Colomba turned off the engine. Dante crammed the Mickey Mouse baseball cap he'd bought down on his head and stuck his bad hand into his pocket.

"Are you sure you're going to be able to go in?" asked Colomba.

Dante stopped with his good hand on the car door. "I've been bracing myself spiritually for the past two hours. And just look, it's got plenty of windows." But his tone of voice wasn't relaxed.

"You go in on your own. I'll keep a low profile out here-the last thing we need is for someone to recognize me. If you start having problems, get outside quick and we'll try again some other time."

Dante nodded sadly. "All right," he said and then stepped out of the car and slowly headed over to the building, breathing calmly and pretending it was nothing but a fake facade that opened onto an open space, like on a Hollywood film set. Come on, he told himself, you've been through a basement. You've been down an elevator shaft. After those things, this ought to be a breeze. But he couldn't talk himself into it; he felt weighed down and fragile. When he reached the steps, he stopped and lit a cigarette.

Colomba watched Dante's movements with her heart in her mouth. Seeing him walk very slowly down the middle of the street made her fear for his safety. She practically expected to see the Father jump out from behind a wall at any moment and take him away for good. But that of course didn't happen. Dante finished the cigarette and then dodged into the club.

Colomba waited patiently for a few minutes, then less patiently for two more. From where she was, she couldn't see the inside of the room. If Dante was in trouble or if someone had called 911, the only way she'd know would be when the flashing lights appeared in the distance. Getting out and taking a look, on the other hand, would expose her to the risk of being recognized. The two alternatives battled it out in her head until she impulsively threw the car door open and strode, head down, to the club's plate-glass window.

She shielded her eyes with both hands and peered in. It was an unpretentious place, decorated in a maritime theme with fake fish and netting hanging on the walls, with the inevitable photographs of second-rank VIPs. A dozen or so people were scattered around the room playing cards or checkers, and not one was under sixty. Tilting her head, Colomba finally spotted Dante, seated at a card table talking with a wiry old man with a woolen cap on his head and glasses that clumsily concealed his hearing aid. Colomba guessed that the old man was Dante's birth father and wondered why Dante was staying inside with him instead of bringing him out immediately and introducing her.

Behind Dante's shoulders, a card player looked up and waved hello when he saw her peering through the glass. Colomba moved away immediately, leaning against a pole on the patio. Beyond the railing, the waters of the Po ran swirling. The river looked treacherous, full of whirlpools and hidden currents, capable of sucking you under and never spitting you out again. Just like the mess we've wound up in, she thought bitterly. A pickup truck stopped right in front of her, blocking her view of the river. An enormous old man got out; Colomba guessed he must weigh about four hundred fifty pounds. He was dragging himself on two canes, moving slowly. Colomba lowered her head to keep him from seeing her face, but she thought she'd detected a glint of interest in the fat man's porcine eyes, and instead of climbing the stairs he made his laborious way over to her.

He squared off in front of her, leaning his whole weight on his canes, which looked as if they were about to snap. From up close, he looked even bigger, his nose disfigured by a purplish birthmark. "Haven't I seen your face somewhere before?" he asked in a rheumy baritone.

Colomba forced herself to smile. "No. I doubt it. I'm not from here."

"I didn't say you were from here, I just said I'd seen your face before."

This time Colomba looked him hard in the eyes. "Could you leave me alone, please?"

The man seemed unfazed. Instead he smiled fiercely and stuck a forefinger in her face the size of a salami. "You're the policewoman!" he exclaimed. "The one from the bombing. They ran your picture on TV."

"You're wrong."

"I'm never wrong. What are you doing here?"

Colomba considered punching him and taking to her heels. But Dante was still inside, and she couldn't leave him here. She decided to do the only thing possible: she dodged around the fat man and hurried into the club.

Dante spotted her and immediately leapt to his feet. "What's happening?" he asked.

"Some guy recognized me. We've got to get out of here right away." Then she leaned closer to the old man, who was staring at her, wide-eyed. "I'm very sorry. Dante will get in touch with you later. Please don't tell anyone we were here."

The old man stared at her in astonishment. "I don't understand," he stammered.

Colomba dragged Dante toward the door. "You should have just brought him outside first thing."

"But why? He's not my father."

"So who is?"

They'd reached the door, but clearly the fat man could move fast when he needed to, because he was there on the threshold, monumentally blocking the way. He aimed one of his canes at Colomba's face. "Madame, you're quite rude!" he roared. "I wasn't done talking to you!"

Colomba got ready to knock him to the ground with a shoulder butt, but Dante, guessing her intentions, reached his bad hand out to restrain her. "He is," he said, pointing at the man filling the door. "But I see you two have already met."

15.

Dante's birth father was named Annibale Valle, he was seventy years old, and he had emphysema and a bum heart. He got into his pickup, and Dante and Colomba followed him in Santiago's car, keeping an eye peeled in case anyone was following them. Apparently no one was; traffic was light, and they would have noticed.

During the drive, Colomba tried to recover from her shock. She hadn't expected Valle to look like his son, but she hadn't expected an ogre three times Dante's size either. The only thing they had in common was the color of their eyes and the conviction that they knew more than anyone else about everything.

Valle took them through Cremona until they reached a small single-family house in the Boschetto quarter, on a street with twenty other identical houses that could be told apart only by the color of their garage doors. The small enclosed garden boasted magnificent cyclamen bushes and numerous garden gnomes. Colomba pulled the car into the garage and covered it with a tarp. Valle parked behind them.

Valle asked the two of them to give him a couple of minutes to talk to the lady of the house; then they were welcomed by a woman in her sixties with dyed hair, bedecked with bracelets and dainty necklaces. She ushered them into a living room that was furnished like a Swiss chalet in a TV commercial. Over the fireplace with a gas log was an oil painting of her, a few years younger, standing next to a man dressed as a hunter. Wanda immediately hugged Dante, who had prudently stayed close to the window, concealing his discomfort at being in that strange place. He sensed it was a friendly place, though, and that had made it possible for him to enter; still, his thermometer was rising.

"Here he is, Annibale's son," said the woman in an accent and dialect so thick that Colomba barely understood a thing. "Let me take a look at you."

"Pleased to meet you, signora," Dante replied, embarrassed and stiff.

"You don't have to be formal with me. You can't imagine how I've been longing to meet you." Then she caressed his face, which Dante accepted, tilting his head to one side like a cat being petted. It occurred to Colomba that Dante hadn't had a lot of petting in his lifetime.

"Signora . . ." Colomba began.

The woman turned to look at her. Her eyeshadow was the same light blue as her pendant earrings. "Call me Wanda."

"Wanda, did Signor Valle explain the situation to you?"

"Yes. That I can't tell anyone that you're here."

"We'll try to be out of here as quick as we can," Colomba went on. "But you ought to be aware that, if they find us, you'll be in serious trouble for having helped us."

"But you haven't done anything, have you?" asked Wanda.

"No. We haven't done anything wrong. But that doesn't change the way things stand. You'll be the accomplice of a woman on the run, facing a murder charge."

A forced smile appeared on Wanda's face. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"No. I just wanted you to know the risks you're facing."

Wanda turned to look at Valle, who was slumped in an armchair with a glass of whisky in his hand. "Annibale vouches for you."

"Only for my son!" he muttered. "I've never met the policewoman. But for the moment it seems impossible to separate them."

Wanda sighed. "Then I'll just have to take them both."

"Thank you, Wanda," said Colomba, sincerely appreciative. In the not-too-distant past, she'd have merely considered the woman a criminal for sheltering fugitives from the law.

"I'll show you where the bathroom is, so you can get freshened up if you like."

Colomba was the first in, and she stayed in the shower until her fingertips were thoroughly pruned up, with a shower cap on her head to protect her newly dyed hair. Wanda had given her fresh underwear and a T-shirt that fit her nicely, and when she walked out of the bathroom she felt almost human.

She found Dante in the living room with his father, with a discontented look on his face. It didn't take a sleuthing genius to deduce that the two of them had fought; maybe that was why Wanda had retreated to the kitchen.

"Did you leave me any hot water?" asked Dante.

"Sure, go right ahead."

He slipped away, moving as if every corner of the house might conceal some unwelcome surprise. Colomba and Valle sat staring at each other in silence for several seconds.

"Are you the one who put those things into his head?" Valle asked suddenly, from the armchair he was sprawled out in.

"What things?"

"That he needs to hunt down the one who kidnapped him. That he needs to turn into a vigilante."

Colomba pulled up a chair, placed it across from Valle's armchair, and sat down with the back rest in front. "He doesn't need to turn into a vigilante; I'm just asking him to help me keep children from being harmed. As for which of us talked the other one into this, I don't even know anymore. It was a team effort."

"If Dante just reported you to the police, all his problems would go away," said Valle.

"Have you tried to talk him into doing that?"

"What do you think?"

"I think that Dante might not have any more problems with the police if he did listen to you. But that only takes care of his problems with the police."

"And who else would he have problems with?"

Colomba narrowed her eyes, which now glittered cobalt green. "You know exactly who."

Valle took a gulp of whisky. "Are you two sleeping together?"

Colomba felt herself blushing, and her irritation sharpened. "It wouldn't be any of your business if we were."

"So that's a yes."

"So that's a you can mind your own business."

"He's my son. This is my business."

"He's old enough to take care of himself."

"Really?" Valle snorted. "I bet you're the only person on Earth who thinks that. And what you're doing is only going to make his condition worse. That is, if he doesn't wind up going to prison with you."

Colomba studied the man, but the expression on his fat face was inscrutable. He looked like a large mangy cat or a ragtag Buddha. "Do you truly not care that whoever tortured your son is still out there, at large, and free?"

"Even if that were true . . ."

"It is true," said Colomba tersely.

"I don't think that hunting for him is the best thing for my son. Maybe he should just try to forget and go far away. And you could go with him."

"From the way you're saying it, it sounds more like a suggestion than a theory."

Valle drained his glass and poured himself more liquor from a bottle he picked up off a glass side table. "I'm a rich man, Signora Caselli. The money I was paid by the Italian state-what I didn't give to my son, anyway-I invested very well, when that was still possible, and I've been lucky. I'm willing to offer you everything I have, except for a small sum I'll need to live on for the few years still left to me. Buy yourselves tickets for wherever you want to go, buy yourselves a fucking island for all I care. You're a policewoman, you can surely figure out a way to leave the country."

"Is that what you want for your son? To spend the rest of his life on the run?"

Valle drained the second glass as well. He poured himself a third. "I wept over his death for a long, long time. I don't want to do it again."

"Right now there are other parents weeping over children they think are dead."

"They're not my children. They don't matter to me."

"I'm guessing you made the same proposal to him. What did he say to you?"

"He told me to go hang myself. And you know what I said to him? That I'd do it if I thought it would give him a happy life."

"And I'd suggest the same thing. Only I doubt there's a rope thick enough to hold you."

Unexpectedly, Valle burst into laughter that soon turned into a racking cough. "Think it over," he said as soon as he'd recovered, mopping his face with a handkerchief. "By the time they arrest you, it'll be too late for you to accept."

Wanda emerged from the kitchen. "Annibale told me that Dante doesn't eat meat. But you do, don't you, Colomba?"

Colomba stood up. "I'm sorry, but we don't have time to stay. We have to see a person, and the sooner we do it the better. Do you have Internet access or a city map? I just need to get my bearings."

"I have a map, anyway," Wanda replied. "I'll go get it for you."

Just then Dante emerged from the bathroom. He was barefoot, and he was wearing a clean T-shirt with the logo of a local hunting club; it hung on him like a circus tent.

"Get dressed, we have to go," said Colomba.

"So I imagined." He looked at his father, who sat motionless with his chin on his chest. "We need your pickup truck," he told him.

"Well, what if I refuse to give it to you? Would you take the keys from me by force?"

"Pap . . ."

Valle tossed him the keys, then turned to Wanda. "Give him your cell phone."

"I couldn't possibly . . ." Dante replied.

"Oh, yes, you could. Wanda never uses it, and I've certainly never called her on that phone. If they're tapping it, it means the cops have suddenly turned into geniuses. And I don't believe that's happened."

Colomba nodded, and Dante put the cell phone into his pocket.

"This thing's going to end badly, Dante," Valle said again.