He didn't. He shifted his hold, plucked me easily from Ettore's grasp, and threw me—simply heaved me—a good eight or ten feet out into the street. On the fly. I didn't even hear him grunt with the effort. I managed to break my fall with my arms and jump quickly if unsteadily to my feet. I was muddled, though, facing in the wrong direction. I turned dizzily, almost losing my balance, until I found the two of them again. Ettore was up now. He and the monster were standing together, next to the flower stand, looking quietly at me again. Ettore had something in his hand that looked like a piece of metal pipe. Max was moaning softly on the ground behind them. The rain drifted lazily down onto my face.
There was a sudden roar to my right, only a dozen or so feet away. Startled, I spun around and found myself facing a small, dark car with its headlights off. I could see a figure behind the wheel.
The car . . . I'd forgotten the car—
Even now, it still seems to me as if the thing literally sprang at me, like a tiger at a deer. And even if I hadn't been as frozen as a terror-stricken deer, there wouldn't have been time to get out of the way. I put out my hands feebly in an absurd effort to keep it off.
And astonishingly I did, after a fashion. When my hands hit the front of it and I pushed, I was bumped upward, not downward, and an instant later I was doing a handstand, or at least a rolling shoulder stand, on the hood while it moved under me. I slid heavily into the windshield, or rather it slid into me—thank God, it didn't break—and then, somehow, I was flipped over and up, landing on the roof.
That was the most painful part, because I landed sharply on the base of my spine and also managed to bang the back of my head somewhere along the way. I felt the car speed up under me, and I skidded the length of the roof on my back, slithered down over the trunk without doing much additional damage, and landed back in the street, amazingly enough on my feet.
I hit hard on both heels, jarring every bone and joint in my body, and then juddered crazily over the pavement, my teeth rattling, until I tripped over the curb and fell onto the terrazzo. On instinct, I dragged myself between two columns, out of reach of the car, then sat shaking, not comprehending what had happened. I had been caught by surprise, after all, and the whole thing couldn't have taken even two seconds. And believe me, it was a lot less intelligible in the experiencing than in the telling. Besides, from the moment I'd seen the car, I'd expected to be killed. Sitting there, I wasn't sure I hadn't been.
A wave of nausea billowed over me, and I leaned sideways and put my forehead down against the smooth tile. My teeth ached appallingly. Something warm was flowing thickly by my ear and along my neck. I saw the column next to me tilt slowly and begin to revolve. I must have passed out then, for how long I'm not sure, but I remember jerking awake with a start at the sound of an approaching siren.
The thugs were gone. The car, too. But Max was still lying there; alive, thank God. He was painfully trying to haul himself to his elbows. His legs, flaccid and boneless-looking, seemed not to belong to him. For the first time, I noticed he was lying beneath the darkened windows of Bologna's newest restaurant, opened a few weeks before on the busy downtown corner of Indipendenza and Ugo Bassi, across from the venerable Piazza Nettuno.
McDonald's.
Chapter 5
The next time I was aware of anything at all I was drifting in and out of cottony, white clouds. I was quite comfortable. Happy, in fact. I was in the Ospedale Maggiore; so I'd been given to understand, and I was going to be just fine. I certainly felt fine. Solicitous, cheerful men and women in white hovered about me, making pleasant sounds and occasionally sticking needles in me with great gentleness. It was very pleasant to simply lie back and be fussed over.
At one indeterminate point I surfaced—or rather descended from somewhere around ceiling level—to find myself listening to someone speaking in Italian with quiet confidence.
"—was named Ettore. I remember because the other one, Pietro, called him that." The voice was pleasant and familiar.
I was lying peacefully on my back with my eyes closed, and I waited with interest to hear what would follow. Whoever it was, he was talking about the two thugs. Had there been a witness, then?
Another person spoke, also in Italian. "Thank you. Now I would like to ask another question. Tell me, why did you, signor Scoccimarro, and signor Caboto go out drinking?"
I waited. The question was a little complex. I yawned and settled myself farther into the bed. Time passed. I began to float off again.
"Signor Norgren?"
I started. "Yes?"
"Why did you, signor Scoccimarro, and signor Caboto go out drinking?"
I opened my eyes. I was in a cranked-up hospital bed. Through the lowered window blinds I could see daylight. Was it Tuesday morning already? To my side were two young, blue- uniformed policemen in chairs, one of them with a pad. On the bedside table, a couple of feet from my face, a tape recorder was whirring softly. I realized belatedly why the first voice had sounded so pleasant and familiar. It was mine.
"How long have we been talking?" I asked.
The two policemen looked at each other. "About twenty minutes," the one without the pad said. He seemed to be in charge; a long-limbed, athletic-looking man in his late twenties. "We won't keep you much longer. Will you answer the question, please?"
The question. I searched my mind for it. "Uh, out drinking?" I said lamely. Where was that quiet confidence now that I was awake?
"The three of you had several brandies at the Nepentha. I would like to know why."
"Why? Why did we have several brandies? Well, we were old friends, and it was the first time we'd seen each other in a while."
"Who suggested it?"
I thought back. My mind was beginning to clear. "Ugo. To celebrate old times."
"And are you all really such good friends as that?"
"As what?" I think a note of irritation must have crept into my voice. Even half-zonked on whatever the doctors had been sticking in my arm, I could see where he was leading: If Max had been set up, then wasn't it likely that it had been by one of the two people he'd left the restaurant with? And if it wasn't me, he was thinking, then it must have been Ugo.
I suppose I would have been in contention, too, had I not been fortunate enough to have nearly gotten killed in the melee myself. I shifted my shoulders with a grimace. The clear headedness was coming at a price. I was starting to ache at every joint, and a few other places, too. I thought of asking the cops to get a nurse to give me something but decided I'd be better off undoped for the rest of the interview. It had already occurred to me that I couldn't be in a very serious condition. For one thing, there were no bandages, no tubes going in or out of me, no oxygen tent. For another, the hospital had permitted the police to interview me.
What I thought the young cop was thinking didn't make me happy. Ugo Scoccimarro was probably the most straightforward, aboveboard person I knew. Coarse sometimes, ignorant sometimes—how could he not be, with four years of schooling all told?—but unfailingly honest and openhearted.
"Yes," I said, "we're good friends." We had, in fact, met perhaps half a dozen times.
"Did you ever go out drinking together before, or was this the first time?"
I didn't like this "go out drinking" business either. I began to object, but caught myself as a chorus of "0 Sole Mio" in the Piazza Maggiore flashed before my eyes. Maybe the guy had a point.
"Well, this is the first time that it was just the three of us, as I recall, but—"
"Tell me, did you actually see signor Scoccimarro leave Bologna?"