Conor Fitzgerald: The dogs of Rome

“As for you,” he told the dog, “clean up your act.”

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 5 P.M.

Blume made one more attempt to contact Paoloni, and this time the phone was answered.

“I’ve been avoiding you,” said Paoloni. “But I’ve been doing some thinking, too. We need to talk.”

“I know,” said Blume. “But let’s put it off until tomorrow morning. I’ll call, you answer this time.”

“OK, but call as soon as you can. I want to get this over with.”

Blume thought he’d give Kristin a surprise and wait outside the embassy on Via Veneto for her. It took all of three minutes of standing outside the gates of the embassy with the dog before a car with three men inside pulled up and he was asked what he thought he was doing. Blume showed some identification, which they passed among them, looking at it carefully. One of them keyed the details into an onboard computer. Blume waited to be validated, and explained he had a girlfriend who worked in the embassy.

The man in the backseat said something, and the driver looked at Blume. “You’re an American,” he said in English.

“Yes,” said Blume. “Originally.”

“But you’re an Italian police commissioner, too. How does that work?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I bet. What’s your girlfriend’s name, by the way?”

“Kristin Holmquist.”

“Kristin? I know Kristin.” He gave him a big smile, and suggested he wait for her across the road at the Palace.

“Too plush for me,” said Blume. “But I’ll get out of your way.”

“Spoken like a real colleague. Nice dog, by the way.”

In the end, he called Kristin, told her to meet him at a place he knew on Via Crispi. A small bar five minutes away that didn’t mind his dog and charged the same for sitting as for standing.

“Alec! What a beautiful dog!” said Kristin as she walked up half an hour later. “That’s a Cane Corso, isn’t it? The Romans used them in battle. Did you know that? Who are you keeping it for? What are we doing here?”

“Change of plans. You like this dog?”

“I love him! He’s not mature yet, is he? What’s his name? I hope it’s something totally Roman, like Pertinax, or Pugnax or-I can’t think of any more, Domitian, Nerva, Aureliano.” She sat down and crossed her legs.

“Those are all good names,” said Blume. “Choose one.”

“You mean he hasn’t got a name yet?”

“No, no name. Perhaps you might give him one?”

“What do you mean?” said Kristin.

“I mean, you can have him. As a gift. You said you liked dogs.”

Kristin slowly closed her eyes, then opened them and seemed disappointed to see him still sitting there. “I don’t believe you just said that.”

“It was a joke,” said Blume. “I was just kidding. Hey, c’mon, really. Would I try to hand a dog off on you like that?”

“It was a joke?”

“Sure it was.”

“So what are you really going to do with the dog?”

Blume thought, blinked a few times, then said, “I had not really gotten around to-”

She interrupted him. “You weren’t joking at all, were you? You really thought I’d take the dog just like that.”

“Half-joking wholly in earnest. No, not even that. I mean, if you had said yes, that would have been cool… no, it wouldn’t have. OK, let me tell you about how I found him,” said Blume.

“I am not interested in that right now.” Kristin was standing glaring down at him, her face too bright in the sunlight for him to see, her hair a fiery red. “You just thought you could dump an unwanted dog on me like that. Like I have nothing better to do? By the way, apart from the fact you already know I’m going to the States in a few days, how often do you think I have to travel there?”

“I don’t know,” said Blume, who had not been there in ten years. “Three times a year? Four?”

“I go back once a month. Just how in the hell did you think I was going to deal with having a dog… I don’t even know where to start with this. You hate dogs. Right?”

“Well… Hate is a bit extreme.”

“You hate them. It was practically the first thing you said to me. So now you are trying to offload something that is hateful to you on me.”

Blume wished he understood his own psychology better.

“A dog is a living being, a responsibility, a thing you give in love, a sign of a long-term commitment. I was not even so sure about inviting you to dinner. I thought maybe it was too… domestic. That it might signal too much. Then you do something like this.”

What he saw as a miscalculation of timing and tone was turning out to be a big mistake, one of those blunders he made that told women things about him that he didn’t even know about himself. Blume had been here before, only with a different girl and no dog.

“Maybe you’d like to hear how I got this dog?” he tried.

No, it turned out she did not. Few things could interest her less. She brought up the subject of his parents’ mummifying study, his immobility, his depressing home and whole attitude. “I think we’re going to have to press the reset button, Alec. Keep it strictly professional.”

Then she walked away, leaving Blume blinking blindly in the sudden sunlight.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 10:30 A.M.

If Kristin thought his apartment was depressing, thought Blume, she should see Paoloni’s. In six or seven years, Paoloni had yet to find time to unpack the boxes he had brought with him when his wife threw him out, and he had rented a place two hundred meters down the street, convinced she’d soon see the error of her ways. Paoloni’s wooden chairs had once been used as weapons during a fight in a pizzeria. The owner donated them as a gesture of deep gratitude for Paoloni’s help in restoring peace. The room also contained a heavy leather armchair of the type to be found in the waiting rooms of certain government ministries.

“That’s a nice TV,” said Blume.

“Yeah, thanks. It’s full HD. You’re supposed to be able to see the sweat on players’ faces, the mud on the football, even the individual blades of grass,” said Paoloni. “Except the screen’s too big or my chair’s too close, so you get a bit seasick watching it. To see it properly you have to stand at the front door, where you are.”

“Right,” said Blume.

“I was thinking,” said Paoloni. “Let’s go out. There’s a sort of park and playing fields behind the church. We could go there.”

“Sure.” Blume had no problem leaving Paoloni’s apartment, but if he had known they were going to a park, he’d have brought the dog. He’d closed it in his bedroom, but the beast could probably break down walls with its forehead.

Paoloni chose to sit on a bench near a chain-link fence behind which two teams of kids were playing football on synthetic grass. A few fathers were shouting instructions from the sidelines.

“Would you have killed them?” asked Blume, getting straight to the worst point first.

“I don’t know. Probably. But I can’t be sure. See, I know Alleva. He’d probably have surrendered immediately when he saw us come in. That would have made it hard to do.”

“But you’d have done it? Put a bullet in him?”

“I’m not talking moral choices here,” said Paoloni. “I only mean it would have been hard for me to get away with it. The other guys with me, they weren’t there to carry out an assassination. If Alleva and Massoni resisted, they would not have asked too many questions about lethal force, but if Alleva surrendered immediately and I killed him, that would have been a problem.”

“Come on, Beppe. You don’t expect me to believe that. The four of you went with one mind and one intention. There’s no point in protecting them. And you’re all on film.”