Time To Depart

LVII

ONE DAY MIGHT be enough. It could certainly be enough to make me look a fool. If we watched the brothel all day and there was no discernible criminal activity, my name would be bog weed. Whether I wanted to skulk around longer looking for a chance to apprehend Gaius and Phlosis for annoying me at Ostia would be up to me. Martinus would curse me and storm off to tell the entire cohort what incompetent, aggravating blocks of wood informers were, and how he had been taken in.

On the other hand, if there was enough toing and froing of known members of the Balbinus gangs to suggest a link with his empire, I would be justified. Not a hero, but entitled to swank at the bathhouse. It would be a pleasant change.

Martinus and I arrived at dawn. We began by sitting in a doorway like runaway slaves. Later a sad thermopolium was opened by a creaky woman who spent ages dabbling around the floor with a flat-headed broom and a bucket of grey water. We watched her desultory efforts at wiping down counters, then she fidgeted about with her three shelves of cups and flagons, emptied some blackened pots into her counter holes, and stood a few amphorae crookedly against a wall.

We ambled up. We told her we were foxing – watching the streets for `opportunities', illegal ones being understood. She seemed neither surprised nor shocked. by this notion. Martinus engaged in brief negotiations, coins chinked into her apron pocket, and we were encouraged to park ourselves indoors on tall stools. There we could look as if we were picking at olives while we watched Plato's. We bought a dish of something in cold dark gravy. I left most of mine.

Things were very quiet to begin with. Despite my good intentions I ended up staying in the same bar as my. assistant

(stalwartly ignoring the fact that he seemed to assume I was helping him). The only other food stall was the one where Petro and I had sat when we first eyed up the brothel before visiting Lalage, a place where we had shown ourselves to be law-and-order men. Today I wanted to pass for ordinary street grime.

I could just about trust Martinus to blend in. He must have been forty, so older than Petronius, the chief he was longing to elbow aside. As far as I knew he had remained unmarried, and though he talked about women his relationships were quiet incidents in a fairly ordered life. He had straight brown hair, cut neatly across the forehead, heavily shaded jowls and a dark mole on one cheek. He seemed too boring to arouse comment.

As the morning passed we started to see typical activity – locals visiting Plato's routinely. It seemed a long time since I had groaned over this with Petro, though when I bothered to work out the time scale (needing mental entertainment) I realised it was only five days ago. In those five days Rome had descended from a city where you were wise to keep your eyes open into one of complete lawlessness.

`Here we go!' Martinus had spotted suspects. From the brothel emerged three figures; a thin man in sky-blue tunic with an intelligent face and a scroll dangling from his waist, and two companions, one plump, one pockmarked, both inconspicuous. We had not seen them going in that morning; they must have been at Plato's overnight.

`Know them?' I asked quietly.

`The one in blue is a Cicero.' I lifted an eyebrow. `A talker, Falco. He engages the attention of men drinking in wine bars, then keeps them laughing at his stories and jokes while the other two rob them.'

Martinus drew out a tablet, and stylus, then began making notes in firm square Latin lettering. As the day progressed, his writing was to shrink as the tablet rapidly filled up. To make us more unobtrusive, he later produced a pocket set of draughts, glass counters in black and red that he kept in a small leather bag. We set out a board, drawn in gravy on the marble. To look authentic we had to play for real, worse luck. I hate draughts. Martinus was an intelligent player who enjoyed his game. In fact he was so keen it would have been insulting to fake it, so I had to join in properly and attempt to match his standard.

`You should practise, Falco. This is a game of skill. It has parallels with investigation.' Martinus was one of those pretentious board-game philosophers. `You need mental agility, strength of will, powers of bluff, concentration

`And little glass balls,' I remarked.

The morning continued without much incident, though we did see a limping man whom we reckoned must be on the `wounded soldier' racket and another whom Martinus had once arrested for hooking cups off drink stall shelves. He ignored the Oily jug, our perch. At lunch time a whole parade of men who appeared to be legitimate customers were crowding to the brothel when my companion stayed his hand just at the moment of capturing my last viable counter. `Falco! There go a real couple of gangland educators!'

I didn't need him to point out the enforcers. Emerging from Plato's for a midday stroll were the Miller and Little Icarus. `I know them. Those are the pair who tried acting as rough masseurs to me. They must be living there.'

`Seeing two from the old Balbinus set-up gives us enough to mount a raid, Falco.'

`You sure? We have to be certain we land the big one.' `If he's there.'

`If he isn't there all the time, I reckon he comes. visiting.' Before we did anything rash I wanted to watch for an evening and night at least. Martinus made no attempt to demur. He was not stupid – far from it. The bastard was a champion draughts player.

In the afternoon three more seedy characters caught our attention as they emerged. We decided they were low-life. There was a flash type in punched sandals and a niello belt, a broken-nosed hearty who kept kicking kerbstones, and a weed who came out scratching his head as if a whole herd of little lodgers were bothering him. I felt itchy just looking.

`Fancy stretching your legs?' I asked. Martinus swept up his glass counters in an instant and we set off to trail the trio. We both had to go. One man can't follow three.

For a nicely brought-up Aventine boy it was a real eye-opener. First two of them joined the squash in an elbow joint, pretending to buy a' stuffed-vine-leaf lunch while they worked through the customers with a skill that left me gasping. When someone went to pay for a flagon too early, found his purse gone and caught on to them, out they ran like eels. The third man was loafing on the doorstep as if unconnected; he misdirected the robbed man, who pelted down the wrong street while our friends met up together and mooched off the other way. We never saw them cleaning out the purses they had lifted, but we noticed the empty pouches flipped into a cart.

We split up to walk on either side of the street for a while, still tailing the three. They were now heading for the Forum. It was at its busiest, all the temple steps crowded with moneychangers and salesmen, and the spaces around the rostra packed. Our mark with the overactive lice paused to kick and rob a drunk near the House of the Vestals. The crunch of his boot going in symbolised all that was vicious in the Balbinus gangs.

They moved on through the press of fishwives and bread-sellers, `sampling' rolls, sausages and fruit as the fancy took them, never paying for any of it. One was a real reacher, adept at leaning across shop counters to grab money or goods. In the end we could bear to watch no longer, not without arresting them. That might alarm the brothel; we had to hold back. They were tackling the Basilica Aemilia, the main centre of commerce in Rome, which was cluttered with itinerant sellers and tacky stalls; plenty of scope for our boys to spend a lucrative hour.

Incensed, Martinus and I walked back into the Forum. We took a breather in the shade of the Temple of the Divine Julius, reflecting on our researches so far.

`Those three were sharp little movers. What you've uncovered has Balbinus' seal stamped all over it,' Martinus commented. He seemed depressed.

`What's up? Do you think we're wasting our time taking on the gangs?'

`You never wipe out thieves, Falco. If we put those three in a cell, someone else will be along, aiming to relieve diners of their purses while they're licking out their bowls.'

`If you think that, why do this job at all?'

`Why indeed!' He sighed bitterly. I said nothing. I knew this mood was a hazard of life in the vigiles. I had known Petro long enough.

Sometimes the pressure and danger, and the sheer weight of despair, caused one of them to resign. The others became even more unsettled for a while. But normally they moaned a lot, got paralytic with an amphora, then carried on. Given their lousy pay and harsh conditions, plus the traditional indifference of their superiors, complaint seemed understandable.

Martinus was now watching passers-by. His arms were crossed on his chest and his fat backside was thrust out in his habitual way. His large eyes were taking in everything. I remembered that when we were waiting for Balbinus at Ostia it was Martinus who had stayed twitching at the door of the tavern, and how timely had been his warning of the escort's approach. Here in the Forum, although his thoughts seemed to be upon disheartened philosophy, he had spotted the vagrant who was drunk as a vintner's carthorse weaving a determined course towards two highly snooty types in togas outside the Julian courts. He had noted the slaves fooling about, including the one who had pinched another's inkpot and hidden it in his tunic with a genuine intent to steal. He had seen the old woman crying and the girl who did not realise she was being followed home. His gaze had finally settled on the group of young boys loitering on the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, youths who were clearly looking for trouble though probably not yet committed to a life of crime.

`Of course it's a job,' he mused. `Fresh air and mental challenges. At least when. you get hit on the head it's no surprise. There's a routine, if you like that, but scope to use your initiative. You have wonderful colleagues to insult you day and night. Plus the joy of knowing everyone else thinks you're just a fireman and despises you. I haven't doused a flame in fifteen years.'

`You've been on enquiries most of your career?'

`Must be thought to have the knack,' he replied dryly.

He had the cynical tone of a man who knew all superiors were incapable of judgement or man management. This could have made him vulnerable. But somehow I felt that Martinus was too easy-going to complicate his existence by taking bribes. He was too lazy to bother, Petro would say:

`So what do you reckon we do now?' I asked. Naturally I had my own ideas. I was convinced the brothel had been made the new centre of the Balbinus organisation.

`We need to know if Balbinus is inside Plato's.'

I agreed so far. `Or if not, when they are expecting him.'

`So we need an inside man,' Martinus said.

I glanced at him uneasily. `You mean one of us?'

`Jupiter, no! Unless,' he grinned, `you fancy volunteering?'

`If that's the plan, I fancy a long vacation on a pig farm in Bruttium!'

Martinus shook his head. `We need a single-handed worker. One who looks bent enough to be accepted without comment, but who has no real allegiance to the Balbinus mob.' He pointed a long finger at a pickpocket who for the past half-hour had been patiently working the crowds. `There's one I know. He'll do.'

We walked across to the unobtrusive pouch-snatcher and waited until he bumped into his next victim. Martinus instantly laid a hand on his shoulder, and just as quickly the man darted off. `Drop him, Falco!'

I knocked the snatcher's legs from under him, and Martinus sat down hard on his ribs. We tossed the purse back to the victim, who blinked in surprise, then looked at us as if he feared we were setting him up for some really complicated con. Sighing, Martinus waved him away.

We stood the pickpocket upright and grinned at him.