"My office?" He blinked at me. "But this is my office." We looked at each other, embarrassed. I didn't know what to say. I said, "Ah."
"There was little space available," he explained stiffly. "This is in reality a storeroom, of course, but it will be perfectly acceptable once I have arranged things."
I still didn't know what to say. My confidence in Antuono's status was not rising. He could spend the next three months arranging things and the place would still be a hovel. Was this any way to treat a big wheel?
He left, returning in a few minutes with a ratty, cane- seated chair. Somehow he got it wedged at the table between the cartons piled on the floor. He pulled off his plastic cuffs, produced from somewhere a charcoal-black jacket with the faintest of narrow gray pinstripes, shrugged into it, and buttoned it. It was snug across his spare shoulders. He looked like a hungry, vaguely predatory undertaker.
He sat down, working bony knees between the cartons and facing me across the littered table.
"Well," he said.
"Well," I said. Then, when he didn't say anything further: "You're aware that Max Cabot and I were attacked a couple of nights ago?" I wasn't really sure. The policemen who had interrogated me had been in the municipal blue-and-gray uniforms, not the khakis of the carabinieri. Maybe Antuono hadn't heard. Maybe he hadn't been out of his storeroom yet.
"Yes, of course. I've read the transcripts of your interview. You're feeling all right now?"
"Much better, thanks."
"Very good. I was sorry to hear you were hurt."
I smiled politely and made an appropriate pooh-poohing gesture. Merely another day in the life of an art curator.
"It was quite brave of you to go back and help your friend."
"Thank you."
He was being courteous enough, but it was all form. Antuono had that petty official's knack of making you feel that he had a thousand pressing things on his mind, every one of which was infinitely more important than you were. But Antuono wasn't supposed to be a petty official.
Again the conversation lagged. If he was really anxious for my reports on gossip from the Bolognese art world, he was hiding it very well.
"Did they ever catch those thugs?" I asked.
"Oh." The questiou seemed to surprise him. The ones who attacked signor Cabot?" He shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know that, Dr. Norgren."
My concern deepened. How could he not know? It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but how could he not know? He'd responded as if it hadn't even occurred to him to wonder about it. Wasn't he supposed to be in charge of the whole thing? Who was this guy?
"It is something for the local police, the polizia criminale, to be concerned with," he said. "It's not a matter for the carabinieri."
It wasn't? Was he suggesting that the attack wasn't related to the thefts? If he had read the transcripts, he knew that it had come just hours after Max had prattled so loudly about coming to him, Antuono, with pertinent information. It had come, in fact, almost the very first second he had been alone. I pointed this out to Antuono, rather persuasively, I thought, but the Eagle of Lombardy was not impressed. With a weary sigh he twisted to reach a black telephone on top of the metal cabinet behind him and placed it on the table.
"If you really want to know, I imagine I can find out for you."
If I wanted to know? Why didn't he want to know? I began to wonder if Di Vecchio and Luca had been right about him. Could he be another Captain Cala, more intent on lining his own pockets than on catching anybody? But I quickly dismissed the thought. Some local cop, maybe; not a carabiniere. And certainly not the deputy commander of their famous art theft squad. They were as close to the Untouchables as anything was nowadays. But something was awry.
"Colonel, to tell you the truth I don't understand what's going on. Here's Max. He announces that there are five people who knew about his security arrangements, and that he's going to come and tell you who they are. Two hours later he's savagely beaten up. And you don't even seem to—"
He had begun to punch some numbers into the telephone, but he stopped and made an irritated noise. I was repeating myself, apparently something one didn't do with Colonel Antuono. "Five names," he snapped. "Do you happen to know them?"
"Only one: Amedeo Di Vecchio."
"The director of the National Museum. Yes, a highly suspicious character. We'll certainly keep our eye on him. None of the others?"
"No," I said, getting annoyed myself, "but I don't think you'll have any trouble getting them from Max."
He had been toying with a pencil. Now he tossed it sourly onto the table. "But I did have trouble, Dr. Norgren. I've already seen him. He will say nothing. He has no list of five names, he has no idea of why he was attacked, he saw no faces, he has no enemies—nothing."
"But that's—" My surprise didn't last for long. They had broken—"shattered"—his legs with a metal pipe, after all. As admonitions went, it had to be considered highly persuasive. And the two gorillas involved weren't the type to have reservations about going further if the need arose. And if more guidance were needed, there was always the hortatory example of Paolo Salvatorelli with the cork in his mouth and the 116 bullets rattling out of whatever was left of his body.
So why be surprised, even for a moment, that Max had concluded that his best interests lay with refusing to tell Antuono anything? The Rubens taken from his shop had already been recovered undamaged. Clara Gozzi was satisfied. Even the insurance company was relieved. Was Max supposed to risk his life to get them back their money? Would I have done differently if I had been the one lying in the hospital with shattered legs?
Truthfully, I didn't know. And yet—unfairly, sanctimoniously—I was disappointed in my friend.
"In any case," Antuono said, "I think these names are also a matter for the local police, not for the carabinieri."
I laughed, more in frustration than anything else. "Colonel, is there anything that is a matter for the carabinieri?"
"The art," he said evenly. "And the people behind the thefts; the organizers, the receivers."
"Well, couldn't one of those five people be—"
"I don't think so."
"But how can you say that so certainly? It seems to—"
"Dr. Norgren," he said, cutting me off, "these thefts were not locally planned. We have very good reason to suspect the involvement of the Sicilian Mafia. "
"The Mafia?" What was it that Tony had said about the Mafia being a thing of the past?
"The Sicilian Mafia. The onorata società." His voice dripped contempt. The honored society.
"But . . . why are you here, then? In Bologna?"
"You have a great many questions, dottore." He looked steadily at me for another few seconds, then picked up the telephone again and hit four or five buttons, muttered a few quick words in rapid Italian, and replaced the receiver. "They will call back. You understand, signore, that my concern is with the stolen art. I'm very sorry about this incident on the street, but you must see that it's not a matter of highest priority."
That, I said with commendable restraint, depended on who was setting priorities. It was high enough to me.
He stared at me without smiling; without anything to suggest that a human being might live somewhere beneath that dusty exterior at all. "Dr. Norgren," he said, "I am a deputy commander of the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Artistico. Your Italian is good enough to understand the words?"
"Of course. The command for the protection of Italy's artistic patrimony. Its heritage."