Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 21

If on the one hand Mineo admired Dardanoni for having courage and the desire to do something other than advance to a nice insular office job like so many of their colleagues, on the other hand, he hated how his boss always seemed to come up with some way to upset his, Mineo's, best-laid plans.

Today, for instance.

Mineo's girlfriend was a Roman policewoman of Ethiopian origin, and they had signed up for patrol duty this evening at the soccer stadium. It wasn't an easy job, as he'd recently had reason to say to his boss, but, hell, it meant overtime pay and a free match with their favorite team AC Roma.

Instead of being at the stadium, however, here he was watching Dardanoni flip through his papers and computer files, while his lovely dark Hewan, ex-national female champion in 100-meter hurdles of Ethiopian origin, was dealing on her own in their assigned area with drunken skinheads, vicious neo-fascist fans, and that lurid fraction of hard-core fans accustomed to yelling insults at black players on the field.

"This is the list of cell phone calls made by the Chinese bear," Dardanoni said, tapping his index finger on the first number on the computer screen.

"You got the authorization that quickly?" Mineo asked.

Dardanoni smiled enigmatically. "In the last couple days before his death he placed twenty-some calls. I've ruled out the one made to a number in South Africa and the one made to Argentina."

"How come?"

"Because they weren't part of the Roman Empire and so don't have mithraic temples."

This reasoning sounded rather insane to Mineo, but he said to himself that he might as well let Dardanoni do his thing, since the soccer match was as good as over by now. Maybe if he kept quiet, Dardanoni would let him go in time to enjoy an after-match match with Hewan? The mere thought of the deep molasses color of her skin made his chest tight.

"Let's limit ourselves to the calls made by the American priest within the States and the Roman Empire," Dardanoni continued. "Let's forget about the taxis and hotels…and that leaves us with six calls. So…two were to an American lady—a gallery owner, who, it seems, had a privileged relationship with the priest. The American police have already questioned her, and she knows nothing. Another phone call, made here in Rome, was to a priest at San Clemente to ask him to open the mithraeum—this we've confirmed. A fourth call was to book a table at a restaurant, only he never showed up. Ever heard of 'da Giggetto' over by Ottavia's Portico?"

"Too expensive for me."

"In Milan it'd cost double...There were also two phone calls made to a certain Arjan Vittorio Gupta, an Indian with an Italian passport. The second of these calls the victim made from the hotel, as witnessed by the hour and verified by the desk attendant."

"So I need to question him? What's the address?"

"Hold on. Arjan Gupta is in Holland. That's where he received the phone call. He has an Italian cell phone but right now he's using it in the Netherlands."

Mineo continued to wait for Dardanoni to give him an order or draw a conclusion—to do something, in other words, that would allow him to salvage his evening.

Instead, Dardanoni opened another computer file; a new set of phone call listings appeared on the screen.

"Arjan isn't your normal immigrant," he said reflectively. "He was born in Italy of an Indian father and an Italian mother. He got a good education. He became an expert in Ancient art and religion…which makes him a colleague of a sort of the dead man. He's clean—never had any dealings with the justice system. But have a look here. This is the list of Arjan's received calls…and this is the list of the people Arjan placed calls to."

Mineo leaned forward and saw there were two lines that Dardanoni had highlighted in red. "This is a real multi-level examination," he said ironically. "What's next? The list of the listings of the listings?"

"If need be, we'll take it to ten levels," Dardanoni said severely. "…But look at Arjan's calls…dry-cleaner's, museums, friends, a restaurant, the information number of the Dutch train network, a Surinamese take-away joint, a bookseller…and then these three numbers, for a total of four received telephone calls."

"Who do they belong to?"

"The first was received from Chinese Bear. The second from a cloned SIM card. Someone who was in Milan. Who had a cell phone that didn't correspond to any real name. Someone who didn't want to be traced, who wanted to stay in hiding. I say, Mineo, we have a respected religious scholar who likes to contact someone who uses a cloned cell. What do you make of that? And then, fifteen minutes later, Gupta received a call from Chinese Bear. Pretty strange, eh?"

"I'll alert Milan. They can try to figure out what part of the city the cloned cell phone was in."

"I'm one step ahead of you, Mineo. The signal came briefly from downtown Milan, but unfortunately, it never reappeared again."

"So we're talking about someone with access to a good number of cloned SIM cards."

"Disposables—throw it away as you go."

"And the fourth?"

"From a place in Virginia. Near Washington DC in America."

"And so what we going to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" echoed Mineo, incredulous.

"If I ask the Dutch police to question Arjan Vittorio Gupta on the basis on what we have in hand, they'll laugh in my face."

Mineo stood up from the chair next to Dardanoni's, thinking resentfully, 'But why did he make me give up the game? Just to have a chair-warmer to talk to?'

"Let's return to the crime itself. First hypothesis: the homicide stems from a war between two gangs or sects—the Mithraists versus another group of strange religious fanatics." Dardanoni paused thoughtfully, then continued, "Only there's no record anywhere in the world of such post-mithraic gangs. I say let's rule that out."

Mineo knew Dardanoni well. He had almost certainly come up with a theory.

Perhaps this evening wasn't going to be a complete wash-out after all.

"But why would anyone commit a crime like that?" Dardanoni went on. "It's getting a lot of media coverage."

"Well, boss? You think the murderer wanted to send a message? A horrible murder just to send a message?"

"Could be a warning at an international level. A sort of signal to say 'I haven't found what I'm looking for but I know that you have it, and if you don't give it to me you'll meet with a horrible end.'"

"Meanwhile the 'you'-who-has-that-thing is going to go ballistic."

"And make mistakes...which will give away his identity...and if we don't find him fast enough, he'll be murdered. The murderer just wants to find him in possession of 'the thing' first. Mineo, the murderer could have been convinced that Chinese Bear knew where that thing was located. Then he changed his strategy and massacred him."

Mineo felt a god-awful tingle down his spine when his boss used the term Chinese Bear. Dardanoni was s a real Northerner—they didn't come any colder than that. "This would explain the photo nailed to the poor guy's chest," he said. "The murderer is looking for the statue or whatever the heck it is."

He didn't trust the cryptic smile on Dardanoni's face, and so he added,

"What kind of probability are we talking about here? Two percent?"

"You're an optimist. I thought you'd say less than that. A two- percent chance is worth pursuing. It's much better than a zero-percent chance."

The evening was getting on and Mineo stood up a second time.

"I'm going home, boss," he said.

He had hoped for a nod or a 'ciao' from Dardanoni but there was none forthcoming. The detective simply continued meditating at his computer screen.

"'Night," Mineo said at the door.

From behind him came Dardanoni's parting orders: "The investigation is by right ours because the first crime has happened in Rome. I expect there will be more. I want you, Mineo, to keep tabs on any strange crimes that happen in Italy, especially if there's an Indian involved, or if there is anything mentioned in the newspaper called the Washington Post. And while you're at it, read all the issues on-line of the Washington Post from the past month."

"Boss, you know that I don't know English."

"Well, Mineo, then look at them, pick out the names."

"Boss, I did find out a small thing regarding the lock on the cage in the mithraeum. It's made in China but sold in America by Wal-Mart."

"I imagined something like that," Dardanoni nodded. "So the murderer is probably either American or someone who has recently been to the States."

Mineo blinked at Dardanoni's determined face. 'All that determination,' he thought, 'when in reality we are still at square one.' "Forget what I said, boss," he coughed, as he finally opened the door. "We're way below that two percent."