Mickey lurks behind them, miserable, uncomfortable, unsure of where he belongs.
They talk and talk and now Nic Costa understands why. These men, powerful men, influential men, are nervous. This is something new for them. An experiment, a break with convention. They look at Randolph Kirk and their eyes say everything: make this work or else.
Randolph Kirk knows this. He’s more nervous than the rest, almost twitching with anticipation. He speaks but his words are inaudible. He claps his hands and, though they make no sound, the men stop talking and look. A line of young figures gathers at the door. Girls in sackcloth shifts, flowers in their hair, young, young. Some giggle. Some smoke. Their eyes are bright yet hazy. They are, like Randolph Kirk, afraid.
The mood pivots on a breath, a gesture, anything that might break the spell.
One of the initiates, Barbara, young yet knowing, walks forward, expectant, animated. Her hand falls on the mask. Her fingers stroke its ugly features, caress the vile, bulbous nose.
Watch, the chemical screams, a god inside him, so strong it is impossible to fight.
The golden girl lifts the dead, ugly face, looks at each of them in turn and smiles.
THEY LEFT THE HOUSE on the Aventine Hill just after nine. Bruno Bucci drove. Neri huddled down in the rear with one man on either side. Then the Mercedes snaked down the back roads, taking the narrowest it could find, before it emerged in Cerchi, just where the call had dictated.
Not that Emilio Neri needed directions. He’d never forget this place. Too many memories lay behind the scarred earth.
The car pulled onto the pavement. They got out and stood in the shadow of the escarpment that ran into the Tarpeian Rock. The sun was coming up on another fine spring day. If there’d been a little less traffic Neri could have taken a deep breath and believed he would miss Rome.
Bucci looked at him, nodded at the black hole of the cave, behind the broken gate its ancient city archaeology department notice saying “Keep Out.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Neri said and ducked into the darkness. “I’ll handle this on my own. Just make sure he’s carrying nothing when he shows, huh?”
“What about Mickey?” Bucci said.
“Mickey?” Neri laughed. “What about him? He’s just a stupid kid. I can handle my own son.”
Neri thought about Bucci again and briefly wondered about his own judgement. “You think I’m being dumb, don’t you?”
Bucci didn’t say a thing.
“OK. Don’t answer. I got to say, Bruno. I’m being more than fair to you here.”
“Sure. I’d still like to come in with you.”
Was this sentiment? Or just some self-serving show of concern? Neri couldn’t decide. Maybe Bucci was right. He could handle Mickey, no problem. But if his son had others in tow…
“You heard of anyone going over to Mickey?” he asked.
Bucci laughed out straight. “Are you kidding? Who’d be fool enough for that?”
Neri nodded at the shadowy mouth of the cave. “So it’s just him in there. And maybe Adele. Do you honestly believe I cannot cope with my own son and a two-timing wife I can slap down with one hand?”
Bucci shuffled on his big feet, uncomfortable.
Neri took that as a yes. “Just make sure Wallis goes in on his own and he’s not carrying anything,” he said. “I don’t share out this pleasure with anyone. Besides. I’ve been thinking. There’s some questions I want to ask, and they’re all family. I don’t want anyone else listening.”
“Think of me as back-up.”
Neri tapped him on the chest with a single finger, quite hard. “I was putting men down before you were born, Bruno. Don’t get presumptuous. You got the rope and the tape like I asked?”
Bucci nodded and handed them over.
Emilio Neri patted his jacket, felt the butt of the gun there. Then he walked into the darkness, surprised how cold it was, surprised too by how little illumination the bulbs gave.
His memory must have been playing tricks. In the old days everything seemed much brighter.
LEO FALCONE WATCHED Peroni dabbing his head next to him in the back seat.
“That’s one big black eye on the way,” he said. “Do you have any idea where Wallis might have gone? Did he say anything?”
“Yeah. First he asked if Neri and his kid were safely in the net anyway, even without this. Then he tried to bribe me to look the other way so he could get a spare thirty minutes with the fat man. I was explaining the problems this posed for my fragile sense of public duty when he whacked me in the face. Said he wasn’t hitting me so hard because he admired me. I’m glad I wasn’t on the hate list. If he punched like that when he’s a fan—”
The radio barked at them. Wallis had dumped the police car in a side road near the Trevi Fountain and disappeared into the tourist masses. Falcone swore and then issued the standard call. Tall black men in flapping leather overcoats weren’t that common in Rome. Someone ought to see him.
“Maybe he’ll take a cab,” Peroni suggested. “That guy is as cool as they come. You know what I think? He intended to make that drop all along. And on his own. He just came to us to make sure we got that camera with Mickey on it. Make sure the Neris wind up in the shit whatever.”
Falcone picked up the mike and ordered every man he had to cruise around Cerchi; he told his own driver to get there too. It was the last place Costa had been seen. If they got lucky…
It was hard thinking straight. Then his phone went and it got even harder.
“Not now,” he said instantly.
“Yes now,” she yelled at him, and Falcone wondered for a moment why he and Teresa Lupo so seldom had a conversation at normal volume. “Listen to me. I’ve just been through Kirk’s belongings again. I’ve found some phone numbers. One in particular. The most recent. Maybe the one he called before he died.”
“Maybe?” Falcone roared. “What the hell use to me is ”maybe“?”
“He called Miranda Julius,” she said simply. “At least that’s the number on his snotty little handkerchief, as bright and clear as day. She gave me the number when we were in that apartment of hers. Doesn’t that sound more than a little interesting? Sometime before he died, Randolph Kirk called the mother of the kid we’re supposed to think he snatched in the first place.”
Falcone shook his head, trying to clear some space for thought then ordered the car to pull to the side of the road. “What?”
“Her mobile number was there on Kirk’s person. There is no mistake about this. And given how disorganized that particular man was I can only think it was there for a very recent reason. You tell me.”
Leo Falcone leaned back into the soft seats of the Alfa Saloon and stared out the window, out at the tourist crowds mingling near the mouth of the tunnel, making their way at a snail’s pace to the little square and its over-blown fountain. Miranda Julius had given them a picture of Randolph Kirk near the Trevi, staring myopically at her daughter. Or so it appeared.
“Meet me at her apartment,” he said, making a particular effort to keep the volume down. “I’ll send a car.”
“Hey,” said the surprised voice on the other end of the line. “I’m just a pathologist. I don’t want to tread—”