“I’m tired, I want to get some sleep, so tell me what you want right away and then get the hell out from underfoot.”

“Sure, we’ll tell you right away, won’t we, Seba?”

Sebastiano got to his feet. Same height as Paoletto. He looked him calmly in the eye. “At that bank robbery in Cinecittà three years ago, with Pasquale . . . you were the other guy.”

“Me? What the hell have you got into your head?”

“Listen, that wasn’t a question, understood?” Sebastiano went on. “That’s a statement. Mao Tse-tung told us so.”

“Guan Zhen,” Brizio corrected him from the sofa. “He has a little shop on Via Conte Verde, property of the family of the late and lamented Pasquale, one of his longtime friends.”

“Guan? Never heard of him.”

“But he knows that it was you. You fired that gun and you killed that poor retiree.”

Paoletto touched his nose. “Brizio, let me tell you something. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, it’s past five in the morning, I’ve been working all day, and now I’m going to get some sleep. There are beers and even milk in the fridge, so take your choice: breakfast or a nightcap. When you leave, close the door behind you. I may have a shitty alarm, like Seba says, but I’d feel just a little bit safer if you shut the door when you leave.” And in order to give some credibility to his stated intentions, he took off his jacket and stood there in a white shirt. Under the cotton, the enormous muscles of the bouncer from Hysteria pulsed and twitched.

“We don’t give a fuck whether or not you killed someone. All we want to know about is the pistol that you used . . .”

“Here we go again!” said Paoletto, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

“Who’d you give the gun to?” Sebastiano insisted. “Your brother?”

“My brother?”

“That asshole Flavio? Did you give it to him?”

Paoletto leaned in, just inches from Sebastiano’s face. He wasn’t afraid of him. “What the fuck does my brother have to do with any of this? Flavio lives with Mamma, and she’s eighty-five years old.”

They looked like a couple of mountain goats about to lock horns. On the one side there were muscles and long hours in the gym, on the other stifled rage. Brizio did his best to keep them from reaching the point of no return. “Paolè, I told you, we don’t want you, we don’t want your brother, all we want is the gun that you used.”

The bouncer continued looking Sebastiano in the eyes. He ground his teeth. “If I told you I don’t know a fucking thing about it, it’s because I don’t know a fucking thing!”

“You know what your problem is?” Seba asked him calmly.