The Fatal Touch (37 page)

As it turned out, the buyer was a young man of about my own age, who did not look as if he had that much to spend either. I saw him the following Wednesday (not Thursday, then) pick up the painting and bring it to old Ramsauer and pay for it.

I went over and demanded to know what he intended to do with it. He looked at me in astonishment, and clutched his painting tighter.

“Are you an artist?” I wanted to know.

“No.”

“What do you want with that, then? It’s ruined.”

“It’s my business what I want with it, Paddy.”

I could have given him a clout there and then, but if he fell over he would have broken about a thousand objects.

“Take that back.”

“What?”

“You called me Paddy. Call me that again and you’ll need to put a toothbrush up your arse to clean your teeth.”

He put the painting on the counter and said, “Paddy.”

His eye tooth cut my knuckle when I hit him. He staggered backwards.

“Jesus. Mind the vase behind you,” I said. “It’s a bell krater.”

He obediently moved away from it, and I hit him on the nose.

He cupped his nose between his hands and shouted, “Fucking hell! That hurt! I am calling the police!” He was outraged, as if I had just made a terrible mistake. Then he added, his voice nasal and his eyes watering, “It’s not an original krater, is it?”

“Course not,” I said. I picked up the painting.

I walked out of the shop, then stood and waited for the young man to come out after me.

“Here, give it back. I won’t call the police, and I won’t say Paddy anymore.”

I handed over the painting. “I could restore it for you,” I offered. “For a fee.”

“I can restore it myself, thanks.”

“With what? The canvas is blooming. How do you get rid of that mold?”

“Freeze it.”

His reply stopped me dead. I was expecting him to say Dettol disinfectant and sunlight, which is what most people would have done back then. In fact, it’s a better method than freezing. But in those days freezers were a bit exotic.

“That’s clever,” I said.

“I’m clever,” he said. “Well, if your name’s not Paddy—and it had better not be after that—what are you called?”

“Henry. Henry Treacy.”

He put out his hand. “Well, Harry. How about you buy me a drink at the Lamb and Flag?”

“Henry, not Harry. You have a problem with names. What’s yours?”

“John Nightingale.”

He carried the blasted painting with ghastly precision . . . we drank pale ale and I said . . . In those days they had fires in the hearths of London and overflowing ashtrays . . . One is never as lonely as when . . .

The manuscript fell with a thump on the floor, and Caterina opened her eyes wide for a moment, turned off the bedside lamp. What was that thump? Manuscript, same sound as the gas made when he lit it. Waited for hours, then lit it. Poor Blume. Propped up like a zinc coffin, the bed tilted pleasantly back.

Chapter 29

“No. it’s half past one in the morning, Beppe. I don’t want to go to a McDonald’s,” said Blume, looking into his rear-view mirror for the tenth time.

Paoloni’s voice sounded both metallic and intimate as it came over the earpiece: “Some American you are. Do you want to meet?”

“Of course.”

“Do you want to know if you’re being followed or not?”

“I don’t think I am,” said Blume.

“Do you want to know for sure?”

Blume sounded his horn at an oncoming car he felt was driving too close to his side of the road, raised a finger as the other car flashed its lights, and swerved toward the bastard to force him over. “I suppose so.”

“You know the McDonald’s at the Agip station on Via Aurelia? Go there. You’ll be coming from Piazza Irnerio. So call me as you get to the piazza. Don’t bring the phone up to your ear or they’ll get suspicious, especially if they’ve tapped your service phone. You start making calls without them hearing anything, they’ll know you know. Use hands-free.”

“I’m already using a Bluetooth earpiece,” said Blume.

Paoloni asked Blume for his car make, color, and license, and they estimated meeting in half an hour.

A kilometer before the rendezvous, Blume called again.

Paoloni answered after half a ring. “I’m about 300 meters behind you. No sign of anyone. Now, just as you reach the turnoff for the Euronics warehouse on your right, hit your brakes twice.”

“OK, I’m there . . . now.” Blume tapped his brake pedal twice as he passed it.

“I see you. OK, you’re not going to turn into McDonald’s, though I am. Go straight past the forecourt, don’t even slow down. Go on to the next overpass, which is a mile ahead or a bit less. Use it to reverse direction and start heading back into the city. After the road sign marking the city limits, take the entrance road and another overpass to reverse direction again to get to the McDonald’s you’re now passing. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Blume pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. Five vehicles were parked as close to the door as possible; one, a white Audi Q5, was parked near the exit. That would be Paoloni.

Blume parked near the entrance and waited. Five minutes later the Audi drew up alongside him and Paoloni disembarked. Blume picked up the notebooks, climbed out of his car, and proffered his hand, but Paoloni punched him on the shoulder instead, saying, “None of the next thirty or so cars behind you reappeared on the ramp bringing you back here. Only two other cars took that entrance road and overpass in the five minutes after you. When you reversed direction down the Via Aurelia, they might have called it off. If they’re good, they won’t have sent a car onto the second overpass to follow you. If you had a tail, you’ve lost it for now, though they might pick you up again afterwards. I am assuming they exist, because it might just be that you’ve finally cracked. I’m starving. You can tell me who the bad guys are over a Big Mac.”

The harsh white light of McDonald’s did no favors to Paoloni, but all things considered, he was looking better than he had during his last days in the police force. He had put on a bit of weight in his face, and seemed to have developed a liking for sunlamps, for his skin was a bright glowing orange rather than the jaundiced yellow Blume remembered. Getting out of the police also seemed to have liberated his inner bling. Chains dangled from his wrists and he had taken to wearing rings on his thumbs and a flat silver link chain around his neck. He had sculpted his hair so that it stood like a bristly gray cube on his head. He was wearing a white sleeveless hooded training top, and his tattooed arms showed signs of weight training. The gym look was completed by Capri shorts with untied strings that dangled down his bare calves.

“You’re looking well,” said Blume.

“Thanks. Business is good. I should have left the force years ago.”

Blume stood behind a pot-bellied man in flip-flops who was speaking Russian on his phone. Paoloni placed himself in front of the Russian, who paused his conversation, said a few words, and hung up. A man in a porter’s uniform finished his order. Paoloni stepped up to the till, and the Russian followed and tapped him on the shoulder.

“I am in front of you.” He jerked a thumb behind him. The girl behind the counter glanced backwards in search of support from the kitchens.

Paoloni looked the Russian up and down, then gave him a light backhanded swat on the stomach, and wagged his finger.

“You’ve eaten at McDonald’s before, haven’t you?” He allowed the Russian to go in front of him, stood beside Blume, and said, “What are you having?”

“Anything that doesn’t begin with a ‘Mc,’ I think.”

Paoloni looked at the overhead menu. “Coca-Cola or Fanta?”

“Coca-Cola, please.”

As they took their seat next to a plate glass window, Paoloni said, “These people who you imagine are following you? You don’t think they want to shoot you too? Because we’re sitting like two goldfish in a lighted bowl here.” He flicked open his hamburger box, poured the French fries into the top flap, and ripped open two packets of ketchup.

Blume sipped his Coke and shook his head. “Uh-uh. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Paoloni caught a sliding disk of gray meat between his fingers and deftly reinserted it with ketchupy fingers into his bun. “OK, but first things first. Leporelli, Scariglia: it’s all arranged. I even met the two scumbags myself, and they are very keen to turn themselves in. Magistrate Gesti really annoyed the Ostia gang. Those two clowns will pay the price once they get to prison.”

“That is well beyond my scope of competence,” said Blume. “Where are they now?”

“Somewhere in Casetta Mattei.”

“They are not going to resist arrest or try to flee or anything?”

“That wouldn’t make sense.”

“What they did doesn’t make sense,” said Blume. “Why are criminals usually so stupid? Even the relatively clever ones seem to choose retards as associates.”

“It’s because they cannot advertise to get good people,” said Paoloni, with the air of a man who had spent some time considering the question. “So they have to depend on blood relations, which is no guarantee of excellence, or else on people they have always known from the neighborhood. But if they’re still living in the same neighborhood, chances are they’re not too bright.”

“Speaking of people who aren’t that bright, you hear about the hole Grattapaglia’s dug for himself ?”

“I heard that. He was unlucky. Of course, it’s very funny, too. A diplomat of all people. Can you make him the solver of some big case, make him look good? It’s all I can think of.”

“The thing they care most about now is the mugger who targets tourists and foreigners,” said Blume. “And we’re not getting anywhere with that. You haven’t got anything, have you?”

Paoloni licked a dollop of ketchup off a finger, then wiped the remaining orange stain onto the Formica of the tabletop. “Nope. Zilch. The only thing I can tell you is no one, and I mean no one, knows who this mugger is.”

“An outsider of some sort?”

“That’s the impression I get,” said Paoloni. “Definitely someone without a record. Works alone, too, which is weird—more a rapist’s profile. Now, tell me about these imaginary beings who are following you and why.”

Blume began with the Treacy investigation, skipping over most of the details and focusing on his meeting with Colonel Farinelli.

“Heard the name. Never met him, though,” said Paoloni. “Go on.”

Blume told Paoloni everything he thought was important. When he came to the part about the Colonel recording the two of them discussing the sale of the paintings, Paoloni interrupted him. “Were you thinking about it? You can tell me, you know.”

“I know I can,” said Blume. He swirled the ice cubes in his cup, then looked at the window, which the darkness outside and the brightness inside had turned into a mirror. “If I could use the paintings to catch the Colonel, then somehow still sell them, get a little extra, I don’t know. How bad would that be, given the context we work in? But thanks to Treacy’s notes, now I know they are probably worth little or not enough to justify the risk. So the temptation isn’t there anymore.”

Paoloni nodded understandingly and stood up. “I think I’ll have some McNuggets and a cheeseburger,” he said.

He was back a minute later saying, “The girl behind the counter says she’ll call me when the food’s ready. You’d think she’d bring it over. Doesn’t seem like she has much else on her hands, and she could definitely do with the exercise. I got a Happy Meal. Tell me more about Treacy and his notebooks.”

“I can do better than that,” said Blume. “Here. These are the notebooks themselves.” He slid them across the table.

Paoloni sucked a finger, and gingerly opened one and peered inside.

“It’s written in . . .?”

“English,” said Blume. “I told you.”

“Could be Arabic. You’re not expecting me to read these?”

“No. I want to leave them with you for safekeeping.”

“You told me the Colonel already has a copy. What’s the point?”

“I don’t want to be caught with them,” said Blume.

“So don’t get caught.”

“I don’t want them. They feel unlucky.”

“Alec! I’d never have guessed you were superstitious.”

“I’m not.”

“So you think the notebooks are jinxed, and that’s why you want me to have them?”

“I don’t believe in jinxes. I just don’t want them around for a while.”

“Fine, but your dog is more likely to read them before I do. So you’d better tell me a bit about what’s in them.”

Blume started talking about Treacy’s early life.

Paoloni was called for his Happy Meal and McNuggets. When he got back, he unwrapped his hamburger, flicked open the chicken box, and waved a magnanimous hand at the shining brown lumps inside.

“No thanks,” said Blume.

Paoloni bit into his hamburger. “You could eat this food even if you had no teeth,” he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then the back of his hand on the underside of the table, and said, “What the fuck do I care about Treacy’s early life? What do you care about it? Why were you even reading that?” He removed two slices of pickle. “What’s the basic structure?”