Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

The scene vibrated and faded as something seemed to cleave his head in two. The pain, too intense to remain in the one spot, rushed down his body, first as a boiling, then as a freezing sensation, as if the blood in his neck, spine, coccyx had turned to ice slush. He noticed his feet planted firmly on the ground, and felt pleased, especially as the ground seemed to be swinging upwards.

Another catastrophic and savage blow came racing out of nowhere, and this one frightened him, because it was the penultimate. He would not survive a third like this. He moved his hands, just for the sake of it, and felt millions of tiny spheres that tickled and jabbed his palms, like pins and needles, only more pleasant, like lying on a white sand beach, and he realized he must be on the floor already.

After what might have been several months, and certainly a good many hours, Blume was reluctant and tearful at the idea of returning. As he left the warm darkness and was dragged back into the present where unwanted light pressed hard against his eyeballs, he began to shiver. He kept his eyes shut and groaned. Distant voices gave commands, but he refused to hear them. A less distant foot gave him a kick, and he could smell the leather, the sock below. It was touch and go about weeping.

“Don’t do anything. Anything at all. I will shoot this woman straight through the forehead. Did you call any backup?”

Blume opened his mouth to reply, not sure what he intended to say. It made no difference since the words that came out were incomprehensible even to him.

“Speak in Italian,” ordered the Colonel. “But I’ve got your phone. Last call you made was almost an hour ago. Last one you received was twenty minutes ago. It looks like no one else is coming.”

Blume said something else, and lay there wondering what it was. Water, perhaps. He may have asked for water.

The Colonel ordered him into an armchair. For a while he failed to understand the idea, since he could not see any armchair, then the Colonel’s foot showed it to him. When he finally located it, cracked, leathery, and inviting, he was moved to great gratitude and crawled over, and heaved himself into a sitting position.

Reality continued to impinge upon his senses. A deep pain began not where he had been hit, but in a fold in the center of his brain, and pulsed outwards.

This is going to be some motherfucking headache.

“If you don’t stop bleeding soon, you won’t feel it for long,” said a voice with an accent.

“Speak in Italian you two,” ordered the Colonel.

Blume frowned. He was speaking his thoughts. He peered across the room. Nightingale was still there, so was the woman. They were still framed in the same taut, expectant pose they had had when he came into the room all that time ago. He put his hand to the back of his head and dabbed it in his soaking wet hair. If he had been bald like the Colonel, maybe all the blood would have flowed away and he would be dead.

Thank God for hair. He felt tears of joy.

“I seem to have knocked you stupid, Commissioner,” said the Colonel, who was holding his pistol upwards, almost as if he intended to put it into his own mouth. “Try to talk sense. Why are you here alone? You always need at least one other person to help you. I’m without my Maresciallo, and it’s almost impossible. Luckily, these two were together when I found them at Nightingale’s apartment. Then we traveled over to the gallery to pick up Treacy’s flattering portrait of himself. Nightingale was kind enough to do all the driving.”

Blume looked at the portrait again. The face had been scrubbed and dissolved away, the blond hair remained. He looked at another painting, lying discarded on the floor, a colorless smudge running diagonally across its surface. There was another and another. Paintings from the gallery, from Angela’s house, from here. Beside them, in an ignored pile, were the charcoal cartoons, pen and wash sketches, and drawings. Simple, direct, to the point and without layers. They were incapable of hiding anything beneath, and Blume felt a rush of affection for them. In the end, they were better than all the paintings. These preparatory sketches showed hope, potential, freedom.

The Colonel walked into the middle of the room and raised his pistol and pointed it directly at the woman. “I gather you two have never met. Alec, this is Angela, Emma’s mother, the failed artist and woman of easy virtue. I found her with John cuckold Nightingale here at his house. It’s funny that we know more about Treacy and Angela fucking than anyone else, except for Angela, of course. John here, his eyes have been opened to the ways of the world. We have just a few more of these to get through. Though I am not hopeful.”

It had turned dark. Angela was working in a pool of light cast by two standing lamps. She took a wad of cotton balls from the table. From the floor in front of her she picked up a bottle of solvent and drenched the cotton and her hands in it, filling the room with a sharp scent, then made a swipe at the picture on the easel. On the first pass, the canvas merely glistened as if another coat of varnish was being applied, on the second it dulled, and on the third she left a messy streak. She concentrated on the lightest part, rubbing at it. Outside the thunder rumbled, and Blume remembered why it should be so dark.

“See, she’s as keen as I am,” said the Colonel. “OK. Switch to kerosene now, sweetie.”

Blume planned ahead, making sure what he was going to say would come out right. “You really think you’ll find a Velazquez under one of those paintings?” he asked.

“I said my hopes were fading on that front,” said the Colonel. “But if not, I am going to talk to you about it after we’re done here.” He gestured at Angela. “Look at that woman. She used to look like she stepped out of Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation. Her daughter does not resemble her. Her daughter was the spitting image of Treacy, whose youthful face I just allowed Nightingale here to cancel. Very symbolic that.” He looked over at Angela. “Or do you object to being objectified?”

“You’re the one with the gun,” said Angela.

“Well observed. Dear God, these fumes are going to my head. Commissioner, aren’t you going to try to rush me or something heroic? You need to make up for that pathetic entrance. Nightingale, John, throw that piece of shit aside, we can see nothing lies below. Try that one there, the over-darkened portrait of a woman. It looks suspicious. It also looks highly glossed and hardened. Start with sandpaper, then the solvent.”

“Why are you here, Colonel?” said Blume. “Why didn’t you take the paintings and flee to somewhere safe, check them at your leisure?”

“I cannot abandon my Maresciallo. What do you take me for? Also, you seem to be laboring under the illusion that I need to flee, Commissioner.”

“Oh, trust me on this. You need to,” said Blume. He was thinking straight and remembering now. The dribbling at the back of his head had stopped, the throbbing was waiting for another time, and the image of Paoloni was pin sharp.

“Remember Craxi?”

“I remember Craxi,” said Blume.

“What was his big mistake?”

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” said Blume.

“Cowardice,” said the Colonel. “He fled the country to hide in Tunisia and spent the next few pathetic years of his life threatening his former political allies. He died with a whimper. The politicians he was threatening, people like Andreotti, Cossiga, Berlusconi, Forlani, Amato, they stayed behind. Within a few years they were all back in power, and he was dead. He did carry out his threat to tell all, by the way, but we simply made sure no one was listening.”

“What’s your point, Colonel?” Blume figured he could reach the pistol in three moves. If he saw a way of reducing it to two moves, he’d try. Then, with a shock, he recognized the pistol the Colonel held was his own. That decided him.