“Well, I know Vicequestore Gallone doesn’t like becoming entangled
…”
“You can’t entangle the Holy Ghost, Ferrucci. Knotty problems just pass right through him,” said Paoloni.
“Well…” Ferrucci looked unhappy. “I realized it was unusual for him to, you know, work a case personally, and so I looked for a point of convergence between him and Romagnolo, see if there was some special connection that would explain his interest.”
“You ran a check on Gallone?” Blume thought his voice conveyed warmth and admiration, but Ferrucci flinched.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well?”
“I found one. They were at university together studying jurisprudence. She was a year ahead of him.”
“You looked up university records,” said Blume. “What made you think of that?”
“First I looked up police files, sir. Clemente, Romagnolo, and the vice-questore were tagged because they were members of a revolutionary group called Prima Linea at La Sapienza University.”
Blume and Paoloni both burst out laughing. Ferrucci looked worried, thinking it might be him they were laughing at.
“Comrade Gallone,” said Paoloni. “Who’d have thought it? I always figured him for a spoilt priest. Maybe he was one of those Catho-communists you used to hear about.”
Prima Linea was an echo from a distant past when the Communists really thought they might just make it. Blume was a child in another country when they were active, and Ferrucci had not even been born.
Blume tried to imagine Gallone in a combat jacket hurling Molotovs at the police he was later to join. Plenty of right-wing politicians and administrators had been in far-left movements in their youth. Even so, if he had kept it quiet, Gallone obviously felt vulnerable. What Blume found funniest of all was the idea that the vicequestore might ever have had an ideal. Or been young.
“Right. I’m filing that in my head for next time I need to compromise the bastard,” said Paoloni.
“Good work, Ferrucci,” said Blume.
“Ale?” said Paoloni.
“What?”
“I need to go for a drink in Trastevere, see who I can meet. You coming?”
Blume looked at his watch. It had just gone eleven. “You think?”
“You decide,” said Paoloni.
Blume had never had much street credibility. D’Amico had told him once it was because he would not compromise, but he knew it was his voice. His accent, acquired in the schoolyard, was perfect Roman, but a hint of something else lay behind it, a watchfulness, a lack of spontaneity or a slight reticence in his movements. Whatever it was, he put people on their guard.
“I think I’ll pass,” he said.
“Are you staying here?”
“I don’t know. I might try to steal some sleep, a few hours. Here or at home, I haven’t decided. But I’m on call if you need me.”
Ferrucci’s relief at Paoloni’s departure reached Blume like a softening in the air.
Blume said, “I want you to get in contact with Zambotto, give him the address to Clemente’s office, tell him to get over there, find a way of getting in. I’ll meet him there later. Tell him to wait for as long as it takes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Blume scribbled down the address of Clemente’s office, shoved it in his pocket.
“Then finish retrieving the essentials-car registration, relatives, friends, telephone numbers, Internet providers, name of bank, credit card transactions, all that sort of stuff. Also, see if you can get a copy of the Carabinieri report on that dog-fighting raid, first thing tomorrow. Go straight to the Court Records Office tomorrow morning. Let’s not waste time. Get the investigating magistrate to help you with it. It’s Principe. He’s good. He’ll help you if the Carabinieri decide to be unhelpful. And then go back home and go to bed. You get all that?”
“Bed?”
“Yes. Tiredness leads to oversights. People who don’t sleep make stupid mistakes.”
7
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 11:40 P.M.
Blume sat in his car in the underground garage and couldn’t sleep.
He had climbed into it with the intention of driving home, napping ninety minutes, and changing into proper clothes before going to Clemente’s office to join Zambotto. But he didn’t feel comfortable going home while Paoloni was still working his contacts.
He decided to put his phone on the dashboard and try to fall into a doze while he waited for it to ring. The oily smell of the dark garage and the soft seat of the police Lancia, which he had pushed back into maximum recline, seemed to invite sleep. But Blume stayed awake.
Again he checked the signal strength bars on his cell phone, even though he had received and made calls from the basement countless times in the past. The phone was showing a signal at full strength, but he could not rid himself of the idea that the tufa walls and concrete pillars were somehow blocking his communications with the outside world.
After half an hour, Blume drove the car up the ramp, out through the electric gates and into the piazza. He got out, breathed in the warm night air and phoned Paoloni, but got no reply. He was not surprised. Paoloni often went offline when he was doing his thing. Incoming calls made confidential informers and potential witnesses nervous. Fine. Time to join Zambotto.
He pictured the bulky policeman with his drooping eyelids waiting without acting.
Clemente’s office was located near the zoo, or the Biopark, as it liked to call itself now that almost all the large animals in it had died or been poisoned by disgruntled keepers. Blume double-checked the address in his pocket and turned on the engine.
The traffic on the northbound quays was still heavy. Small cars with young people weaved in and out, cutting him off over and over. Blume did his best to keep calm and drive carefully, but he still found himself doing more than a hundred as he came out of the tunnel leading to Ponte Risorgimento. As he slowed down to turn right, his phone rang. He was surprised to see Zambotto’s name on the screen. Zambotto did not usually take the initiative of placing a call.
“The office was being searched already,” said Zambotto without even checking to make sure the right person had answered.
“Clemente’s?”
“Yeah, that one. Your colleague D’Amico was here with two uniforms. They’ve just left.”
“Stay there. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
Blume ran the traffic light and headed down Viale delle Belle Arti at high speed. He raced up Via delle Tre Madonne, and almost lost control as the wheels lost their grip on tram tracks, before turning onto Via Mercandante. A police car was coming up in the opposite direction and Blume bore down on it. The police car whooped its siren, and swerved across the road to block Blume. An officer jumped out of the passenger side, pistol already in his hand. Blume got out, his police ID held high.
Nando D’Amico, wearing a white shirt, stepped carefully out of the backseat of the car and unfurled a dark jacket.
He put on the jacket and became less visible. “Alec! What’s going on?”
Slowly, the policeman lowered his weapon.
“That’s what I want to know, Nando. What’s going on?”
“I don’t follow.”
“What were you doing at Clemente’s office?”
