“Officer Peroni said nothing of the sort, sir,” she replied evenly. “He told me you were a good man. You were last on our list. We’d hoped we’d never need to come this far. That tells you something, surely?”
“ ”A good man,“ ” Rajacic repeated. He stared at Peroni. “You’re a fool if you said that. And I don’t think you’re a fool.”
“I know what you are,” Peroni told him. “There’s a lot worse out there. That’s all I said. And, yes, I know you wouldn’t deal with a girl this age. I just thought maybe you’d heard something. Or could suggest who we might ask next.”
Rajacic downed his beer and ordered another. The barman wandered over with a bottle and placed it on the table with an undue amount of respect. He knew who Rajacic was. There were just two other customers in the place. Outside, the street was deep in filthy slush. Business went on as usual, though. Costa knew that, if he looked, there would be pushers sheltering in the doorways, and a handful of hopeful hookers too, hunting business with haunted, hungry eyes. There were places nearby that Costa counted among his favourites in Rome. Just a short walk away were Diocletian’s baths and the church created by Michelangelo from the original frigidarium. In the Palazzo Massimo around the corner was an entire room from a private villa of Livia, the empress of Augustus, decorated to resemble a charming, rural garden, with songbirds, flowers and fruit trees. But they were rare oases of delight in an area that seemed to become more tawdry each year. Costa couldn’t wait to be on the move again.
“We’re struggling here, Mr. Rajacic,” he said. “We need to find this girl. She could be in danger. We know how the system works. Girls come here when they’re young. If they’re lucky, the welfare people pick them up, put them in a home. If they’re not, they fall through the net and something else happens. First they learn to beg. Then they learn to steal. Then, when they’re old enough, they become the goods themselves. And maybe sell some dope on the side. That’s how it is. Somewhere along the way they must go to someone, a person like you, and see what the options are.”
“Not if she knows me,” Rajacic insisted, waving a big cracked open palm in their faces. “Not if she asks. These people who deal in children… they’re scum. I handle no one who isn’t old enough to know what she’s doing. And no drugs either.”
“I know,” Costa insisted. “As I said, we’re desperate.”
“Who isn’t?” the Serb wondered. “These are desperate times. You never noticed?”
He swigged some beer from the bottle, stubbed out the cigarette and looked at them. Maybe there was something there, Costa thought. Maybe…
“You know what?” Rajacic grumbled. “When I came here fifteen years ago I used to have to call home and beg for girls. Most wouldn’t even phone me back. They had dignity then. They didn’t need the likes of me. Now? This is a world in motion, my friends. I got the United Nations working for me, and more women calling pleading for work than I can handle. Kosovans. Croats. Russians. Turks. Kurds. All those people who watched the Berlin Wall come tumbling down, the old world rolling over and dying, and they thought: ”Now the good times begin, now everyone gets free and rich like all those big shots in the West promised.“ Some joke, huh? You guys never told them it didn’t really work like that, did you? You left it to pimps like me. I’m the one who gets to say it to some pretty little seventeen-year-old straight off the boat, no papers, no money, nothing going for her except what she’s got between her legs. And now you’re coming asking for help-”
“We don’t have time to apologize, Stefan,” Peroni grumbled.
“No.” The dark eyes flashed at him. “You don’t.” He picked up the photo. “What is she? Kosovan? Albanian?”
Peroni grimaced. “We just don’t know.”
“From the looks of her she could be anything. Turk or Kurd even. Jesus…”
“But she can’t just walk into a city like this without knowing someone, surely?” Emily objected. “She must have a name. A phone number. Something.”
“That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it?” Rajacic asked. “Who?”
Peroni reeled off the names. The Serb scowled as he heard each one.
“My,” he said at the end. “I wouldn’t want to meet even one of them in a day. Six…”
“Can you think of someone else we should be talking to?” Emily asked.
The brown eyes blinked in disbelief. “Do I look like I have a death wish?”
“Mr. Rajacic,” she persisted, “this girl’s so young. She might not even be in the loop you’re talking about now. We don’t know where she is, but we know what she saw. She’s got to be scared. And in danger too.”
He glowered back at them. “What did she see?”
The two cops looked at each other. They were running out of options.
“A couple of murders,” Peroni said quietly. “Don’t go telling anyone, huh? The kid’s got problems enough as it is.”
Rajacic finished the beer and clicked his fingers for another. “Two?”
“It was on the TV,” Costa said. “A woman was killed in the Pantheon. An Italian photographer was shot too. We know this girl was there. Inside. Probably just looking for shelter or something. We know the guy who killed this woman realizes that too now. You see my point?”
The old man thought about this, then got up, went to the bar and, without saying a word to the man behind the counter, picked up the phone by the till and began talking rapidly in his native language.
“He acts like he owns the place,” Emily observed.
“He does,” Peroni said. “Even a pimp needs an office. I don’t suppose you understand any of that lingo?”
She shook her head. Rajacic was virtually yelling into the phone now.
“He doesn’t act like a pimp,” she observed. “Not really.”
Peroni watched Rajacic barking at the phone. “It’s not his chosen profession. He was a farmer in Bosnia. The Croats decided his land was theirs. He had the sense not to stay around and argue.”
“Big leap from Bosnian farmer to pimping here,” Costa commented.
“Yeah,” Peroni agreed. “Like the man said, ”A world in motion.“ I don’t get it either. But who’s asking? If every other pimp we had was like this guy-no drugs, no kids.”
Emily’s blue eyes wandered over the pair of them, some bitter judgement there. “He’s still earning a living by selling women on the street.”
“We’ve had people doing that here for the last couple of thousand years,” Peroni answered. “Doubtless will for the next couple too. Do you think we can stamp it out somehow? We’re cops. Not miracle workers.”
She stirred the empty coffee cup. “Sure. I just want to make sure we remember what he is.”
“What he is, Emily, is maybe the only chance we’ve got to find this kid. These people lead separate lives. They talk to us on their terms, when they feel like it. No amount of screaming at them, no amount of time in a cell, changes that. Trust me. I know. I’ve tried.” He nodded at Costa. “We both have.”
“True,” Costa agreed, watching how Rajacic’s attitude had changed while he was on the phone. He looked a little happier. He was getting what he wanted.
The Serb came back to the table and sat down. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he told them.
Peroni slapped him on the big brown arm of his overcoat. “Because you’re a good guy, Stefan. Like I told my American friend here.”
“Or maybe just a damn fool. Don’t go putting this around, Peroni. I don’t want anyone getting the idea I make a habit of helping the cops. And maybe I’m not helping at all.”
A woman was coming out of the door at the back of the bar. She was about thirty, with long, black hair, a tanned gypsy face heavy with makeup and a tight red dress cut low at the neck. Boredom and resentment shone out from her tired eyes. She must have been upstairs, taking the call on an internal line.