“No. it’s half past one in the morning, Beppe. I don’t want to go to a McDonald’s,” said Blume, looking into his rear-view mirror for the tenth time.
Paoloni’s voice sounded both metallic and intimate as it came over the earpiece: “Some American you are. Do you want to meet?”
“Of course.”
“Do you want to know if you’re being followed or not?”
“I don’t think I am,” said Blume.
“Do you want to know for sure?”
Blume sounded his horn at an oncoming car he felt was driving too close to his side of the road, raised a finger as the other car flashed its lights, and swerved toward the bastard to force him over. “I suppose so.”
“You know the McDonald’s at the Agip station on Via Aurelia? Go there. You’ll be coming from Piazza Irnerio. So call me as you get to the piazza. Don’t bring the phone up to your ear or they’ll get suspicious, especially if they’ve tapped your service phone. You start making calls without them hearing anything, they’ll know you know. Use hands-free.”
“I’m already using a Bluetooth earpiece,” said Blume.
Paoloni asked Blume for his car make, color, and license, and they estimated meeting in half an hour.
A kilometer before the rendezvous, Blume called again.
Paoloni answered after half a ring. “I’m about 300 meters behind you. No sign of anyone. Now, just as you reach the turnoff for the Euronics warehouse on your right, hit your brakes twice.”
“OK, I’m there… now.” Blume tapped his brake pedal twice as he passed it.
“I see you. OK, you’re not going to turn into McDonald’s, though I am. Go straight past the forecourt, don’t even slow down. Go on to the next overpass, which is a mile ahead or a bit less. Use it to reverse direction and start heading back into the city. After the road sign marking the city limits, take the entrance road and another overpass to reverse direction again to get to the McDonald’s you’re now passing. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Blume pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. Five vehicles were parked as close to the door as possible; one, a white Audi Q5, was parked near the exit. That would be Paoloni.
Blume parked near the entrance and waited. Five minutes later the Audi drew up alongside him and Paoloni disembarked. Blume picked up the notebooks, climbed out of his car, and proffered his hand, but Paoloni punched him on the shoulder instead, saying, “None of the next thirty or so cars behind you reappeared on the ramp bringing you back here. Only two other cars took that entrance road and overpass in the five minutes after you. When you reversed direction down the Via Aurelia, they might have called it off. If they’re good, they won’t have sent a car onto the second overpass to follow you. If you had a tail, you’ve lost it for now, though they might pick you up again afterwards. I am assuming they exist, because it might just be that you’ve finally cracked. I’m starving. You can tell me who the bad guys are over a Big Mac.”
The harsh white light of McDonald’s did no favors to Paoloni, but all things considered, he was looking better than he had during his last days in the police force. He had put on a bit of weight in his face, and seemed to have developed a liking for sunlamps, for his skin was a bright glowing orange rather than the jaundiced yellow Blume remembered. Getting out of the police also seemed to have liberated his inner bling. Chains dangled from his wrists and he had taken to wearing rings on his thumbs and a flat silver link chain around his neck. He had sculpted his hair so that it stood like a bristly gray cube on his head. He was wearing a white sleeveless hooded training top, and his tattooed arms showed signs of weight training. The gym look was completed by Capri shorts with untied strings that dangled down his bare calves.
“You’re looking well,” said Blume.
“Thanks. Business is good. I should have left the force years ago.”
Blume stood behind a pot-bellied man in flip-flops who was speaking Russian on his phone. Paoloni placed himself in front of the Russian, who paused his conversation, said a few words, and hung up. A man in a porter’s uniform finished his order. Paoloni stepped up to the till, and the Russian followed and tapped him on the shoulder.
“I am in front of you.” He jerked a thumb behind him. The girl behind the counter glanced backwards in search of support from the kitchens.
Paoloni looked the Russian up and down, then gave him a light backhanded swat on the stomach, and wagged his finger.
“You’ve eaten at McDonald’s before, haven’t you?” He allowed the Russian to go in front of him, stood beside Blume, and said, “What are you having?”
“Anything that doesn’t begin with a ‘Mc,’ I think.”
Paoloni looked at the overhead menu. “Coca-Cola or Fanta?”
“Coca-Cola, please.”
As they took their seat next to a plate glass window, Paoloni said, “These people who you imagine are following you? You don’t think they want to shoot you too? Because we’re sitting like two goldfish in a lighted bowl here.” He flicked open his hamburger box, poured the French fries into the top flap, and ripped open two packets of ketchup.
Blume sipped his Coke and shook his head. “Uh-uh. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Paoloni caught a sliding disk of gray meat between his fingers and deftly reinserted it with ketchupy fingers into his bun. “OK, but first things first. Leporelli, Scariglia: it’s all arranged. I even met the two scumbags myself, and they are very keen to turn themselves in. Magistrate Gesti really annoyed the Ostia gang. Those two clowns will pay the price once they get to prison.”
“That is well beyond my scope of competence,” said Blume. “Where are they now?”
“Somewhere in Casetta Mattei.”
“They are not going to resist arrest or try to flee or anything?”
“That wouldn’t make sense.”
“What they did doesn’t make sense,” said Blume. “Why are criminals usually so stupid? Even the relatively clever ones seem to choose retards as associates.”
“It’s because they cannot advertise to get good people,” said Paoloni, with the air of a man who had spent some time considering the question. “So they have to depend on blood relations, which is no guarantee of excellence, or else on people they have always known from the neighborhood. But if they’re still living in the same neighborhood, chances are they’re not too bright.”
“Speaking of people who aren’t that bright, you hear about the hole Grattapaglia’s dug for himself?”
“I heard that. He was unlucky. Of course, it’s very funny, too. A diplomat of all people. Can you make him the solver of some big case, make him look good? It’s all I can think of.”
“The thing they care most about now is the mugger who targets tourists and foreigners,” said Blume. “And we’re not getting anywhere with that. You haven’t got anything, have you?”
Paoloni licked a dollop of ketchup off a finger, then wiped the remaining orange stain onto the Formica of the tabletop. “Nope. Zilch. The only thing I can tell you is no one, and I mean no one, knows who this mugger is.”
“An outsider of some sort?”
“That’s the impression I get,” said Paoloni. “Definitely someone without a record. Works alone, too, which is weird-more a rapist’s profile. Now, tell me about these imaginary beings who are following you and why.”
Blume began with the Treacy investigation, skipping over most of the details and focusing on his meeting with Colonel Farinelli.
“Heard the name. Never met him, though,” said Paoloni. “Go on.”
Blume told Paoloni everything he thought was important. When he came to the part about the Colonel recording the two of them discussing the sale of the paintings, Paoloni interrupted him. “Were you thinking about it? You can tell me, you know.”
“I know I can,” said Blume. He swirled the ice cubes in his cup, then looked at the window, which the darkness outside and the brightness inside had turned into a mirror. “If I could use the paintings to catch the Colonel, then somehow still sell them, get a little extra, I don’t know. How bad would that be, given the context we work in? But thanks to Treacy’s notes, now I know they are probably worth little or not enough to justify the risk. So the temptation isn’t there anymore.”
Paoloni nodded understandingly and stood up. “I think I’ll have some McNuggets and a cheeseburger,” he said.
He was back a minute later saying, “The girl behind the counter says she’ll call me when the food’s ready. You’d think she’d bring it over. Doesn’t seem like she has much else on her hands, and she could definitely do with the exercise. I got a Happy Meal. Tell me more about Treacy and his notebooks.”
“I can do better than that,” said Blume. “Here. These are the notebooks themselves.” He slid them across the table.
Paoloni sucked a finger, and gingerly opened one and peered inside.
“It’s written in…?”
“English,” said Blume. “I told you.”
“Could be Arabic. You’re not expecting me to read these?”
“No. I want to leave them with you for safekeeping.”
“You told me the Colonel already has a copy. What’s the point?”
“I don’t want to be caught with them,” said Blume.
“So don’t get caught.”
“I don’t want them. They feel unlucky.”
“Alec! I’d never have guessed you were superstitious.”
“I’m not.”
“So you think the notebooks are jinxed, and that’s why you want me to have them?”
“I don’t believe in jinxes. I just don’t want them around for a while.”
“Fine, but your dog is more likely to read them before I do. So you’d better tell me a bit about what’s in them.”
Blume started talking about Treacy’s early life.
Paoloni was called for his Happy Meal and McNuggets. When he got back, he unwrapped his hamburger, flicked open the chicken box, and waved a magnanimous hand at the shining brown lumps inside.
“No thanks,” said Blume.
Paoloni bit into his hamburger. “You could eat this food even if you had no teeth,” he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then the back of his hand on the underside of the table, and said, “What the fuck do I care about Treacy’s early life? What do you care about it? Why were you even reading that?” He removed two slices of pickle. “What’s the basic structure?”
“Two volumes are autobiographical. A third is full of technical stuff about painting and forgeries, fixatives, different brushes, a history of pigments, papermaking, famous painters, styles, grounds, canvases, woodwork.”
“Sounds fascinating. You say he’s from Holland?”
“Ireland.”
“Yeah, well, one of those islands. Something’s made you get lost in the story of this guy’s life. I don’t know what it is. Seeing him dead or something. But you’re not working effectively. And another thing, who’s the chick you’re supposed to be studying these notebooks with?”
“Inspector Mattiola. She came in just before you quit.”
“Yeah, I think I got her. Brown hair, straight. Nice tits. Looks at you like this.” Paoloni popped a chicken chunk in his mouth, bent his head, and then raised it to give Blume a horrible leer.
“Not like that, no.”
“You know what I mean, puts her head down a bit, then looks at you from under her eyebrows, like she’s judging you. Good legs. Getting on a bit, though. So, what’s with you and her?”
“Nothing.”
“You just go to her house and read her bedtime stories, huh?”
“I think she’s got instinct,” said Blume.
“What makes you say that?”
Blume told him about Caterina’s trip to Pistoia that morning and her discoveries about Emma and Nightingale.
“You keep adding bits,” Paoloni complained. “Is that it, you’ve told me everything now?”
“More or less,” said Blume. He decided to hold back on the Velazquez angle for now.
“OK, but something’s still missing here, Alec. The Colonel’s stringing you along, just as you’re doing to him, but you both know the paintings aren’t worth all that much. The Colonel says he wants the notebooks because of what it says about what-Gladio agents, the CIA Stay Behind operation in the 1970s, his past dealings with Treacy-all that secret agent stuff. I don’t believe it. No one cares about that shit. Andreotti is a life senator, Cossiga got made a life senator, Berlusconi’s in power, there are seventy convicted criminals sitting in Parliament. No one gives a damn.”
“I forgot. There’s also this thing about the Colonel and Nightingale selling stuff to the Mafia.”
Paoloni turned and addressed the four empty bucket seats to his right. “Now he tells me.”
As Blume explained, Paoloni methodically shredded the food cartons on the table. Then, scooping them onto the tray, he placed the tray on the table next to them, crumpled his straw into his cup, and sucked his teeth.
“Except, it’s still bullshit, Alec. Maybe the Colonel found out about the notebooks through Nightingale, but if his main concern was about some minor Sicilian Don finding out he was swindled fifteen years ago, and the Colonel knows you’ve read the notebooks, then he’d have come to you, spoken to you about it, tried to buy or force your silence. But he didn’t do that. I don’t think he cares too much. The way you have told me this suggests the Colonel wanted to see what was in the notebooks, and he has some good reasons for not wanting them to go completely public. But he doesn’t seem all that worried that you have read them. It may have started out like that, but now it’s basically the other way around. You are more concerned about what he might find in them. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Blume watched the Russian sleepwalk in their direction wondering whether he was going to come to their table or walk right on by. The Russian could be a hit man. This could be a hit. No reason it should be, but it could be.
“I think he is looking for something else in there,” said Paoloni. “And I think that whatever it is, you have found it.”
The flip-flopped Russian walked right out.
Paoloni said, “You don’t want to tell me.”
Blume said nothing.
“Hey, Alec, we’re good friends, right?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Then it’s cool. Friends don’t have to tell their friends stuff if they don’t want to. A friend is not someone who doubts, hassles, probes, questions, and disbelieves you: that’s what wives are for. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t tell you.”
“Christ knows I’m glad you don’t,” said Blume.
“See? Friendship is all about not sharing,” said Paoloni. He floated his hand in the air, and Blume slapped it. “Maybe you’ll tell me later, huh?”
“Tell you what?” said Blume.
“That’s my man.”