Carlo came briskly around the marble structure without peeking.
He looked feral to Pazzi, short and round and powerful, nimble in his extremities. His vest was leather and he had a boar bristle in his hat. Pazzi guessed he had three inches reach advantage on Carlo and four inches of height. They weighed about the same, he guessed. Carlo was missing a thumb. Pazzi figured he could find him in the Questura’s records with about five minutes’ work. Both men were lit from beneath by the grave lamps.
“His house has good alarms,” Pazzi said.
“I looked at it. You have to point him out to me.”
“He has to speak at a meeting tomorrow night, Friday night. Can you do it that soon?”
“It’s good.” Carlo wanted to bully the policeman a little, establish his control. “Will you walk with him, or are you afraid of him? You’ll do what you’re paid to do. You’ll point him out to me.”
“Watch your mouth. I’ll do what I’m paid to do and so will you. Or you can pass your retirement as a fuckboy at Volterra, suit yourself.”
Carlo at work was as impervious to insult as he was to cries of pain. He saw that he had misjudged the policeman. He spread his hands. “Tell me what I need to know.” Carlo moved to stand beside Pazzi as though they mourned together at the small mausoleum. A couple passed on the path holding hands. Carlo removed his hat and the two men stood with bowed heads.
Pazzi put his flowers at the door of the tomb. A smell came from Carlo’s warm hat, a rank smell, like sausage from an animal improperly gelded.
Pazzi raised his face from the odor. “He’s fast with his knife. Goes low with it.”
“Has he got a gun?”
“I don’t know. He’s never used one, that I know of.”
“I don’t want to have to take him out of a car. I want him on the open street with not many people around.”
“How will you take him down?”
“That’s my business.” Carlo put a stag’s tooth into his mouth and chewed at the gristle, protruding the tooth between his lips from time to time.
“It’s my business too,” Pazzi said. “How will you do it?”
“Stun him with a beanbag gun, net him, then I can give him a shot. I need to check his teeth fast in case he’s got poison under a tooth cap.”
“He has to lecture at a meeting. It starts at seven in the Palazzo Vecchio. If he works in the Capponi Chapel at Santa Croce on Friday, he’ll walk from there to the Palazzo Vecchio. Do you know Florence?”
“I know it well. Can you get me a vehicle pass for the old city?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t take him out of the church,” Carlo said.
Pazzi nodded. “Better he shows up for the meeting, then he probably won’t be missed for two weeks. I have a reason to walk with him to the Palazzo Capponi after the meeting—”
“I don’t want to take him in his house. That’s his ground. He knows it and I don’t. He’ll be alert, he’ll look around him at the door. I want him on the open sidewalk.”
“Listen to me then—we’ll come out the front entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Via dei Leone side will be closed. We’ll go along the Via Neri and come across the river on the Ponte alle Grazie. There are trees in front of the Museo Bardini on the other side that block the streetlights. It’s quiet at that hour when school is out.”
“We’ll say in front of the Museo Bardini then, but I may do it sooner if I see a chance, closer to the Palazzo, or earlier in the day if he spooks and tries to run. We may be in an ambulance. Stay with him until the beanbag hits him and then get away from him fast.”
“I want him out of Tuscany before anything happens to him.”
“Believe me, he’ll be gone from the face of the earth, feet first,” Carlo said, smiling at his private joke, sticking the stag’s tooth out through the smile.
CHAPTER
35
FRIDAY MORNING. A small room in the attic of the Palazzo Capponi. Three of the whitewashed walls are bare. On the fourth wall hangs a large thirteenth-century Madonna of the Cimabue school, enormous in the little room, her head bent at the signature angle like that of a curious bird, and her almond eyes regarding a small figure asleep beneath the painting.