Then he hung up without waiting for a response, without asking her whether she and Elia were OK.
Bastard.
Half an hour later, as she applied cold cream to her face and massaged the tense area around her eyes with her fingers, she thought of the almost elegant movement with which old Corsi had knelt down before stretching out on the floor of his dilapidated palace, stabbed in the back by his clumsy, unhappy child. She wiped the sink shiny with the towel she had just used and set out a fresh towel over the edge of the bathtub.
Passing the living room on her way to her bedroom, whispering so as not to wake Elia, she said, “The bathroom’s free now, Emma.”
Chapter 42
Would it be by phone or face-to-face? Blume opened his car door, threw in the accursed notebooks, and pulled out his phone and looked at it in case it had rung on silent. Nothing. He walked back toward Paoloni’s house, back down the sidewalk covered in dogshit and trash. A dark car came the wrong way up the one-way street.
Face-to-face, then, thought Blume.
The car stopped beside him. The Colonel rolled down his window and spoke out of the dark. “Where’s your friend going?”
“Aren’t you people following him?”
“My resources are a little stretched,” said the Colonel. “Where is he going?”
“To look for his son,” said Blume.
The Colonel considered this. “His son is fine,” he said after a while.
“He’d better be,” said Blume.
“I didn’t want to worry the poor man,” said the Colonel. “The idea was that you would see what was at stake.”
“I see what is at stake,” said Blume. “Where is Fabio?”
“The son? Torvaianica, I believe. We used your name to pick him up. Now he thinks he’s being recruited for something exciting, and has been sworn to secrecy. Apparently the hardest thing was to keep a straight face as they told the kid to check for people following and to search out a certain face in a bar. It’s been an evening of entertainment for everyone.”
“When is he coming home?”
“When are you going to get my paintings back?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” said Blume. “That’s the earliest I can do it.”
“Then that’s when your friend’s son is coming home,” said the Colonel. “Simple enough.”
The Colonel’s words disappeared into the blackness of the car, and then reappeared inside Blume’s head. It would not do, but he had to keep calm.
A blue flare turning yellow lit up the Colonel’s cheeks and nose. Blume watched and waited as the Colonel set his cigar aglow, and took comfort that the ritual suggested the Colonel was prepared to negotiate. He moved closer, picking up a scent of sweet wood and orange peel from inside the vehicle. The Maresciallo was in the driver’s seat.
“Beppe Paoloni is my dear friend. The first thing he will do if he thinks his son is missing is enlist my help and demand my constant presence,” said Blume. “As long as he does that, I cannot move to get the paintings, and as long as he is looking for his child, he cannot help me.”
“Do you need his help?”
“The people who took the canvases don’t want to deal with law enforcement. They’ll do a deal with Paoloni, though. As long as the son is missing, everyone is wasting time.”
A puff of smoke came out the window, and the Colonel said, “That sounds like a valid argument. And I really don’t want to waste time. Here.” His plump hand emerged and offered Blume a chunky Nokia with too many buttons.
“I don’t know how to use that.”
“It’s already ringing. Connected by now, I should say,” said the Colonel.
Blume brought the phone up to his ear, and noticed that the Colonel had a second phone and was talking into it.
“Yes?” A young man on the other end of the line. Blume realized he didn’t even know Fabio’s voice.
“Fabio?”
“Commissioner Blume?” The kid’s voice wavered between disappointment and relief.
“The test is over. Can you call your parents? Call your father. He’s looking for you.” This was going to take some explaining to Paoloni afterwards.
“Yes. I was going to.”
“Where are you now?”
“On the Via del Mare. On our way back in. They said I did well.”
Blume heard a man in the background say something and Fabio’s voice, uncertain, nervous, saying thank you.
“They’re going to drop me off at the Line B underground. I’m not to mention this test to anyone except you. I’ll just say I was with friends and my phone was dead.”
“No,” said Blume. “Say it was off, not dead. You need to use it now to call your parents.”
“I’ll just tell them I recharged it at a friend’s house.”
Maybe the kid would make a good agent after all. The lie came easily to him.
“Good,” said Blume.
“Satisfied?” asked the Colonel as Blume handed back the phone. But now his own was ringing, and he answered.
It was Paoloni wondering if he had heard anything.
“No, Beppe. I called in. No accidents or anything. I’m sure Fabio will be OK. Maybe his phone is out of credit or something.”
“Definitely something like that,” said Paoloni. “It’s his mother. She’s very anxious. She’s phoned me twice. Listen, things are moving faster than I thought here, which is good. It turns out these two guys…”
But Blume did not want Paoloni to talk about this now, as he stood there in front of the Colonel. He pretended to scratch his ear with his thumb and surreptitiously hit disconnect, then made a few grunts of assent, and pretended to finish up the conversation. He switched the phone off completely as he slipped it back into his pocket in case Paoloni called straight back.
“Colonel, this abducting and threatening children, for all that you do it so subtly and gently, and make sure the victims don’t even realize it… someday you will get burned. You know that? Eventually something will go wrong, someone will find out, and you will be killed.”
“I have been in this line of business since you were a child, Blume. I have not been caught yet.”
“You have not been punished, you mean. But you have been caught. People know who you are, what you do. The American Embassy has a file on you. Older Carabinieri, police, criminals, and politicians remember you, some younger Carabinieri want rid of you.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Faedda, for instance? Do you think I would allow a queer Sard kid to control me? You’re tricky, Blume, I’ll give you that. I want you to contact me tomorrow. We meet, exchange the paintings, maybe hammer out a new deal of some sort, and then that will be that. We won’t have to meet again. If the truth be told, I didn’t even want to get involved in this case. I was semi-retired, you know. This will be the last case. And as such, Velazquez or no Velazquez, money or no money, the ending will be dictated by me. I will decide your fate; I will decide who deserves favor, which gets punished. That’s how it will be.”
He closed the window and the Maresciallo drove away, flashing his lights as he sped the wrong way up the street.
Blume switched his phone back on. It rang almost immediately.
It was Paoloni. “We got cut off earlier,” he said. “Anyhow, got them. It was that easy. Oh, by the way, Fabio called. He’s on his way home. Thanks for your help there. Little bastard had his mother worried sick.” Blume smiled
