SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition Read online

  »You surprise me, Signore«, he said gallantly. »Other foreigners would have passed out at this sight immediately. This gentlefolk don’t know the local customs and much less the merciless rules of the streets. Lucky ones!«

  »Believe my, my friend, evil isn’t a Roman invention«, I replied and brushed away some last tears with my paw. »And as for murder, there’s definitely no Roman patent.«

  »Murder ...?«

  For a moment his face threatened to crumple. He seemed bewildered. Until the visor of politeness folded down again.

  »Ah si. Si, si, assassinio. Murder is a daily occurrence in this città misera. And do you know why, Signore? Because molta semplicione think that they can live without protection. Although it is so easy to get protection.«

  With his head he performed a conspirational gesture and made sure that nobody was watching us. Then he leaned towards me and talked quietly out of one corner of his mouth as if he was sharing the most well kept secret.

  »Trust me, Signore, I can easily arrange protection for you. That is to say, I belong to the organization. Of course you would have to share one half of the food you find with us. Well, concreto you would have to share it with me.«

  I had an idea of what he was getting at but thought he was kidding.

  »What kind of organization?«

  He gave me that pitiful look. He had explained the difference between male and female to a child, and it still didn’t get it.

  »Well, the organization, Signore, the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the Black Hand. Never heard of that?«

  »Am I right in assuming, Signore, that you are going to make me an offer I can’t refuse?« I replied.

  »Exactly!« it burst out of him. »You may have heard that in Italy we keep to some old tradition – well, apparently this poor sister didn’t ...«

  »And as you also may have heard, the nuthouses in Italy were scrapped in the mid-seventies. Ever since the former patients are allowed to roam freely among the workers and enjoy insanity without having to fear electroshocks.«

  At first, the one who spoke stayed out of sight.

  The pirate cringed as if Don Corleone himself had pissed on his parade. Within seconds his corny Mafia-ado deflated like a half-baked cake outside the oven. All of a sudden he wasn’t the frightening chunk anymore but a frustrated actor whose mask had been ripped off. Who had done this to him?

  I looked around, expecting an even more frightening braggart. Meanwhile, even the most persistent gazers had left the scene. The pirate, the exsanguinated body with the giant whole in the head and I were an island in the middle of the ancient rubble. Then he stepped out of the darkness. He must have been among the crowd of gazers and had waited until those had cleared out.

  »Giovanni, you Lord of the morons«, he said. »How often did you put on this show for tourists? And how often were you successful? Never or never ever?«

  An elegant stripling approached us. As beautiful and clean as an early morning. The Oriental Shorthair with shiny onyx fur resembled an only slightly modified hound. His head was a narrow wedge, with giant funnel-like ears and glowing turquoise eyes, which had the brightness of emeralds. The slim, smooth torso was strung-out like a pipeline, the legs as well, not to forget the tail that looked like a never-ending skinny snake. He was the Pomp and the Glory, and if Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, or any other luxury fashion brand whatsoever, chose someone of our kind as a top model for the presentation of their rags, he’d be the beau. Although I enjoy smoothies as much as nausea, I liked him from the very start.

  »Antonio, tu figlio di fornicato, do you have to kill all joy every time?«, the pirate yelled and seemed so angry he was close to an infarct.

  »Why every time?«, Antonio said. »Would I look this stunning if I watched this sad performance of yours every time? One can get acne from that!«

  He turned to face me.

  »Sia salutato, stranger! Welcome to Rome, the most beautiful city in the world. It’s a real shame you were plagued by two disasters right at the outset. First the sight of this poor sister, and then Giovanni’s Marlon Brando for morons.«

  Giovanni’s facial expression couldn’t decide whether to keep showing anger or resignation. Right in front of my eyes, the frightening pirate had dwindled to a poor codger.

  »You have to excuse him, stranger«, Antonio said and circled around us in mannered motions. His »easy-pawing« style, his feminine voice and his witty parlance, his whole appearance made him a terrific dandy. »The unscrupulous swine, which just left him here, was from Sicily. That’s some water-surrounded wasteland where people don’t do anything else than eating pepperonis, speaking a language that consists of 25 words and watching these moldered Godfather movies without a single break. I’m afraid this rubbed off on good old Giovanni way too much.«

  »Well, I am a stranger«, I said. »But I also have a name: Francis! I already know who you are.«

  I nodded towards the body.

  »And by now, unfortunately I also know that Rome is quite the hotspot.«

  »Oh that ...«

  His voice did carry some sadness but one of a kind that accepts fate with dignity. Antonio didn’t seem as battered by the horror as me. To him this incident wasn’t more than unfortunate routine.

  »Yeah, that’s actually distressing, Francis«, he said, while he helplessly stared at the body with his phosphorous green eyes. »But in a big and chaotic city like this one incidents of that kind are normal. Rome is a whore and a monster. But also an angel. My experience tells me: It was a bad accident in one of the busy streets around us. Or maybe a fatal fight. Must have happened around noon when the others took a siesta and were dreaming of the Vatican bells. Also, she could be the victim of some maniac who calls killing his hobby. What do I know? Anyway, there’s no reason to let it drag us down.«

  »Maybe there is«, the pirate joined back in, after he had apparently recovered from his humiliation.

  »I do get about a lot. And from the one or other corner I hear a lot of whispering. Recently, more and more bodies, which are battered like this, keep showing up around town. Of course I don’t know if this one has a lot in common with the others. And of course I can’t tell what the wounds of the others looked like. Aiutaci dio!«

  Yeah, may God help us. But above all I wanted to be hit by a descending meteoroid right now – if I gave in the temptation to play detective again. Because without exhausting my »savvy box« too much, I immediately noticed some conflicts in Antonio’s list of explanations. I felt the never really extinct fervor blaze up again, a fervor called curiosity. All my life this damnable illness had went along with me, and like every bad illness in the end it hadn’t brought anything but pain and despair. Often I had rebelled against it and decided to keep my sensitive nose out of bloody mysteries. And yet, in the end I had always given in and had let curiosity eat myself up completely. Terrible scars – most of them in my soul – had always been the consequence. So should I again ran towards disaster with my eyes open when my original plan had been a cheerful »Salve Roma!«?

  »One of your guesses probably is dead on target, Antonio«, I said after some contemplation. »Unless ...«

  I turned away from the body, whereat I almost got sick as I purposely turned a blind eye to the evil. I was about to sin against my own principles and to approve of an evil crime remain unpunished. But blame it on age, blame it on the hedonistic prospect of the upcoming holiday, for the very first time I didn’t get the urge to trace blood.

  »As a matter of fact, I’m here to distract myself from the evil world, guys«, I continued. »And like you may have guessed already, also for me the best distraction is some that can be corroded by stomach acids. Seriously, I’m starving.«

  A knowing smile appeared around Antonio’s coal-black snout, and shortly his noble eyes sparkled. He had seen right through my ham.

  »Unless what, Francis?«

  »What do you mean ›unless what‹?«

  »You started a sentence with ›unless‹ an
d then didn’t end it. I got the impression you find fault with my brilliant assumptions.«

  »You think so?«

  »Si, Signore, che ritiene, io!«

  »Well yeah, there really are only some discrepancies«, I started sluggishly and haphazardly. The sky by now was a purple violet board and fitted with only a couple of stars. A lukewarm breeze sprung up and played with our fur. The heritage site pitched an inaudible dialogue with its creators over several millenniums. In my dreams I had conjured up connotations of this exact atmospheric image of Caesar’s city again and again – of course without the sad detail of the dead body lying on the rocks. Meanwhile the lights at the site had gone on. Along the sidewalls longish, oval, salmon-colored neon lights were shining and creating an ever-warm atmosphere. Spotlights in the ground illuminated some eminently picturesque colonnade or round arch rudiments and emphasized some of their features in vivid light.

  »Let’s begin with the theory of accident: To me this seems to be, no offense, rank nonsense. Assuming that it actually happened to her in the street, a pretty weird vehicle must have hit her. In fact by something that has sharp items attached to its front, let’s say, rods. Otherwise the cleanly rimmed hole in her head can’t be explained.«

  Awkward, awkward: My Ego that was spoiled by success literally feasted on Giovanni’s and Antonio’s faces, in which astonishment and admiration took turns in quick succession, which didn’t quite rein my desire for self-expression.

  »So let’s still assume she made the fatal acquaintance of such a weird vehicle. Thus, after the collision she was tossed through the air directly onto the Largo Argentino, or she was able to drag herself to this very point where she eventually bled to death. So where is all the blood supposed to be? I just can’t see any blood at all. The body looks totally bled out. The same applies to the theory of fight: no blood, nowhere, not a single bush of hair that was ripped out during the fight, no urine splashes which our kind excretes in fearful and stressy situations. Even more, it’s unlikely that a fellow would be able to cause a wound of this size with bare teeth and claws, even if he was really freaked out. As we see, the victim misses quite a considerable part of her head. This being said, a fight like that probably couldn’t have been kept from the siesta taking colleagues.«

  »So the assassino must be a weirdo, a crazed human?«

  Antonio sank on his rear legs and adopted a contemplative pose. All his dandy-ado had vanished.

  »I don’t know«, I said. »There is much to be said against it. A human who puts down a dead animal or throws it over a barrier in a spot that can be overseen from every angle, must have been noticed immediately. Unless he is employed here and managed this whole thing on the quiet during work. When was the body found anyway?«

  »In the late afternoon, about half an hour before you showed up.«

  »So someone planted her on the rocks, on the QT, while all the others were asleep. But where did this stranger come from?«

  And again I was in over my head, in another bloody cesspool of mystery, which I had wanted to give a wide berth just a few minutes ago. The most frightening about this was: I felt as fit as a fiddle in the middle of this cesspool! I just wanted to scratch my face with my own claws. And right after that Antonio’s, as this fine Signore had admirably known which buttons to press on the atavistic construction called Francis, in order to start the renowned program.

  I eyed the entire sight on the search for some inspiration or even better a reasonable proof that added up to my hypothesis. Eventually I paused at the sight of the huge iron gates and round arches along the inner wall rectangle, which was barely noticeable in the dark. There seemed to be an entry to some chambers underneath the streets. I pointed at it with my snout.

  »What’s inside these chambers?«

  »Small treasures of the archeologists and their tools«, Antonio replied.

  »And where do they lead to?«

  He shrugged.

  »Everywhere and nowhere. But I know where you’re going with his. You ask yourself if these chambers are a connection to the bowels of this city. And you may be freaking right. Rome’s underground is pretty perforated indeed, Francis. There are catacombs everywhere, and almost every month new ones are discovered. All in all they are said to have a length of about ninety miles. But there aren’t just Christian catacombs, but Gnostic, and even Jewish ones. You find yourself in a city that consists of many cities, one superimposed on the other. It’s a moloch, a testimonial of great chaos. In the abstract, some passages might lead to these chambers, but as far as I know they are closed to the human public.«

  »But maybe not to our kind. I mean, it might be possible that a fellow who knows his way around the place and history extremely well is aware of some undetected hallways and entries which to the human eye look unremarkable and can be easily overlooked. Through these he could have dragged the body, grabbing it by its neck like a kitten, first to the working rooms and then eventually out here into the open space.«

  »Non capisco«, Giovanni said and let out a comfortless growl. Apparently he had recovered from his humiliation pretty well by now.

  »You just said that our kind isn’t able to cause such big wounds. And now our noble race shall be blamed for this porcheria. I think you throw your weight around in a way I would never be able to!«

  »You’re probably right, Giovanni«, I replied. »I actually give myself airs a little bit. But as a matter of fact this is partially caused by the fact that I am close to being delirious or presenting this whole matter in the form of French chansons because I’m freaking starving. Coming back to airing myself, my witty assumptions actually don’t seem to make much sense. Yet, I think they’re worth a conclusion: If your gossip factory’s information is correct, Giovanni, we’re dealing with a real series of murders. If all victims share the same kind of wounding, the suspect can only be human.«

  I went back to the dead Siamese again, bend over her with a cascade of stabbing pain in my head and kept examining the horror at her head.

  »I have to correct myself in one point«, I said after I had eyed up the wound very thoroughly. »I can’t see any straight fracture on her cranial bone. The natural bulge in it, where the inner ear with the funnel growing out of it is located, has just been affected by the abuse. It looks like it has been ripped out or operated with some special tool. If I were in the mood for kidding I’d say someone stole the good old thing. Did one of you know her?«

  »Casually«, Antonio said.

  »Well, she was very young«, Giovanni raised his paw again. »And like you still can see, molto bello. I hit at her once, but I was sent packing. I don’t know her name. Neither do I know where she comes from or who abandoned her here.«

  Antonio agreed with the pirate, wordless and clueless.

  »Any special skills?« I went further into it. »I mean, could she hear the grass grow with her vanished ear or juggle a ball on her nose or something like that?«

  The Italiani shared some puzzled looks and then shook their heads.

  »Back to my conclusion«, I continued. »Also your third theory, Antonio, isn’t very well founded to me. Right, this story does not just contain a dose but a barrel of madness. Without a doubt there are animal abusers and killers with a proclivity for bloody fetish, but I hardly believe that those are capable of delivering such clean work. My instinct tells me, there’s more to it. And how a human could have managed to place a body in such a well observed spot in the middle of the day, also remains a secret.«

  I know I had contradicted myself in a couple of aspects. But this half-baked analysis was just a first attempt at putting these conflicts in an order by thinking aloud. Antonio’s retransformation from the astonished kiddo back to the cool dandy was worth seeing. One could see in the black skinny lad whose fur now shimmered in pastel orange in the warm light of the lamp how he rebuilt his smug veneer that had fallen down in the whirlwind of activity.

  »Scusa, il mio amico«, Antonio said, stood up and came real c
lose to me. I lost myself in the green of his eyes, in which light and dark veils seem to sough. »Is it possible that you are experienced in stuff like this?«

  »In what?«

  He smiled wearily as if I wanted to fool him.

  »Okay, okay«, I replied. »The truth is that I encountered such difficile cases a couple of times.«

  »And who won?«

  »Good, I hope, il mio amico.«

  »È un detective!« he suddenly yelled out so loud that not just I but even jaded Giovanni winced. »We got ourselves a real detective! Finally investigative know how moves in with us. Forget London, where dark creatures in tweed rush through the fog, forget New York with all its serial killers. From now on the criminal tango is played in Rome!«

  »Without my magnifying glass and my cape I’m pretty much left stranded, Dr. Watson.«

  »Don’t hide your light under a bushel, Francis. Just a minute ago you delivered a great piece of criminal investigation. In front of me there’s an expert. It cannot be denied, your witty reflections speak for themselves. And you know what: I want you to teach me a thing or two, I want to be your Dr. Watson. The both of us, you, the Master, and I, your apprentice, will end this series of murders.«

  »How did you conceive the idea that I will actually let myself in for that, you wacko?«

  »Because I can read it in your eyes, Francis. I see the flare of curiosity and the shine of ambition in them. Admit it to yourself, il mio amico: You’re hooked! And this bait probably isn’t even the tastiest compared to the former ones. But you can’t help it, you are crazy for these cases with many barbs. So let us apprehend our first dark angler together before he has fished everyone in this sea.«