“I was just in the middle of a… I am in the middle of something. It’s important. I didn’t have a chance to phone,” said Blume.
“Where are you now?”
Blume looked at his bedroom clock. Jesus. How had that happened? “I’d prefer not to talk now. I’ll tell you later, sir.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Nothing. I just have to keep it down. The person I’m interviewing, a C.I., is a bit cagey. I need to hang up now.”
“Who’s your C.I., Blume?”
“That’s confidential, sir.”
“You don’t have any confidential informants. That’s what Paoloni does. Where are you?”
“I really had better go. I’ll explain later.” Blume hung up. He got out of the bed and suddenly the floor seemed to tilt. He sat down quickly again as wave after wave of nausea rolled over him. He had skipped dinner. Ever since he was a kid, skipping a meal had sent him into some sort of glycemic crisis. His mother used to worry about it and had been about to bring him to the doctor when she got back from the short break with his father. The day after, as he had sat in the wreckage of an abandoned teenage party, a policewoman sitting on the sofa opposite him, the doctor’s secretary had called up and spoken in icy tones about there being no excuse for skipping appointments. So he had never gone back to the doctor.
Every year, he underwent an obligatory medical, during which he folded his arms over his chest and spoke in monosyllables. The previous year, the doctor had taken out a beak-shaped metal instrument and pressed a piece of fat from his flank between the blades.
Doctors.
After some toast and an apple, he felt a bit better. He had always had problems oversleeping. Once he was down, he was out. He had to skip the coordination meeting, but he’d make it up with an investigative breakthrough. But first… he fell back asleep.
10
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 11:15 A.M.
At eleven fifteen, showered, gelled, fresh, and reinvigorated, Alec Blume walked out of his apartment block, properly dressed in beige chinos and a soft, dark blue cotton shirt with an ample breast pocket containing his notebook, pen, and phone. He wore heavy Clark casuals and carried a leather briefcase, still supple thanks to his careful application of Leather Balm with Atom Wax once a month. It was a wide and deep bag, large enough for the art books his father used to carry in it. He carried no weapon.
Blume decided to go straight to visit this Manuela Innocenzi that the secretary had fingered. If she was the person in bed with Clemente before his murder, she might have a lot to tell, and he would drag her in for questioning.
He plugged his phone into the cigar lighter below the dashboard to recharge, and phoned the office. He expected the youthful, bright voice of Ferrucci to answer. Instead he got Zambotto.
“Cristian? It that you? What are you doing answering phones?”
“It was ringing.”
Blume explained where he was going.
“Manuela Innocenzi?” said Zambotto. “Some name.”
“What do you mean some name?” asked Blume, beginning to see the answer as he asked the question.
“You know, Innocenzi,” said Zambotto.
“Innocenzi, as in… Innocenzi?” said Blume. It had not even entered his thoughts, yet it had been the first thing Zambotto’s anvil-like mind had come up with.
“No way.”
“OK. No, then,” said Zambotto.
Blume felt butterflies in his stomach, a feeling he used to get in school and during his presentations at university. It was the bad-dream feeling of being visibly stupid in front of other people. Innocenzi was the name of the clan that controlled the entire south and southwest of Rome, most of the Agro Romano to Fiumicino and Ostia, with pockets of influence in the Agro Pontino, Foggia, Circeo, Latina, even Campania.
He pulled over to the side of the road and switched on his hazard lights.
“No way,” he said.
Zambotto seemed to have hung up.
“No,” repeated Blume. “It’s just a coincidence of surnames.”
Zambotto was still there. “Innocenzi has a daughter. No wife, no brothers or sisters. Just the daughter.”
“Not one that sleeps with a do-gooder like Clemente. They’d never move in the same circles.”
“What have circles got to do with people fucking?” said Zambotto.
“Innocenzi’s a pretty common name,” said Blume.
Zambotto seemed to be considering the idea. Eventually he said, “I can’t think of anyone I know called Innocenzi except for that bastard. You want, I can ask Ferrucci. He’s good at research. He’ll be here in a minute.”
Blume hesitated, then pulled out the piece of paper he had copied out in Clemente’s office earlier and read off the address to Zambotto.
“OK. Tell Paoloni, tell Ferrucci, but let’s keep this close. It’s probably nothing. As for this woman, I’ll go there myself now. You give this address to Ferrucci, check it out together, then call me immediately. It’s probably only a coincidence.”
“In some ways, it’d be pretty good if it wasn’t,” said Zambotto.
“How?”
“It settles the case. Boss’s daughter sleeping with married guy, married guy gets whacked. Not too many problems with motive.”
“You think that would be a good thing, us having a run-in with Innocenzi?” said Blume.
Zambotto relapsed into silence.
“Let me know as quick as you can.”
The woman in silk pajamas who answered the door twenty minutes later had probably once had strawberry- blonde hair. Time had faded it, and she had retaliated against time by turning it carrot-orange. She glanced at Blume wearily as if he were a well-known and unwelcome acquaintance. She stepped back to allow him in and did not even glance at his badge, from which a younger version of himself gazed intently out.
He knew immediately he was not going to have to be the one to break any bad news to her. Tears had already washed away all pretence of youth.
“Manuela Innocenzi?” asked Blume. She had let him into the building without a question as soon as he said police. Neither Zambotto nor anyone from the office had got back to him yet.
She nodded, loosened her hair, let it fall over her shoulders. She was barefoot. She led him into the living room. Blume glanced around, half hoping to see an unequivocal picture of Benedetto Innocenzi, old boss of the New Magliana Gang. She motioned him to sit down. He looked for a piece of upright furniture and found none. Reluctantly, he slid into the embrace of the fat pink cushions of an armchair.
“Enya!” she called, and an Irish Setter edged over to her feet as she sat down on a pink sofa opposite.
He said, “I am Commissioner Blume,” and then paused as he watched the shifting weight of her breasts under her loose top and the wrinkling of the V of visible skin as she bent down and stroked the dog, which she kept sleek.
“What was your name?”
“Blume.”
“I got that. Your first name, I meant.”
“Alec.”
