question were idiotic. “Doesn’t everyone? I want—”
Perhaps it was an actor’s talent, but somehow Costa knew she was about to do something.
“To hell with everyone,” Maggie Flavier declared, and tugged on whatever she held in her fingers.
It was film. Costa could hear noises coming from the projection room, frames of movie rattling, jamming, trapped and tangled inside the machine that gave them life. The showing of Bambi had somehow frozen on a single frame. She must have done that. She had to be in control.
Maggie Flavier yanked hard on the snaking trail of celluloid and something snapped, came free.
The Carabiniere stared at her, curious, angry, uncertain what to do next.
Bright, piercing white light, as brilliant as a painter’s vision of Heaven, spilled into the room as the film fell free in the projector gate.
The boy in the uniformed man’s arms squirmed and shrieked. The Carabiniere swore, a foul English curse, and tried to shield his eyes. Costa, careful to keep his eyes from the projector’s beam, struck a heavy, hard blow into the man’s stomach, unable, he knew, to reach the weapon, yet intent, still, on getting the child free. He punched again. There was a cry of pain and fury. His left hand closed on the child’s back, his right struggled to pull the hostage free.
Then something else intervened. A large silver circular shape flashed across his vision and dashed against the Carabiniere’s head. Maggie Flavier had a film can and she was using it, along with some pretty colorful language, too.
The weapon turned toward Costa’s chest. The barrel barked, the black shape jumped in the man’s hand.
The woman struck again, hard, with such force the firearm fell back, still in their attacker’s grip. The boy wriggled free and fled the moment his small feet touched the floor. Costa closed in, seized the man’s forearm, forced it back hard, sending the weapon upwards into one of the hot overhead lights in the low wooden ceiling.
There was another scream. Pain. Heat on skin. The handgun tumbled to the floor. The Carabiniere turned and stumbled out of Costa’s grip, was free again, was scrabbling, half crouching, towards the gun, too close to it for anyone to intervene.
“Run!” Costa ordered, unable to understand why he was still standing, why he could feel no pain.
She didn’t move.
“No. Are you hurt?”
“Run!”
“I don’t need to. Can’t you see?”
He could, and he didn’t understand how he knew she was correct, but she was. The individual in the Carabinieri uniform, now stained with dirt and dust from the floor of the Cinema dei Piccoli, wouldn’t come back to them. It was written in his defeated, puzzled, enraged face. As if his part was over.
“Drop your weapon,” Costa barked. “Drop your weapon now.”
It was useless. The man retrieved the gun, then laughed and half 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.
5
THEY 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