Middleton spun around. “I’m warning you. Do not try to stop me. If you do—”

“No, no, I only mean. . . . Here.” He stepped forward and handed the American his passport. Then he touched Middleton’s arm. “Please. I want this man too. He killed three of my citizens. I want him badly. Remember that.”

He believed the inspector said something else but by then Middleton was jogging hard down the endless hall, as gray as the offices, as gray as the sky, digging into his pocket for his cell phone.

2 - DAVID HEWSON

2

DAVID HEWSON

Felicia Kaminski first noticed the tramp outside the Pantheon when she was playing gypsy folk tunes, old Roman favorites, anything that could put a few coins in the battered gray violin case she had inherited from her mother, along with the century-old, sweet-toned Italian instrument that lived inside. The man listened for more than 10 minutes, watching her all the time. Then he walked up close, so close she could smell the cloud of sweat and humanity that hung around people of the street, not that they ever seemed to notice.

“I wanna hear ‘Volarè,’” he grumbled in English, his voice rough and carrying an accent she couldn’t quite place. He held a crumpled and dirt-stained 10-euro note. He was perhaps 35, though it was difficult to be precise. He stood at least six feet tall, muscular, almost athletic, though the thought seemed ridiculous.

“‘Volarè’ is a song, sir, not a piece of violin music,” she responded, with more teenage ungraciousness than was, perhaps, wise.

His face, as much as she could see behind the black unkempt beard, seemed sharp and observant. More so, it occurred to her, than most street people who were either elderly Italians thrown out of their homes by harsh times, or foreign clandestini, Iraqis, Africans and all manner of nationalities from the Balkans, each keeping their own counsel, each trying to pursue their own particular course through the dark, half-secret hidden economy for those trying to survive without papers.