A Dark Song of Blood by Ben Pastor Page A

picking up something she dropped.”
    At the next intermission, Bora left the box again. Guidi saw him below, easily finding his way across the partly empty row of seats to accost Merlo and his companion. Next he was clumsily stepping on the man’s foot, and apologizing gave him a chance to make small talk. He was even invited to sit to the left of the young woman, where he spent the rest of the intermission. He rejoined Guidi when the lights – miraculously working tonight – were already off.
    â€œAre you out of your head, Major?”
    â€œWhy? Merlo doesn’t know me.”
    â€œHe knows you’re a German aide-de-camp.”
    â€œThere’s scads of us, Guidi. I wanted to make sure I got close in case the power fails. Don’t be a killjoy. He looks like a chummy ad for Brillantina Linetti, and she’s... Well, what can I say. She’s half his age.”
    â€œWell, don’t be misled by his fat innocent looks. If he hasn’t done in the Reiner girl, he was directly involved in the Matteotti affair.”
    â€œYou mean his murder ?” There was no discouraging Bora tonight. “A nasty way of disposing of socialist opposition. DidI tell you I was in Rome when it happened, twenty or so years ago? My stepfather’s wife told me how they stuffed the poor man in a shallow grave in the Campagna. Yes, I can see Merlo digging it. My first summer here, and everybody and his brother searched for this cadaver that no one wanted to find. How can you tell me the Italians aren’t absurd?” He sat back, lowering his voice as the curtain rose. “It was Merlo throwing up in the neighborhood of the Reiner house, by the by. How do I know? Not everyone is afraid of telling on a Fascist Ras , as it seems.”
    When they left the theater it was very cold and clear. Even Bora admitted it was cold. A distinct rumble of cannon fire was audible past the expanse of city blocks. Guidi glanced at him in the semi-darkness, and Bora said, “It’s a beautiful night.” The truth was that after his visit at the front he knew how by tonight the worst was past, and the enemy contained. But he didn’t let Guidi have a chance to surmise that much. “I just received a telegram from my stepfather,” he told him. “My wife is coming next week.”
    25 JANUARY 1944
    Danza told Guidi, “Looked into all you asked for, Inspector. The girl is actually registered under her mother’s name, Di Loreto. No father’s name given. Has attended courses at the Academy of Fine Arts, goes by Lippi and calls herself an art student. Has been supplementing her income at a stationery shop by posing for painters, which is apparently what her mother does for a living. Not much else to say – works at this place, this stationery shop on Piazza Ungheria.”
    â€œFriends, men and women?”
    â€œAcquaintances. Goes to the movies with them, occasionally. No word of a steady boyfriend. If she’s pregnant, we don’t know by whom or for how long.”
    â€œTry to find out. Anything else?”
    â€œIt depends on what you’re looking for. We can have her followed, Inspector. In case something turns up.”
    The cold facts were no more significant than those about Magda Reiner, a parallel that made Guidi uncomfortable somehow. Guidi jotted down the names of the students and the cherry-lipped woman. “No. Look further into these, too.”
    Danza read, and laughed. “She’s a familiar one!”
    â€œWhat do you mean, is she on file?”
    â€œWith the vice squad, she is. Nothing big. Soliciting, mostly. She’s behaved for the past two years or so – not so many men around, I guess.”
    â€œPolitics?”
    â€œPina? Nothing from the navel up.”
    Were it not for his uniform, Lieutenant Colonel Kappler would look insignificant. Far from consoling Bora, who’d been invited to Gestapo headquarters to discuss