It was raining, for a change. Julie Rhodes was singing “I’d Rather Go Blind,” and I was looking out the window with a cigarette dangling from my lips and a glass of Calvados in my hand, waiting for Pierino Martinenghi to call.
His prostitute friend was willing to talk to me about Edith, but in return she needed to be sure she’d be safe. She promised to be in touch soon, but Vienna was a zoo those days, a carnival for tourists, and work had picked up substantially.
After the meeting with Paz Anaya Vega and her crew, we’d laid low to avoid any surprises from the Spaniard or Dottoressa Marino.
We were convinced that that lady cop would be after us the moment we were back in Italy, maybe treat us to a surprise search and seizure, during which those three kilos of cocaine she’d threatened us with would appear.
That was why we were in no rush to cross the border. Even Inspector Campagna agreed. Our hope was that the Spaniard would nab Pellegrini and send his operation into a tailspin.
Our plan wasn’t great. But it was the only option. We’d gone over it again and again, scrambling for alternatives that didn’t exist.
Then there was Edith. I didn’t want to leave Vienna and face what was coming to us before explaining to her that I wasn’t the person she thought I was, especially without having had the chance to offer her our help. I had no doubts that the gang of pimps she worked for had done her harm.
“He’ll call, don’t worry,” said Beniamino, sitting on the couch with the Italian paper from the day before. He removed his reading glasses. “And take it easy with the Calvados. It’s eleven in the morning.”
I pretended to blow him off with a wave of my hand.
“You can drain the bottle, but if you don’t have a clear head, I’m not leaving the house. Now’s not the time to mess around.”
I emptied my glass in one swig. “That was the last,” I said. “Now I’m going to Max for reinforcements.”
The Fat Man was in the kitchen writing a long email.
“A woman?” I asked, fumbling with the coffee machine.
“I met her in the mountains when I took off to work at a retreat,” he said, still typing away. “I’m trying to tactfully figure out if she’s still free. I’d like to spend summer in the Dolomites again.”
“Lacanian shrink?” I asked, recalling his passion for the type.
“No, I gave that up,” he joked. Then he thought again. “To be honest, I’ve never met another.”
“Maybe they’re extinct.”
He wagged his big index finger.
“Impossible. I probably haven’t tapped into the right circle yet.”
“So you woke up this morning all optimistic and realized you still don’t have summer plans,” I said, needling him.
“I wouldn’t go so far as ‘optimistic.’ More like in a good mood,” he replied, pointing to the oven. “On the third try, the Wiener Brot came out perfect. Try it.”
Max had become obsessed with the dish, a cross between a baguette and a brioche.
“I don’t think I’ve digested yesterday’s effort.”
“There’s butter and bearberry jam in the fridge,” he continued, undeterred. “Besides, you still haven’t had breakfast and the booze on your breath is stinking up my kitchen.”
“Don’t you start,” I protested.
“Get a move on. I’ve got to prepare lunch in a minute.”
“Another local recipe?”
“No, Venetian. And fit for a dreary day: bean soup, orzo, and crackling. Gialèt della Valbelluna would be the best variety, but we’ll make do with some first-rate borlotti.”
I felt I ought to change my mind. The bread was good, the jam not so good, but I forced myself to eat in order to stanch the alcohol. Max never stopped tapping away at the keys.
“Are you still writing that email?”
“Yes. It’s been a while since I was last in touch and I’ve got a lot to tell her.”
“About the marvelous time you’re having right now?”
He gave me a withering look.
“Don’t be a pest,” he ordered.
I gestured with my hands to say I was sorry. “I can’t stop thinking about Edith,” I explained.
“That’s no reason to bother a poor guy who’s struggling to reconnect with an intelligent, witty, tender woman. A very tender woman. I’m not sure you understand the kind of thrills I’m referring to.”
“I can try.”
“Because I can’t update her on the more intimate twists in my life of adventure, all I can do is reflect deeply on the memories that we share,” he explained, getting worked up. “But I risk sounding tedious. What kind of woman wants to go to bed with a bore?”
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up.”
“Because you’re distracting me and writing requires concentration.”
I made a gesture of zipping my mouth. I’d seen an old Argentine woman do the same many years ago and it struck me as being the most effective way of swearing that your lips were sealed.
I did the one thing that could help me abide the wait: I shaved and listened to good blues. I’d tossed a few albums at random into my backpack and found an old stereo with a CD player in the apartment. I decided on the joyful, passionate voice of Grainne Duffy and selected “Let Me In,” the song I liked best, before filling the sink with hot water.
The Punisher Pierino Martinenghi didn’t get in touch until midafternoon. I was napping when the electronic version of “Rosamunde” alerted me to the fact that things were finally moving.
“My friend Klaudia should be free around seven,” he said. “She has to accompany a client to Sexworld Spartacus and then she’ll meet you in front of Hotel Kummer, in Mariahilfer Straße. She said you might have to wait because the john’s slow to make up his mind.”
“How do we recognize her?”
“I’ll send you her photo. I just took it.”
Smart man—Pierino was always thinking ahead.
“I hope German’s not the only language she speaks.”
“If she didn’t speak English she couldn’t work the hotels. She speaks a little Italian too.”
“Did you teach her?”
The safecracker laughed heartily before hanging up.
A few seconds later, I was scrutinizing the face of an attractive thirty-year-old on the screen of my phone. She had straight blond hair and a warm smile. Her smile was meant for my friend Pierino, evidently, a far cry from the kind reserved for paying customers.
I could have gone to the meeting alone, but my friends had decided to get involved in this Edith business, and it seemed only fitting that they get a sense of the person they were going to help. But they also had another reason for coming: when it came to a woman I liked, my judgment was never objective.
I went to the living room. Max and Beniamino were chatting about boats and the Dalmatian Islands. We all could have used some sun.
“Her name’s Klaudia,” I said, and showed them the photo.
I don’t recall exactly how, but I managed to spark a heated debate about what would drive a man to have a prostitute escort him to the biggest sex shop in Austria. It all began with a couple of dirty jokes and had turned into serious reflection.
It was still raining when we walked out of the building. We shielded ourselves with umbrellas and walked to a taxi stand a safe distance away.
The driver was Algerian and couldn’t take the dreadful weather any longer. He liked Italy but was convinced that the quality of life was better in Austria. “And Algeria?” asked Max. The man shrugged his shoulders and withdrew into an oppressive silence. I breathed a sigh of relief once I was out of the car.
Mariahilfer Straße was one of Vienna’s major shopping arteries. The Hotel Kummer was old but respectable, and it boasted panoramic views on the top floors.
That info and more came courtesy of a shady, elegantly dressed guy who waylaid us the minute we entered the hall.
Once again I discovered that the word “scram” was universal. The man retreated quickly and in good order, maybe because Rossini was the one who put him on notice.
Pierino’s friend arrived twenty minutes late. She was definitely striking. Tall, statuesque, she wore a long white overcoat with fur cuffs, parted to reveal a pair of boots that ran midway up her thighs, a miniskirt, and a shirt left generously unbuttoned. She was clad in tasteful Italian brands. She wore light makeup and her jewelry was almost invisible. You wouldn’t automatically guess her profession.
“You’re a real beauty, Klaudia,” said Old Rossini after we’d introduced ourselves; there was nothing slimy about his compliment.
She thanked him and proposed we go to dinner in a traditional beer hall nearby.
She was a regular there. She greeted the bartenders and waiters and strode over to a less rowdy area where a few tables were almost all unoccupied.
“I only agreed to talk to you because Pierino asked,” she said, immediately setting the record straight. “He’s a good man and I’m very fond of him.”
“We’re honored to call him a friend,” I asserted.
“I know. He told me to trust you, but Edith is a touchy subject and I don’t want trouble.”
“We just need some information.”
“And I need honesty. Before I answer your questions I want to know why you’re interested in her. You’re Italian, and from what our mutual friend tells me, you’re just passing through Vienna.”
She was worried there was something else going on. She’d been around long enough to know that crooks have countless wiles, and she didn’t want to get mixed up with criminal elements.
Beniamino and the Fat Man looked at me.
“Your turn,” said Max.
I told her what went down. The first meeting at the hotel bar, the one after at the café. The words, apparently nonsense, that Edith had uttered in a fright.
“I like her,” I admitted, sure that Klaudia would understand. “And if somehow she’s being forced to turn tricks, we want to help her change her situation.”
“My friend Marco isn’t your average john. He doesn’t lose his head over just any girl,” interrupted Rossini. “And we’re upstanding, old-school outlaws.”
She picked up her glass and proposed a toast: “To love and liberty,” she whispered. “But your words don’t mean a thing as far as poor Edith’s concerned. You should forget her and go back home.”
Exactly what I hadn’t wanted to hear.
“Why?” I asked.
“Frau Vieira isn’t bad for a madam. She runs a major escort service that gives her license to operate on other levels, understand?”
“She’s capable of satisfying all kinds of demands.”
“She treats us good, as long as we respect the terms of the agreement. And that’s exactly what Edith Amaral didn’t do.”
One September day, when it was still warm enough to walk around outdoors, this john turns up. In no time they’re meeting regularly. The man is kind, caring. He showers her with gifts. Prior to that, Edith had only been with Frau Vieira’s men, because the madam insisted that the Portuguese in her employ only sleep with one another. This sweet man, who did everything he could to prove to her that he was hopelessly in love, was a breath of fresh air in a life that had become harder and harder to bear.
Edith capitulated. For the first time, she let her emotions hold sway. He wanted to take her away from Vienna and Frau Vieira. He fed her a plausible line about a pretty little cottage in Bretagne, a small tourist shop selling handicraft goods. Another country, another life. Love.
But in order to run away, and all that other good stuff, they needed money. And he didn’t have any. Moreover, the little savings Edith had couldn’t be used because they were tied up in stocks and bonds by a broker connected to the organization.
They had one shot at realizing their dream: rob the madam.
The guy knew that all the cash that the girls earned and the pimps collected was kept in a safe in Frau Vieira’s office. Three times a month an accountant would pick up the money, but during the Christmas season all the earnings from December weren’t touched until after the Epiphany.
A hefty sum, as Edith knew. She’d been fucked by the crew’s deputies for so long that she knew all the details. Even where they hid the key to deposit the money during the day. The madam kept the other key around her neck.
It was a practical system, though hardly secure. But no one would dare try to pull off a job like that. The Portuguese, especially Luis Azevedo and Rui Salgueiro, had earned Frau Vieira the respect she commanded, breaking bones and creating the myth that they could make anyone with the gall to challenge her disappear.
It was up to Edith to decide. He didn’t pressure her. He didn’t need to. Happiness was within her reach and she knew that, for a whore who wants to change her lot, some opportunities only present themselves once in a lifetime.
On the night of December 31, while the world was ringing in the New Year, Edith slipped out of the broom closet where she’d hid all afternoon. She had gone to the office with some excuse. After exchanging a few words with Frau Vieira and one of her exes, she pretended to leave and then crept into that closet full of mops and buckets.
The key was in its usual place and, as fireworks illuminated Vienna’s skyline, she opened the safe and stuffed the bills into her purse. The john was waiting for her in a car with their suitcases.
They entered the highway, having carefully planned their route. They’d cross Germany into France. He stopped at a gas station to fill up the car and asked her to go buy him cigarettes. By the time she got back, carrying two packs of Marlboro Reds and the violet mints she liked so much, he wasn’t there. He’d left her.
Klaudia couldn’t say what they did to her when she came back to Vienna. Rumors spread. The most credible was that she’d been locked in a basement, and after a few days her lover was brought in to keep her company. A corpse. His body pummeled.
Word had it that before he died the man had confessed to colluding with one of the pimps in the crew. In fact, one of them had vanished all of a sudden and hadn’t been seen since. Apparently the plan had been his handiwork. They’d picked Edith because they figured she was the “right one,” sensitive enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book: love.
Frau Vieira proved sympathetic. Edith could go on living as long as she paid back the money she’d stolen. Plus interest. The madam told the other girls that Edith would be her old whore forever. Forced her to become an outrageous character, verging on the ridiculous. Frau Vieira’s henchmen made sure the johns didn’t get too intimate. She condemned her to solitude.
“Her life’s hell,” said Klaudia, finishing her story. “We’re all convinced that she’ll go mad or take her own life.”
Now I understood Edith’s reaction when I’d mentioned her jailer. I looked at my partners. They both nodded: we’d go forward with our plan.
“We want to talk to her,” I said. “Can you tell us where she lives? Or maybe you know another way of contacting her without putting her in danger?”
The girl looked perplexed. “I guess I didn’t make myself clear. Frau Vieira won’t ever let her go, she’d lose her reputation,” she repeated. “And this time, the girl would die and you’d disappear in some ditch.”
No one batted an eye. Klaudia looked us over, one at a time. “I don’t get it. You should be afraid. Maybe you don’t believe what I’m saying?”
“We believe everything you told us,” the Fat Man assured her, digging into an extra-large portion of paprika-glazed ribs. “The fact is, we think trying to help Edith is worth it.”
She pointed at me. “Just because your friend here likes her?” she asked, in shock. “He’s only seen her a couple of times.” Then she turned to me. “You haven’t even slept with her. What happens if you don’t like her? Your story doesn’t add up.”
Klaudia was losing her patience. It was understandable. It wasn’t easy to explain the meaning of an outlaw heart. Or that it was impossible for me to accept the idea that I couldn’t court a woman just because she was the old property of a ruthless Portuguese madam.
Old Rossini saw to it.
“All we want is what’s good for her. If that means forgetting having ever met her, that’s what we’ll do. But if there’s a concrete, sufficiently safe chance of tearing her away from Frau Vieira, we’re going to take it. And we’re not going to ditch her at a gas station. We’ll do everything we can to guarantee she has a future.”
He placed his hand on my arm. “As for my friend, you should know that this is how he’s fallen in love his whole life. He meets a woman he likes and loses his head. But there’s nothing wrong with that either.”
Klaudia smiled. She was still far from understanding our reasons but figured she could trust us.
“You guys are insane.”
Max grabbed the handle of his stein. “To love, liberty, and insanity.”
* * *
Edith lived in Lorystraße, on the first floor of a small apartment building with a sky-blue façade, down the way from a small park. Klaudia gave us the scoop about her shift: she started work in the early afternoon and left her last john at night. She’d also offered to talk to Edith about our meeting and put her at ease, but we refused, because that might put her in danger.
We’d improvise. The one spot that allowed us to surveil the door to her building was a vegetarian restaurant, which served us an excellent mid-morning snack of potato beer scones. The problem was they served non-alcoholic drinks only.
After exactly one hour of waiting, I proposed to go ring the bell. Maybe she’d let me in.
“She won’t,” wagered the Fat Man.
“She’s still asleep,” said Beniamino, raising the stakes.
“But if she goes out and we approach her on the street, she might freak and start screaming,” I objected. “The last thing we need is to be stopped by police.”
Fifteen minutes later Edith solved our problem for us when she stepped out of the building. She had on the same overcoat that she wore the day we met at Jonas Reindl Coffee. Only this time she had her hair down. She was beautiful.
I stood up. “I’m going to talk to her,” I said, moved.
“No,” Rossini countered firmly. “I’ll go.”
“But I know her,” I protested.
“And she knows you,” replied Max. “It’d be better if we played the kind and charming stranger card.”
I watched Beniamino jog up to her and strike up a conversation. At a certain point my friend pointed to the restaurant and added a few words before she backed off, practically ran away. Our effort had gone up in flames.
“Things’ll go better next time,” said the Fat Man to console me.
The Old Gangster returned to our table, looking, all in all, pretty satisfied. “I told her I’m your friend, that you’re not a prick, and that if she wants to meet us she can find us at this restaurant.”
“Doesn’t look like it worked,” I said, discouraged.
“She’s a woman who’s been through terrible experiences, who’s living in terror now,” replied Rossini. “She needs time to think and figure out that she can trust you.”
“Beniamino’s right,” Max weighed in. “Giving her the chance to decide was a smart move.”
I looked at the street. Edith wasn’t coming back. “O.K. We’ll wait and hope,” I conceded, something polemical in my tone.
The waitress came over. Twenty-something, her red hair parted in two messy braids, on her left wrist a tattoo of a community center in Berlin. “We’re about to start serving lunch,” she announced, as if she harbored doubts about our sense of time. “Are you going to free the table or should I bring you a menu?”
“We’ll eat here,” I hastened to say, casting a cool look at Max. You never knew with him where food was concerned.
“I’ve got nothing against vegetarianism,” he said testily while perusing the day’s specialties. “In fact, I agree that the consumption of meat is excessive, and that a diet light on—not deprived of—animal protein can be beneficial—”
“Quit while you’re ahead,” said Beniamino with a smirk. “You’re not fooling anybody.”
To spite us the Fat Man ordered vegan. I let myself be enticed by the barley soup.
At some point I looked up from my dish and saw Edith staring at me through the window. With a conspicuous wave of his hand and a broad smile, Old Rossini invited her in. But she retreated again.
“She’ll be back,” bet Beniamino.
He was right. Five minutes later she was sitting at our table.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice trembling. “If Frau Vieira didn’t send you then how do you know where I live?”
“So many questions!” cried Rossini jovially. “Why don’t you have a bite to eat while we explain everything?”
She shook her head. She was too nervous. We were frightening her.
“We know what happened to you,” I said. “We’re not mixed up with Frau Vieira or Luis Azevedo or Rui Salgueiro. If you want, we can help you build a life somewhere else, where no one will think they have the right to decide what you do with your body.”
“Why do you want to do that for me? I’m just Frau Vieira’s old whore.”
“To us you’re Edith Amaral,” I shot back.
“So? What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
We could have bandied about big meaningful words, appealed to the ideals of humanity. She would have laughed in our faces. Hookers are the kind of people who feel cheated on principle. Edith most of all.
“My woman used to work strip clubs. Her name was Sylvie,” Beniamino began. “She was a burlesque queen. Hated pimps. More than once, with my support, she helped girls get out from under their exploiters. Then I had to kill a man, and in retaliation she was kidnapped and surrendered to a crew that rented out women for certain kinds of parties. She was forced to dance, and afterward they’d gang bang her. We managed to free her, and I killed everyone who’d done her harm. But Sylvie couldn’t forget the violence she’d suffered. My love wasn’t enough, and in the end she killed herself.”
The Old Gangster’s eyes were full of tears. He reached his hand out to Edith. “I can’t sleep at night knowing there are people out there like Frau Vieira. When they cross my path, I don’t duck them. You’re the old whore I want to rescue from her.”
Edith sighed and shut her eyes. She knew the man in front of her was telling the truth, but she still wasn’t ready to risk it. “There’s no way of escaping the Frau. She’ll kill us.”
Rossini gripped her hand hard and forced her to look at him. “They’re the ones that need to watch their backs.”
She smiled bitterly before standing up.
“I don’t know what to think,” she confessed. “It’s all so absurd.”
“Where do you want to go?” I asked. “Do you want to go back to Portugal?”
“There’s no one there for me anymore. I’m dead to my family.”
“Where then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve lived in Austria all my life.”
“I could take you around the world. That way you could choose a place that you liked.”
Another smile. More bitter than the one before. “I’ve got to go.”
I followed her. “I’d like to see you again,” I said as she headed home.
“Who? Edith or Tempest Storm?”
“As a pin-up you’re a knockout, but I prefer this you.”
“Then it won’t happen. Frau Vieira won’t allow me to see anybody outside work.”
“I don’t want to pay to sleep with you. I’d like the chance to see you again.”
She pointed to a bar a few hundred feet away. “Tomorrow morning at ten. O.K.?”
“I’ll be there,” I cried, happy as a boy. She shook her head good-naturedly.
I could have kissed her on the cheek, but after hesitating a minute I turned and walked back.
My friends had left the place and were enjoying their first cigarette in several hours. The restaurant was one of the few to have banned smoking.
Rossini still had tears in his eyes. It takes a long time to recover from pain of that magnitude.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“For what?”
“For finding a way to speak on Edith’s level. I know what it cost you.”
He changed the subject. Just as I expected he would.
“It’s useless to continue to torment her,” he said. “She’s too scared to make decisions that important. It’s clear she wants to be rid of the scumbags draining her life, but she won’t do anything to save herself.”
I drew a cigarette out of the Fat Man’s pack. “It’s up to us. As long as we figure out a way not to get killed.”
“We have two options,” the Old Gangster chimed in. “The first is we steal her from under their nose. There’s always that convent in Croatia where the nuns took care of the girls Sylvie and I used to bring them.”
“And the second?” implored the Fat Man.
“We do things the right way,” replied Beniamino with a malicious smile. “We go see Frau Vieira and plead our friend’s case. The madam tells us to fuck off, we take offense, and we make it clear to her she’s in the wrong.”
“Gut reaction, I prefer the first scenario,” I said. “In our situation, we’re better off not drawing the local cops’ attention. According to Martinenghi, they have a good relationship with the Portuguese madam and her crew.”
“Speaking of, did you ever hear back from Campagna?” asked Max.
“I switched off the phone,” I admitted. “I don’t feel like listening to his bullshit while we’re tied up with other business.”
“Well, you should be in constant contact with him, Marco,” lectured Rossini. “We need to keep an eye on what Dottoressa Marino is up to.”
“I’ll take care of it tomorrow morning, after I’ve had breakfast with Edith.”
“You managed to score another date,” complimented the Fat Man.
But Rossini advised me, with venom in his voice, “Try not to make her run away like last time.”
He was pissed that I hadn’t been monitoring the business with Paz Anaya Vega that had brought us to Vienna in the first place. I should have apologized and called the inspector, and instead I was failing to appreciate our situation because I was caught up worrying about Edith’s fate. And my love life. I knew that, but right then all I wanted was to listen to my heart as it pounded out a twelve-bar blues. It was a bad idea but, you know, sometimes common sense fucks off elsewhere.
With the other phone I called Pierino Martinenghi.
“We need to see you.”
“Then you can buy me a drink. I get off before dinner.”
We met the safecracker at a wine bar in Singerstaße. Pierino had had time to change; he wasn’t sporting that ugly hotel uniform anymore.
“What are we drinking?” asked Max, scoping out the bottles on display.
“I’ll start with a bottle of Silvio Nardi ‘43’: Sangiovese, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Then I’ll take a Brunello di Montalcino, the Manachiara, from the same estate.”
“You want to spoil us,” I joked.
“To be honest I want to pamper myself while I wait to hear what kind of jam you’re planning to put me in,” admitted Pierino with a sly smirk. “Yesterday you had dinner with Klaudia and, lo and behold, today you’re dying to talk to me. I mean, first it’s drug dealers, then it’s Frau Vieira—you don’t want to miss out on any of the action in Vienna.”
Beniamino held his hands out. As he should have.
“If you don’t want to touch the subject we can drink to each other’s health and go back to being friends like before.”
Martinenghi frowned. “Thanks for the courtesy, but I want to hear what you have to say, then I’ll decide what to do,” he explained calmly. “For the record, I hate pimps too. Working in hotels, I’ve been forced to witness scenes that have left a mark right here,” he added, touching his chest at the height of his heart.
“I’m glad we’re of the same mind, though I didn’t have any doubts to the contrary,” continued Rossini. “We’ve decided to draw Edith from the deck.”
“So where’s the problem?” asked Pierino.
“If she disappears, the other girls will think it was the work of their protectors, done to punish her,” I answered. “We want to avoid consolidating their power.”
The safecracker stuck his nose in his glass and breathed in the wine’s bouquet. “I get it. You want to save Edith and at the same time damage the crew’s rep.”
“Damage of a certain scale,” I stressed. “All of Vienna needs to know. It’s got to be the biggest story of the year.”
“Frau Vieira will involve the cops. She’s got several on her payroll.”
“We don’t plan on sticking around long.”
Martinenghi picked up a slice of prosciutto and began coiling it around a breadstick with painfully slow precision. He needed time to think. He knew that helping us put him in a thorny position. If not a dangerous one.
“I’m planning a score,” he confided, a spark of excitement in his eyes. “A beautiful safe from the 1970s, all gears and levers, none of that electronic crap. I’ve already cracked two of the same model, but this young widow was modified twenty years after. It’s a challenge I can’t give up—and won’t.”
“We get it. It’s not a problem,” said Beniamino.
“Yeah, it is a problem,” replied Pierino. “It wouldn’t be honorable of me to abandon you right now. We’ve always been loyal to an idea of criminality that despises scumbags.”
I looked at my friends. “You’ve already done a lot for us,” I said with a certain amount of embarrassment.
“Out of friendship,” he added.
“What about the safe?”
He stretched his arms. “It can wait. And if I have to bag the whole thing, I’ll look for another one.”
“But if you stick to playing a minor role, they might not discover you were involved,” remarked Max. “What we really need at the moment is information.”
The waiter, a Tuscan in a Tuscan joint, interrupted to bring us the second bottle—a Brunello di Montalcino Cru—and fresh glasses. “Eighteen months in barrique, twelve in a barrel, and aged two years in the bottle,” he said with a certain solemnity, fearing, perhaps, that we’d guzzle it down without savoring it.
I took a sip. It was a really intense, complex wine, with clear hints of ripe fruit. It should have been reserved for a more cheerful occasion, but we managed to appreciate it properly.
Pierino countered the Fat Man’s argument with a sensible, practical consideration. “Portuguese mobsters are just like all the rest. When someone cons them and they don’t know who, they get to thinking, they turn over every stone, they check every contact. And in the end they put two and two together.”
It was true: that was exactly what they were like. Criminal organizations like that can’t afford to let mistakes go unpunished.
At that point Beniamino wanted to rethink the whole situation. “Maybe we ought to go back to plan A: Edith disappears, and no one risks getting hurt.”
Pierino was the first to object. “I had coffee with Klaudia after lunch. She told me what happened to Edith. I’d rather not be involved, but it hurts knowing those crooks can exploit girls with the help of cops and get off scot-free.”
There was nothing left to add. End of discussion.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
I had two questions at the ready. “Is Frau Vieira the real head of the operation?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s she closest to? I don’t mean relatives, I mean members of the organization.”
“You’re asking if there’s someone she can’t run the show without?”
“Exactly.”
“Rui Salgueiro,” he answered without hesitating. “Klaudia explained everything: Frau Vieira keeps everything in order and is in charge of the escort service—the legal front. But he handles all the rest.”
“Klaudia said Luis Azevedo is the other heavy in the crew.”
“He’s just Salgueiro’s right-hand man. A mindless proxy.”
Max ran a search on his tablet and pulled up a photo of Salgueiro from an old assault case.
“It’s an old photo, but he hasn’t changed much,” confirmed Pierino.
“And where can we find dear Rui?” asked Rossini.
“After dinner he hangs around Maxim, a nightclub in the middle of town, on Kärntner Straße, but his ‘office,’ where he conducts all his business, is in the back of a dive he owns, tucked away on a side street. It’s called Leiria, in honor of the city all the Portuguese in his crew come from.”
“And Edith,” I said.
We paused for a moment, moved on to simpler subjects, like wine and the beauty of the Tuscan hills. Martinenghi called the owner over to our table, a woman from San Quirico d’Orcia, who immediately had a sample of pici al ragù di cinghiale brought over. Our friend introduced us as clients of the hotel, and the woman didn’t press him for more details. But she was determined to talk about the current political situation in Italy, and our pleasant chat grew stale.
“It’s always the same story with our compatriots,” Pierino remarked. “They left Italy because there wasn’t work or they weren’t making a living and they’re always quick to badmouth the government, rightly so. But if an Italian expresses a negative opinion about his own country they get pissed and refuse to even greet you. I prefer to keep my mouth shut. After all, I’m never returning to that backwater. The first safe to get cleaned out, the cops will come to take me away.”
Me? I couldn’t wait to cross the border again, because Edith would be there by my side. I began to daydream, and the Brunello helped, but Martinenghi dragged me back to reality.
“I take it you’ve already got a plan.”
Rossini gestured in response. “More or less. The goal is to knock them flat on their asses.”
“Vienna’s not used to a ruckus,” remarked Pierino.
“We’ll try to keep the noise down,” promised the Old Gangster.
We avoided dropping a thousand euro at Maxim just to locate our man amid a throng of horny guys and half naked girls. Besides, there were too many security cameras and bouncers to devise a plan. We set our sights on Leiria. Two rooms, dim lighting. The few clients in the place were mostly men.
“I’m hungry,” said Max, as if that were news. “The wine’s doing dances in my stomach.”
“I bet the food’s no good here,” said Beniamino. “But there’s no harm in taking a look.”
We were greeted by a woman in her sixties who pointed to a table. The tablecloth was in sore need of a wash and the woman wiped off the crumbs with a rag that she kept tucked under her arm.
She only spoke German, but the menu was in five languages. Nearby two large, heavyset men were packing it away. The Fat Man asked them what they’d ordered and we voted unanimously to trust them: roast pork with rice pilaf and potato salad. And three large light beers.
The chef’s assistant saw to serving us, a kid no older than eighteen with a flower-print bandanna who exited the kitchen loaded up with plates.
Right away we noticed a conspicuous stream of men passing by the restroom and entering a door labeled PRIVATE.
“The office is open,” I mumbled.
I got up to go to the bathroom, whose cleanliness exceeded my rosiest expectations. I lingered in front of the other door just long enough to hear several people talking, and went back to my friends. I’d been tempted to pull the old “Sorry, wrong door,” but that wouldn’t fly with hardened criminals; it’s in their nature to be suspicious.
The food turned out to be better than average. Were it cleaner and had it adequate service, the restaurant might have a shot at being flagged by one of those specialty sites and attracting a couple more customers. But on second thought, management couldn’t have been all that interested in food and wine, seeing as the lion’s share of their profits came from exploiting prostitutes.
A little later a couple came in. They were seated in a corner set apart from our room. He must have been 35 or 40. She was much younger, under 25 maybe. Wheat-blond hair, tarnished by a few pink highlights. She took off her long down jacket to reveal a skimpy dress, cinched at the waist by a large leather belt. Unlike her coarse face, her body was very attractive.
“Hungarian,” said Beniamino after hearing them talk.
They gave the impression that they were waiting for someone. They ordered drinks, and he kept checking his watch and looking up at the door. The girl was glued to her phone.
“The son of a bitch brought his mare to the market,” said the Old Gangster bitterly.
There wasn’t any doubt about it. We couldn’t say for sure how the man had convinced her to come with him to that restaurant, but clearly he was selling her to Frau Vieira’s organization. Maybe he’d already had her slagging for a while and had realized he wasn’t tough enough to match the competition. The one thing pimps were good at, generally speaking, was manipulating the women that turned tricks for them, roughly meting out violence and flattery. But they were reluctant to risk getting stabbed to defend an inch of the block. They only became dangerous when they assembled a crew like Frau Vieira’s. Maybe the son of a bitch was looking to get hired and had shown up with the blond woman as a gesture of goodwill.
The boy with the bandanna cleared our table and came back with three helpings of sweet dumplings stuffed with soft cheese topped with a blueberry sauce. We pointed out that we hadn’t ordered them.
He shrugged. “We had extra. Crazy Dominick always fucks up when he mans the fryer,” he explained before walking away. Dominick must have been the cook. Relationships in restaurant kitchens can be complicated.
The sweets were delicious, in any case. Unfortunately we didn’t get to sample them properly, because in walked Rui Salgueiro. We recognized him immediately. He wasn’t wearing a coat, clear proof he’d come from the “office.” He went over to the counter where the woman poured him two fingers of Asbach, a cheap brandy popular in Germany and Austria.
He stopped to check out our table. He’d never seen us before, but the way we were all laughing, as if one of us had just told a joke, convinced him we were harmless.
He was over 50. Not tall but burly. Bit of a paunch, the rest muscle. His skin was olive colored, his face like a peasant’s from a bygone era. He wasn’t good-looking but he could pass for alluring. You could tell he was a pimp by the way he dressed. Flashy clothes are their trademark. He didn’t rise to the level of a French macrò, but the snug red shirt, open at the chest to show off the typical gold cross, and the nut-brown pants tucked into his polished boots—they didn’t go unnoticed. In his left hand he held a pack of cigarettes and a solid gold lighter. On the middle finger of his right hand he wore a massive ring with the head of a tiger; it must have left a mark on more than a few faces.
Just as we’d imagined, he walked over to the table where the couple was seated. The pair shot up, and the man greeted him with exaggerated deference. The girl just looked embarrassed. Salgueiro invited them to sit down and began talking to the man in hushed tones. The girl kept her eyes down. Every so often her friend placed his finger under his chin and lifted her head so that the Portuguese, who had yet to show an interest in the goods, could get a look at her.
It was heartbreaking to watch. Beniamino was stone-faced. He watched the scene with a troubling look in his eyes. He was reliving the hell of Sylvie. She, too, had been sold. The deal had probably been struck in a joint just like this one. I turned to him.
“Would you rather we left?” I asked in a calm voice.
He gripped my arm. It hurt but I didn’t move a muscle. “No, we stay,” he replied. “Tonight the trafficker gets what’s coming to him.”
“Seems just to me,” I said.
“Just,” he repeated. “Just, motherfucker, just!”
I exchanged a look with Max, who had been looking on. He sighed. A moment later, I did too. Rui Salgueiro decided he’d had enough. He stood up, shook the guy’s hand, and motioned to the girl to follow him. She turned to look at her friend, who urged her to get moving. Either the Portuguese wanted to sample the goods or he wanted to put her to work immediately.
The other man stayed there nursing his beer alone. He had a perplexed look on his face, maybe the exchange hadn’t gone down so hot.
After a while he stood up, put on his heavy sheepskin coat, and headed for the door.
Beniamino did the same, giving the guy a few seconds head start.
“Settle up,” I told the Fat Man. “And go home.”
Night. Cold. The shoplights switched off. Ditto the blinding lamps and neon bar signs. It was the worst area to teach some piece of shit a lesson. I quickened my pace to catch up with my friend.
“I can handle this myself,” he said drily.
“What’s the harm in me tagging along?” I replied. “That way I can keep a lookout for cops. It could happen. We’re still in the center of a European capital.”
He flew into a rage. “Are you trying to tell me I’m doing something stupid?”
“No. But I would have preferred this to go down in the dark of winter on the outskirts of town.”
“It’ll look like a mugging.”
Stellar idea. It meant that he was meditating on what to do and that his mind wasn’t completely clouded by pain and rage.
A square. A large church. The man made the mistake of hugging the side of the building. The Old Gangster covered his face with his scarf and ran up behind him without the man’s ever noticing. One shove and the man tumbled in the shadowy corner of the bell tower. He got up and tried to run. Rossini stood in his way and brandished his fists.
“Put ’em up,” he said calmly.
The other man accepted the challenge. Biggest mistake of his life. Beniamino hit him repeatedly in the face and ribs. When the man fell to the ground, Beniamino wailed on his legs. Sixty seconds the man would never forget.
Then Beniamino knelt and searched his jacket and pants pockets for the man’s wallet.
“That’s that,” he said, short of breath. “Three months in the hospital at the least.”
A few minutes later we came across a dumpster next to the service entrance of a bakery and seized the opportunity to get rid of the loot.
“Toss the gloves and scarf too,” I said, “they’re covered in blood. And tomorrow you’d better buy another coat.”
Back at the apartment, Max greeted us in silence, trying to guess from our looks if things had gone smoothly.
We sat down at the table and drained a couple of glasses to alleviate the tension and the chill in our bones. The Old Gangster held his head in his hands. His shoulders shook a little.
I took the bottle of Calvados and stood up. I was in pieces. All I wanted was to have another drink and sleep until I had to get up and see Edith.
But there was something I wanted to say to my friends. It had crossed my mind while I’d watched Rossini tear that scumbag apart.
“Things have gotten out of hand, and now it’s too late,” I mumbled. “All we can do is hope our end isn’t too painful. Before that happens, I’d like to set a few things straight, saving Edith first and foremost.”
When I woke up the next morning, the house appeared empty. The door to Beniamino’s room was wide open. The Fat Man’s was shut. He was probably still sleeping. The same old coffee, the same old first cigarette of the day, staring out the window. Comforting habits in a life that was anything but. I was used to anxiety. I knew its every nuance, but that morning it was almost unbearable. Not even the blues helped. And yet I let the voice of the Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins wash over me, singing “Postcard Blues” and “Walking After Midnight.”
The anxiety that morning couldn’t be attributed to what happened the night before or my upcoming meeting with Edith. It came from my own shady depths, which I had never wanted to explore. So now I could do nothing but let it have its way with me.
I dressed nicer than usual and removed a bottle of cologne from the bottom of my bag. The kind saleswoman at the perfume shop in Padua, who sold me expensive shaving products, had assured me women liked it.
On my way out I encountered the Fat Man in the kitchen. He was in his pajamas making breakfast.
“You’ll court her until she capitulates and falls into your arms, am I right?” he said in a pale imitation of a dramatic voice.
“That’s the intention.”
“Well then, good luck.”
He’d slept on the wrong side of the bed too. I left without saying goodbye.
I had time and looked for a taxi stand even farther than the usual spot. The sky was still gray but the people I passed by weren’t carrying umbrellas. If the Viennese were sure it wouldn’t rain, you could be confident it wouldn’t.
I entered the bar where I was to meet Edith. I was two minutes early. I told the elderly waiter that I was waiting on someone. But after a half hour she still hadn’t shown up. It was clear she wasn’t coming. I was at a loss. I hadn’t considered the possibility of her changing her mind, since she was the one who had chosen the time and place.
I smoked a couple of cigarettes outside the door of her apartment building and worked up the courage to ring her bell.
“Is that you, Marco?” she asked over the intercom.
“Yes.”
“I’m not feeling well. Let’s meet some other time.”
“Let me come up.”
Silence. But after a while I heard the door click open.
She lived on the second floor. I was barely up the first flight of stairs when I found myself standing face to face with her. She had on a black slip, there were still traces of pin-up make-up on her face.
She let me in, shut the door, and went back to bed. I watched her walk the length of the hallway to her room. I waited a moment for her to say something to me, then took off my parka and followed.
A little light filtered through the shutter, and she lay on her side with the duvet tucked up to her neck. I removed my shoes and stretched out beside her, terrified she’d kick me out.
She didn’t. “Sorry. I had a difficult john yesterday. He hurt me, and I’d prefer to stay in bed.”
“You don’t have to explain. I don’t want to hear about it anyways.”
“If you insist on courting a whore, you have to bear the burdens of the job.”
“You’re right. If you’re up to telling me what happened, I’ll listen.”
She rubbed my face in every last detail. She wanted to test how much I really cared, to see if I’d still desire her after knowing that she’d been with a man who was infatuated with dilation. Every time she saw him he’d bring certain toys: the bigger they were, the more he paid. Because Edith couldn’t run the risk of his complaining to Frau Vieira’s minions, she couldn’t refuse.
The body of an old whore is no longer protected by the prospect of its being exploited for a long time. It’s at the mercy of money, and the price is set by the client’s fantasies.
I was perfectly aware of that from the moment I saw her at the hotel bar. But I didn’t know how to tell her.
“Do I have to pay to hug you?” I asked.
She chuckled and rested her head on my chest. I caressed her hair and, seeing as she didn’t protest, her face too.
“Is Marco your real name?” she asked all of a sudden.
“Marco Buratti.”
“And do you have a family waiting for you somewhere?”
“In this world, all I have are two friends and a bunch of exes.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“You must really like me,” I joked, “otherwise you wouldn’t be asking all these questions.”
“Please answer me. Paz Anaya Vega doesn’t meet just anyone. You must be some kind of kingpin.”
I’d been waiting for her to ask. I hadn’t been able to erase the memory of her look of disgust when she saw me talking to the Spaniard.
“I don’t deal drugs. They make me sick,” I replied. “I’m a private investigator without a license. I handle cases off the books, and the money I earn rarely comes from legit sources.”
“Were you in jail?”
“Seven long years.”
She let out a sigh of disappointment. “If I ran off with you I’d still have to turn tricks. I’m forty-two and in ten years I’ll be a lot lizard—hunting for johns in gas station stalls. Ten euros for a blowjob, fifteen from the front, twenty from the back,” she said, hard-bitten. “If I stay here nothing changes. I’ll live out my last days in hospice if I don’t die first.”
She pulled away and coiled into a ball at the edge of the mattress.
At that point I stood up and put my shoes back on. “I’ll take you away, Edith,” I said. “You can’t live like this anymore. With the help of my friends, I’ll manage to find you an alternative, by which I mean a place to live and a job. Then you can decide what to do.”
“And if I don’t want to be with you?”
“I’ll suffer the same as any spurned man, but it’s not a bargaining chip,” I answered before leaving.
I was happy to have seen her and told her that her enslavement would be over. For good. I wasn’t expecting anything else.
I wandered around the neighborhood. I stopped to drink a beer and all of a sudden I remembered my promise to Rossini to call Campagna. I switched on the phone that we used to communicate and discovered that over the last twenty-four hours the inspector had tried to call me dozens of times.
“What’s the point of having a phone if you keep it turned off the whole time?” he laid into me.
“Take it easy. What happened?”
“Are you still in Vienna?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll call as soon as I’m off the plane.”
He didn’t sound like himself. He was palpably upset.
“Tell me why, otherwise you won’t find me when you get here.”
“Don’t be a prick, Buratti.”
“Talk. The line’s secure.”
“The Spaniard abducted Marino and Pellegrini. It happened in Munich. They were lured into a trap and fell for it like two fools.”
My advice had worked: the Russian hackers had circulated the intel on Pellegrini and someone sold him out. It wasn’t bad news at all. Sure, we hadn’t planned for Marino to get mixed up in it, but it meant salvation for us and for Campagna. We were no longer at risk of ending up in jail in the Republic.
“You ought to be happy,” I said. “We can turn the page.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I’m sorry to hear. As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to spring for champagne and caviar and celebrate with my friends tonight,” I said.
“I’m begging you, Buratti, I have to see you tonight.”
“Sounds like you still need us,” I remarked suspiciously. “I don’t want to find myself back in the sorry situation of being threatened to do the dirty work for the ministry’s super-cops.”
“Not at all. I swear. On my daughter’s life.”
If I agreed to meet him and get involved, we’d most likely risk delaying our efforts to free Edith from the clutches of Frau Vieira. But in my world, a man doesn’t swear on something that big for a lie or scam.
“All right,” I conceded, “call me when you get in to the city.”