and looked at Gallone. “You understand it, too, sir. We can’t just walk in and pick him up if there is a chance of others intervening, especially if they are Innocenzi’s crew. It could spiral. All deals would be off. We’d lose months, years of intelligence and contacts. Also, these people know a lot of secrets and pull a lot of strings. These things need to be negotiated. I don’t think we really want this general aggravation in the Magliana area. All we want is Alleva. Let’s wait till we can get just him.”
Blume was surprised to see Gallone take all this backtalk. He even seemed to be listening.
“OK. How do we get Alleva, then?” he asked.
“We get him tomorrow morning when he’s visiting his mother’s,” said Paoloni. “He always visits his mother on a Sunday. Brings her pastries. Sunday’s a quiet day.”
“It’s also an overtime day,” said Gallone. “So where does the mother live?”
“Testaccio area. He goes there at around ten. We can follow him from his house or wait for him at his mother’s.”
“We could do both,” said Gallone. “Just to be sure.”
Gallone, getting back into his old habits, assigned Paoloni the task of setting up the stake out for the following morning. This was not what Paoloni did best, but Blume wasn’t going to waste his breath.
As the meeting was breaking up, Ferrucci suddenly announced, “I’ve got a DVD of Di Tivoli’s documentary for RAI. I forgot to say. I picked it up at Viale Mazzini on my way back.”
Blume looked over. Ferrucci held a DVD in his hand. The RAI butterfly-talking heads symbol was printed on the cover.
“What time is it?”
“Just gone eight,” said Ferrucci.
“OK, let’s watch it,” he said.
“Not everyone, Commissioner. That’s hardly necessary or efficient,” said Gallone. “I suggest you pick one of your men to watch it with you.”
Blume massaged his temples. “I wasn’t going to-never mind.”
“I’ll watch it with you,” said Ferrucci.
“I’ll get the popcorn,” said Zambotto.
Paoloni left the room and returned wheeling the wire rack with the DVD player and TV on it. Ferrucci put in the disc, turned on the TV, and sat down next to Blume. Zambotto and Paoloni had gone.
The documentary was pretty much as Ferrucci had said. Plenty of mid range shots of Di Tivoli himself in profile, his chin pointed slightly upward as if he were gazing ahead into an uncertain future.
The dog fights were filmed with a hidden camera, and there was a lot of wobble and confusion and sometimes too much darkness for it to be clear what was going on. The sound editors had overdubbed some of the fights with a frantic dance track.
Go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go! went the track, and Blume leaned forward with enthusiasm. Two pitbulls circled, then tore into each other, head to head, and the track burst into a manically repetitive refrain.
Blume found himself marking out the beat with his feet. He felt like punching the air and saying, “Fuck yeah!” Now that’s what dogs are for.
Later, to make up for it, the sound editors spliced in a few shots of bloodied, staggering, and dying dogs, and played Faure’s Requiem.
Clemente was interviewed. He appeared sitting in the office Blume had been in early that morning. He used a lot of statistics, possibly to keep calm, because when he started talking about the way dogs were trained, he seemed to be struggling to stay in his seat. He seemed like an earnest type, dressed too young for his age. He did not resemble the corpse Blume had seen, but live people never looked like their dead selves.
The Carabinieri raid was well filmed. The reporters had set up a long-range camera at the end of the field that could pan across the whole scene as the Jeeps came roaring up to the warehouse. A large skinhead bouncer seemed about to put up some resistance as the Carabinieri stormed the door he was standing beside, but knelt down with his hands behind his head when a shotgun was pointed at him.
“Stop the tape,” said Blume.
“It’s a DVD,” said Ferrucci, but stopped it.
“Can you go back a bit to that guy kneeling?”
It took Ferrucci a few attempts to get a picture frame that had some readable detail in it, and even then it was hard to make out faces.
“That there must be Massoni, Alleva’s enforcer,” said Blume, pulling out a file folder from his bag. “You leave these folders on my desk?”
Ferrucci nodded.
Blume opened the profile of Massoni. There were two sets of police pictures. One, in color, from five years before, the other in black-and-white from eight years ago. He chose the black-and-white one.
“They should never have started using color,” he said, holding the photo in front of him, then comparing it to the picture on the screen. “It overwhelms all the essential details.” He handed the photo to Ferrucci, “What do you think, is it him?”
Ferrucci looked hard at the photo, then at the screen, and said, “I have no idea.”
“Yeah, it’s impossible, isn’t it? And this is with real cameras, not your usual CCTV.” Blume studied the screen image carefully. “Let’s just say that this could be the same person. Right, let’s get back to the film.”
They had sent in two cameramen with the Carabinieri, as well as an extremely righteous Di Tivoli, who came running up to the people as they were manhandled by the Carabinieri, and hurled questions at them. They hurled back abuse that was bleeped out. Worst of all, their faces were pixelated.
“I didn’t think to ask for the master tape or whatever it is,” said Ferrucci apologetically.
“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got the names of the people, anyhow. We can gaze at their faces anytime we want.”
More Carabinieri in white overalls were shown bending over mutilated animals, trying to gain control of an enraged taupe beast using two control poles with restraining loops.
“That’s a Tosa Inu,” said Ferrucci.
“Ugly beast,” said Blume, watching the slavering black mouth trying to snap the restraining pole.
“No, they’re nice dogs, really,” said Ferrucci. “We need to go and rescue them. Or send someone there. I’ll deal with it, if you want.”
Blume glanced over to see if Ferrucci was trying to be funny, but he seemed to be intent on the scene in front of them.
A sudden whoosh of wet air slammed open a window, and Ferrucci paused the documentary again as Blume went over to close it. As he arrived at the window, a flash of white lightning seemed to envelop the whole building, and left him with a taste of aluminum in his throat. The thunderclap that followed shook the building, and then the rain came crashing down. Ferrucci joined him at the window. There was no point in trying to watch the DVD as long as the storm was directly overhead.
Looking ahead to his date, Blume began to worry that Kristin wouldn’t turn up in this weather. But after a few minutes, the storm moved away, toward the Castelli Romani. The lightning flashes now had a yellowish tinge, and the thunder rolled as well as crashed. After eight minutes, the rain began to ease, and they returned to their chairs in front of the TV.
Now the screen showed Di Tivoli back in the studio. He talked a bit about the organizer being known to the authorities, but did not mention Alleva by name or show any picture.
The reporters were waiting for some of the detainees as they came out of the Carabinieri station to which they had been brought. More obscenities, but three did agree to be interviewed. Again, their features were obscured, though not their voices. One, who sounded drunk, defended dog fighting as the same as greyhound racing. Another was defiant and spoke of the free market and the right to free speech. A younger voice that seemed to come from a throat filled with mucus drew historical parallels with bear-baiting, then laughed and said sure, when the reporter asked him if he thought bear-baiting could be defended. Cut to Di Tivoli, trembling with barely suppressed rage, pretending he had just heard the interviews at the same time as the viewer. Di Tivoli then summed it up with hints of political complicity and the need for further acts of courage by the media. Clemente had got about thirty seconds.
