فصل 27

Chapter 27

IF RINALDO Pazzi had decided to do his duty as an officer of the law, he could have detained Dr Fell and determined very quickly if the man was Hannibal Lecter.

Within a half hour he could have obtained a warrant to take Dr Fell out of the Palazzo Capponi and all the palazzo’s alarm systems would not have prevented him. On his own authority he could have held Dr Fell without charging him for long enough to determine his identity.

Fingerprinting at Questura headquarters would have revealed within ten minutes if Fell was Dr Lecter. PFLP DNA testing would confirm the identification.

All those resources were denied to Pazzi now. Once he decided to sell Dr Lecter, the policeman became a bounty hunter, outside the law and alone. Even the police snitches under his thumb were useless to him, because they would hasten to snitch on Pazzi himself.

The delays frustrated Pazzi, but he was determined. He would make do with these damned Gypsies .

“Would Gnocco do it for you, Romula? Can you find him?”

They were in the parlor of the borrowed apartment on the Via de’ Bardi, across from the Palazzo Capponi, twelve hours after the debacle in the Church of Santa Croce. A low table lamp lit the room to waist height. Above the light, Pazzi’s black eyes glittered in the semi-dark.

“I’ll do it myself, but not with the baby,” Romula said. “But you have to give me “No. I can’t let him see you twice. Would Gnocco do it for you?”

Romula sat bent over in her long bright dress, her full breasts touching her thighs, with her head almost to her knees. The wooden arm lay empty on a chair. In the corner sat the older woman, possibly Romula’s cousin, holding the baby. The drapes were drawn. Peering around them through the smallest crack, Pazzi could see a faint light, high in the Palazzo Capponi.

“I can do this, I can change my look until he would not know me. I can-“

“No.”

“Then Esmeralda can do it.”

“No.”

This voice from the corner, the older woman speaking for the first time. “I’ll care for your baby, Romula, until I die. I will never touch Shaitan.”

Her Italian was barely intelligible to Pazzi.

“Sit up, Romula,” Pazzi said. “Look at me. Would Gnocco do it for you? Romula, you’re going back to Sollicciano tonight. You have three more months to serve. It’s possible that the next time you get your money and cigarettes out of the baby’s clothes you’ll be caught . I could get you six months additional for that last time you did it. I could easily have you declared an unfit mother. The state would take the baby. But if I get the fingerprints, you get released, you get two million lire and your record disappears, and I help you with Australian visas. Would Gnocco do it for you?”

She did not answer.

“Could you find Gnocco?”

Pazzi snorted air through his nose. “Senti, get your things together, you can pick up your fake arm at the property room in three months, or sometime next year. The baby will have to go to the foundling hospital. The old woman can call on it there.”

“IT? Call on IT, Commendatore? His name is-“

She shook her head, not wanting to say the child’s name to this man. Romula covered her face with her hands, feeling the two pulses in her face and hands beat against each other, and then she spoke from behind her hands. “I can find him.”

“Where?”

“Piazza Santo Spirito, near the fountain. They build a fire and somebody will have wine.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Better not,” she said. “You’d ruin his reputation. You’ll have Esmeralda and the baby here - you know I’ll come back.”

The Piazza Santo Spirito, an attractive square on the left bank of the Arno gone seedy at night, the church dark and locked at that late hour, noise and steamy food smells from Casalinga, the popular trattoria.

Near the fountain, the flicker of a small fire and the sound of a Gypsy guitar, played with more enthusiasm than talent. There is one good fado singer in the crowd. Once the singer is discovered, he is shoved forward and ‘lubricated’ with wine from several bottles. He begins with a song about fate, but is interrupted with demands for a livelier tune. Roger LeDuc, also known as Gnocco, sits on the edge of the fountain. He has smoked something. Hid eyes are hazed, but he spots Romula at once, at the back of the crowd across the firelight. He buys two oranges from a vendor and follows her away from the singing. They stop beneath a street-lamp away from the firelight. Here the light is colder than firelight and dappled by the leaves left on a struggling maple. The light is greenish on Gnocco’s pallor, the shadows of the leaves like moving bruises on his face as Romula looks at him, her hand on his arm.

A blade flicks out of his fist like a bright little tongue and he peels the oranges, the rind hanging down in one long piece. He gives her the first one and she puts a section in his mouth as he peels the second.

They spoke briefly in Romany. Once he shrugged..

She gave him a cell phone and showed him the buttons. Then Pazzi’s voice was in Gnocco’s ear. After a moment, Gnocco folded the telephone and put it in his pocket.

Romula took something on a chain off her neck, kissed the little amulet and hung it around the neck of the small, scruffy man. He looked down at it, danced a little, pretending that the holy image burned him, and got a small smile from Romula. She took off the wide bracelet and put it on his arm. It fit easily. Gnocco’s arm was no bigger than hers.

“Can you be with me an hour?” Gnocco asked her.

“Yes,” she said.