The dogs of Rome cab-1 Page 15

  He thanked Blume for the interest shown by the police in these things. If it were up to him, there would be no more poker machines or lottery scratch cards either.

  Blume wanted to know why he went to a dog fight. Did he not know it was cruel and inhumane and illegal?

  “The odds,” said Dandini, shaking his large head slowly. “They had such great odds.”

  Dandini said he had been in the office all day on Friday.

  “Can anyone else confirm that?”

  “Giovanni.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “My junior business partner. He’s gone to a customer’s to get some papers signed. He’ll probably go straight home after.”

  “OK, maybe I’ll talk to him. Anyone else?”

  “I made three sales yesterday. Well, I made one sale and signed the contracts of sale on two others. Maria, our secretary, was there. She draws up the ownership papers. She goes home at four.”

  Blume took her number down. “When did you make the sales?”

  “All morning. It takes a while, you know. The paperwork, showing them the car, putting on the license plate, waving them away. I was doing that from nine until lunchtime, then after lunch I made the third sale. It was a good day.”

  “And you have the names of these customers. They can say you were here?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Sure.” He pulled open a lower drawer and pulled out two folders. “These are the names, if you need them.”

  A group of moneyed youngsters appeared in the forecourt, and Dandini looked at Blume longingly for permission to leave. Blume had not even begun to ask questions, but Dandini had solid alibis. In any case, he knew Dandini was not the man he was looking for.

  19

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 7:45 P.M.

  Blume made it back to the station just in time for the meeting. He went to his office. Someone, probably Ferrucci, had left two file folders closed with ribbon on his desk. He opened them, saw that they were profiles of Alleva and his henchman, Gaetano Massoni. He dropped them into his bag and went up to the conference room.

  The furniture inside was minimal: no telephones, nor even telephone jacks in the walls. A projection screen, usually left open, was set against the wall flanking the door. To minimize the opportunities for the installation of permanent bugging devices, all the audiovisual equipment, including an extremely expensive projector, was set on a wire-framed cart that could be wheeled out of the room when not in use. It was a room designed for deniability.

  He sat down, opened his bag, and read the files.

  Renato Alleva, born 1966, in Genoa. This was already odd. The Roman underworld, like Rome itself, was provincial. Alleva was an outsider, and operated on sufferance. Alleva’s early career seemed to be that of a thwarted confidence trickster. Arrested in 1982, ’86, ’88, ’91, and ’95 for impersonating an insurance salesman, area manager for a supermarket, charity worker, business investor, and realtor, he was unmasked each time by his intended victims, who had called the police. As he never actually managed to take any money off anyone, the sentencing was light. In 1995, Alleva spent two months in the hospital with multiple fractures inflicted, it seemed, by relations of the old woman to whom he had tried to sell a temporarily unoccupied apartment on the Via Marco Sala. He spent the next eight months in Marassi prison. Blume looked at the mug shots of Alleva’s flat face with its cubic nose and pig eyes and wondered how its owner came to think he should try a career based on winning trust. But Alleva had learned from his mistakes. Going from confidence trickster to dogman had been a smart move.

  Blume learned off Alleva’s charge sheet like he used to learn poems in school. He would remember it for as long as he needed to, then forget it. Sometimes faces, their crimes and, most often, their victims, got stuck in his mind’s eye, along with fragments of school poetry.

  Lontano, lontano

  Come un cieco

  M’hanno portato per mano.

  As for Massoni, the criminal record dated back to 1980, when Massoni was thirteen. The details of the charges brought against him in the years 1980 to 1985 were absent, “pursuant to the terms of Article 15 DPR 448/88” relating to the protection of juveniles. The comment was marked with an asterisk, which, Blume saw, referred to a footnote to the effect that Article 52 of Law 313/02 had since repealed this provision.

  But not before Massoni’s youthful exploits, whatever they were, had been deleted.

  Massoni didn’t let his eighteenth birthday slow him down. He had started out with arrests for criminal damage to a vehicle, resisting arrest, dangerous driving, and assault, for which he received noncustodial sentences and a suspension of his driver’s license. He was back eight months later after being caught driving, and the suspension on his license was extended. From 1990, Massoni seemed to be specializing in assault. He was arrested for inflicting bodily harm on would-be clients of a nightclub where he worked for a while as a bouncer, but the victims did not press charges. In 1991, he was arrested and charged with beating up a thirty-five-year-old woman called Elena, with whom he had been living. He got seven months for this, his first taste of jail. Released after three months, he was picked up again for another assault, this time on a twenty-year-old girl and her five-year-old son, but the charges were dropped. He was back in Rebbibia in 1993-94 after slashing the face of a Juventus supporter. He was also charged with being part of a gang of Roma Ultras who hurled a Vespa scooter from the South Curve stand of the Olympic Stadium onto rival supporters below. In 1995, he and four others were acquitted for insufficient proof on charges of a racist attack on a certain Francis Mianzoukouto, a technician for Radio Vatican, who lost the use of his left hand after being savaged by dogs on his way home from work.

  In 1998, Massoni’s record became slightly more interesting, with arrests for tax evasion, illegal gambling, and extortion. No charges for maltreatment of animals were made against him until 2002, but that, Blume figured, had more to do with the absence of specific legislation until then. It looked as if Massoni’s interest in animals dated to around 1997-98.

  He was about to start reading the sheets he had taken from Di Tivoli when Ferrucci walked in and sat down quickly at the far end of the desks, where Blume had put himself at the last meeting.

  “Well?” demanded Blume. “How did it go?”

  “Fine,” said Ferrucci. “I’m not sure what you wanted me to find out, but I don’t think this guy had anything to do with it.”

  A pale orange beam of light lit up the area where Ferrucci had chosen to sit. Blume looked out the window and saw the sky directly above was whitening, while farther away it darkened. He turned his attention back to Ferrucci, who looked different somehow. It wasn’t just the strange light of the coming storm.

  “Am I imagining it, or have you just had your haircut?”

  Ferrucci touched his hair, hesitated as if considering a denial. His short-cropped fair hair looked yellow.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes I am imagining it? Or yes you’ve just had your hair cut by a person you were sent out to interview on suspicion of murder?”

  “You never said he was a suspect.”

  “Did you pay him for the haircut?”

  “He would not talk to me otherwise.”

  “You let him shave you, too?” Blume heard the sound of voices coming up the corridor. If he continued this line of questioning he’d end up humiliating Ferrucci. “OK, forget that. What was your impression?”

  “I don’t think he makes a good suspect,” said Ferrucci. “I’m not sure, though.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Fat,” said Ferrucci just as Paoloni and Zambotto walked in. “Fat, soft, short arms, perfumed…”

  “You talking about your boyfriend?” asked Paoloni, taking a seat near but not next to Ferrucci.

  Zambotto looked at Ferrucci and said, “You got a haircut since I last saw you. Me, I was working.”

  “Chatty, fussy, busy, knows everyone,” continued Ferru
cci. “Gay, I think.”

  “You are talking about your boyfriend,” said Paoloni.

  Blume said, “Shut up, Beppe.” To Ferrucci he said, “Like gays don’t kill?”

  “He says he was in his salon all morning. Showed me an appointment book, invited me to call up any of the names there. He’s got six alibis for the morning, five for the afternoon. Also, there’s a bar opposite. The barman brings in orders for the customers. He says he was in and out at least four times on Friday.”

  “OK. Good work.”

  “Also I asked in a few other stores. The ones who remembered, remembered him there.”

  D’Amico arrived next. In a concession to the fact that it was Saturday night, he was dressed in a combination of Lacoste and Zegna instead of the suit he had on earlier. He must have a wardrobe in his office, thought Blume.

  D’Amico came and sat next to Blume, as if they were still partners. Finally, Gallone marched in. He stared at Blume seated at the top of the room and seemed about to say something, but finally settled to sit off-center and began the meeting.

  Blume glanced through the few pages he had taken from Di Tivoli.

  For a journalist, the man wasn’t much of a speller. There was not much in the notes, either. Blume circled the names he found: Alleva was there, along with Clemente and several other names and numbers, which seemed mostly to do with production fees. Blume noted down these names, too. He recognized some of them as being “front-line” RAI reporters. Real reporters.

  Not like Di Tivoli. But the notes were not going to help much. There was nothing there.

  “Have you quite finished your reading, Commissioner Blume?”

  Blume put the papers carefully back into his bag, zipped the compartment closed, fastened the closure in the flap, put the bag on the floor, and then said, “Yes, sir.”

  With each of Blume’s exasperatingly slow movements, Gallone had jutted his chin a little further, so that now his neck tendons looked ready to snap.

  “We are here to map out a plan for Alleva’s capture,” said Gallone. “I demand your undivided attention.”

  “You have it, sir.”

  “We have a detention order from Principe, and about time, too. The press know almost everything now, and we have reached twenty-four hours since we got the alert. Any delay and it’ll look like incompetence. We get Alleva into custody now. Also, it’s what the family expects.”

  “The family?” asked Blume.

  “The widow, Sveva Romagnolo.”

  “Right.”

  “I was talking to the magistrate who is waiting for the autopsy report, but Dorfmann has given him some details, which he also passed on to me and I am passing on to you,” said Gallone.

  They sat there waiting for Gallone to do his passing.

  “Well, it’s nothing that we did not already know. Death by a single-edged knife partly serrated at the end, almost certainly an assault knife. No hesitation wounds. The killer went straight to it. He was either skilled or got lucky. We have five possible candidates for the lethal blow, and seventeen stab wounds in all.”

  “What about other evidence?” asked Paoloni.

  “So far, we have nothing from the fingerprints. No match of any sort,” said Gallone. “They started with the ones in the bathroom and one on a piece of masking tape on the cardboard box. The DNA is going to take longer. The crime scene manager’s report is almost ready. Clemente was murdered where he was found. Not much else to it.”

  “Knife is confirmed as the cause of death, Questore?” asked Blume.

  Gallone looked at him as if this might be a trick question.

  “Yes. You’ll get the finished report yourself tomorrow.”

  “Good,” said Blume. “But all the evidence continues to point in the same direction, which is not towards Alleva.”

  “Commissioner, you wasted an entire afternoon importuning the widow and a media personality. You disobeyed a direct order to report to me. Let’s not make it any worse now.”

  “No, indeed,” said Blume.

  “Back to Alleva,” began Gallone. “We can get backup if we need it. I want him in custody tonight.”

  “Not a good idea, Questore,” said Paoloni.

  Everyone turned round to look at him.

  “I don’t remember asking for an opinion on this,” said Gallone.

  Paoloni had his arms folded and head tilted back as if he was talking to someone hovering just above his head.

  “It is going to be hard to get to him tonight. I heard that he was last seen, on his own-in the sense of without Massoni-in the company of some of Innocenzi’s scagnozzi. It is therefore possible that we will never see him again. But the point is, he is not on his own. We don’t have the manpower to go in and lift him. Even if we did, it could be complicated.”

  “I can order the manpower,” said Gallone.

  “We don’t want to go in there,” said Paoloni. “Everyone in this room understands that.” He lowered his head and looked at Gallone. “You understand it, too, sir. We can’t just walk in and pick him up if there is a chance of others intervening, especially if they are Innocenzi’s crew. It could spiral. All deals would be off. We’d lose months, years of intelligence and contacts. Also, these people know a lot of secrets and pull a lot of strings. These things need to be negotiated. I don’t think we really want this general aggravation in the Magliana area. All we want is Alleva. Let’s wait till we can get just him.”

  Blume was surprised to see Gallone take all this backtalk. He even seemed to be listening.

  “OK. How do we get Alleva, then?” he asked.

  “We get him tomorrow morning when he’s visiting his mother’s,” said Paoloni. “He always visits his mother on a Sunday. Brings her pastries. Sunday’s a quiet day.”

  “It’s also an overtime day,” said Gallone. “So where does the mother live?”

  “Testaccio area. He goes there at around ten. We can follow him from his house or wait for him at his mother’s.”

  “We could do both,” said Gallone. “Just to be sure.”

  Gallone, getting back into his old habits, assigned Paoloni the task of setting up the stake out for the following morning. This was not what Paoloni did best, but Blume wasn’t going to waste his breath.

  As the meeting was breaking up, Ferrucci suddenly announced, “I’ve got a DVD of Di Tivoli’s documentary for RAI. I forgot to say. I picked it up at Viale Mazzini on my way back.”

  Blume looked over. Ferrucci held a DVD in his hand. The RAI butterfly-talking heads symbol was printed on the cover.

  “What time is it?”

  “Just gone eight,” said Ferrucci.

  “OK, let’s watch it,” he said.

  “Not everyone, Commissioner. That’s hardly necessary or efficient,” said Gallone. “I suggest you pick one of your men to watch it with you.”

  Blume massaged his temples. “I wasn’t going to-never mind.”

  “I’ll watch it with you,” said Ferrucci.

  “I’ll get the popcorn,” said Zambotto.

  Paoloni left the room and returned wheeling the wire rack with the DVD player and TV on it. Ferrucci put in the disc, turned on the TV, and sat down next to Blume. Zambotto and Paoloni had gone.

  The documentary was pretty much as Ferrucci had said. Plenty of mid range shots of Di Tivoli himself in profile, his chin pointed slightly upward as if he were gazing ahead into an uncertain future.

  The dog fights were filmed with a hidden camera, and there was a lot of wobble and confusion and sometimes too much darkness for it to be clear what was going on. The sound editors had overdubbed some of the fights with a frantic dance track.

  Go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go! went the track, and Blume leaned forward with enthusiasm. Two pitbulls circled, then tore into each other, head to head, and the track burst into a manically repetitive refrain.

  Blume found himself marking out the beat with his feet. He felt like punching the air and saying, “Fuck yeah!” Now
that’s what dogs are for.

  Later, to make up for it, the sound editors spliced in a few shots of bloodied, staggering, and dying dogs, and played Faure’s Requiem.

  Clemente was interviewed. He appeared sitting in the office Blume had been in early that morning. He used a lot of statistics, possibly to keep calm, because when he started talking about the way dogs were trained, he seemed to be struggling to stay in his seat. He seemed like an earnest type, dressed too young for his age. He did not resemble the corpse Blume had seen, but live people never looked like their dead selves.

  The Carabinieri raid was well filmed. The reporters had set up a long-range camera at the end of the field that could pan across the whole scene as the Jeeps came roaring up to the warehouse. A large skinhead bouncer seemed about to put up some resistance as the Carabinieri stormed the door he was standing beside, but knelt down with his hands behind his head when a shotgun was pointed at him.

  “Stop the tape,” said Blume.

  “It’s a DVD,” said Ferrucci, but stopped it.

  “Can you go back a bit to that guy kneeling?”

  It took Ferrucci a few attempts to get a picture frame that had some readable detail in it, and even then it was hard to make out faces.

  “That there must be Massoni, Alleva’s enforcer,” said Blume, pulling out a file folder from his bag. “You leave these folders on my desk?”

  Ferrucci nodded.

  Blume opened the profile of Massoni. There were two sets of police pictures. One, in color, from five years before, the other in black-and-white from eight years ago. He chose the black-and-white one.

  “They should never have started using color,” he said, holding the photo in front of him, then comparing it to the picture on the screen. “It overwhelms all the essential details.” He handed the photo to Ferrucci, “What do you think, is it him?”

  Ferrucci looked hard at the photo, then at the screen, and said, “I have no idea.”