Blume wondered if he had time to interview the third name on the list,
Pernazzo, before his meeting with Kristin. Probably not. He should not have tried to get a date in the middle of an investigation.
“Someone had to watch it, I suppose,” he told Ferrucci. “I’m going to interview that third person on the list, Angelo Pernazzo.”
Ferrucci ejected the disc without replying. His jaw seemed to be quivering, but whether it was a trick of the thunderstorm light, Blume could not tell.
20
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 8:50 P.M.
At this time of the evening on a Saturday, Via di Bravetta was clogged with cars full of people from Corviale determined to celebrate Saturday night anywhere that was not Corviale. The house in front of him was done in yellow stucco that looked like dried vomit, but behind him a stretch of undeveloped fields still glittering from the rain an hour before rolled down to the Portuense area and gave the illusion of grassy slopes stretching all the way to the mountains behind. Blume pressed the intercom button next to the name Pernazzo.
“Pernazzo?”
“Yes?”
“Angelo Pernazzo?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“Police.”
The pause that followed was long enough to make Blume press the intercom button again.
“I’m still here, fuck it,” said the voice.
“Did you hear me? I said police.”
“OK.”
The buzzer sounded, and the lock to the front door clicked open. Blume held it open with his foot and pressed the buzzer for a third time.
“What!”
“Which floor?”
“Third.”
“OK. On my way.”
Blume took the elevator and stepped out onto a narrow landing with three chocolate-brown doors, each of which had a brass plaque showing two different surnames. The plaque on the middle door looked new. The first name was T. Vercetti and the second F. Pernazzo. Below the doorbell was a paper tag covered in adhesive tape. This displayed only the name A. Pernazzo. Blume hooked his fingernail under the tag and eased it back to see what name had been there originally. S. Pernazzo. He flattened the new tag back into place and rang the bell.
Blume thought he must look tired, but the person who opened the door was evidently in a worse state. He looked as if he had been dipped in nicotine, then rolled in clay. His small nose twitched slightly. It was slightly upturned, a bit pink, the sort that plastic surgeons put on so many women.
He jerked the door open, then retreated into his apartment, leaving the door ajar.
“Permesso?” said Blume, and taking the sullen silence as permission, walked over the threshold. Angelo Pernazzo was waiting for him in the middle of the hallway, in a slightly crouched position as if ready to leap.
Blume tensed for a brief moment, ready to parry, but Pernazzo turned around and entered the last door on the left.
Blume followed Pernazzo down a short corridor, past a kitchen in which he glimpsed a table covered with a plastic cloth, on which sat an open tin of butter beans, a glistening fork, a torn piece of bread smeared with something brown. He walked into a small living room. The marble composite floor was so sticky that it snatched at the soles of his shoes so that each step was accompanied by a short clack of release as his feet broke free.
The shutters were down, closing off the remaining few minutes of evening light. The main source of illumination in the room was a large computer screen in the corner. The picture on the screen showed a detailed fantasy landscape as seen from above. Blume was fascinated by the level of detail. There seemed to be hundreds of characters doing battle below.
Pernazzo pointed at the screen, revealing a woman’s silver bracelet on his arm. He indicated the level he had reached and asked, “You into World of Warcraft?”
“Me? No,” said Blume. “I’m an adult.”
He moved away from the computer and sat on a chesterfield sofa that smelled of yeast and dust. A Mars Bar wrapper lay on the floor at his feet.
Pernazzo picked up a pair of balled-up mauve socks from the floor.
Blume could smell them from where he sat. Pernazzo bent down and put them on, then straightened up and asked, “What’s this about?”
“You were detained at an illegal dog fight. Remember?” said Blume.
“That? Is that what this is about?”
“Why? Is there something else it should be about?”
“No. It’s just it was a while ago, you know. And it was the Carabinieri, not the police.” Pernazzo licked chapped lips.
Blume settled into the brown velvet chesterfield. He thought he could smell fish from his left. He brought his hand up to his nose to block the smell, then turned his gesture into a yawn, which became real.
“You are tired,” said Pernazzo settling into a plastic-covered club chair opposite Blume. “I never am.”
“No?”
“If you sleep, you lose,” said Pernazzo. “I follow the Uberman sleep schedule. It maximizes my REM sleep and minimizes non-REM sleep, which is just a waste of time.”
“I see,” said Blume, and yawned again.
“What you have to do is take six twenty-minute hyper-sleeps, every four hours. When you close your eyes, you go straight into REM, skipping four unnecessary phases. It’s called polyphasic sleeping.”
“And you do this?”
“Yeah, it’s raised my productivity.”
Foul air seemed to be seeping up from inside the brown cushions. Blume leaned forward. A gray Champion backpack sat beside Pernazzo’s computer desk.
“You work in computers,” said Blume.
“I write scripts for Web sites. Some of the companies I work for are big names, but I am paid fuck all, and the work’s never regular. No stable income. You think that’s fair?”
Blume had no opinions on the matter.
“Nobody pays for quality, either. I do quality work. High intelligence doesn’t pay.”
“Depends on your unit of measurement,” said Blume.
“Euros,” said Pernazzo. “I did day trading for a while. Naturally, I was good at it, but you can’t do much with the Italian stock market. The MIBTEL gained, what, five percent over the year? In the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial was up twenty-three percent.”
“You lost money?”
“Of course I did. You can’t make money in this fucked-up country.”
“So you started gambling.”
“I have always gambled, as you put it. Usually I win.”
Pernazzo seemed to have sunk down into the chair so that its arms were higher than his.
“So you’re a winner. Tell me, is this house yours?”
“Of course it is.”
“Did you buy it?”
“No. It used to be my mother’s. She died a few months ago.”
