Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

He’d dragged himself a body’s length along the ground when his hand touched something hard, metallic, and familiar. It was his Beretta. He knew it at once, like a neglected old friend. The nicks and imperfections on the grip, the tiny chip out of the hammer, the stickiness of the release catch, now on. It must have dropped out of Curmaci’s pocket. Almost without thinking, he scooped it into his hand, even though it impeded his movements. Curmaci would no doubt have noticed and would be waiting at the end of the tunnel, but even so it felt like a providential gift. Even better, the collapsed section of the tunnel was over. The cavern opened upwards and outwards, suddenly becoming a spacious chamber in which he could stand up. In front of him was a metal door with a sliding bolt like the one to the communal roof of his apartment in Rome, and behind that a larger room where white LED-bulb lanterns were hanging. He saw all this with absolute clarity after the darkness of the tunnel.

He walked into the cavernous space, tucking his Beretta into the back of his waistband under his shirt.

Curmaci was waiting for him, but at a distance, and half hidden behind a rock. Already he could hear Curmaci’s henchman wheezing and cursing as he emerged from the tunnel. It must have been even tighter for him.

‘It’s a limestone cave, ten or twelve metres high at the centre, shaped like a big tent. Most of the tunnel into it was already there,’ said Curmaci, switching on another lamp and lifting it up to reveal the last corner of the room with a camp bed and neatly folded blankets. The room contained piles of old newspapers, what seemed like a complete collection of Dylan Dog comics, chipped mugs, plates, a few food cans with faded labels. A bench-chair was fashioned from fruit crates, and was placed in front of a truncated section of a single log of heavy wood that served as a table.

‘The door and that log are far too big. How did they get down the tunnel?’

Curmaci shrugged. ‘Why do you care, Commissioner?’

‘Everything needs a logical explanation.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Curmaci.

‘But the metal door…’

‘Shh!’ said Curmaci. ‘Listen, this place has running water. You can hear it.’

A creaking sound of reluctant water came from the back of the cavern.

‘It takes a while to fill a cup, but you just leave one there. Basile stayed here for eight months once, during the Second Mafia War, venturing out only at night. But maybe you don’t even know who Basile is?’

Blume shook his head. How had Curmaci failed to noticed the missing pistol? Behind him, smelling even worse than before, stood Pietro, shotgun pointed straight at him. All that bulk and a shotgun through the narrow tunnel. It was an unwelcome marvel to see him here.

Curmaci inclined his head in the direction of the corner of the cavern, and Pietro waved the gun in Blume’s face and, finally, verbalized the death sentence. ‘Over there, into the corner.’

‘This also doesn’t make sense,’ Blume said over his shoulder to Curmaci, pleased to hear that the cavern deepened and echoed his voice, removing the tremor of fear he could feel in his chest. ‘All the way down here just to shoot me.’

‘That’s what Pietro said, too, but it does make sense. You’ll see in a minute, won’t he, Pietro?’

‘If you say so,’ said Pietro.

‘I do say so, and that should be good enough for both of you.’

‘What happened to Konrad Hoffmann?’ said Blume.

‘My idea for Hoffmann,’ said Curmaci, ‘though I need to check the logistics of this, is to ship what’s left of him back to Germany, throw the pieces into the same sewage pipes into which they poured his girlfriend all those years ago. What do you think, Blume? Will I make all that effort and run the risk of detection just so as to lay the grounds for an ironic story that I could tell to myself and two, three other people at most?’

‘I think you might.’

‘Is that how you see me? OK, Pietro, do your stuff.’

Blume moved back into the depths of the cavern in the direction of the water, drawn there by thirst as much as anything. Pietro came up behind him. Just as it was becoming too dark to see, Blume stopped dead, causing Pietro to lumber into him. Pietro stood back and aimed a vicious kick at the small of his back.

The kick was hard and sent him lurching forwards, but he exaggerated his fall. The floor was irregular and jagged, and he took his full weight on his left hand as he went down, but in his right he had the Beretta, and as the shotgun appeared over him, Blume fired directly into the space where Pietro’s stupid face should be, realizing as he did so that this was the first time he had ever killed a man, and surprised at how quick it was, and how easy. His would-be assassin did manage to utter a half-shout half a second after the gunshot. The acoustics of the cave seemed to combine the two sounds into a single angry roar that ricocheted off the walls, and returned with renewed vigour just as Pietro’s body hit the floor. Even his going down worked out nicely. He fell neither forwards nor backwards but crumpled in on himself, like a smokestack being demolished by expert engineers. After the gunshot and shout, the flop of his body on the stone was like a whisper.

Blume stood up, Beretta in hand, but Curmaci was there, a pistol inches away from Blume’s forehead.

Ah well, thought Blume.

Curmaci stepped back, and beckoned with the pistol. ‘Come over here and sit down.’

‘I think I’d prefer to be shot standing up,’ said Blume.

‘Who’s talking about shooting? Come over here, away from that shotgun. Go over there and sit down.’

Blume stayed where he was, his own pistol still in his hand.

‘Please?’ said Curmaci.

Blume started walking towards the makeshift seat, and Curmaci picked up the shotgun by its barrel and tucked it under his left arm.

Blume was shivering, because it was damp and ghastly in the cave and because he had just killed a man. He recognized the plastic LED lanterns now: from the home and garden section of IKEA. They were one of the last objects displayed for impulse buys before the warehouse section. Caterina had wanted one, even though neither she nor he had so much as a balcony, let alone a garden. There were four of them in the cavern. They shone pure white unto themselves, but bathed everything around them in shades of yellow and grey and did not nearly penetrate the darkness behind.

He was sitting underground with Curmaci. He was still holding his weapon, and Curmaci did not seem to mind. Their voices boomed and echoed as they spoke. He was pretty sure it was not a dream, but it didn’t feel very real either.

Curmaci popped the shells out of the shotgun. He pocketed them and tossed the weapon carelessly in the direction of the incongruous door at the entrance. He propped a foot on the log table, and contemplated Blume.

‘Was that your first time to kill a man?’

Blume nodded.

‘It’s not as hard as you’d think, is it? The first thing to do is to persuade yourself it is not a man, which will have been easy with that stinking goat Pietro. Easy for you, I mean. For me, it would have been a bit harder. He and his wife virtually brought up my boy along with their fat spoiled nephew, Enrico. Pietro, for all his faults, was like a father to his nephew Enrico, and like an uncle to my son. And you have just shot him dead. A single shot, that’s all you had, and that’s all it took. You didn’t pull the trigger again, which is not just a sign of your self-confidence, but also of your humanity.’

‘Obviously you left me just one round in the pistol.’

‘Yes. I took out the others. Then left it for you to find. You were hardly going to use it on me while Pietro was behind you, and you could not use it on him while you were in the tunnel.’