Conor Fitzgerald: The dogs of Rome

The killer stood up. The blood seemed to have gotten everywhere. It had spurted up the walls, some of it even to the ceiling. He spat into Clemente’s clouding eye.

“I win,” he said.

Stepping over Arturo Clemente, whose thrashing had quickly decreased in intensity to become no more than brief jittery movements, the killer made his way down the corridor. After opening a few doors he found the bathroom, and came back carrying some white towels. Perhaps he would not need them. Clemente’s powder blue bathrobe had soaked up the mess below him and turned imperial purple.

The killer crouched down, balancing four towels on his left arm, the galvanized rubber grip of the knife nestled comfortably in his right fist. Clemente’s face presented itself in profile, though most of his body was turned upward, set quite correctly for the morgue position. After a moment’s consideration, he pushed the point of the knife in hard at the temple, and deftly twisted it with a flick of the wrist as he withdrew. Almost at once the twitching stopped. He half wiped the blade on the top towel, then stood up and walked over to the door and drew a deep breath. He was all right, but he had not expected blood to smell so strong. His hands reeked as if they had been holding fistfuls of dirty coins. He placed the towels on the floor, then took one from the top of the pile, rolled it up and pushed it against the bottom of the door. He repeated the operation with the others.

Returning to the bathroom, he closed the toilet seat and placed the knife on it. He noticed it still had stains near the grip. He took off his white tracksuit and examined his clothes underneath. The front of his v-necked football shirt had caught a few flecks, but it just looked as if he was a messy eater. His gray slacks seemed fine. He stripped down to his underpants, and enjoyed the relief from the heat. He dropped the stained tracksuit on the tiled floor, which, he noticed, was already wet. Running the water in the washstand, he delicately dabbed at dark patches on his short-sleeved shirt. Cold water for chocolate and blood, his mother used to say. When the stains did not wash, he allowed himself more water and a little ordinary soap. Even if he ended up wearing a visibly wet shirt, people would just assume it was sweat, or that he had deliberately soaked himself at a drinking fountain to stay cool.

He started sliding the belt out of the loops in his trousers, removed the Kydex sheath, then relooped the belt. He was disappointed with the cheap sheath, which he had bought separate. But the knife, a Ka-Bar Tanto, was magnificent. He picked it off the toilet and brought it to the washstand. As he rotated it under the running tap, the stream of water struck the flat of the blade and spray shot out sideways and backward. Cursing, he leapt back, turned off the water and checked to see if his clothes had been hit. He resheathed the knife and dropped it on the tracksuit on the floor.

He splashed water all over his face, hands, arms, neck, and chest. He found a patch of blood on the side of his neck, but it wasn’t his. Bending his head further down into the sink, he allowed the cool water to wash over his head. When he felt relaxed, he stood up, eyes closed. When he opened them, he saw that his wet hair was dripping bright pink droplets onto his face, lips, and shoulders. He hunted around for shampoo. He had to scrabble his way through the whole medicine cabinet on the wall behind him before he found some, though it was a brand he had never even heard of.

He double-checked the bottle to make sure it was shampoo, then poured some onto his palm and sniffed at it suspiciously. It smelled like expensive face cream. He touched it with a finger, then held up his finger and examined it. Satisfied, he rubbed it into his hair, and used the hand shower in the bath to rinse. Then he took off his socks and shoes. He balled his socks and rinsed his shoes thoroughly. They would be wet on the inside, too. He got dressed again, leaving his tracksuit, shoes, and wet balled socks on the floor. He needed something to put them into.

He took his knife and padded out of the bathroom barefoot, victorious but unsure what to do with the freedom of the house. The kitchen was off to his left, and he entered it. A high window looked directly across over the courtyard and afforded a clear view of Building D to the right. No more than seven meters away, standing on a balcony, a woman, taking a break from house work, was leaning on the rail smoking. Her eyes seemed fixed on him as he stood there in his underpants staring back, but she registered no interest or surprise.

Taking some money struck him as a good idea, but the kitchen was an unlikely place for cash, so he moved to the bedroom. As he entered, his reflected self walked toward him, causing him to freeze in midstep until he realized he was looking at four full-length mirrored doors on a built-in wardrobe.

He slid open a mirrored door and was confronted with a row of dresses, skirts, and dress suits hanging on a rail. He was about to move on to the far side of the wardrobe door when curiosity got the better of him and he pulled open one of the drawers fitted into the lower half of the compartment. It was filled with women’s underwear, mostly silk and expensive, but some of it ordinary cotton. He stretched an arm into the drawer and ran his hand between the piles of silk. He pulled some of them out, pulled down a handful of summer dresses and buried his face in them. Some of them smelled like his mother’s had. Others were different.

It was a pity the wife was away. He liked the idea of having a woman at his mercy now, begging, sobbing quietly. But he would not take advantage. He would be magnanimous.

He opened Clemente’s side of the wardrobe, located the sock drawer, emptied it, did the same with the next drawer and the next, but found no cash. He selected a nice fresh pair of socks, clambered onto the bed, lay on his back, feet in the air, and pulled them on.

He pushed the pile of sharply folded sheets off the bed, and pulled the mattress off the bed to reveal a lattice-wood frame, unsuitable for hiding anything. Then he slit the latex mattress right down the middle. It split like a mozzarella, but the inside was like the outside, and gave up no trea sures.

He negotiated his way up the corridor and over and around the corpse. He spotted Clemente’s wallet lying on the floor. He hunkered down, stretched out a hand, and took the wallet, only to find it was sticky with blood underneath. He stuck it into his pocket anyhow.

He checked out the living room, threw the sofa cushions about a bit. They had an old TV and a VCR. He didn’t think anyone used VCRs anymore. The room had three windows, and was bright. He was unimpressed by the modernist paintings on the walls.

He went into the next room, which turned out to be a child’s bedroom.

The bedspread had a picture of Winnie the Pooh. The child’s books were neatly stacked. He sat down on the bed and looked around him, then stood up, smoothed the bedspread flat, patted the cushion, and left, closing the door gently behind him.

Moving past the corpse down the corridor, he entered the room opposite the front door. It was a study. The first thing he noticed was Clemente’s Acer flat-screen monitor. Sleek, black.

The glint of coins in a bowl caught his attention. He took a handful and was about to stick them in his pocket when he noticed many of the coins were foreign, and included an American silver dollar commemorating the bicentennial. Heads or… eagles. He flicked it once. It came down wrong. He flicked it again. Heads. Good. Then he pocketed it.

A gray Champion backpack sat on a chair. He unzipped it, emptied the contents on the desk. A book on flowers, a brown apple, crumpled cartons of juice, a sweatshirt. He went back to the bathroom, retrieved his bloodied tracksuit and socks, stuffed them into the backpack, and slipped on his shoes, then returned to the study.