Thank God for hair. He felt tears of joy.
“I seem to have knocked you stupid, Commissioner,” said the Colonel, who was holding his pistol upwards, almost as if he intended to put it into his own mouth. “Try to talk sense. Why are you here alone? You always need at least one other person to help you. I’m without my Maresciallo, and it’s almost impossible. Luckily, these two were together when I found them at Nightingale’s apartment. Then we traveled over to the gallery to pick up Treacy’s flattering portrait of himself. Nightingale was kind enough to do all the driving.”
Blume looked at the portrait again. The face had been scrubbed and dissolved away, the blond hair remained. He looked at another painting, lying discarded on the floor, a colorless smudge running diagonally across its surface. There was another and another. Paintings from the gallery, from Angela’s house, from here. Beside them, in an ignored pile, were the charcoal cartoons, pen and wash sketches, and drawings. Simple, direct, to the point and without layers. They were incapable of hiding anything beneath, and Blume felt a rush of affection for them. In the end, they were better than all the paintings. These preparatory sketches showed hope, potential, freedom.
The Colonel walked into the middle of the room and raised his pistol and pointed it directly at the woman. “I gather you two have never met. Alec, this is Angela, Emma’s mother, the failed artist and woman of easy virtue. I found her with John cuckold Nightingale here at his house. It’s funny that we know more about Treacy and Angela fucking than anyone else, except for Angela, of course. John here, his eyes have been opened to the ways of the world. We have just a few more of these to get through. Though I am not hopeful.”
It had turned dark. Angela was working in a pool of light cast by two standing lamps. She took a wad of cotton balls from the table. From the floor in front of her she picked up a bottle of solvent and drenched the cotton and her hands in it, filling the room with a sharp scent, then made a swipe at the picture on the easel. On the first pass, the canvas merely glistened as if another coat of varnish was being applied, on the second it dulled, and on the third she left a messy streak. She concentrated on the lightest part, rubbing at it. Outside the thunder rumbled, and Blume remembered why it should be so dark.
“See, she’s as keen as I am,” said the Colonel. “OK. Switch to kerosene now, sweetie.”
Blume planned ahead, making sure what he was going to say would come out right. “You really think you’ll find a Velazquez under one of those paintings?” he asked.
“I said my hopes were fading on that front,” said the Colonel. “But if not, I am going to talk to you about it after we’re done here.” He gestured at Angela. “Look at that woman. She used to look like she stepped out of Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation. Her daughter does not resemble her. Her daughter was the spitting image of Treacy, whose youthful face I just allowed Nightingale here to cancel. Very symbolic that.” He looked over at Angela. “Or do you object to being objectified?”
“You’re the one with the gun,” said Angela.
“Well observed. Dear God, these fumes are going to my head. Commissioner, aren’t you going to try to rush me or something heroic? You need to make up for that pathetic entrance. Nightingale, John, throw that piece of shit aside, we can see nothing lies below. Try that one there, the over-darkened portrait of a woman. It looks suspicious. It also looks highly glossed and hardened. Start with sandpaper, then the solvent.”
“Why are you here, Colonel?” said Blume. “Why didn’t you take the paintings and flee to somewhere safe, check them at your leisure?”
“I cannot abandon my Maresciallo. What do you take me for? Also, you seem to be laboring under the illusion that I need to flee, Commissioner.”
“Oh, trust me on this. You need to,” said Blume. He was thinking straight and remembering now. The dribbling at the back of his head had stopped, the throbbing was waiting for another time, and the image of Paoloni was pin sharp.
“Remember Craxi?”
“I remember Craxi,” said Blume.
“What was his big mistake?”
“It’s hard to know where to begin,” said Blume.
“Cowardice,” said the Colonel. “He fled the country to hide in Tunisia and spent the next few pathetic years of his life threatening his former political allies. He died with a whimper. The politicians he was threatening, people like Andreotti, Cossiga, Berlusconi, Forlani, Amato, they stayed behind. Within a few years they were all back in power, and he was dead. He did carry out his threat to tell all, by the way, but we simply made sure no one was listening.”
“What’s your point, Colonel?” Blume figured he could reach the pistol in three moves. If he saw a way of reducing it to two moves, he’d try. Then, with a shock, he recognized the pistol the Colonel held was his own. That decided him.
“My point is as long as I stay here, I’ll triumph. If I flee, I fail. Once I leave the country, I lose leverage and power. I am not even sure any painting is so valuable as to compensate for that loss.”
“You killed a former policeman.”
“Paoloni. An ex-bank guard, a criminal facilitator, a shady character. Not nearly as good at throwing off a tail as he thought he was. He brought the paintings back to his own house, which shows he had no imagination. I was there, waiting outside in the car. I didn’t kill him. That was my dear, loyal, and, for once, careless Maresciallo, who met with surprising and uncalled-for violence when all he was doing was trying to prepare the ground for negotiations.”
“If you want something done well, you’d best do it yourself,” said Blume.
“I’m still not sure of that. My Maresciallo has always served me perfectly. But you may have a point.” The Colonel looked over to the painting and moved closer to it. “Angela, use a light touch, there’s a good girl. I have a good feeling about this portrait. John, make yourself useful and stop standing there like a pointless cuckold. Give her some kerosene.”
Blume shifted his weight in his chair. If the Colonel took another step to the right, he could push himself over the arm of the chair.
He tried to move, but the Colonel leaned in toward him at the same moment and slapped him in the forehead with the side of the pistol.
The Colonel stood back, still pointing the pistol at him, his hand steady, and saying something, his voice booming but muffled and far away. Blume braced himself to receive a bullet, but the Colonel was now sitting down and wiping his forehead with the back of the hand that held the weapon. There was no question of rushing him now. No question of standing up out of this chair. The fumes in the room were choking him.
“I can read thoughts, Commissioner,” the Colonel was saying. “Your intent was in your eyes. I expected you to be more phlegmatic, even a little disinterested in the justice or the injustice of all this, instead you get whipped with your own pistol. More worrying now, isn’t it? If I’m waving yours about, maybe it’s because I am planning on using it, then ducking the blame.”
“The painting you are looking for is not there,” said Blume.
“Well now, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said the Colonel. “Buy time. Always buy time. In this case, I believe you.”
“It’s not there.” Blume wanted to save his breath and not speak, but he needed to speak to save his life. He closed his eyes and focused on getting the right words out. “We can sit here and watch. I can’t do much else. When she has wiped the last canvas down, you’ll see I’m right. I may have bled to death by then.”
“Lean forward,” ordered the Colonel. “And a little to your left. Do it.”
Blume did.
“Not that much blood behind you. Where is the hidden painting?”
“Hidden.”
“Yes, yes. Predictable to the end, Commissioner. Hey, cuckold, where’s the Velazquez?”