There was a ringing tone and a woman’s voice said,“Bianchi avvocatessa.”
“Gianna Bianchi, please. Tell her it’s Jack Morgan.”
I was connected almost immediately.
“Jack, what’s going on? The things they’re saying on the news—”
“They’re not true,” I interrupted Gianna. “Someone has done a great job of setting me up. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. My colleagues Seymour Kloppenberg, Maureen Roth and Justine Smith have just been arrested at Centro Commerciale Aura. Do whatever you can to get them released. They’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Of course,” Gianna said.
“And you should probably let the cops know one of their own is dead. Bernardo Baggio is hanging in his closet. I think it’s murder staged to look like suicide.”
“Why?” Gianna asked.
“He was on duty the night Matteo is supposed to have tried to kill himself.”
I could sense her putting the pieces together.
“I’ll inform the authorities,” she assured me. “What about you? Come in. We’ll challenge the accusations.”
“Not yet,” I replied. “I can’t risk what happened to Matteo and Baggio happening to me. I need to take care of a few things.”
She hesitated.
“I understand. But I have to advise you to turn yourself in.”
“You’ve done that. Now do whatever you can to get my friends out. I’ll be in touch.”
“Be careful,” she advised before I hung up.
I turned to Faduma.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
I nodded, my mind whirring, my body still charged with adrenaline.
“Just trying to figure out how we get inside an apartment that is probably under tight police surveillance.”
CHAPTER70
I TRIED TO encourage Faduma to leave me but she refused to listen, saying she would never bail on a story like this. I couldn’t help feeling there was more to it, that there was a sense of honor guiding her, compelling her not to abandon me. It was a sentiment I shared. I’d never abandoned a case.
She took me to a tiny basement bar in Poggio del Torrino, a neighborhood that lay between the center of Rome and Ostia, and we passed the evening there with a handful of heavy drinkers who spent enough on alcohol to keep the place going. The bar was called Il Tucano and was set beneath a modern apartment block. It was the kind of watering hole where people drank alone and purposefully, determined to achieve oblivion. While I’d hesitate to label strangers alcoholics or problem drinkers, these folk certainly weren’t fair-weather.
Faduma and I sat in a booth in a back corner of the bar,nursing a steady stream of Cokes, coffees and water to ensure the taciturn old barman, who looked as though he’d soaked up many lifetimes of misery, didn’t kick us out.
No one paid us any mind and for a while I was able to forget I was a wanted man whose face had been beamed across the airwaves and the Internet.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said to Faduma.
“You keep telling me that, and I keep telling you I want to be here.”
“You’re risking so much,” I responded.
“And you?” she asked. “Why do you have to be here?”
I hesitated.
