Numero Zero Read Online Free

will be just as quick to remind you that according to all scientific manuals, the ‘eye of the storm’ is the place where calm reigns while the storm rages all around.”
    â€œNo, Dottor Simei,” I interrupted. “In such a case I’d say you should use ‘eye of the storm’ because it doesn’t matter what science says, readers don’t know, and ‘eye of the storm’ gives exactly the idea of finding yourself in the middle of it. This is what the press and television have taught them.”
    â€œExcellent idea, Dottor Colonna. We have to talk on the same level as the reader, we don’t want the sophisticated language of eggheads. Our proprietor once said that his television audience had an average mental age of twelve. That’s not the case with us, but it’s always useful to put an age on your readers. Ours ought to be over fifty, they’ll be good, honest, middle-class folk, eager for law and order but desperate to read gossip and revelations about other people’s misfortunes. We’ll start off from the principle that they’re not what you’d call great readers, in fact most of them won’t have a book in the house, though, when they have to, they’ll talk about the latest book that’s selling millions of copies around the world. Our readers may not read books, but they are fascinated by great eccentric painters who sell for billions. Likewise, they’ll never get to see the film star with long legs and yet they want to know all about her secret love life. Now let’s allow the others to introduce themselves. We’ll start with the only female . . . Signorina, or Signora . . .”
    â€œMaia Fresia. Unmarried, single, or spinster, take your choice. Twenty-eight. I nearly graduated in literature but had to stop for family reasons. I worked for five years on a gossip magazine. My job was to go around the entertainment world and sniff out who was having an affair with whom and to get photographers to lie in wait for them. More often I had to persuade a singer or actress to invent a flirtation with another celebrity, and I’d take them to the appointment with the paparazzi, the two walking hand in hand, or taking a furtive kiss. I enjoyed it at first, but now I’m tired of writing such drivel.”
    â€œAnd why, my dear, did you agree to join our venture?”
    â€œI imagine a daily newspaper will be covering more serious matters, and I’ll have a chance to make a name for investigations that have nothing to do with celebrity romance. I’m curious, and think I’ll be a good sleuth.”
    She was slim and spoke with cautious gaiety.
    â€œExcellent. And you?”
    â€œRomano Braggadocio.”
    â€œStrange name, where’s it from?”
    â€œHa, that’s one of the many crosses I have to bear in life. Apparently it has a pretty unattractive meaning in English, though not in other languages. My grandfather was a foundling, and you know how surnames in such cases used to be invented by a public official. If he was a sadist, he could even call you Ficarotta, but in my grandfather’s case the official was only moderately sadistic and had a certain learning. As for me, I specialize in digging for dirt, and I used to work for
What They Don’t Tell Us
, one of our own publisher’s magazines. I was never taken on full-time, they paid me per article.”
    As for the other four, Cambria had spent his nights in casualty wards and police stations gathering the latest news—an arrest, a death in a high-speed pileup on the highway—and had never succeeded in getting any further; Lucidi inspired mistrust at first glance and had worked on publications that no one had ever heard of; Palatino came from a long career in weekly magazines of games and assorted puzzles; Costanza had worked as a subeditor, correcting proofs, but newspapers nowadays had too many pages, no one could