'You decide the way out first, Lovejoy? When you haven't even got in?'
'In is no problem.'
She was furious. 'Might your one and only partner know why?'
I grinned at her. 'They'll invite me in, love.' I got my own back by refusing to say any more.
During the mass exodus from the Square later I missed Anna, though I observed some disturbance over near the Vatican City post office. A policeman stopped me near the Cancello di Sant' Anna, giving me a momentary infarct.
'That your auntie over there in the police car?'
'Eh?'
'That old lady. She's been pickpocketing.'
Everybody was looking. 'Er, yes. Good heavens!' I pushed through the crowd towards the car. A tired policeman in the front seat was smoking a cigarette. Anna was hunched shamefacedly in the back, putting on an act of dizziness.
'This old bag—' the cop began.
'Auntie!' I cried in relief. 'Where've you been?'
'—causes us more trouble than the rest of Rome.'
'I've been looking everywhere for you!'
'Now, signor.' The copper with me tapped my shoulder. 'Now. We tire of her.
Understand? You take her in hand, or else…'
'I will! I promise!'
'If you looked after her properly she wouldn't need to steal.'
'You are right, signor,' I said, all humble. With my hand on my breast and my heart seething with murderous intentions towards Anna I smiled apologetically.
'We warn you,' the boss cop said, wearily exhaling smoke into my face like he was doing me favours. 'You are responsible in future. Okay?'
They took my name and address and let us off with a warning. I even had to sign for the silly old bitch. I grabbed Anna and backed off into the crowd, bowing and scraping to the cops as I went. All the way I said nothing, dragging Anna home in a blaze of white-hot fury, and once there it happened without any conscious decision. I didn't even give her time to have a shower. I gave her a damned good shaking, and called her all the names under the sun for risking the rip and getting us booked like that.
She took it in silence, struggling a bit at first and sobbing a little.
'I'm sorry, Lovejoy,' she snuffled after I'd nearly calmed down.
'So you ought to be,' I snapped. 'You're now a registered felon on the cops' frigging books.'
'I'll make it up—'
'There's no time.' As I said it my heart was in my boots. I felt ill at the thought.
'I'll ditch old Anna, build another character—'
'The fucking rip's next week, you silly cow!'
'Next week?' Stricken, she raised a tear-streaked face. 'We must put it off—'
'Rips can't be postponed. They're cancelled, or done. Silly bitch.'
'But, Lovejoy—'
Then I nicked her handbag—why change a profitable habit?—and slammed out into the alley. The trouble with allies is they try to help, and nothing is more trouble than that.
Within an hour I'd got plastered on white plonk, and that evening was thankful it was Sunday. I could barely totter to the restaurant whose name Adriana had written down.
* * *
I worked so hard planing and chiselling that I could see wood wherever I looked.
I'd better explain. A rent table is not your usual rectangle or flapped circle, nothing like that. Think of a mushroom, a top on a pedestal. It was used for what its name says, collecting rent from the peasantry. The serfs' coins went on to a decorated centre, which sinks like Sweeney Todd's chair and drops the gelt into the pedestal below. Some are oval. Arcellano's was angled, with drawers all round. It stands to reason that every drawer can't be rectangular, or they would have no space to enter. Slices of cake are wedge-shaped for the same reason. So some of the drawers have to be phoney for the exterior to look right.
I was using wood cannibalized from cheap furniture about thirty years old, plus a few panels quite a bit older. Incidentally, when you are forging furniture don't turn your nose up at chipboard. It's a hell of a weight but it's cheap, it veneers like a dream, and it won't warp in central heating. Very few whole-thickness woods have all those merits.
As my plan called for two rent tables I was wood from floor to ceiling. A lucky find was a supply of beeswax and turpentine at the furniture makers next door to Anna's place, and a reasonable range of wood varnishes from the main Corso. The adhesives you can get nowadays are great, but a few have one terrible drawback—a characteristic stink—
so those have to be avoided. I'd also need a controlled temperature of 68° Fahrenheit or so to do all this glueing and varnishing, and as I'm very keen on knowing what the relative humidity is playing at around furniture, another battle with Adriana was obviously called for. The trouble was Piero would say the opposite to whatever I proposed. Him having the monarch's ear, so to speak.
