in the soft orange light of the evening sun, and yet his words caused a murmur of discontent to run down the table before they finally raised their glasses and joined in his toast.