A Season for the Dead

Forty

Rossi cursed himself. It was so obvious when he thought about it.

They’d found just one blurry picture of Gino Fosse and here, he now knew, was the same face, covered in white powder, trying to pretend to be a statue. He grappled inside his jacket, trying to get the gun out, yelling at Cattaneo, yelling at the TV jerk, telling them to get down, to keep out of the way because Brutus wasn’t Brutus at all, he was some crazy, bloodthirsty priest. At least Cattaneo seemed on the ball then. He dragged Valena into the massing crowd by the scruff of his neck. Rossi turned and watched the two of them tumble into the mass of bodies, then fell back, trying to follow them.

His hand felt greasy. His mouth went dry. By the time his fingers reached the butt of the weapon, Brutus had leaned forward on his crate. The hat had fallen from his hands; Luca Rossi’s few coins were rolling on the ground, making a precise, musical sound oddly audible over the animal racket of the crowd. Maybe the metallic chink of the coins was, the big man thought, the last thing he’d ever hear.

Then the swarm of people closed around him. Shoulders jostled him.

Tourists yelled abuse. Rossi held up his gun, high above the mass, trying to make them see some sense. Not knowing why—not even understanding whether this was a conscious action—he fired a single shot into the air and sent some small slug of lead flying out of Bernini’s piazza, spinning wildly toward the bright moon set in a black velvet sky.

Someone nearby screamed. He saw a woman’s bulbous, gaudily made-up eyes and they reminded him of the look he once saw on a bull as it went into the slaughterhouse.

“Luca!” It was Cattaneo yelling. He held Rossi by the arm. Valena was firmly attached to the other. Luca Rossi felt like a jerk. He’d always hated Cattaneo. Always thought him a loser. And now here they were, rolling around inside some steadily panicking mass of people, not knowing where they were going or what was on their trail.

Cattaneo was barking something into the radio. Rossi raised his hand again, let the gun pump upward once more. It felt good. It felt like a statement, something even a warped priest with blood on his hands and a penchant for women’s heads might comprehend. Then a big figure in a Stars and Stripes T-shirt pushed hard into him. Rossi felt the breath disappear from his chest, a sharp pain rising underneath his ribs. The strength left him, just for an instant. It was enough for the gun to slip from his grip, out from his fingers, tugged down by the nagging force of gravity into the sea of stampeding legs at his feet.

Rossi bent over, gasping for air, noting as he did so that some space appeared to be growing around him. When he had his senses back—as much as he could muster—he pulled himself upright. Brutus was there, smiling in front of him, with a semicircle of scared tourists at his back. He looked like a bit-part actor suddenly thrust into the limelight. He had something in his hand, something small and light and deadly.

Luca Rossi stared at it, heard Cattaneo racing toward him. Rossi said, simply, “Shit.”

The weapon shrieked once, jerked back in Fosse’s fingers, then changed direction, just as Rossi’s sight was beginning to fail him and a thick, stupid pain started to cloud his ears.

The last sound was thunder repeating itself, a muffled, echoing roar through which Luca Rossi wished to make some final point, about living and dying and what ought and ought not to be accomplished.

Except it was impossible. Something stole away his thoughts, left him helpless, unable to speak. There was a hand on his shoulder and he knew it was Cattaneo’s. The idiot was dragging him down to the hard stone ground of the piazza. He fell with an extraordinary, irresistible momentum, down toward the red pool running into the cracks of the cobblestones like a sluggish river, growing, turning into a flood.

Gino Fosse stood back, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the two stupid cops prone on the ground, not moving. The crowd was going wild. They were screaming, fighting to get away from this white figure, his fake toga now stained with the splashback of Luca Rossi’s blood.

Only Arturo Valena didn’t run. The fat TV presenter stood there, cowering, unable to move, alone in a circle being created by the fleeing bodies around him. Fosse walked up and held the revolver tight against Valena’s sweating temple. “Come with me,” he said. “Quickly, by my side. Right now.”

Valena nodded. A minute later, Valena joined the dogs.