She knew nothing of the victim

DURING THE day, they watched the front of the Palazzo Capponi from the high

shuttered window of an apartment across the street Romula, and an older Gypsy

woman who helped with the baby and may have been Romula's cousin, and Pazzi,

who stole as much time as possible from his office.

The wooden arm that Romula used in her trade waited on a chair in the bedroom.

Pazzi had obtained the daytime use of the apartment from a teacher at the

nearby Dante Alighieri School. Romula insisted on a shelf for herself and the

baby in the small refrigerator.

They did not have to wait long.

At 9:30 A.M. on the second day, Romula's helper hissed from the window seat. A

black void appeared across the street as one of the massive palazzo doors

swung inward.

There he was, the man known in Florence as Dr Fell, small and slender in his

dark clothing, sleek as a mink as he tested the air on the stoop and regarded

the street in both directions. He clicked a remote control to set the alarms

and pulled the door shut with its great wrought - iron handle, pitted with

rust and impossible to print. He carried a shopping bag.

Seeing Dr Fell for the first time through the crack in the shutters, the older

Gypsy gripped Romula's hand as though to stop her, looked Romula in the face

and gave her head a quick sharp shake while the policeman was not looking.

Pazzi knew at once where he was going.

In Dr Fells garbage, Pazzi had seen the distinctive wrapping papers from the

fine food store, Vera dal 1926, on the Via San Jacopo near the Santa Trinita

Bridge. The doctor headed in that direction now as Romula shrugged into her

costume and Pazzi watched out the window.

"Dunque, it's groceries," Pazzi said. He could not help repeating Romula's

instructions for the fifth time. "Follow along, Romula. Wait this side of the

Ponte Vecchio. You'll catch him coming back, carrying the full bag in his

hand. I'll be half a block ahead of him, you'll see me first. I'll stay close

by. If there's a problem, if you get arrested, I'll take care of it. If he

goes someplace else, come back to the apartment. I'll call you. Put this pass

in a taxi windshield and come to me."

"Eminenza," Romula said, elevating the honorifics in the Italian ironic style,

"if there is a problem and someone else helps me, don't hurt him, my friend

won't take anything, let him run."

Pazzi did not wait for the elevator, he raced down the stairs in a greasy

boilersuit, wearing a cap. It is hard to tail somebody in Florence because the

sidewalks are narrow and your life is worth nothing in the street. Pazzi had a

battered motorino at the curb with a bundle of a dozen brooms tied to it. The

scooter started on the first kick and in a puff of blue smoke the chief

investigator started down the cobbles, the little motorbike bouncing over the

cobbles like a small burro trotting beneath him.

Pazzi dawdled, was honked at by the ferocious traffic, bought cigarettes,

killed time to stay behind, until he was sure where Dr Fell was going. At the

end of the Via de' Bardi, the Borgo San Jacopo was one-way coming toward him.

Pazzi abandoned the bike on the sidewalk and followed on foot, turning his

flat body sideways to slide through the crowd of tourists at the south end of

the Ponte Vecchio.

Florentines say Vera dal 1926, with its wealth of cheeses and truffles, smells

like the feet of God.

The doctor certainly took his time in there. He was making a selection from

the first white truffles of the season. Pazzi could see his back through the

windows, past the marvelous display of hams and pastas.

Pazzi went around the corner and came back, he washed his face in the fountain

spewing water from its own mustachioed, lion-eared face. "You'd have to shave

that to work for me," he said to the fountain over the cold ball of his

stomach.

The doctor coming out now, a few light parcels in his bag. He started back

down the Borgo San Jacopo toward home. Pazzi moved ahead on the other side of

the street. The crowds on the narrow sidewalk forced Pazzi into the street,

and the mirror of a passing Carabinieri patrol car banged painfully against

his wristwatch. "Stronzo! Analfabeta!" the driver yelled out the window, and

Pazzi vowed revenge. By the time he reached the Ponte Vecchio he had a fortymeter lead.

Romula was in a doorway, the baby cradled in her wooden arm, her other hand

extended to the crowds, her free arm ready beneath her loose clothing to lift

another wallet to add to the more than two hundred she had taken in her

lifetime. On her concealed arm was the wide and well-polished silver bracelet.

In a moment the victim would pass through the throng coming off the old

bridge. Just as he came out of the crowd onto the Via de' Bardi, Romula would

meet him, do her business and slip into the stream of tourists crossing the

bridge.

In the crowd, Romula had a friend she could depend on. She knew nothing of the

victim and she did not trust the policeman to protect her. Giles Prevert,

known on some police dossiers as Giles Dumain, or Roger LeDuc, but locally

known as Gnocco, waited in the crowd at the south end of the Ponte Vecchio for

Romula to make the dip. Gnocco was diminished by his habits and his face

beginning to show the skull beneath, but he was still wiry and strong and well

able to help Romula if the dip went sour.

In clerk's clothing, he was able to blend with the crowd, popping up from time

to time as though the crowd were a prairie dog town. If the intended victim

seized Romula and held her, Gnocco could trip, fall all over the victim and

remain entangled with him, apologizing profusely until she was well away. He

had done it before.

Pazzi passed her, stopped in a line of customers at a juice bar, where he

could see.

Romula came out of the doorway. She judged with a practiced eye the sidewalk

traffic between her and the slender figure coming toward her. She could move

wonderfully well through a crowd with the baby in front of her, supported in

her false arm of wood and canvas. All right. As usual she would kiss the

fingers of her visible hand and reach for his face to put the kiss there. With

her free hand, she would fumble at his ribs near his wallet until he caught

her wrist. Then she would pull away from him.

Pazzi had promised that this man could not afford to hold her for the police,

that he would want to get away from her. In all her attempts to pick a pocket,

no one had ever offered violence to a woman holding a baby. The victim often

thought it was someone else beside him fumbling in his jacket. Romula herself

had denounced several innocent bystanders as pickpockets to avoid being

caught.

Romula moved with the crowd on the sidewalk, freed her concealed arm, but kept

it under the false arm cradling the baby. She could see the mark coming

through the field of bobbing heads, ten meters and closing.

Madonna! Dr Fell was veering off in the thick of the crowd, going with the

stream of tourists over the Ponte Vecchio. He was not going home. She pressed

into the crowd, but could not get to him. Gnocco's face, still ahead of the

doctor, looking to her, questioning. She shook her head and Gnocco let him

pass. It would do no good if Gnocco picked his pocket.

Pazzi snarling beside her as though it were her fault. "Go to the apartment.

I'll call you. You have the taxi pass for the old town? Go. Go!"

Pazzi retrieved his motorbike and pushed it across the Ponte Vecchio, over the

Arno opaque as jade. He thought he had lost the doctor, but there he was, on

the other side of the river under the arcade beside the Lungarno, peering for

a moment over a sketch artist's shoulder, moving on with quick light strides.

Pazzi guessed Dr Fell was going to the Church of Santa Croce, and followed at

a distance through the hellish traffic.