to meet in, say, an hour, on the corner of Via Catania and Via Bari. There’s an office supplies store, which will be handy.”
“Handy for what?”
“For photocopying the photocopies of the notebooks Blume left with you. I really don’t want him to know about this, so we’re going to leave you with the photocopies he made for you, understand? Phone your mother again; tell her you’ll be a bit later than planned. Don’t phone anyone else. Especially Blume. In fact, the best thing would be for you to turn off your cell phone altogether. They are little better than self-inflicted listening devices.”
Chapter 22
When working in immigration, Caterina had liked to think she would fight harder, give up less easily than some of the people she had to deal with. A lot of immigrants were tough, independent, scary even. But many were weak, exploited, and tormented because they had sold out. Selling yourself is the last option. At the very most, you might buy some time but once that time passes, you belong to someone else.
It was something the dead immigrants smothered in the back of trucks failed to understand. The Chinese girls, those white, dusty moths that never saw the sun, who lived, slept, gave birth, and died in underground factories in Prato, had not figured it out. Caterina wanted to sympathize with them, but in a secret part of her heart she knew she despised them, their stupidity, their flat, alien faces, their total helplessness. They had driven her out of Immigration Affairs into Blume’s Squadra Mobile.
And now she was walking down the same road with her eyes wide open. In her case, all it had taken was a single phone call and an implicit threat to her son.
Twenty minutes later, Caterina parked her car in a space reserved for the handicapped and tried to work out what she was really thinking. Was her idea to satisfy the Colonel’s demand for now, but lay a trap for him later? Or was this a self-serving lie? Her father would tell her to test the feeling she had in her stomach and believe that. The body does not lie. This was something he used to say, until his own, quietly and painlessly, betrayed him in old age.
Even though she was early, the Maresciallo was already waiting. She saw him give a brief signal as she walked toward him, and the Colonel emerged from a red Alfa Romeo 159. She saw him toss aside a toscano, and she touched her service Beretta. To have him fall dead at her feet, she would need to start firing now, like a hunter taking down an advancing hippopotamus.
When he arrived, he put out a big floury hand with manicured nails. She looked at it with revulsion.
“I see you are still peeved. Never mind. You have the copy? Good. In we go.”
There was one other customer, a nervous student type. Farinelli held up a hand and snapped his fingers, then pointed down at Caterina as if she were a glass that needed refilling.
“We need these copied, very quickly. No binding.” He pulled out three twenty-euro notes. “Here. I’ll pay in advance for speed.” He took the pile of papers from Caterina and handed them over the student’s head to the man behind the desk, who took them and went straight into the backroom.
“Hey! I was first,” ventured the student, addressing himself to the smooth silk back of the Colonel’s jacket, causing not a ripple of a movement. He glanced accusingly at Caterina, but the look she flashed back caused him to lower his eyes and then his head.
A few minutes later, the assistant came out with three neat piles of typing paper.
“You sure you don’t need these bound or stapled?”
“They’re fine like that. Thank you.” Farinelli popped them into a briefcase, gave Caterina her original copy back. He caught her arm and propelled her toward the door, saying, “There’s a little hotel four doors down. The Hotel Malaga. I know the owner. We can have a drink there, a sandwich if you haven’t eaten.”
She shook her arm free. “I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to be in your company.”
“I’m not asking,” said the Colonel. “I need to talk to you, put you in the picture. I don’t want to see you in a panic like this afternoon. Soon you will be acting with complete serenity, I promise. You’ll be happy to know what I am about to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“No. Just four doors down. Follow me.”
When they reached the hotel, the Colonel ushered her in first, and Caterina found herself in a ludicrous state of social embarrassment at not knowing where to go. She wanted to kill the Colonel for having threatened her child and was rushing through ideas of how she might be able to do this, yet she felt awkward and, incredibly, apologetic as she led the way. The lobby connected to a breakfast and dining room and to a narrow corridor, surely too narrow for the Colonel. She ignored the person at reception, only registering his presence a few seconds after she had entered the room. She sat down at a polished wood table facing the door. Stainless steel food warmers and steak knives sat on a table to her left, and the walls were sponge-painted yellow and orange. A mirror on the wall made the table seem twice as long. She sat with her back to it, and realized the Colonel would now be able to see all of her, front and back, at once.
If she tried to pull a gun, he would see it coming but he was too large to run, and impossible to miss. As she fired, she would have to tell him why. This is for threatening Elia. This is so that nothing may ever harm him. Then two, maybe three crack-thump sounds as the bullets tore into him. She felt sick. The Colonel entered and sat down at the far end of the table.
“I know the owner. We shall be left alone in here. Can I get you something to drink?”
Caterina did not answer. She was wondering how many people she would have to kill before Elia would be safe. The Colonel, that Maresciallo who accompanied him. And others, no doubt. She could never do it. She already knew she was going to accept whatever he proposed if it meant putting her son beyond harm.
Her photocopies sat in front of her on the table. She could not remember carrying them or putting them there. She said, “You kidnapped my son.”
“Not at all. He was taken straight to his grandmother’s. He was perfectly happy in the car. Chatty, one of my men said. You know, I ordered them to pick him up, drive him straight home. If I had ordered the abduction of a child, they would not have obeyed. They are Carabinieri. Their smiles were genuine and your son was not afraid. He was in safe hands.”
“I will kill you if anything ever happens to him. I will kill you if anyone even goes near him again. Is that understood?”
The Colonel bowed his huge head and murmured something, as if he were warning himself off something. His lips were liver-colored, almost the same color as his tanned face. He paused, and looked up and raised his voice a little so that Caterina could hear.
“Negative happiness. That is what I have just given you. Negative happiness is waking up every morning and knowing you have a son and knowing he is safe.”
He pulled out a slim white device like an air-conditioning remote control and slid it across the table.
“Here. The buttons on the damned thing are too small. My Maresciallo set it up for me beforehand, for voice activation. He’s just fixed it up again, now he tells me all you have to do is press play.”
Caterina picked up the device, holding it like it was a turd. It was a digital voice recorder. Buttons on the front, tiny speaker at the back. Manufactured by Olympus.
“I made the recording just an hour ago, at a late lunch with your Commissioner. We were talking business, as you’ll hear.”
Caterina pressed play, and for the next few minutes, she listened to the lunchtime conversation between the Colonel and Blume. They were talking about selling Treacy’s forged paintings.
As she listened to Blume take the name of an offshore accountant, demand a bigger cut from the sale of the paintings, she felt betrayed but detached, too. She was still thinking of Elia.
When the recording was over, she slid the device back across the table. It didn’t matter. She did not care what Blume did. Elia was her only concern.
The Colonel peeled his lips back over his front teeth in what was probably intended as a sympathetic smile. “It’s disappointing, isn’t it? You think you know someone, then pfft!” He conjured nothing out of empty hands, “They
