“Dust in the Wind,” Van Morrison (whom his father knew all about before they discovered him in Europe), Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Neil Young, and “Blinded by the Light,” which he never understood.
His parents never made it out of the city. Both were shot dead, along with a third customer, during a heist on the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro on Via Cristoforo Colombo. They had not even mentioned they were going to the bank. One of the bank robbers had been shot dead, too. The one who didn’t do the shooting.
The police came to his school to find him, but he had skipped out with five friends and spent the afternoon smoking weed on an embankment in Villa Borghese, flicking butts and roaches on the cars passing below on Viale del Muro Torto. The police went to his apartment building and left word with the neighbors to call when they heard Blume return. They posted a policeman outside his apartment to wait, but pulled him out to deal with a reported assault.
When Blume and his loud friends came back at nine in the evening, nobody was there waiting for him. It was the woman in the apartment below who called.
When the police came, Blume and his buddies were crammed into the apartment, getting buzzed, listening to the Clash. He opened the door and saw them there, a policeman and a policewoman. Some of his friends lounging on the couch saw the uniforms.
— Wooo! Heavy!
— Pigs on the loose!
— Fascists!
Blume played it punky and hard, and started closing the door on them before they had even spoken, saying yeah, yeah, the music would be turned down.
“Fuck this,” the policeman had said, and stuck his foot inside the door, bouncing it back open, almost slamming the edge against Blume’s temple.
Blume looked up in surprise and straight into the policewoman’s dark eyes brimming with pity.
It was past two when the patrol car returned. D’Amico was not in it. He had evidently got himself a lift home while Blume sat waiting.
One of the patrolmen waved to Blume before opening the back door to deposit a young woman in the middle of the road. Then he drove off.
Blume stood up. “Over here.”
She hesitated, then turned in his direction and walked over.
She was young, with thick glasses. Blume might have found her attractive had she been a little older.
“When they arrived the first time, they didn’t tell me what happened,” she said. “Then they came back.”
“I know. I sent them.”
“I refused to cooperate till they told me,” she paused and looked at him. “Is it true?”
“What did they say?”
“That Arturo has been killed.”
“Yes. It is true.”
“I need time to process this.”
“I’m sorry, but there isn’t time. We have to move as quickly as we can. There will be follow-ups. For now, I want you to lead me into the office, and tell me what if anything is out of place to you. If nothing is out of place, then I want you just to show me around. Do you think you can do that?” Blume held out the keys.
The office was on the second floor. They used the broad, winding staircase instead of the elevator, almost as if they had silently agreed not to make more noise than necessary.
“Who else is here?”
“All offices. Lawyers, a museum ticketing company, a travel agency, and, on the top floor, an accountant.”
They walked into the office. She switched on fluorescent lights, which cast a fizzy whiteness that Blume found unpleasant after the dark street.
The office was matte gray and characterless. Some of the IKEA-style furniture was garishly colored to give a faux ethnic or northern European bohemian look, but the room they were in was dominated by an outsized photocopying machine whose wheels and multiple paper trays made it look like a robot with fins. The wall behind contained white shelves lined with green Oxford binders.
On top of a white desk sat a graceless Apple computer made with see-through plastic.
“Is this where you work?”
She nodded.
“Anything out of place?”
She shook her head.
Blume took one long step into a truncated corridor with two doors on the right.
“Clemente’s office is behind one of those doors?”
She nodded again.
“And the other?”
“Bathroom.”
“Right.” He walked down, opened the first door. The bathroom was long and narrow. It looked unused. To the left was a shower. Blume imagined the plea sure of stepping under it.
“Boot up your computer, then show me his office.”
“You haven’t even asked my name.”
“I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I thought. I am Commissioner Alec Blume. I already know your name. It’s Federica. Right?”
“I didn’t even ask to see your identification.”
“Want to see it now?”
“No, it’s OK. I trust you. You look…”
“Tired. I look tired.”
Clemente’s office was small and almost entirely blank. In the daytime, he would have had a nice view of plane trees and a stretch of parkland. In each of the four corners sat piles of white cardboard boxes.
“Anything out of place here?”
“Not that I can see.”
“What about those cardboard boxes?”
“Posters, flyers. Animal rights. To help change the laws on animal mistreatment, strays, dog fighting,” explained Federica.
Blume picked up a beige folder lying on Clemente’s desk and opened it. It contained flyers, a few typewritten sheets, some handwritten notes.
“This folder on his desk?”
Federica frowned. “I don’t know. Usually he leaves his desk clean, but not always.”
Blume picked up a few sheets and read them. They seemed to be notes for a campaign against the idea of giving children puppies for Christmas. If he were dictator, Blume would ban all dogs from the city. Big ones that bit children and fouled the streets, small ones that yapped at him from the arms of childless women, and every type in between.
One neatly handwritten page had some names, numbers. In the middle of the small pile of papers were several sheets with the name “Alleva” handwritten in block capitals on top.
“Come here a minute, Federica.”
Blume sat down and started reading, handing each sheet over to the secretary as he did so. Some sheets were typed, others handwritten. It took twenty minutes. He waited for her to finish looking at them, for she did not seem to be reading them, then asked, “What do you make of it?”
“It’s a description of a dog-fighting ring. The breeds, what he saw, the number of dogs killed-it was our main campaign recently. After the campaign against Christmas puppies, which is annual. I thought you would know that.”
“No, I know very little so far.” Blume picked up the file folder.
“Let’s go back into reception, your room, and you can fill me in a bit. Sit down there, in the chair you usually use, in front of the computer. Like that. Good.”
Blume discovered that Federica had seen Clemente leave the office at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. He
