convergence between them. So we need to look into Clemente’s friends and, sir, we need to ask his wife some questions.”
“I don’t like this insistence on the wife and friends,” said Gallone.
“We’ve already got a prime suspect, Alleva, and now you tell us that there’s also a connection with Innocenzi, though I still see Alleva as the most likely candidate.”
D’Amico stood up. “No, sir. Commissioner Blume is right. If we rule out Innocenzi on the grounds that the murder was completely unprofessional and leave him far too exposed to suspicion, then we need to rule out Alleva on the very same grounds.”
“So you no longer believe in the Alleva hypothesis, Nando?” Blume asked. “In spite of the documentary evidence I found on his office desk? You know what it looked like to me? As if a fastidiously neat person had tried his best to scatter papers about, but could not bear to make too much of a mess.”
Above D’Amico’s bright white collar the slightest hint of a blush appeared, then almost immediately faded. But he waved a minatory finger at Blume and rolled his eyes in Gallone’s direction. So now D’Amico was playing at being back on his side, his old partner and friend, pretending to cut Gallone out of the loop.
As for Gallone, he had retreated into himself and was too preoccupied even to acknowledge that they were leaving his office without being dismissed. As D’Amico closed the door behind them, Blume saw him wince, then pick up his silver cell phone again.
12
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 3:10 P.M.
Blume went straight across town to the investigating magistrate’s office in Prati.
“Alec,” said Principe, leaning back and stretching his arms behind his head to reveal underarm sweat stains. “We missed you this morning.”
“I’m here now.”
“You arrive when it’s too hot for sane people to think straight.”
Blume glanced over at a rusting air conditioner hanging from the lower half of the window. “Does that thing not work?”
Principe shrugged. “I’ve never tried. Air conditioners give you throat infections, colds, and muscle spasms. I hear you want to take this investigation in a different direction. On a collision course with the second most important crime family in Rome.”
“How do you know that?”
Principe waved his hands like a conjurer. “Magistrate magic,” he said.
“Who phoned ahead?” said Blume. “Was it the Holy Ghost?”
“Yes, he filled me in on your meeting with Manuela Innocenzi. Now he wants me to block you. Should I?”
“I don’t see the point. I doubt that the Innocenzi syndicate had anything to do with the murder. This was a half-botched attempt done by an amateur.”
“Or by a professional imitating an amateur,” said Principe. “The messier the killing, the dumber the assassin seems, the less likely we are to tie it with a professional like Benedetto Innocenzi.”
“We’ll talk after I’ve interviewed the widow.”
“Ah. Now that was the other thing he wanted me to prohibit.”
“Well, you don’t want to block the only two avenues of investigation.”
“No. You should go ahead, talk to the widow. It seems you’re not convinced by the third avenue-the one leading to Alleva’s door?”
“I am not ruling anything out,” said Blume. “As for that television documentary Clemente was involved in, we could do with a copy of it from RAI. Maybe also a list of all the people involved in its making. You could maybe send Ferrucci there. Phone ahead, ease his way. It’s not as if it’s confidential material. They broadcast it to the nation a month ago, or to that part of the nation still up at eleven in the evening and watching RAI 2.”
Principe took out a fountain pen. “Fine. Anything else?”
“Not for now,” said Blume. “You coming for a coffee?”
Principe shook his head sadly. “I can’t. Coffee is full of cafestol. My doctor says there’s no point in taking Zocor at night then undoing all the good work during the day.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Blume.
“You should pay attention to these things,” said Principe. “Stress raises cholesterol. You look stressed.”
“I’d be more stressed if I couldn’t drink coffee because of… whatever that thing was,” said Blume.
“Cafestol. I’m allowed to drink filtered coffee, you know, that grayish brew you Americans like. Apparently there’s no cafestol in that. But I can’t bring myself to. I’d rather die.”
Blume retrieved his car from outside the court building and drove back to the station. He parked it in the piazza outside, nodding to the illegal parking attendant, who had hundreds of car keys attached to chains around his waist and jingled as he walked.
Blume walked into the station courtyard. Until recently, it had been filled with police vehicles and a very old Fiat Jeep, but then a decision was made to take over the piazza outside and turn the courtyard back into its original function as an internal garden, with a fountain in the middle. The removal of the cars had not caused flowers to burst through the concrete. And no one had thought to repair the fountain, a slime-covered object, said to be by Borromini, around which squadrons of tiger mosquitoes swarmed.
As he reached the center of the courtyard, he lifted his head up from the ground directly in front of him and saw someone sitting on the dilapidated wooden bench. Even before looking at her directly, Blume had already registered her as the woman who had walked in on their meeting by mistake. The object of her study was the crumbling fountain.
She had a graceful white neck, and her hair was the same copper color as the leaves of the Mirabolan plum tree behind her. She had hooked one leg over the other and rested a board and sketchpad on her knee. At twenty paces, he thought he could detect the smell of white soap and pastel colors, which suddenly reminded him of a moment in playschool in Seattle, long ago.
She was wearing blue jeans and Birkenstock sandals and a white blouse.
Something about the whiteness of the cotton blouse, the brightness of her skin, told him she was American. A few loose sheaves from her sketchbook were fluttering in the wind. Now he noticed that she was only a few years younger than he was. At ten paces, he had resolved to say something to her. She sensed his arrival and glanced up and gave him a smile.
Blume smiled and nodded at the sketch she was doing. She half held it up, almost as if asking him for an opinion. As she did so, a gust of dusty wind pulled some papers from the bench beside her and sent them gliding to the ground. One piece slid over the broken paving, losing its pristine whiteness. Blume picked it up, in spite of her protests of “Grazie-non importa.” Holding the sheet with a slightly reverential air, he approached her.
“There you are,” he said in English.
“Non era necessario,” she said, with a smile that gave him a constricted feeling in his chest. He hoped she would hurry up and notice he had spoken in English.
“No problem,” he said. This time the message got through.
“Ah, so you speak English? I was a bit slow in noticing.”
“No, not at all.” Blume was full of disagreement.
“The wind,” she explained.
“Yes, I saw it.”
I can see invisible streams of air. I’m gifted that way.
But she didn’t seem to notice his phrasing, and gathered the sheets together and, without separating the clean from dirty or even the blanks from those with sketches, bundled them all into a soft leather bag. Now she was packing away all her things, as if the gust of wind had been a sudden order to abandon the field. Her right hand was covered in charcoal dust, yet her blouse remained perfectly white.
