WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 5 P.M.

BLUME MADE ONE more attempt to contact Paoloni, and this time the phone was answered.

“I’ve been avoiding you,” said Paoloni. “But I’ve been doing some thinking, too. We need to talk.”

“I know,” said Blume. “But let’s put it off until tomorrow morning. I’ll call, you answer this time.”

“OK, but call as soon as you can. I want to get this over with.”

Blume thought he’d give Kristin a surprise and wait outside the embassy on Via Veneto for her. It took all of three minutes of standing outside the gates of the embassy with the dog before a car with three men inside pulled up and he was asked what he thought he was doing. Blume showed some identification, which they passed among them, looking at it carefully. One of them keyed the details into an onboard computer. Blume waited to be validated, and explained he had a girlfriend who worked in the embassy.

The man in the backseat said something, and the driver looked at Blume. “You’re an American,” he said in English.

“Yes,” said Blume. “Originally.”

“But you’re an Italian police commissioner, too. How does that work?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I bet. What’s your girlfriend’s name, by the way?”

“Kristin Holmquist.”

“Kristin? I know Kristin.” He gave him a big smile, and suggested he wait for her across the road at the Palace.

“Too plush for me,” said Blume. “But I’ll get out of your way.”

“Spoken like a real colleague. Nice dog, by the way.”

In the end, he called Kristin, told her to meet him at a place he knew on Via Crispi. A small bar five minutes away that didn’t mind his dog and charged the same for sitting as for standing.

“Alec! What a beautiful dog!” said Kristin as she walked up half an hour later. “That’s a Cane Corso, isn’t it? The Romans used them in battle. Did you know that? Who are you keeping it for? What are we doing here?”

“Change of plans. You like this dog?”

“I love him! He’s not mature yet, is he? What’s his name? I hope it’s something totally Roman, like Pertinax, or Pugnax or—I can’t think of any more, Domitian, Nerva, Aureliano.” She sat down and crossed her legs.

“Those are all good names,” said Blume. “Choose one.”

“You mean he hasn’t got a name yet?”

“No, no name. Perhaps you might give him one?”

“What do you mean?” said Kristin.

“I mean, you can have him. As a gift. You said you liked dogs.”

Kristin slowly closed her eyes, then opened them and seemed disappointed to see him still sitting there. “I don’t believe you just said that.”

“It was a joke,” said Blume. “I was just kidding. Hey, c’mon, really. Would I try to hand a dog off on you like that?”

“It was a joke?”

“Sure it was.”

“So what are you really going to do with the dog?”

Blume thought, blinked a few times, then said, “I had not really gotten around to—”

She interrupted him. “You weren’t joking at all, were you? You really thought I’d take the dog just like that.”

“Half-joking wholly in earnest. No, not even that. I mean, if you had said yes, that would have been cool . . . no, it wouldn’t have. OK, let me tell you about how I found him,” said Blume.

“I am not interested in that right now.” Kristin was standing glaring down at him, her face too bright in the sunlight for him to see, her hair a fiery red. “You just thought you could dump an unwanted dog on me like that. Like I have nothing better to do? By the way, apart from the fact you already know I’m going to the States in a few days, how often do you think I have to travel there?”

“I don’t know,” said Blume, who had not been there in ten years. “Three times a year? Four?”

“I go back once a month. Just how in the hell did you think I was going to deal with having a dog . . . I don’t even know where to start with this. You hate dogs. Right?”

“Well . . . Hate is a bit extreme.”

“You hate them. It was practically the first thing you said to me. So now you are trying to offload something that is hateful to you on me.”

Blume wished he understood his own psychology better.

“A dog is a living being, a responsibility, a thing you give in love, a sign of a long-term commitment. I was not even so sure about inviting you to dinner. I thought maybe it was too . . . domestic. That it might signal too much. Then you do something like this.”

What he saw as a miscalculation of timing and tone was turning out to be a big mistake, one of those blunders he made that told women things about him that he didn’t even know about himself. Blume had been here before, only with a different girl and no dog.

“Maybe you’d like to hear how I got this dog?” he tried.

No, it turned out she did not. Few things could interest her less. She brought up the subject of his parents’ mummifying study, his immobility, his depressing home and whole attitude. “I think we’re going to have to press the reset button, Alec. Keep it strictly professional.”

Then she walked away, leaving Blume blinking blindly in the sudden sunlight.