“What?”
“You keep saying ‘he,’ but there’s two of them. Alleva and Massoni. And Massoni’s the one who pulled the trigger.”
“You’re right,” said Blume. “But I bet Alleva’s escape plan is made for one. Staying together makes them more conspicuous, anyhow. They’ll have split up. And if we find Alleva, then we’ll find Massoni. Alleva’s already shown he’ll give up Massoni easily.”
“Except he didn’t,” said Paoloni. “Massoni never came down the road in his SUV. We were watching other roads from the south and east as well. Nothing.”
“Again, you’re right. But if he can pretend to betray Massoni like that… I don’t know. I think he could. Maybe he tried, but Massoni didn’t fall into the trap. At any rate, I think they are now separated.”
Blume peeled back the strip of bandage holding the needle in his arm and started sliding the needle out with his thumb. “Jesus. You’d think they could put a needle in without causing so much fucking bruising.”
“Maybe you did that to yourself,” said Paoloni.
“What?”
“In the accident.”
“Oh, right.”
“Like your nose.”
“What about my nose?”
“It looks funny.”
“Beppe, go downstairs, buy me a razor and shaving cream.”
When Paoloni had left, Blume completed the removal of the intravenous feed, and stared at his arm with a look of disgust. He shoved the needle into the side of his mattress, took the keys, wallet, and phone Paoloni had brought him.
Paoloni returned, and Blume handed him the keys. “Go to my house, now. In the bedroom, there’s a white cupboard with a sliding door. You’ll see a suit wrapped in green plastic, or maybe blue. Anyway, take that. Get me a pair of socks from the chest of drawers and on your way out, next to the door, there’s one of those plastic shoe holder things. Open it, take out a pair of black shoes. Bring the lot back here. Shit, a shirt. I need a shirt-and a tie, too. Either you iron me one or you buy me a new one. White, collar size forty-two, and a nice dark blue tie. No designs. There’s a big menswear place down at Piazza Re di Roma, near the house. It should take you, what, forty minutes to get there and back. Less if you use a siren. Turn it off when you’re buying me the shirt and tie.”
“Are you leaving here?”
“I’m going to the funeral. We both are,” said Blume.
25
While Paoloni was gone, Blume shaved, using the sink in his room. The whiplash collar made it difficult, and he couldn’t get rid of some stubble on his chin. He checked his nose, and it seemed fine to him, maybe a little fatter and more off-center than before. Then he sat there in his paper-thin green hospital pajamas waiting for Paoloni. He checked his cell phone and found the battery had died.
When Paoloni eventually arrived, it was with a shirt with a thirty-eight collar. It would have been too small at the best of times, and did not come close to closing around the whiplash collar. Nor had he reckoned on his left arm not working at all. In the end, he had to forego the tie, which was a fat ugly thing anyhow, and get Paoloni to help him. As for Paoloni, he was now wearing a jacket and an open yellow shirt. His jeans were the same as before.
Blume had to get Paoloni to tie his shoelaces, and it was just then that the nurse with flabby cheeks walked in. He expected a hands-on-hips scene of womanly outrage, but she just glanced down at Paoloni and then at Blume.
“What are you doing?”
“My shoelaces, or he is.”
“So you’re leaving us. There’ll be paperwork.”
“Have it sent to me.”
“No. You have to sign yourself out. We don’t want you dying, then suing us.”
Paoloni straightened up. “If he died, then he couldn’t…”
“Yeah, OK, Beppe. Thanks.” To the nurse he said, “Can you get me the forms to sign?”
“Of course. The question is whether you’re even capable of pushing a pen.”
“It’s my left arm that hurts. My right’s OK.”
“You need to get that left arm in a sling if you’re planning on discharging yourself-which, it goes without saying, I am opposed to your doing.”
“It’s a funeral. I have to be there.”
The nurse shook her head. “And then I suppose you’ll come straight back here?”
“To be honest,” said Blume, “I hadn’t really been planning…”
“I was kidding. What I’ll do is send you down to emergency. They can put your arm in a sling. Then you’ll book yourself into outpatients for some follow-up visits. Won’t you?”
“Um…”
“You will. Because the discharge form will be waiting for you at the desk with a note from me. No return appointments, no discharge papers.”
“Thanks, I appreciate this,” said Blume. “It might get you into a bit of trouble, mightn’t it, me disappearing like this?”
“Trouble with who? The doctors here? Hah!”
Blume thought if she had not been a middle-aged woman and a nurse, she might have spat on the floor at this point.
It took Blume, with Paoloni following him around like a silent dog, more than an hour to get his arm put in a sling, make an appointment to return in two days, and sign the discharge papers. Finally, he walked out of the hospital, expecting a sense of liberation and air, but the heat was so great that he forgot about everything else and just concentrated on not swaying or stumbling. Paoloni lit a cigarette and started across the car park, Blume followed.
As Paoloni drove them out of the car park, he lit another cigarette.
“Jesus Christ,” said Blume, who was battling down wave after wave of nausea. “Put that out.” Somewhere far below the nausea and the shooting pains assailing his body, Blume knew he was hungry. “Close the window and turn on the air-conditioning.”
Paoloni flicked his new cigarette out the window, and spun the dial of the AC up to full. He closed his window, blew smoke from his mouth and said, “We’ve still got too much time before it starts,” then slowed down so much Blume thought he was going to pull in.
“No one actually saw Massoni kill Ferrucci,” said Paoloni. “But we know it was him, since Alleva didn’t have time. Ferrucci was getting out of the car, he had opened the door. He got shot three times in the head, close range, one on the side, two in front. The one on the side like that. He hadn’t a chance, poor kid. He probably never knew.”
“The shot in the side of the head,” said Blume. “That wouldn’t be consistent with Alleva pulling a gun and firing as he ran in Ferrucci’s direction.”
“Yeah. Sorry. That was the point I was supposed to be making. So we know it was someone who was there, and that someone was Massoni. We’ll get him for it.”
Blume was pleased to see they were about to enter the Giovanni XIII tunnel and get out of the sun for a bit. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“Borgata Fidene,” said Paoloni.
“Right,” said Blume. “So that’s where Ferrucci lived.”
The area of the city to which they were headed was a densely packed cluster of apartments built on a section of flood plain, hemmed in by a railway line, the ring road, and a bend in the river. The area had never been properly
