Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

“Of the Carabinieri. Do you have a problem with that, Commissioner?” Buoncompagno clumped away in his soft leather ankle boots toward the reception desk and the two women. As he arrived, they both moved across the room back toward Blume. Caterina touched his elbow, and said, “I think we should go. All three of us, if possible.”

Blume nodded.

Buoncompagno laughed good-naturedly. “Hold on there, you two! Just where do you think you are taking that beautiful young woman? Sweetheart, you don’t have to go with them. I’m in charge now.”

He leaned over and lightly clasped her arm.

Manuela gently removed her arm from his grasp, and with a sweet smile stepped forwards as if changing sides and going over to the magistrate. She put her hand flat against his chest, in what seemed like a protective gesture, then suddenly pushed the heel into his solar plexus. Buoncompagno staggered back with a gasp.

“Don’t you dare touch me again,” said Manuela.

“I didn’t!” Buoncompagno looked around for witnesses, but the Carabinieri seemed not to have been paying attention.

“I do not feel comfortable leaving a young woman alone in the company of male officers and a male magistrate only,” said Caterina. “So she’s coming with us.”

“You take orders from me,” said Buoncompagno. “I am in charge here. And I say she stays.”

Blume looked around him, caught the eye of a Carabinieri Maresciallo whom he half knew. The Maresciallo, whose age and experience gave him authority well beyond his modest rank, gave the tiniest of nods in the direction of the door, then called the magistrate over, and led him to the far end of the room.

Blume, Caterina, and Manuela walked out.

When they reached the street outside, Manuela turned to him to say, “Can I go now?” but Blume signaled her to be quiet as he made a phone call. She turned to Caterina and asked the same question.

“Sure,” said Caterina, watching Blume’s face for a reaction. “Stay available. Call me if you need help.” She looked over at Blume for confirmation, but he was too agitated by something he was hearing on his phone to notice.

“I am a fool,” he said, apparently forgetting completely about Manuela, and setting off at a fast pace, driving himself between a tourist couple who started after him in outrage. Caterina, weighed down by her bag and the three heavy notebooks inside, had to break into a short trot before she caught him up.

“I ignored Grattapaglia’s calls. I stood there like an idiot listening to that whore of a magistrate. Can you guess where he is, the Colonel he appointed, I mean?”

As Blume framed the question, Caterina knew the answer.

“At Treacy’s place,” she said. “That’s why Grattapaglia was calling you.”

“Yes, and Grattapaglia’s just told me he had to let the Colonel past, the dumb bastard. He’s going to pay for this in ways he can’t imagine.”

Caterina wondered what she would have done in Grattapaglia’s place.

“He could have called in others to help,” said Blume in reply to her thoughts. “I’m not the only superior officer he knows. I might as well have put a fucking traffic cone in charge.”

“Was Magistrate Buoncompagno there, too? At Treacy’s house?”

“Apparently so,” said Blume, slowing down his pace a little. “Buoncompagno. Can it get worse? By the way, I see you know about him, too. What act of corrupt incompetence did he visit on you?”

“Not on me personally,” said Caterina. “He archived an investigation that should have been kept open. We were on the point of breaking a ring smuggling in Romanian girls-this is from before Romania was part of the EU-and he just went and closed down the whole operation. Someone paid him off.”

“That’s pretty typical,” said Blume. “Six years ago, Paoloni-he’s not on the force any more, but he was a great cop…”

“I arrived a few weeks before Paoloni left,” said Caterina. “I remember him.”

“Right,” said Blume, slowly, not quite believing her.

“You’ve forgotten that, too. I arrived just after the killing of the young policeman… Ferrucci.”

“Right,” said Blume. “Of course.”

“I don’t expect you to remember. Obviously you had other things to worry about at the time.”

“No, no. I remember,” said Blume.

“Now you’re trying to be gallant.”

“Nope. I remember you. So, you remember Paoloni?”

“Yes.”

“I disagreed with some of the things Paoloni did, but he was a friend. Still is. People never really noticed how close we were, because we had different styles, and now, they tend to forget that when they talk to me about him. So try not to make the mistake of criticizing him or his methods when talking to me.”

“I didn’t say a word against him!”

“Yeah, but you were thinking it, and I’d hate to have an argument with you. You want to compare Paoloni with someone like Buoncompagno. A moral chasm between them.”

“I didn’t…” began Caterina, but Blume plowed on, quickening his pace on the downward slope of the Sisto Bridge as he did so.

“I’ll tell you a story about Buoncompagno. Six years ago, Paoloni and I were investigating the killing of an inspector from the Health Institute, a guy called Lazzarini, also worked as a natural scientist for La Sapienza University. He had been looking into dioxin levels in San Marzano tomatoes…”

Caterina stopped dead as Blume walked straight into the moving traffic, slapping his palm hard on the hood of a car that honked at him and giving it a kick in the side as it sped off. He still seemed to be telling the story of the San Marzano tomatoes as he reached Piazza Trilussa on the other side. Caterina watched him go, and waited for the pedestrian light to turn green. By the time it had, her Commissioner was already out of sight.

As he reached the other side of the road, Blume pulled out his phone and called Kristin Holmquist at the American Embassy.

“Alec!”

She sounded warm. He closed his eyes and imagined her standing there with her bright copper hair, her blue jeans, her white blouse, her smell of talc.

“I’m working an interesting case,” he said.

“Really? You want to tell me about it first, or shall we just skip to the part where you ask me to do some research for you?”

“Well, you know it’s not safe or practical to do this sort of thing by phone, so why don’t I just give you a name, and then maybe we can meet for dinner and compare notes,” said Blume.

“Get information and a date out of me, you mean?”

“I know, it is a terrible role-reversal for you, Kristin…” The scent of ginger and garlic from the Surya Maha Indian restaurant above him gave him an idea. “I’ll make dinner. This evening, my place.”

“What’s the name you’re interested in?”

“Colonel Orazio Farinelli, he’s a member of the Carabinieri. I know the name from somewhere. He’s just strolled in and taken my case away from me.”

“How did he manage that?”

“Investigating Magistrate Franco Buoncompagno, also known as the finger puppet. I don’t need you to look Buoncompagno up. I know more than enough about him.”

“You can never know too much,” said Kristin.

“I hate to disagree, but often I find myself knowing far more about people than I want to. Do we have a deal?”

“I’m not sure, Alec. You have not always been as helpful as we had hoped. And when I say ‘not always,’ I mean ‘never.’ ”

“That’s because I don’t like sharing info on my cases with an operative in a foreign embassy.”

“I’m not an operative, Alec baby. And you can’t go round calling your fellow Americans foreigners.”