“I’m telling you, Blume is not working your case. The police don’t know anything about you.”
“Sure, they do. And now so do you.”
“I don’t get it,” said Di Tivoli. “They found Alleva and Massoni. The dog-fight organizer and-”
“I know who they are.”
“Sorry,” said Di Tivoli. “I hear they’ve been found dead. So maybe the case will be closed now.”
“That’s what you think?”
“Gangland slaying. Those guys, they sure don’t mess around, do they?” said Di Tivoli, his voice taking on some of the syncopated rhythm of a hard Roman accent. “Maybe Alleva was skimming the bosses, and they whacked him. What do you think?”
Pernazzo tapped himself on the shoulder and smiled. “I did that to them. It was me. It’s something… I don’t know. I’ve gained strength, learned from my mistakes, but I don’t have my own style yet. And I don’t know where to go from here.”
Di Tivoli opened his mouth as if to say something, but only managed to suck in a stream of air that caught at the back of his throat.
Pernazzo pictured him dead in the armchair. What would it look like? A few days after an expose of Innocenzi, TV show host found dead in home, from… He’d work out the details in a moment. Unnatural causes. They would have to look into Innocenzi, forget about him. Maybe all the killings could be pinned on Innocenzi.
Pernazzo turned around to look at the bookcase behind him. “You know, since I came in here, that thing has been staring at the back of my head. What is it?”
“It’s an Etruscan head,” said Di Tivoli.
Pernazzo reached up, took it in his hands, and holding it, walked over to him. “This is wood? It feels like steel. It’s so heavy. This head is bigger than mine.” He held it aloft, and Di Tivoli began to move forward in his seat. He lowered it, then made as if to throw it at Di Tivoli, who flinched and flung his arm up protectively.
Pernazzo laughed.
“So is this like one of those house hold gods? A protector?”
He walked behind the armchair on which Di Tivoli sat. “Do you believe in that sort of thing?”
“Not really… Look…” Di Tivoli began to turn his head.
“No, stay looking forward. So, has this mean-looking bastard protected you?”
“Yes. Until now,” said Di Tivoli.
“Right. Until now.”
Pernazzo held the bust aloft in both arms like a trophy. He put so much downward swing into the blow that his feet slipped from under him and he toppled halfway over the back of the chair. The impact as the scowling wooden face hit the back of Di Tivoli’s skull jerked the bust out of his hands. It bounced against the back of the armchair cushion, tumbled down the arms, dropped onto the Persian carpet on the floor, and rolled a little farther with a dull rumble.
That and the crack of impact were almost all the noise.
Di Tivoli had made hardly a sound. Just a sort of farting noise came out of his mouth.
Pernazzo picked himself up. The back of Di Tivoli’s head was visibly caved in. Di Tivoli was bent forward as if examining his navel, and a steady bright stream of blood was rolling off the side of his face, dripping onto the armchair cushions and darkening there.
It had been far easier than he had imagined. And far quieter than a pistol. Pernazzo went over to the matching beige sofa opposite the armchair, lay down, and slept.
When he awoke twenty minutes later, the Etruscan head was watching him from the floor. The nose was chipped, and Pernazzo wondered if he had done that. Di Tivoli was in precisely the same position as before.
Di Tivoli’s car keys were easy to find, but he could not find the man’s wallet anywhere. When he found himself opening kitchen cupboards at random, he stopped. He went back to the bedroom, which he had already searched, checked the bedside table again, slid his hand under the mattress, slid open the mirror-fronted wardrobe and looked for clothes that might have been recently worn. Still no wallet. Di Tivoli had a small room dedicated entirely to shoes, but the man had feet like canal barges. Pernazzo tried on a few pairs, but he simply stepped in and out of them. He continued to hunt, hurling the shoes out of the alcove into the bedroom. He came across a few pairs of women’s shoes. They fit him, but had high heels.
Then he had an idea, and went over to Di Tivoli’s bent body. He inserted his hand into the dressing gown pocket, and found the wallet. Not only that, but it was stuffed with cash. Pernazzo counted 950 euros, including a 500-euro note. He had never seen one before. He put the wallet into his own pocket and went into Di Tivoli’s study. It had the same color scheme as the living room: beige, white, gray. Pernazzo appreciated the style. It was like an expensive hotel for executives. Three widescreen monitors sat next to each other on a buffed steel desk with a matte black finish. Pernazzo wondered for a moment if Di Tivoli had been a hardcore gamer, then remembered he worked in television. He did not bother switching on the machine. It would be password-protected, and he did not have time to hack.
In the hallway, Pernazzo found keys to the apartment and another bunch on a ring. They included two short padlock keys and two long, old-fashioned rusting keys that might be used for a garden door. If Di Tivoli had a place outside Rome, he could go there, lie low for a day, while the investigators concentrated on questioning Innocenzi.
He went back into the living room. Another impressive bank of technology. He switched on the massive TV and channel-surfed for a bit, familiarizing himself with the large remote control.
“You got Sky satellite,” he told the slouched figure in the armchair. “Doesn’t that count as helping the competition? But, hey, there’s nothing good on RAI anymore.”
Good surround-sound effects, too. Speakers all over the room. Not so obvious, either. Great plasma TV. Pity he couldn’t just take it all home with him. He checked the cables at the back and saw the screen was hooked up to a small-format computer.
The computer seemed to be on. Pressing AV on the remote control gave him a screen with Windows XP Media Center. He had never seen the Windows logo so large. Nice. Even if it was Mickeyware. A Red Hat OS was what was needed here. There was the recorded TV menu. He could not find the remote control for this, and hunted around. He found a Daikin remote control for the air-conditioning.
Wait a minute. He went over to the armchair and pushed Di Tivoli’s inert body sideways. Di Tivoli’s head lolled over the side of the armchair, and the blood worked its way around so that it now seemed to be dripping from his ear onto the floor. Pernazzo felt for the remote control Di Tivoli had shoved behind the cushions, and pulled it out. He looked at it.
“You sneaky fucker,” he said. He pressed a button and looked at the on-screen menu.
Di Tivoli had been recording. The microphone was right in front of him. So obvious that it was invisible.
Pernazzo stopped the recording, saved it as a file, which he named “deleteme.” He rejected the suggested “. wav” ending and added an. xls suffix instead. Then he deleted the misnamed audio file and emptied the trash.
It would not stop anyone who knew what they were looking for, but it would hide the file for long enough. In two days, he would be in Argentina.
He ran through the menus and a file name caught his attention: 08_ 28_Blume. wav. He opened the file.
From behind him, Di Tivoli said: “This heat is killing me.”
Pernazzo spun around and ran backward at the same time, almost crashing into the TV. Di Tivoli still lay slumped on the armchair, blood now dripping onto the floor.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” said a voice he recognized. Commissioner Blume. “You know, we’re practically neighbors. I live on Via La Spezia. Know it? On the corner of Via Orvieto, the one with the fish market?”
The clever bastard had recorded the cops as they interviewed him.
There was another person, a Neapolitan. Presumably another cop.