Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (16 page)

I can see him now, standing there, the light at his back, and all the forces of the light. “Come with me,” he said. I can’t, I told him, I mustn’t. It seemed that all this had happened before. Where do they come from, these memories and dreams? They must belong to someone else. There was nothing before the darkness. How could there be? We come from darkness and to darkness we return. There is nothing else.

“It’s all right,” he said, “I’m a policeman. Come with me.” I did what he told me. He would have taken me anyway, by force.

The light burned so much I had to close my eyes. When I opened them, there were men everywhere, rushing about, shouting at each other, crowding in, their eyes swishing to and fro like scythes. They took it in turns to pour their lies into me, filling me with unease. Everything that had happened had been a mistake. I’d done nothing wrong, it was all a mistake, a scandal, a tragic and shocking crime. When I tried to say something, my voice astonished me, a raven’s croak passing through my body, nothing to do with me. After that I kept silent. There was no point in trying to resist. They were too strong, their desires too urgent. Sooner or later, I knew, they would have their way with me.

In the end they tired and let me go. You’re free, they said. Like the follower I was, I believed them. I thought I could go back as though nothing had happened, as though it had all been a dream!

THURSDAY: 1720–1910

B
Y THE TIME THE GRUBBY BLUE
and grey Metropolitana train emerged above ground at the Piramide stop, it was getting dark. Zen walked up the broad dim steps beneath a Fascist mural depicting the army, the family, and the workers, and out into the street.

The city’s sparrows were in the grip of the madness that seized them at the changing of the light, turning the trees into loudspeakers broadcasting their gibberish, then swarming up out of the foliage to circle about in the dusky air like scraps of windborne rubbish. In the piazza below, gleaming tramlines crisscrossed in intricate patterns leading off in every direction, only to finish abruptly a few metres further on under a coat of tarmac or running headlong into a traffic divider.

Instead of making a detour to the traffic lights on Via Ostiense, Zen walked straight out into the vehicles converging on the piazza from every direction. Maybe that was where the sparrows got the idea, he thought. Maybe their frenzied swarming was just an attempt to imitate the behaviour patterns of the dominant life-form. But tonight the traffic didn’t bother him. He was as invulnerable to accidents as a prisoner under sentence of death. Respecting his doomed self-assurance, the traffic flowed around him, casting him ashore on the far side of the piazza at the foot of the marble pyramid.

The most direct route to where he was going lay through Porta San Paolo and along Via Marmorata. But now that he was nearly there, Zen’s fears about being followed had revived, so instead of the busy main road he took the smaller and quieter street flanked by the city walls on one side and dull apartment blocks on the other. Apart from a few prostitutes setting up their pitches in the strip of grass and shrubs between the street and the wall, there was no one about. He turned right through the arches opened in the wall and then left, circling the bulky mound which gave its name to the Testaccio district. At the base of the hill stood a line of squat, jerry-built huts guarded by savage dogs. Here metal was worked and spray-painted, engines mended, bodywork repaired, serial numbers altered. During Zen’s time at the Questura, this had been one of the most important areas in the city for recycling stolen vehicles.

The other main business of the district had been killing, but that had ceased with the closure of the slaughterhouse complex that lay between the Testaccio hill and the river. Any killing that went on now was related to the part-time activities of some of the inhabitants, of which the trade in secondhand cars was only the most notable example. As for the abattoir, it was now a mecca for aspirant yuppies like Vincenzo Fabri who thronged to the former killing floors in their Mercedes and BMWs to acquire the art of sitting on a horse. Opposite, a few exclusive nightclubs had sprung up to attract those of the city’s gilded youth who liked to go slumming in safety.

Skirting the oxblood-red walls of the slaughterhouse, Zen walked on into the grid of streets beyond. Although no more lovely than the suburb where Tania and her husband lived, the Testaccio was quite different. It had a history, for one thing: two thousand years of it, dating back to the time when the area was the port of Rome and the hill in its midst had gradually been built up from fragments of amphorae broken in transit or handling. The four-square, turn-of-the-century tenements which now lined the streets were merely the latest expression of its essentially gritty, no-nonsense character. The merest change in the economic climate would be enough to sweep away the outer suburbs as though they had never existed, but the Testaccio would be there forever, lodged in Rome’s throat like a bone.

Night had fallen. The street was sparsely lit by lamps suspended on cables strung across from one apartment block to another. Rows of jalousies painted a dull institutional green punctuated the expanses of bare walling. In an area where cars were a medium of exchange rather than a symbol of disposable income, it was still possible to park in an orderly fashion at an angle to the kerb, leaving the pavements free for pedestrians. Zen walked steadily along, neither hurrying nor loitering, showing no particular interest in his surroundings. This was enemy territory, and he had particular reasons not to want to draw attention to himself. After crossing two streets running at right angles, he caught sight of his destination, a block of shops and businesses comprising a butcher, a barber, a grocery, and a paint wholesaler. Between the barber and the butcher lay the Rally Bar.

It had been years since Zen had set foot there, but as soon as he walked in he saw that nothing had changed. The walls and the high ceiling were painted in the same terminal shade of brown and decorated with large photographs of motor-racing scenes and the Juventus football team and posters illustrating the various ice creams available from the large freezer at the end of the bar. Two bare neon strips suspended by chains from the ceiling dispensed a frigid, even glare reflected back by the indestructible slabs of highly polished aggregate on the floor. Above the bar hung a tear-off calendar distributed by an automobile spare parts company featuring a colour photograph of a peacock, framed permits from the city council, a price list, a notice declaring the establishment’s legal closing day to be Wednesday, advertisements for various brands of
amaro
and beer, and a drawing of a tramp inscribed, He always gave discounts and credit to everyone.

The three men talking in low voices at the bar fell silent as Zen entered. He walked up to them, pushing against their silent stares as though into a strong wind.

“A glass of beer.”

The barman, gaunt and lantern-jawed, plucked a bottle of beer from the fridge, levered the cap off the bottle, and dumped half the beer into a glass still dripping from the draining board. The glass was thick and scored with scratches. At the bottom, a few centimetres of beer lay inaccessible beneath a layer of bubbles as thick and white as shaving foam.

The barman picked up a copy of the
Gazzetta dello Sport.
The other customers gazed up over their empty coffee cups at the bottles of half-drunk spirits and cordials stacked on the glass shelving. Above the bar, in pride of place, stood a clock whose dial consisted of a china plate painted with a list showing the amount of time the proprietor was allegedly prepared to spend on tax collectors, rich aged relatives, door-to-door salesmen, sexy housewives, and the like. Plainclothes policemen on unofficial business were not mentioned.

Zen carefully poured the rest of the beer into the glass, dousing the bubbles. He drank half of it and then lit a cigarette.

“Fausto been in tonight?”

The second hand described almost a complete revolution of the china plate before the barman swivelled smoothly to face Zen.

“What?”

Zen looked him in the eye. He said nothing. Eventually the barman turned away again and picked up his newspaper. The second hand of the clock moved from “mothers-in-law” through “the blonde next door” and back to its starting place.

“This beer tastes like piss,” Zen said.

The pink newspaper slowly descended.

“And what do you expect me to do about it?” the barman demanded menacingly.

“Give me another one.”

The barman rocked backward and forward on his feet for a moment. Then he snapped open the heavy wooden door of the fridge, fished out another bottle, decapitated it, and banged it down on the zinc counter. Zen took the bottle and his glass and sat down at one of the three small round metal tables covered in blue and red plastic wickerwork.

As if they had been waiting for this, the two other customers suddenly came to life. One of them fed some coins into the video game machine, which responded with a deafening burst of electronic screams and shots. The other man strode over to Zen’s table. He had slicked-back dark hair and ears that stood out from his skull like a pair of gesturing hands. There was a large soggy bruise on his forehead, his nose was broken, and his cheek had recently been slit from top to bottom. Wary of the fearful things that had happened to the rest of his face, the man’s eyes cowered in deep, heavy-lidded sockets.

“All right if I sit down?” he asked, doing so.

On the video screen, a gaunt grim detective in a trenchcoat stalked a nocturnal city street. Menacing figures wielding guns appeared at windows or popped out from behind walls. If the detective shot them accurately, they collapsed in a pool of blood and a number of points was added to the score, but if he missed, then there was a female scream and a glimpse of the busty half-naked victim.

“I couldn’t help overhearing what you said,” Zen’s new companion remarked.

Zen stubbed out his cigarette in a smoked-glass ashtray printed with the name, address and telephone number of a wholesale meat supplier.
All home-killed produce,
read the slogan.
Bulk orders our specialty.

“I’m a friend of Fausto,” the man went on. “Unfortunately he’s out of town at the moment. Perhaps I could help.”

Zen moved the ashtray about on the table as though it were a counter in a game and he hadn’t quite decided on his move. “That would depend on what I wanted,” he said.

“And on who you are.”

So that the attractions of the video game should not be lost on those unable to see the screen, the manufacturers had thoughtfully provided it with a range of sound effects which were repeated at regular intervals. One in particular, a mocking little motif like an electronic sneer, invariably caused the player to blaspheme and slap the side of the machine with his palm. At length he turned away in disgust, crossed over to the bar, and slapped down a banknote.

“Gimme five,” he said.

The barman laid down his pink sports paper, massively unmoved by the shattering events referred to in the headline:
JUVE, WHAT A LETDOWN!!! ROMA, WHAT A LETOFF!!!.
He tossed the coins on the stainless steel surface. A moment later the video player was lost to the world again, his buttocks twisting and swivelling as though copulating with the machine.

“I’m also a friend of Fausto’s,” said Zen.

The man raised his eyebrows. “Strange we haven’t met before.”

“Fausto has a lot of friends. A lot of enemies, too. Maybe that’s why he’s out of town.”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“That’s no way to treat a friend,” Zen remarked.

The barman tossed his newspaper aside and stepped down from the raised wooden stage from which he lorded it over the customers. An oddly insignificant figure now, diminished by more than just height, he moved restlessly about, straightening chairs and tables and polishing ashtrays.

“Anyway, if I run into Fausto, I’ll let him know you were asking for him,” the man said. “What did you say your name was?”

Zen wrote his telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it to the man. “Tell him to ring me this evening.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“For the same reason he’s out of town. For his health, for his future, for his peace of mind.”

He got up and started to walk to the door.

“Hey, what about the beers?” the barman called.

Zen jerked his thumb at the table.

“My friend’s buying,” he said.

He walked down the street without looking back. Once he had rounded the corner, he stopped in a patch of shadow cast by a large delivery van, keeping an eye on the door of the Rally Bar. A cloying odour emanated from the van, the odour of blood, of death. It had its own smell, quite distinct from all others. Zen recalled a visit he had made to another abattoir in the course of an investigation into an extortion racket, maybe even the Spadola case. He had watched the animals being prodded and kicked to their deaths, squealing piteously, showing the whites of their eyes. Men in blue overalls and red rubber aprons went about the killing in an atmosphere of rough, good-natured camaraderie, and at lunchtime went home to their wives and children and ate fried back muscles and veins and intestine and stomach lining.

A figure emerged from the bar and started to walk straight toward him. Zen backed into the shadows, keeping in the lee of the van, then ran quickly into the courtyard of a nearby apartment block. Palms and small evergreen shrubs surrounded a dripping communal tap. The courtyard was separated from the street by a wall topped with high iron railings. Zen took shelter immediately inside, behind the wall, ready to follow the man once he had passed by.

But he didn’t pass by. The footsteps came closer and closer, and then he was there, no more than a metre away. He walked past Zen without seeing him, crossed the courtyard, and disappeared into one of the doorways. Zen followed.

Inside the door, a narrow marble staircase with a heavy wooden banister on wrought-iron supports ran up to a landing. The man was already out of sight. Zen stopped still, listening to the footsteps in the stairwell above. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, then a brief pause as he reached the landing. This pattern was repeated twice. Then there was a faint knocking, repeated after some time. The murmur of voices was cut off by the sound of a door closing.