Conor Fitzgerald: The dogs of Rome

“So, first Gallone, then you people at the Ministry, then an ordinary emergency call, in that order?”

“Yes,” said D’Amico. “Which is why I heard about it first, and you last.”

“So where is she now? The wife, or the widow as she now is.”

“She told the first unit-the one sent by Gallone-that she was removing herself and her child to her mother’s house. She gave an address. But didn’t Gallone say he was dealing with that?”

“He did say that, yes,” agreed Blume. “You can tell he’s handling it by the way he let the wife walk away like that. OK, Nando. You coming round here to coordinate with me anytime soon?”

“I was thinking of getting home. I’ll stay on call if there’s anything you need me to do,” said D’Amico.

Blume thought about it. For now, he didn’t want D’Amico to do anything.

“Just be here tomorrow morning. Before the meeting with Gallone,” said Blume, and hung up.

Blume walked out of his office. “Ferrucci, what have you got for me?”

Ferrucci, who had been bobbing up and down in his seat from enthusiasm, and showed no signs of tiredness, said, “I got a list of addresses, sir.”

“Whose?”

“Romagnolo’s mother’s place. Clemente’s office and… I got two so far. You need any more?”

Blume wondered if he had been overestimating Ferrucci. “That’s all you got?”

“Yes, sir.” Ferrucci went bright red.

“You could have used a phone book for that. What’s with the computer?”

“I was looking up Clemente, sir. I hadn’t finished.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“He worked for LAV-that’s the League Against Vivisection. He is the chairman of the Lazio section. Was the chairman. He sort of specialized in protecting dogs.”

“Meaning?”

“He campaigned against illegal dog fights. He’s been at it for a while. There are newspaper articles dating back at least as far as 1998. He was doing a documentary on it. Remember the operation last year against a dog fighting ring in Tor di Valle?”

Blume did, though it had involved the Carabinieri, not the police.

“He was behind that. Kicked up a big media fuss. His name’s all over the papers in that period.”

“Good. So we have a motive. Who was he doing the documentary with?”

“Taddeo Di Tivoli. He’s the host of a TV show.”

“I know the name,” said Blume. “But I don’t really watch TV. What else did you find out about Clemente?”

“He was thinking of going into politics, joining the Greens. That’s his wife’s party.”

“Right. Anything else?” Blume was beginning to believe in his young colleague again.

“No. But I heard the vicequestore was…”

At that moment, Paoloni came in and belched.

“Broad beans don’t agree with me,” he said and rubbed his stomach. “It could be the beginning of Favism. Go on, Ferrucci, you were saying: Gallone was what?”

Ferrucci, his voice rising a little from tension, continued: “I heard he had taken charge of questioning Romagnolo.”

“Or so he thinks,” said Blume. “Go on.”

“Well, I know Vicequestore Gallone doesn’t like becoming entangled

…”

“You can’t entangle the Holy Ghost, Ferrucci. Knotty problems just pass right through him,” said Paoloni.

“Well…” Ferrucci looked unhappy. “I realized it was unusual for him to, you know, work a case personally, and so I looked for a point of convergence between him and Romagnolo, see if there was some special connection that would explain his interest.”

“You ran a check on Gallone?” Blume thought his voice conveyed warmth and admiration, but Ferrucci flinched.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“I found one. They were at university together studying jurisprudence. She was a year ahead of him.”

“You looked up university records,” said Blume. “What made you think of that?”

“First I looked up police files, sir. Clemente, Romagnolo, and the vice-questore were tagged because they were members of a revolutionary group called Prima Linea at La Sapienza University.”

Blume and Paoloni both burst out laughing. Ferrucci looked worried, thinking it might be him they were laughing at.

“Comrade Gallone,” said Paoloni. “Who’d have thought it? I always figured him for a spoilt priest. Maybe he was one of those Catho-communists you used to hear about.”

Prima Linea was an echo from a distant past when the Communists really thought they might just make it. Blume was a child in another country when they were active, and Ferrucci had not even been born.

Blume tried to imagine Gallone in a combat jacket hurling Molotovs at the police he was later to join. Plenty of right-wing politicians and administrators had been in far-left movements in their youth. Even so, if he had kept it quiet, Gallone obviously felt vulnerable. What Blume found funniest of all was the idea that the vicequestore might ever have had an ideal. Or been young.

“Right. I’m filing that in my head for next time I need to compromise the bastard,” said Paoloni.

“Good work, Ferrucci,” said Blume.

“Ale?” said Paoloni.

“What?”

“I need to go for a drink in Trastevere, see who I can meet. You coming?”

Blume looked at his watch. It had just gone eleven. “You think?”

“You decide,” said Paoloni.

Blume had never had much street credibility. D’Amico had told him once it was because he would not compromise, but he knew it was his voice. His accent, acquired in the schoolyard, was perfect Roman, but a hint of something else lay behind it, a watchfulness, a lack of spontaneity or a slight reticence in his movements. Whatever it was, he put people on their guard.

“I think I’ll pass,” he said.

“Are you staying here?”

“I don’t know. I might try to steal some sleep, a few hours. Here or at home, I haven’t decided. But I’m on call if you need me.”

Ferrucci’s relief at Paoloni’s departure reached Blume like a softening in the air.

Blume said, “I want you to get in contact with Zambotto, give him the address to Clemente’s office, tell him to get over there, find a way of getting in. I’ll meet him there later. Tell him to wait for as long as it takes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Blume scribbled down the address of Clemente’s office, shoved it in his pocket.

“Then finish retrieving the essentials-car registration, relatives, friends, telephone numbers, Internet providers, name of bank, credit card transactions, all that sort of stuff. Also, see if you can get a copy of the Carabinieri report on that dog-fighting raid, first thing tomorrow. Go straight to the Court Records Office tomorrow morning. Let’s not waste time. Get the investigating magistrate to help you with it. It’s Principe. He’s good. He’ll help you if the Carabinieri decide to be unhelpful. And then go back home and go to bed. You get all that?”

“Bed?”

“Yes. Tiredness leads to oversights. People who don’t sleep make stupid mistakes.”

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 11:40 P.M.

Blume sat in his car in the underground garage and couldn’t sleep.

He had climbed into it with the intention of driving home, napping ninety minutes, and changing into proper clothes before going to Clemente’s office to join Zambotto. But he didn’t feel comfortable going home while Paoloni was still working his contacts.

He decided to put his phone on the dashboard and try to fall into a doze while he waited for it to ring. The oily smell of the dark garage and the soft seat of the police Lancia, which he had pushed back into maximum recline, seemed to invite sleep. But Blume stayed awake.

Again he checked the signal strength bars on his cell phone, even though he had received and made calls from the basement countless times in the past. The phone was showing a signal at full strength, but he could not rid himself of the idea that the tufa walls and concrete pillars were somehow blocking his communications with the outside world.