Rosa slowly approached the bed. Valerie looked as if she was about to flinch, but she seemed to summon all her self-control and stayed where she was. Rosa turned and dropped onto the mattress beside her. There they sat, thigh to thigh, staring at the empty room.
“Do you know him?” asked Valerie after a while.
“No.”
“But it’s not the first time you’ve heard the name.”
“No.”
Val hesitated. “Okay,” she said quietly.
Rosa still wasn’t looking at her. “What are you going to do now?”
“No idea.” A shudder ran through Valerie’s body. Rosa could feel it in her leg. “Or maybe I do know…there’s still someone in New York.”
“Mattia,” Rosa whispered.
Valerie’s head swung around. There was surprise in her wide eyes. And a question. But she didn’t utter a sound.
“I met him,” said Rosa. “When I was in New York. Michele was trying to kill me, and Mattia helped me. He guessed that you’d show up here. He wanted me to tell you something—to say you could go to him anytime, whatever happened.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Then he doesn’t hate me? Because of Michele? And because I ran away?”
Rosa shook her head.
“He…he once told me he liked me.” Her voice was vibrating slightly, and it was a second or two before Rosa realized that what had upset Valerie’s self-composure was hope. More hope than she had felt for a long time.
“He’s dead,” said Rosa. “Michele’s men murdered him.”
Silence.
After a while, a whisper as quiet as a breath passed Valerie’s lips. “That’s not true. You’re just saying it to hurt me.”
“They burned him. Maybe he was dead already. Or maybe not.”
A high-pitched sob made its way out of Valerie’s throat. That was all. Just that one awful sound.
Rosa stood up and went to the door. “I’ll call a doctor for you. You can stay until tomorrow morning. Then you’re getting out of here.”
Val didn’t watch as Rosa left. She just sat perfectly still, like someone in a photograph, almost entirely black and white and two-dimensional.
Rosa walked out and closed the door. Sarcasmo ran over to her and sat down outside the room, asking to be praised. She scratched his throat, and then she went away.
Behind her, the dog started barking at the door again.
THE VIDEO
THE LIBRARY PROMISED SECURITY. The shelves along the walls rose fifteen feet high, to the ceiling. Thousands of yellowed books stood there, often in double rows, one behind the other, and even the last spare bit of space was full of volumes stacked horizontally. If you took one out, you often came upon patches of mold. Like all the rooms in the palazzo, this one suffered from the damp masonry.
But Rosa wasn’t interested in the books, only in the atmosphere that they created. The room made her feel like she could creep away to hide here, unobserved, undisturbed.
The paper blanked out all sounds. Nothing existed outside your own thoughts.
She sat in a creaking leather armchair with her knees drawn up. Curtains hid the tall windows; the fiery-red evening sky glowed through patches where the fabric had worn thin. An old-fashioned lamp with a fringed shade threw off mustard-colored light.
She crouched there with the cell phones that Trevini had sent her, one in each hand.
She switched on the right-hand phone. Someone had written the password on the edge in waterproof felt pen, in a neat girlish hand. Someone who knew how to crack these things. Probably Contessa di Santis.
On the display, an atomic mushroom cloud above a desert appeared. Valerie’s cell phone, no doubt about it. So Rosa would begin with the video of the party. She knew most of that one already, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Only a single video file had been stored. Trevini and the Contessa had prepared everything meticulously in advance.
So once again she watched the wobbly film of the party, saw herself put a glass down on a table and walk away, saw all the laughing people greeting one another, Alessandro among them. But this time the picture didn’t freeze on him. The camera panned around, zoomed at random through the crowd, to the sound of Valerie’s intoxicated giggles. Suddenly Rosa came back into the frame, glass in hand. Laughing, she said something to Valerie behind the camera, then drank half the contents of her glass. Put it down. Drank again. Swayed in time to the muted music coming from the overloaded loudspeaker.
The film suddenly stopped.
Rosa’s hand was shaking. She hadn’t noticed before, because the picture was so unsteady. Once again