Private Rome

Chapter 70

I tried to encourage Faduma to leave me but she refused to listen, saying she would never bail on a story like this. I couldn’t help feeling there was more to it, that there was a sense of honor guiding her, compelling her not to abandon me. It was a sentiment I shared. I’d never abandoned a case.

She took me to a tiny basement bar in Poggio del Torrino, a neighborhood that lay between the center of Rome and Ostia, and we passed the evening there with a handful of heavy drinkers who spent enough on alcohol to keep the place going. The bar was called Il Tucano and was set beneath a modern apartment block. It was the kind of watering hole where people drank alone and purposefully, determined to achieve oblivion. While I’d hesitate to label strangers alcoholics or problem drinkers, these folk certainly weren’t fair-weather.

Faduma and I sat in a booth in a back corner of the bar, nursing a steady stream of Cokes, coffees and water to ensure the taciturn old barman, who looked as though he’d soaked up many lifetimes of misery, didn’t kick us out.

No one paid us any mind and for a while I was able to forget I was a wanted man whose face had been beamed across the airwaves and the Internet.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said to Faduma.

“You keep telling me that, and I keep telling you I want to be here.”

“You’re risking so much,” I responded.

“And you?” she asked. “Why do you have to be here?”

I hesitated.

“I don’t,” I conceded. “But if I wasn’t here, who would find the truth? Who would protect Matteo from wrongful conviction? I can’t stand by if there’s a chance an innocent man might be jailed.”

She nodded slowly. “Do you know what it’s like to come to a country as a refugee? To be spat on? Told you’re inferior? To be abused? Ridiculed? Told you aren’t welcome? That you have no worth?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine experiencing any of those things and was suddenly conscious of the privilege life had granted me.

“It can break a person,” Faduma said, and I couldn’t be sure in the low light of the bar but I thought her eyes were glistening. “Or it can build strength. It can teach you to know when the crowd is wrong and when those less fortunate than you need help. Rome is hunting you, Mr. Morgan, and for someone who grew up being marginalized by Rome, that is reason enough for me to stay.”

We remained in our booth until the last of the swaying customers staggered out and the barman finally presented us with the bill shortly after 1 a.m. We stepped onto Viale degli Astri, a wide avenue lined with palm trees and modern apartment blocks, and the warm air hit us along with the echoes of drinkers and diners making their way home along the otherwise quiet streets. We walked through a small park that lay to our east and caught a taxi from an office set in the foot of an apartment block on Viale Don Pasquino Borghi.

About five minutes into our journey, as we reached the open highway that would take us to the coast, I noticed the driver, a short, stocky man with stubble and the hungry expression of a hyena, kept glancing at me in the rear-view mirror and every so often his gaze would linger. I could see my face in the mirror, lit up now and again by the headlamps of vehicles coming along the carriageway on the other side of the median.

“Five hundred,” the driver said at last.

“Mi scusi?” Faduma responded.

“For a safe journey,” he explained. “It seems a fair price for your friend.”

And there it was. His eyes were on me not because he was a conscientious citizen thinking of turning me in, but because he was calculating how much he could extort for his silence.

Faduma said something in Italian. She sounded angry, but I interrupted her.

“That’s a fair price,” I said. “I’m assuming it buys your silence forever.”

“That’s another five hundred,” the greedy man replied.

I nodded. “Okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled to a halt on Via Ottavio, a quiet residential street in Ostia.

“One thousand,” he said, turning with his hand held out expectantly.

“The meter says thirty euros,” I remarked.

He scowled and waved his phone menacingly. “Police.”

“You know why they’re hunting me,” I said, leaning forward so my face was inches from his. “They say I killed a priest. Go ahead and make the call, Paolo Sachetto.” I gestured at his license displayed on the dash. “My friends and I will know exactly where to find you.”

His bravado crumbled. I handed him fifty euros.

“A generous tip for such a comfortable ride,” I said, before getting out.

“Remind me never to cross you,” Faduma said as she joined me on the sidewalk.

We waited for the taxi to leave before heading for Via Orazio, ten minutes away. We walked on arm-in-arm, playing the part of lovers coming home from a date.

As we got closer to the cell-phone store, we feigned chit-chat but were in fact pointing out potential risks to one another.

“Van, twenty feet from the store,” Faduma said, touching my arm as though she was telling me how much she loved me.

“I see it,” I replied, and we crossed the street and walked behind the empty market stalls opposite the terrace where the store was located.

Faduma was nearest the van and kept her head turned toward me, providing me with good cover so I wasn’t easy to see from the vehicle. But by leaning around her briefly, I caught a glimpse of two men in the cab, their faces lit by the glow of the gaudy lights in the store window.

“It’s not the cops,” I said, surprised by the fact I recognized the men. “I know these two. They were at the Inferno. They’re members of the Dark Fates.”

We walked more quickly and took a left down Via Stefano Cansacchi.

“Why aren’t the police watching the apartment? Why is it being staked out by gangsters?” Faduma asked.

“My guess is the Rome police force is even more compromised than we thought,” I replied. “Someone high up must have told the cops to back off in order to give these guys a clear run.”

We stopped and turned to look back at the bright lights of the cell-phone store.

“They’re going to have at least one pair of eyes on the rear of the building too,” I said. “So I’m going to need you to create a distraction.”