Scandal Takes a Holiday Read online

  Informers who play up their feckless side avoid this. I looked back to my irresponsible days with sudden fondness.

  Once again next day I hired a donkey and rode out along the coast. The gate to the so-called pirate’s villa had a guard this time, but he let me in without trouble. As I rode down the sandy path, I passed a man leaving. He was going at a crazy pace, feet-out on a small mule like desert tribesmen in Syria, who liked to race off from oases in this madcap way. Because of the dustcloud, the rider had a long scarf wrapped around his face, but as I coughed in his wake I glimpsed a coat-shaped robe of Parthian cut, a balding dome, and eyes that looked sideways at me curiously.

  Damagoras received me. Perhaps his claim was true that he never left home, so he welcomed visitors. Little bronze cups on a matching tray were being removed by a woman in beaded slippers after his previous caller. No replenishments appeared for me.

  As I expected, Damagoras crushed any suggestion that my brother-in-law deserved help with his medical bills and recompense for his time off work. We quickly abandoned that conversation.

  I pressed him again on the subject of Diocles, but that too hit a dead end.

  Then I mentioned the kidnaps. The old rogue became a little more attentive, but I could see he reckoned I had very few leads. “So what makes you link this to the Cilician community, Falco?”

  He was right: none of the victims had mentioned any provincial nationality, apart from “the Illyrian.” I left Illyria out of it. When there is a viable bunch of suspects, why complicate matters? “I am making a direct connection between Diocles’ interest in the kidnaps and his visits to you.”

  Damagoras gave me his honest-fellow laugh. “We never talked about kidnaps. What interest in kidnaps was Diocles supposed to have had?” I noticed the past tense. Perhaps Damagoras knew what had happened to the missing man.

  “The longer he is missing, the more closely all his interests will come under scrutiny,” I warned.

  “This is bad, Falco! Trying to frighten an old man who has done nothing wrong.”

  “You don’t scare that easily. But don’t let’s quarrel about it—or not yet! Now I’d like you to give me a contact address, please, for your pugilistic crony Cratidas.” Damagoras went vague on me. “Better to let me discuss what that angry swine did to my brother-in-law, Damagoras, than for Cratidas to find his name is on a surveillance-of-aliens list, being monitored by the vigiles.”

  I was a Roman, so Damagoras took the threat as real. Coming to the notice of officials is the last thing a provincial in temporary residence ever wants. Any seafarer has quite enough to do, dodging import taxes and protection rackets, and haggling with the negotiators who try to dun him out of all his profits in an unfriendly market. To be marked for constant investigation and harassment is deadly. Unable to risk it, the old man reluctantly told me a bar where Cratidas could be found in Ostia. I noted the name.

  “And would you happen to know an adventurer called Theopompus?”

  Nothing changed in Damagoras’ expression. “A common name among sailors,” he said. “What has this Theopompus done? Is he one of your kidnappers?”

  I felt I had made a mistake. At least I had not mentioned the girl, Rhodope. There was no particular menace in the so-called pirate’s tone, but if he knew anything about the ransom racket, I had just fingered a gang member who must have broken the anonymity code. Word of this stupidity by Theopompus would get back. Mind you, if the young girl’s seducer was thrashed as a result, I had no qualms.

  “I suppose one of the female victims says she slept with him?” Damagoras read my thoughts as cunningly as my mother. “Falco, I’ll tell you—the woman will be lying. It was always a rule with the old pirates never to touch their guests.” Calling them “guests” was a glossy euphemism. And of course he was still pretending piracy had died out. “The whole point was to convince friends and relatives to pay up, knowing that they could be sure the …”

  “Victim,” I supplied, as he paused.

  Damagoras smiled, but still left the word unsaid. “Would be returned to them, alive and unharmed.”

  “Women,” I commented. “Always tricky commodities.”

  “They lie,” he said, again baldly. “They want to believe they have had a romantic love affair. It was well-known, Falco. Women were trouble. The experts at ransoming never took women, if men were available. That way, they avoided untidy consequences.”

  “All the victims here have been women. It is a very particular scam.”

  “Craziness,” said Damagoras.

  “Maybe it will end like the most famous kidnap of all.”

  “Who’s that?” demanded Damagoras. He squinted at me keenly, just like a man who thought I had insulted his trade.

  “Julius Caesar. He promised his captors that as soon as he was ransomed he would come back and crucify them all. He was true to his word.”

  “A noble guest,” observed Damagoras. “A hard man, very tricky to do business with!”

  I had distracted him from the Rhodope angle. There seemed nothing to gain from him, so I left.

  XXIX

  Cratidas drank at a tavern called the Aquarius. I had a feeling he probably lived there. It was by the Gate of Fortune, which was close to the bank of the Tiber and fairly near to my apartment, so after I rode back, I diverted and found it. I was expecting a verminous hovel where day would be as black as night, and night unspeakable. However, the house with the name of the zodiac water-carrier was a large establishment with a pleasant exterior and several shady interior courtyards. It lacked a river view, but being set back from the bustle of the waterfront made it seem more gracious.

  Casual trade used the snackbar, standing up at streetside counters on two sides of a corner. The servery there was larger than most, well equipped with shelves of flagons and bowls. The odors from the sunken pots of food inset in the marble counters were less repellent than the low fast feeders in Rome; the bar-girl was neat and clean, and she said I was welcome to pass down a short corridor to the ground-floor courtyard area. Here, tourists sat about on benches under pergolas, congratulating themselves on finding such a good hotel, right near the Portus ferries. A businessman who clearly knew the place of old passed through on his way to a room upstairs, led by a burly slave carrying luggage. He was something big in corn; we were in an area of grain measurers and associated government officers.

  In this slightly unlikely setting, I found Cratidas. He was talking to another man, probably subordinate to him in the Cilician hierarchy. They had seats at a table under a fig tree, where they had established themselves in a way that suggested this courtyard was their private office so the tourists had all better use the other spaces. The tourists had taken the point. Maybe they thought Cratidas owned the Aquarius. In fact, for all I knew, he did.

  Maybe, though, people avoided him because there was just something about Cratidas that told them he was dangerous. I had met worse bullies, certainly more obvious ones, but he carried himself with an air. He was coiled for action. Clearly, he was just looking for an excuse to take offense, and he expected to win his fights. That would probably be because he fought dirty—but complaining about his methods would not be much help after he had sliced off your hand or blinded you. He had scars, including a long knife wound, which had healed years ago in a silvered crease, running from his eyebrow to his jaw. The end of one finger was missing.

  His companion looked fairly presentable until he laughed; then I saw he had very few teeth. Cratidas was still wearing the long crimson robe he had flaunted when he attacked Gaius and me at the villa; this one was in a dull greenish ensemble. It looked filthy, but the braid on the neck and the edges of the long sleeves included genuine gold thread. I recognized his balding crown and the long multicolored scarves flung around his thick hairy neck.

  Nobody would mistake this pair for philosophy teachers. They were rough. Very rough. As I approached, I had heard harsh voices and abrupt, coarse laughter. That was before they noticed me. Af
ter that, their hostility hung between us as tangibly as woodsmoke.

  “Nice base you have here! Remember me? I’m Falco.” Cratidas turned to his companion and said something in a foreign language. Evidently he did remember, and the recollection caused them both to grin nastily. “Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “Is this a Greek symposium?”

  “Oh yes, we were discussing literature!” Cratidas replied. The pair laughed at some huge private joke. I raised an eyebrow coolly.

  The other man stood up. He was Eastern-looking, and when he swayed past me, looking sideways with a sneer, I definitely recognized him. I had last seen him riding away from the Damagoras villa at a cracking pace. Now he left us too, once more grinning at Cratidas as he went.

  I had been standing with my thumbs in my belt, but I now joined Cratidas. Spreading myself, as I took a bench opposite him at the table, I moved one end of it away from the table to make myself more room. I began discussing the disability he had inflicted on Gaius Baebius. I knew it would be a waste of time. Cratidas spat fiercely at the fig tree. After that, he slammed a dagger into the table. The point just missed my hand. I kept my hand motionless, not even flinching at the noise. He could decide for himself whether this was because I was stupid, or so stunned I couldn’t move.

  “That’s an old trick.” I made it dry and languorous. “Did you mean to miss, or are you just incompetent?”

  Then, under the table, I jerked up one thigh to trap his knees against the boards so he had no leverage; I used my other foot to kick away the bench he was sitting on. He crashed down to the floor; it must have jarred his back. Of course he was up again instantly. I threw myself right over the table and grabbed him by his long hair. (Never have hair long enough to be grabbed by an assailant, as my trainer says.) When Cratidas lunged at me, I went with the motion, but swung him around and got him facedown on the table with an arm up his back. I was pinning his head down with my body weight. His nose was so bent he must be finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Now listen!” He seemed helpless, but I was not intending to stay that close in case he wrenched free and took off some part of me. “I think that you and your sidekick in the dirty Parthian dressing gown are part of a racket to kidnap merchants’ wives. Probably Damagoras runs the racket. Other people are looking into it, so you can take your chance with them. I want to know, and I want to know now, Cratidas, what happened to the scribe, Diocles?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Oh, I bet you do! Was he investigating your ransom scam?” He made another negative gurgle. I lifted him up partially and banged his face against the table. As a favor to Gaius Baebius, I bashed him down really hard. If Cratidas was impressed that I could match him in brutality, he didn’t show it. “Where is he, Cratidas? What have you done with him?”

  I felt him tense for action. I was vulnerable, lying half on top of him, so I flew off him as he burst free. He spun around, teeth bared. We had fallen apart a couple of yards distant. He saw I had snatched his knife from the table. He was one blade down (though I reckoned he had others), and he had yet to discover what weaponry I carried.

  He hauled up the bench he had previously fallen off. People were taking notice of us now, though. Cratidas probably wanted to continue his stay here so he needed to calm the situation, or the nice people who were sitting under the pergolas would huffily ask the affable tavern landlord to evict him. He swung the bench around, about the height of my head, but then placed it back down. The fight was apparently over—not that I trusted him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, in that coarse voice with the rasping tone, “what went on with the scribe. Damagoras toyed with him, but even he lost interest. You can find out where the man went or what he wanted for yourself, Falco!”

  “I will,” I said. “And then I’ll be back, Cratidas.”

  We omitted good-byes.

  As I left the Aquarius I gave the bar-girl a sample of imperial coinage and my best smile. She knew I had not ordered any food or drink. So she accepted the money and returned the smile delightfully—then when I asked if she knew the name of the visitor in the dirty green robe who had come to see Cratidas, she told me.

  He was called Lygon. I had heard that name before. When I hit the street outside he was long gone, but that did not bother me. There was no need for me to tail him home. I already knew where Lygon lived—or at least, where he had lived until recently.

  XXX

  When I consulted Petronius, I thought he looked shifty. I had left a message at the station house; he called in at our apartment late that afternoon. I told him how I had identified Lygon—the same Lygon, I was sure, who had been named to us as the boyfriend of Pullia, young Zeno’s mother. I had decided the Cilicians had placed her in the gatehouse room where we found her unconscious so that when they took a victim, Pullia could be their jailer until a ransom was paid.

  “Apparently the women seem confused after their ordeal. Brunnus thinks that while they are being held, they are drugged—remember how the boy said to us, ‘Uncle’ Lygon had once told him that if anyone didn’t wake up, the vigiles would want to know?”

  “How do you know what Brunnus thinks?” Petronius demanded.

  I feigned deafness. “Zeno must have misunderstood what Lygon meant. Lygon was talking about the risk of being hunted down for murder, if any victims were accidentally given an overdose. In fact, Pullia may have overdosed herself instead. That time the boy took us to see his mother, she wasn’t drunk, as we thought. I bet she got bored and sampled the drugs herself.”

  “So by chance, we stumbled on the racket, way back!” Petronius sucked his teeth in annoyance.

  “Missing it doesn’t matter. Now we can break the ring.”

  “I’d like to hold back on that, Marcus. We need to gather evidence—”

  “When did evidence feature in a vigiles arrest?” I scoffed.

  “Don’t be like that! We need to be certain—” Prevarication had never been Petro’s style. I guessed his motive, however.

  “We are waiting until the Fourth Cohort arrives in Ostia?”

  “End of the week,” Petronius said briskly, unaware that Rubella had already told me.

  I mentioned that Rubella might accompany the detachment. I had to explain why. Petronius Longus told me what he thought of me. His dissertation was not pretty.

  Eager for action now, we reached an accommodation. “I’ll get you for this, Falco!”

  “Fine. In the meantime, old pal, what’s our plan?”

  “We can take turns to watch the old gatehouse. We’ll establish whether Lygon and the woman are still living there.”

  “It’s just around the corner from where I saw Lygon with Cratidas.”

  “Yes, the gatehouse is ideally positioned.” Petro had quickly thought it out. “It’s near the river, when they snatch victims from Portus. It’s also centrally located if they take them in Ostia, and good for returning the women after ransom.”

  “I thought our involvement that time would put them off the place.”

  “Pullia may never have owned up to the others about what happened. Even if she did, once the gang saw we were not suspicious of her, why sacrifice a good location? So we can observe the place until the next time they bring a victim back there. Then it’s arrest time.”

  As always when I had made a neat connection, I found myself wanting to test it: “Pullia and the boy come from somewhere called Soli. Remember, Maia found that out. Do we know if this Soli is in Cilicia?”

  Helena Justina was reading, so quietly we had forgotten she was there. Now she looked up from the scroll. “Yes,” she said, as if she were already part of our conversation. “Soli used to be on the Cilician coast.”

  “Used to be?” I was skeptical. “What happened? Did the town sprout wings and fly off into the puffy clouds? Sounds like an abstruse metaphor, in an Athenian satire.”

  Petronius was grinning—too much, I thought. I was better acquainted with Helena’s research skills. I gave her a l
ook. Her dark eyes betrayed a modest triumph. Roman matrons do not gloat. Particularly over their spouses, of course. “I brought a map of the Empire with me, Marcus.”

  “Of course you did,” I answered. “We want to be equipped, if one of our very advanced children starts asking cute questions about remote provinces.”

  “I expect,” Petronius mocked us gravely, “Julia Junilla Laeitana can already recite all the rivers in Germania.”

  “Germania Ulterior and Inferior,” I assured him. “Rhenus and all its tributaries, in order, north to south.”

  “Should be south to north, Falco. Go with the flow, man.”

  “I know, but I was holding the map upside down when I taught her. We are working on Germania Libera, but the little sweetheart is frightened by the thought of untamed barbarians.” Julia was three; she still had problems reciting all her own names. I had been rather carried away when naming my firstborn.

  Helena waited quietly for Petro and me to stop fooling.

  “I think you will like this; it fits your theories. Soli was officially renamed a hundred years ago.” She lifted her right hand, a characteristic gesture, freeing up the group of bracelets she wore on her forearm. They tinkled against one another as she twisted her wrist, unconscious of the movement. “Soli, you crazy pair of jesters, is now called Pompeiopolis. Now, Marcus, isn’t that where your old pirate comes from too?”

  We took it in, then both graciously applauded her. Helena had just provided our first link between the kidnappers and Damagoras.

  Inspired, Petronius and I took turns at watching the gatehouse.

  “You’ll have to be careful,” I warned him. “What if the Soli group have already noticed you? You only live about two doors down. You’ve been sauntering right past their place almost every day.”

  “I’ll take the night watch then,” he volunteered. As a father of small children, that suited me. I could be telling bedtime stories, while Petro endured the drunks and caterwauling whores.