“An old guy that time, too?”
Sandro looked puzzled. “No, no. She said two young guys.”
A different time, different place, different attacker. “So you were sort of revenging her, even though this was someone else?”
Sandro shrugged. “Old guy molesting a young woman.”
“Did you see him attack her?”
“No. He was trying to hold her. An old guy like that.”
“How do you know she was a young girl? It was dark, she ran before you arrived.”
“She had long silver-blond hair. I heard her voice, which was young, and then when she ran. You can sort of tell someone’s age from how they move, you know?”
“What age would you say she was?”
“I don’t know. She could have been sixteen, she could have been maybe as old as thirty, but no older.”
Caterina made Sandro go back over the events twice more, and then made him do it in reverse chronological order while she checked against her notes. His story did not change. He saw the girl push the old man, then run. The old man lay on the ground. Sandro went over to him but did not help. He did not see anything wrong with his own behavior. He told the story a fourth time, and again mentioned that his original reason for going over to the old man was to kick him, not help him. In not kicking him, Sandro felt he had shown restraint.
“Also, I didn’t steal money or anything from him.”
“That was good of you, Sandro.” Caterina reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a blow-up of Emma’s ID photo.
“Sweet!” said Sandro. “Who’s that?”
“You’ve never seen her?”
“I’d have remembered a face like that. What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” said Caterina. “Just an idea.”
Caterina accompanied Sandro back up to his friends, who were seated on the plastic bench at the entrance on the first floor, eating pizza and drinking cans of Coca-Cola.
“I may be in touch.” She gave him a half-push, half-caress on the shoulder to propel him down the corridor.
She watched as the sorry little crew gave their Sandro a welcome fit for a returning warrior king. They piled out of the station into the evening air, their energy returned, their spirits temporarily lifted as they were given back the excessive freedom that was killing them.
She went back up to the operations room, where Grattapaglia was beginning to clear his desk.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Not that will help us with the muggings.”
He shrugged and turned back to his work.
Caterina said, “Where did they get the pizza and Coca-Cola?”
“From the pizzeria a taglio down the road, I suppose,” said Grattapaglia.
“You accompanied them, right?”
“Of course. You told me to keep an eye on the scumbags.”
“You took them out and brought them back. Did you buy the pizza for them, too?”
“Dumb little fuckers spend all their money on drugs,” said Grattapaglia. “Who else was going to pay?”
Chapter 27
For the next half hour, Grattapaglia slammed things on his desk and kicked at chairs, while Caterina stood in front of a large-scale map of Trastevere, pulling out and putting in the pins showing where the muggings had taken place. The map had been on the wall for three months, and the number of pins had gradually expanded.
She had to pass by Assistente Capo Rospo’s desk on her way to turn on the overhead lights, and he took the opportunity to say, “Those pins don’t mean shit.”
“They all converge around two places,” said Caterina.
“Yeah, two hotels. Big fucking surprise that, finding tourists in hotels.”
“This hotel has more than…”
She had to stop talking, because Grattapaglia’s metal desk drawer refused to slide, and Grattapaglia smashed the side of his heel into it several times, swept the stuff from his desk, and left it on the floor.
“ Ma vaffanculo a tutto! ” Grattapaglia clenched and unclenched his fists, then rubbed his left bicep and whitened.
Rospo was suddenly busy with his work.
Caterina went over to the Sovrintendente. “Let me help you,” she said. “Don’t let the stress kill you.”
“Fuck the stress,” said Grattapaglia. “It’s being indoors. Last thing I’m going to do here is find out who the damned mugger is. You coming?”
Caterina hesitated. Her shift ended in half an hour.
“Sure,” she said. “Just let me call my mom, tell her I’ll be late again.”
Grattapaglia surprised her by suggesting they go on foot.
“It’ll calm me. We catch the mugger, we can call a car.”
As they were crossing Ponte Garibaldi, she pulled the blow-up of Emma’s ID photo from her shoulder bag and showed it to Grattapaglia.
“The kid who knew nothing about the mugging?” she said. “I think he might have seen her, but he did not identify her.”
Grattapaglia looked at the photo carefully. Emma waited for a crude comment, but none was forthcoming. “Who is she?”
Caterina explained. Grattapaglia nodded, “This has nothing at all to do with the muggings.”
“I know. I just thought I’d tell you what I was doing down there with that kid. Look, I know you’re the one who’s going to be doing all the work and all the talking for the next few hours, and I’m basically going to be in your way… but I was wondering, could you…” she delved back into her shoulder bag and pulled out a photo of Treacy.
Grattapaglia looked at the photo of Treacy in one hand, Emma in the other. “You want me to ask about the girl and Treacy as well as the muggings?” said Grattapaglia.
“As a favor.”
They veered right toward the Jewish school, for no other reason than that Grattapaglia seemed to want to shoot the breeze with the four patrolmen guarding the entrance. Caterina waited in the shadows, listening to a stream of guffawing misogyny.
Then they walked to a bar where the bartender greeted Grattapaglia like an old friend and nodded warily at her.
“Wait here,” Grattapaglia told Caterina, and he and the bartender disappeared into a back room. Ten minutes later, he reemerged.
They left the bar, Grattapaglia whistling, swaggering slightly as he occupied the absolute center of the street, forcing young people and tourists to move to either side of him.
Caterina realized the price to be paid for asking a favor was she would have to chisel information out of him.
“Did that bartender see Treacy or Emma?”
“Emma. I didn’t even know the name,” said Grattapaglia. “He knew the Englishman. But he couldn’t remember if he had seen him on the night in question.”
“Shit, I just remembered something,” said Caterina. “Her name would not have been Emma. Use the name Manuela instead.”
“Whatever you say. I still don’t know who she is.”
Caterina explained, and Grattapaglia listened attentively, bending down in a way that reminded her a bit of Blume. Tall men, the two of them. Broad, too, though Grattapaglia was out of shape.
“Now I know who I’m talking about, I might be able to ask better questions. Maybe I should have been told before now. You seem to be in a privileged position with the Commissioner.”
Caterina was glad of the dark that hid her face. She changed subject as casually as she could manage. “The bartender you were just talking to, was he working that night?”
“ Porcaccia la misera! I forgot to ask.”
He was jerking her about, but he was also doing what she had asked and so she kept quiet.
He walked on a bit, then said, “Yes, he was working that night. No, he didn’t see them.”
In the next bar, on Piazza Santa Maria, a bartender in a starched white outfit with gold buttons glanced at the photos and became immediately adamant that Treacy had not been there. About the girl he knew nothing.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
The bartender sprayed blue detergent on the zinc counter and wiped it even cleaner.
“I’m not saying I don’t know him. I do. That’s why he doesn’t come here anymore.”