That’s a message from him.”
“I see. OK, message received. Clemente… You liked him.”
“Yes, I liked him a lot. I really did.”
“He liked you?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t ashamed of you?”
“You don’t have to keep insulting me.”
“I’m not interested in whether you feel insulted. I want to know: Did Clemente introduce you to all his friends?”
Manuela bent down to fondle the dog again, allowing some of her orange hair to fall down and obscure her face. “No. He introduced me to no one.”
The doorbell rang.
“Get that, will you?” said Manuela, the wistful tone that Blume had detected evaporating as the chime faded. “It’s got to be those real estate people. Flash your badge at them, make them go away. I’ll fix us a drink.”
Manuela sprang up and disappeared out of the far door leading, he imagined, into the kitchen. With his arm in a sling, it took Blume so long to extricate himself from the yielding cushions of the soft armchair that the doorbell rang again before he got to it. Annoyed, he yanked it open.
An old man with no ears wearing a white linen jacket over a pink T-shirt was standing beside a young man in a half-unzipped tracksuit. He had just begun to register something funny about the old man’s face, when the young man stepped in and shoved the barrel of a small-frame pistol hard against the underside of Blume’s chin.
33
The gunman kept Blume’s head tilted awkwardly back, preventing him from getting a look at him. The older man, who smelled of after-shave, ran his hands expertly across Blume’s stomach and waist, up and down his side, back, and front, then patted him gently as if he was a big baby with wind. Then he hunkered down on a single knee around Blume’s calves, before standing up again, to extract Blume’s wallet and cell phone from his front trouser packet with considerably more ease and speed than Blume himself had ever managed, even when two-handed. Then he gently raised the sling holding Blume’s plastered arm, and slid his hand across the sweaty patch below on Blume’s polo shirt. Blume was fascinated by the man’s earless head.
“Clean,” he said at last.
“I don’t like that,” said his younger partner, releasing some of the pressure on Blume’s chin.
“What?”
“Clean. Don’t say clean. That’s what cops say.”
“Yeah? What do we say, then?”
The young man withdrew his tiny pistol entirely from Blume’s face to gather his thoughts and think about this.
Free to move, Blume turned his eyes to the older man. Where his ears should have been were two crumpled pieces of pink flesh that resembled the @ of an email address. They looked infantile and out of place perched behind his aged face. He wore two thin pendants around his neck, one of which, a golden horn amulet, had slipped out from below his T-shirt. Tufts of hair rose from below the neck.
“The fuck you looking at?” said the young man.
Blume ignored the question.
“I said…”
“Shut up, Fa,” said the older man. His overtanned face fissured into countless lines and wrinkles as he concentrated on a plasticized card in his hand.
“This is your badge?”
“Can’t you read?”
“I can read just fine.”
Blume said, “Because I thought maybe at your age, you’d need reading glasses, though I can see how wearing them might prove difficult.” Blume broke off as the young man, smelling mockery in the air, shoved his pistol back into his face.
The earless one remained calm. He was old. He must have heard them all by now, and if he was still alive in this business at this age, then he must have some self-control. At least Blume hoped so.
“Fa. Get rid of it,” he told his partner.
The young man lowered the weapon again.
“Commissioner Alexsei Blum-eh?”
“More or less.”
He slipped the card back into the wallet.
The young man made the pistol vanish into his velour top. The other handed Blume his wallet and phone back.
Blume took them wordlessly, and glanced behind him. No sign of Manuela. The dog slept on.
“Step out?”
It was phrased as a request, but the young man moved slightly behind Blume. Blume chose to step out the door, and the two followed. Neither of them had a weapon in evidence. Blume thought about making a break for it, and felt the muscles in his legs throb. He imagined hurtling down the stairs, lurching into the banisters with his sprained arm.
The young man pressed the elevator button. All three stepped in.
“I suppose ‘clean’ is all right,” he said as the doors slid shut. “I can’t think of another way of saying it.”
The older man poked Blume in the back.
“You’re really Commissioner Blume?”
“My fame precedes me.”
“You’re not a journalist?”
“No.”
“Good. There’s something I want you to know.”
“Tell me.”
“This isn’t abduction.”
Blume turned around and said, “No?”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. A woman with a small boy and some shopping bags was waiting to get in. Blume went to help her, then remembered his arm. The youth pushed past them, then stood outside the elevator. He reminded Blume of a pouting footballer who played for Juventus. Almost good-looking, except for the mouth.
“It’s OK,” said the older man, “I got it.”
He helped the woman get the bags into the elevator. Blume feeling useless stepped out of the way and watched. Although the mother was saying thank you, Blume could see from her face she was uncomfortable with their continued presence.
Blume smiled at the boy, who was clutching a handful of small Japanese action figures. The doors slid shut just as he began to smile back.
Glistening from the effort of helping the woman with the shopping bags, the older man came up to Blume.
“This is not an abduction. I want to make that clear. Up there, in the apartment…”
“Yes, what shall we call that?” asked Blume.
“A precautionary search.”
“I am a police officer.”
“Yeah, we know. We had to check. Now anything you do from here on out is of your own free will.”
“Like if I walked away?”
“Even that. We might follow you.”
