David Hewson (15 page)

"One
final thing," she added. " "Margaret Kearney."
There's an address on her driver's licence. Leapman and his friends
said they'd be contacting relatives, right?"

"They
said that," Falcone agreed.

"The
Internet's a wonderful thing, you know. Tell him, Silvio."

Di
Capua stared at his shiny boots and said in a very low, timorous voice,
"There's no Margaret Kearney in the Manhattan phone book."

"What?"
Falcone yelled.

"There's
no phone number listed," Di Capua continued. "She could be
ex-directory, of course. Except the residential address isn't an
apartment either. It's just a forwarding service."

"You've
been looking up this woman on the Internet?" Falcone bellowed.
"This is a morgue.
We
get paid to do that kind of thing. What
the hell gives you the right to interfere with our work like this? Again?"

Gingerly
Teresa put a hand on his arm. "But you didn't do it, Leo. They told
you not to, remember? Nobody placed a gagging order like that on us. So, when I
noticed the hair, when I looked at that passport, those glasses--please,
don't blame Silvio, if you're going to blame anyone, blame
me--I just kept looking at this woman and I couldn't stop thinking,
"Something is wrong here." "

He
didn't know whether to shout and scream or thank them, she guessed. It
was hard being Leo Falcone much of the time.

"This
doesn't go any further than here," he told her. "Agreed?"

"Sure,"
she said. "And maybe now I should make a call to them explaining they
left a few things behind. What do you think? I don't want them to feel
we're being uncooperative. I don't want them to get..."

She
left it at that. The "suspicious" word could have been pushing things
a little too far.

"Do
it," he agreed.

"You
see what this means, Leo? We don't know who Margaret Kearney is. But the
hair, the glasses, that stupid fake passport photo, the phone number, the
address... we sure as hell know who she
isn't
."

Falcone
scowled at the items in the green box, as if a set of inanimate objects could
somehow be to blame.

"Still,
I guess we don't need to tell Agent Leapman that," Teresa added. "Do
we?"

She
watched the inspector turn this information over in his head. Falcone was one
smart man. He was surely there already. All the same, it had had to be said,
just to lock the three of them together, deep in all this potential shit.

STEFAN
RAJACIC didn't look like a pimp, Nic Costa thought. He was about sixty
years old, squat in an old tweed suit and brown overcoat, with a swarthy,
expressive face and dark, miserable eyes. The moustache--heavy and
greying, like that of an old walrus--gave him away. It belonged to a world
that had vanished, that of Eastern Europe before the end of the Cold War. The
man could have been a portlier version of Stalin, trying to fade into old age
with plenty of memories and what remained of his dignity. He was the seventh
pimp they'd seen that night and the only one Gianni Peroni, who seemed to
know every last man of his ilk in Rome, treated with a measure of respect.

Rajacic
stared at the photograph of the girl through the fumes of his Turkish cigarette
and shook his head. "Officer Peroni," he said in a heavily accented
voice cracked by years of tobacco, "what do you want of me? This girl is
what? Thirteen? Fourteen? No more surely?"

"I
don't know," Peroni admitted.

The
Serb waved his hand at the photo. "What kind of a man do you think I
am?" He looked at Emily Deacon. "Has he told you I deal with children?
Because, if he has, it's a lie. Judge me for what I am but I don't
have to take that."

"Officer
Peroni said nothing of the sort, sir," she replied evenly. "He told
me you were a good man. You were last on our list. We'd hoped we'd
never need to come this far. That tells you something, surely?"

"
"A good man," " Rajacic repeated. He stared at Peroni.
"You're a fool if you said that. And I don't think
you're a fool."

"I
know what you are," Peroni told him. "There's a lot worse out
there. That's all I said. And, yes, I know you wouldn't deal with a
girl this age. I just thought maybe you'd heard something. Or could
suggest who we might ask next."

Rajacic
downed his beer and ordered another. The barman wandered over with a bottle and
placed it on the table with an undue amount of respect. He knew who Rajacic
was. There were just two other customers in the place. Outside, the street was
deep in filthy slush. Business went on as usual, though. Costa knew that, if he
looked, there would be pushers sheltering in the doorways, and a handful of
hopeful hookers too, hunting business with haunted, hungry eyes. There were
places nearby that Costa counted among his favourites in Rome. Just a short
walk away were Diocletian's baths and the church created by Michelangelo
from the original frigidarium. In the Palazzo Massimo around the corner was an
entire room from a private villa of Livia, the empress of Augustus, decorated
to resemble a charming, rural garden, with songbirds, flowers and fruit trees. But
they were rare oases of delight in an area that seemed to become more tawdry
each year. Costa couldn't wait to be on the move again.

"We're
struggling here, Mr. Rajacic," he said. "We need to find this girl.
She could be in danger. We know how the system works. Girls come here when
they're young. If they're lucky, the welfare people pick them up,
put them in a home. If they're not, they fall through the net and
something else happens. First they learn to beg. Then they learn to steal. Then,
when they're old enough, they become the goods themselves. And maybe sell
some dope on the side. That's how it is. Somewhere along the way they
must go to someone, a person like you, and see what the options are."

"Not
if she knows me," Rajacic insisted, waving a big cracked open palm in
their faces. "Not if she asks. These people who deal in children...
they're scum. I handle no one who isn't old enough to know what
she's doing. And no drugs either."

"I
know," Costa insisted. "As I said, we're desperate."

"Who
isn't?" the Serb wondered. "These are desperate times. You
never noticed?"

He
swigged some beer from the bottle, stubbed out the cigarette and looked at
them. Maybe there was something there, Costa thought. Maybe...

"You
know what?" Rajacic grumbled. "When I came here fifteen years ago I
used to have to call home and beg for girls. Most wouldn't even phone me
back. They had dignity then. They didn't need the likes of me. Now? This
is a world in motion, my friends. I got the United Nations working for me, and
more women calling pleading for work than I can handle. Kosovans. Croats.
Russians. Turks. Kurds. All those people who watched the Berlin Wall come
tumbling down, the old world rolling over and dying, and they thought:
"Now the good times begin, now everyone gets free and rich like all those
big shots in the West promised." Some joke, huh? You guys never told them
it didn't really work like that, did you? You left it to pimps like me.
I'm the one who gets to say it to some pretty little seventeen-year-old
straight off the boat, no papers, no money, nothing going for her except what
she's got between her legs. And now you're coming asking for
help--"

"We
don't have time to apologize, Stefan," Peroni grumbled.

"No."
The dark eyes flashed at him. "You don't." He picked up the
photo. "What is she? Kosovan? Albanian?"

Peroni
grimaced. "We just don't know."

"From
the looks of her she could be anything. Turk or Kurd even. Jesus..."

"But
she can't just walk into a city like this without knowing someone,
surely?" Emily objected. "She must have a name. A phone number. Something."

"That's
where you've been, isn't it?" Rajacic asked.
"Who?"

Peroni
reeled off the names. The Serb scowled as he heard each one.

"My,"
he said at the end. "I wouldn't want to meet even one of them in a
day. Six..."

"Can
you think of someone else we should be talking to?" Emily asked.

The
brown eyes blinked in disbelief. "Do I look like I have a death
wish?"

"Mr.
Rajacic," she persisted, "this girl's so young. She might not
even be in the loop you're talking about now. We don't know where
she is, but we know what she saw. She's got to be scared. And in danger
too."

He
glowered back at them. "What did she see?"

The
two cops looked at each other. They were running out of options.

"A
couple of murders," Peroni said quietly. "Don't go telling
anyone, huh? The kid's got problems enough as it is."

Rajacic
finished the beer and clicked his fingers for another. "Two?"

"It
was on the TV," Costa said. "A woman was killed in the Pantheon. An
Italian photographer was shot too. We know this girl was there. Inside.
Probably just looking for shelter or something. We know the guy who killed this
woman realizes that too now. You see my point?"

The
old man thought about this, then got up, went to the bar and, without saying a
word to the man behind the counter, picked up the phone by the till and began
talking rapidly in his native language.

"He
acts like he owns the place," Emily observed.

"He
does," Peroni said. "Even a pimp needs an office. I don't
suppose you understand any of that lingo?"

She
shook her head. Rajacic was virtually yelling into the phone now.

"He
doesn't act like a pimp," she observed. "Not really."

Peroni
watched Rajacic barking at the phone. "It's not his chosen
profession. He was a farmer in Bosnia. The Croats decided his land was theirs. He
had the sense not to stay around and argue."

"Big
leap from Bosnian farmer to pimping here," Costa commented.

"Yeah,"
Peroni agreed. "Like the man said, "A world in motion." I
don't get it either. But who's asking? If every other pimp we had
was like this guy--no drugs, no kids."

Emily's
blue eyes wandered over the pair of them, some bitter judgement there. "He's
still earning a living by selling women on the street."

"We've
had people doing that here for the last couple of thousand years," Peroni
answered. "Doubtless will for the next couple too. Do you think we can
stamp it out somehow? We're cops. Not miracle workers."

She
stirred the empty coffee cup. "Sure. I just want to make sure we remember
what he is."

"What
he is, Emily, is maybe the only chance we've got to find this kid. These
people lead separate lives. They talk to us on their terms, when they feel like
it. No amount of screaming at them, no amount of time in a cell, changes that. Trust
me. I know. I've tried." He nodded at Costa. "We both
have."

"True,"
Costa agreed, watching how Rajacic's attitude had changed while he was on
the phone. He looked a little happier. He was getting what he wanted.

The
Serb came back to the table and sat down. "I don't know why
I'm doing this," he told them.

Peroni
slapped him on the big brown arm of his overcoat. "Because you're a
good guy, Stefan. Like I told my American friend here."

"Or
maybe just a damn fool. Don't go putting this around, Peroni. I
don't want anyone getting the idea I make a habit of helping the cops. And
maybe I'm not helping at all."

A
woman was coming out of the door at the back of the bar. She was about thirty,
with long, black hair, a tanned gypsy face heavy with makeup and a tight red
dress cut low at the neck. Boredom and resentment shone out from her tired
eyes. She must have been upstairs, taking the call on an internal line.

Rajacic
pushed out a chair and beckoned her to sit. "This is Alexa," he
announced. "My niece."

Peroni
looked her up and down. "You mean this is a family business?"

"When
he gets some business," she snapped.

The
Serb pointed to the window. "Am I responsible for the weather now? Please.
I've listened to enough shit for one evening. These people need your
help, Alexa. You're getting paid anyway. You can go with them. Or you can
clean up in the kitchen. Which is it going to be?"

"Some
choice," she grunted and took a seat. "What do you want?"

Rajacic
reached over and brushed his fingers against her fine black hair. "Hey,
zingara
.
No tantrums. They just want a little advice."

He
looked at Peroni, who pushed the photo across the table. She picked it up.

"I
don't know who the hell this is," she complained. "Why ask
me?"

Rajacic
smiled. "A little gypsy blood crept into the family a while back,"
he explained. "Don't ask how. It's thick blood, huh, Alexa?
Like this kid's maybe. My friends here are asking themselves,
"Where would a girl like this hide out if she were scared and living off
the street?" Can you tell them?"

Her
black eyes didn't give away a thing. "On the street? In weather
like this?"