Fifteen
WITH ONE ACCORD we rose to our feet and went out to search the establishment. We found plenty of slaves, mostly smelling of stables, but none Anacrites could identify.
"Do we demand that Calliopus should produce him, Falco?"
"You're not a Palace torturer now. Leave it. He'll say he doesn't recognize your description as any slave he owns. And he'll imply you're a romancer."
Anacrites looked offended. Typical of a spy. We informers may be reviled by everyone but at least we have the guts to acknowledge how our reputation stinks. Some of us even occasionally admit that the profession has asked for it.
"How long did you wait outside after he got here?" I asked.
"Wait?" Anacrites looked puzzled.
"Forget it." He was a typical spy all right-absolutely amateur.
The messenger belonged elsewhere. Still, if he had turned up here once to contact somebody, he might come again.
"So what now, Falco? We need to interview this Rumex."
"Sorry to be logical, but we need to find him first."
"Aren't you anxious we'll lose the lead?"
"Somebody assumes we know who he is. So he'll probably come crawling out from under his stone if we just carry on as normal. Anyway, you were the one who said we were not to be sidetracked. If somebody's trying to give us something else to think about we don't have to comply like lambs. Let's go back to the office and concentrate on our tax report."
As we turned away to do just that, we ran into the bestiarius called Iddibal.
"Who is your fabulous lady admirer?" I chaffed him.
The young bastard looked me straight in the eye and claimed that the woman was his auntie. I looked straight back at him like an informer who had supposed that antique story went out with the Punic Wars.
"Know anyone called Rumex?" Anacrites then asked him casually.
"Why, who's he? Your bathhouse back scratcher?" Iddibal sneered and went on his way.
I noticed a change in Iddibal. He seemed harder, and as if he were harboring some new streak of bitterness. As he walked off in the direction of the throwing range Calliopus emerged from a side room and said something to him in a very sharp voice. Maybe that explained it. Maybe Calliopus had pulled Iddibal up for the affair with his so-called aunt.
We waited for Calliopus to join us, then asked him the Rumex question. "Not one of my boys," he answered, as if he assumed it was a gladiator. He should have known we knew it was not one of his troop, or the man's name would have been on the list of personnel he had given us-assuming the version he was offering to the Censors was accurate. He drew himself up for what looked like a prepared speech. "About Leonidas-you've no need to involve yourselves. I've looked into what happened. Some of the lads were playing up that night and the lion was let out for a bit of a lark. He turned troublesome, and they had to put him down. Naturally nobody wanted to own up. They knew I would be furious. That's all. It's an internal matter. Iddibal was the ringleader, and I'll be getting rid of him."
Anacrites gazed at him. For once I could imagine how it had felt in Nero's day to be interrogated by the Praetorian Guards in the bowels of the Palace with the notorious Quaestionarii in attendance, bringing their imaginative range of torture implements. "Internal? That's odd," Anacrites commented frostily. "We have received further information about the death of Leonidas, which doesn't square with that. He was killed by this man Rumex, apparently-though now you tell us Rumex is not one of your boys!"
"Save him having to be got rid of as you're planning for Iddibal," I said. Proposing a dubious fate for Rumex was, as it turned out later, a poignant piece of augury.
The lanista huffed and puffed for a moment, then thought of something urgent he had to run off and do.
Anacrites waited until we were back in the office and had the place to ourselves.
"So that's that, Falco. We may not have heard the whole story, but the lion's death need not trouble us anymore."
"Whatever you want," I answered, with the smile I keep for butchers who sell last week's meat as fresh. "Still, it was good of you to defend my viewpoint when Calliopus was so obviously fibbing."
"Partners stick together," Anacrites assured me glibly. "Now let's finish taking the cheat apart for his financial misdemeanors, shall we?"
I stuck with the audit report like a good boy until lunchtime. As soon as my partner had sunk his jaws into one of my mother's home-cooked rissoles and was preoccupied with mopping the squidged gravy from the front of his tunic, I let out a curse and pretended Helena had forgotten to give me any fish-pickle to sauce up my cold sausage, so I would have to go and scrounge some… If Anacrites was only half a spy he must have guessed I was bunking off to interview someone else about the lion.
I really did mean to go back to auditing later. Unfortunately one or two little adventures got in the way.
Sixteen
MY BROTHER -IN -LAW Famia worked-if you can call it that-at the chariot-horse stables used by the Green team. We had nothing in common; I supported the Blues. Once, many years back, Famia had actually done something sensible; that was when he married Maia. She was the best of my sisters, whose one aberration had been her alliance with him. Jove knows how he persuaded her. Famia had made Maia a drudge, fathered four children just to prove he knew what his plunger was for, then gave up the struggle and set himself the easy target of an early death from drink. He must be pretty close to his goal now.
He was a short, fat, squint-eyed, florid-faced, devious drone whose profession was administering linctus to racehorses: the kind of disaster only the Greens could rely on. Even the knock-kneed nags who pulled their cranky carriagework knew how to avoid Famia's ministrations. They kicked so hard when they saw him approaching he was lucky never to have been castrated with his own equine ball-snipper. When I found him, a mean-looking gray was rearing up and savagely lashing out with his hooves in response to a sesame sweetie that Famia was coaxing him to take; it was no doubt dosed with jollop from a sinister black pottery bottle that had already been kicked over in the fray.
Seeing me, Famia promptly gave up. The horse whinnied sneeringly.
"Need some help?"
"Push off, Falco!"
Well that saved me from having my fingers bitten off while pretending I could whisper sweet nothings in a stallion's ear. Bluff would be wasted on Famia anyway. If I did make the gray swallow his medicine, Famia would take the credit himself.
"I want some information, Famia."
"And I want a drink." I had come prepared to bribe him. "Oh thanks, Marcus!"
"You ought to level off."
"I will-when I've had this one."
Talking to Famia was like trying to clean your ear with a very bulky sponge. You told yourself the procedure would work, but you could waste hours screwing up your fist without managing to poke anything down the hole.
"You sound like Petronius," I scolded.
"Good lad-he always liked a drop."
"But he knows when to stop."
"Maybe he knows, Falco-yet from what I hear nowadays he's not doing it."
"Well, his wife's left him and taken his children, and he almost lost his job."
"Plus he's living in your old disgusting apartment, his girlfriend went back to her husband, and his promotion prospects are a joke!" cackled my brother-in-law, his slitlike eyes becoming almost invisible. "And you're his best pal. You're right. Poor dog. No wonder he prefers oblivion."