Time to Depart mdf-7 Read online

  Nonnius himself had a lean face with an aristocratically hooked nose, big ears and a scrawny neck. He could have modelled for a statue of a republican orator. In the old Roman manner he had features that would be called 'full of character': pinched lips, and all the signs of a filthy temper if his dinner was late.

  He was about sixty and pretty well bald. Despite being so poorly he had managed to shave; to make it more bearable his barber had aided the process with a precociously scented balsam. His tunic was plain white, but scrupulously clean. He wore no gems. His boots looked like old favourites. I mean, they looked as if they had already kicked in the kidneys of several hundred tardy payers, and were still greased daily in case they found a chance of kicking more. Everything about him said that if we annoyed him, the man would cheerfully kick us.

  Fusculus introduced me. We had fixed a story: 'Didius Falco has a roving commission, in a supervisory capacity, working alongside the public auditor.'

  Nobody believed it, but that didn't matter.

  'I'm sorry to learn you're off colour,' I mouthed sympathetically. 'I may need to go through some figures eventually, but I'll try to limit the agony. I don't want to tire you -'

  'You being funny?' Nonnius had a voice that sounded polite, until you noticed threads of a raw accent running through it. He had been brought up on the Tiber waterfront. Any semblance of culture was as incongruous as a butcher calmly discussing Heraclitus' theory of all things being in a state of eternal flux just as he cleavered the ribs of a dead ox. I knew one like that once; big ideas, but overprone to making up the weight with fat.

  'I was told you had to take it easy…'

  'Raiding Balbinus' accounts seems to have given me a new lease of life!' It could just have been the desperate jest of a genuine deathbed case. I was trying to decide if the bastard was really ill. Nonnius noticed, so he let out a pathetic cough. The exotic slave child rushed to wipe his brow for him. The tot was well trained in more than flirting his fringes; apparently.

  'Is the Treasury man helping you?' I asked.

  'Not a lot' That sounded like most Treasury men. 'Want to see him?' Nonnius appeared perfectly equable. 'I put him in a room of his own where he can play with the balls on his abacus to his heart's content.'

  'No thanks. So what's the score so far?' I tossed at him unexpectedly.

  He had it pat: 'Two million, and still counting.'

  I let out a low whistle. 'That's a whole bunch of radishes!' He looked satisfied, but said nothing. 'Very pleasant for you,' I prompted.

  'If I can get at it. Balbinus tried to lock it in a cupboard out of reach.'

  'Not the old "present to wife's brother" trick?' -

  He gave me a respectful gleam. 'Haven't come across that one! No: "dowry to daughter's husband".'

  I shook my head. 'Met it before. I took a jurist's advice and the news is bad: you can't touch the coinage. So long as the marriage lasts it has passed away from the family. Title to the dowry goes with the title to the girl. The husband owns both, with no legal responsibility to the father-in-law.'

  'Maybe they'll divorce!' sneered the ex-rent-collector, in a tone that suggested heavy whacks might be used to end the marriage. Once a muscleman, always a thug.

  'If the dowry was-big enough, love will triumph,' I warned. 'Cash in hand tends to make husbands romantic.'

  'Then I'll have to explain to the girl that her husband's an empty conker shell.'

  'Oh I think she must have noticed that!' Fusculus put in. He glanced at me, promising to elaborate on the gossip later.

  I saw Nonnius looking between us, trying to work out how Fusculus and I were in league. None of the vigiles wore uniforms. The foot patrols were kitted out in red tunics as a livery to help them force a right of way to the fountains during a fire, but Petro's agents dressed much as he did, in dark colours with only a whip or cudgel to reveal their status, and with boots that were tough enough to serve as an extra weapon. They and I were indistinguishable. I wore my normal work clothes too: a tunic the colour of mushroom gravy, a liverish belt, and boots that knew their way around.

  The room was full of working boots. There were enough soles and studs to subdue a crowd of rioting fishmongers in five minutes flat Only the slave boy, in his embroidered Persian slippers, failed to match up to the rest of us.

  'What's your background?' Nonnius demanded of me, bluntly suspicious.

  'I'm an informer basically. I take on specials for the Emperor.'

  'That stinks!'

  'Not as much as enforcing for organised crime!'

  I was pleased to see he did not care for me standing up to him. His tone became peevish. 'If you've finished insulting me, I've got enough to do chasing my stake from the Balbinus case.'

  'Stay busy!' I advised.

  He laughed briefly. 'I gather your "roving commission" will not include helping me!'

  I wanted to tackle the area that Rubella had called past history; the one that had big implications for the future. 'I need to rove in other directions.'

  'What do you want with me?'

  'Information.'

  'Of course. You're an informer! Are you buying?' he tried brazenly.

  'Not from a jury fixer!'

  'So what are you looking for, Falco?' Nonnius asked, ignoring the insult this time as he tried to startle me.

  I could play that game. 'Whether it's you who masterminded the Emporium heist.'

  XVIII

  It failed to nettle him. 'I heard about that,' he said softly. So had most of Rome, so I couldn't accuse him of unnatural inside knowledge. Not yet anyway. I was starting to feel that if he had been involved, handing him over to justice would give me great pleasure. I had a distinct feeling that he knew more than he ought. But crooks enjoy making you feel that.

  'Somebody could hardly wait for Balbinus to leave town,' I told him. 'They snatched the inside lane of the racecourse – and they want everyone to know who's driving to win.'

  'Looks that way,' he agreed, like a convivial friend humouring me.

  'Was it you?'

  'I'm a sick man.'

  'As I said earlier,' I smiled, 'I'm very sorry to hear that, Nonnius Albius… I've been away. I missed your famous court appearance, so let's run over a few things.'

  He looked sulky. 'I said my piece and I'm finished.'

  'Oh yes. I heard you're quite ar orator-'

  At this point Fusculus, who had been watching with amused patience, suddenly bawled with anger and had to butt in: 'Get a grindstone and shark it up, Nonnious! You're a committed songbird now. Tell the man what he needs to know!'

  'Or what?' jeered the patient, showing us the ugly glower that must have been forced on countless debtors. 'I'm dying. You can't frighten me.'

  'We all die,' Fusculus replied. He was a quiet, calm philosopher. 'Some of us try to avoid being hung up in chains in the Banqueting Chamber first, while Sergius gives his whip an airing.'

  Nonnius was hard to terrify. He had probably devised and carried out more excruciating tortures than we two innocents could even imagine. 'Forget it, shave-tail! That's the frightener you use for schoolboys filching oysters off barrows.' He glared at Fusculus suddenly. 'I know you!'

  'I've been involved in the Balbinus case.'

  'Oh yes, one of the Fourth Cohort's brave esparto-grass boys!' This was the traditional rude nickname for the foot patrols, after the mats they were issued with for smothering blazes. Used of Petro's team, who thought themselves above firefighting, it was doubly rude. (All the worse because the esparto mats were regarded as useless anyway.)

  I managed to break in before things got too hot 'Tell me about how the Balbinus empire worked.'.

  'A pleasure, young man!' Nonnius decided to treat me as the reasonable person in our party in order to show up Fusculus. The latter settled back again, quite content to simmer down. 'What do you want, Falco?'

  'I know Balbinus was the uncrowned king of rat thieves and porch-crawlers. He ran small-time crime as an industry and ha
d drop shops on every street corner to process the loot. I haven't even mentioned the brothels or the illicit gaming houses yet – '

  'He could run an estate,' Nonnius conceded, with visible pride at being an associate.

  'With your help.' He accepted the smarm. I choked back my disgust. 'It was more than stealing scarves from washing lines, however.'

  Balbinus was big enough to have carried off the Emporium raid,' Nonnius agreed. 'Were he still in Rome!'

  'But sadly he's travelling… So who might have inherited his talent? We'll take it that you personally have retired to lead a blameless life.' Nonnius allowed that lie too. 'Were there any other big boys in the gang who could be showing a flash presence now?'

  'Your sidekick ought to know names,' Nonnius sneered nastily. 'He helped close down the show!'

  Fusculus acknowledged it with his normal grace, refusing to lose his temper this time. 'They all had cheap nicknames,' he said quietly to me, before running off one of his competent lists: The Mller was the most sordid; he did the killings., The more brutal, the more he liked it. Little Icarus thought he could fly above the rest, the joke being that he was a complete no-hoper. Same for Julius Caesar. He was one of those madmen who think they're an emperor. Laurels would get the blight pretty quickly on his greasy head. The others I knew were called Verdigris and the Fly.'

  We looked at Nonnius for confirmation; he shrugged, pretending at last to be impressed. 'Clever boy!'

  'And where are they all now?' I asked.

  'All gone to the country when the trial came off.'

  'Quiet holidays in Latium? You reckon that's true?' I put to Fusculus.

  He nodded. 'Minding goat'

  Petro would have kept tabs on them as far as possible. 'So, Nonnius, those were the centurions, and now they're living in rural retirement like a legion's colony of veterans… Who were the big rivals to your dirty group?'

  'We did not allow rivals!'

  I could believe that.

  There was no need to press the point. Better to think about the other criminal gangs after we left him. I sensed that Nonnius was taking a gloating delight in my interest in the rivals – who undoubtedly existed, even though Balbinus Pius must have done his best to strong-arm them out of his territory. I saw no need to gratify the rent-collector's pernicious taste for making trouble.

  'We'll be in touch,' I said, trying to make it sound worrying.

  'Don't wait too long,' leered Nonnius. 'I'm a sick man!'

  'If the Fourth want you, we'll find you in Hades,' Fusculus chortled. A pleasant threat, which somehow carried a darker tone than his mild, cheery nature led one to expect. Petronius knew how to pick his men.

  Fusculus and I left then, without bothering to make contact with the Temple of Saturn auditor.

  XIX

  When we returned to the station house Petronius had just come in. At the same time his deputy, Martinus, had gone off duty, so Petro was in an affable mood. In our absence the day patrol had brought in two suspected lodging-house thieves, and a man who kept an unleashed dog that had bitten a woman and a child (the 'suspected wolf' from the Temple of Luna). Petro told Fusculus to do the interrogations on these.

  'What, all of them, chief?'

  'Even the dog.'

  Fusculus and I exchanged a grin. It was his punishment for palling up with me. Petronius wanted to keep me on a very tight rein – one that could be personally jerked by him.

  'And you can stop smirking!' he snarled at me. 'I've seen Rubella. I know you're setting up special little escapades that I haven't agreed to!'

  Looking innocent, I made sure I told him how friendly my chat with his tribune had been, and how I had been given a free hand to interview Nonnius.

  'Bastard,' Petro commented, though it was fairly automatic. 'You're welcome to the rent-collector. I warn you, he's a snake nesting in a midden heap. Be careful where you shove your garden fork.' He relaxed. 'What did you think of Rubella?'

  Assessing the tribune seemed to be a cohort obsession. It's the same anywhere that has a hierarchy. Everyone spends a lot of time debating whether their supervisor is just an ineffectual layabout who needs a diagram in triplicate before he can wipe his backside clean -or whether he's so poisonous he's actually corrupt.

  'Snide,' I said. 'Could be more dangerous than he looks. He can make a sharp judgement. It was like being interviewed by a crap fortune-teller. Rubella chewed some magic seeds, then informed me that as a legionary I didn't like my centurion.'

  Petro feigned an admiring look. 'Well he was right there!' We both laughed. Our centurion in the Second Augusta had been a brutal lag named Stollicus; both Petro and I were constantly at loggerheads with him. Stollicus reckoned we were a pair of unkempt, unreliable troublemakers who were deliberately ruining his own chances of promotion by dragging down his century. We said he marked down our personnel reports unfairly. Rather than waiting to find out after twenty years of failing to make centurion ourselves, we manufactured invalidity discharges and left him to it. Last I heard he was tormenting the local populace in Nicopolis. Interestingly, he was still a centurion. Maybe we really had been successful in blighting his life. It was a pleasing thought.

  'Your honourable tribune spoke as if it were a promise to find out who our centurion was, and ask.'

  'He loves handing out some hint of blackmail that sounds like a joke but might not be,' scoffed Petro.

  'Oh well,' I teased. 'At least he won't have any trouble tracing Stollicus. He will have already found him once, to ask about you!'

  Thinking about our military careers we were silent for a moment, and allies again. Perhaps, being more mature now, we wondered whether it might have been wiser to placate the official and salvage our rights.

  Perhaps not. Petronius and I both believed the same: only crawlers get a fair character reference. Decent characters don't bother to argue. For one thing, the truly decent know that life is never fair.

  Changing the subject, Petro asked, Did you get anywhere with Nonnius?'

  'No. He swears the Emporium raider isn't him.'

  'Hah! That was why,' Petro explained, fairly mildly, 'I myself wasn't going to bother to visit him.'

  'All right. I just thought I'd been assigned here to volunteer for the embarrassing jobs, so I might as well get on with one.'

  'Ooh! You're going to be a treasure.'

  'Oh yes. You'll be asking for a permanent informer on the complement… So what lying ex-mobster do you reckon we should tackle next?

  Petro looked thoughtful. 'I've had Martinus doing the rounds of the other big operators. They all deny involvement, of course. The only hope is that one of them will finger the real culprit out of spite. But Martinus can handle that. Why should we upset ourselves? The only trouble is he's slow. Martinus reckons never to break into more than a decorous stroll. Asking three gang warlords where they were on a certain Thursday night will take him about five weeks. But left to himself he'll tell us in due course if anything has an abnormal whiff.'

  'You trust him?'

  'He has a reasonable nose -with expert guidance from his senior officer!'

  'So while he's sniffing villains extremely cautiously, what do we two speedy boys get up to? Investigating the races?'

  'Depends…' Petro looked whimsical. 'Do you see this as an office job, or will you take a mystery assignment that could ruin your health and your reputation?'

  'Oh the office job for me!' I lied. If I had realised what mystery assignment he meant, I might have stuck to this joke.

  "That's a pity. I thought we could go visiting my auntie.' A very old euphemism. Petronius Longus did not mean his Auntie Sedina with the big behind and the flower stall.

  'A brothel?'

  'Not just any old brothel.'

  'Ooh! A special brothel!'

  'I do have my standards, Marcus Didius! You don't have to come with me – '

  'True, you're a big lad.'

  'If Helena wouldn't like it – '

  I grinned gen
tly. 'She'd probably want to come too. The first time I slept with Helena Justina we'd been to a brothel earlier that night.'

  Petronius snorted disapprovingly. 'I didn't know Helena Justina was that kind of girl!' He thought I had been implying she had once been one of those senatorial stiffs who descend on bawdy-houses for a thrill.

  'We were just passing through!' Calling his bluff could be easy. 'Oh get wise. Helena could have been a vestal virgin if she hadn't met her heart's delight in me.' I shook my head at him. He winced. I didn't worry him by mentioning the rest of the story. 'So where is this palace of delight you're luring me to? The dives in the Suburra where the practices are ancient and the whores positively mummified? The out-of-town cabins where runaway slaves solicit travellers for a bit of brass? Or the lousy dens of push-and-shove in the deeply plebeian Patrician Street?'

  'Home ground, Down by the Circus.'

  'Oh Jupiter! You can catch something just thinking about those filthy holes.'

  'Shut your brain off then. You get by without thinking often enough… We've had a hard morning. I thought we deserved an afternoon of exotic entertainment with the exquisite Wage!'

  'I'll buy you lunch first,' I offered promptly. Petro accepted, agreeing with me that we needed to build up our strength before we went.

  XX

  We had entered the Eleventh region. It was outside Petro's area, although he said it was unnecessary to make a courtesy call on the Sixth Cohort, who patrolled here. His was the career in public-service, so I let him decide. I could tell he didn't like the Sixth. He was enjoying the fact we had sneaked into their patch privately, on the excuse of our special task.

  Most prostitutes around the Circus Maximus are pavement-crawlers and portico practitioners. They hang about during and after the races, preying on men whose appetites for excitement have been aroused by watching arena crashes. (Or men who have just come out hoping to waste money and don't fancy any of today's track runners.) Some of these women give themselves an air of moral rectitude by parading near temples, but the trade is the same: up against a wall, with the penalties of theft, a guilty conscience, and disease.