He was about to start reading the sheets he had taken from Di Tivoli when Ferrucci walked in and sat down quickly at the far end of the desks, where Blume had put himself at the last meeting.
“Well?” demanded Blume. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” said Ferrucci. “I’m not sure what you wanted me to find out, but I don’t think this guy had anything to do with it.”
A pale orange beam of light lit up the area where Ferrucci had chosen to sit. Blume looked out the window and saw the sky directly above was whitening, while farther away it darkened. He turned his attention back to Ferrucci, who looked different somehow. It wasn’t just the strange light of the coming storm.
“Am I imagining it, or have you just had your haircut?”
Ferrucci touched his hair, hesitated as if considering a denial. His short-cropped fair hair looked yellow.
“Yes.”
“Yes I am imagining it? Or yes you’ve just had your hair cut by a person you were sent out to interview on suspicion of murder?”
“You never said he was a suspect.”
“Did you pay him for the haircut?”
“He would not talk to me otherwise.”
“You let him shave you, too?” Blume heard the sound of voices coming up the corridor. If he continued this line of questioning he’d end up humiliating Ferrucci. “OK, forget that. What was your impression?”
“I don’t think he makes a good suspect,” said Ferrucci. “I’m not sure, though.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Fat,” said Ferrucci just as Paoloni and Zambotto walked in. “Fat, soft, short arms, perfumed…”
“You talking about your boyfriend?” asked Paoloni, taking a seat near but not next to Ferrucci.
Zambotto looked at Ferrucci and said, “You got a haircut since I last saw you. Me, I was working.”
“Chatty, fussy, busy, knows everyone,” continued Ferrucci. “Gay, I think.”
“You are talking about your boyfriend,” said Paoloni.
Blume said, “Shut up, Beppe.” To Ferrucci he said, “Like gays don’t kill?”
“He says he was in his salon all morning. Showed me an appointment book, invited me to call up any of the names there. He’s got six alibis for the morning, five for the afternoon. Also, there’s a bar opposite. The barman brings in orders for the customers. He says he was in and out at least four times on Friday.”
“OK. Good work.”
“Also I asked in a few other stores. The ones who remembered, remembered him there.”
D’Amico arrived next. In a concession to the fact that it was Saturday night, he was dressed in a combination of Lacoste and Zegna instead of the suit he had on earlier. He must have a wardrobe in his office, thought Blume.
D’Amico came and sat next to Blume, as if they were still partners. Finally, Gallone marched in. He stared at Blume seated at the top of the room and seemed about to say something, but finally settled to sit off-center and began the meeting.
Blume glanced through the few pages he had taken from Di Tivoli.
For a journalist, the man wasn’t much of a speller. There was not much in the notes, either. Blume circled the names he found: Alleva was there, along with Clemente and several other names and numbers, which seemed mostly to do with production fees. Blume noted down these names, too. He recognized some of them as being “front-line” RAI reporters. Real reporters.
Not like Di Tivoli. But the notes were not going to help much. There was nothing there.
“Have you quite finished your reading, Commissioner Blume?”
Blume put the papers carefully back into his bag, zipped the compartment closed, fastened the closure in the flap, put the bag on the floor, and then said, “Yes, sir.”
With each of Blume’s exasperatingly slow movements, Gallone had jutted his chin a little further, so that now his neck tendons looked ready to snap.
“We are here to map out a plan for Alleva’s capture,” said Gallone. “I demand your undivided attention.”
“You have it, sir.”
“We have a detention order from Principe, and about time, too. The press know almost everything now, and we have reached twenty-four hours since we got the alert. Any delay and it’ll look like incompetence. We get Alleva into custody now. Also, it’s what the family expects.”
“The family?” asked Blume.
“The widow, Sveva Romagnolo.”
“Right.”
“I was talking to the magistrate who is waiting for the autopsy report, but Dorfmann has given him some details, which he also passed on to me and I am passing on to you,” said Gallone.
They sat there waiting for Gallone to do his passing.
“Well, it’s nothing that we did not already know. Death by a single-edged knife partly serrated at the end, almost certainly an assault knife. No hesitation wounds. The killer went straight to it. He was either skilled or got lucky. We have five possible candidates for the lethal blow, and seventeen stab wounds in all.”
“What about other evidence?” asked Paoloni.
“So far, we have nothing from the fingerprints. No match of any sort,” said Gallone. “They started with the ones in the bathroom and one on a piece of masking tape on the cardboard box. The DNA is going to take longer. The crime scene manager’s report is almost ready. Clemente was murdered where he was found. Not much else to it.”
“Knife is confirmed as the cause of death, Questore?” asked Blume.
Gallone looked at him as if this might be a trick question.
“Yes. You’ll get the finished report yourself tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Blume. “But all the evidence continues to point in the same direction, which is not towards Alleva.”
“Commissioner, you wasted an entire afternoon importuning the widow and a media personality. You disobeyed a direct order to report to me. Let’s not make it any worse now.”
“No, indeed,” said Blume.
“Back to Alleva,” began Gallone. “We can get backup if we need it. I want him in custody tonight.”
“Not a good idea, Questore,” said Paoloni.
Everyone turned round to look at him.
“I don’t remember asking for an opinion on this,” said Gallone.
Paoloni had his arms folded and head tilted back as if he was talking to someone hovering just above his head.
“It is going to be hard to get to him tonight. I heard that he was last seen, on his own-in the sense of without Massoni-in the company of some of Innocenzi’s scagnozzi. It is therefore possible that we will never see him again. But the point is, he is not on his own. We don’t have the manpower to go in and lift him. Even if we did, it could be complicated.”
“I can order the manpower,” said Gallone.
“We don’t want to go in there,” said Paoloni. “Everyone in this room understands that.” He lowered his head and looked at Gallone. “You understand it, too, sir. We can’t just walk in and pick him up if there is a chance of others intervening, especially if they are Innocenzi’s crew. It could spiral. All deals would be off. We’d lose months, years of intelligence and contacts. Also, these people know a lot of secrets and pull a lot of strings. These things need to be negotiated. I don’t think we really want this general aggravation in the Magliana area. All we want is Alleva. Let’s wait till we can get just him.”
Blume was surprised to see Gallone take all this backtalk. He even seemed to be listening.
“OK. How do we get Alleva, then?” he asked.
“We get him tomorrow morning when he’s visiting his mother’s,” said Paoloni. “He always visits his mother on a Sunday. Brings her pastries. Sunday’s a quiet day.”
“It’s also an overtime day,” said Gallone. “So where does the mother live?”
“Testaccio area. He goes there at around ten. We can follow him from his house or wait for him at his mother’s.”
“We could do both,” said Gallone. “Just to be sure.”
Gallone, getting back into his old habits, assigned Paoloni the task of setting up the stake out for the following morning. This was not what Paoloni did best, but Blume wasn’t going to waste his breath.