SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (6 page)

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‹ and 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 whe
re 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 ex
amining 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 lo
oks 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
re
transformation
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 whirlwi
nd of activity.

»
Scusa, il mio amico
«, Antonio said, stood up and came real close 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.«

»As we have reached fishing by now: What are the odds of one those colleagues with gills hopping into my mouth within the next seconds, before I crack from hunger?«

»You want to eat something? That’s it?«

Antonio looked at me as if I had just sta
ted that I derived from trolls.

»No, first I want to hold a presentation about Garry Kasparov’s strategy at his last tournament. Of course I want to eat, and I want it now, what do you think, douche bag!«

»Now, now Francis, you’re in Rome, the culinary Mecca of the whole planet. You are going to tuck in so many delicacies, that you will eventually crave for a rotten fishbone.«

»You don’t happen to call this Spaghetti Bolognese with a hint of green on the stairs up there
delicacies
?«

»Spaghetti Bolognese with a hint of green?«

He shook himself grossed out so that for a moment every single hair of his velvet fur sat up like spines and let him look
like he had licked on a socket.

»My dear Francis, I believe, you really are starving, hunger has made you rant by now. So what does your palate crave for?
La Rosetta
have the best fish. If you are into meat, we should go visit
Checchino Dal 1887
. And
La Pergola
is the home of the real haute cuisine.«

»Phew, difficult choice«, I said, while I had to try hard not to drool all over myself again. »The problem is that I lost my platinum card on the plane.«

»Boo, only morons and humans pay for food! As an honorary gourmet critic all the top chef in the city are at my paws. Feasting is culture, and who could evaluate the quality of this culture better than our kind with our sensitive tongues. At least I’d rather swallow prussic acid than beg for trash in this horrible place. Come on, Francis, follow me and let your palate experience the fourth Lucullan dimension.«

»
Eccellente
, Antonio!« Giovanni said. »Until now I never even had a clue about this gluttony being culture but as I value culture above all things, I’m also going to take one for the team and join you.«

»No way!« Antonio replied unlovingly and headed towards the stony hill that consisted of rotting wall pieces and pillars, which had fallen over and broken into rough slices. »You stay here and keep your eyes open. I’m sorry, old pal, but when I mentioned the sensitive tongue, the operative word was sensitive, I didn’t talk about the record speed at which this tongue carries dirt of all kinds into the mouth. And regarding to your tummy rumbles: Didn’t Francis mention some Spaghetti Bolognese with a hint of green? Always keep in mind that green is the color of hope!«