Time to Depart (11 page)

XXI

Will this take long?' Her voice had all the fluting charm of pebbles in vinegar cleaning out a blackened skillet. We're expecting guests.'

'Lycians, maybe?' asked Petronius.

'You've got a nerve.' She was still pinning folds of her dress, more interested in how it draped than in dealing with us. 'This had better be good,' she snapped, looking up abruptly. 'Luckily we'd finished, or I'd kill you for interrupting that customer. He's my best client.'

'Who gets a personal service,' Petro commented.

'He knows this is where he'll receive the best!' smirked Lalage. I noticed her giving us a thorough squint: Petronius solid, tough and hostile; me less tall, but just as tough and even more disparaging.

'Left his lictors at home, did he?' I asked, in an offensive tone. I was referring to the mighty man's state-employed bodyguard; they were supposed to escort him everywhere, showing the axes and rods that symbolised his power to chastise. Or as Petro used to say, symbolising what a big donkey he was.

'We're looking after the lictors.'

'I bet! Lictors usually know how to park their rods,' I said. 'A man should always take his lictors, Marcus Didius,' Petro reproved me gravely.

'Oh true, Lucius Petronius,' I corrected myself formally. 'Leaving your lictors at home is the right way to make the wife suspicious.'

'And he's a magistrate, so he must be a clever man! He'll know how to bluff the old broomstick he left at home in his atrium. Besides, I expect the lictors only keep quiet about his habits, provided they get theirs -'

'Spare me the comedy!' Lalage interrupted. She swung her bare feet to the floor and sat up on the edge of her couch, an ornate affair with bronze curlicues all over it, dripping with cushions of the type that are described as 'feminine'. I could think of several women who would shove Lalage out of a window and fling her tasselled and pleated pink fripperies after her - not so much for moral reasons, but in disgust at her decor.

With a shimmer and tinkle of jewellery, she folded her fine arms and waited.

Petronius and I had deliberately stood at opposite ends of the room so she had to turn her head to face whoever was speaking. In more fragile company it was a tactic to cause alarm. I suspected Lalage had had plenty of practice in dealing with two men at once. Still, we went through the routine, and she let us play.

'We need to ask you some questions,' Petro began.

'Don't you mean more questions? I thought the damned business with the Lycians was all sorted out.' She assumed we had come about the murdered tourist whose death had formed the basis of the Balbinus trial.

'This is not about the Lycians.'

'Afraid I can't help you then.'

'Afraid you'd better. Do you want a raid?' Petronius asked. 'I dare say we could find a few kidnapped minors working your cubicles. Or unlicensed freeborn. Are you absolutely certain you comply scrupulously with the hygiene regulations? Is any food being supplied on the premises? If So, are you licensed for hot meals? Who exactly were those shady cnaracters Falco and I saw huddled downstairs?'

Petronius tended to stick stolidly to his remit, but this could take poking with a fancier baton. 'How about a scandal?' I timed in. 'Senior magistrate named; society divorce ensues; shocked officials say they have seen nothing like it since Caligula's excesses. That should make a few entries in the Dally Gazette!'

'Good for trade,' Lalage shrugged. Annoyingly, she was right. Such a story might limit her upper-class clients for a while but others would flock. She decided to defy Petro. 'Anyway, you work in the Thirteenth. This is the Eleventh; it's out of your jurisdiction. I'm not going to be raided,' she assured him serenely. 'The Bower of Venus has an excellent relationship with the local boys.'

Petro's voice grated. 'Excellent as tar!'

'They look after us very prettily.'

'I'm not the Sixth Cohort. I don't take oily handshakes, and I don't want half an hour with a dubious haybag on one of your flea-ridden blankets -'

'Of course you don't. You're a hero and your cohort's incorruptible! Something more select?' Lalage then rasped at Petro, with an affected attitude. 'Does the most excellent sir have interesting tastes?'

'Shut it, Lalage!'

'Juno! Have I just met the one and only member of the vigiles who's not on the take?'

Petro ignored it. We were not investigating graft. If anyone tackled that problem, it would need more than two agents, and they would want to be wearing Scythian chain mail. 'Hear my words. I'm not touting for a free tickle, and you're in danger of finding the brothel closed down and yourself back as a paviour again.'

'I was never a streetwalker!' the madam exclaimed with true horror.

I took a turn in the conversation. "This is the real business,' I warned her. 'Unless we get co-operation, you'll find yourself making an appearance before the eagle's beak!'

'Nice oratory. So what's the catch?'

'Be clever. My colleague's easily upset.'

She turned lustrous eyes on me. Her manner altered. She had had fifteen years of practice and I felt my breath falter. 'So what about you?' she murmured.

'He has a very respectable girlfriend,' Petronius shot in rapidly.

'Oh I see! Why keep a pig and honk yourself?' Her eyes never left me. If I looked at her, the pressure was serious, and if I stared back, I could no longer see Petro. This was where separating ourselves at two ends of the room could leave one of us vulnerable. Lalage knew how to make feeling vulnerable seem exciting. She was still relaying the promising smile, and I was freely admiring the act. She had once been a genuine looker. She was soiled, but still attractive. Well-worn glory has its own allure. Virginity's a bland commodity.

The skirmish was brief, however. 'You seem to bee man of taste,' she said.

'I like to bask at my own fire.' I liked rather more than that, and what suited my taste was not sold by the hour. My girl could never be bought.

Lalage dropped the subject, though not without a sneer. 'Well thanks for making it sound like an apology!'

'Aventine etiquette.'

She gave me a sharper look, but I chose to pretend I had said nothing significant. She still did not know what I was hinting; she had seen too many men to remember who I was. I felt her lose interest - leaving me with a strong sense of unfinished business.

Unexpectedly she spun back to Petro: 'I haven't got all day! What do you want?'

She was using our own separation routine; letting one relax, then trying to catch him off guard. Petro managed to avoid being thrown. His chin came up, but he turned it into a surly gesture by sweeping back his straight hair with one hand, like a dandy who didn't reckon on letting a mere woman make him jump. 'To discuss the Emporium heist.'

'Oh that was a loud one!' She rolled her eyes. They were still very beautiful: wide-set, large, dark as a winter evening, and melting with suggestiveness. Personally, I liked eyes with a more subtle challenge. But Lalage had nice eyes.

Petronius had noticed them, though only a close friend would know it. 'Yes, they're talking about it everywhere - but nobody's whispering who did the dirty deed.'

'Who do you think did it?' Lalage asked, pretending to flatter him.

'I haven't time to waste thinking. I want names.'

She tried the innocent-little-woman trick: 'Well what makes you believe I might know anything about thieves?'

Petro's temper was running short now. His teeth had locked. 'You mean, apart from the fact that your downstairs parlour is full of sneaks who follow funerals to rob the mourners, door-knock thieves who work the rush-the-porter game, balcony-crawlers, basement rats, and that little runt who hangs the fake fly in people's faces, then slits their purse thongs while they're brushing it away?'

I was impressed. We had only glimpsed the trading room for a moment. Petro must have sharp eyes. He certainly knew the streets... And I knew him. I recognised the signs: he felt uneasy with the location and was working up to dragging Lalage over to his station house. If she had been a well-bred schoolgirl who had never spoken to a public official he might have stood a chance. But he ought to realise what a fool he would look, trying to put an arm lock on a glittering saffron butterfly who would shriek abuse at him all the way to the Aventine. Arresting a brothel madam is never discreet.

'Are you talking raids again?' Lalage laughed. She knew he had lost his grip enough to give her the upper hand.

'He knows better,' I assured her. 'By the time we can bring the espartos in, the joint will be clean. Macra probably gave the word straight after she finished massaging your magistrate.'

'Well I do hope she was thorough,' grinned the madam shamelessly. 'A person of his status doesn't expect to be hustled!'

It seemed to me it was time the man was hustled out of office. Rome would never be cleaned up if every time Petronius brought a mugger to court the bad character could smile at a judge who had shared the ewer where he washed his privates after his Tuesday-afternoon binge. The fellowship of Plato's had insidious tentacles. A fact that was only one aspect of our visit today that had an aura of ambidextrous ethics. The smack of sticky payments seemed to be lurking everywhere.

Lalage's diversion failed. Petronius Longus was strictly unamused. 'Who's your landlord now?' he sprang on her. 'Who runs this place since Nonnius did his singing from the high twig and Balbinus Pius took a sail?'

'What sort of a question's that?'

'Well it's not about who has decorating rights under your building tenancy. Who's the mighty man behind you, Lalage?' 

'I don't go in for boys' stuff.'

'Stifle the innuendo! Who's giving Plato protection? We proved in court that Balbinus used to cream off his percentage, so who skims Plato's now?'

'Nobody. Who needs it? I'm running everything myself.'

It was what we already suspected. Petronius screwed the corner of his mouth. "This had better be honest then.'

'Who needs a man?' scoffed Lalage lightly. 'I had it up to here with the old system. Balbinus demanded an exorbitant cut, then I was constantly giving presents to Nonnius to stop him breaking up the furniture - all ln return for a supposed service we never saw. Any trouble had to be sorted out by my own staff. What happened when the Lycian blew away was typical - we tried to clear up ourselves. I was doing the herd work, and Balbinus was just milking the business. That's over. The only commerce I'm interested in now is when men are paying me!'

'Someone will try to take over his position,' Petronius insisted.

'Let them try!'

'If it hasn't happened yet, now Balbinus has left Rome you'll meet with pressure eventually. When it happens, I want to know.'

'Sorry,' she answered acidly. 'You're in the same bumboat as all my customers: you'll get what you pay for - and no more!'

'That's closer to what I call a bargain,' Petronius responded, in his normal, level tone. 'For the big item, I'll be buying.'

She heaved her bosom, setting up ripples of light from the jewellery. The effect was less worrying than the eye trick, but highly professional. 'How much?'

'What it's worth. But I don't want shoddy goods or fakes.'

'You don't want much.' The last comment was amiable bluster. They had reached the real centre of the discussion; the terms were understood and more or less accepted by both sides. Whether that meant Lalage would ever produce any information was another matter.

'Bring me the name I need, and you won't regret it. You'll find me at the station house in the Thirteenth,' Petro announced politely.

'Oh go away,' she sneered, addressing me as if her patience with him had run out. 'And take the Big Unsusceptible with you!'

We were leaving. I turned back at the last moment to add a courtesy of my own. Giving the famous whore a generous smile, I said, 'I'm glad to see your ear healed up!'

While she and Petronius were thinking about it, I grabbed him by the elbow and we fled.

XXII

We emerged unscathed, though I for one wanted to head for the nearest respectable bathhouse.

'What was the crack about the lug, Falco?'

I just grinned and looked mysterious.

The place seemed much emptier than when we arrived. News spreads.

The girl Matra was standing back at the outside door. She looked edgy, but when she saw we were leaving peacefully she relaxed. As we passed her I heard a young child's cry. Macra noticed my surprise. 'Things happen, Falco!'

'I thought you were organised in places like this.' Some brothels were so organised, their expertise had led to them operating as neighbourhood abortists.

'Losing a baby's illegal, isn't it, officer?' Macra gurgled at Petronius. He looked tense. We all knew it would be a long time before anyone bothered to take a prostitute to court for this. The unborn are protected if there's a legacy in it; the unborn with shameless mothers have few rights.

'Like to see around the nursery?' the girl then offered Petro. There was a distinct undertone of offering him a prepubertal titbit. He declined in silence, and she giggled. 'You're a hard man to tempt! Maybe I'll have to come and see you in your station house.'

'Maybe I'll show you the cell!' Petro growled in annoyance. A mistake.

'It's a promise!' Macra shrieked. 'We know a client in the vigiles who does amazing things with chains during "interviews".'

Petronius had had enough. He took out his note tablet formally: 'And who would that be?'

'Well do you believe,' she leered at him, 'his name seems to just escape me . .'

'You're a lying little flirt,' Petronius told her, fairly pleasantly. He put away the note tablet. We stepped out into the street with her jibes ringing along the narrow passage at our backs.

'So that's a brothel!' Petro said, and we both nudged each other, grinning at an old joke from the past.

We had hesitated, lacking plans. We should not have laughed. Laughing on a brothel doorstep can lead to disaster. Never do it before you have taken a careful look in both directions down the street.

Somebody we knew was coming towards us. Petro and I were already helpless. It was too late to make off discreetly; far too late to look less like guilty men.

Approaching down the narrow lane, crying loudly, was a little girl with big feet and a dirty face. She was seven years old, in a tunic she had outgrown months ago; with it she wore a cheap glass bracelet that a kind uncle had brought her from abroad, and an extravagant amulet against the evil eye. The evil eye had not been averted; the child was being dragged along by a small, fierce-old lady with a pinched mouth who had an expression of moral outrage even before she spotted us. Spot us she did, of course, just as we two emerged like utter layabouts from Plato's Academy.

The little girl was in deep trouble for playing truant. She was glad to see anyone else she could drag down to Hades with her. She knew we were exactly the distraction she needed.

'There's Uncle Marcus!' She stopped crying at once.

Her jailer stopped walking. Petro and I had been reprobates in our youth, but nobody in Rome knew that. Petro and I had not been stupid. We were reprobates abroad.

We had just blown our cover. My niece Tertulla stared at us. She knew that even bunking off school after her grand na had pinched and scraped to pay for it failed to match our disgrace. We knew it too.

'Petronius Longus!' cried the old lady in frank amazement, too horrified even to mention me. Petro was renowned as a good husband and family man, so this disaster would be blamed on me.

'Good afternoon,' murmured Petro shyly, trying to pretend he had not been chortling, or if he had it was only because he had just heard a very funny but perfectly tasteful story about an aspect of local politics. With great presence of mind he embarked upon explaining that we could not make ourselves available to escort people to a safer neighbourhood, owing to a message he'd just received about a crisis over at the station house.

At the same moment a flying figure whom I recognised as my fraught sister Galla came hurrying down the lane crying, 'Oh you've found the little honor!' Galla spent half her life oblivious to what her children might be getting up to, and the rest in guilty hysterics after somebody stupid had told her.

'I found more than that!' came the terse reply, as a pair of unmatchedly contemptuous eyes finally fixed themselves on me.

There was nowhere to hide.

'Hello, Mother,' I said.