“That was a long three minutes,” said Zambotto.
“I needed to talk to D’Amico.”
“Clemente’s office is on the second floor,” said Zambotto.
“What will I find there?”
“Nothing much.”
“Did it look like D’Amico had been there long when you arrived?”
Zambotto did not seem to understand the question.
“You know, was he finishing off, or did he continue looking around when you arrived? That sort of thing.”
“He arrived twenty minutes before me,” said Zambotto.
“How do you know that?”
“I asked the patrolmen who brought him.”
“Well done.”
“Sure.”
Blume sat down on the doorstep. It was dirty, but pleasantly chilly against his bare legs.
“What time is it?”
“One fifteen.”
“You can go home if you want, Cristian. Get some sleep. There’s a meeting tomorrow morning at eight.”
“You want the keys?”
Blume held out his hand, and Zambotto handed him a ring with two heavy and one light key on it before ambling off, like an incurious ox.
Blume took out his phone and called Paoloni. This time he got an answer.
“I got nothing,” said Paoloni picking up on the second ring.
“Were we expecting anything?”
“No. I was ninety percent sure it was no gangland slaying, now I’m one hundred percent sure. No one knew what I was talking about.”
“Make that ninety-nine percent,” said Blume. “There is nothing certain in life, except death and taxes.”
“I’ve heard you say that before. I don’t get the bit about the taxes.”
“Who did you ask?”
“I used an Albanian guy I know as my main source,” said Paoloni. “He owes me a lot. Owes me more than a man should be able to live with. But I got nothing. Not even a suspicious blink. The other people I met this evening either know nothing at all about this Clemente or they’re keeping very quiet. I’ll talk to some more people tomorrow, but I don’t see this going anywhere.”
Blume said, “Either they know something but are scared of speaking, which suggests professional gang involvement, or this was a haphazard event from someone outside the loop, and they really know nothing.”
“Weren’t you listening? They know nothing. Tomorrow I’m going to meet more know-nothings. This is a dead end.”
“OK,” said Blume. “You know what you’re doing. You saw the apartment. Give me an adjective for the crime scene.”
“An adjective?”
“Just the one, mind you.”
“Haphazard,” said Paoloni.
“I just used that,” said Blume, “but it’s a very good adjective. By the way, did you know anything about D’Amico visiting Clemente’s office?”
“How should I know what he gets up to nowadays? Is that where you are now? Clemente’s office?”
“Yes.”
“With D’Amico?”
“No, D’Amico’s gone now.”
“Want me to come around?”
Blume considered. “No,” he said at last. “I’ll do this myself.”
Blume hung up and looked at the clock on his phone. It was nearing two in the morning.
There was nothing to do but wait. Blume fished in his shorts pocket and pulled out his badly dented Transcend MP3 player. The headphones were in the other pocket, and they took a while to disentangle. He had been planning a soft run, and had loaded the player with precise but sleek and laid-back music, the stuff his father used to listen to, a frictionless quality sound that no one in Italy knew anything about.
The first track was “I.G.Y.” by Donald Fagen. Clear, forward-looking optimistic music. His mother, from the East Coast, never quite got it.
She had bent down over his bed, early on a Friday morning, when he was half-awake, kissed him and told him to behave while they were gone.
She left a scent of Marseille soap and oranges, her European smell, as she straightened up. There was an art historians’ conference in Spoleto. They were staying overnight. His father had stroked his forehead. All he had to do was open his eyes and sit up, smile and bid them a proper goodbye. They could have exchanged an embrace, if he had still been doing that. But he lay there, a stinking, useless, lazy teenager, irritated at having been woken.
Fagen segued into Boston, who told Blume to lose himself in a familiar song, close his eyes and slip away, and from Boston to Clapton, to “Horse with No Name,” Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Doobie Brothers, Kansas, “Dust in the Wind,” Van Morrison (whom his father knew all about before they discovered him in Europe), Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Neil Young, and “Blinded by the Light,” which he never understood.
His parents never made it out of the city. Both were shot dead, along with a third customer, during a heist on the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro on Via Cristoforo Colombo. They had not even mentioned they were going to the bank. One of the bank robbers had been shot dead, too. The one who didn’t do the shooting.
The police came to his school to find him, but he had skipped out with five friends and spent the afternoon smoking weed on an embankment in Villa Borghese, flicking butts and roaches on the cars passing below on Viale del Muro Torto. The police went to his apartment building and left word with the neighbors to call when they heard Blume return. They posted a policeman outside his apartment to wait, but pulled him out to deal with a reported assault.
When Blume and his loud friends came back at nine in the evening, nobody was there waiting for him. It was the woman in the apartment below who called.
When the police came, Blume and his buddies were crammed into the apartment, getting buzzed, listening to the Clash. He opened the door and saw them there, a policeman and a policewoman. Some of his friends lounging on the couch saw the uniforms.
— Wooo! Heavy!
— Pigs on the loose!
— Fascists!
Blume played it punky and hard, and started closing the door on them before they had even spoken, saying yeah, yeah, the music would be turned down.
“Fuck this,” the policeman had said, and stuck his foot inside the door, bouncing it back open, almost slamming the edge against Blume’s temple.
Blume looked up in surprise and straight into the policewoman’s dark eyes brimming with pity.
It was past two when the patrol car returned. D’Amico was not in it. He had evidently got himself a lift home while Blume sat waiting.
One of the patrolmen waved to Blume before opening the back door to deposit a young woman in the middle of the road. Then he drove off.
Blume stood up. “Over here.”
She hesitated, then turned in his direction and walked over.
She was young, with thick glasses. Blume might have found her attractive had she been a little older.
“When they arrived the first time, they didn’t tell me what happened,” she said. “Then they came back.”
“I know. I sent them.”
“I refused to cooperate till they told me,” she paused and looked at him. “Is it true?”
“What did they say?”
“That Arturo has been killed.”
“Yes. It is true.”
“I need time to process this.”
“I’m sorry, but there isn’t time. We have to move as quickly as we can. There will be follow-ups. For now, I want you to lead me into the office, and tell me what if anything is out of place to you. If nothing is out of place, then I want you just to show me around. Do you think you can do that?” Blume held out the keys.
The office was on the second floor. They used the broad, winding staircase instead of the elevator, almost as if they had silently agreed not to make more noise than necessary.
“Who else is here?”
“All offices. Lawyers, a museum ticketing company, a travel agency, and, on the top floor, an accountant.”
They walked into the office. She switched on fluorescent lights, which cast a fizzy whiteness that Blume found unpleasant after the dark street.