SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (9 page)

»But it truly is some harsh climb-down if one loses the whole Toscana to this democratic riff-raff! Is there maybe also a
Signora
Savoyen?«

»Not really ...«

Antonio let go of his tail all of a sudden and yanked his head up.

»Aaah, there comes our hostess!«

Up the stairs a ghost of tremendous beauty appeared. She was a blue-point-burmese. With her crème-white body and the dark badges on her head, ears, tale and legs, her silky and angora-like fur and her sapphire-blue eyes she seemed to be arisen from a wonderful dream. The snow-white paws were in contrast with her smoky-gray legs like th
ey had been drawn with a ruler.

»Samantha,
tu regina della notte
!«
Antonio shouted with a light cheer in his voice.

»Antonio,
tu bel uomo
!« the pretty ghost replied and pattered down the stairs with bouncy moves. On the scarlet carpet, which was tightened with brassy hooks at each of its sides, she looked like a shot of
whipped cream in tomato paste.

»Perfidious you, where have you been so long? I came to the conclusion that one of those fashion icons caught you, stuffed you and used you as draped jewelry on an
avant-garde
hat. And who is this gentleman with the wise eyes next to you?«

As soon as Samantha had reached the end of the stairs, the both of them greeted each other in the tried and tested way of the in-crowd wi
th a cheek-to-cheek-kiss.

»This is my friend Francis«, Antonio said. »Some kind of spiritual kinship implies that we must have gotten along really well in a former life.«

With a sweet smile he turned towards me.

»And this is the legendary Samantha, Francis, the
Signora
of this house. She’s the only one the Prince is living with.«

I believed to see a hint of a smile in Samantha’s beaming blue eyes when Antonio introduced me as his »new friend«. Had the good Lord given me the ability to blush, in this moment I would have been redder than a volcano at its highest operating temperature. I lost my bearings so much that I would have
loved to vanish into thin air.

»Nice to get to know you, Samantha«, I said. »It’s true, Antonio and me, we’ve become good friends in the last couple of hours. And with friends I mean, well, friendship as such, in other words, friends who share thoughts or hang out together, hanging out as
friends,
friends like in, lets say, having dinner maybe or sleeping, oh, uhm, well, you know sleeping as such, like in, how should I explain that, real resting, just lying down,
I mean
...
«

She burst out in broad laughter.

»Your friend seems to be pretty worried about the correct image of his sexual orientation, Antonio.«

»Yeah, that’s one of his kinks. He says he’s old-fashioned. Though I always believed us Romans to be old-fashioned with all this old bombast surrounding us. But no worries, actually he’s a detective ...«

Antonio began to tell her about the sad circumstances of our encounter and exposed my assumptions and theories regarding the murders in every detail. Samantha was very fond of my observation skills. Even more so she was impressed by the odyssey, which had brought me to her wonderful metropolis. Although she seemed to be the blessed luxury pet of an old man, she was neither unworldly nor did she lack sympathy for her brothers and sisters outside her upper-class home. She had already heard about the monstrosities. Therefore she encouraged me to solve this case as soon as possible and offered all
she could do in order to help.

For now this help meant giving us a place to spend the night because Antonio and I just couldn’t take any more. Samantha led us up the stairs to the second floor of the Palazzo, where we were told to be able to sleep without being bothered. On the way there we passed another parlor, where we saw the man of the house. The old man with shoulder-length snow-white hair was sitting in an armchair, tossed a full wine glass in his hand and smoked a big cigar. He was surrounded by quite a couple of candelabra with burning candles, which shone on his ancestors on the wall. Savingly, he sipped his red wine and smiled to himself. An old phonograph on an ancient dresser supplied him with
La Traviata,
quite the appropriate music according to his mood, which fed
on the glory of long gone days.

We went upstairs, wandered through dark halls, and eventually entered a room, which contained velvet cushions, scratchers and loads of toys for our kind. In a nutshell, Samantha’s can opener, rapt in the golden times of his ancestors, did more than is humanly possible
in order to keep his pet happy.

I can’t remember anymore how Antonio and I sank down on the cushions and dozed off.  No clue if it was due to pure imagination or real memory, but before I went off to dreamland, I believe to have seen Samantha’s face above me. At first it radiated its familiar kindness, but before I closed my eyes, it suddenly took on a strange harshness.

In my dreamland it didn’t get less strange. I found myself on another plane, again on my way to Rome. The funny thing was that, like a human, I was sitting upright on my butt. I was even strapped! The machine was deserted, and the sunlight above the fluffy carpet of clouds shone through the plane windows with such intensity that my eyes hurt even though they were screwed up. From the speakers resounded
La Traviata
, rough and now and then in
terrupted by various scratches.

Suddenly Gustav showed up next to me. He was on his way to the bathroom, and trotted past me like a circus bear. When he noticed me, he smiled his witless smile.

»I got one of your kind at home!« he said, winked at me and moved on.

I turned my head to the right and noticed that there was another human inside the cabin except for Gustav. On the neighbor seat sat Antonio’s former master. Although I had never seen him before, I recognized him instantly. He wore a pastel-colored disco suit from the Seventies with a wide lapel and flared pants. The half unbuttoned shirt showed off his hairy chest, on which a silver cross dangled. Somewhere I had seen this before. The Rolex on his wrist, the golden cufflinks and big dark sunglasses, which hid the eyes perfectly, complet
ed the image of a Roman macho.

The flawlessly tanned man held a thick cigar in one hand, and nipped red wine from the glass in his other hand. Doing this, he smiled to himself, abstractedly, as if he wasn’t above the clouds but above everything earthly. Gradually, certain uneasiness began to build up inside me.
Soon enough, I found out why.

My eyes wandered past the guy next to me, sort of zoomed out of the plane’s window and reached the outside. We were in the final descent; I was able to see a lot of details. In consternation, I noticed that we weren’t heading towards Rome, or towards any other Italian city. For sure, here also everything was bathed in sunlight. But instead of Southern pastures, we dashed towards a skyline landscape that trended to the horizon. The sea of high-rises towered up the steal-blue sky like an artful composition of countless building blocks. Although the buildings stood side by side, every single one of them seemed to have their own distinctive face. My initial conster
nation turned into pure horror.

I found myself caught in a nightmare scenario which had been broadcasted around the globe billion fold, and which drew closer to me at breathtaking speed, choking me. The destination of our flight was New York, namely Manhattan. The front line of the high-rise-family, the twin towers, stared at me like long-decayed relatives that somehow came to life again. They became bigger and bigger, higher and higher, and we flew towards them relentlessly. The mirrored facades reflected the piercing light, causin
g a burning pain in my retina.

My pulse rate by now reminded of the rhythm of a drum solo. My whole body shivered and I tossed and turned in my seat. Of course I knew what was about to
happen a few seconds from now.

Then I heard this sound
...

I averted my eyes from the towers and looked at the clear sky. Something black sheered up very fast. At first it was just a vibrating spot in the infinity of the blue firmament, but then I recognized Antonio, who was flying towards us like Superman or maybe Batman. While flying he also seemed to rotate in a couple of full turns. In doing so, he laughed triumphantly, as if he actually was a comic hero who was about to save the earth in the nick of time. He came closer and closer, and I saw that his wedge-shaped head had assumed the shape of missile head. With a loud crash he pierced through the plane window and landed, carefully
targeted, in his master’s lap.

Outside the scenario suddenly seemed like spirited away. The sun again was petting fluffy fields of clouds; harmony seemed restored. My neighbor’s hair flapped wildly in the puff of air from the hole in the window. The fine gentleman hadn’t let the incident interfere with his meditative mood. He still smiled mildly behind his dark sunglasses, calmly nipped his red wine and now lovingly caressed his pet. I also calmed down a little due to the restored chime, although I just wasn’t able to grasp the last minutes’ absurdity. Yeah, when I looked at snuggled up, contentedly purri
ng Antonio, I somewhat relaxed.

But then the lonely passenger ripped the glasses of his face, grabbed Antonio by his neck and violently, like it was a restive screw cap, turned his head towards me so I could see his profile. Instead of the ear there was a gigantic hole in the black fur. Through the open skullcap I could look right at the rosy shimmering brain. A flush of blood and some slimy material oozed out of it, ran down the Oriental’s throat and wetted his master’s pale pants. The grotesque of this sight was that Antonio’s beaming green eyes still moved and that despite all this he still kept his foxy smile on his snout.

»We have too many of your kind at home, Francis!« the man s
aid and raised his glass at me.
At the same moment Antonio burst in thousand p
ieces in a deafening explosion.

I
t would hardly surprise anyone if I said that I woke up from this nightmare yelling and crying. But that wasn’t the case. Instead totally reasonable sounds wakened me, though so subtle that they were audible only for the hypersensitive, hunting-tested ears of my species. Some rustling and crackling, almost unhearable and mysterious. The visions still in my mind, I looked around the dark room. Antonio had snuggled down in the cushion next to me and apparently shifted from one sleep phase to another. He neither snored nor farted like it appertained for an adonis in any situation, and of course he looked gorgeou
s even when he was fast asleep.

The room door stood ajar, and through it pale light shone on the floor in the shape of a fan. The strange sound also came from somewhere behind the door. I must have been sleeping for a couple of hours because forgotten were the strain of traveling and former tiredness. After a little stretching which equally lubed all of my muscles and strings, I sneaked towards the doo
r and risked a glimpse outside.

In the matte light of an ancient carriage lamp I could see Samantha at the stair head. She stood right beside the elevator cage and nervously pattered back and forth on the marble floor. Doing this, her eyes never seemed to let go of the lower level underneath the winding staircase. Without a noise, as if I was hovering on air cushions, I left the room and approached her from behind. Then I stopped at her back and reduced breathing to a minimum so that she couldn’t hear me. I wanted to see what she saw, and so I also got the lower level in my
sights.

The glimpse through the halfway open door to the Prince’s room offered an insight, which was fairly strange, if not to say sensational. The old man had taken off his dressing gown and was changing clothes. This very fact was weird enough at so late an hour – I guess it had been about three or four a clock in the morning. Even stranger though was this new clothing or should I say his costume. Of course the Prince was part of an aloof elite, and of course it wasn’t that strange that a lonely old man did strange things now and then. Still, I found this whole masquera
de to be as bizarre as it gets.

The Prince wore a Fin de siècle tailcoat with almost floor-length laps, white silk shirt and a giant bow tie. Now he only needed to put on a black cape, don a topper and ... While I imagined this, it be became reality! He grabbed a cape and a hat from a stand and completed his gothic outfit. Now he stood there like Count Dracula, apparently looking for the glass he put vampire teeth and some denture cleaner in, or for a cozy coffin with a heating blanket. However, his glazed eyes apparently seemed to be looking for something inside the room. Suddenly he rushed forward, found a vintage walking stick with a golden handle in the shape of a lion’s head, slipped on some white velvet g
loves and put on a black mask.

I reckoned that the Prince was heading to some costume party. From experience, parties like that usually come to an end at this late hour. I was about to slap nervous Samantha, who was still sitting in front of my nose, on her shoulder and ask her for the answer to this mystery, when suddenly there was another link added to this chain of weirdness.