It was better than hearing Petronius Longus constantly moaning that I became bogged down in trivia, but it meant the same: just like the old one, my new partner was telling me I wasted time.
“Leonidas,” I stated (wondering what the chances were of persuading the lion to devour my new partner), “is entirely relevant. He cost a lot of money, didn't he, Buxus?”
“Naturally.” The keeper nodded. He was ignoring Anacrites; he preferred to deal with me. “The problem is catching them alive. I've been over to Africa and seen it. They use a kid for bait. Getting beasts to pounce and fall into a pit is dodgy enough-then they have to extract the cats without damage, while they are roaring their heads off and trying to maul anyone who comes close. Calliopus uses an agent who sometimes snatches cubs for us-but he has to hunt and kill the mother first. And then there's the bother of rearing the cubs until they're a useful size for the Games.”
I grinned. “No wonder the proverb says the first requirement for a successful politician is knowing a good source for tigers.”
“We don't have tigers,” said Buxus gravely. Satire was lost on him. Jokes about senators bribing the people with gory spectacles just bounced off his bald cranium. “Tigers come from Asia, and that's why so few reach Rome. We only have links with North Africa, Falco. We get lions and leopards. Calliopus comes from Oea-”
“Right. He keeps the business in the family. Does Calliopus' agent rear his lion cubs over there?”
“No point wasting the expense of shipping them-that's a game in itself-not until they're big enough to be of some use.”
“So Calliopus owns a menagerie in Tripolitania as well as this one?”
“Yes.” That would be the establishment in Oea that Calliopus had sworn to the Censors was in his brother's name. Anacrites surreptitiously made a note on a tablet, finally aware what I was driving at. The beasts could be as valuable as they liked; it was land, whether in Italy or the provinces, that we were tracking down. We suspected that this Oean “brother” of Calliopus was a fiction.
That had been enough for us to pursue on site the first day. We collected the menagerie records to add to a pile of scrolls about Calliopus' fighting tough men, then we slogged back with the documents to our new office.
This roost was another point of disagreement. All my career I had operated as an informer from a gruesome apartment in Fountain Court up on the Aventine. Complainants could traipse up the six flights of stairs and rouse me from bed to listen to their woes. Timewasters baulked at the climb. Bad fellows who wanted to dissuade me from my investigations by hitting me hard on the head could be heard coming.
When Helena and I had needed more spacious living accommodation we moved across the road, keeping my old place to work from. I had let Petronius move in after his wife threw him out for philandering, and even though we were no longer partners, he was still there. Anacrites insisted that we now required somewhere to stash the scrolls we amassed for the Census job, somewhere without Petro glowering at us disapprovingly. What we did not need, as I wasted my breath saying, was to install ourselves among the deadbeats at the Saepta Julia.
He fixed it up without consulting me. That was the kind of partner my mother had stuck me with.
The Saepta is a large enclosure next to the Pantheon and the Election Hall. Its internal arcades in those days- before the great clearances-were home to informers. The ones who lurked there were the slyest and grubbiest. The political creeps. Nero's old crawlers and grasses. No tact and no taste. No ethical standards. The glory of our profession. I wanted nothing to do with any of them, but Anacrites had plunged us right into the middle of their louse-ridden habitat.
The other low class of Saepta Julia wildlife was composed of goldsmiths and jewelers, a clique loosely formed around a group of auctioneers and antique-dealers. One of them being my father, from whom it was my habit to keep as far away as possible.
“Welcome to civilization!” crowed Pa, bursting in within five minutes of us arriving back there.
“Get lost, Pa.”
“That's my boy.”
My father was a square, heavy man with untamed grey curls and what passed even among women of experience for a charming grin. He had a reputation as a shrewd businessman; that meant he would sooner lie than tell the truth. He had sold more fake Athenian blackware vases than any other auctioneer in Italy. A potter turned them out for him specially.
People said I was like my father, but if they noticed my reaction they only ever said it once.
I knew why he was happy. Every time I was deep in some complex job he would be interrupting with urgent demands that I pop down to his warehouse and help him shin some heavy piece of furniture. With me nearby he was hoping to lay off two porters and the lad who brewed borage tea. What was worse, Pa would make instant friends with every suspect I wanted to keep at a distance, then he would blab my business throughout Rome.
“This calls for drinks,” he cried, and rushed away to find some.
“You can tell Ma about this yourself.” I growled at Anacrites. That did make him go paler than ever. He must have gathered that my mother had not spoken to my father since the day he ran off with a redhead, leaving Ma to bring up his children. The idea of me working in Pa's vicinity would have her looking for somebody she could hang up by the heels on her smoked-meat hook. By moving into this office Anacrites could well have just terminated his lease at Ma's house, sacrificing some very palatable dinners and risking a far worse wounding than the one after which she saved his life. “I hope you can run fast, Anacrites.”
“You're all heart, Falco. Why don't you thank me for finding us this fine billet?”
“I've seen bigger pens for pigs.”
It was a first-floor closet that had been abandoned for two years after the previous tenant died in it. When Anacrites made the landlord an offer, he couldn't believe his luck. Every time we moved we banged our elbows. The door didn't close, mice were refusing to give way to us, there was nowhere to pee, and the nearest foodstall was right the other side of the enclosure; it sold mouldy rolls that made us bilious.
I had established my own space at a small wooden counter where I could watch the world going by. Anacrites wound himself on to a stool in the darker rear area. His unobtrusive oyster tunic and oiled-back hair merged into the shadows, so only his smooth pale face stood out. He was looking worried, leaning back his head on the partition as if to hide the great cleft of his wound. Memory and logic were both playing tricks on him. All the same, he seemed to have brightened when he joined me in partnership; he gave the peculiar impression he was looking forward to his new active life.
“Don't tell Pa what we're doing for the Census, or the news will be everywhere by dinner time.”
“Well what can I tell him, Falco?” As a spy he had always lacked initiative.
“Internal audit.”
“Oh right! That usually makes people lose interest rapidly. What shall we say to suspects?”
“Have to be careful. We don't want them to realize our draconian powers.”
“No. They might respond by offering us bribes.”
“Which we are far too respectable to accept,” I said.
“Not unless the bribes are very handsome indeed,” replied Anacrites demurely.
“As with any luck they will be,” I chortled back.
“Here we are!” Pa reappeared, carrying an amphora. “I told the vintner you'd call in later to pay for it.”
“Oh thanks!” Pa squashed in beside me, and gestured expectantly for the formal introductions he had brushed aside before. “Anacrites, this is my father, the devious miser Didius Favonius. Otherwise known as Geminus; he had to change his name because there were too many angry people after him.”
My new partner evidently thought I had introduced him to a fascinating character, some colourful and sought after Saepta eccentric. Actually they had met before, when we were all involved in searching goods in a treason case. Neither seemed to remember it.
“You're the lodger,” exclaimed my father. Anacrites looked pleased by his local fame.
As Pa poured wine into metal cups, I could tell he was watching us together. I let him stare. Playing games was his idea of fun, not mine.
“So it's Falco Partner again?”
I pressed out a tired smile. Anacrites sniffed; he had not wanted to be merely “ Partner”, but I had insisted on continuity. I was, after all, hoping to ride on straight into a different partnership as soon as possible.
“Settling in?” Pa was pleased to sense an atmosphere.
“It's a bit tight, but we're expecting to be out and about so that shouldn't matter.” Anacrites seemed
