Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery (35 page)

Gilberto was at work, so it was Rosa Nieddu who greeted Zen at the door of their pleasant, modern flat in Via Carlo Emanuele. To Zen’s amazement, his mother was playing a board game with the two youngest Nieddu daughters. It was so long since he had seen his mother do anything except slump in a comatose state in front of the television that this perfectly ordinary scene of domestic life seemed as bizarre and alarming as if the tram he had just been on had suddenly veered off the rails and started careering freely about the streets, menacing the passers-by.

“Hello, Aurelio!” she called gaily, beaming a distracted smile in his direction. “Everything all right?”

Without waiting for his response, she turned back to the children.

“No, not there! Otherwise I’ll gobble you up like this, bang bang bang bang bang!”

The girls tittered nervously.

“But Auntie, you can’t go there, it’s the wrong way,” the elder pointed out.

“Oh! So it is! Silly old me. Silly old Auntie.”

Zen felt a pang of jealous hurt, all the stronger for being completely absurd. She’s not your auntie, he felt like shouting, she’s my mamma! Mine! Mine!

Taking Rosa Nieddu aside, he hesitantly broached the subject of his mother staying one more night.

“That’s wonderful!” she replied, interrupting his deliberately vague explanations. “Did you hear that, kids? Auntie Zen’s not leaving today after all!”

A look of sheer delight instantly appeared on the children’s faces. They rushed about, doing a war dance around the old lady, screaming at the top of their voices while she looked on happily, a benign totem pole.

“What a treasure your mother is!” Rosa Nieddu enthused.

“Why, er, yes. Yes, of course.”

“She’s been absolutely tireless with those two. I love them dearly, of course, but sometimes I think they’re going to drive me round the bend. But your mother has the patience of a saint. And she knows all these wonderful games and tricks and stories! I haven’t had to do a thing. It’s been a real holiday for me. I’ve finally been able to catch up with my own life a bit. Gilberto helps as much as he can, of course, but he’s so busy at work these days. Anyway, we’ve arranged that your mother’s going to come round every week, once she goes home I mean. That’s all right, I hope.”

Zen stared at her.

“You
want
her to come?”

Rosa Nieddu’s serene features contracted in puzzlement.

“Of course I do! And just as important,
she
wants to. She said she was … well, anyway, she wants to come.”

Zen eyed her.

“What did she say?”

“I don’t expect she meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“Well …”

“Yes?”

“It was just a manner of speaking, you know, but she said she’d had enough of being locked up at home.”

“Locked up?” Zen shouted angrily. “What the hell do you mean? She’s the one who refuses to set foot outside the flat!”

“Well, she’s been out a lot while she’s been with us.”

“She never wanted to move here in the first place. She hates Rome!”

“No, she doesn’t! We all went to the Borghese gardens on Sunday. She couldn’t believe all the joggers and cyclists and the fathers pushing babies. Afterwards, we went to the zoo and then had lunch out. We had a really good time. She said she hadn’t enjoyed herself so much for years.”

Zen stood open-mouthed. This is not my mother, he wanted to protest, it’s an imposter! My mother is a crabby old woman who spends her time shut up at home in front of the television. I don’t want this wonderful, patient, inventive old lady with a zest for life! I want my mamma!
I want my mamma!

“I’m glad to hear it, I’m sure,” he said drily. “So it’ll be no trouble if she stays another night, then?”

“It’ll be a pleasure.”

Zen rode the lift downstairs feeling irritated, relieved, and obscurely guilty. It wasn’t his fault, of course. How could it be? He hadn’t locked his mother up in the flat. She’d locked herself up. It was true that he had accepted that because it was convenient, because it had left him free to do what he wanted, particularly when he had been seeing Ellen. He’d always avoided confronting his mother with that relationship, preferring to shut her out of that area of his life. That was apparently one of the things that had made Ellen leave him in the end. Perhaps it
was
partly his fault, in a way. He hadn’t created the situation, but he’d connived at it, used it, acquiesced. He hadn’t been cruel, but he’d been lazy. He’d been thoughtless and selfish.

He stopped in the first cafe he came to and phoned the caretaker at home. Then he walked back to Portomaggiore and took the Number 19 tram all the way round the city to its terminus a short walk from where he lived. As he had expected, there was no sign of the grey van, but the chances were that the house was under surveillance. Zen walked casually down the street and into the shop next door to his house, an outmoded emporium selling everything from corkscrews and hot-water bottles to dried beans and herbal remedies. It had the air of a museum rather than a shop, and the elderly woman who ran it had the haughty, disinterested manner of a curator.

“You’re from the Electricity?” she demanded as Zen threaded his way through the shelves and cupboards to the counter.

“That’s right.”

She jerked her thumb at a door at the rear of the shop. The array of mops and brooms which normally concealed it had been cleared to one side.

“Don’t you dare touch anything!” she admonished. “I know where everything is! If anything’s missing, there’ll be trouble, I promise you.”

Zen opened the door. Inside was a dark passageway almost completely filled with boxes of various sizes. At the end was a second door, opening into the courtyard of his own house. In the hall he found Giuseppe and thanked him for getting the shopkeeper to unlock the doors.

“So what’s the problem, dottore?” the caretaker asked anxiously.

“Just a jealous husband.”

Giuseppe cackled and waggled a finger on either side of his forehead.

“He has good reason, I’ll bet!”

Zen shrugged modestly. Giuseppe redoubled his cackles.

“Like we say in Lucania, there may be snow on the roof but there’s still fire in the furnace! Eh, dottore!”

Once he had showered and shaved, Zen put on a suit of evening dress exhumed from the oak chest in which it had lain entombed since the last time he had had occasion to attend a formal gathering. He wandered dispiritedly through to the living room, struggling with a recalcitrant stud. In the absence of his mother and Maria Grazia, the lares and penates of the place, the flat felt hollow and unreal, like a stage set which despite its scrupulous accuracy does not quite convince.

Catching sight of himself in the mirror above the sideboard, Zen was surprised to find that he did not look flustered and absurd, as he felt, but elegant and distinguished. What a shame that Tania would not see him in his finery! But it was clearly out of the question to keep their appointment as long as hired assassins were pursuing Spadola’s vendetta from beyond the grave. He had already put her life at risk once too often.

He picked up the smooth pasteboard card propped against the mirror and scanned the lines of engraved italic copperplate requesting the pleasure of his company at a reception at Palazzo Sisti that evening at seven o’clock. Even
l’onorevole
and his cronies didn’t have the gall to celebrate openly the collapse of the case against Renato Favelloni, so the reception was nominally in honour of one of the party’s rising stars who had recently been appointed to a crucial portfolio in the government’s newly reshuffled cabinet. Zen had been very much in two minds about attending, particularly after Vincenzo Fabri’s attack on him that morning, but the appearance of the grey van had removed his lingering doubts.

There was no point in trying to buy off the people Spadola had hired. Even if he’d had the money to do so, the underworld has a strict code of consumer protection in such matters. Spadola would have made a substantial payment up front, with the balance in the hands of a trusted third party. The deposit was unreturnable now that Spadola was dead, so any failure to carry out the hit would amount to breach of contract. These rules of conduct were extremely rigid. Zen’s only recourse was to try and persuade the organisation involved that it was in its own interests to make an exception in this case. He himself didn’t have the necessary clout to do this, but
l’onorevole
should, or would know who did. And
l’onorevole
owed him.

He reached for the phone and dialled the number Tania had given him that morning to cancel their date, but there was no reply. By now it was ten to seven, and there was no sign of the taxi he had ordered, so he rang to complain before trying Tania’s friend again. To his dismay, the dispatcher not only disclaimed all knowledge of his previous call but even hinted that Zen had invented it in order to jump the forty-five minute waiting period that now existed. After a brief acrimonious exchange, Zen slammed down the receiver and headed for the door. The evening was fine and it was not too far to walk. Even if he didn’t manage to pick up a taxi on the way, he would arrive no more than fashionably late.

He raced down the stairs two at a time and out to the street, trying to work out how best to phrase his petition without making it look as though he took Palazzo Sisti’s underworld connections for granted. So preoccupied was he that he didn’t notice the unmarked grey delivery van that was now double-parked further down the street nor the dark figure that slipped out of a doorway nearby and began to follow him.

His route was the same as he and Tania had taken a week earlier: past the law courts, across the river, and south through Piazza Navona. He strode rapidly along, oblivious to the stares he was attracting from passers-by curious about this image of sartorial rectitude hoofing it through their vulgar streets like Cinderella going home from the ball. When he reached the small piazza facing the grimy baroque church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, he was halted for some time by the traffic on Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. A woman getting out of a car parked by the fountain shouted something and pointed. Zen turned to find a slight, swarthy man brandishing a pistol at him.

“You have disgraced my marriage bed and …”

He paused, breathless with the effort of running to keep up with Zen.

“… and brought dishonour on my house! For this you shall pay, as my name is Mauro Bevilacqua!”

So this is the way it’s going to end, thought Zen. He almost laughed to think he had survived the worst a Vasco Spadola could do, only to fall victim to the ravings of a jealous bank clerk.

“You thought you had it all worked out, you two, didn’t you?” Bevilacqua sneered. “You thought you could have fun and games at my expense and get away scot-free. Well, let me tell you …”

Tyres squealed as the grey van slewed to a halt by the neat Fascist office block at the other side of the piazza. Men in grey overalls bearing the word Police in fluorescent yellow leapt out clutching submachine guns.

“Don’t move!” boomed a harshly amplified voice. “Drop your weapon!”

Mauro Bevilacqua looked about him in utter bewilderment. He turned to face the van, the pistol still in his hand. A volley of shots rang out. There was a sound of breaking glass and a woman’s scream.

“For Christ’s sake, drop the fucking thing before they kill us all!” Zen hissed.

The pistol clattered to the cobblestones.

“It’s only a replica,” Bevilacqua muttered.

The woman who had shouted to Zen stood looking with a shocked expression at her car, whose windscreen was now crazed and punctured by bullet holes. Two of the men in grey overalls threw Bevilacqua against the side of the car, arms on the roof, and searched him roughly. Another walked up to Zen and saluted.

“Ispettore Ligato, NOCS unit 42! I trust you’re unharmed, dottore?”

Zen nodded.

“Sorry about losing contact this afternoon,” Ligato went on. “You were a bit too quick for us at the lights. Still, no harm done. We were here when it counted.”

He walked over to Bevilacqua, who was now lying face down on the cobblestones, his arms tightly handcuffed behind his back. Ligato gave him an exploratory kick in the ribs.

“As for you, you bastard, you can count yourself lucky you’re still alive!”

Zen laid a restraining hand on the official’s shoulder.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” he said. “His wife’s just left him.”

Palazzo Sisti was lit up and humming like the power-station it was. A queue of limousines tailed back from the courtyard, waiting to discharge their illustrious passengers. The miniscule porter, beside himself with the importance of the occasion, was haranguing a chauffeur who was trying to park in a space reserved for some Party dignitary.

At the top of the staircase lounged a familiar apelike figure, unconvincingly got up in a footman’s apparel.

“Good evening, Lino.”

The bodyguard scowled at Zen.

“That way,” he said, jerking his thumb.

“This way?” Zen enquired brightly.

Lino’s scowl intensified. “Don’t push me too far!” he warned.

“Sorry, too late. Someone already threatened to kill me this evening. In fact there’s a waiting list, I’m afraid. I could pencil you in for some time next month.”

“You’re crazy,” muttered Lino.

Zen walked past a mutilated classical torso which revived memories of a particularly nasty murder case he had once been involved in. A pair of rosewood doors opened into a series of salons whose modest dimensions and exquisite decoration reflected the tone of the palace as a whole. The rooms were packed with people. Those nearest the door scanned Zen’s features briefly, then turned away. But though they did not recognise him, he saw many faces familiar from the television and newspapers. As he hovered on the fringes of the gathering, unable to find an opening, Zen found himself reminded oddly of the village bar in Sardinia. If the contrasts were obvious, so were the similarities. He couldn’t get a drink here either. For one thing, the white-jacketed waiters always passing by were just out of his reach, ignoring his signals. But more important, here too he was an intruder, a gate-crasher at a private club. These people were constant presences in each other’s lives, meeting regularly at functions such as this, not to mention other more significant reunions. Nothing any of them did or said could be indifferent to the others. They were a family, a tribe to which Zen did not belong. They had felt obliged to invite the man who did their dirty work for them, but in fact his presence was an unwelcome embarrassment to himself and everyone else.