Dante's Numbers Read Online Free PDF Page B

fell, half ran out the door, out into a warm golden Roman evening.
    Maggie Flavier started to follow. Costa put out a hand to prevent her.
    “That was a mistake,” he said.
    He knew what happened when wild men flailed around with weapons in public, particularly in a protected, special place, full of officers determined to guard those in their care.
    From beyond the door of the tiny wooden cinema came voices, loud and furious, shouts and cries, bellowed orders, all the words he dreaded to hear since he knew what they might mean, because he'd been through this kind of tense, standoff situation in training, and knew how easily it could go wrong.
    “What's happening?” the American woman asked, and started to brush past him.
    “No!” Costa commanded, with more certainty than he'd used in many a long month.
    He stepped in front of her and stared into the woman's foreign yet familiar face.
    “You never walk towards the line of fire,” Costa said, his finger in front of her face, like a teacher determined to deliver a lesson that had to be learned. “Never…”
    He was shocked to see that, for the first time, there seemed to be a hint of real fear in her face, and to know that he was the cause, not the madman who had attacked them for no apparent reason.
    Outside, the shouting ended and the staccato sound of gunfire began.

T HEY HEARD IT FROM THE CASA DEL CINEMA. The volley of pistol shots sounded so loud and insistent it sent every grey, excitable pigeon in the park fleeing into the radiant evening sky.
    “Nic's there somewhere,” Peroni said instantly, alarmed.
    Falcone's and Teresa's eyes were on the podium. Peroni couldn't believe their attention was anywhere but the source of that awful, familiar sound.
    “It's the Carabinieri's job,” Falcone answered. “Nic can take care of himself.”
    “To hell with the Carabinieri! I'm—”
    Peroni fell silent. The dark blue uniforms of their rivals seemed to be everywhere. Officers were shouting, yelling into radios, looking panicked.
    On the podium Roberto Tonti, with a gaggle of puzzled, half-frightened politicians and minor actors around him, was droning on about the movie and its importance, about Dante and a poet's vision of Hell, all as if he'd never noticed a thing. The tall, stooped director looked every inch of his seventy years. His head of grey swept-back hair seemed the creation of a makeup department. His skin was bloodless and pale, his cheeks hollow, his entire demeanour gaunt. Peroni knew the rumours; that the man was desperately sick. Perhaps this explained Tonti's obsessive need to continue with the seemingly interminable speech as the commotion swirled around them.
    “…for nine is the angelic number,” Tonti droned on, echoing the words of the strange Carabiniere they'd met earlier. “This you shall see in the work, in its structure, in its division of the episodes of life. I give you…”
    The movie director tugged on the braided rope by the side of the curtain. The velvet opened.
    “… the creator. The source. The fountainhead.”
    The casket came into full view. Peroni blinked to make sure he wasn't dreaming. Someone in the crowd released a short, pained cry. The woman next to him, some half-familiar Roman model from the magazines, elegant in a silk gown and jewels, raised her gloved fingers to her lips, her mouth open, her eyes wide with shock.
    The Carabinieri became frantic. They didn't know where to look—towards the children's cinema and the sound of shooting, or at the platform, where Tonti was now walking stiffly away from the thing he had revealed, an expression of utter distaste on his cold, sallow face, as if he resented the obvious fact that it had somehow stolen his thunder.
    Falcone was pushing his way through the crowd, elbowing past black-suited men with pale faces and shrieking female guests.
    Teresa, predictably, was right on his heels.
    “Oh well,” Peroni grumbled, and followed right behind, forcing his big, bulky body