“Conte Alfonso Corsi, and there is no need to raise your voice.” He sighed and tutted his tongue, but surprised her by stepping aside and elegantly ushering her in, then closing the door behind her, enclosing her in a corridor that smelled of damp brick and rust. The long old man, his pace far quicker than she had expected, overtook her, and proceeded with sharp footfalls down a corridor of black and red hexagon tiles.
“Wait.”
But Caterina was not sure she had spoken loud enough. She increased her pace to catch up, but already he had reached a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor, and ascended it with efficient, light, insect-like leaps, leaving her plodding and heavy below. As she rounded the first landing where the staircase doubled back on itself, she worried that he might leap out at her. But he was already at the top, and calling down.
“They have kept me fit all these years.”
By the time she reached the second floor, Conte Corsi had entered a high-ceilinged room with yellowed windows and no furniture save for a writing desk and a few chairs at the end. Behind him, a double-leaved door stood slightly ajar, allowing in a thin bar of brighter light. She had the feeling that the room behind was just as large and just as empty. She came over and took a seat, glancing behind at the echoing room. The Count turned his bone-white smooth countenance toward her and said, “Not much left, is there? Someone will have to build up the family fortunes, but it won’t be me. I am eighty years of age. I can trace my lineage back to Enea Silvio Piccolomini on one side and Jacopo Corsi on the other. Do you know who they were?”
Caterina shook her head. “I’ve heard of Piccolomini. Wasn’t he an artist or something?”
The Count shook his head sadly and from his desk picked up a pair of reading glasses, held them up like a glittering fish in the light from the window, then perched them on his nose. “Let me see what you have, then.”
He reached his hand across the desk.
“I just want to ask some questions,” said Caterina.
“You have not brought warrants?”
“No,” said Caterina. She drew in breath to disguise the thrill his question had caused her. “Not yet, but they’ll be coming, if we need them.” Her father had once told her the best way of keeping the tremor of excitement from the voice was to imagine you had coated your mouth and throat with honey, thick blobs of it, slowly sinking down your throat, smoothing the ripples in your voice. Speak slowly, deliberately, calmly. She could taste the honey now and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat, as the old man lowered his arm onto the desk and took off his glasses to observe her with disapproving coffee-colored eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Good question. Sprightly though he was, this eighty-year-old man did not hold tourists up at knife-point. And yet he was expecting warrants.
She took a leap of faith.
“Well, first of all, we know the stolen goods were never marketed. Can they be returned to the tourists?”
“You think that might help?”
“Yes, definitely.” Had she sounded too eager? She instilled greater formality and severity into her tone. “Cooperation is very important in these cases. What I write in my report will have an enormous effect on the judge’s decisions. Even better would be direct evidence of cooperation on your part. Repentance. Regret.”
“I have that in abundance,” said the old man. “What will happen to him?”
“What do you mean?” The real question, the only question, was not what but who. He had invested her with knowledge she did not have, but was moments away from acquiring. It was vital not to break the spell. One mistimed comment and she would disclose the full extent of her ignorance, but the Count seemed more interested in asking his own questions, like a catastrophic lawyer demolishing his own case.
“How many years? Is it possible for him to avoid prison?”
And now she understood. What was going on began to take shape. She understood who the old man was talking about and trying to argue for. She knew who the mugger was and what it meant to the Count. As the realization came upon her, she noticed a darkening in the air around the old man. The bar of light from behind the door had dimmed and become shadow, and the shadow moved.
Caterina sprang out of her seat and moved behind it, just as the door swung open and a heavyset but short man with square shoulders and a smooth, well-fed face emerged from behind. He stood behind the Count on whose shoulder he placed a pudgy babyish hand. He seemed to be pushing the old man into his chair.
“You called the police, Papa,” he said.
“It had to stop, Agnolo. Someone was going to get hurt. And I did not call them. They found out by themselves, as they were bound to in the end. Ask the policewoman here.”
The younger man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, stared over his father’s bald head at Caterina, but asked her nothing. Slowly, he moved to the side of the desk, and Caterina shifted her chair slightly to keep it between them. Then he put his palms outward to show he was not armed, and grinned.
“The Noantri’s bookings are down seventy percent this year. It won’t recover. Reputation is everything. Mark my words. We are a family not to be crossed.”
“Move behind the desk, please, and keep your hands visible,” she said. There was no honey taste now, just a sensation of tomato skins and copper at the back of her throat. Her hand was trembling slightly. The man turned his back with what seemed a shrug, then whipped around again, a thin blade in his right hand. The metal caught the faint sunbeam streaming through the faraway window and seemed to harden and brighten it.
But Caterina was pointing her Beretta directly at him, her hands steady, her finger on the trigger, the bluish barrel pointing directly at his forehead. Slowly, slowly, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she lowered the aim to the middle of his chest. Stopping power, greater surface area, easier target, no hesitation, squeeze trigger don’t pull, beautiful Elia with his soft cheeks needs you alive.
“No!” The Count, unnoticed by either, had arisen from his chair and, with the same surprising agility, interposed himself between his son and Caterina.
“Drop your weapon,” said Caterina. “Drop your weapon, drop your weapon! I will shoot, drop your weapon, I will shoot; drop your weapon now!” Caterina repeated the command and threat in another burst of three, allowing the barrel of the pistol to shift left and right while steadying against pitch and roll in her aim. She would not miss, and the Count was so thin and his son so broad that the odds were… but she did not want to shoot.
“You betrayed me.”
“No, son,” said the Count. “But you have so disappointed me.”
“Drop your weapon. Signor Conte, stand aside. Stand aside now.”
With a balletic movement, the Count bent his knee and slipped sideways and downwards out of the line of fire, and Caterina drew a bead on the son’s broad chest. In his hand, he still held the thin knife, now glossy and sticky at its tip.
The Count lay on the dark floor and groaned, and a small gleaming pool ran from under him.
Caterina began to squeeze the trigger, but at that moment the man dropped his knife and fell to his knees on the floor beside his father.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I panicked.”
Caterina followed his trajectory, pointing at the back of his bowed head, her finger easing its tension.
“It’s very painful, Agnolo. Very painful.”
“I just meant to push you away. I don’t think it went in deep. I don’t… ” He wiped his fingers on the floor. “Where is all this blood coming from?” He looked over at Caterina. “Help us. Please, help. O Signore, perdonami.”
She edged over. “Move away.”
“He needs me.”
“Move away from the knife. I’ll take the knife, and you can go back to him. Understood?”
“Do as she says, Agnolo,” whispered the old man. “I’ll be fine in a moment. The pain is fading already.”
Obediently, without standing up, Agnolo Corsi moved backwards on his knees. Caterina kicked at the knife with her foot, then retrieved it, and backed away. The son, now oblivious of her, leaned over his father, and buried his large head against the thin bird-like breast. Caterina took her left hand off the butt of the Beretta and used it to pull out her phone. She called an ambulance and backup, ordering them to break down the front door, because, against regulations, she had come in here alone and was trapped. For fifteen minutes she stood there in silence, her pistol loosely trained on the bunches of curly hair at the back of Agnolo Corsi’s head as he wept over his
