Authors: John Case
And how long was the flight anyway? Seven or eight hours? Call it ten hours, door-to-door—Adams-Morgan to the Spanish Steps. If you thought about it like that, he’d make a grand just for making the trip.
What are you thinking about!? A man’s dead. You put his name out there, and now he’s dead. And all you can think about is your hours. You’re turning into a sleazebag,
he told himself. A voice in his head replied,
To be fair—
Danny shook his head. It was magical thinking, putting himself at the center of the universe, taking the credit and blame for everything that happened, when in fact he knew practically nothing about Jason Patel—whose death probably didn’t have anything to do with Belzer’s client, Zerevan Zebek.
“You still there?” Belzer asked.
“Huh? Yeah! Absolutely. And, uhh, sure—I’ll be glad to do it.”
Sleaze.
“Excellent! I’m delighted.”
“Well, I can’t promise anything.”
“Of course not. You can only do your best—that’s all anyone can ask.” A little pause. “How soon do you think you could go?”
The sooner the better,
Danny thought. With all the work he had to do for the Neon show . . . “Actually, the best time would be . . . pretty much right away.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night would be fine.”
“I’ll have a car pick you up—there’s an eight o’clock flight out of Dulles. I’ll make sure the driver has everything you’ll need, tickets, ID—”
“What ID?”
“The tickets will be in your name, of course, so you’ll need your passport. But what I mean is the other ID. I suppose it would be—what? Fairfax County. Police or sheriff—whatever they have.” When Danny didn’t react, Belzer added, “As we discussed . . . “
“Well, maybe that won’t be necessary,” Danny suggested, a hopeful tone in his voice.
“If you can think of another pretext—one that’s just as good, one that works—I don’t have any problem with that. But just in case you can’t . . . “
Danny let out a breath. “Okay.”
“Then it’s settled.
Buon viaggio, Danielo!
”
Caleigh was thrilled for him and made a big show of wanting to go with him. But that was impossible, and they both knew it. In the end, they toasted his good luck with a bottle of Old Vine red. “Tell me what you want,” he said. “I have to get you something, at least. Whatever you want!”
“A T-shirt would be nice,” she said, her face a mask of innocence. “If you can find something with the Colosseum on it, that would be great. I’m so tired of jewelry.”
The next evening, Danny was standing at the window, waiting for his ride, when a jet-black stretch Mercedes pulled up outside and double-parked.
Rich bastard,
Danny thought, wondering when his own ride would show up. A minute went by, and then another. Finally, he saw the driver of the Mercedes climb out from behind the wheel and walk slowly up to the front door of Danny’s apartment building. Even then, it wasn’t until the doorbell rang that Danny realized the limo was there for him.
A stocky man in his forties, the driver was right out of
GQ
, resplendent in a dark suit, wing tips, and a black fedora. Wresting the duffle bag from Danny’s hand, he trotted back to the car and held open the door to the backseat. “For you,” he said, nodding at a leather attaché case on the backseat. Trying to look casual, and not quite managing it, Danny struggled to suppress the grin that held his mouth in a kind of rictus. “Thanks!” he said, sliding into the backseat as if it were home plate.
Thunnnk.
The car was virtually soundproof. Just behind them, the driver of a sanitation truck leaned on his horn, impatient to go by. Danny sensed that the horn was a loud one, but even so, he could barely hear it. And the limo driver couldn’t have cared less. Taking his time, the driver stowed Danny’s duffle in the trunk, walked around to the side of the car, got in, and fastened his seat belt. Then he adjusted his hat, carefully checked the results in the rearview mirror, and smiled. “Now vee go,” he said in an accent that Danny couldn’t quite place.
Central Europe, maybe.
As the limo moved forward, Danny eyed the accoutrements around him. There was a small television, half a dozen magazines, and a split of champagne nestled in a silver bucket of crushed ice. A blood-red rose stood at attention in a cut-glass vase, coloring the air with its fragrance. Reaching over his shoulder, Danny switched on the reading light, which cut through the gloom imposed by the limousine’s tinted windows.
It was all very impressive, slightly embarrassing—and fun. But what made him blink was the sheaf of magazines he found in front of him.
Art in America. Daruma. Bomb. Asian Art.
Clearly they’d been chosen with Danny—and only Danny—in mind.
As flattering as that was, he felt a twinge of apprehension as he opened the attaché case on the seat beside him. Inside he found a portable cell phone, its instruction manual, and a short note.
This will help us stay in touch,
the note read.
American cells don’t work in Europe, and hotel phones aren’t secure. Suggest you use this, as needed. B.
Danny glanced at the manual, which explained (in six languages) that the phone was a digital unit with embedded encryption based upon the GSM standard common in Europe.
In addition to the cell phone, the attaché case contained a leather portfolio. In this Danny found his tickets and itinerary, with a confirmation number for a suite—
a suite!
—at the Hotel d’Inghilterra. Clipped to the itinerary was a business card for “Paulina Pastorini, Translations,” and an envelope containing the phony ID that Belzer had promised. This consisted of a small stack of expensive-looking business cards and a laminated ID. Both the cards and the ID were embossed with a small gold shield. To his surprise, Danny saw that the ID bore his picture (
Where did they get that?
he wondered), and the name
Frank Muller (Det.)
.
There was even a badge—a glob of metal with wings and a number: 665. Seeing it made him acutely nervous. What if he was stopped going through the metal detector at the airport? How would he explain the fact that he was carrying phony ID—and police ID at that?
Be cool,
he told himself. No one was going to look at the badge or the ID. And even if they did, it wasn’t illegal to have it. He’d just put it in his duffle bag and check it.
It took about forty minutes to get to Dulles. Danny took out the tickets to check the airline and the departure time—and saw with a shock that he was flying first-class. Instead of making him happy, this only increased his anxiety. The limo, the suite at the hotel, first-class tickets.
What am I getting into?
he wondered.
The agent at the counter bathed him in a radiant smile as she processed his ticket and attached a
PRIORITY/FIRST CLASS
tag to his Army-Surplus bag. Before long, he was reclining in what amounted to a leather armchair, sipping a glass of champagne, gazing out the window as the city of Washington dwindled away under the wings. He was in pig heaven—or he would have been, if it wasn’t for that badge in his duffle bag.
The badge was wrong. The badge made him nervous. There was something about playing a cop that was . . . well, not what the good guys did. And that raised a question, a very interesting question, a question so fundamental that he didn’t even want to think about it.
What if I’m on the wrong side?
SEVEN
There was a crowd at the gate beyond Customs, where half a dozen drivers stood in a kind of receiving line, waiting to be found by their passengers. Danny’s driver turned out to be a square little man with bushy black eyebrows and a hand-lettered sign that read:
cray
sistemi di pavone
Seeing Danny react to the sign, the driver came forward with a smile. “Signore Cray?”
“Si.”
“Benvenuti!”
Taking the duffle bag from Danny’s hand, he led the two of them on a brisk walk through the terminal.
“Parle Italiano?”
he called over his shoulder.
“No.”
The driver’s shoulders rose and fell. “
Non importa.
I go Hotel d’Inghilterra, okay?”
“Si.”
“Molto bene.”
Coming out of the terminal, Danny was staggered by a wall of heat, noise, and diesel fumes. As excited as he was to be in Rome, he hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane, and the jet lag he felt was like Karo syrup in his veins. Then the driver was standing in front of him, holding open the rear door to a shiny new Alfa Romeo, illegally parked in a taxi zone. A few feet away, a policeman in an elaborate uniform nodded deferentially to the driver, who exchanged a little salute with him. Soon they were on their way.
It seemed to Danny that the industrial suburbs of Rome were like the outskirts of any big city. Weed-ridden and trash-strewn fields separated factories, office buildings, and car dealerships that were uniformly modern, ugly, and dull. Except for the wall of oleander bushes that divided the highway, he might have been anywhere, anywhere hot. The sun was a smear of glare in the colorless sky.
Then—had he dozed?—they were in the city itself, and the ruined grandeur of it all suddenly surrounded him, magnificent and impossible to ignore. The driver followed the Tiber as it wound past a huge castle, then crossed the river into a vast and confusing square. Scattering a cluster of nuns, the Alfa glided through a towering stone gateway that took them into a sprawling and tree-shaded park. Surprised by the leafy quiet, Danny leaned forward in his seat and asked, “What
is
this?
Dove?
”
“E la Villa Borghese,”
the driver replied in an incredulous tone.
“Naturalmente.”
They were out of the park almost as quickly as they’d entered it. Now they were on a busy thoroughfare, bumper-to-fender with Fiats and Vespas and thronged with shoppers. Antiquarian showrooms and designer boutiques stood side by side: Missoni, Zegna, Gucci, Bulgari. It was as if he’d wandered into an advertising supplement for an in-flight magazine. Then the traffic slowed to a crawl as the driver nosed the Alfa through the crowds, growling at pedestrians and fellow drivers alike. To Danny’s surprise, the man never once hit the horn but contented himself with a litany of mumbled expletives.
The mob began to dwindle; the Alfa turned up a cobbled street and moments later rolled to a stop at the edge of a faded red carpet. Danny heard the trunk spring open as the driver jumped from the car, calling to the bellman. In an instant, the door was held open for him, and he stepped out at the entrance to an old-fashioned hotel—an ochre pile of stone whose facade bore the name
ALBERGO D’INGHILTERRA.
Danny checked in. The desk clerk took his passport. The driver disappeared. And a geriatric bellhop showed him to his room.
This was, as promised, a suite—adjoining rooms that looked as if they’d been designed for
Masterpiece Theater
. Velvet drapes guarded the windows, quenching the light and muffling the sounds from outside. In the center of the larger room, a welcoming bouquet rested on a round mahogany table, the flowers’ sweet scent vying with the pungent aroma of furniture wax.
The adjoining room had much the same feel. At once funky and luxe, it was dominated by a massive sleigh bed that carried the weight of an impossibly thick mattress. An avalanche of feather pillows was piled high against the headboard, atop a thin down comforter. Testing the mattress, Danny keeled backward on the bed—just for a second, he told himself, just to catch his breath—and felt his eyes close.
Late afternoon.
Waking with a start, and with the unreasonable sense that he was somehow
late
, Danny fairly vaulted out of bed. He padded across the Oriental rug toward the shower and stepped inside the marble enclosure. A torrent of water leached the jet lag from his bones.
Suddenly, he was hungry and excited to be in Rome. Dressing quickly, he clambered down the stairs to the lobby and out onto Bocca di Leone. Without much caring which way he went, he wandered with the crowds until he found himself climbing the Spanish Steps. Losing himself in the streets at the top of the stairs, he wandered through a labyrinth of side streets. He emerged twenty minutes later on the Via Veneto, having no idea where he was in relation to his hotel.
Dropping into a chair at a sidewalk table outside the Cafe de Paris, he ordered a mozzarella and tomato sandwich
(“si, si, si—a Caprese, signore”),
a bottle of Pellegrino water, and a Campari-soda. Then he sat back and watched the parade.
It was an elegant and stylish crowd of passersby. The women were uniformly thin and beautifully dressed—as, indeed, were most of the men. Everyone seemed to smoke, and no one wore a fanny pack. Except the tourists. Half of them appeared to be Americans who’d “supersized” one too many meals. As for Danny himself, okay, he wasn’t fat, and he wore his good shoes—the Cole-Haan loafers. But apart from that, he felt almost dowdy among the Italians, dressed as he was in khakis from the Gap and a polo shirt from nowhere in particular.
There were two ways he could go, he thought. Either he could get to work right away (like the good boy that he was) or he could do what came more naturally—which was to spend a couple of hours in the cafés, reading the
Herald Tribune
and savoring
la dolce vita
.
A tough call, but virtue prevailed. Paying the bill with his Visa card, he crossed the street to an ATM at the Banco Ambrosiano. He coaxed half a million lire from the machine, then caught a taxi back to his hotel.
He collapsed into a wing chair next to the window and sat with the phone in his hand, silently rehearsing the short speech that he’d devised on the flight from Washington. Satisfied that he had it down, he punched in the number from the FedEx receipt, pressed
SEND
, and waited. Momentarily the phone began to squawk at the other end of the line. Danny leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, concentrating. Finally, a recorded voice came on the line:
“Ciao! Avete raggiunto Inzaghi. Non posso ora venire al telefono . . .”
The only words he recognized were
Ciao, Inzaghi,
and
telefono
, but he got the point. The priest was out. He’d call him again in the morning.
There wasn’t much else for Danny to do, really. Father Inzaghi was the only reason he was in Rome. If the priest was out of town or if he refused to meet with Danny, well . . . in that case, Belzer’s client would have spent a lot of money for not much at all. Which was
his
problem, Danny thought.
There’s nothing I can do about that.
If Belzer wanted to keep him in the Inghilterra for a day, a week, or a month, making the same phone call every couple of hours, that was up to him—and it was fine by Danny.
Taking a bottle of Peroni from the minibar, Danny dropped into a chair and switched on the television with the remote. Soon he was immersed in the end-to-end drama of a UEFA Cup match, blissfully uncaring that it had been played months earlier. Somewhere in the second half, the phone rang, and he answered it with a distracted “Yeh?”
“Mr. Cray?” It was a woman’s voice, but deep and lightly accented.
He pressed the
MUTE
button on the remote. “This is Danny Cray.”
“It’s Paulina Pastorini—your interpreter. I think Signore Belzer told you that I’d be in touch?”
“Ri-ight!”
“Well, first let me welcome you to Rome—”
“Thanks—”
“—and ask if I can be of any assistance. Do you have everything you need?”
“I think so,” Danny told her, “but . . . I’m trying to reach someone—”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And I’m having a little difficulty. He’s a priest. And I guess he works at the Vatican.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I have his phone number, but all I get is an answering machine. And, of course, it’s in Italian, so . . .”
A soft chuckle—very sexy. “If you’d like . . . I could call him for you. See if he speaks English.”
Danny thought about it for a moment and frowned. “It’s kind of complicated,” he said.
“I understand. Our friend explained it to me. But this is not a problem. I’ll simply say that I’m helping you arrange things.”
“Well—”
“It’s ‘Detective Muller,’ yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will call him in the morning,” the interpreter announced. “First thing.”
“Great.” He tried to keep the unhappiness out of his voice, but he knew that he wasn’t entirely successful. It bothered him that the interpreter knew about “Detective Muller”—though, of course, she had a need to know.
“I’ll simply make an appointment,” she said. “
With
me if he doesn’t speak English—
without
me if he does. Is that okay?”
“Fine.”
“So that’s what I’ll do. And what about you? Tomorrow . . . you’re free?”
“As a bird,” Danny told her.
“I am sorry?”
“I said I’m free as a bird.”
That laugh again, a floating trill. “Of course. You have to excuse me, but—we don’t have that idiom in Italy. And it’s just as well, because in Roma most of the birds are pigeons—and it’s very hard to think of them as ‘free.’ They are just—what is the word?—
homeless
.”
It was his turn to laugh, and he did.
After she’d hung up, he opened another Peroni and telephoned the States to get his messages.
The first was from Jake, calling to report that he’d actually sold a painting.
Gimme a call, dude! I’m buyin’!
The second message was from Caleigh, phoning home from the Coast to let him know her number at the Oyster Point Inn.
I loves ya, Danny boy! Ciao!
Then Mom:
Just checking in. Thought I’d remind you we’re off to Ireland Tuesday. Kevin knows how to reach us if you need to get in touch.
And then, almost conspiratorially:
Why don’t you sneak up here with Caleigh, while we’re gone? I’ll leave the keys in the usual place. Captain is staying with Mr. Hutchins.
And finally:
Dan? Hi, it’s Adele Slivinski at Remax. And I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. I don’t know how serious you were about the Terio property, but unless you wanted it for a teardown . . .
Big sigh.
It’s gone. There was a fire last night and now . . . well, now there’s nothing. But I wanted you to know that I’ve got another listing in the same area, and I think you’ll love it.
And then she signed off, leaving a cascade of numbers.
So much for Terio’s files,
Danny thought, and tossed the phone onto the couch. Getting to his feet, he wandered over to the window, parted the curtains, and gazed down at the street below.
This is beginning to get scary,
he thought.
First Terio—then Patel and now the house. That’s a lot of violence. Though the house could have been vandalism. In fact, it probably
was
vandalism. Old house—no one living in it. Weird stories about a “basement tomb.” It was probably kids from the town houses down the road.
It was a reassuring scenario, and he wanted to believe it. He could imagine the kids getting buzzed, jumping in the old man’s car, trucking over to Terio’s house.
Goths. It was probably some Goths—saw the house on TV, heard the spooky stories—figured they’d star in a horror flick of their own. So they broke in, partied down, maybe some candles and . . . a fire broke out. Who knows what happened?
He fell asleep around ten, sitting in front of the TV, watching CNN with his feet up on the coffee table. In the middle of the night, a flying squad of American drunks woke him from a bad dream as they staggered down the street beneath his window, bellowing, “Rubber Ducky, you’re the one!”
He didn’t remember the dream at all—just that it scared him. And he didn’t remember undressing, either, or getting into bed, but he must have. Because he was very much between the sheets when the sun came pouring through the windows at just after six in the morning.
It was still too early to do anything, so he went out in search of a
Herald Tribune
, thinking there might be a story about Jason Patel. Most of the shops were still closed, but he found a newsstand on the Via del Corso. Buying a copy of the paper, he carried it with him to a café in the Piazza Colonna.
There he stood by the counter for a long moment, watching how things were done. First you paid the cashier for what you wanted. She relayed the order to one of the countermen, and then you went to pick it up.
The joint was hoppin’ with tradesmen and shop girls, businessmen on the way to work, and a couple of Italian soldiers with—literally—feathers in their caps. A trio of men in dirty blue coveralls—they must have just come off shift—were playing cards in the corner, drinking coffee with shots of brandy. Everyone was smiling and high-spirited. The sun was blazing. It was all so different from Washington—it revved him up. If he could get this interview with Inzaghi set up, he could take the afternoon off and check out the Sistine Chapel. Go for a walk in the Villa Borghese, buy a present for Caleigh . . .
When his cappuccino was ready, he climbed onto a stool at a copper-topped counter and searched the newspaper for a story about Patel. But there was nothing. And why should there be? It was just another murder in America. There must be a dozen every single day.
And house fires. Lots of
them
, too.
The sun poured through the windows of the café, emblazoning the pall of cigarette smoke that hung in the air.
The truth is,
Danny thought,
I’d like to be done with this thing.
Rome or no Rome, the business with Belzer was making him nervous. There was too much bad news—too much
violence
on the periphery of it all. And as much as he was enjoying it, the assignment itself was entirely too swank, too good to be true.