The dogs of Rome cab-1 Read online

Kristin soaked up the oil from her plate with a piece of bread, and put it in her mouth, then pushed her plate away. “That was excellent. So did it make you feel better, seeing that tomb?”

  “A bit,” said Blume. “Not much. I’d like to be absolutely certain that’s what the message meant, and I would prefer to have put Scognamiglio in his tomb myself.”

  “I guess the death of your parents is the reason you’re still here.”

  “Yes. I was just seventeen. It was hard to survive on my own in a foreign country.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  Blume tried to determine her tone. It was not quite mocking, or maybe it was.

  “I had already been living here for three years. I thought I was going into freshman class at Franklin High, but they brought me here and put me into the final year of a liceo in Parioli. I was fifteen then.”

  “Why did they come here?”

  “They were art historians. My father was also an illustrator. I did not take after him.”

  “So you lived on your own after seventeen?”

  Blume nodded.

  “That must have been interesting. How many other kids had a free house every night?”

  “It wasn’t my house,” said Blume.

  “You were next of kin. There’s no way the house could have gone to anyone else.”

  “It was a rented apartment. It never belonged to them. It belonged to a guy called Gargaruti, some fucking character, he turned out to be.”

  “Yeah? Tell me about him.”

  Blume allowed a look of great sadness to wash over his countenance and said, “Maybe some other time.”

  “OK.”

  “Unless you want to hear now…”

  “No. That’s OK. Some other time will do.”

  “Yeah, because, he was…”

  Kristin interrupted him, “So tell me, how did you survive?”

  “The police helped me. First of all, they tried to get in contact with my relatives in the States. My mother had a sister in L.A., kind of a failed actress. She didn’t reply to any letters. Nothing. So then they had to send me to an orphanage.”

  “That’s very Dickensian. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?”

  “I don’t care. Also, I didn’t really live in the orphanage. I continued in school, then the nuns gave me some freedom. I even got lifts back and forth from the police, spent some nights in the apartment, which was paid for until the end of the year. Also, it took the City of Rome three months to complete the paperwork, and so by the time I went in there for my first day, it was only weeks before my eighteenth birthday.”

  “How did you survive for money?”

  “I taught English, then started giving Latin and French lessons, too.”

  “You were good enough at Latin and French to give lessons?”

  “Yes. I’m good at languages. Very good. I find them easy to learn.”

  “What else do you speak?”

  “Spanish-obviously. Basically, it’s Italian with a lisp. My German’s quite good. That’s all. A bit of Albanian. Some Romany. Greek.”

  “Ancient Greek?”

  “No. Modern. I used to go to the islands in June and July with college friends. I can order food in Greek, read a menu.”

  “You pick up languages just by listening to them?”

  “No. I need to study them. What I am good at is picking up accents. I can tell accents.”

  “Who were these police who helped you?”

  “A policewoman, the one who came around to tell me. Marina. She came around the following day, and the day after that, and then her partner arrived, and after him, another, and they all started checking up on me, seeing if I was OK. Five cops on rotation for a year and a bit, all looking out for me. I still know them all.”

  “Did your parents leave money?”

  “No. They weren’t planning to die. And they were both part-time university teachers, with a lifestyle above their means. No properties, no assets, no savings to speak of. My father left a debit card in his drawer, and after a long search I found the PIN hidden as a telephone number. So I started drawing money out of his account. But it didn’t last. After six months, the bank found out my father wasn’t alive. I’m not sure how. Not only did they block the account, they also called in the Finance Police and denounced ‘persons unknown’ for theft.”

  “So you have a criminal record?”

  “No. I get this visit from the Finance Police, and they give me grief for a while. Then I get a lawyer’s letter from the bank, saying they want all the money back plus interest plus legal fees and so on. And then in comes Gargaruti, my landlord, doubles the rent there and then.”

  “A landlord can’t just double the rent like that.”

  “He can here, if the apartment is let to a non-Italian. Gargaruti had other apartments, and a take-out restaurant, a rosticceria. He worked there all day. He always smelled of roast chicken. Anyway, he tells me to turn up for work in the restaurant on Monday. I did. The pay he gave me didn’t cover my rent, and he said he was charging interest. Then he gets all kindly uncle again, tells me to eat all the roast chicken I want. I told Marina, the policewoman, about him. She spread the word and the police sort of leaned on him. My rent went back down, I left his kitchen. Three years later, I bought the flat from him. He needed persuasion about that, too.”

  He lifted his glass to drink some of his wine, and kept the rim of the glass against his mouth and narrowed his eyes until all he saw was the red wine. When he put down the glass, he picked up his napkin, and pressed it against his mouth, leaving a purple stain like a bruise on the linen.

  “A few days after I had identified my parents, they asked me to bite on a piece of gauze, and put it with tweezers into a plastic tub. Mitochondrial DNA testing. It wasn’t necessary. This was the early 1990s. The police labs were developing a training program for technicians, and this was a good opportunity.”

  “Don’t you resent that? The police using you like that for training their technicians?”

  “No.” Blume was emphatic. “The police did everything for me. They took care of me. They kept coming back to check. I’d have ended up on the street if it hadn’t been for them.”

  “Or back in America.”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the second course. Kristin tucked in with relish to a red and pale yellow mess of pieces in a bowl.

  Blume couldn’t help but wonder at the incongruity between her talc-scented freshness and this voracious appetite for slaughter house leftovers.

  He thought of Clemente lying on the floor, the blood congealing around him. Dorfmann dipping a blood-soaked swab on a Hemastix strip and turning it green.

  “You’re supposed to eat the marrow,” said Kristin, jabbing a fork in the direction of his plate, where he had hardly touched the osso buco. “That’s the best bit.”

  Blume looked without appetite at the cross section of leg-bone with strings of gray flesh attached to it. He reached out for more wine, but discovered the carafe was already empty.

  “I did go back to America. A year later, as soon as I was eighteen and could travel alone. There was no one there. I found out where my aunt lived. I watched her house in Los Angeles for a day, and I think I saw her. I have two cousins.”

  “You went all the way over to the USA, then just looked at your aunt from a distance?”

  “I didn’t see what I could say to her. Anyhow, it was just one day out of my holiday.”

  “You considered it a holiday?”

  “I was there with Valentina, my girlfriend. We did a coast-to-coast. Two months traveling and working. She got a J-1 visa, so she could work, too. It was fun. My life has not been a total wreck, you know.”

  “Did you hang out with students or cops in those days?”

  “Both. A lot of people studying law and economics were thinking of joining the police.”

  “What about the expat community? Did you have much to do with them? Other Americans?”

  K
ristin’s voice seemed to echo as she said that, and Blume realized he was slipping into a half-dream state, battling wine and sleepiness with adrenaline. He checked the time on his phone: ten forty-five. The sensible thing would have been to go to bed, get a proper six hours at least before the Alleva operation.

  “Not much. I never got on with visiting Americans.” He was tired of talking. “But what about you? Tell me what you do. I haven’t managed to get any information from you.”

  “Well, I was a lawyer until recently. I worked for Merck Sharp and Dohme. Pharmaceuticals. What I couldn’t tell you about rizatriptan benzoate ain’t worth knowing.”

  “What does that do?”

  “Gets rid of headaches.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never had a headache,” said Kristin.

  “Shit, I get them all the time,” said Blume.

  “Well, you could try drinking less,” said Kristin, timing her comment with the arrival of the waiter with another carafe brimming with red wine.

  “Why did you quit your job?”

  “Ethical stuff. They do too many experiments with dogs. Cats, too-more cats than dogs, actually, but I had some real issues with the dog experiments. I made some ill-advised comments in an in-house magazine.”

  “You like dogs?”

  “Sure. Don’t most normal people? Apart from the experimenters, and even some of them feel pretty lousy sometimes.”

  “I don’t like dogs in the slightest,” said Blume. “Filthy noisy stinking creatures.”

  “You’re a cat person, then?”

  “Isn’t that code for gay when applied to men? I don’t care-look, I never even think of cats. They live in my courtyard, piss on the motorbikes, that’s all I know about cats. Dogs, on the other hand, are creatures I actively dislike.”

  Kristin seemed annoyed to hear this, and to distract her attention he asked the waiter what was on the dessert menu.

  “Torta mimosa panna cotta frutta fresca creme caramel torta all’arancio cassata siciliana con ripieno di ricotta fresca-molta buona questa-la prenda,” replied the waiter, not wasting more than six seconds of his life in listing false alternatives before telling him what to order.

  “Oh yes, the cassata, I’ll have that,” said Kristin.

  Blume ordered the same.

  The waiter ambled off toward another table, with the air of having decided not to give them anything, after all.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Vermont. I already told you that in the courtyard.”

  “So that’s what your accent is,” said Blume.

  “I lived where there are trees, big gardens. Cold, rich, middle class. Very comfortable. My closet at home is about the size of my apartment here. Dad is an anesthetist, or was. Retired. Now he just bores people to sleep.”

  “I don’t get the connection between Merck and whatever and you wandering through the corridors of a police station in Rome,” said Blume.

  “I don’t work for a pharmaceuticals company. I used to. But I quit. Now I work as a legat with the embassy on Via Veneto.”

  “What’s a legat?”

  “A legal attache.”

  “You don’t say more than you have to, do you? Must be part of being a lawyer.”

  “Must be.”

  “What exactly are you legally attached to?”

  “The FBI.”

  Blume considered this. “The FBI works from the embassy? I thought they operated through Europol. I’ve heard of cooperation, but it’s always been very specific. I suppose I don’t know much.”

  “Your rank doesn’t help there,” she said, and pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “I am an FBI legat to the Embassy of the United States in Italy. I report here to a regional security officer, and back home to the Office of International Operations.”

  “And you draw bad pictures of fountains in courtyards in your spare time.”

  “Bad pictures, huh? You didn’t like the reference to your rank. I’m sorry, Alec.”

  “No. I don’t care about that. But seeing that this is more an interview than an evening out, it occurred to me your sketch might have been a prop, to allow you to sit there waiting for me.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything better.”

  “So you’re here talking to me, finding out things about me because

  …?”

  “I maintain contacts in the Polizia, the Carabinieri, the Finance Police, and even-would you believe it-the traffic police,” said Kristin. “These contacts are official, unofficial, diplomatic, confidential, open, private, public-whatever. They tell me whatever they feel like telling me. I don’t ask them to tell me more. It’s all very above-board and friendly.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Helps us get a feel of the place. Keep an ear to the ground.”

  Blume gave her his skeptical-cop look.

  “I do work a little with people who may have special operational remits. We pool information and work together in what is called a country team.”

  “You have contacts up high?”

  “I’ve exchanged a few pleasantries with the prefect at embassy dos.”

  “What were you doing at my station?”

  “Handing out invitations to a conference on terrorism. Before you say it, almost everyone knows the conferences don’t resolve anything, but that’s not what they’re for. Attendance is always total. Know why?”

  “Free food? Cops love free food.”

  “Yes, they do. But it’s not just that. The top brass is there. That way, lowly commissioners get a chance to have a private word with questors and prefects. We provide a little private court where the vassals get a chance to ask favors of the barons. All played out in front of us. They know we’re watching, but they don’t care. After all, we’re all allies.”

  The waiter came out of the tiny doorway with two plates and a winning smile.

  “There we go,” he declared, placing desserts in front of them, then standing back as if planning to watch them, like a proud mother feeding her two children. Blume gave him a look that sent him off with a scowl to the next table.

  The cassata was something special. Blume had not tasted a cassata so good since he had been posted to Palermo during the period in the early ’90s when the politicians were pretending to care about organized crime. The chef had not skimped on the sweetened ricotta, which was fresh and just the right blend of crumbly creamy and laced with a very generous amount of maraschino liquor. Blume now regretted sending the waiter away like that. Excellence and beauty should always be acknowledged and publicly praised. Italians were good at that, and he was not.

  “Good, isn’t it?” mumbled Kristin, breaking the reverent silence that had descended as they allowed the candied fruits, chocolate, cheese, and sponge cake to quietly dissolve in the heat of their mouths.

  “It’s more than good. People should come here just for this,” agreed Blume.

  All too soon, it was gone. Blume rubbed his thumb in the sweet white trail left on his plate and stuck it in his mouth. Kristin was intently cleaning off all residues with her middle finger.

  “We could order another,” suggested Blume.

  Kristin giggled, which he found disconcertingly out of character.

  “Marcello!” called Kristin.

  The waiter responded like an eager cocker spaniel, and bounded over to the table, radiating smiles solely at Kristin.

  “Il conto, per piacere.”

  Annoyingly, very annoyingly, when Marcello came with the bill, he handed it to Kristin, and before Blume could protest, she had put a gold American Express on the platter.

  “How much was it?” he demanded, trying to read her surname on the card. It was upside-down to him, and seemed to spell out Holmquist.

  By way of response, she handed him the check: 126 euros. “The wine was particularly dear,” she said.

  Kristin went up to the desk to key in her number and sign the
stub.

  Blume went to the bathroom. Kristin was waiting for him on the street outside.

  His alcohol-fueled policeman’s swagger was slightly more pronounced as he walked down the laneway toward the brighter, noisier, and dirtier streets ahead. He’d make a move on Kristin before they reached the intersection.

  But he delayed a fraction too long, and when they reached the end of the lane, a large group of young people and two motorcyclists, conscientiously not going against the one-way signals on the road by driving on the sidewalk instead, caused them to separate for a moment, and when Blume turned around again, she had moved as if to go left and he as if to go right.

  “I’m going this way,” she said, in a tone that excluded all possibility of invitation.

  “How am I supposed to pay for the dinner? Can I see you again?”

  There, that was unambiguous.

  “I’ll phone you,” she said, with a smile that suddenly and very briefly revealed where future years would etch themselves into her face.

  “You don’t have my number.”

  “You’re in the book, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m ex-directory.” He started hunting his pockets for a pen and paper. He always, always had a pen when he was working. Now he didn’t.

  His bag was in his office, damn it. “I’m not in the book,” he repeated in case she had missed the danger of the situation. He had given Pernazzo his last card. What a fucking waste. He pulled out used tissues, plastic wrappers, scraps of paper no good for writing on, and dropped them on the wet ground.

  “Calm down, Alec. Just tell me your number. I’ll remember it.”

  Blume gave her his number. She repeated it.

  “OK, I’ve got that memorized. I have a great head for figures.” Without waiting for him to reply, she turned and walked off. She went through the noisy crowd like a white-sailed boat cutting through a darkening lake.

  It was only as he took off his jacket at home that Blume remembered the peanut butter label from Pernazzo’s kitchen. With a mounting sense of dread, he began searching his pockets. Surely he hadn’t thrown it away when he was looking for…

  Gone.

  22

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 10:30 A.M.