“Well, let’s try this thing again. You never made it clear what you wanted me to do for you anyhow, apart from when we were, you know . . .”
“When we were what?”
“Sorry, that was in bad taste.”
“It sure was. I distinctly remember explaining it to you in the clearest possible terms. I was looking for someone to keep an ear to the ground here in Rome, help me flesh out my monthly reports to the country team. You are clearly not that person. So, personal feelings and friendship aside, you’re calling me now because . . .?”
“A case was taken away from me, I was hoping you might speed up the process of my finding out about this Colonel. If not, I can do it myself.”
“I still don’t get why you think I’ll do this. Or why you think I have access.”
“I know you have access. Even I have access if I try hard enough. It’s just quicker this way.”
“Suppose I helped you, would you consider that as a favor to be returned?”
“Of course. I never said no to what you were proposing. You know me, I love sharing. Love my country, too.”
“I don’t know, Alec. Maybe.”
“Great. That’s Farinelli with two ‘l’s. And 8 o’clock, my place. I’m making pure American tacos and . . .” he tried to think of something appetizing. “Guacamole.”
When Blume arrived a few minutes later, Sovrintendente Grattapaglia was standing at the green door, arms folded as if barring entrance to it, and staring at a dark-blue Carabinieri car with a red flash emblem parked a few meters from him.
The driver, a Maresciallo, had positioned the vehicle below a plane tree, and was leaning on the half-open door. As Blume came up beside the car, a small swirl of smoke floated out from the passenger seat behind.
Blume bent down to see inside, shading his eyes like he was saluting the occupants. The windows were slightly tinted, and he could just make out two or maybe three men filling up all the space in the backseat. Someone grabbed his shoulder, but Blume stayed relaxed.
“Take your hand off me,” he said. “I am a police commissioner.”
The grip eased, but the Carabiniere did not let go completely. Blume straightened up, turned around, and pushed down the Carabiniere’s extended arm.
“If you’ve been on duty in Rome for any length of time, you probably know my face,” said Blume. “So there should be no need for me to have to tell you to step back, now.”
The Carabiniere took a step backwards, and nodded.
From behind him came the whirring sound of a car window being lowered, and a blue cloud of cigar smoke swirled over Blume’s shoulder.
Blume turned around and looked into the car. The backseat was filled to capacity by a single man.
The voice was slightly throaty, soft, and calm, the face creased and brown like a hickory nut. “I imagine you are Commissioner Blume.”
Blume had seen people this large when traveling as a boy with his parents through towns in Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, but everything they wore was elasticized; and he had seen obese Neapolitan criminals with Velcro straps on running shoes they couldn’t see, but he had never seen a man with so much bulk dressed in such a nicely cut silk suit.
“And you must be Colonel Farinelli,” said Blume.
“You put the place off limits,” said the Colonel. “Good. I like a sealed environment.”
“I hope my Sovrintendente extended you every courtesy during your search,” said Blume.
“Oh, he did his best to stop us,” said Farinelli. He let out a cloud of smoke and nodded from inside it. “But what could he do? The magistrate tried to send him away, but he wouldn’t budge. He even insisted on watching us as we gathered evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“Why paintings, of course. That’s why I have been called in. Art fraud is my special area.”
“Murder is mine.”
“Yes. I’m sure you’ll have a murder to look into sometime soon. What’s the average in your district, two, three a month?”
“Are you saying Treacy was not murdered?” said Blume. “Do you have evidence for that?”
“Of course not. That’s up to you, Commissioner. It should be clear within a few hours, or tomorrow after the autopsy, no? Meanwhile, I’m looking after this.” The Colonel tossed his cigar butt out the door. His suit began to ripple as he began the process of heaving himself across the seat toward the door.
Blume walked away in the direction of Grattapaglia, leaving the task of pulling his boss out of the car to the Maresciallo.
“You did try to stop them, right?” said Blume as he reached Grattapaglia.
“Stop a team of Carabinieri, a colonel, and a magistrate with a search warrant? I did my best.”
“OK, OK. I should have answered when you called. Get back to the station now.”
Grattapaglia nodded over Blume’s shoulder. “Here they are again. And I can see Inspector Mattiola looking a bit lost at the end of the street.”
“Take her back with you.”
“So it’s all working out? She’s a big help?”
“Get lost. Write that report on this morning’s incident.”
Grattapaglia moved away, leaving Blume face-to-face with Colonel Farinelli who was holding two solid white boxes with “Franchi” written on them in blue cursive letters. He caught Blume’s glance and raised the boxes slightly. “A break for lunch, Commissioner. That’s where I was just now. Do you like Franchi’s take-out fare?”
Blume did—who didn’t? But he said nothing.
Blume pushed open the green door, which now sagged on its hinges, and stepped into the narrow passageway, imagining the Colonel trapped there like a hog in a rabbit hole.
“I did not enjoy squeezing in there last time,” said the Colonel. “If you’d be so kind . . . .” He handed the boxes to Blume.
Blume handed them back, saying, “Get your Maresciallo to carry them.”
“Ah, but he’s staying here.”
“Then carry them yourself.”
By the time he reached the door to the greenhouse, the Colonel was breathing heavily and had difficulty ascending the two steps that led inside.
When he had finally made it up, he put down the boxes and placed his hands on the small of his back and pushed his stomach out even further, like he was considering buying the property.
After a while, with his breathing back to normal, the Colonel said, “Treacy has hardly changed this place.”
“Treacy?” said Blume. “You knew him?”
“Of course. I knew him well. Or used to. This house must have been the servants’ quarters for Villa Corsini.”
Blume went through the kitchen and into the next room. The walls were now almost bare, though several paintings had been left. The unframed sketches and paintings he had noticed earlier piled on the desk were gone, and the papers on the desk had been thoroughly searched and many of them lay scattered on the floor. Perhaps the utility bills and bank statements were not vital evidence, but they could be useful, and Blume had intended to take them in. Yet Farinelli and his men had thrown them on the floor. The only reason Blume could see for that was that they had been looking for something else, something specific.
Colonel Farinelli appeared from the kitchen. “What are you looking for? You’re not conducting an investigation, you know.”
“I’m curious,” said Blume.
“What we have here is a natural death. No need for your
squadra mobile
. The dead man was a forger, hence my involvement,” said the Colonel. “But I seem to remember, you don’t work well with the Carabinieri.”
“Usually I work fine with the Carabinieri,” said Blume. “Last time I didn’t, Buoncompagno was directing that investigation, too. I just want to see a few things for myself before I sign off.”
“Come into the kitchen, then,” said the Colonel.
Blume returned to the kitchen, where the Colonel had thrown open the fridge.
“You’re an Anglo-Saxon,” he declared. “So I suppose you’re more butter, beer, and milk than wine, oil, and water?”
Blume did not reply, but the Colonel was not waiting either. “Your northern diet is very high in cholesterol. You need to be careful.” He pushed the refrigerator door shut. “What did you see in there that might be interesting?”
“A lot of eggs,” said Blume.
“Ah, you noticed them, did you?” said the Colonel, clumping his hands together. He wore a large ruby ring on his middle finger.
“Yes,” said Blume. “And I thought maybe he was using the eggs for tempera painting, instead of just eating them.”
The Colonel tapped the side of his nose. “What made you think of that?”
“I’m investigating the suspicious death of a man who forged paintings for a living. Eggs are used for tempera painting, it’s an obvious connection.”
“It’s not obvious to everyone,” said the Colonel, pulling out a green folding wooden chair from below the marble table on which the two boxes now sat beside a honey pot, a bag of sugar, an open carton of milk, a pepper canister, and a bottle of
Worcester sauce. “But I suppose you have the right background.”
The Colonel lifted the flimsy chair in one hand, looked at it scornfully, then put it down, and dragged a heavy oak stool with paint spots all over it. He brushed the surface with the back of his hand, sat down, stretched out his arm, and pulled the two white boxes across the table. “Your parents were art historians, Commissioner. I was hoping some of their knowledge had rubbed off on you, and it seems it has.”
“Did you delve deep, Colonel?”
“A cursory glance, just to see who I would be dealing with. I am very impressed, Commissioner. Really. That was a terrible thing that befell your parents. What made you decide to stay in this awful country afterwards?”
Blume wagged his index finger at the Colonel, warning him off the subject.
“I don’t mean to intrude on your private grief,” said the Colonel. “Though it can’t have been easy. All these years on a police salary? We public servants, risking our lives, grossly underpaid, unrewarded, unrecognized. Policemen fall into arrears on a mortgage, take stupid risks, some even kill themselves out of despair. Some have killed their families. It doesn’t take much to get into a hole, especially if the first place you go to is the criminal underworld instead of your colleagues in law enforcement. A house sale falls through, your kid needs braces, some bastard sues you for some trivial mishap. And there we stand, vulnerable, outbid, underpaid, in debt.”
He opened a box with a sigh and a sad shake of his head that caused his cheeks to wobble. “Get those two glasses over there, the ones by the sink, would you?”
Blume stayed where he was.
“Go on,” said the Colonel. “I had them washed earlier. The corkscrew, too, if you’d be so kind. And some knives, forks, spoons from that drawer.”
Blume spread his hands out in an apologetic way, and said: “Sorry, Colonel. You want a valet, call your Maresciallo in.”
The Colonel sighed theatrically. “Look, Commissioner, I am a fat man. What is simple for you is difficult for me. I suffer from diabetes. I have gout in my left toe.”
“Gout? Nobody gets gout anymore.”
“Nowadays they call it metabolic arthritis. It’s been getting worse. It comes in the spring, stays for the summer, and is gone by the winter. Like some sort of evil migrating bird.”
Blume went over and retrieved the glasses, corkscrew, and silverware, brought them back to the table.
“To the side of the refrigerator there, in the rack, the bottle third from the top—no, the other. That’s it,” said the Colonel.
Blume brought the bottle of wine over, set it in front of the Colonel who was now lifting things out of one white box.
“The thing is,” said the Colonel, “our man was not known for forging tempera paintings, and I found only two in the house. His real specialty was pen, ink, wash, sketches, preparations for prints. He was a great draftsman, but maybe his eye for color was not so good. Maybe you need to be Italian to appreciate the full palette of color.”
“Do you?” said Blume. “Well, then maybe he just liked eggs a lot.”
“There was a lot of milk in that refrigerator, too,” said the Colonel. “Both fresh and sour. Anglo-Saxons always have so much milk.”
“The fresh milk tells us Treacy was here recently,” said Blume. “Not that it’s likely to make much difference.”
“Why would he keep sour milk, Commissioner?”
“Milk is used as a fixative for pencil and chalk, which is what you say he mainly used. Sour is as good as fresh for that. Or maybe he made his own soda bread.”
“Soda bread? Good stuff that. You use sour milk? You must tell me about that another time,” said the Colonel. “Speaking of bread, did you notice the basket with the stale bread in it?”
Blume went over to a wicker basket sitting on the counter, pushed off the top, and produced two pieces of broken dirty bread which he rapped against the counter.
“Rub breadcrumbs over a chalk drawing, and you get an old look,” said the Colonel. “Treacy was a bit of a pig, but I don’t think he kept dirty bread to eat.”
“It’s hardly the only way to get a drawing to look old,” said Blume.