Dead Men’s Sandals

As months go, September in Rome is one of my favourites. The heat’s beginning to ease, and the weather’s dry enough to make walking a pleasure. Okay, sure, the closer you are to the river, particularly in the low-lying areas, the niffier it is – old Father Tiber is still stripped down to his metaphorical summer smalls, and barring mid-stream he’s mostly mud and worse – but a city boy like me is pretty much used to that. Up here on the Caelian where there’s usually a breeze blowing you hardly notice.
So there I was, fresh off the boat from our Carthage trip, relaxing over a late al fresco breakfast and waiting for Perilla to surface, with nothing more taxing ahead of me but a stroll downtown for a shave-and-haircut followed by a half-jug and a leisurely chat with the punters at Renatius’swineshop. At which point our major-domo Bathyllus soft-shoed out through the peristyle and buggered the whole thing up.
‘A visitor, sir,’ he said.
Just that, and the little bald-head would’ve used exactly the same tone to report a king-size rat in the privy. Not a good sign. Still, Bathyllus has standards that would leave your average society matron nowhere, so I wasn’t prejudging here.
‘Yeah? And who would that be, now?’ I dipped the last of my crusts into the bowl of olive oil…
…just as the guy himself appeared from between the pillars. I stared. The visitor, it seemed, was Titus Satrius.
Fuck. Double fuck. Me, I’d’ve preferred the rat.
‘Morning, Corvinus.’ He was grinning as he came over. ‘Sorry to disturb your breakfast.’
‘Then don’t.’
The grin widened. ‘Yeah, well, maybe I’m not sorry at that. One of life’s little pleasures. The boss wants a word with you.’
‘Is that so?’ I said. Oh, shit. The boss in question being SemproniusEutacticus, such was not good news. Eutacticus was to your run-of-the-mill crook what a crocodile is to a pond-newt; the two might be related in the technical sense, sure, but that’s where any similarity ended, particularly with regard to dental development and general sunniness of disposition. Our paths had crossed several times over the years, and on my side it had never been a pleasure unalloyed. The trouble was that on the last occasion I’d ended up owing the bastard a favour. Hence, presumably, Satrius’s visit.
Double, as I say, fuck. In spades.
‘That is so.’ He reached over for a stuffed olive, flicked it into the air, caught it in his mouth and chewed. ‘Now for preference.Maybe earlier, if you can manage it.’
‘He say what it was about?’
‘Sure.’
I waited. Nothing.‘And?’
‘Doesn’t mean I have to tell you, does it?’ Bastard. ‘I’ve got a litter waiting outside.’
Well, that was to the good anyway. Normally I hate using those things, but Eutacticus’s bijou little mansion was up on the Pincian, a fair hike away, and the less time I had to spend in Satrius’s jolly company the better I’d like it.
So I told Bathyllus to tell Perilla where I’d gone – she’d worry, sure, but it was always best, when visiting Eutacticus, to apprise a third party of your whereabouts in case of accidents, viz. being fed to the bugger’s pet eels – and set off. Hardly rejoicing, mind, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

The litter lads pulled up outside Eutacticus’s gates. We de-chaired under the watchful eye of the gate-troll and carried on up the drive past topiaried hedges studded with serious bronzes and enough marble gods, goddesses and nymphs to equip a pantheon. Greek originals or specially commissioned, probably, the lot of them: in SemproniusEutacticus’s case, crime didn’t only pay, it came with a six-figure annual bonus and an expense account you could’ve run a small province on.
The lad himself was sitting in a rose-trellised arbour communing with nature, the remains of a substantial breakfast on the table in front of him. Yeah, well, if you’ve a hard day of running an organised crime empire ahead of you you need a hearty breakfast to set you up for it. A bread roll, a few olives and a handful of grapes doesn’t really cut it.
‘Ah, Corvinus.’ He was beaming. Bad sign; bad, bad sign. ‘Glad you could make it. Sit down, boy. Pour yourself some wine.’ I did, and glanced round at Satrius. I’d expected that, duty done, body duly delivered, he’d slope off to wherever tame gorillas go when they have some quality free time, but he’d taken up position against the arbour gatepost and was leaning against it, arms crossed and with a general air of being a fixture. ‘Wife well, is she? Bright and healthy and so on?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, Perilla’s okay.’ I tasted the wine. Caecuban. Not the imperial variety, mind, but it came damn close.
‘That’s good. You had a good summer?’
Oh, shit; small talk. With Eutacticus you never, ever got small talk. Forget bad; in terms of signs we were into fully-fledged omen territory here.
‘It was interesting, yeah,’ I said. ‘We were away most of the time. Abroad. Carthage. We’ve just got back, in fact.’
‘Excellent! So you won’t have unpacked yet?’
‘Ah…no, as it happens. Not altogether. We’re planning to go down to Castrimoenium in a few days to see our adopted daughter and her family. They’re–’
‘Were planning.’
I blinked. ‘Come again?’
‘You heard.’ The smile broadened even more, revealing an incisor. ‘Were planning.Past tense. You owe me and I’m calling in the favour. Plans change. You’re going to Brundisium.’
‘What?’
‘A little job I want you to do for me.’
‘Hang on for just one little second, pal!’ I said. ‘You can’t just–!’ I skidded to a halt; the smile had disappeared like morning dew at the first kiss of sunrise. Fuck. ‘Brundisium.Right.Got it. And this would be in connection with what, exactly?’
‘You remember my…we’ll call him a colleague down there? Sent me that necklace your major-domo’s crooked brother got his thieving hands on a while back?’
‘Uh…yeah. Not personally, mind, I never met the guy, but–’
‘Name of Marcius. Titus Marcius. His granddaughter’s due to get married in a couple of months.’
‘Is that so?’ I said cautiously. ‘And?’
‘Seems he bought her a ring as a present. Not for her as such, for her to give to her fiancé on the day of the wedding. Only it’s gone missing.’
‘And you want me to find it, right? Or find whoever, presumably, was responsible for liberating it?’
‘Partly, yes.’
I set down the wine cup. ‘Come on, Eutacticus! The business you’re in – your pal’s in – you don’t need me for something like that. Any run-of-the-mill, common-or-garden thief would chew his own arm off before he risked pinching something he knew you’d a connection with. Witness Bathyllus’s brother. And if he was stupid enough to try you’d–’ I stopped again as the qualification registered. ‘Ah…“partly”?’
‘The day after it went missing Marcius was found face down in Brundisium harbour with his head bashed in.’
Yeah, well, I reckoned that would just about do it where calling in the favour was concerned. Bugger. I reached for the wine cup and took a decent swig; if we were going to be saddled with an unexpected trip to Brundisium then I might as well make the most of things. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘You want to fill in some of the background details?’
He frowned. ‘Listen, boy, when I buy a dog, I don’t do my own barking, right?’ Ouch. ‘Sleuthing’s your department and I’ve got a busy morning ahead. Everything’s arranged, they know you’re coming; you just get on down there, sniff around, do what you’re good at. Find the bastard responsible and we’ll call it quits.’
.Gods! ‘Indulge me, okay?’ I said. ‘Just the basics. It’s necessary. Believe me.’
The frown deepened. ‘All right. Five minutes. What do you want to know?’
Grudging as hell.Still…‘Who “they” are, for a start.We talking family here? Uh, what’s your word, “colleagues”? Give me a few names.’
‘Very well.’ He shifted irritably in his chair. ‘Like I said, the guy was Titus Marcius. We’ve had dealings with each other on and off over the years, and he was straight as they come.’
‘“Straight”? That’d be “straight” as in “honest”, yes?’
That got me a long, baleful look. ‘Don’t try to be funny, boy. You know what I mean. I’d a lot of time for Marcius, which explains why I’m giving you the job of finding the bastard who killed him. Family…he had two sons plus the granddaughter, Marcia.’
‘The one who’s getting hitched and who’s suddenly short one wedding ring?’
‘Correct.’
‘So what’s the connection?’ I said. Eutacticus hesitated. ‘Come on, pal! Coincidences happen, sure, but they’re not all that common and you don’t go for them straight off. You tell me someone half-inched this ring and the next day Granddad’s found murdered. Okay, then we’ll take it as a working hypothesis that the two events are connected until apprised otherwise. That fine by you?’
The baleful look went up another notch. ‘I also told you not to get smart with me, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Just don’t push it, right?’ I waited. ‘The man Marcia’s betrothed to is the son of a…let’s just call him a long-term business rival, okay?’
‘Is that so, now? This guy got a name?’
‘Pettius. Lucius Pettius. His son’s Sextus.’
‘Uh-huh. So if they’re, uh, business rivals then why the wedding?’
‘The usual reason. It was part of a business agreement.’
‘Yeah, well, I might’ve gone for that if you’d described them as colleagues, pal. In your own sense of the word, that is. “Rivals”, now, that’s something else, isn’t it? Or am I wrong?’
Eutacticus grunted. ‘Okay. Maybe “rivals” is pitching it a bit strong. Oh, sure, the two of them were in the same business, more or less, and in a small place like Brundisium there’re only so many slices to the cake, so there was bound to be a bit of friction. Still, they got along together, most of the time.’
‘Really?’
He frowned. ‘I said: don’t get smart. One thing you have to remember in this line, boy: if you don’t want no trouble with the rest of the field you don’t go looking for it. You keep to your patch, they keep to theirs and everything’s bright and sunny in the garden. That’s a lesson you learn pretty quick if you want to live to old age. You get me?’
I shrugged. ‘You’re the expert. Fair enough. Call them what you like.’
‘The important phrase, though, is “long-term”; we’re talking twenty-odd years here, so the two of them weren’t getting any younger, right? Both well into their sixties. That age, you get tired, you’re not as sharp as you were. Besides, the world’s changing, there’re pushy youngsters on their way up, out to make their fortunes any way they can. And where Brundisium’s concerned there’s the southern Italian gangs knocking at the back door. Oh, sure, ten, fifteen years ago these guys were just hicks from the sticks, small-timers with small ideas, but they’re learning fast, and they’re getting pushy. Seriously pushy. In another ten years’ time, maybe less, they’ll be real trouble, and not just down south, either.’
‘You’re breaking my heart, pal.’
‘Oh, I’ve no worries on that score myself, Corvinus. Believe me. I’ve Rome stitched up tighter than a gnat’s arse. Marcius and Pettius, now, they were different, old school operators, both of them, small-time but happy to keep it that way for the sake of peace and quiet. They were doing okay on their own for the time being, sure, but they could see how the wind was blowing. An alliance, pooling their resources, not pissing in each other’s ponds, that made sense.’
‘So what happens now that Marcius is dead?’
Eutacticus shrugged. ‘Maybe nothing. No reason why it should. Like I said, it was a willing agreement on both sides, and Marcius has his sons to follow him. Plus his deputy’s no fool. He’ll take care of things until the dust settles.’
‘Deputy?’
‘He’s the one you’ll be seeing most of. Guy by the name of Cluvius. Quintus Cluvius. Him and Marcius, they’ve been together from the beginning.’
‘You have any thoughts yourself? About who the perp might be?’
‘I told you, Corvinus. That’s your job. Me, I don’t do theorising.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. We’ll leave it there for the present. Tell me more about this ring.’
Was it my imagination, or did his eyes flicker just for an instant?
‘What’s to tell?’ he said. ‘All you need to know is that it’s gone missing, it’s worth more than your fucking annual income, and the other half of your job is getting it back. Now you’ve had all the time you’re getting out of me. Anything else you want you can find out for yourself when you and Satrius get down there.’
What?
‘Uh…wait a minute, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Maybe I misheard. You said Satrius?’
‘Sure. I’m sending him with you. Any objections?’
He’d reverted to basking crocodile mode. I backed water frantically. ‘Ah…no. None at all,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not. Perish the thought.’ I glanced sideways. Satrius was still leaning against the gatepost, only now he was grinning like a drain with the cover off. Bastard. ‘You, uh, have reasons for doing that?’
‘He’s my rep and your authorisation. These guys aren’t your normal poncey law-abiding pillars of the establishment; they don’t play nice. You go poking your nose into their affairs and they’ll cut it off for you without a second thought, for any reason or none at all, just on principle. Unless you’re protected, that is. Which you will be, because with Satrius keeping an eye on things they know that if they so much as fart out of turn I’ll find out, and I will not then be a happy bunny. Think of him as a guide and mentor.’
Guide and mentor, eh? Some images are just too bizarre for the human mind to entertain while keeping its sanity. ‘Fair enough. So you, uh, want me to leave right away, do you?’ I said. ‘Us, rather?Me and Laughing Boy here?’
‘No hurry, Corvinus. The day after tomorrow will do.’
‘Very generous, pal. Thank you.’
That got me a long, hard stare, but then he grunted, shrugged, and stood up. ‘Like I said, everything’s arranged the other end; Satrius can fill you in on that score. Take your wife with you, take anyone you please. Take the fucking family cat if you like.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Come on, boy! Smile! Think of it as an extra holiday, all expenses paid. Let me know when you’ve worked things out and I’ll handle the rest. Now bugger off and enjoy.’
He got up, mopped his lips with his napkin, and ambled back towards the house, leaving me with Laughing Boy himself.
Gods!