of alarm, almost of fear.
‘Oh my God, it’s coming! Ah! Oh! No, I can’t! It’s too big! It’ll tear me apart! Please God, I can’t take it!’
At the last moment, just when he knew from the pangs below that he was about to do himself a serious injury, his sphincter relaxed that crucial millimetre or so. After that there were only the gasps, tears and moans, followed by a triumphal flush and the glowing sense of absolute fulfilment.
Next came an invigorating shower, but Tony emerged totally uninvigorated. After a moment’s reflection, he swallowed six paracetamol tablets washed down with water gulped from the hand-basin tap. They wouldn’t do his liver any good, particularly given his rigid regime of a bottle of bourbon a day, but at least they would ease the vicious headache that had been with him since he awoke.
Straightening up, he caught sight of himself in the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet. The reflected image was a shock. His forehead was swollen to twice its normal size and, when he touched it, proved very sensitive. Tony immediately thought about malignant cysts, but the thing definitely hadn’t been there the day before, so a bruise seemed the more likely solution. The skin was a rainbow in shades of pink, red, purple, blue and black, but didn’t seem to be broken.
He walked through to the bedroom, trying to calm down and get the situation into perspective. It was all part of the job, after all. Being the top investigatore privato in Bologna was tough work, but somebody had to do it. Still, he wished he could recall a little more clearly what had happened the previous night. He knew that he had fired his current girlfriend, but only because he did that to whoever happened to occupy that position on the last day of each month. Private eyes couldn’t have stable, long-term affairs. They were complex, alienated loners who had to walk the mean streets of the big city, men who might be flawed but were neither tarnished nor afraid. Above all, they had to suffer.
Tony Speranza was certainly suffering as he laboriously put on his clothes and went through to the kitchen to make coffee. The resulting brew produced still more suffering, to alleviate which Tony lit an unfiltered Camel, cracked open the Jack Daniels and knocked back a stiff shot. What the hell had happened last night, apart from the screaming match with Ingrid or whatever her name was?
Screaming match. Football match. Of course, he’d been to the stadium to check up on the target’s pals. Photograph them at the bar afterwards with that ultra-cool digital camera he’d just bought, barely bigger than a matchbox. It had taken all the experience of the total pro he was to do so without being spotted, but he’d accomplished his mission. Now it was just a matter of downloading the picture files to his desktop and emailing them to l’avvocato. Only where was the camera? He checked his overcoat pockets, then patted his suit. His wallet and keys, notebook and pen, were all present and correct. But not the camera. And not…
Oh shit, he thought. Oh fuck. Oh my God.
To be honest, Tony didn’t really need a gun. Ninety-nine per cent of his work came from divorce cases, jealous husbands, and keeping tabs on the children of local families worried that their costly offspring were getting into bad company and worse habits. La sicurezza di sapere tutto, sempre!!! was the slogan he used for his ad in the Yellow Pages and on the fliers stuck under the windscreen wipers of parked cars. The work itself was mostly a question of being equipped with the latest surveillance technology, and occasionally putting in a sleepless night staked out in front of the property where an adulterous liaison or drug party was going on. There was almost never any violence, certainly none involving firearms.
But Tony Speranza knew and respected the rules of the genre. Private eyes have to have a gun, so he had acquired one from a Serbian former special policeman who had done some freelance work for him at one time. It was an M-57 semi-automatic, manufactured to the highest specifications in strictly limited quantities by the Zastava State Arsenal. The pistol fitted unobtrusively into the capacious pockets of the double-breasted trench coat and had a gorgeous walnut grip and silky blued finish into which Tony had had his name engraved in fancy cursive script. A little beauty, in short. The only problem was that he didn’t seem to have it any more. ‘The assurance of knowing everything, always’. Ha! Right now, Tony would have settled for feeling reasonably sure about anything, once in a while.
This train of thought was derailed by the phone.
‘Tony Speranza, investigatore privato,’ he said automatically.
‘This is the office of Avvocato Giulio Amadori,’ a female voice stated.
Tony laughed and took a hit of bourbon.
‘Hey, I never talked to an office before!’
‘Avvocato Amadori wishes to be informed of the current status of the unresolved issues in the matter in which he has employed you.’
‘Put him on, darling, put him on.’
‘Avvocato Amadori is presently away from his desk.’
‘Then let me speak with the desk.’
‘It concerns the photographic evidence which you and he have discussed.’
Tony laughed again and lit another Camel.
‘You know what? I bet you’re not an office at all. You were just kidding around. I see you as a ravishing blonde with a come-hither look that can melt platinum at twenty metres, who knows where all the bodies are buried, and has the murder weapon tucked into her garter belt.’
‘To ensure quality service and for your protection, this conversation is being recorded. If Avvocato Amadori considers your attitude inappropriate, he reserves the right to take the necessary steps.’
‘Oh yeah? What does he do when he gets mad, run up the bell tower of San Petronio and make like Quasimodo?’
‘Thank you. Avvocato Amadori will be informed of your response in due course.’
‘Listen, I’m on the job, okay? But discretion is of the essence and so far a suitable opportunity has not presented itself.’
But he was talking to a dead line.
He put the phone down and poured himself another bourbon. I knew the Amadori case would be trouble from the beginning, he fantasised. Of all the PI offices in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. In point of hard fact, it was a routine surveillance operation for a fortyish yuppy whose kid had left home and was refusing to communicate with him. Giulio Amadori’s main worry seemed to be that Vincenzo would end up in trouble with the cops and that this would reflect badly on his own law practice, although he had made a cursory gesture towards fashionable sentimentality by foregrounding the family reputation and his wife’s feelings. He was prepared to pay five hundred up front for details of his son’s whereabouts, habits and associates, with the possibility of more to come for follow-up investigations or interventions based on the primary information.
Tony Speranza would much rather have been hired to look into a seemingly casual disappearance that led him to a sexy but dangerous babe with plenty to hide both physically and criminally, but in his experience that sort of thing rarely happened in Bologna. All he had to go on was a snapshot of the young man and the information that he affected to be a diehard supporter of the Bologna football club. Such fans invariably had season tickets at the Curva San Luca end of the ground, and sure enough when Tony headed out to the stadium on Via Costa the evening of the next home fixture he soon identified Vincenzo emerging in a group of his fellow ultras from one of the stepped concrete culverts leading down from the stands. He had then followed them through prolonged post-game festivities in various bars and clubs before tailing the target home to an apartment right in the centre of the city.
Thanks to his superb professional skills, Tony had remained unobserved by Vincenzo and his associates on this occasion, but he knew that it would be too risky to repeat the operation regularly enough to provide the total surveillance which his client expected. A remote device was therefore called for, and the question became where to install it. The most convenient location was the target’s car, but Tony had already established that Vincenzo didn’t own one. The normal alternative was some personal possession or item of clothing in frequent use, and here Tony had better luck.
The Amadori kid spent a lot of time asleep or hanging around the apartment he shared with one Rodolfo Mattioli, a harmless, ineffectual graduate student who didn’t appear to socialise with the target. There was also a girl involved, a red-headed stunner that Tony had tracked to her nest and planned to visit in the very near future, but the activities that l’avvocato was concerned with invariably involved some or all of the crew of football fans, and when he went out with them Vincenzo equally invariably donned a rough-looking black leather jacket, the back of which was decorated with an oval of shiny metal studs surrounding a painted image of the official club logo and the heading BFC 1909.
