Walking through my home town like an illegal immigrant. It was an odd feeling. From time to time I’d cross paths with people I’d known all my life. They wouldn’t give me a second glance. For that matter, though, it was practically impossible to recognize me. I’d cut my hair short and grown a stylish little goatee, I was wearing a pair of fake eyeglasses, and I had radically changed my style of dress.
In Verona I’d walked into a pretty expensive boutique. While talking with the sales clerk, I pointed to a fifty-year-old gentleman with a wealthy appearance and said: “I want to dress like him.”
The sales clerk was about sixty; he’d been doing this work for more than forty years. He looked me up and down carefully and said: “Too late. You’ll never pull it off. But if we lower our sights a little and restrict our ambitions, we might achieve something vaguely similar and just barely acceptable.”
He was right. I felt uncomfortable in a jacket and tie, and it wasn’t just a matter of habit.
As I was leaving the store, he asked me to recite the combinations of colors and fabrics, and I got every one of them wrong. He shook his head resignedly and wished me good luck.
I’d never spent that much money on clothing in my life, but I could easily have afforded to buy everything in the shop. The robbery had brought us vast wealth: 511 kilograms of gold: well over 16,000 troy ounces. Luckily, since there had been seven of us, we managed to clean out the entire vault full of gold. The job was as quick and easy as the narcotics heist at the Institute of Legal Medicine. We had the security codes so we were able to deactivate the alarms, sneak into the workshop in the middle of the night, and conceal ourselves in the bathrooms. There we waited for the morning arrival of the employees and the owner with the keys to the vault, which could only be unlocked at 9 am.
“Don’t do this to me,” he’d implored us, collapsing to his knees.
Beniamino, Luc, Christine, and the two Germans had worked swiftly and methodically like the professionals that they were; they even remembered to utter a few words in Serbian from time to time, for the benefit of the wide-eyed, presumably wide-eared robbery victims. Max and I, in contrast, proved with our ham-fisted ineptitude that we were not cut out for armed robberies.
Less than twelve hours later Beniamino had roared out of the port of Livorno, heading briskly for France, where the Druses were expecting him. They would arrange to forward the gold in batches to the various fences and middlemen.
Our French and German accomplices had accompanied him to cover his back, just in case the Lebanese decided to start playing dirty. When there’s that much money at stake, people are unpredictable. Missing from the massive shipment of swag was eleven kilograms of finished gold jewelry, about 350 ounces, which we had assigned to other purposes. That was to remain a secret.
There were only three people in town who knew I’d come back. Rudy Scanferla, the one-time manager of La Cuccia, whom I’d greeted with a hug and a fat envelope stuffed with cash and the news that he was about to leave for an extended holiday, and that he would be turning his apartment over to me.
Then Virna, of course. I waited for her in the street outside her apartment. I remembered her saying that when the weather was nice enough, she took Emma for a mid-morning walk. That day there was a pale winter sun.
“Good morning, lovely ladies.”
She stared at me, open-mouthed. “Have you come back so they can murder you?”
“If I had, I certainly would be wearing my boots,” I replied, pointing to my lace-up suede oxfords. “You know that my will states clearly that I am to be laid to rest in my cowboy boots.”
She was smiling again. “I’m not sure I like you like this. You’re too different.”
“Without my clothes on, I look a lot more like the old Marco.”
“Do you feel like a roll in a warm bed with me?”
“Yes, please, as soon as possible.”
“How dangerous are you?”
I held out both hands, palms up. “I couldn’t say.”
She pointed to her daughter, who was trying to grab a teddy bear that was strapped to the stroller. “Come back sometime when you’re out of this mess.”
I nodded resignedly. “Can I tell you you’re beautiful?”
“If we weren’t right outside my house, I’d kiss you. I really feel like it.”
“So do I.”
“Now get out of here.”
“Enjoy your walk, my lovely ladies,” I said aloud before turning and walking away.
The third person who knew I was back in town was Avvocato Bonotto, and I had an appointment to meet him for lunch that same day. He was a lawyer who had hired me freqently. We both knew that we could trust one another.
We’d arranged to meet for lunch at Donna Irene in Piazzale Pontecorvo. Ubaldo, the owner, used to run a bar that I frequented. He gave me a quick sharp glance as I walked into the place, but if he recognized me, he gave no sign of it. He accompanied me to the table where Bonotto was already comfortably seated, enjoying the wait with a glass of bubbly prosecco.
“Are you the one who needs a lawyer?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then why on earth are you dressed in that get-up?”
“I’m trying to avoid certain people.”
“Word’s going around that . . .”
“That what?”
“That you and your partner were forced to sell La Cuccia and leave town because you sold out one of your customers to the police.”
I snickered. “Idle gossip. You believed it?”
“Of course not. I know you better than that. And if you had decided to become a police informer, you would have done it at the time of your choosing.”
Ubaldo returned to take our orders. He objected politely but firmly when I ordered a seafood appetizer followed by a veal steak, very rare.
I gave in. “You decide, then.”
“Of course I’ll decide. And I’ll choose the wine as well.”
Bonotto laughed heartily but discreetly, and then ran his hand over his snow-white mustache. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”
“The Kosovar Mafiosi of the Pe´c clan that are operating in Northeast Italy employ only one law firm.”
“I’m aware. They work with Antonio Criconia, a colleague here in Padua. He’s in the middle of a fairly intricate court case right now.”
“It’s just more of the usual, coke smuggling on behalf of the spoiled young hipsters and wealthy professionals of this town,” I pointed out. “A case that emerges from a lengthy and meticulous investigation . . .”
“So get to the point.”
“I want access to the transcripts of the wiretaps and eavesdropping tapes.”
He grasped what I wanted instantly. “So you can find out what they’re saying about you and your partner.”
“Precisely.”
He slipped his fork into the plateful of tagliatelle and spun a mouthful of pasta. “And you’d like me to ask my colleague for this favor?”
“We’re willing to pay whatever it takes.”
“I’m pretty sure that, when he took on these clients, my colleague had no clear idea of the collateral effects—first and foremost, the fear—involved in becoming a full-time defender on behalf of a certain kind of client.”
“He’s not the first lawyer to make this kind of mistake.”
“Agreed. But my point is this: I doubt that money is enough of an incentive. He has a wife and children.”
“We aren’t interested in getting him in trouble. We just want to find out what they know about us.”
“I can make all kinds of promises, but that’s not going to reassure him.”
“But he’s known you for years.”
“True, but we stopped working together a while ago. He knows perfectly well that I disagreed with his professional choices.”
“So you’re telling me that you won’t even try to talk to him?”
“That’s right. It would be pointless.”
Plan A had failed. Now I had to try Plan B, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I waited for the waitress to take our plates.
“We have to get our hands on those transcripts.”
He heaved a deep sigh. “Please, Marco . . . .”
“Look, I don’t like this either. It’s unpleasant, but this is how matters stand: either he helps us out, or we’re going to have to make Avvocato Criconia understand that he has more reason to be afraid of us than of the Kosovars.”
“Unpleasant? It’s despicable. Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?”
I nodded. “We have no alternative.”
He got to his feet. “Forgive me if I leave you to your meal. I’m not hungry anymore.”
At that point I lost my temper. “If you had any idea what’s behind this request, you’d drop this pose of moral superiority.”
“I have some sense of professional ethics; you’re asking me to deliver a Mafioso extortion message.”
“I could write you a pizzinu if you like,” I badgered him.
He told me to go to hell and left the restaurant. I finished my meal alone, fobbing off the curious waitress with the story that my friend had been urgently summoned back to his law office.
“Before they invented cell phones, people could finish their meals in peace and quiet,” she observed.
Without my asking, Ubaldo sent a glass of vintage Calvados over to my table. It was his understated way of letting me know that he’d recognized me. I felt the warm burn of the apple brandy as it moved down my throat and into my belly.
Max la Memoria remained safely ensconced at Fratta Polesine: at the speed that the fat man drove, it was 90 minutes away from Padua, though it took three hours at the speed that ordinary mortals drive. I was waiting for him under the shelter of the porticoes of Piazza dell’Insurrezione, taking care not to wind up in the viewfinder of one of the 120 new videocameras with swiveling lenses and remote zoom that were conveying a live feed of every neighborhood in Padua to the gleaming new command center of the city police.
As usual, a cold wet rain was drumming down. My old leather flight jacket would have kept me warmer than the elegant and expensive overcoat I was wearing that day. A little later a small mob of upright citizens on the hunt for lowlifes came along. They were escorted by a pair of private security gaurds to protect them from the kids from the social centers who used to kick their asses whenever they ran into them. They saw me from a distance and headed straight for me. As they drew closer, they noticed the color of my skin and my expensive clothing. They changed course and headed on down the porticoes. As they went by, the man who must have been their leader greeted me in a low voice and gave me a look, hoping to receive a white Italian citizen’s gratitude for their protection. I pretended to be intent on my cell phone. They were the last thing I needed.
Every corner of Padua was being patrolled by patrols and “megapatrols,” as the newspapers had come to dub them, and there were uniforms of every description.
With the ostensible goal of freeing the city’s neighborhoods of pushers and whores, in reality the vigilante patrols were so many campaign promises being kept, as well as placeholders, doing advance groundwork for the witch-hunt that was in the offing. As soon as the security bill now making its way through Italian parliament was approved, hunting season would be open and the vigilantes would be off.
And the biggest supporters of that law were, of course, Mafiosi of every nationality. They would finally be able to rid the cities of their annoying competitors, unaffiliated small-time crooks, the annoying freelance criminals who wound up in the newspapers on a daily basis, threatening to upset their profitable and discreet arrangements.
In the meantime, the law-abiding citizens of Northeast Italy continued to entrust their elderly relatives to illegal-immigrant nurses and caregivers; their houses were still being cleaned and their meals were being cooked by undocumented housekeepers. Workshops, factories, construction yards, new highways, and shipyards were all staffed by illegal immigrants who had made their way across Italy’s porous borders locked up in 40-foot containers or aboard rusty and terrifyingly dangerous old freighters. An underpaid, easily extorted labor force that could simply be expelled from the country if they caused trouble or made demands—without even having to invoke the usual excuses of a slowing economy or rocketing inflation. And those same upright citizens continued exploiting for their sexual gratification Nigerian prostitutes and Brazilian transexuals, young women and underage boys from every country in the old East European bloc.
Simple arithmetic told you that more than a few people had to be preaching one thing and practicing quite another, on the one hand braying about clean streets and law and order, and on the other hand shamelessly exploiting the illegals.
In Northeast Italy, for that matter, unprincipled cynics were in charge. More than before. More than ever before. The owners of little factories and businessmen with luxury cars, elegant villas, and millions invested overseas who had never paid a lira or a euro in taxes in their lives. Waste disposal tycoons who exported thousands of tons of toxic plastic to China, plastic that was then recycled into brand-new toys for children around the world. And there were pillars of the community in the same sector who obliged women who had immigrated illegally from third-world countries to sort through garbage bare-handed.
To say nothing of call centers where dozens of Italian women worked only to be paid under the counter, waiting months at a time for their wages, and never uttering a word of complaint because, with unemployed husbands and children to feed, a job—however crappy—was still a job.
To say nothing of the entrepreneurs who ran websites listing young escorts, and who were always eager to buy the houses where the women entertained their clients, because real estate is always the best investment, even during a recession.
To say nothing of politicians and public officials who kept taking the same bribes they’d always taken, but now they camouflaged them with consulting fees and agreements and, in the rare occasions when they were caught, they hastened to state that it had been a “single episode of weakness” . . . But the truth was quite different: illegal machinations were the order of the day in every sector of hard-working Northeast Italy, and it had become a fertile terrain for organized crime of every kind to take root. The mafias of the world had sunk their teeth into the Northeast, and nothing would stop them from eating to their heart’s delight. Money laundering had become the meeting ground between unprincipled cynics and Mafiosi. Only politicians, and with them the local press and television, continued to pretend not to notice that this was the part of Italy that had the highest concentration of organized crime. And they weren’t pretending for their political futures alone, because if there is one thing that the mafias of the world understood long ago, it’s that the only way to do real business is to be on good terms with everyone—absolutely everyone.
And the respectable citizens and voters were all happy to bray for the heads of the illegal immigrants because everything else, the really bad stuff, all things considered, was going splendidly. The mafia money made the wheels spin round, business was booming, and there was a positive synergy with legal businesses of all kinds. Even more effective than the nocturnal patrols of those gentlemen wearing phosphorescent bibs were the police cars stationed outside the clinics that offered medical care “even” to illegal immigrants. It had become common practice in many different cities and towns in the province of Padua, and fear had begun to spread among the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable.
Max appeared at my side. “And here I am.”
“You’re late,” I scolded him as we walked across the piazza.
“Twelve minutes late. When it’s raining I tend to lower my maximum velocity.”
“It’s dangerous to drive 35 mph on a superhighway. There’s a good chance that a Greek or Bulgarian truck driver who’s been powering cross-country for ten hours without a rest might rear-end you.”
“Are you in a bad mood?”
“I’m worried that the past two years in Switzerland haven’t been good for me. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that this fucking Northeast Italy I’ve always lived in is becoming unlivable.”
“So you’re looking around and you don’t like what you see, eh?”
“It’s worse. I think, I analyze, and I find everything morally intolerable.”
“Yup, it’s a mess. You need to purge your system and come back and live with us cynical assholes.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“One week of drinking spritz in the piazza cafés and you’ll see how easy it is.”
We’d arrived at the street entrance of the office building that housed Avvocato Criconia’s law firm. “Can you imagine me showing up for an aperitif dressed like this?”
“For once you’d be dressed like everyone else; you could finally extend your circle of acquaintances. The next step is Facebook, but I’ll explain that to you some other time.”
The lawyer was a man of average height, skinny, with a face that made you think of a turtle wearing a toupee. He might have been a little older than sixty. He opened the door for us, but he carefully avoided greeting us. We’d hurt his feelings by threatening him, but we overlooked his wounded emotions. We followed him into the library, where there were ten or so thick files waiting for us on a conference table.
“I’ll be in my office. Let me know when you’ve finished.”
The transcriptions of the wiretaps and other electronic monitoring involved an investigation into a coke ring that was servicing a number of socialites who frequented certain exclusive clubs and other facilities in the center of Padua and in the hillside homes up on the Colli Euganei. The Carabinieri were able to blackmail one of their informants into placing hidden microphones all over the place; now they knew that it was the Kosovars who were dealing the Colombian coke.
Max snickered with satisfaction as he read through the list of names. “Lookee lookee, all the respectable citizens.”
We weren’t interested in the converstions of the highly placed coke addicts; we wanted to see what the Kosovars had to say. We started reading through their conversations, in translation, and found only one reference to us. In a conversation caught by a hidden mike, a certain Lenez, newly arrived from Pe´c, asked an accomplice named Arben Alshabani (who was an ambitious second-tier capo according to a Carabinieri report) if there was any news concerning the friends of the “bellydancer’s man.” Arben told him that they had left town and no one knew where they had gone, adding that it was annoying to have to go after people without knowing the reason why; it’s the kind of situation in which you make mistakes that can prove dangerous, even fatal.
Lenez had gently reminded him that he wasn’t important enough to have to know everything. Arben had shot back that maybe he would be too busy to have time to look for those guys, and Lenez had brusquely snapped an expression that the translator had rendered: “Do whatever the fuck you think best.”
Then they’d started on a new topic: the internal feuding in the family. Both Lenez and Arben were second cousins of the late Fatjon Bytyçi. According to Lenez, the patriarch and boss of the Pe´c clan was saddened at the death of his oldest son, but not distraught. He had always preferred Fatjon’s younger brother Agim, who was much smarter, more capable, and who had leadership qualities, as he had shown in the years when he commanded a KLA unit.
“Why do Mafiosi always seem to have one useless son?”
The fat man gave me a baffled glance. “You’ve lost me there.”
“Take The Godfather. Fredo, Don Vito Corleone’s second-born son, is a pervert and is turning into an informer. Michael has to have him killed. Or A.J. Soprano, Tony Soprano’s only son: he’s an ineffectual mess, and he even tries to kill himself.”
“So are you just running off at the mouth, or should I try to make sense of this?”
“Don’t try too hard, I can help you. It seems obvious to me that the Bytyçi clan doesn’t want people to figure out how that sicko Fatjon really died.”
“And so?”
“So up till now, before I read these transcriptions, I thought that we were in much worse trouble than we seem to be. I figured that the old boss got up every morning and asked whether we had been killed yet. Instead, it looks like we’re far from a top priority for him, seeing that he hasn’t given Arben a kick in the ass, even though Arben’s clearly uninterested in tracking us down.”
“You can rest assured though that if we ever fall into their hands they’ll slice us up into catfood, just to make it clear to everyone that you can’t touch a Bytyçi.”
“Maybe so. But it strikes me that we have an opportunity to take advantage of how embarrassed they are about Fatjon’s perversions.”
“Okay, but let’s start by finding out the official version of his murder. There’s nothing about that here. This Arben is very careful not to spell things out. It’s probably no accident that, even though the police are sure that he’s an important clan underboss, they still haven’t been able to issue a warrant for his arrest.”
Max la Memoria copied down names and took notes in his notebook with his clear and minute handwriting. I killed time looking out the window and smoking.
When we told the lawyer that we were done, he didn’t even bother to look up from the file he was reading.
It pissed me off. “Have they already asked you to smuggle a cell phone into prison?”
He looked up and glared at me contemptuously.
“When they do, remember, you won’t be able to say no.”
The fat man tugged at my sleeve. “Forget about him, what do you care?”
“Arrogant shit.”
“Nowadays, every successful lawyer is arrogant. They have to be. He’ll be disbarred otherwise.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re starting to sound like one of these little altarboy opposition politicos.”
“You really think so?” I asked, deeply concerned.
“You need to drink more and you need to get more pussy. Hurry, it’s not too late.”
The discovery that killing me was not a top priority for the Kosovar mafia made me feel confident enough to lower my security restrictions. I went to the Anfora for an aperitif. Before walking in the door, I took off my sunglasses and my tie. I was immediately hailed by Alberto and a number of the regulars; there was a blizzard of wisecracks about my prolonged absence, and they quickly brought me up to date with all the news about our old friends. I stayed for dinner and then went back to Scanferla’s grim little apartment, intending to catch a quick nap until it was time for the evening spritz.
But in the middle of the afternoon the doorbell woke me up. A short ring, followed by a pause, and then two more rings. Rossini was back. He was dragging a wheeled suitcase that looked like it was very heavy.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got all our money in that suitcase.”
“I haven’t had time to go to the bank yet.” He looked around, and then pointed at the bed. “That’s the only one, isn’t it?”
“There’s a couch.”
“We couldn’t find anything better?”
“We’re going to have to make do.”
He grunted in disappointment. As he was taking off his coat and pants, I brought him up to speed on the latest developments. Then he grabbed a blanket, lay down on the couch, and fell asleep.
Once again, I felt a surge of envy. All he had to do was lay his head on a pillow and he dropped into a deep sleep. I always had to watch hours of television shopping shows to knock myself out. I thought to myself that sooner or later I was going to have to seriously consider breaking myself of the habit.
I made a cup of coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes. Then I left the apartment and walked toward the center of Padua. I windowshopped and killed time until the bars, the piazzas, and the surrounding streets began to fill up with people. That was when I started looking for Morena Borromeo.
I finally found her in Piazza delle Erbe, smoking with a couple of her girlfriends, warming themselves by a freestanding patio heater. They were all three dressed identically, made up identically, and their hairdos were identical as well. The police informer was older than the other two, who couldn’t have been over thirty.
When I walked up to them, all three turned to me with the same professional escort smile, telegraphing that they were free for the evening. But when Morena recognized me, her face changed expression. She seemed genuinely pleased to see me. She got rid of her friends with a brusque goodbye and gave me a hug.
“I haven’t seen you around for a while.”
“I had a lot of vacation time I needed to use up.”
“I haven’t thanked you yet for putting that bastard in his place.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Fine, fine, message received,” she whispered. “I see you’ve finally started dressing like a little gentleman.”
“A drink and dinner?”
“Sure, and after-dinner if you want. But the meter’s already running.”
“So you finally decided to get a boss.”
She sipped her spritz. “It’s an agency, not a pimp. They only take a percentage of my time keeping company in public. The money for the tricks I get to keep.”
I observed her carefully. She still looked great, though another couple of years of cocaine had left their mark. She began playing her part. I let her work without interrupting. I needed time to figure out if she was still in the informant business.
We moved to another bar, and stayed there until she got hungry.
“Now let me take you to a brand new place: cozy, unusual, and . . . expensive.”
“As long as it’s not one of your cokehead restaurants. I don’t want to eat in a place where dealers are selling drugs from table to table.”
“Relax. The place looks fake, it’s such an elite crowd. But the food is incredibly good.”
The place looked like an old downtown osteria, only with fine crystal, designer silverware, and five-star food presentation. The dishes all had the kinds of names that evoke spectacular crescendos of flavors, the names that food journalists seem to swoon over. In reality, though, the meal was just a grab-bag of flavors that, given the money we were paying, we couldn’t afford not to enjoy.
But there was another reason that you couldn’t have persuaded me to go back to that restaurant. Everyone was talking in low, hushed voices; no one laughed out loud; the waiters came and went as silently as ghosts. It was a restaurant frequented by well-mannered corpses.
“You still dating your handsome policeman?”
“Last year his wife left him, so now he fucks me on a regular basis. Every Sunday. He shows up with a gift-wrapped tray of pastries, after taking his children to Mass, and he goes at it till late at night.”
“So you’re his girlfriend now?”
“Well, in a way. He treats me a little better, he tells me things. Typical male: he can’t wrap his head around the fact that his wife finally dumped him.”
“And you’re happy with how things are going?”
“I can’t complain.”
“How much do you take home at the end of the month?”
“Three thousand euros, after taxes, but I don’t usually talk about that with my customers.”
“Maybe it would be worth talking about with me.”
She smiled. “I was just starting to wonder when you’d get around to telling me the real reason for this nostalgic get-together.”
“Do you think you could get your cop to do a little work for me?”
She ran a breadstick over her lips before taking a tiny bite. “Are you looking to cut me out?”
“No. I’ll need you to keep an eye on him and warn me if he’s planning to fuck me.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“A year’s income.”
“What about my bonuses?”
“Forty thousand euros. Not a euro more.”
“And how much is he going to get?”
“More than you get, of course, but it’s a separate deal.”
She stared at me. “Maybe you’re not offering me enough money.”
“Don’t be greedy. He’s not the only crooked cop in town.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
I seized her hand. I wanted to make sure that she realized how serious I was. “In this movie, traitors die.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“I’m trying to make you understand something.”
“Does this have anything to do with that old drug heist?”
“No,” I lied.
“Do you remember that my handsome policeman was monitoring the phone calls of cops in another jurisdiction who were suspected of being responsible for the heist?”
“Vaguely.”
“It was them, all right, but all the tapes with the recordings of the wiretaps were mysteriously demagnetized, and the investigation was archived.”
These are things that happen when the intelligence services are involved, I thought to myself, but all I said to her was: “See what happens when you rely on technology?”
“My cop told me that his higher-ups never really intended to take those other cops to court.”
“Then why spy on them?”
“I asked him the same thing, but I didn’t understand the answer: ‘Reselling it wasn’t part of the agreement, it was an excess of zeal and a lack of communication’.”
Then, as if nothing had happened, she resumed her performance, acting the part of the woman that you absolutely have to take to bed. After a while, she realized how ridiculous it was and began making fun of herself. We both burst into laughter, attracting the attention of the living dead who were dining at the other tables around us.
“Tonight, it’s on the house.”
“I’m not sure I’m up for it.”
“Come have a glass of something at my house and let’s see what happens.”
Later, in her apartment, while Morena was preparing a line of coke for herself, I started snooping around in her collection of CDs, just to avoid standing there like an idiot staring at her. I was surprised to discover an Alberta Adams CD, Born with the Blues. It must have just wound up there by chance.
Edoardo “Catfish” Fassio had introduced me to Alberta. I was immediately enchanted by her voice: the voice of an attractively jazzed-up 77-year-old woman with an incredible charge of vitality.
After starting her career in Detroit nightclubs at the end of the Thirties, and after going through a number of unsuccessful marriages, she had decided to go back into the recording studio not once but four different times when others her age were griping about their arthritis.
I slipped the CD into the player and chose my favorite song, Searchin’. I closed my eyes. It didn’t take Alberta long to convince me that making love that night might not be a bad idea at all. I took off my jacket and began loosening my tie.
It was just before lunch when I got back to my apartment. My host wasn’t an early riser, and no one left her bed before eleven, just in time to head out for the first aperitif of the day.
“I’m in a hurry to meet your handsome policeman,” I reminded her as I planted a kiss on her cheek.
“You get your money ready, and you’ll meet him tonight.”
Max was cooking; he looked questioningly at me. Beniamino, instead, came over to me and took a deep, stage sniff.
He turned to the fat man. “I hereby announce that he screwed Snow White’s evil stepmother.”
“Yikes,” Max commented as he stirred the risotto.
They began to rib me mercilessly. I got sick of it after awhile.
“Most likely I’m going to meet with the cop this evening.”
Rossini’s face became serious. “That’s good news.”
Max la Memoria went on with the ribbing. “Excellent. That means we’ll overlook your strange perversions and we’ll allow you to share our humble meal.”
The handsome policeman had a name and a surname: Attilio Carini. He picked me up in front of the train station a little after one in the morning and gestured for me to remain silent. He drove up onto an overpass, sped through an entire section of town, and turned onto the ramp that led onto the ring highway around town.
He was somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, physically fit, with an alert face set off by a perfectly bald head. He dressed unostentatiously—no designer clothes, no expensive watches. He drove at moderate speed, and the unnecessary miles he drove had a very clear purpose behind them: he wanted to give me the time to consider carefully just what kind of cop he was so that our conversation could get off on the right foot. I gradually came to the conclusion that he was not corrupt in the classical sense of that word, because he wasn’t allied with the bad guys. If he ever took money, he would do so only once he was certain that to do so would harm neither an ongoing investigation nor any of his fellow policemen. He wasn’t the kind of bad cop who acts recklessly just to service a vice or to keep a mistress.
I found myself obliged to come up with a very different strategy from the one I’d agreed on earlier that day with my friends.
He stopped the car in a highway pullout and gestured for me to get out. He frisked me carefully for microphones or recording devices.
“Now it’s my turn,” I said once he’d finished searching me.
“You must be kidding me!” he snarled.
“If you won’t let me check, it means you’re wearing a wire.”
He shrugged and raised his arms. I did just as meticulous a search as he had, and then I demanded that we leave both our cell phones in the warmth of the car and step about fifty feet away from the vehicle. I’d heard about a guy who was screwed for having had a conversation a little too close to a car bumper.
“All right, let’s get to the point,” he said as he lit a cigarette.
“Do you know who I am?”
“What kind of an amateur do you take me for?”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure that I don’t need to introduce myself.”
“No, there’s no need of that. So what do you want from me?”
“I want to fuck a Serbian gang that operates in Northeast Italy. The local boss is called Pavle Stojkovic and he’s working with a woman, possibly German, called Greta Gardner.”
“In my line of work the verb ‘fuck’ can have a lot of different meanings.”
“True. As far I’m concerned, we’re not talking about physically eliminating anyone. I just want to dismantle the organization.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Useful information.”
“You should be the one giving information to me. I’d be sure to pass it on to my colleagues with proper jurisdiction.”
“Let’s not waste time kidding each other. There’s 100,000 euros in it for you and, if you’re interested, a bonus: you get to catch them with their hands in the honey pot.”
“Honey that I’ll bet you’ll be supplying.”
“Oh yes. Plenty of shiny, sticky honey . . . Some might even stick to the fingers of whoever finds it.”
“So what you’re saying is that you want the police to take them out of circulation for you?”
“It’s the deal of a lifetime: you get money and a career boost.”
“That might be something I’m interested in.”
“Except?”
“Except I have to be sure that this whole operation isn’t just one gang getting another gang out of the way.”
“They fucked with the wrong woman, and someone’s pissed. That’s all.”
“Are you asking me to believe that?”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
He offered me a cigarette. “Speaking of women. You’d be giving the 100,000 euros to Morena.”
“Right. So no one can link the money to you.”
“That’s not the only reason. That money’s for her.”
“So why are you telling me about it?”
“Morena is going to turn over a new leaf. No more coke, no more cocks.”
“Does she know about it?”
“Not yet. But now you do. So keep your hands out of her panties.”
We got back in the car and said as little during the ride back as we had on the ride out. So the handsome policeman was sick of the loneliness of divorce and had decided to make an honest woman of Morena. It wasn’t a bad idea. She was on the verge of becoming too old for her business. Another couple of years, and she’d have to cut her rates drastically. When it comes to turning tricks, you can’t beat youth.
He dropped me off at the station, where my friends were waiting for me in a Japanese-made car with unusual lines. The car was black, with tinted windows. I got in back and made a disgruntled noise. “This is nice and inconspicuous.”
If one day I was able to go back to my old life, the first thing I’d do was get my old Skoda Felicia, currently in the loving care of Paolo Valentini.
“He saw it, and there was no way to stop him,” the fat man told me. “He wouldn’t even bargain on the price; he pretended to believe that it really has just 1,200 miles on the odometer.”
Beniamino stroked the steering wheel lovingly. “It’s sort of like a scale model of a mid-century American car.”
“You mean the cars that drove around Chicago full of gangsters with a tommy gun in their lap?”
“Well, the cars from the movies of my childhood. Masterpieces: A Touch of Evil or Asphalt Jungle. The first one taught me how to deal with cops; the second taught me how not to split up the take from a robbery.”
“Don’t you want to know how it went with the cop?”
“It went fine,” said Old Rossini. “Otherwise you’d never have busted my chops about the car.”
I looked out the window and realized we weren’t heading for Scanferla’s apartment. When it dawned on me that we were in my old neighborhood I asked where we were going.
“We have a decent place to stay now,” Max replied. “You can call Rudy and tell him he can go back to his rathole.”
A cluster of gleaming new apartment buildings stood where there was once only countryside and I rode bicycles with small armies of boys my age.
The apartment was big and fully furnished. Each of us would have his own room.
“Nice place,” I commented.
“They’re going to rent it out as a pied-à-terre for visiting managers of a multinational corporation. It’s costing us about what a villa on the Costa Smeralda costs in August.”
Beniamino patted his wheeled suitcase packed with cash. “Don’t quibble about money, boys. At my age, I need comfort and cleanliness.”
The fat man was hungry, and he suggested having a plate of pasta. I sat in the kitchen to keep him company while he busied himself at the stove. Rossini withdrew into his bedroom to make an international phone call to Sylvie. He came back with a worried look on his face.
“I don’t feel comfortable being so far away from her,” he explained, nervously fingering the bracelets that dangled from his wrist. “If I’m not there, she doesn’t like to go out, and spending all her time indoors isn’t good for her.”
“But there’s always someone with her to protect her, right?”
“Two trusted bodyguards stay with her everywhere she goes. It’s a pretty big slice of the family budget.”
“How does she spend her days, now that she’s given up dancing?”
“Mornings she works at a rape crisis center. Once a week she sees a shrink, then I take her shopping and in the evenings we go to the best nightclubs in the city. The real problem is the night. In the old days, she lived for the night. Now it’s become a nightmare that never ends.”
Max served out platefuls of pasta and asked me to open a bottle of wine. The old old smuggler seemed to be lost in a reverie. He ate a couple of forkfuls of pasta before continuing. “For the first time in my life, I’m sure that payback isn’t going to change a thing. Killing the person that decided to take her to that gang bang parlor isn’t going to help Sylvie at all.”
“You just have to hope for the best. Time helps.”
He waved one hand in the air resignedly. “No, she’ll never be happy the way she was. She’s not my dancer anymore. Those bastards killed her in Corenc. And that’s why I’m going to kill them. It’s vengeance for a woman who no longer exists.”