by Tobias Jones
‘Why not?’
He looked around the small office, just to double-check no one else was around. ‘It’s better that what goes on in here doesn’t get recorded for posterity.’
‘How do you mean?’
He didn’t reply, but gestured towards the window. I looked down again at the crowded floor beneath. The hedonism was explicit and, I guessed, much of it wasn’t legal.
‘I better get back,’ he said.
I followed him down the stairs and into the bar. There were even more people waving notes now, all looking desperate and needy. He snapped the top off a beer bottle and passed it to me. Then he reopened the hinged bit of the bar and let me back out into the melee. I sank the beer and walked out. It was well past midnight now and the air was unexpectedly cool. There were people in groups of twos and threes smoking spliffs and cigarettes, trying to adjust to the reality of the outside world.
I walked slowly back to my car, wondering about the Oro club and why a girl like Simona would come here. It was a heady sort of place, the kind of place that could knock you off balance if you didn’t have your feet on the ground. I yanked the car off the pavement and drove back through the cobbled alleyways onto the main road.
The street cleaners were at work now, taking advantage of the almost empty roads to clear up the day’s droppings. The circular brushes underneath their little vehicles looked like the whirling discs of an electric toothbrush as they angled down into the plaque between the road and the pavement. Binmen in bright hi-vis vests were jovially shouting to each other from one side of the road to the other.
There were still quite a few late-night revellers standing around outside bars or at traffic lights. Older couples were walking serenely through the city as though it were the middle of the day. I looked at the clock on the dashboard and saw it was just gone two.
I pulled up by one of the binmen and showed him the hotel’s business card.
‘Hotel del Fiume?’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘Hang on.’ He called over a colleague and a long conference ensued about where it might be. They thought it was in opposite parts of the city and argued cheerfully for a few minutes.
‘Why don’t you just call them and ask?’ one of them said when they couldn’t come to an agreement.
‘All I’ve got is the name of the place,’ I said.
‘You’re not likely to get a bed then, are you?’
‘Not looking for a bed. I’m trying to find a girl.’
They looked at me with sympathy, as though I were some sort of sad cuckold. I showed them the snap just in case, but of course they just shrugged and moved away like they didn’t want to get involved.
I drove on and found a taxi rank with no taxis but a lot of punters queueing up to get home. I parked and walked up and down the queue, asking if anyone knew where the hotel was. Most of them tried to help, offering their vague ideas. When a taxi eventually rolled up the couple getting in let me ask the driver, and he seemed convinced it was over towards Ostia. Since that seemed to be the consensus, I got back in the car and headed towards the sea.
As I left the city behind me I became aware of the darkness. No more street lights, no more glitzy shop windows. Just a few silhouettes of cypresses against the moonlight. I was overcome by tiredness. I had been driving almost all day and now all I needed was a bed.
It wasn’t long before I got to Ostia, the seaside suburb of Rome. The air smelt different here: salty with hints of seaweed and the accumulated smells of a resort on a Saturday night: bonfires, caramelised nuts, spilt drinks. I drove as far as the Lido, knowing I had arrived when I saw the sand on the pavements. The whole place was almost entirely abandoned now. There was just one couple walking along the beach, looking like they were in the middle of an argument. The man kept grabbing the woman as she walked away. She twisted out of his grasp, but was too drunk or desperate to make a clean break, and always seemed to let him take hold of her again.
There were two dozen shallow street signs hanging off one post and I saw, half-way down, the name of the hotel. I turned right and followed the signs through dull, dark streets. When I got to the hotel the vertical sign with its one star wasn’t even illuminated. I got out and shut the door quietly. If Massimo Mori was here with the girl I didn’t want him awake.
The door to the place was locked. Amongst the colourful stickers listing the credit cards they accepted and the associations they belonged to was a handwritten card saying If Closed, Ring Bell. The arrow pointed to a small buzzer. I held it down for a few seconds. Nothing.
Stepping back, I couldn’t see any lights on. I walked around the corner to see the place from the other street but it was all dark. Most of the curtains in the rooms weren’t drawn so I guessed they had hardly any guests.
I rang the buzzer again, holding it down for ten, fifteen seconds. I took my finger off and then went again. So much for the element of surprise.
From inside I heard a man cursing. He seemed to be kicking furniture on his way to the door. When he got closer I could see that he was short and fat, with a short-sleeved shirt thrown over a dirty white vest. He unlocked the door and stared at me.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘You always receive your guests like that?’
He screwed his face up. He looked like a bulldog. He was old and unshaven and smelt of booze. His hair was thin and sparse, though. No grey ponytail.
‘I’m looking for a bed for the night,’ I said.
‘Look elsewhere.’ He started shutting the door. I gave it a good shove with my shoulder and he stumbled sideways, putting out a hand to break his fall. I closed the door behind me and started pulling him roughly to his feet.
‘Try to be polite,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a long day.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said.
I let him go again and he fell back to the floor. He was half-asleep and half-drunk and it wasn’t much of a fight. He rolled onto his side to try to push himself up but kept looking over his shoulder to see where I was.
‘Get up,’ I said impatiently.
He was swearing and grunting under his breath as he got to his feet. He didn’t say anything but just stared at me with snarling contempt.
‘This is the Hotel del Fiume, right?’
He smiled sarcastically, like I was really clever.
‘You’ve got a guest here called Massimo Mori.’
He shook his head.
‘You haven’t got a guest here called Massimo Mori?’
He shook his head again, raising his wiry eyebrows slightly to show his enjoyment at being uncooperative.
I looked around the place with disdain. ‘You got any guests in this shit-hole?’
He just stared at me. I don’t know if it was exhaustion or concern for Simona, but I felt the furies rising up inside me. Suddenly I found myself lunging towards him. I got my grip around the front of his thick stubbly neck and I pushed him up against the wall.
‘A young girl has been abducted,’ I whispered loudly into his ear. ‘From what I’ve been told, the man who abducted her was staying in this pit.’ I gave the neck a squeeze and jammed his head back against the wall.
I let him go and he fell forward, coughing and holding his throat. I took out some notes and held them in front of him. His gaze followed them like I was a hypnotist.
‘Massimo Mori. Is he here?’
He shook his head, just like before. I was about to lunge again but he started explaining. ‘We had a guest here called Mori. He checked out this morning.’
‘Show me the book.’
He walked towards the thin, chest-high reception desk. He went behind it and reached down for a book. He put it on the desk and spun it round, pointing at a name. Mori.
‘How many nights?’
‘He was here for a week, more or less.’ He was still rubbing his neck and looking sore.
‘Was he with a girl?’
He nodded. ‘Only last night.’
I pulled out the snap and put it
on the desk. ‘This her?’
He nodded again. ‘That’s the girl.’
‘You sure? What was she wearing?’ I asked.
‘Jeans. Red T-shirt.’
I stared at him, deciding I needed him sweet. ‘When did she turn up?’
‘He brought her back last night.’
‘Twenty-four hours ago?’
‘Right. Nice piece she was. I thought he must have picked her up from the ring-road, but she was classier. You know. Didn’t look like the usual hooker.’
I wasn’t sure whether he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. He seemed more interested in the cash than the girl.
‘What were the two of them like together? Was she being held against her will?’
‘When am I going to see some of that dough? Haven’t I told you enough?’
I held up the notes again. ‘There. You’ve seen it. What were they like together?’
‘What do I know what they were like together?’
I turned round to walk out. I didn’t get two paces towards the door when the old boozer called me back.
‘They were normal,’ he shrugged grumpily. ‘Just normal. A man and a woman. I see it all the time. Didn’t think there was anything unusual going on.’
‘He wasn’t holding on to her? Wasn’t mistreating her?’
‘They seemed normal, OK?’ He stared at me and shook his head quickly as if it might help me understand.
‘When did you see them together?’
‘When he brought her in last night—’
‘What time?’
He shrugged. ‘Ten. Eleven. And when they checked out this morning.’
‘And she seemed OK?’
‘To be honest, it looked like she had been crying. Didn’t look exactly cheery. But then none of us do in the morning.’
‘Did this Mori say where they were going?’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘Allora?’ He threw his chin in the air expecting his pay-off.
‘What does Mori look like?’
He lowered his eyebrows, losing patience with the interrogation. ‘Ugly. Long hair in a ponytail. Grey hair.’ He shrugged.
‘Did he have a car?’
‘Sure.’
‘How do you know?’
‘If they want to park round here I have to give them a permit, something saying they’re staying here so they can park in the blue lines.’
‘So you gave him the permit?’
‘Sure.’
‘Did you have to write the number plate on it?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s just something they put on a dashboard.’ He reached below the desk and showed me a plastic rectangle announcing that the owner of the vehicle was resident at the Hotel del Fiume.
‘Did you see his car?’
He shook his head, staring at me as if he were pleased he couldn’t help.
‘But you took a photocopy of his ID?’
‘Sure. That’s the law.’
‘Show me.’
He grunted wearily as he bent down and opened a filing cabinet. He passed over a piece of paper, a photocopy of a page of a passport. I looked at it: Massimo Mori, it said. The mug shot showed a man with thick eyebrows and black holes for eyes. His hair looked short.
‘No ponytail here,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, hair grows.’
‘Not on you.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Do me a copy.’ I passed him back the paper. He switched on a photocopier and ran off a copy. Before handing it over, he stared at me like he deserved something in return.
‘Do me a photocopy of the check-in form as well.’
He trudged back to the desk, got out another piece of paper and ran it through the copier. I held out a twenty without looking at him. I was studying the form: it had his name and address in black and white. The address was somewhere in Viterbo, an hour or so to the north. Via della Salute, number 34‚ it said.
‘I’ll give you another twenty for a guided tour.’
‘Forget it. I’m going to bed.’
‘Fifty.’
He glared at me with his mouth open. Every feature of his face seemed to sag. His swollen nose looked purple. He looked to the side briefly and then back at me. ‘Not much to see,’ he said.
‘Show me Mori’s room.’
He took a key from a hook on the wall behind him and headed off towards the stairs. ‘No lift,’ he said. ‘No lift so no guests. Nowadays everyone expects a lift. And a beauty spa, and a gym. All we’ve got are beds.’
‘No pool?’
He snorted in derision. ‘It’s more like a pond. Can’t afford to clean it or heat it. It’s still there, but it’s a health hazard.’
The old man was puffing as he got to the first-floor landing. He thumped a light-switch and threw his hands out like this was all there was. There were cheap reproduction paintings on the walls. The rug itself looked so dirty it could have been a nature reserve.
‘Which room was Mori in?’
He shuffled along the corridor and unlocked a room. There were two double beds inside. A tiny TV was high up in the corner, angled down towards one of the beds. The shutters were down but as I pulled the cord to open them slightly all I could see was a brick wall about a metre the other side of the window.
‘Were both beds slept in?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘How do you know? You don’t clean the room yourself, do you?’ He looked like the kind of person who would leave a room dirtier just for being in it.
‘A girl comes in. She changed both beds this morning.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I asked her. I was curious about the odd couple.’
‘Why odd?’
He rolled his eyes, bored of the questions. ‘He was gnarled and ugly. She was young and beautiful. The only time a couple like that get together is when he’s rich. This guy wasn’t. So I just wondered what was going on. I asked the cleaning girl and she told me they’d used separate beds.’
I poked around the cheap furniture, pulling out drawers and opening cupboards and wardrobes. They wobbled feebly each time I pulled a handle. Their plastic laminate smelt of too much disinfectant. The bathroom was empty. There was a shower cubicle that looked half the size of a telephone kiosk. A thin miniature soap was wrapped up, ready for the next sad resident. There was a plastic bin with a translucent liner. Nothing of interest.
‘What happened to the rubbish?’
‘It goes in the wheelie bins in the basement. But today was rubbish day so it’s already gone.’
‘Nice place,’ I said sarcastically.
‘Wasn’t always like this. Used to be a very fashionable place twenty, thirty years ago.’
‘Yeah?’ I said sceptically.
‘Yeah. Used to have people begging to be allowed in. We used to host major conferences and gala events and parties. It used to be the perfect place for a party before they built all those new swank places right on the seafront. The parties we used to have.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘Incredible parties. Stuff going on you wouldn’t believe. Sometimes I would walk along this corridor and I would see naked girls going from one room to the next.’
‘Must have been nice for you.’
‘We used to have all the stars here. You remember Alberto Grilli, the guy who presented that game show back in the eighties? He was a regular. Always tipped like a king. Great guy, Alberto. And there was Beppe Anselmi, the actor. We’ve got a signed photo of him downstairs.’
He went on like that, trying to persuade me that this place used to be a Mecca for stars back in the day. He led me back downstairs and showed me a gallery of framed signed photographs of people I had never heard of. He described their TV shows or films, and what they used to eat and tip and their taste in girls.
I wasn’t sure if it was all just talk. Most of the bars round here have photos of stars. It seems to be standard décor. And most pizzerie have one or two pizzas named after footballers or acto
rs so that they can make out they’re regular customers.
‘Why did they come here?’ I looked around with disdain.
‘They were all friends of Mario.’
‘Who?’
‘Mario. The owner. Mario Di Angelo.’ He said it impatiently like I was slow. The name rang a bell.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The senator. He owns TV Sogni.’
‘And he owns this place?’
‘Sure. Has done ever since I came to work here thirty years ago. Whenever he wanted to throw a party, he would do it here. Used to bring all his showbiz friends along, all their girls.’
‘That so?’
‘He knew the meaning of the word largesse. He used to pay for everything. He’s the most generous man, always giving presents to people, always offering to do something for you. He looks after everyone. Makes sure everyone’s having a good time.’
‘That why he went into politics?’
He heard the sarcasm and his face dropped once more. He looked older and more tired suddenly.
‘Give me that fifty and I can go back to bed.’
‘Why did the parties stop?’
He looked pensive for once. He was staring at the floor and brought his shoulders up to his ears. ‘They didn’t stop,’ he said slowly, ‘they just moved elsewhere. A man like Mario isn’t one to slow down, believe me.’ He smiled, still staring at the floor. Then he snapped out of the reminiscence and put his hand out for his money. I handed over fifty.
‘Call me if you see Mori or the girl again and I’ll make it two hundred.’ I wrote down my number and gave it to him. He grunted and shuffled towards the door to let me out. As I went out into the cold air I heard him twisting the key in the lock.
I walked to the other side of the street and looked back at the hotel. From the outside it looked a little less unattractive. There were plants cascading from one or two balconies. The awning over the entrance was lined by thin fairy lights. I couldn’t imagine the place full of A-listers and flowers, but it wasn’t as bad outside as it was in.
The night was just beginning to give way to the day. The black was going grey, and there was a faint light in the sky back towards Rome. I could hear birds beginning to chirp and I felt suddenly very tired. Dawn usually has that effect on me. Makes me realise that I haven’t been to bed.
