The Gladiator

Ten

The chief janitor of the apartment building was a large, impressive man named Marcantonio Moretti. He scratched his bushy, Stalin-style mustache as he nodded to A

"And it's so smooth! Just like a dream!" A

"Grazie" Comrade Moretti said, as if he'd done the work himself. He hadn't, of course. He didn't do much work of any sort. He was the chief janitor because his brother-in-law was a medium-important official in Milan 's Bureau of City Maintenance. Under Communism, capitalism, or any old kind of ism at all, whom you knew mattered at least as much as what you could actually do.

"Who were the repairmen who did the job? They ought to get commendations for the Stakhanovite work they did," A

"Well, I don't exactly remember," Moretti said instead of saying he had no idea, though that had to be just as true.

"I'd really like to find out," A

Comrade Moretti scratched his mustache again. Had Gian-franco said something like that, the chief janitor would have run him out of his office. A

"Hey, Ernesto!" Moretti yelled.

"What's up?" Ernesto Albosta called from the back room. A moment later, the assistant janitor came out. He wasn't impressive. He was short and ski

"Who were the guys who did the elevator?" Moretti asked.

"I don't know where the devil they found 'em," Albosta answered. "They're not even a Milanese outfit. The fix was in somewhere-you can bet on that."

"So where are they from, then? Bergamo? Como? Pia-cenza?" Moretli named three cities not far away.

But Ernesto Albosta shook his head each time. "Farther off than that. I think Rimini. Yeah, that's right-they're called By the Arch Repairs, from the Roman one in the middle of town there." He spread his hands. "How's an outfit from over by the Adriatic supposed to get work here? Somebody knows where the bodies are buried, all right."

"Sounds like it," Morelti agreed. "Now I'm going to wonder if we've got to worry about the elevator dying on us in two weeks. If it does, I guarantee you we'll never see those worthless bums again."

"Got that right," /Ubosta said, and slouched away scratching himself.

Marcantonio Moretti nodded to A

"Yes. Thank you." A

Now she knew-but she wondered what she knew. She couldn't remember whether the repair truck had plates from Italy or San Marino. In detective stories, people always noticed stuff like that. She'd paid no attention, though.

Still, there was a fair chance those had been Eduardo's friends looking for him. They hadn't found him. Were they still in Milan, checking other places where he might be? Or had they given up and gone away? She couldn't begin to guess.

Neither could Eduardo when she told him what she'd learned. "That's… too bad," he said. She got the idea he'd clamped down on something stronger. He sighed. "I have to go to San Marino, then, and hope they're not watching the border."

"My family and the Mazzillis are going to Rimini on vacation in a couple of weeks," A

"Is Rimini here full of Germans and Scandinavians trying to get sunburn and skin cancer on the beach?" Eduardo asked.

"Si. Some of them hardly wear any clothes at all." A

"Nothing wrong with looking. When you do more than look, that's when life gets complicated," Eduardo said. "Maybe you and Gianfranco can come up to San Marino with me. What could look more i

What could give me better cover? he meant. A

Italy slowed to a crawl in August. It didn't get as hot in Milan as it did farther south, but it was muggier here. Everybody who was anybody got out of town for a while. Doing business often took time-Gianfranco thought about the elevator in his building. Trying to do business in August was a fool's errand.

"It will be good to get to the beach," his father said as they packed for vacation.

"If we can get to the beach," his mother said darkly. "All those foreigners there in as little as the law allows…"

"Well, we've got the hotel reservations. The place is only a couple of blocks from the sand," his father said. "It's where we stayed last year. You liked it then, Bella."

"I wasn't talking about the hotel," Gianfranco's mother said.

Gianfranco kept his mouth shut. Anything he said in a discussion like this could and would be used against him. If the swim trunks he packed were his skimpiest pair, then they were, that was all. He didn't have to mention it.

"Have a good trip," Ernesto Albosta said as Gianfranco's family and the Crosettis brought their bags down to the lobby. The elevator made that much easier. Albosta sounded mournful, and no wonder. He was stuck in town in August. Marcanto-nio Moretti, by contrast, was on holiday somewhere a little north of Rome.

The Crosettis drove a little Fiat. Their bags barely fit into the trunk. They and Cousin Silvio barely fit into the car. Gian-franco's father had a Mercedes. Gianfranco had always taken that for granted. His father had waited a long time to get the car. Nobody, not even a Communist Party official, could avoid that. But when he got it, he got the best.

On the autostrada, the Mercedes soon left the Fiat behind. The highway ran east and a little south, past towns and farms that had been there since time out of mind. Whizzing past those brick buildings in the countryside, Gianfranco wondered how much history they'd seen. A century and a half earlier, Germans and Americans would have fought over them. A century and a half before that, they might have watched Napoleon's army march past. Before that… Well, how old were they? He had no idea.

When he asked his father, he got a shrug for an answer. "A

"If you want to be practical, keep your eyes on the road," his mother said.

"Haven't hit anything yet, have I?"

"Sometimes I think you're trying to."

When they started going on like that, Gianfranco stopped listening. He'd heard it too many times before. They rolled along the autostrada, and then stopped rolling and started crawling. Gianfranco's father said several things that made his mother cluck. "It doesn't count if you're in the car," his father said defensively.

"Oh? Since when?" His mother didn't believe a word of it.

"It's an old rule I just made up," his father said. His mother snorted.