At the End of a Dull Day (14 page)

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“No place that's secure,” he replied. “You're going to have to take care of that.”

Actually, I did have a place to hide him, one where I could always keep an eye on him. Use him and then, after taking the appropriate precautions, steer him toward his ultimate fate.

I stuck out my hand. “Okay. You're enlisted.”

He took my hand reluctantly. He didn't trust me. The fact that he was still alive after stealing from the Nigerians meant he wasn't that big of a fool. I waved to him to get out of the car. “Do you mind? I have to talk a few things over with my partner.”

I worked it out with Mikhail that I would take delivery of the Chadian on the following night. I needed a little time to take care of his lair.

“In the meantime I need you to get all the information you can about the Lexus,” I told him. “If it actually is carrying a wad of cash from Lombardy then there's a good chance we'll have a nice chunk of cash on our hands.”

“Next Monday I'll see if I can follow it down from Milan.”

“Don't ask your cop anything else about him,” I warned him. “He could get curious and greedy.”

“Don't worry. I don't need him anymore.”

It was time for me to get back to work, to keep from arousing Tortorelli's suspicions. I was satisfied and hopeful. At last the outlines of a plan were beginning to take shape. I started out with an intuition about Ylenia Mazzonetto, Brianese's secretary. Now I knew a lot more and I had a ragtag little army at my command, maybe sufficient for what I had in mind. I had to figure out how to get all the characters to read from the same script. And get out of this alive. It wouldn't be easy but it was too late to turn back now: the criminal acceleration of events had reached cruising velocity.

 

As I got closer to La Nena I noticed that something was missing. Or rather, that someone was missing. Ding Dong, the bouncer I paid to keep street vendors out of the restaurant, wasn't manning his usual post. His nickname was a humorous reference to his mental state—tenuous at best. The section of portico that the front door looked out upon and the large plate glass window of the restaurant were his second home. His first home was his mother's place, but he and she didn't get along and he couldn't wait to take up his post by the front door every day and ward off unwanted visitors.

I should have guessed that Tortorelli would have something to do with it. “I sent him away.”

“Why would you do that?” I asked in horror. “Now there's going to be an endless procession of flower vendors and panhandlers of all kinds, busting the customers' balls.”

“People are used to it. And it was a question of courtesy.”

“Courtesy?”

“Courtesy toward the person who manages them,” he explained as if he was talking to a mental defective.

Disheartened, I went to take shelter in the kitchen to talk with the cook.

Around lunchtime the shithead told me that he'd be eating lunch in another restaurant. A buffet was being held to celebrate the successful outcome of Brianese's political negotiations concerning positions in the health department. He'd managed to obtain 45 percent of the offices, even though the Padanos were furious at discovering that numerous bank accounts were in the red while the ledgers recorded them as being in the black.

“And he invited you to come?”

“No, but I figured I'd drop by just to show my face. And to learn a little something. At that other restaurant they know how to choose the right wine for a Blue Stilton.”

I couldn't help but smile. He raised his index finger. “One time,” he said in a solemn voice. “You can make a fool of me just once.”

“You are definitely quite the hard-ass,” I mocked him.

“Keep it humble, Pellegrini. The longest dick is stuck firmly up your ass right now.”

“You know, I really don't understand the things you say.”

“I know that. You're so stupid it almost makes me pity you.” Just then a cruel desire flashed through my mind with the power and speed of an uppercut. I squinted to enjoy the thought more thoroughly and Tortorelli misunderstood it as a gesture of surrender.

“I'll never understand why the Honorable Brianese ever decided to put all this trust in you,” he added in a disgusted tone. Then he went back to his place behind the cash register. I hurried down to the cellar to look for a special bottle.

I put it down in front of Tortorelli. “A peace offering.”

He looked at me scornfully. “Fine. Thanks very much. Now I have to get back to work.”

I ran my finger over the surface of the bottle. “Notice how thick the glass is. It has to contain pressure of up to ten atmospheres. Look at the beautiful line, the way it runs from the neck down to the base.”

“It's just an ordinary bottle, so what?”

“It's a
prestige cuvée
champagne bottle,” I corrected him. “The queen of bottles.”

“I'll drink it to your health,” he said sarcastically.

“See, now you're the one who doesn't understand,” I said in a mysterious tone before going back to taking care of reservations.

I was sorry I'd treated the bookkeeper that way. I was clearly worn out from the tension and last night I hadn't managed to get back my equilibrium. I blamed Nicoletta. When I told her that she was going to have to go back home and play nursemaid to a Chadian refugee and explained that she was going to get even deeper into a situation where yet another person was going to get badly hurt, she kind of spun out of control. I was forced to become very persuasive. It demanded a lot of work and it took most of the night. I only had time enough to take a shower, and I was forced to forego the extraordinary force of Martina's devotion. That was my last shot at it before shutting down operations for a good long while. In fact, at that very moment, she was already traveling toward the German clinic where she was going to help her mother care for her sick father.

“Think about me,” she said, as she told me goodbye at the door.

I'd have to make do with Gemma, but she was still green. We didn't have the kind of complicity that only time can nurture between two people.

At the end of a dull day I managed to get away from the restaurant and make it to my appointment with Mikhail, to take the Chadian to his new and final home.

Hissène traveled light. A tiny shoulder bag with a couple of T-shirts and some underwear. He climbed into the car without a word. I stayed outside to talk briefly with the Russian.

“I'm starting to hear complaints from the Neapolitans,” he said in a worried voice. “I'm away too much.”

“On Monday, you follow the Lexus and then we'll move.”

“So you have a plan?”

“Sure,” I lied, for no reason.

 

“This is Nicoletta. She's your fairy godmother, she'll take care of you.”

The African was surprised to find himself looking at an elegant white woman and a house that was palatial by his standards.

My former partner held out a hand and he shook it awkwardly. “I'm Hissène.”

She looked at me. “Did you explain the rules to him?”

The Chadian beat me to it. “I can't go out and I can't let myself be seen through the windows, don't use the home phone . . . I know the rules better than both of you, I live in hiding.”

“You're going to have to be patient. Before we act we still have a couple of things to check out.”

“I'm in no hurry,” he said, pointing to the sofa where I'd strangled Isabel. “I'll just get comfortable and watch some satellite TV.”

He pointed to the stairs. “Where's my bedroom?”

“Come on, I'll show you,” said Nicoletta.

I poured myself a drink. Just a drop of amaro. There were a lot of discotheques in that area and plenty of cops with breathalyzers. She came back downstairs after a few minutes.

“I'm going to be afraid to be alone with him.”

“We already talked about that,” I said brusquely. “Any news about the residential hotel?”

She pulled a bunch of keys and a remote control out of her purse. “There's an apartment, directly underneath the one where Ylenia and Brianese fuck, and it's free from Friday afternoons until Monday mornings. The structural engineer who uses it returns home for the weekends and all major holidays.”

“I expected something better.”

A note of exasperation crept into her voice. “You always think that all you have to do is dominate other people's lives and snap your fingers to get whatever you want. That's not how it works.”

“You've been whining since last night.”

“Because I can't do this anymore.”

“Do what? Betray your partners?” I mocked her.

She jabbed her index finger into my chest. “I'm not Martina and I'm definitely not that nutjob Gemma.”

“Calm down. You have a guest.”

“You have to give me a way out, Giorgio, or I'm not going to give a damn what I do next.”

“Seriously?”

“Don't doubt me.”

I knew her too well to think that she was just talking. I sat down and pointed to the bottle of amaro and the empty glass.

“Pour me a drink.”

Nicoletta did as she was told. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. In my previous life I'd met another woman who slid through my fingers. She decided she wouldn't take any more, she rebelled against me, and I lost her forever. Women like that are strange. Once they make up their minds, they don't look back. They're willing to pay any price, no matter how extreme. The woman in front of me was ready to flush everything and everyone down the toilet. I had to accept it and just forget about toying with her life. What a pity. Now the only thing left to do was to try to negotiate terms that wouldn't make me look like a fool. Everthing has a price, and I'd make sure she paid the highest possible price.

“Anything I tell you to do until this business is out of the way,” I ventured, without taking a breath. I paused for a beat. Then I spread my hands slowly. “Then each of us goes our own way. You can leave the city and I never want to see you again.”

“You've got a deal.”

I spread my legs and settled back, getting comfortable. “When people make a deal, there should be a celebration.”

“Right,” she said, sinking to her knees. “Maybe after I'm done with you I'll do the black guy too, just for fun,” she added in a tone of voice I didn't particularly like.

“He might not throw himself at your feet, white goddess,” I shot back viciously. “You're at least ten years older than him.”

 

Gemma had an old record player and a collection of vinyl LPs that her husband hadn't been able to take south with him when he left. Every so often I rummaged through the albums and picked out ones that were crucial to the history of my generation. Records I listened to when I was a young dickhead and wanted to start a revolution. I listened to Jefferson Airplane's
Volunteers
. I'd fallen head over heels for the lead singer, Grace Slick. She was an outrageous babe and she had a warm contralto voice that always gave me a hard-on. Now the new diamond-tip needle that I'd asked my fuck buddy Gemma to buy finally did justice to a well-preserved vinyl copy of
Manhole
, her first solo album. I didn't miss those years in the slightest. Still, there was one good thing to say about that period. Compared to the present, young people had a lot of fun showing the world how ridiculous it was. There was an astounding wave of creativity in every field, from music and film to art and crime. Extraordinary gangs of armed robbers had cleaned out bank vaults with great rock music echoing in their ears and a joint on their lips. Someone in my group of acquaintances had even begun theorizing the concept of creative criminality and contrasting it with the cruel, dull, repetitive crimes committed by the capitalist establishment. What complete horseshit.

I lifted a foot and jammed it between Gemma's thighs. She was dangling exhausted from the ceiling. We'd played astronaut, and I've rarely seen a woman have such an intense orgasm that she went into a brief state of complete delirium. I slowly ran my foot down the length of her leg, and then gave her foot a sharp push so she spun around dizzily.

In those days, organized crime was more effervescent and less oppressive. Evidently even the major crime gangs were affected by the changes sweeping through the world. Then, when the collective dream came to an end and there was a mass of losers in prison doing life without parole, the various international Mafias moved in and globalization decimated any free market competition, so that the sphere of illegal pursuits turned gray and humdrum like everything else.

People like the Palamaras were exactly the same thirty years ago. They were dinosaurs who'd always lived in a culture devoid of any imagination. We on the other hand chanted “all power to the imagination!” I think Marcuse was the one who came up with that chestnut. I stood up and turned over the LP.

“Hey, King of Hearts,” Gemma murmured. “Will you fuck me again?”

I took a look down there. Not a chance. “The kitchen's closed.”

“Take another tablet.”

I'd taken a good deal more than the maximum dose of the blend of Cialis and Peruvian
maca
. “One more milligram could kill me,” I mumbled.

Where was I? I asked myself. I didn't want to lose the thread of my thoughts about imagination because that was exactly what I needed to screw the Calabrians. I knew their way of thinking. I remembered a number of episodes from my time in jail when whoever happened to be capo at the time veered out of control because someone or something had upset the sacrosanct Mafia routine.

Manhole
was a convulsively sensual piece of music. I felt a slow, sinuous discharge of shivers up and down my back. Why the fuck had I deprived myself of that absolute beauty until now? I lifted my leg again and sent my girlfriend's body spinning around.