She eyed him suspiciously. “Oh, per-lease. Is that really the best you can do?”
“It’s a start,” he objected. “You see a pretty young girl. She looks miserable. Nine times out of ten it’s boyfriend trouble. Old men like me understand that. We were young men once. We used to cause these problems.”
She licked the pistachio. It gave her a creamy green tongue.
“Well?” he persisted. “Am I wrong?”
“No…” Her voice had that pouty, caustic edge he recognized growing in his own daughter.
“Well?”
“He never calls!” she cried. “Never! It’s always me. I’m always the one who has to phone him. What is it with men? Do they hate phone bills that much?”
He shrugged. “It’s not just men. That happens in relationships. It’s how it is. Like old-fashioned dancing. One person leads, the other one follows.”
“It’s not like dancing. So why do they do it?”
Her face had that frank, questioning intensity you got from teenagers.
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because…” He couldn’t go on. There was no answer. It was a stupid question. He couldn’t think of a single good reason to support what he’d just said.
“Do you call your wife?” she asked. “Or does she call you?”
“My wife calls me. Only rarely and with gleeful updates on how well the divorce is going and what new bills dropped through her mama’s door.”
She didn’t know whether to believe that or not. “Really?”
“Really. No need to feel sorry. Crap like this happens.”
“You’ve got a girlfriend, then?”
Peroni was beginning to wish she’d put the uniform back on. It made her easier to handle somehow. “What is this? I’m the grown-up around here. I ask the questions.”
“So you have got a girlfriend?”
He shifted awkwardly on the tiny metal stool. “Yeah. Sort of. Now. It’s not what you think. I didn’t have then.”
“Sounds a deep relationship,” she commented. “This ”sort of girlfriend.“ Does she call you? Or do you call her?”
Peroni swallowed a huge chunk of gorgeous lemon sorbet, which stuck at the back of his throat and made him gag for a moment. Once the coughing stopped he was dismayed to find some of the gelato was dribbling down his chin. He never would get the hang of eating this stuff.
The girl handed him a napkin. He dabbed at his face, then said, “Bit of both. What’s it to you?”
It was a lie. Teresa always called. He had just never faced the fact till then.
“You’re eating my ice cream for free, mister. I can ask any damn thing I like.” She poked the front of his coat with a long fingernail. “Men who don’t call piss me off.”
“I am getting that message.”
The green eyes narrowed. “Are you? Are you really?”
He thought about it and wondered how he’d come to develop this habit of having weird, half-jocular arguments with strangers in cafes. Nothing like this ever happened in Tuscany. People were too polite there. The Romans just spoke a thought the moment it entered their heads.
“I am hearing what you say, my girl. It doesn’t mean I intend to act on it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
She took his ice-cream dish, even though it was only half-eaten.
“Hey!” Peroni objected. “That’s mine.”
“No it isn’t. I gave it to you.”
“OK.” He threw some notes on the counter. “How much?”
She threw the money back at him. “I told you. It’s free. I just don’t think you phone her. You’re a man. Why would you?”
“That’s my ice cream,” he repeated. “I want it back.”
She waved at the door. “Go outside and call your girlfriend. Now. You can have some more when you come back and say you’ve done it. And no lying. I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“Jesus Christ…” Peroni cursed, and added a few more epithets under his breath that it was best the girl didn’t hear. “What is this?”
“Christmas,” she hissed. “Almost. Hadn’t you noticed?”
Damn teenagers, he thought. You never got an ounce of respect from them. Though maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Not that he would tell her so.
“I was going to do it anyway,” he objected, heading for the door, trying not to listen to her muttering, “Yeah, right,” straight into his big back.
It was crazy. Now that he thought about it he never called Teresa. He had to look up her mobile number in his address book because he hadn’t even programmed it into the phone.
Teresa answered on the third ring and was quiet for a moment when she heard his voice.
“Gianni?” she asked eventually. “Are you OK?”
“Of course I’m OK! Nothing wrong with me phoning you, is there?”
The pause on the line said otherwise. “Not exactly. Though I have to tell you I am in a very strange apartment right now dealing with a stray head. That lady you met earlier, if you remember. I think we have all the pieces at last.”
“Jesus,” he swore quietly. “Listen, Teresa. There’s something I need to know. About Laila. What happened this morning? Why’d she leave like that? Have you any idea?”
She sighed and said something about taking the call outside. The line was quiet for a short while, then Peroni heard the unmistakable sound of the night wind roaring behind her.
“I told her you were going to get fired unless she gave you something about what happened in the Pantheon,” Teresa said over the noise. “I’m sorry. I thought it might help.”
“I wish I’d thought of that,” he said. He made absolutely sure that there was no edge to his words. “It was really clever. Classic stuff too, Teresa. Good cop, bad cop, huh? Maybe they should pin a badge on you and let me drive the corpse wagon.”
He could almost feel the tension on the other end. “Don’t be so ridiculous, you big goof. Falcone would be lost without you. Gianni?”
“Yeah?”
“You mean that? I did the right thing?”
“Of course I mean that! It should have worked too. If she had anything to tell us…”
She sounded so relieved he felt like going back into the cafe and hugging that mouthy girl.
“Gianni, she knows something. That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Me neither.” If Laila did have more to tell, that ought to have dragged it out of her. “I just don’t get it.”
“Unless…”
Teresa Lupo would have made a good cop. “Unless what?”
“She keeps stealing things. What if she stole something from this guy? What if he took his jacket off when he was doing what he did? Do you think Laila could resist a peek? Or something more?”
“I don’t know. But if she stole something why doesn’t she just give it to us? I mean, it’s not as if we don’t know about her habits. I must have emptied her pockets ten times this morning.”
She didn’t say anything. He was glad of that. She was thinking.
“I’m improvising here so don’t treat it as any more than that,” she said after a long moment. “What if she hid it somewhere? What if that’s why she ran away? To get what she stole, recover it from somewhere? Then give it to you?”
It just fell into a place in his head, the little compartment that said: right.
“God, I wish I could kiss you now,” Gianni Peroni sighed.
The sound of short, tinny laughter flew through the cold night air. “I’m wearing surgical gloves covered in blood. And I’m standing on the roof of some dead woman’s apartment freezing my ass off.”
“All the same…”
He was an idiot, moping over his kids. They were safe and comfortable and warm. He’d drive up to Tuscany when the weather cleared, take them to one of those little country restaurants they loved, maybe introduce them to Teresa Lupo, too. They were just a couple of young people learning to live with damaged parents. It wasn’t ideal, but there were a lot worse things the world could throw at you.