At the End of a Dull Day (19 page)

I peeked over at Brianese. He was frozen solid with shock. The picture of a man in ruins. And his reaction was so unmistakably sincere that the Calabrians could hardly miss it. Even if his wife and I were both excellent actors, there were good reasons to suspect that both yours truly and the lady of the house might well be pulling the wool over their eyes. Not the Counselor. He was the very picture of sincerity.

Palamara handed back the keys, turned and headed for the door. They were kind enough to drive me back to Gemma's apartment. Giuseppe turned around suddenly and shot me a look. “Still, you must have had something to do with it.”

That wasn't what I'd expected to hear. He would brood over that suspicion endlessly and if he couldn't figure out a plausible alternative, then he'd start up with me again. It wasn't over with the Calabrians yet, but I wasn't worried. I had faith in the resources of creative criminality.

Gemma was stretched out and tied to the kitchen table. I took the gag and blindfold off her.

“King of Hearts,” she stuttered. “I don't like this game.”

I kissed her on the lips and started taking off my clothes. “Now I'll take over, baby, and you'll see I'll drive you crazy.”

My cell phone rang while I was slipping her panties down her legs. It was Brianese. “Come to my law office tomorrow morning.”

“No. The back room is more secure and it's been a while since you've shown your face around La Nena. I'll expect you for an aperitif.”

“So you want to humiliate me right up to the end, don't you?”

“Sure,” I said, and then I hung up.

 

At the end of a dull day, the lawyer and member of the Italian parliament Sante Brianese walked into my restaurant with his usual determined step. He behaved like the consummate actor he was and looked like the happiest man in the world. He shook hands and slapped backs, reeling off wisecracks, ancedotes, and jokes. Finally, he walked into the back room and I followed with a tray of cold cuts and vegetables preserved in oil and a bottle of white wine, the way he liked it.

He ate and drank frantically, the way he did when his stress was out of control. Every so often we exchanged a glance. He didn't really know how to get started or what to say. Events had overwhelmed him. Things had hurtled far out of control. The great thing was that there were still so many things he didn't know about, like Ylenia's betrayal.

I decided to turn the tables. “It's no fun having the 'Ndrangheta in your house, is it, Counselor?” I said. “Once they get their foot in the door it's hard to get rid of them. You need to act smart and be absolutely pitiless and fearless.”

“You dragged my wife into this mess, you son of a bitch,” he hissed furiously. “I don't know what really happened, but if you think you're going to dupe Giuseppe Palamara, you're just an unfortunate fool.”

I grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket and pulled his ear close to my mouth. “I didn't do a thing, but if, just to speculate, I really had arranged for Bookkeeper Tortorelli's disappearance, I can assure you that I'd bury him somewhere on your estate, Counselor. That way, I could confess to that asshole Giuseppe that I'd done it at your orders. It wouldn't save my life, but it would ensure that your life and the lives of your wife and daughters wouldn't be worth shit anymore.”

I released him. He leapt to his feet. “What the hell are you? You're a monster.”

I took offense at that one and I hauled off and slapped him, not very hard, but deeply humiliating for a bigwig like him. “I'm the biggest, baddest wolf of all, Counselor. It's a good thing I'm your friend.”

”What do you want?”

I extended my arms and gripped him by the shoulders. I carefully lowered him into his chair. “I want the Calabrians to stop busting my balls once and for all. Also, I want La Nena to go back to being your favorite restaurant, and last of all, I want the two-and-a-quarter million euros that you owe me. You can pay in installments. I'm in no hurry.”

I poured him some wine and he threw it back in a single gulp. He sighed. “I don't know what to do about the Palama­ras. There's a fellow member of parliament involved and other party leaders in Lombardy— ”

“Don't worry about that. Mafiosi never mention politicians' names, at least until they turn state's witnesses,” I said, crunching my teeth down on a breadstick. “I can direct you to a deputy commissioner of police who's got his hands dirty with a prostitution ring. He could steer certain choice morsels of information to his colleagues in Milan . . . he'd come out of it with a nice glow and you'd be kept out of it entirely.”

He stood up. “Okay. What's his name?”

I told him. He carefully wiped his mouth with his napkin and then filled it with hard mints. He started sucking on the mints pensively. “How did you manage to track down the residential hotel and how did you get a copy of the keys?” he suddenly asked.

I put on an expression of pure astonishment. “I had nothing to do with it. That was your wife's doing.”

“I don't believe that you slept with Ombretta.”

“What does your Signora say?”

“That it's true,” he replied, glaring a challenge at me.

That Signora Marenzi was quite some woman. “Oh, it's true, Counselor. You are one spectacular cuckold,” I said in a jocular tone, imitating the voice of Italy's prime minister.

He shot me a glance of scorching fury. I held out both arms apologetically. “Do you remember that time, in fact it was right here in the back room, after you sold me off to the Palamaras, that you said: ‘Giorgio, you can't imagine how happy I am right now?'” I asked in an exaggeratedly pained tone of voice. “Well, now it's my turn so I hope you don't take it the wrong way if I have my little joke.”

I smoothed his jacket lapel and walked him to the door. He was a cuckold of legendary proportions and a complete piece of shit. I'd just told him that there was a corpse fertilizing his vineyard and all he cared about was whether or not I'd fucked his wife. That got me thinking; I understood that my dealings with my friend Sante were not over.

 

 

P
alamara's thugs kept showing up at my restaurant. Every so often they'd drop by to eat lunch or drink a glass of something. I unfailingly treated them with exquisite and fearful courtesy, never forgetting to send my best wishes to Signor Giuseppe and to Signor Nilo. The real problem was Gemma, who recognized them one evening and went over the edge into something approaching a nervous breakdown. I was forced to take her home and give her a triple dose of Xanax.

One day Giuseppe dropped by in person. He ate heartily and invited me to sit down and help him polish off a bottle of a 2006 Solaia. “Have you put your ring of whores back together?” he asked, after extending his compliments to the chef.

“No, and I'm not going to.”

“Just who was it that used to procure the girls for you?”

I'd been waiting for that question for a while. “From an escort service. As you know all too well, there's an embarassment of riches.”

He flashed me a smile of reproof. “You're trying to pull the fucking wool over my eyes.”

“That's true,” I admitted. “But I don't have anything to do with your problems. If you haven't set your heart at rest about that it just means you've got too much time on your hands.”

He stuck his nose deep into his glass and pretended to be lost in the inebriating perfume of that full-bodied red. “It's not smart to talk to me like that.”

“It wasn't my idea to bring Tortorelli around here and if he took off with your money I certainly didn't help him.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It's what I've been able to come up with given the scanty information available to me.”

“The bookkeeper would never have skipped out of his own free will, Pellegrini. Somebody helped him,” he retorted confidently.

“Well, why should that have been me?”

He laid his finger alongside his nose. “Because you reek.”

“What do I reek of?”

“It's a sort of sickly sweet odor. The smell of flowers, or dead men.”

“Well, let me thank you for that glass of wine and the interesting conversation, Signor Palamara. But I'd better go tend to my customers.”

“Go on, go right ahead. We'll be seeing more of each other.”

He left without paying, as if La Nena were his personal property. He'd dropped by to let me know me that he'd figured it out: I'd organized the knockover with the same gang of people that supplied me with prostitutes. He'd come to that conclusion by ruling out all other possibilities and now he was certain of it. Let a little more time go by and he'd track down Mikhail Sholokhov, but he'd be able to identify Nicoletta in less time than that. I tried calling her to warn her, but the number was no longer in service. After all, I had told her she'd better disappear.

I complained to Brianese about the way the Calabrian boss was still on my case, but he wasn't particularly helpful. As far as he knew, the investigation was being slow-tracked and it would be several months before the magistrates were ready to sign arrest warrants.

The Counselor showed that he'd learned his lesson and he did everything possible to bring the old clientele back to La Nena. He'd come in with Ylenia and with Nicola, his personal assistant, and everything seemed to have gone back to normal.

I decided I could tell Martina to come home. Her father's health hadn't improved, but it had been a useful exercise from many points of view and it had made things easier for her sisters for a good long period of time.

The night before she returned I talked to Gemma and spelled things out clearly. “Martina is my wife and you're just my lover; you can be replaced in five minutes.”

“I'll be a very good girl, King of Hearts,” she promised in a piping toddler's voice.

Later that night, while I was watching an episode of my favorite television show,
Justified
, and absentmindedly fondling Gemma's tits, I asked her if she'd heard from Nicoletta. She told me she hadn't seen her or heard from her in a while.

The next morning I swung by my ex-partner's little villa. The front door and the windows were wide open and there were a couple of painters working in the front hallway. I stopped and asked whether the house was for sale. They weren't Italian and showed no signs of wanting to talk to me. I pulled out twenty euros and offered to trade it for the phone number of whoever had hired them. In authentic Veneto dialect the painter told me that the house had already been sold and that they'd been hired by the new owner.

I organized a little party at La Nena to celebrate my darling's return home. I hired a duo, guitarist and vocalist, who specialized in covers of songs by Lucio Battisti.

Martina came straight to the restaurant from the train station and when she walked in the musicians began playing
The Man Who Loves You
.

 

Oh! Woman you are mine,

And when I say mine

I mean you're not leaving:

You'd better stay here

And make love in my bed!

 

It was an excellent return on 200 euros. She was deeply moved, she ran across the room and threw herself into my arms in front of the roomful of customers. They burst into applause and were sufficiently supportive to deserve a round of prosecco on the house.

I had lots of work to take care of so I couldn't spend more than a few minutes with her. Gemma looked after her and made sure that Martina was comfortable and relaxed. I'd told Gemma to ask Martina lots of questions about her experiences in Germany, so that she'd already be sick of talking about it by the time she got home.

She was waiting for me in the bathroom for the ritual of creams and ointments, which I'd really been missing. She started touching herself but stopped almost immediately. “Please, I want you to take over.”

I went over to where she stood by the sink and satisfied her request. Then I took her to bed where we made love for a long time and fell asleep with our arms wrapped around each other.

After breakfast she talked to me for exactly half an hour, about her father, the clinic, and her life in Lahnstein with her mother. I noticed that she was a good storyteller. She knew how to put a listener at ease.

Then she spoiled it all while I was leaving for work. “I can see you almost never slept here.”

“So?”

“When I was all alone in Germany I sensed that you were with another woman.”

I took her chin in my hand. “I don't want to talk about it. It's been a tough period.”

“It has been for a while now, Giorgio.”

“In fact, tonight I'm going to need all your devotion. Can I count on that?”

“You know you can.”

According to my calculations, Brianese must be in Rome and that reckoning was confirmed when I saw Ylenia come into the restaurant alone. The last thing she wanted to do was drop by La Nena for an aperitif but she had no choice. I greeted her with the usual kiss on the cheek and told her to come join me in the back room.

“I urgently need to get in touch with Nicoletta Rizzardi to warn her about a certain situation . . . ”

“Have you lost her phone number?”

“It's no longer in service and she must be out of town. I want you to get in touch with her brother for me.”

“Is that all?”

I didn't need anything else but she'd been bitchy enough that it was always useful to remind her that I was the last person on earth that she could afford to disrespect.

“No,” I answered rudely. “Have you moved your little love nest yet?”

“We will soon.”

“Ombretta didn't like the interior decoration.”

“So I heard.”