Bitter Remedy (9 page)

Silvana bent her head down meekly. ‘Don’t be too long, Niki.’

When she had gone, Niki offered Blume his hand.

‘So you’re Silvana’s fiancé?’ he asked, reluctantly taking the proffered hand, which was warm and damp.

‘Absolutely.’ Niki affected not to notice Blume’s incredulous tone. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his tight-fitting trousers and produced a small clear bottle of Amuchina disinfectant gel, which he rubbed into his hands, filling the air between them with an insulting lemony scent.

‘Only because you are sick,’ he explained. He put the bottle away, stood back, and grinned at him, showing teeth small and white as a child’s. ‘Alec Blume, Alec, Alec, Alec!’ as if he and Blume were old pals meeting after too long an absence.

‘Niki, Niki, Niki, Niki,’ replied Blume. ‘How do you spell that?’

‘With a K.’

‘With a K,’ said Blume, manoeuvring himself to the side of the bed and sitting up. ‘And your surname?’ Automatically, he cast around for his notebook, which wasn’t there.

‘Solito.’

Blume had never owned a shirt as white as Niki’s. The buttons gleamed like pearls, the massive collar shone in the dim room as if it had its own source of light. Perhaps the whiteness was exaggerated by the contrast with the triangle of sunbed-treated skin, visible down as far as the third unfastened button, where the edge of a blue and red tattoo peeked out. Niki slid his hand in and massaged his breastbone. He caught Blume’s eye.

‘I have a condition, but I keep myself fit.’ He slipped his satchel off his shoulder. ‘Very fit,’ he added. ‘In fact, I have come to consider my curse, which is diabetes, the real version not the one fat people get, as a blessing in disguise. Without it, I would not have taken such great care of my body!’

‘Well, Niki-with-a-K, Niki with a condition, what are you doing in my room?’ Blume found himself standing on the floor. Without quite realizing it, he had decided to get dressed. The first thing he pulled out of his suitcase, however, was a blister pack of Lyrica lozenges. He muscles were tensed, his eye kept wandering over to the corner of the room and seeing movements where there were none. To be on the safe side, he took three.

‘Drugs?’ said Niki, amiably enough.

Blume ignored him and started getting dressed.

Niki now tugged at the tail of his white shirt that billowed like a clean sail, executed an elegant
pas de valse
, put his hands on his hips and stared at Blume, his face flushed with defiance and anticipation, as if he had just been challenged on one of his strong points. ‘What do you think I weigh?’

Blume peered upwards with the air of a professor disturbed from his studies, then lowered his eyes again, and did not answer.

‘No, seriously. How much?’

Blume glanced at him again. Maybe 70 kilos, he reckoned, about 1.68 metres tall. Blue eyes, thinning fair hair – in his mind he was describing a suspect. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said.

‘Sixty-seven!’ declared Niki. ‘I am aiming for 62. That’s my ideal weight. Yours?’ He stroked his eyebrows and lifted up the side of his lip with a finger to examine an eye-tooth. Blume folded his arms like a passer-by determined not to pay for a piece of street theatre he has been watching. Seeing as he was getting no response, Niki said, ‘OK, so you couldn’t guess my weight. Here’s an even harder one: how old do you think I am?’

He patted his stomach, and turned his insubstantial flank towards Blume. ‘Go on. Guess.’

‘Forty-six.’

A look of shock followed by rage passed across Niki’s face, which he managed to twist into a tight smile.

‘You must have looked that up.’

‘Just a lucky guess.’

‘People don’t guess with such precise numbers. Usually you say 30–35, something like that. You don’t just come out with a fixed number.’

‘I do.’

‘You looked it up.’

‘Where, when, and, also, why the fuck would I bother doing that?’

‘Because you’re a policeman, pretending not to be one.’

‘Listen, Niki-with-a-K.’

‘Stop saying that.’

‘I could call you Nicola. Is that your proper name?’

‘On my birth certificate only. My mother named me after San Nicola of Bari. My father renamed me Niki in 1976, after Niki Lauda.’

‘Either way, you’re a saint or hero. Is that where you’re from: Bari?’

Niki sat down, and stroked his throat with forefinger and thumb, then gently patted his own cheek. ‘Did you know that men have better skin than women? Women over a certain age envy men their skin. They don’t like to talk about it, of course.’

‘Answer my question, Niki-with-a-K.’

‘
Minchia
, you’re a real cop, Cop, aren’t you? I’m from Molfetta originally. A long time ago. There, satisfied?’

Blume shrugged.

Niki picked up his shoulder satchel, opened the flap, extracted a thin metal disc, and opened it.

‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking drugs but –’ He dipped in two fingers and scooped out some white cream, ‘Moisturizer. Men should not be afraid to use cosmetics where necessary. I had my eyes lasered, my teeth whitened. These are things you could do for yourself. Along with losing some weight, maybe. Women find me attractive. Women of my age find me pretty irresistible. We men, we can just keep going, can’t we? We don’t have to limit ourselves. They say Picasso fucked on his deathbed.’

‘Silvana?’ Blume could still not quite believe it.

‘What about her? She’s my
fidanzata
, but she recognizes my needs and rights. No man in my line of business could do otherwise, but you don’t know about my line of business, or do you? Is that why you’re here?’

Blume gazed at Niki’s patent leather shoes, and wondered idly if they ever needed polishing, or if they were even leather to begin with. They looked plastic, and weak. He pictured himself stamping on Niki’s toes. ‘I know you run a discotheque, girls, probably drugs. I know you’re from Bari. Anything else I should know, apart from why you are sitting here in my room right now?’

‘I have interests in some organic vineyards. All told, 80 people or so depend on me for their employment.’

‘Good for you. Italy needs as many restaurants and discotheques as it can get,’ said Blume.

‘And a tattoo studio. They did this one.’ He unbuttoned his shirt exposing smooth hairless tanned skin and more of the tattoo, which turned out to be some sort of stylized Celtic beast.

‘I don’t need to see,’ said Blume.

‘Body art makes you uncomfortable?’ He made his pectorals ripple.

‘You’re sweating, Niki.’

‘Not a problem.’ He slipped out a handkerchief and dried his chest. ‘Just makes it glisten all the more.’

‘Silvana is considerably younger than you,’ said Blume.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘No, I guess not. It’s all perfectly balanced. She’s younger than you, you’re shorter than her.’

Niki’s narrowed his eyes and lifted his lip in what was presumably an attempt at a sneer. He stood up and advanced a few paces towards Blume.

‘Coming closer doesn’t make you seem any bigger,’ said Blume. ‘My brain worked out the trick of perspective a long time ago. Also, that thing with the lip? Makes you look like a jackrabbit.’

When Niki finally spoke, it was in excessively modulated tones, as if he was trying to use his own voice to calming effect.

‘My discotheque has live dancing girls. Short skirts. Often they don’t have anything on below. Are you interested?’

Blume stared at his feet. His toenails needed a trim. ‘Do I look like a disco-dancing type to you?’

‘For the girls. They dance, you watch. They like strong men. You’re a fat old
stronzo
, but you’re strong.’

‘You’re telling me, a policeman, you run a prostitute ring?’

‘You don’t get it, do you? Most of those girls pay me to come in and dance. They get up there on stage, get themselves seen, get to choose from the men. They want a man with money. There are others. Young, Romanian. A Russian with tits out to here?’ He mimed cupping two breasts some distance away from his own thin chest, and made a thrusting movement with his pelvis.

‘Go sit down,’ said Blume. ‘And stop trying to provoke me.’

‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that. You think I don’t have policemen in my clubs? Magistrates, too, and judges. They come from all over. Rieti, Terni, Pescara, Teramo, even Frosinone.’

‘
Addirittura
Frosinone. Well, colour me impressed. You still haven’t sat down, but that’s OK, because you’re leaving.’

Niki went back to the chair and stood behind it. ‘Did someone call you? As a policeman, I mean. Are you here for some purpose?’

‘Would it bother you if I were?’ said Blume, grunting as he pulled on a pair of socks.

‘Typical cop answer. You’re like . . . I don’t know, priests or politicians. Never a straight answer.’

‘Whereas the criminal class are such candid souls.’

‘At least criminals say nothing. You guys, always another question, then another. I’m trying to do a good thing here, but I need to know: did someone call you to come here?’

‘No. Nobody called me here. As is now perfectly plain to the entire province, I am a policeman. I am not retired, I am on leave. I am not a private detective, and I do not work on my own or on behalf of criminals. Or even on behalf of private citizens.
Polizia di Stato
. Of the State. Not of private individuals.’

‘Good. I believe you. Also because I have been checking you out. Like I said, I have a few contacts.’

Blume bent down, waited for the light-headedness this caused to abate, then tied his shoelaces. ‘Niki, I could not give a fuck whether you believe me or not.’ From the corner of his eye, he could see Niki lift his hands from the back of the chair and glance at them with distaste. Out came the bottle of disinfectant. Blume gave him time to finish rubbing the glistening substance into his hands. ‘And they say you can’t polish a turd.’

‘
Ma che vuoi che faccia
. A disease-ridden policeman and God knows what else,’ said Niki. ‘So you’re going back to Rome?’

‘Are you anxious that I do?’

From his bag Niki pulled out a plastic bottle with a bright pink liquid in it. ‘One of Silvana’s concoctions. She’s very good at them.’ He sipped at it, then put it carefully away. ‘Are you any good at working on your own, Blume? From what I hear, you’re not so great at working with others, but it’s not quite the same thing.’

‘You heard this from?’

‘I told you. Some contacts. I called in one or two minor favours. I simply asked a policeman and a magistrate to be a little indiscreet about you, in exchange for which I agreed not to be indiscreet about them.’

‘Can I have the name of these two paragons of the law?’

‘Maybe later? After you’ve helped me.’

‘With what?’

‘A girl has gone missing.’

‘Yes. I have already picked up this news. Small town. Now when you say girl, you mean a woman. One of your dancers.’

Niki nodded. ‘Alina.’

‘So you are asking me to track down one of your missing whores? To act as the pimp’s pimp.’

‘I am not a pimp and she is not a whore. She’s a friend.’

‘A special friend, I imagine. And you reported her disappearance to the appropriate authorities?’

‘I did. The local Carabinieri. One of them frequents my clubs, the other does not, but it made no difference. I am not a relative, and the person missing is an adult, and therefore can’t be reported missing. But she is.’

‘What about your magistrate friends?’

‘What about them? They don’t have jurisdiction for this area, and even if they did, they would never expose themselves by opening an investigation into the club where they go when they tell their wives – anyhow, she can’t be reported missing.’

‘So you think I am just the person to track her down, like a private detective?’

‘I can pay you very well,’ said Niki, patting his satchel, as if preparing to pull out banknotes there and then.

‘Right,’ said Blume. ‘I was waiting for this bit.’

‘Of course you were. Everyone needs money.’

‘Not me. I have more than I know what to do with. An inheritance.’

‘And you’re still a cop? What’s the sense of that?’

‘It’s what I do. When I think of something else, I’ll do that.’

‘I hear you’re good.’

‘Flattery. You know what this is, of course, Niki-with-a-K. It’s a badly played hand. First, you’re worried that I have been sent here to spy into some of what I can assume are your many creepy activities, then you come up with this missing girl thing. No doubt one of your dancers has gone missing: who wouldn’t run from a job like that and a person like you? But you don’t want me to look for her. You’re trying to buy me off with a false mission. Have me take money, look in a different direction. Maybe get me into your club with a few girls, give me money, fuck my credibility and reputation, stop me from looking too closely at something else about you. Isn’t that it? What are you hiding, Niki? Because, you see, a few minutes ago I didn’t give a damn, and now I would sort of like to harm you.’