of All-Star basketball shoes with a high ankle turned out to be his size. Things were looking up.
He found a pair of blunt scissors in the top drawer of a child’s study desk painted in several colors not on the market since the 1970s.
He cut along the edges of the photos from the first page, the scissors making a thunk-snip sound as he walked them across the white spaces. He chose the most perfectly cut one, and inserted it into the framed area of the Greek passport. From the same desk drawer he took out a small, old-fashioned bottle of glue, but it was completely dry. He thought for a moment, then went into the corridor and opened a door to his left, which opened into another child’s room, and then one on the right, which led into a bathroom brightly tiled in yellow. He found some toothpaste, carried it back into the bedroom, and squeezed some onto the back of the photo. He pressed the photo firmly into place, then tested it with his thumb. It held without sliding, which was all he needed.
Now he took out the metal embosser. He disassembled the head and inserted the die with the Greek emblem that Alleva had prepared for himself. When he had inserted the relief die, he thumped the embosser arm to make sure it was set firm. The sound of the slam echoed back at him from the other side of the house. Then he fixed the recessed die in place, slipped the photo and paper between them and pressed down hard, making a gentle thud that almost sounded as if it had come from below. The wooden desk creaked. The Greek-cross embossing and surrounding lettering came up fine. The effect was excellent, especially since no one was going to examine Greek lettering with any real knowledge. It would look even better once he had applied the laminated strip of cellulose acetate, which would require the use of an iron.
But that could wait. In the meantime, he would prepare the Argentine and Italian passports and get dressed, maybe even wash, and finally get rid of the knife and pistol. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Tomorrow, he would be taking an Italian ferry from Naples to Sardinia or from Bari to Greece. The possibilities were many. The day after, he would land in Paris.
Then he would use his Greek passport to book a flight to Argentina. Maybe he would spend a few days in Paris. He had never been there. Maybe he could even spend a day at Disneyland. He looked at his handiwork again, and suddenly was worried that the photo did not look like him. The face he saw seemed too yellowish. But he had taken it only the other day. A second worrisome thought struck him. The photo was too recent. The issue date on the passport was from three years ago. The photo was from three days ago. Would they notice?
He picked up the toothpaste and went back, passport in hand, to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror in the cabinet door. He felt lightheaded and unreal. He had not eaten. He leaned over the washbasin and took a few breaths. Then he looked back up at his reflection and screamed.
An old man with no ears was standing behind him.
54
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2 P.M.
'Stay the re,” was all the man with no ears said. Then he called downstairs. “Will someone come up here and take a look?”
“Coming.” A woman’s voice.
Pernazzo considered hurling himself at the man in the doorway, but he felt rooted to the spot. The man with no ears and bored eyes looked impregnable. Then he stepped aside and Pernazzo saw a raw-faced woman with peroxide hair who chewed gum as she studied his face. He had seen her somewhere before.
“Are you Pernazzo?”
“No.”
On Di Tivoli’s documentary show. That’s where he had seen her.
Manuela Innocenzi.
“Yes, you are,” she said, then turned around and walked out.
Pernazzo made a half movement after her, but the man with no ears stepped to close off the door. There was at least one other person in the corridor.
“Hey. Wait a minute,” said Pernazzo. “Maybe there’s been a mistake. Who do you think I am?”
No reply.
Surreptitiously, he felt around the washstand for the scissors, but then remembered they were in the bedroom, and they belonged to a child and were small and blunt.
He heard the sound of someone shuffling slowly across the landing and into his bedroom. Again, Pernazzo considered rushing the man with no ears, but found his feet would not respond.
“Come here,” ordered the man in the doorway. “Come on,” he added in an exasperated and half-cajoling voice when Pernazzo did not move. “I don’t want to have to drag you out by the ears. In there,” said his captor. He gave him a gentle push into the bedroom and stood by the door. Sitting on the bed, leafing idly through the passports, was the woman again. Pernazzo felt his sweat soak through the entire back of his shirt. He had to try to gain a negotiating position. He nodded at the passports, and tried to fix a knowing smile on his face, but she did not glance up.
“Pretty good, aren’t they?”
She threw a glance in his direction, as if checking to see where the unexpected noise had come from, then put down the passports and pulled out some Transcend memory sticks from the bag.
“Ah, now those. Those are special,” he tried, but she had already lost interest, and was now peering with one eye at a circular metal die contained in a transparent plastic disc. Pernazzo recognized it as the one with the British crown and lion.
“That’s the relief die for the British passport. The recessed die is in another case,” he offered.
Manuela Innocenzi put the metal circle down on the bed, and picked up one of the five sheets of numbers.
“That’s just backup. In case something goes wrong with the memory sticks, which could never happen. With these numbers I can reconstruct bank account numbers and telephone contacts.”
She took out the Ka-Bar Tanto, and examined its hilt. She took it out of its sheath, and turned it back and forth as if looking for blemishes on the blade. He realized he should never have kept that knife, no matter how important it was to him.
Pernazzo stared at a Star Wars bedside mat on the floor beside the bed. C3P0 had his hand raised in greeting.
“How did you find me?” All at once, this was all he wanted to know.
She ignored the question, but spoke at last. “You had no reason to do all these things. You had a choice. I was born into it, and I tried to move above, without hurting my father’s feelings. Arturo was my last chance to change. I would have made it, too. I’d have got away. Escaped into goodness.”
Pernazzo had no idea what the ugly woman was talking about, but he was in no doubt of her power.
She said, “You killed Arturo with this,” and gently waved her hand to forestall any protests. “And you kept it because you are proud of what you did. Arturo and I had a deep sense of justice. Know that? It’s what we had in common.”
Pernazzo felt a shadow move down his head and body as hope drained away.
“This is yours, too?” Her voice sounded tender. Pernazzo looked down and saw she had placed Alleva’s undersized pistol on the child’s bed. “Not this backpack, though. This was his. I remember he used it to bring a packed lunch. He was always walking or cycling, always had this bag. He kept a book for identifying flowers in it. Not just flowers. He was enthusiastic even about weeds, grass.”
Pernazzo looked at a world map on the bedroom wall. It curled at the edges. The Soviet Union still existed. Argentina was green, Brazil orange, Chile pink. His feet were cold.
“How did you find me?”
“We all get found out in the end.”
Pernazzo found himself in the corridor, the earless old man behind him. He moved down the staircase as if it were an escalator. At the bottom of the steps stood a youth in a white tracksuit, who looked hardly older than a child. He had a bum-fluff moustache, a hairless chest, and doe-like eyes. He was also holding a pistol and pointing it
