David Wishart - White Murder

‘As good as Pegasus was?’

‘Pegasus is dead. However good he was, now I’m better.’

‘You think now you’ve another chance with Felicula?’

‘That bitch can go to hell. Pudens is welcome to her, plus whatever stud she takes up with next.’

‘Yeah? You’ve got another girlfriend?’ His mouth closed like a trap; and that was unexpected. I’d touched on something there. Only thing was, I didn’t know how or what. I started again. ‘Okay. Let’s assume you didn’t kill Pegasus. Who do you think did?’

‘No one.’

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘You asked, Corvinus.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve answered. No one. Maybe he killed himself. Maybe it was an accident. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares?’

‘He was stabbed in the back. That was no suicide, and it was no accident.’

Laomedon shrugged. He was still grinning. ‘Suit yourself. He’s dead. That’s all that matters to me.’

‘Why did Felicula dump you?’

The grin faded. ‘She didn’t dump me, Corvinus. Nobody dumps me, boy. I walked.’

‘That isn’t how she tells it.’

‘I said. She can go to hell.’ He took his feet off the desk. ‘So can you. Pegasus is dead, and that’s all I care about. Now get the fuck out of my stables.’

‘Your stables?’

His face was purple under the black. ‘Piss off, Corvinus!’

We were both standing now. ‘Did you kill Pegasus?’

‘Not me. I wish I had.’

‘Then you know who did.’

He opened his mouth – and stopped. Then he laughed. ‘Maybe I do at that, boy,’ he said. ‘Maybe I do at that. But then, I’m not telling, am I?’

There wasn’t anything more to say. I left, with my brain buzzing.

The Circus was just north of the Aventine, so I could kill two birds with one stone here: check up on this new guy Cario, as well as report in to Cammius, and maybe – if I was lucky – catch the glee club baritone Silvius to confirm that Uranius had been where he was supposed to be the afternoon of Pegasus’s murder.

That talk with Laomedon had left me with more questions than answers. Sure, the guy had hated Pegasus so much you could almost see it coming out his ears, and Felicula had been right when she’d said that ninety-nine percent of the bastard was on the surface; but there was still that one percent to be accounted for, and whether he was the murderer or not by his own admission he knew more than he was saying. That needed thinking about.

The weather had picked up, it was another bright spring afternoon, and the stalls area in Cattlemarket Square was heaving with cheerful punters. There was a knot of them at the corner of the Altar to Unconquered Hercules – that’s a popular place with street performers, because they get the crowd flow to and from the Velabrum – and I stopped off to see what the centre of interest was.

It turned out to be a dark-skinned man, maybe a native Egyptian, with a folding table and what looked like three thimbles. The thimbles were upside down and he was shifting them around, sliding them past each other into different places in the line almost faster than my eye could follow. I watched fascinated: I hadn’t seen anything like this before, and from the attention the punters round him were giving they hadn’t either. The only thing missing was a point to the performance. Sure, it was slick and I couldn’t’ve moved my hands that fast myself, but where juggling’s concerned Cattlemarket Square punters are a demanding audience, and anything less than four balls in the air at once with maybe a meat cleaver for variety won’t draw even a passing glance.

Then the guy stopped shifting the cups and waited. One of the punters – a grizzled old tunic who’d been keeping a sharp eye on things – laid a copper coin on the table and tapped the middle thimble. The Egyptian lifted it, the old guy swore and the crowd laughed. He picked up one of the end thimbles, and there was a pea under it. The copper coin disappeared quick as a flash into the Egyptian’s belt-pouch, he covered the pea with the thimble and started the routine again.

I grinned. So. It was a gambling game. Illegal, of course, outside the Winter Festival, and if the market patrol turned up the guy’d be in for a thumping, but I’ve never been against private enterprise and the odds seemed fair enough. I folded my arms and settled down to watch.

He was good, the Egyptian. With professional gambling, you’ve got to judge your punters to a hair: make them think they haven’t got a chance and they give up and drift off; lose too often yourself and you might as well take up humping baskets of vegetables for a living. I reckoned the win/lose ratio was about four to one, which kept the audience and still netted a pretty fair return. The only thing was, I couldn’t really see how the punter, given a reasonable sharpness of eye, should lose at all. The game wasn’t like dice, it didn’t depend on chance: you saw the pea go under, and whatever the guy did with his hands all you had to do was watch the thimble. Simple.

I moved forwards politely. At street level, Rome’s a working-man’s city, and tunics tend to remind pushy purple-stripers of that fact any chance they get, but the weather was still working its magic and the crowd let me through without too much cursing.

‘You mind if I have a go, granddad?’ I said to the grizzled tunic who’d been monopolising the betting.

‘Nah.’ He tightened the drawstrings on his purse with disgust. It wasn’t empty, but I’d bet it’d got a lot lighter since he’d opened it. ‘Go ahead, son. I’m not making anything of this. My eyes aren’t what they were.’

I glanced at the Egyptian, although maybe ‘Egyptian’ wasn’t right after all: he was the wrong shade of brown, for a start, and the features were unusual. ‘Go ahead, pal.’

The guy lifted a thimble to show the pea. Then he whipped the thimbles around in a complex series of switches, crossing his hands over occasionally, sometimes shifting a thimble without actually moving it. He stopped.

This was money for old rope. I took out a copper coin, laid it on the table and tapped the left hand thimble, the one with the pea underneath. The guy lifted it…

No pea.

The crowd laughed, and the grizzled tunic chuckled through his gums. Shit! I’d’ve sworn that was the one! There was even a tiny chip out of the rim that I’d marked when the pea went under. Only obviously it wasn’t.

The ‘Egyptian’ grinned at me, lifted the middle thimble to expose the pea and pocketed my copper piece. ‘You another try, sir?’ he said.

‘Yeah. Sure.’

I was watching a lot more closely this time. I lost again.

I lost five times in a row. The sixth I only won because I didn’t bother following the pea and picked a thimble at random. The crowd loved it: they love anything where a purple-striper gets rooked.

‘One more, sir?’

Well, fractured Latin or not he knew his business. He was too good for me, anyway; although I still couldn’t see how he worked the scam. ‘No, I’ll quit while I’m ahead,’ I said. ‘Thanks a lot, pal. It’s been very interesting.’

He gave me a grin with perfect teeth behind it. I put my purse away, let someone else take my place and moved out through the parting ranks to the Square proper.

Most of the access gates to the Circus would be closed and locked, but the officials’ entrance at the starting end next the main processional adit was open, and the public slave on porter duty told me that Cammius and Casio were busy with the boss. I slipped him a copper or two from the few the pea-and-thimble juggler had left me with and asked him to let them know I was there and that I’d like a word when they were free.