Authors: The Sacred Cut
"Of
course."
There
was a pause on the line. He wondered how convinced she was.
"I'm
with Kaspar," she said finally. "I can bring him in, Nic. No more
killings. No more bloodshed. But you've got to do what I say, however
crazy it sounds. Otherwise--"
There
was a noise at the other end of the line. Something physical, something like a
scuffle.
"Otherwise,
Nic
," barked a cold American voice, "you and Little Em
don't ever get to have fun."
Costa
listened. When the call was over, he found Teresa Lupo staring at him with that
familiar look of tough, deliberate concern he'd come to recognize and
appreciate.
She
pushed back the empty coffee cup, looked around the empty cafe. "Like I
said, Nic, I'm off duty. If there's anything..."
PERONI
LOOKED AT the men behind the desk, ran through the short yet precise brief
Falcone had given him in the lift and wondered what a new career would be like.
Maybe he could go back home and see if there was an opening for a pig farmer
near Siena. Or ask the girl in Trastevere for a job doling out ice-cream cones.
Anything would be better than facing more time with these three: Filippo Viale,
smug as hell, with an expression on his face that said you could sit there forever
and still not get the time of day; Joel Leapman, sullen and resentful; and
Commissario Moretti, neat in his immaculate uniform, pen poised over a notepad,
like a secretary hanging on someone else's orders.
"You
sure had a good argument there," Leapman observed. "Don't you
think it's time you worked on your personal skills?"
Peroni
glanced at Falcone, thought what the hell, and said quite calmly, "I am
tired. My head hurts. I'd rather be anywhere else in the world than this
place right now. Can I just announce that if I hear one more smart-ass piece of
bullshit the perpetrator goes straight"--he nodded at the grimy
office window--"out there."
Moretti
sighed and glowered at Falcone.
"Sir?"
the inspector asked cheerily.
"Keep
your ape on a leash, Leo." Moretti sighed again. "You asked for
this meeting. Would you care to tell us why?"
"To
clear the air."
"And
Emily Deacon," Peroni said. "We'd like to know some more
about her."
The
American grimaced. "I've already told you. I have no idea where she
is."
"Do
you think Kaspar's got her?" Peroni asked.
The
three men opposite looked at each other.
"Who?"
Leapman asked eventually.
"William
F. Kaspar," Falcone answered.
Peroni
watched the expressions on their faces. Viale looked impassive. Moretti was
baffled. Leapman looked as if that rare creature, someone he loved, had just
died.
"Who?"
the American asked again.
Falcone
glanced at Peroni. The big man reached over the desk, grabbed Leapman by the
throat, jerked him hard across the metal top, sending pens and a couple of
phones scattering. Peroni held Leapman there, close enough to his face to give
him a good view of his stitches and bruises. The FBI agent looked scared and
shocked in equal measure. Viale still sat in his seat, smirking. Moretti was
out of his chair, back against the wall, watching the scene playing out in
front of him in horror, lost for what to do.
"Clearly
that burger I shoved in your face didn't make the point," Peroni
said quietly to Joel Leapman, who sweated and squirmed now in front of him. "We've
had enough, my American friend. I've been beaten up because of your lies.
I've watched a little child terrified for her life. We've got
people putting themselves in harm's way. Good people, Leapman. So
it's time now to cut the crap. Either we start to hear something
resembling the truth from you or this little charade comes to an end this
minute. We're done playing dumb cops. Understand?"
Moretti
finally found his voice. "You!" he yelled, pointing at Peroni. "Back
off now! Falcone?"
"What?"
the inspector snarled back. "Look at the state of the guy. Look at your
own man, Moretti. It's the least he's owed."
Then
he patted Peroni on the shoulder and said quietly, "You can let him go,
Gianni. Let's listen to what he's got to say."
Peroni
released his huge paw from Leapman's throat and propelled the American
back across the table.
"Viale?"
Leapman's snarl was full of threat. "Do something."
The
SISDE man opened his hands and smiled. "Tut, tut. This is my office, Leo.
I don't want anything untoward happening here. Let's have a little
calm. What's the problem? This is just police work. Take orders. Do as
you're told." He paused and glared at Peroni. "Get yourself
some new minions too. That way you can keep your job."
Falcone
looked him up and down. "No, it isn't."
Viale
looked puzzled. "Isn't what?"
"Police
work. And I'm not worried about my job, Filippo. Are you?"
"Don't
threaten me," Viale murmured.
"I'm
not. I'm just putting things straight. You see this..."
He
pulled the orders from the Chigi Palace from his jacket pocket and dropped them
on the table. "These have your name on them and Moretti's too. That
ought to worry both of you. A lot."
Viale
made a conciliatory gesture. "Leo..."
"Shut
up and listen," Falcone barked. "Although you people seem to have
forgotten the fact, there is such a thing as a legal system in this
country."
"There's
also such a thing as protocol--" Viale began to say.
"Crap,"
Falcone interrupted. "There's right and there's wrong. And
this is very, very wrong. I checked. You can't just write out a couple of
blanket protection orders like parking tickets. There are rules. They need a
judge's signature, for one thing."
Falcone
pushed the papers over towards the SISDE man. "You don't have that,
Filippo. You're just trying to fool me with some fancy letterhead and
bluster, and hope I'd never notice."
Moretti
bristled inside his black uniform and stared at Viale. "Is that
true?" he demanded.
"Paperwork,"
the SISDE man said to Falcone, ignoring the commissario. "Bureaucracy.
People don't work that way these days, Leo. I don't. I don't
have to. Surely you know that?"
"It's
the law," Falcone said quietly. "You can't pick and choose
the parts you want. None of us can. Not even you. You know that too. That's
why you just put a few SISDE signatures on there, badgered Moretti to do the
same, and never bothered with the judiciary at all. You couldn't handle
this case yourself. It's just too damn public. You had to get us on your
side and you had to break the rules to get there."
Viale's
phoney friendliness finally failed him. The dead grey eyes surveyed the two
cops on the other side of the desk. "Is that so?" he asked.
"Oh
yes," Falcone continued. "The only circumstance when an order like
this gets judicial approval is if it's a matter of national security.
Our
national security. Not that of another country. Though I don't believe
even that's the case here. You've deliberately railroaded a genuine
investigation into a case which involved the murder of an Italian citizen. You've
jerked around the police, you've given a
carte blanche
to a
foreign security service to work here unimpeded, all outside Italian law. And
for what? So Leapman can pursue some kind of personal vendetta against an
individual we have every right to arrest on our own account. I could throw you
in a cell right now. I could pick up the phone and have you in front of a
magistrate by lunchtime."
Viale
sniffed and considered this. "You're a judge of what is and
isn't national security, are you?"
Falcone
smiled. "Until someone proves me wrong I am. So, gentlemen, are you going
to do that? Do we get to hear who William F. Kaspar actually is? Or..."
He
left it there.
"Or
what?" Moretti asked.
"Or
do we arrest all three of you and haul you up in front of a public court
for..." Falcone turned to Peroni. "How many did we have the
last time we added them up?"
"Oh."
Peroni frowned, counting them off on his fingers, staring at the ceiling like a
simpleton, pretending it was hard to remember. "Conspiracy. Wasting
police time. Forgery of official documents. Illegal possession of weapons. Use
of the electronic media to issue criminal threats. Breach of the death
registration rules. Withholding information--"
"You
dare
threaten me, Falcone!" Viale raged. "Here! Do you
have any idea what you're doing?"
"I
think so," Falcone answered quietly. "And also we have
these."
He
took the sheets of paper out of the envelope and threw them on the table. Leapman
snatched them up and stared at them, aghast. They were copies Costa had made
that morning of the material Emily Deacon found the day before: the Net
conversations and, most damning of all, the memo from 1990. The one labelled
"Babylon Sisters."
"Where
the hell did you get this?" Leapman murmured.
"From
Emily Deacon," Falcone replied. "And now she's
missing."
"That
little bitch sure knows a lot of things she's not supposed to. I
thought--"
"What?"
Peroni snapped. "That she was just a dummy? Like the rest of us?"
"Yeah,"
Leapman agreed with a sour face.
Peroni
pointed a hefty finger in his direction. "Wrong again, smartass. And
here's another thought. What if she's dead too? You don't
honestly think you can keep that under wraps, do you?"
It
was remarkable. Leapman was thinking then, exchanging glances with Viale. Something
was going on. Peroni risked just the briefest of glances with the man at his
side. The twinkle in Falcone's eyes told him he wasn't wrong. The
ruse had worked. They were through.
Leapman
shook his head and muttered, "This is a mess. Such a mess."
Moretti
had put down his pen and turned a sickly shade of white. "You told me
none of this would happen, Viale," the commissario complained. "You
said--"
Peroni
took immense pleasure in breaking in. "Must be a hell of a pension
you've built up over the years, Moretti. I was in that position once.
Hurts like hell when they take it away from you. Mind you, jail
too..."
Moretti
closed his eyes briefly, then shot Peroni a look of pure hatred. "You
ugly, sanctimonious bastard," he hissed. "You don't have to
deal with these people, day in, day out. You don't have to listen to them
pushing and pushing, threatening, cajoling: "Do this, do that." "
"I
thought that was what you got paid for," Peroni replied, then added a
final, "sir."
"We
don't have time for this, gentlemen," Falcone reminded them,
glancing at his watch. "Where's it going to be? Here, or in the
Questura?"
COSTA
WAS GETTING DESPERATE. The picture of the heartless ultimatum Kaspar had set
was starting to damage his concentration. Teresa was doing what she loved:
cruising the Questura for any titbits of information she could glean by
badgering people who, by rights, shouldn't even be talking to her. Nic
had taken on the task of working the street. No one answered the bell at the
address Emily had mentioned. He'd peered through the window, looking at
the sparse furniture, the kind you got in a rented apartment, not a real home,
and thought about breaking in. It was difficult to see what it could tell him
about what had happened there thirteen years before. Then he'd hammered
on six doors to no avail. Struggling to decide what to do next, he watched one
of the Jewish bakers lugging flour through the doorway of his tiny store,
smelled the fragrance of fresh bread on the cold December air and, against his
own wishes, felt his stomach rumble. He needed to approach this with the same
cold, deliberate dedication that Kaspar was showing he possessed. Either that
or he could panic them all into another bloody disaster.
At
the heart of the Piazza Mattei stood the little fountain of the tortoises. It
was a modest creation by Roman standards, and possessed a comic touch that had
amused Costa when he was a boy. Four naked youths, their feet on dolphins, were
struggling to push four small tortoises into the basin at the summit of the
fountain. It was ludicrous, almost surreal somehow. And today, he noted, the
water was flowing.
He
walked to the fountain and climbed over the low iron rail protecting the
structure from the carelessness of motorists negotiating the narrow alleys of
the ghetto. Then he dipped a finger into the snow at its foot, in the central
basin. The ice was melting. He looked at the sky. The bitter cold still
blanketed the city, but a change in the weather was imminent.
It
had to be. Something in the human psyche lost sight of facts like these from
time to time. When extraordinary events occurred, one adapted, almost came to
regard them as normal, forgetting to allot them the perspective they merited. Rome
would return to the way it was supposed to be in December. Planes would fly
again, buses and trains would run almost on time. One way or another, the
killings would cease. Chaos, by its very nature, was impermanent.