EQMM 2012-12 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Peroni didn’t approve of exercise. So gyms didn’t impress him much. The one the Spallones owned was called the Palestra Cassius and occupied the first floor of a vast palazzo in the Via dei Pellegrini, the old pilgrims’ street from the city to the bridge to the Vatican. The name intrigued him until he saw plastered behind reception a black-and-white picture of the man most people knew as Muhammad Ali, not Cassius Clay. There was a debt to history being paid here, but it wasn’t a Roman one.

The place smelled of aromatic oils and sweat. There was a blank-looking girl with a ponytail behind a computer, rows and rows of unused exercise machines, and close to the small windows at the back, a boxing ring. A sign leading off to the right said SAUNA.

“Exercise I can do without,” Peroni told the kid behind the desk when he walked in. “But sitting around sweating doing nothing … that I can manage. Is it good?”

She gave him a leaflet. It boasted of the biggest, most traditional Finnish sauna in Rome. She had her name embroidered on her T-shirt: Letizia. Someone, Spallone’s wife, he guessed, liked to tag the things they owned.

“I could break into a good sweat looking at the prices,” he said.

“We’ve got great introductory discounts,” she piped up. The girl looked around at the lines of empty machines. “And discounts after that if you ask nicely.”

“I always ask nicely. How many people work here? Trainers, fitness people, and the like?”

“Ten, fifteen guys. Plus me. We’re good.”

“I’m sure you are,” Peroni said, showing her the police ID. “But I’d really like to see Signora Spallone now if you don’t mind.”

The woman was in her office with ten or so of her men. Every one of them was big and fit, under thirty, he guessed. Names embroidered on their shirts. Mostly foreign, from the way they spoke and muttered as he showed his ID. More than half of them blond, Nordic. Like Eva Spallone herself, he now saw.

She ushered them out and gave him a hard stare, the one civilians used when they thought the police were paying them too much attention.

“You’re not Italian,” he said.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not at all. It’s just that I always try to place people. It’s a game.”

Eva Spallone looked no more than thirty-five. She had short blond hair, the face of an angel, bright blue eyes, and the curvy, almost carved kind of figure Peroni normally saw in the magazines, not real life. She didn’t look as if she’d been crying recently.

“Finnish,” he said.

“You guess well.”

“Not really.” He pointed to the books and trinkets behind her desk. “You’ve got that blue-and-white flag there. The sauna makes a thing about being Finnish and not many do that. Two and two tend to make four. Usually, anyway.”

On the desk stood a picture of her with a man he took to be the living Giorgio Spallone. She was in a wedding dress, he in a suit. The Colosseum was in the background.

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