Costa 08 - City of Fear (24 page)

“… strange,” he began to say, then stopped.

Something had moved in the darkness. Something small. Something close.

He felt Rosa’s body brush his, saw the shaking beam of her flashlight edge toward the black void in the corner. The sound was coming from there.

Her screams tore through the darkness, like the cries that might have come from the dead Etruscans shuffling in drugged rapture from the chamber outside into the bloody, flailing arms of the Blue Demon.

In the unforgiving light of her flashlight beam lay a body. A middle-aged man in jeans and a shirt that had once been white. His mouth was open, his eyes black and sightless, staring up at them. Rats ran over him, making rustling sounds as they scurried beneath the fabric. His dead hand clutched at his chest and what looked like a wound there.

Rosa’s cries were wordless, mindless, and the small, enclosed space made them sound so loud Nic feared the walls might cave in. She dropped her flashlight, sobbing. Costa took her arm, coaxed her back into the first chamber, pushed her to the stairs, helped her up, one foothold at a time, listening as her choking sobs began to subside.

It seemed to take forever to climb the rickety wooden steps. When they reached the top, he could see that evening had arrived, a bright, clear Mediterranean night, lit by stars. Rosa’s cheeks were stained with tears. But she had control of herself again, and there was a glimmer of shame in her intelligent, pretty face that told him she wished he’d never seen her this way.

“We need to call Falcone,” he told her, and stepped outside. “Mirko?”

There was no one there. He took two more steps toward where the car ought to be. Then something pounced on him, and for an instant he wondered whether he’d met the Blue Demon itself. Costa found himself on the ground trying to defend himself from a flurry of vicious and furious punches. Something dragged the weapon from his shoulder holster. As he lay, aching on the hard earth, arm in front of his face, trying to make sense of this, his head turned and he saw Rosa next to him, hand to her mouth, where a faint trickle of blood had emerged.

A dark, foreign-looking individual was kneeling over her, his hand drawn back, recoiling from a punch. As Costa watched, he snatched the gun from the young officer’s holster, cast it to one side, and then, for no reason whatsoever, struck her across the face with the back of his hand, hard.

Costa stared up at the man who’d brought him to the ground. Behind stood a woman whose expression seemed much like those of the long-dead Etruscans he’d just seen on the walls of the tomb below. Confused. Frightened. Expectant.

“God punishes the curious,” the figure above him said, pointing a pistol straight into Costa’s face.

TERESA LUPO GAVE PERONI THE LOOK. THE ONE THAT said,
Only you could pick a place like this for meeting the mob
.

He’d taken her and Falcone to an intimate and rather expensive-looking restaurant called Charly’s Saucière only a few doors away from their apartment, on the same road, near the Lateran piazza. They were the only customers in an elegant dining room, depopulated, the elderly waiter told them, by the crisis in the city. He looked decidedly disappointed when Falcone ordered a single bottle of mineral water for the three of them.

Ten minutes later a dapper middle-aged man in a dark suit arrived. He gave no name, and didn’t ask theirs, but immediately ordered a glass of Barolo and a plate of foie gras with truffles as if he were a regular. He looked like a well-paid accountant or lawyer, though Teresa couldn’t help notice the missing two fingers on his left hand.

The visitor stared at Peroni as if she and the lean inspector next to her didn’t exist.

“We’re here to talk history? In company?”

“I’m training a new assistant,” Peroni replied, and Teresa only just stopped herself kicking his shins under the table. “You OK with that?”

“And him?”

“Management,” Falcone said simply. “I’m just here to pay the bill.”

“Good.”

The stranger watched the antipasti arrive. When the waiter was gone, he picked up a piece of fat goose liver with his fingers and shoved some into his mouth. Appearances could be deceptive. The suit, the shirt, the red silk tie … the immaculate black hair, dyed, and the mustache trimmed to perfection … Whoever this hood was, he’d spent a lot of money on his appearance. But he still couldn’t get rid of the peasant in him, not entirely.

“This conversation don’t exist,” the man announced. “Never happened. You not eating? Onion soup’s good. Snails. Steak tartare.” He tried a little more foie gras. “I’ll go for the steak. Come on. It’s not polite to eat alone.”

Peroni shook his head. “We lost our appetites somewhere along the way. It was that kind of day.”

The man glared at him, called over the waiter, placed his order, then waited until they were alone again.

“Shame. And once this is done, we’re even?”

Falcone didn’t even blink. Teresa looked at Peroni and the man and asked, “Dare I ask what kind of favor we’re repaying here?”

They didn’t respond. They didn’t even look at her, which was an answer in itself.

“Twenty years ago,” Peroni said. “A Greek couple called Petrakis. They were killed in Tarquinia. From what I gather, they’d been dealing dope. Maybe upsetting some people you know. I need to understand what happened and why.”

“Petrakis, Petrakis, Petrakis.” The stranger rapped his fingers on the table. “Greek, you say?”

“Toni …” Peroni sighed.

He did have a name and, judging by the flash in his eyes, he didn’t like to hear it out loud.

“We don’t have time. This is important.” Peroni nodded at the door.

“You know what’s going on out there.”

“Nothing’s going on. Thanks to you people, mainly. And the Carabinieri. Those idiots you got wandering around looking like they’re in a movie or something. Who are you kidding?”

“A politician and his driver have been murdered,” Teresa pointed out.
“We’re lucky someone didn’t die at the Trevi Fountain today. It may just be the beginning.”

Toni stopped eating for a moment, furled his heavy black eyebrows, and asked, “Wait. Are you trying to tell me these two things are linked? Some Greek bums who got what was coming to them years ago. And
this?”

“I assume you read,” Teresa snapped. “What’s going on now is the work of Andrea Petrakis. The son of the couple who got murdered. We’d assumed, at least some of us, that he was responsible for that, and a lot else besides. Now …”

“Now what?” Toni wondered.

“Now we’re not so sure.”

He sniffed the wine, making out he was some kind of connoisseur. “Greeks. What kind of kid would kill his parents? Never get that in Italy.”

Actually, Teresa thought, there were at least four cases she could name in which Roman offspring had murdered one or more parents.

“Is that what happened here?” Falcone asked.

Toni shrugged.

Peroni leaned over the table and slid the plate away. The hungry mobster held his knife and fork over the empty space. He looked hurt.

“We think what’s going on now has to do with what went on then,” Peroni repeated very slowly, very patiently. “We think it might get worse unless we can do something to stop it. To achieve that, we need to understand what happened. This is nothing to do with your business, Toni. It’s about people. Ordinary people. We need to bring it to an end. Quickly. With no one else dead.” He watched the man opposite, whose knife and fork stayed in the air. “Or do you like seeing Rome this way?”

The cutlery went down. Outrage flared in Toni’s dark, glassy eyes.

“Do not insult me, Peroni. I grew up on these streets. This is my city. More than yours.”

“Then help us.”

“With what?”

“The Petrakises,” Teresa answered quietly, wishing Falcone would do something, say something, instead of just watching this overdressed creep behave like a jerk. “Who killed them? And why?”

The plate with the half-finished foie gras went back over to his side of the table.

“You sure know how to ruin a guy’s appetite.”

Peroni swore and got to his feet. “Let’s go,” the big man told Falcone. “I was an idiot. I thought these scum still had an ounce of decency in them.”

“Hey! Hey!” Toni yelled. “That’s just plain offensive.”

There was a commotion from out back. A howl, as if someone were in pain. Then the old waiter shuffled out, his hands to his gray face, babbling about something on the TV.

Peroni strode through into the kitchen and watched what was happening. After a few seconds he went back into the dining room and called the others through.

They watched for only a minute or two. It was enough. The TV stations had found fresh footage of the outrage at the Trevi Fountain. It came from the cell phones of some of those who’d been around at the time. These shots were clearer than anything they’d seen before, much more vivid than the shaky video the Blue Demon had posted on the Web. It looked as if somehow the fountain itself had burst a blood vessel, soaking everyone nearby in gore. As if Rome herself were bleeding profusely into the street. People were screaming. A few were hurt, huddled on the ground, covered in dust and rubble, clutching shattered limbs.

Falcone turned to the mob man and asked, “Are you really going to walk away from all this? And feel
nothing?”

Toni grunted something wordless.

“Or are we back in the Years of Lead?” Falcone asked. “Where the mob plants bombs the moment any rotten politician stuffs money in your pockets?”

The man in the flashy suit shook his head, reached out, took a couple of stems of asparagus from a serving dish in the kitchen, and stuffed them in his mouth.

Without another word he went back to the table and picked up his glass.

“These are not ordinary times, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Teresa said, following him. “If we weren’t desperate …”

“She’s good,” Toni told Peroni. “The lady’s melting my heart.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Teresa wanted to scream.

“You ever see anything like that?” Toni interrupted. “Who could do that kind of thing? Why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she snapped.

He looked at her, and for the first time seemed interested. “You really think these dead Greeks might help?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Peroni replied patiently.

“Huh! You know what channel conflict is?”

“Marketing bullshit,” Teresa responded.

Toni shook his head. His hair moved oddly. She wondered if it was a rug. He picked up his fork and started eating again.

“No. It is not. Imagine you’ve been selling something, say”—he played with his wineglass—“some decent Barolo. You’ve been selling it for years. Spending time developing distribution, marketing. Establishing demand.”

Falcone poured himself another glass of water and raised it in a sarcastic salute.

“I’ll ignore that, Mr. Inspector. You buy it from the people you always did. Pay a good price too. Then one day you go out to sell some more and they’re there. The winemakers. The ones who took your money in the first place. They’ve opened up shop in your street, selling the thing you already bought from them. Selling it cheap. Saying, ‘Don’t buy from those old guys anymore. They’re yesterday. Buy from us.’ What’s a businessman going to do?”

They waited. He waved to the waiter, who came out with the steak tartare. The man looked as if he’d been crying.

“I’ll tell you,” Toni went on. “Hypothetically. First, you sit down and talk to them. You try to reason with them. You explain that this has been a good business for everyone. We’ve all made money. We never had no fallings-out. So why not keep it that way? We can cut a deal. Manage the margins a little, maybe. Act like decent human beings, the way grown-ups do—”

“This was dope, hard drugs. Not Barolo,” Teresa interjected.

“Wasn’t nothing, it being hypothetical and all. Then, if the talking
doesn’t work, you get a little more direct. You tell them how it’s going to be.”

He looked idly at the dessert menu, screwed up his face, and said, “Nah.”

“And when that doesn’t work?” she pressed.

“Then you go round and pop a bullet in someone’s head. Stop the trouble right in its tracks. Before it gets out of hand. That’s what I’d guess might happen, anyway. What do you think?”

“So Andrea Petrakis didn’t kill his parents,” Falcone mused. “Even though it says the exact opposite in an official parliamentary inquiry?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Toni replied. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, thank God. You know why?” He grimaced. “Because it’s messy. Usually, it ends in a war. People get angry. People get dead.”

Teresa cut in, “The Frascas died. Those kids in Tarquinia …”

“Who the hell were they?” Toni growled. “Bystanders. Children. What kind of people do you think we are?”

“Best we don’t go there,” she murmured.

“Your charm is short-lived, lady. Something else you need to know?”

“The war,” Falcone said. “You’re saying it didn’t happen.”

Toni clicked his fingers and grinned. “See,” the man said to Teresa. “These two guys are smart. They’re listening to what I’m
not
saying. If you want to make it as a cop, you could do worse than learn from Peroni. Though it’s a little late for a career change, I’d guess.”