THE NEXT DAY, having boned up on what Calliopus said he was worth, we went back to his training barracks to take his operation apart.

The man himself hardly looked as if he was engaged in the trade of death and cruelty. He was a tall, thin, neat fellow with a well-trimmed head of dark, crinkled hair, big ears, flared nostrils, and enough of a suntan to suggest foreign extraction though he blended in well. An immigrant from south of Carthage, if you closed your eyes he could have been Suburra-born. His Latin was colloquial, its accent pure Circus Maximus, unmarred by elocution training. He wore plain white tunics with just enough finger jewelry to imply he was humanly vain. A wide boy, one who had made good by hard work and who conducted himself with a decorous manner. The kind Rome loves to hate.

He was the right age to have worked his way up from anywhere. He could have learned all sorts of business practices along the way. He saw to us himself. It implied that he could only afford a small group of slaves, who all had their own work to do and could not be spared for us. Since I had seen his manpower schedules, I knew differently; he wanted to keep personal control over anything Anacrites and I were told. He seemed friendly and incurious. We knew what to make of that.

His establishment comprised a small palaestra where his men were trained, and a menagerie. Because of the animals, the aediles had made him stay out of Rome, on the Via Portuensis, way over the river. At least it was the right side of town for us, but in all other respects it was a damned nuisance. To avoid the Transtiberina rough quarter we had to persuade a skiffman to row us across from the Emporium to the Portuensis Gate. From there it was a short sprint past the Sanctuary of the Syrian Gods, which put us in an exotic mood, and then on past a Sanctuary of Hercules.

We had kept our first visit brief. Yesterday we met our subject, looked at his lion in a rather unsafely chewed wooden cage, then grabbed some documents to get to grips with. Today things would get tough.

Anacrites was supposed to be primed to conduct the initial interview. My own study of the records had told me Calliopus currently owned eleven gladiators. They were "bestiarii" of the professional grade. By that I mean they were not simply criminals shoved into the ring in pairs to kill one another during the morning warm-up sessions, with the last survivor dispatched by an attendant; these were eleven properly trained and armed animal fighters. Professionals like them give a good show but try to be "sent back"-that is, returned to the tunnels alive after each bout. They have to fight again, but they hope one day the crowd will shout for them to receive a large reward and perhaps their freedom.

"Not many survive?" I asked Calliopus, putting him at ease as we settled in.

"Oh more than you think, especially among the bestiarii. You have to have survivors. The hope of money and fame is what keeps them coming up to join. For young lads from poor backgrounds it may be their one chance to succeed in life."

"I expect you know, everyone thinks the fights are fixed."

"So I believe," said Calliopus noncommittally.

He probably also knew the other theory every self-respecting Roman mutters whenever the president of the Games waves his pesky white handkerchief to interfere with the action: the referee is blind.

One reason this lanista's gladiators were regarded as feeble specimens was that he really specialized in mock hunts: the part of the Games which is called the venatio. He owned various large wild animals whom he would set free in the arena in staged settings, then his men pursued them either on horseback or on foot, killing as few as they could get away with while still pleasing the crowd. Sometimes the beasts fought each other, in unlikely combinations-elephants against bulls, or panthers against lions. Sometimes a man and a beast were pitted one to one. Bestiarii, however, were little more than expert hunters. The crowd despised them compared with the Thracians, myrmillons, and retarii, the fighters of various types who were intended to end up dead on the sand themselves.

"Oh we lose the odd man, Falco. The hunts need to look dangerous."

That did not square with events I had watched where reluctant animals had to be lured to their fate by banging shields loudly or waving fiery brands.

"So you like your four-footed stock to be ferocious. And you collect them in Tripolitania?"

"Mainly. My agents scour the whole of North Africa- Numidia, Cyrenaïca, even Egypt."

"The animals cost a lot to find, house, and feed?"

Calliopus gave me a narrow look. "Where's this leading, Falco?"

We had announced that Anacrites would ask the first questions, but I was happy to start in like this myself; it unsettled Calliopus who felt unsure whether the interview had yet begun formally. It unsettled Anacrites too, come to that.

Time to be frank: "The Censors have asked my partner and me to conduct what we call a lifestyle check."

"A what?"

"Oh you know. They wonder how you can manage to own that pretty villa at Surrentum when you say your business is running at a loss."

"I declared my Surrentum villa!" Calliopus protested. That, of course, had been his mistake. Property on the Bay of Neapolis runs at a premium. Villas on the cliffs with sparkling views across the shimmering blue to Capreae are the mark of millionaires from consular families, ex-imperial slaves from the petitions bureau, and the more successful blackmailers.

"Very proper," I soothed him. "Of course Vespasian and Titus are sure you're not one of those evil bastards who plead piteously that they work in a field which has heavy overheads, while at the same time they are maintaining troops of thoroughbreds in the Circus of Nero and driving chariots with go-faster spokes and gilt finials. What wheels do you run, by the way?" I asked innocently.

"I have a family-style mule-drawn conveyance and a litter for the personal use of my wife," said Calliopus in a hurt tone, obviously making rapid plans to sell his boy-racer quadriga and its quartet of zippy Spanish grays.

"Most frugal. But you know the sort of thing that causes excitement in the bureaucracy. Big carriages, as I said. Large gambling stakes. Flash tunics. Noisy confederates. Nights out entertaining girls who provide unusual services. Nothing you could ever be accused of, I realize." The lanista blushed. I carried on blithely: "Pentellic marble nudes. Mistresses of the type who can speak five languages and judge a cabochon-cut sapphire, who are kept in discreet penthouses up Saffron Street."

He cleared his throat nervously. I made a note to discover the mistress. A job for Anacrites, perhaps; he seemed to have nothing to say for himself. The woman might only have mastered two or three lingos, one of them merely shopping-list Greek, but she was bound to have wheedled out of her lover a little apartment "to keep mother in," and Calliopus would probably have his foolish name on the transfer deed.

What a great deal of mire there was to uncover in the course of our noble work. Dear gods, how deceitful my fellow citizens were (thought I, contentedly).

There was no sign yet that Calliopus intended to offer us inducements to leave him alone. It suited Falco & Partner at present. We were not yet that type of audit team. We intended to nail him; it was his hard luck. We wanted to start with a genuine high strike rate and a matching income for the Treasury, in order to prove to Vespasian and Titus that we were worth employing.

It would also alert the general population that being investigated by us was dangerous, so people on our list might like to reach an early settlement.

"So you own eleven gladiators," Anacrites weighed in finally. "How do you acquire them, may I ask? Do you purchase them?"