A Name in Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

her effrontery crushed and quailing. Onorio’s features went dead, like
a painting in which the artist forgot to dab a spot of light on the eyeball.
    Mario took the whore’s elbow. She flicked the tips of her fingers off her chin in Onorio’s direction. Mario squeezed her backside and took her into the alley, laughing.
    Onorio lifted his head, swivelled and sneezed. He brushed a trace of mucus off Caravaggio’s shoulder. ‘Never mind. You already have the same diseases I have.’
    Caravaggio gestured after Mario and the whore. ‘I hope I don’t have whatever she’s carrying.’
    ‘You will. Soon enough.’ Onorio wiped his nose on his cuff.
    ‘Mario and me? Not since he married.’
    ‘He has two wives. One cancels out the other, thus making him single and available.’
    ‘I hope that isn’t the kind of mathematics you use when you design your buildings.’
    ‘Don’t worry. My job is to make the façades look good. I rely on the stonemasons to keep them from falling down.’
    Along the Corso, the Arch of Portugal glimmered in the torchlight. It marked the southern edge of the Evil Garden, where the whores lived by order of the Pope and where artists came to be among
their own low type. Caravaggio halted beneath its pillars. He felt some force preventing him from crossing that border, as though he were unworthy of walking among the decent classes, away from the
harlots and pimps and slumlords. Anyone who saw him outside the purlieu of the Evil Garden would shrink from him as if a wild beast had come down from the hills.
    ‘What’re you going to do about Ranuccio?’ Like a villain, Onorio measured his pitch to reach no further than his conspirator’s ears. ‘The money – the
bet.’
    Some shred of recollection told Caravaggio that Ranuccio had cheated. Or had he created that memory, moulding it from his rage? ‘It was a bad call. The ball was in. He didn’t beat
me. The game’s void. I’m not giving a single, dirty baioccho to that bastard.’ His adrenaline pounded, that familiar sensation of abandon, always accompanied by an absolute
conviction that he was right, no matter how his anger shocked those around him.
    Onorio held Caravaggio’s hand. ‘Ranuccio’s family is tight with the Pope, Michele.’ The pulse in Onorio’s thumb was syncopated and uneven against Caravaggio’s
palm. Nothing about him was regular or natural. ‘His brothers fought in the papal armies. His father’s head of the guard at Castel Sant’Angelo. You hear me? The Pope’s own
fortress. They keep order for the Holy Father in this neighbourhood.’
    ‘Doing a great job, aren’t they? You can’t walk down the street without some thug taking a swipe at you.’
    ‘The Pope doesn’t care about crime. He cares about riots against the government. The Tomassoni family prevents such trouble. So what if Ranuccio plays the tough guy. So what if he
cuts up his whores. When the Pope wants a sword to fight his corner, Ranuccio will lift his blade and say, “Hail, Holy Father, those who’re about to stab someone in the back salute
you.” If the Tomassonis run this quarter like a bunch of gangsters, that isn’t the Vatican’s problem.’ Onorio leaned in close. ‘But if you don’t stay on
Ranuccio’s good side, it’s your problem.’
    Caravaggio withdrew his hand. ‘I can handle him.’
    ‘It isn’t just him . It’s his brothers and his father and everyone in this neighbourhood who ever got a job from them or who ever asked them to take an enemy into a dark
alley and leave him there with his guts around his ankles.’
    Caravaggio moaned and puffed out his cheeks.
    ‘People say I’m crazy, Michele, and I admit there are times when everything goes red, you know what I mean.’ Onorio leered. ‘But you’re taking a big risk.
You’re my friend. I can’t let you do it.’
    ‘Be there with me when I fight him.’
    Onorio stepped back. Caravaggio’s neck shivered, trepidation and passion and wild