“Don't tell Pa what we're doing for the Census, or the news will be everywhere by dinner time.”
“Well what can I tell him, Falco?” As a spy he had always lacked initiative.
“Internal audit.”
“Oh right! That usually makes people lose interest rapidly. What shall we say to suspects?”
“Have to be careful. We don't want them to realize our draconian powers.”
“No. They might respond by offering us bribes.”
“Which we are far too respectable to accept,” I said.
“Not unless the bribes are very handsome indeed,” replied Anacrites demurely.
“As with any luck they will be,” I chortled back.
“Here we are!” Pa reappeared, carrying an amphora. “I told the vintner you'd call in later to pay for it.”
“Oh thanks!” Pa squashed in beside me, and gestured expectantly for the formal introductions he had brushed aside before. “Anacrites, this is my father, the devious miser Didius Favonius. Otherwise known as Geminus; he had to change his name because there were too many angry people after him.”
My new partner evidently thought I had introduced him to a fascinating character, some colourful and sought after Saepta eccentric. Actually they had met before, when we were all involved in searching goods in a treason case. Neither seemed to remember it.
“You're the lodger,” exclaimed my father. Anacrites looked pleased by his local fame.
As Pa poured wine into metal cups, I could tell he was watching us together. I let him stare. Playing games was his idea of fun, not mine.
“So it's Falco Partner again?”
I pressed out a tired smile. Anacrites sniffed; he had not wanted to be merely “ Partner”, but I had insisted on continuity. I was, after all, hoping to ride on straight into a different partnership as soon as possible.
“Settling in?” Pa was pleased to sense an atmosphere.
“It's a bit tight, but we're expecting to be out and about so that shouldn't matter.” Anacrites seemed determined to annoy me by engaging Pa in chat. “At least the price is reasonable. Apparently there hasn't been anyone renting for some time.”
Pa nodded. He liked to gossip. “Old Potinus had it. Until he cut his throat.”
“If he worked here I can see why he did it,” I said.
Anacrites was looking around the Villa Potinus nervously, in case there were still bloodstains. Unrepentant, my father winked at me.
Then my partner gave a start. “Internal audit's no good as a cover!” he complained to me in a huff “No one will believe that, Falco. The internal auditors are meant to examine mistakes in the Palace bureaucracy. They never go out among the public-” He realized I had put one over on him. I was pleased to see he was furious.
“Just testing,” I smirked.
“What's this about?” nudged Pa, hating to be left out.
“Confidential!” I answered crushingly.
5
THE NEXT DAY, having boned up on what Calliopus said he was worth, we went back to his training barracks to take his operation apart.
The man himself hardly looked as if he was engaged in the trade of death and cruelty. He was a tall, thin, neat fellow with a well-trimmed head of dark, crinkled hair, big ears, flared nostrils, and enough of a suntan to suggest foreign extraction though he blended in well. An immigrant from south of Carthage, if you closed your eyes he could have been Suburra-born. His Latin was colloquial, its accent pure Circus Maximus, unmarred by elocution training. He wore plain white tunics with just enough finger jeweler to imply he was humanly vain. A wide boy, one who had made good by hard work and who conducted himself with a decorous manner. The kind Rome loves to hate.
He was the right age to have worked his way up from anywhere. He could have learned all sorts of business practices along the way. He saw to us himself. It implied that he could only afford a small group of slaves, who all had their own work to do and could not be spared for us.
Since I had seen his manpower schedules, I knew differently; he wanted to keep personal control over anything Anacrites and I were told. He seemed friendly and incurious. We knew what to make of that.
His establishment comprised a small palaestra where his men were trained, and a menagerie. Because of the animals, the aediles had made him stay out of Rome, on the Via Portuensis, way over the river. At least it was the right side of town for us, but in all other respects it was a damned nuisance. To avoid the Transtiberina rough quarter we had to persuade a skiffman to row us across from the Emporium to the Portuensis Gate. From there it was a short sprint past the Sanctuary of the Syrian Gods, which put us in an exotic mood, and then on past a Sanctuary of Hercules.
We had kept our first visit brief Yesterday we met our subject, looked at his lion in a rather unsafely chewed wooden cage, then grabbed some documents to get to grips with. Today things would get tough.
Anacrites was supposed to be primed to conduct the initial interview. My own study of the records had told me Calliopus currently owned eleven gladiators. They were “bestiarii” of the professional grade. By that I mean they were not simply criminals shoved into the ring in pairs to kill one another during the morning warm-up sessions, with the last survivor dispatched by an attendant; these were eleven properly trained and armed animal fighters. Professionals like them give a good show but try to be “sent back”-that is, returned to the tunnels alive after each bout. They have to fight again, but they hope one day the crowd will shout for them to receive a large reward and perhaps their freedom.
“Not many survive?” I asked Calliopus, putting him at ease as we settled in.
“Oh more than you think, especially among the bestiarii. You have to have survivors. The hope of money and fame is what keeps them coming up to join. For young lads from poor backgrounds it may be their one chance to succeed in life.”
“I expect you know, everyone thinks the fights are fixed.”
“So I believe,” said Calliopus noncommittally.
He probably also knew the other theory every self-respecting Roman mutters whenever the president of the Games waves his pesky white handkerchief to interfere with the action: the referee is blind.
One reason this lanista's gladiators were regarded as feeble specimens was that he really specialized in mock hunts: the part of the Games which is called the venatio. He owned various large wild anin13ls whom he would set free in the arena in staged settings, then his men pursued them either on horseback or on foot, killing as few as they could get away with while still pleasing the crowd. Sometimes the beasts fought each other, in unlikely combinations-elephants against bulls, or panthers against lions. Sometimes a man and a beast were pitted one to one. Bestiarii, however, were little more than expert hunters. The crowd despised them compared with the Thracians, myrmillons and retarii, the fighters of various types who were intended to end up dead on the sand themselves.
“Oh we lose the odd man, Falco. The hunts need to look dangerous.”
That did not square with events I had watched where reluctant animals had to be lured to their fate by banging shields loudly or waving fiery brands.
“So you like your four-footed stock to be ferocious. And you collect them in Tripolitania?”
“Mainly. My agents scour the whole of North Africa-Numidia, Cyrenaica, even Egypt.”
“The animals cost a lot to find, house and feed?”
Calliopus gave me a narrow look. “Where's this leading, Falco?”
We had announced that Anacrites would ask the first questions, but I was happy to start in like this myself; it unsettled Calliopus who felt unsure whether the interview had yet begun formally. It unsettled Anacrites too, come to that.