WHEN INNOCENZI PRONOUNCED Principe’s name, Blume felt as if some invisible noxious gas had seeped into him.
“Principe? Maybe it was another . . .” He stopped.
Innocenzi circled his finger over the green felt of the poker table. “Do you know what kompromat means?”
Blume was thinking of how Principe had assigned him to the road rage case, and did not answer.
“Kompromat,” repeated Innocenzi.
“Sounds like a type of cash card or a place to wash your clothes or something,” said Blume. “Maybe it’s a Russian word?”
“It is Russian. How did you guess?”
“I’m good at languages.”
“You are very gifted. The Russians are making inroads. Lots of Russians. Albanians, too, of course. Can you imagine that? Back in my Fronte Gioventù days, I used to think Russians were naturally Communists. Turns out I was wrong. The Russians are very hierarchical, organized.”
Blume began to refocus. “So are you.”
“Not as much as people think. The 1970s and 1980s. Those years were a step back. Politics got in the way, and groups started organizing them into cells like they were terrorists. Started acting like terrorists, too. Manifestos, political programs and—” He waved his hand in exasperation. “There was no central authority, no one to turn to, no respect, no way of settling disputes. A disaster. Then things started improving, we went back to the old ways, threw out the politicians, dropped the ideologies. Just in time, too. A few years later the Russians arrived.”
“So now you’re organized?”
“Things are much better than they were, Alec. Everyone appreciates this. More hierarchical, as it should be. There is a separation of roles. Politicians and ideologues are now kept at arm’s length.”
“I feel comforted.”
“You should. It’s why we can talk like this. Kompromat.”
“I still don’t know what it means.”
Innocenzi said, “Suppose I confess a secret to you that allows you to destroy me, what would you do?”
“Destroy you.”
“Don’t try to be funny.”
“Who says I was joking?”
“I say you were. That’s how I’m going to take it.”
“Fine. So what should I do instead?”
“If I know you can destroy me, I’ll destroy you,” said Innocenzi. “You think it’s good to gain knowledge, but once you have it, you realize you were far better off without it. But there is no going back. So what do you do now? What you do is you hedge the risk. You tell me a secret that would allow me to destroy you. That way, I have less reason to fear what you might do. Intense fear leads to intense violence. If you spread the risk, you lower the violence.”
Blume said, “People have lots of secrets.”
“The more of their secrets I know, the less worried I am about what they are going to do, and the less inclined I am to treat them as enemies. Seeing as we live in decadent times, I get plenty of material. Even on people who think they’ve nothing to hide. People like Paoloni or Di Tivoli, say. The Russians have a word for that, too: poshlost.”
“Do you know much Russian?”
“I have Russian friends now. How times change,” said Innocenzi.
“Sometimes, just to remind the politicos and administrators and reporters and police and magistrates and all the others that I’m watching, I let slip a little something. A story appears in a scandal magazine about a certain politician in the company of a whore, the hidden interests of an anticorruption campaigner in property development. You remember Di Pietro and that gift Mercedes, made him stop going after Berlusconi? That’s kompromat at work.”
“And do people have things on you?”
“Sure they do. Even you do.”
“How?” asked Blume.
“You know I am vulnerable through my daughter.”
“Most fathers are.”
“You know my daughter is a gossipy, vain aging woman who had an illicit affair with a politician’s husband.”
Blume said, “That’s not much.”
“It is still something. Gives you some leverage, some kompromat power. Maybe you should balance things out, tell me something about yourself.”
“You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”
“Alec, maybe I know things already. But the situation is this. You were taken off the case, but you went to interrogate my daughter in her house. I give you the address of the culprits. I invite you here, treat you well. The way I see it, it’s time you reciprocated.”
Blume crossed his arms.
Innocenzi said, “It’s not corruption. I want you to reciprocate by doing what you were going to do anyhow.”
“Which is?”
“Continue working the case. Put it back on track.”
“To get the heat off you? You have the situation pretty much under control. Anyhow, I am not totally convinced you’re not behind it.”
“Yes, you are,” said Innocenzi.
“I don’t get it. You want me to stop talking to your daughter, fine. As far as I can see, you’ve got plenty of ways of making me stop, anyhow.”
“Sure, I have, Alec. But I want you to act of your own free will in the matter. My daughter, who has a strong sense of retributive justice, had grown very fond of that dog campaigner, Clemente. I didn’t approve of it, but, hey, peace and love, no?”
Blume waited.
“So when he got himself killed, she was very upset, came to me, asked what had happened, who was responsible, whether I might not be able to do something. We asked around. I personally spoke with Alleva, like I told you. The man had no idea what I was even talking about. He had nothing to do with it. I called in some favors, checked out the thinking of the authorities— nothing, except for reports that you and your friend Paoloni had reached the same conclusion as me, which was that it was random and could not be solved through the normal channels. Oh—Paoloni tipped Alleva off, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not convincing you, I can see that. Sometimes I can’t convince my own daughter. Manuela. She doesn’t believe me. She half thinks I had something to do with it.”
“Like she still has doubts about how her mother died,” said Blume.
Although Innocenzi did not change position, the comfortable posture he had been using was suddenly gone. The creases in his face seemed to smooth as he stared at Blume. He had blue-green eyes, like his daughter.
He held his gaze on Blume just long enough for Blume to understand that he stood no chance of staring him down.
“I don’t understand that, Alec. Now why would you say a thing like that? My dead wife. I don’t know. It has to be a cultural thing, you being an American. You can’t have thought it through before you spoke. Wow, what a thing!”
“All right, it was . . . irrelevant,” said Blume.
“And you’re not even apologizing. Amazing. What is relevant is for you to catch whoever killed Clemente.”
Blume felt his finger move and his brow furrow before he had a chance to stop himself, and Innocenzi caught the gestures.
“I see you’re surprised, I think I know why, too.”
“No. You’re over-interpreting,” said Blume.
“No. I am not. You are surprised I don’t already know who you are looking for. I know you have a theory of some sort that no one else does, but try as I might, I can’t get Paoloni or anyone else to give me the name of your suspect. It’s your thing, he says. Nothing to do with him. See? Paoloni is faithful as well as faithless. We humans are a mass of contradictions. Now, I’ll tell you what would be really fantastic, is for you to go and get this person who killed my daughter’s dog protector.”