The Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  Tired, bored, almost despondent, he took a break and went for a coffee in one of his favourite places, the little cafe run by the old-fashioned restaurant Checco er Carrettiere behind the Piazza Trilussa in Trastevere. He knew why he went there. He used to take the kids during the summer, watch them wait goggle-eyed as some pretty girl in a smart white waitress uniform piled high some of the best ice cream in Rome.

  Today the tiny cafe was as deserted as the frozen piazza. There was a pretty young girl behind the counter but she looked tired and careworn. He sat on a stool pouring sugar into a double macchiato and knew: those times would never come again. They were locked in the past. A part of him had understood that would happen all along. Kids grew up, invented their own lives, went away in the end. But his own stupidity had hastened the process irreversibly, sent them scattering north to Tuscany, where he’d never be anything but a stranger to them now.

  He finished the coffee and ordered another. On days like this the system needed caffeine. Then he tried to distract himself by focusing on Laila, racking his brain again about where she might have gone. Something didn’t make sense. He had established a bond with the kid. It just didn’t add up that she should flee the house like that, without a word, without a good reason. He was out of options too. Short of pounding the streets aimlessly, hoping for some rare good luck—and surely that was a waste of time—he might as well give in, call Leo Falcone, get some sleep, then rejoin the team. Maybe even pat the surly American on the back and say sorry a little more loudly if that was what was needed.

  The girl behind the counter came with the second coffee and said, to his dismay, “I know you from the summer. Where are your kids?”

  “It’s not ice-cream weather,” was the best he could offer.

  “It’s not anything weather,” she complained. “I don’t know why I bothered opening the doors. Waste of time.”

  “Thanks. I’m flattered.”

  “Oh.” She laughed and the sudden burst of amusement brought back the memory of her, not much more than a kid herself, piling up ice cream generously as they waited and watched under the bright, burning July sun. “Sorry. I was just feeling a bit down.”

  Everyone did from time to time, Peroni reminded himself. You just had to stop it slipping into self-pity.

  “Gimme an ice cream, then,” he said.

  Her lively eyes opened wide in amusement. “What?”

  “You heard. A tub. Those cones are too damn difficult for an old guy like me. Coffee. Pistachio. And another flavor, too. You choose.”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. “In this weather?”

  “Yeah. In this weather. Me customer, you waitress. Work on the relationship, kid.”

  The girl disappeared out back for quite a while. When she returned she’d taken off the white uniform and was now wearing a short red skirt and a black sweater.

  She sat down next to him. There were two dishes in her hand, each with a selection of multicoloured blobs of ice cream.

  “It’s on the house,” she said. “I’m calling it a day.”

  “Wise move,” he answered and tried the chocolate. It was exquisite, though the cold made his teeth hurt. “What is it? Boyfriend trouble?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Oh, per-lease. Is that really the best you can do?”

  “It’s a start,” he objected. “You see a pretty young girl. She looks miserable. Nine times out of ten it’s boyfriend trouble. Old men like me understand that. We were young men once. We used to cause these problems.”

  She licked the pistachio. It gave her a creamy green tongue.

  “Well?” he persisted. “Am I wrong?”

  “No…” Her voice had that pouty, caustic edge he recognized growing in his own daughter.

  “Well?”

  “He never calls!” she cried. “Never! It’s always me. I’m always the one who has to phone him. What is it with men? Do they hate phone bills that much?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not just men. That happens in relationships. It’s how it is. Like old-fashioned dancing. One person leads, the other one follows.”

  “It’s not like dancing. So why do they do it?”

  Her face had that frank, questioning intensity you got from teenagers.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because…” He couldn’t go on. There was no answer. It was a stupid question. He couldn’t think of a single good reason to support what he’d just said.

  “Do you call your wife?” she asked. “Or does she call you?”

  “My wife calls me. Only rarely and with gleeful updates on how well the divorce is going and what new bills dropped through her mama’s door.”

  She didn’t know whether to believe that or not. “Really?”

  “Really. No need to feel sorry. Crap like this happens.”

  “You’ve got a girlfriend, then?”

  Peroni was beginning to wish she’d put the uniform back on. It made her easier to handle somehow. “What is this? I’m the grown-up around here. I ask the questions.”

  “So you have got a girlfriend?”

  He shifted awkwardly on the tiny metal stool. “Yeah. Sort of. Now. It’s not what you think. I didn’t have then.”

  “Sounds a deep relationship,” she commented. “This ”sort of girlfriend.“ Does she call you? Or do you call her?”

  Peroni swallowed a huge chunk of gorgeous lemon sorbet, which stuck at the back of his throat and made him gag for a moment. Once the coughing stopped he was dismayed to find some of the gelato was dribbling down his chin. He never would get the hang of eating this stuff.

  The girl handed him a napkin. He dabbed at his face, then said, “Bit of both. What’s it to you?”

  It was a lie. Teresa always called. He had just never faced the fact till then.

  “You’re eating my ice cream for free, mister. I can ask any damn thing I like.” She poked the front of his coat with a long fingernail. “Men who don’t call piss me off.”

  “I am getting that message.”

  The green eyes narrowed. “Are you? Are you really?”

  He thought about it and wondered how he’d come to develop this habit of having weird, half-jocular arguments with strangers in cafes. Nothing like this ever happened in Tuscany. People were too polite there. The Romans just spoke a thought the moment it entered their heads.

  “I am hearing what you say, my girl. It doesn’t mean I intend to act on it.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  She took his ice-cream dish, even though it was only half-eaten.

  “Hey!” Peroni objected. “That’s mine.”

  “No it isn’t. I gave it to you.”

  “OK.” He threw some notes on the counter. “How much?”

  She threw the money back at him. “I told you. It’s free. I just don’t think you phone her. You’re a man. Why would you?”

  “That’s my ice cream,” he repeated. “I want it back.”

  She waved at the door. “Go outside and call your girlfriend. Now. You can have some more when you come back and say you’ve done it. And no lying. I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “Jesus Christ…” Peroni cursed, and added a few more epithets under his breath that it was best the girl didn’t hear. “What is this?”

  “Christmas,” she hissed. “Almost. Hadn’t you noticed?”

  Damn teenagers, he thought. You never got an ounce of respect from them. Though maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Not that he would tell her so.

  “I was going to do it anyway,” he objected, heading for the door, trying not to listen to her muttering, “Yeah, right,” straight into his big back.

  It was crazy. Now that he thought about it he never called Teresa. He had to look up her mobile number in his address book because he hadn’t even programmed it into the phone.

  Teresa answered on the third ring and was quiet for a moment when she heard his voice.

  “Gianni?” she asked e
ventually. “Are you OK?”

  “Of course I’m OK! Nothing wrong with me phoning you, is there?”

  The pause on the line said otherwise. “Not exactly. Though I have to tell you I am in a very strange apartment right now dealing with a stray head. That lady you met earlier, if you remember. I think we have all the pieces at last.”

  “Jesus,” he swore quietly. “Listen, Teresa. There’s something I need to know. About Laila. What happened this morning? Why’d she leave like that? Have you any idea?”

  She sighed and said something about taking the call outside. The line was quiet for a short while, then Peroni heard the unmistakable sound of the night wind roaring behind her.

  “I told her you were going to get fired unless she gave you something about what happened in the Pantheon,” Teresa said over the noise. “I’m sorry. I thought it might help.”

  “I wish I’d thought of that,” he said. He made absolutely sure that there was no edge to his words. “It was really clever. Classic stuff too, Teresa. Good cop, bad cop, huh? Maybe they should pin a badge on you and let me drive the corpse wagon.”

  He could almost feel the tension on the other end. “Don’t be so ridiculous, you big goof. Falcone would be lost without you. Gianni?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You mean that? I did the right thing?”

  “Of course I mean that! It should have worked too. If she had anything to tell us…”

  She sounded so relieved he felt like going back into the cafe and hugging that mouthy girl.

  “Gianni, she knows something. That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither.” If Laila did have more to tell, that ought to have dragged it out of her. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Unless…”

  Teresa Lupo would have made a good cop. “Unless what?”

  “She keeps stealing things. What if she stole something from this guy? What if he took his jacket off when he was doing what he did? Do you think Laila could resist a peek? Or something more?”

  “I don’t know. But if she stole something why doesn’t she just give it to us? I mean, it’s not as if we don’t know about her habits. I must have emptied her pockets ten times this morning.”

  She didn’t say anything. He was glad of that. She was thinking.

  “I’m improvising here so don’t treat it as any more than that,” she said after a long moment. “What if she hid it somewhere? What if that’s why she ran away? To get what she stole, recover it from somewhere? Then give it to you?”

  It just fell into a place in his head, the little compartment that said: right.

  “God, I wish I could kiss you now,” Gianni Peroni sighed.

  The sound of short, tinny laughter flew through the cold night air. “I’m wearing surgical gloves covered in blood. And I’m standing on the roof of some dead woman’s apartment freezing my ass off.”

  “All the same…”

  He was an idiot, moping over his kids. They were safe and comfortable and warm. He’d drive up to Tuscany when the weather cleared, take them to one of those little country restaurants they loved, maybe introduce them to Teresa Lupo, too. They were just a couple of young people learning to live with damaged parents. It wasn’t ideal, but there were a lot worse things the world could throw at you.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve not exactly been normal lately,” he said, his voice choking a touch, doubtless from the aftermath of the lemon gelato.

  “If I wanted ”normal,“ Gianni, do you think I’d be dating you?”

  “No, I mean…”

  The words dried up. He was terrible at this. He just hoped she got the message.

  “Can I go back to my head now?” she asked. “This isn’t the right way to have a conversation like this.”

  “OK.”

  “And by the way—thanks for phoning.”

  He heard her cut the call, looked at the empty Piazza Trilussa, and said, “You’re welcome.”

  Then Gianni Peroni went back into the cafe, smiled at the girl, said thanks, and sat over a newly replenished bowl of ice cream thinking about what Teresa Lupo had said.

  Laila stole something. Where? In the Pantheon, surely. Laila hid that something. Where? In the Pantheon. Where else?

  He looked at his watch and thought about that miserable, florid-faced caretaker and the hours he kept. The place closed at seven-thirty. Maybe she’d been there already. But if that was the case why hadn’t she tried to get in touch? Wouldn’t she wait till the very last moment when there were hardly any people around? Or—and this thought appalled him—had she left the thing somewhere that meant she had to spend another night there to recover it?

  The waitress was reading a magazine. He placed a ten-euro note on the counter and got up.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. “You want to know why that boyfriend never calls you?”

  The green eyes looked at him with steady, intrigued intent. “Possibly…”

  “Because he’s a jerk. That’s why.”

  WILLIAM F. KASPAR SAT in the yellow Fiat Punto he’d ripped off from the cavernous underground car park by Porta Pinciana, waiting, thinking, watching the steady, light fall of snow descend on the deserted Via Veneto, listening to nothing but static from the tiny device clipped into his ear. This could go on forever. Not that he was worried about being caught. The weather meant the car park was dark and dead and deserted. He’d been able to swap the Fiat’s plates with those of a dusty Lancia that hadn’t moved in days. Even when the theft got reported they’d be looking for the wrong car.

  That was the kind of thing the old Bill Kaspar would have done. This recent carelessness wasn’t like him. He’d tested his luck in the Net cafe and, for once, got away with it. Still, this was bad. This was unlike him. He knew who he was: William F. Kaspar. He knew where he came from: Kentucky, a big old stud farm outside Lexington, where the horses flew like the wind across green fields that stretched forever, where family meant family, a tight, unbreakable bond of love, and you could get good whiskey straight from an illicit still if you knew where to ask.

  Kentucky was where he’d grown up, where he’d loved his first woman. After college in Alabama (and the memory alone sent a Dan song, with its refrain about the Crimson Tide, spinning through his head), a Kentucky military academy had started him on the long, hard road to becoming a soldier, filled him with a love of the classical world through studying the campaigns of Hadrian and Caesar and Hannibal. A Kentucky congressman, no stranger to the covert world himself, had first marked him out as someone whose talents could be used outside a conventional military career.

  Memories. Fading ghosts, blurring the line between reality and illusion.

  It was a lost world now, a distant sea of faded, two-dimensional mental pictures. He couldn’t return there even if he wanted to. He’d assembled his team, the best team, the Babylon Sisters (shake it, his head said immediately, right on cue) and he’d screwed up, been betrayed, whatever. There’d been blood on the ground, the holy ground, on the floor of the ziggurat, gore tracing the outlines of the patterns there, a red stain on the filigreed stone tattoo Hadrian himself had once touched. He’d wrapped the corpses of his own men and women in that same pattern, trapped in something as mundane as camouflage webbing. Then, before he’d had the chance to go down with them, bad luck got in the way. Thirteen wasted years that changed forever what he was and what he could be.

  A killer.

  No, that didn’t worry him. Bill Kaspar had killed plenty in his career. Never unnecessarily, never without good reason. It went with the job. Sometimes it was the only way to stay alive. He’d killed in the jungles of Colombia and on the streets of Managua. He’d taken men down in Afghanistan and Indonesia. And the Middle East. He’d been there a lot, enough to speak good Arabic, Kurdish and Farsi. Enough to help him convince a few people who should have known better, men who, temperamentally, hated everything American, that he really could be on their side, put some weapons their way, provided they had the mo
ney and information to share.

  He’d read every last book he could find on Hadrian, knew every twist and turn of his career all the way from Italica to Rome. Long before these new voices came to occupy his head, Bill Kaspar had thought he heard Hadrian talking to him sometimes, a strong, educated voice carrying across almost two millennia. The voice taught him lessons that kept a man like him alive. How it was impossible to fight battles on multiple fronts, which made it necessary, on occasion, to convert an enemy into a friend. How important it was to be a true leader, one everyone could look up to. And how the ambition was, invariably, more important than the achievement because, in the end, everything was dust and death and failure, a shallow, temporary grave in a foreign place far from home.