Falcone glanced back at the chaos across the road. “A bomb, a bomb. What the hell is Neri thinking?”
Peroni’s mind had been working along the same lines. “You think it has to be him? He had enemies. The American for one.”
Falcone stared dolefully at the firemen working to free Rachele D’Amato. “Why would any of them bomb an empty building? No one’s that stupid. Neri knew we were coming. The bastard left us this as a present and—”
Falcone was struggling to tie the ends together in his head. Peroni hated seeing him filled with doubt like this. “And it doesn’t make sense. This is so final. He can’t talk his way out of this one. He can’t pick up the phone and bribe some politician, some cop to look the other way.”
That was true, Peroni thought. This was the end of Neri’s career. There was no other possibility. Or, to be more precise, it was the act which Neri was using to announce the closure of his time in Rome. Something, the papers on the dead accountant’s desk, some threat they failed to understand, must have convinced him there could be no turning back. He had to flee, to seek anonymous sanctuary somewhere he hoped the Italian state could no longer reach him.
Peroni thought of the body, the brown, shining body in Teresa Lupo’s morgue. Everything led back to that first corpse. Every event that followed stemmed from its discovery, and still they had no idea why, no clue to explain the strange and deadly demons that flew out of the ground once that small patch of peat near Fiumicino was exposed to the light of day.
Falcone turned a sudden, sharp gaze on him, the one that said: don’t lie, don’t even think of it. “Tell me the truth. Do you think I’m losing it? Is this getting too much for me?”
“What?” Peroni stared at him, almost lost for words. “Since when did you get to be super-human? This is too much for all of us. This…” he waved a hand at the scene across the road, “… is the world gone mad. Not just that bastard Neri.”
There was a sound from the house. The lifting gear around Rachele D’Amato was being cranked into action. The firemen were shouting to each other. Timbers were moving. Walls were starting to shake. And there was more light now. The bright, unforgiving light of the TV cameras, back to see what they were supposed to witness all along.
Falcone stood up and shook the dirt and dust off himself, getting ready to go back. Peroni was with him instantly, a hand on his arm.
“Leo,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. And whatever state that woman’s in, you can’t change it. Furthermore, if she does wake up, she’ll be livid to find you sitting by the bed like some dumbstruck husband.”
“Really?” Falcone gave him a familiar, cold look. “You know her well enough to say that?”
“I know she’s just as married to the job as you are. And when she does get conscious the first thing she’ll ask is what you’ve done to get the sons of bitches who did this. You offer a bunch of flowers and you’ll get it straight back into your face. Now am I right?”
Falcone glanced at him and Peroni wondered if he had read everything the wrong way. “You think that’s what this is about, Gianni? Me and her?”
“I dunno,” he mumbled, and Peroni realized that at that moment he really didn’t. There was more going on in Falcone’s head than he appreciated.
“She’s got another man,” Falcone said flatly. “She told me so.”
“Gimme a break,” Peroni answered immediately. “Does she look like a woman with a man in tow? She’s just playing with you, Leo. Women are like that.”
“Maybe.”
Falcone was focused on the meeting going on across the road. The men from the black cars were engaged in an impromptu conference near the sight of the blast. He knew, surely, he ought to go and join them. He ought to answer their questions, try to keep them happy.
Peroni looked at the shattered building and sighed. “For God’s sake, Leo. It’s times like this people look to you. If you’re riddled with self-doubt, how the hell do you expect them to go on? Here—”
He lit another cigarette and offered it. Falcone accepted reluctantly.
“Listen to your friend Gianni, please. Because he’s just got a stupid vice cop brain in his skull and this primitive organ doesn’t have a clue what’s going on here. All these crazy genes bouncing around tonight. Where’d they come from, Leo? What the hell for? Who flipped that switch and why?”
Falcone scratched his chin and said nothing.
“This is good,” Peroni said carefully. “This is indicative of cerebral activity. Come on. Reel off some options.”
Falcone shook his head miserably and threw the cigarette away.
“You are costing me big time, man,” Peroni groaned. “OK, let me change the subject. How about this? You can bawl me out. Sometime over the past half hour—don’t ask when exactly because I can’t tell you—Costa went off on his own, chasing this wild goose story about some blonde girl over in Cerchi. He didn’t want to. Or rather, he did but he didn’t want to let it show. So I told him to get his ass on the road anyway. Who knows? Anyway, it was me giving orders. So bust my ass.”
There was a flicker of interest in Falcone’s face. Peroni was glad even that much was there.
“It was just a report of a blonde girl?” Falcone asked. “Just that she looked like Suzi Julius?”
“Nothing more,” Peroni agreed. “You seemed to think—this was just before the big bang event took place—it was worthy of attention, I believe.”
“It was. Hell, it is.” Falcone wasn’t looking across the street now. His mind was getting back into gear. “Or maybe—”
“Maybe what?”
The old Falcone was lurking there somewhere. The one who didn’t let go. And the men in black across the road were starting to look around them, wondering why no one had seen fit to acknowledge their presence.
“I’m not messing with you now, Leo. Either you pull yourself together or someone at the Questura’s going to be sending you back on leave and finding some young smart-ass to warm your seat. Probably for good.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Falcone conceded. “Maybe it’s what Rachele said all along. A war. And somehow the Julius girl—” He waved his hand at the mess across the street, “All these people, they’re just, what do they call it? Collateral damage. Bodies caught in the crossfire. It’s a war. Neri against Wallis. Or Neri against us, the world, everything. I don’t know.”
Peroni didn’t feel convinced. “Don’t wars need something to start them?”
“The girl. Wallis’s stepdaughter. Neri or maybe his son did something to her. Wallis wants payback. This is Neri getting his revenge in first. Against all of us.”
“You people do live in a complicated universe. How’d you get there?”
“It’s not ”there.“ It’s not even part way ”there.“ ”
“So what do we do? What are cops supposed to do in a war?”
Falcone gave him a withering look. “Do we have men outside Wallis’s place?”
“No. The DIA took that one, remember?”
“Yeah,” Falcone nodded, thinking. “You remember what Wallis said?”
“Every word. But remind me.”
“ ”War is the natural state of humanity.“ ”
“Bullshit,” Peroni protested. “Lethargy’s the natural state of humanity. Look at this mess! What’s natural about that?”