At the End of a Dull Day (8 page)

I had to pretend that I was happy about the designation of my establishment, but I was actually seething with rage. The Counselor went on relentlessly mocking me. I forced myself to make my usual round of the tables with a smile on my lips.

“So Gemma, are you withstanding the temptation to light a cigarette?” I asked when I got to the table where she was having dinner with Martina.

“Certainly,” she answered proudly.

“Just think, she's even given up her usual aperitif tonight, to stand by me in my new alcohol-free regimen,” my wife broke in.

I looked at her in surprise. “Good girl!” Then I turned to my wife: “Do you think she's finally made up her mind to find herself a man?”

Gemma blushed. I gave her a paternal pinch on the cheek and moved on to another table.

I thought about Martina, about saying to her: “Spinning, baby, spinning,” and the peace and quiet that would come next, when I'd finally have a chance to think clearly.

A little before closing time De Palma came back. “The secretary Ylenia is screwing the Honorable Brianese,” he announced. “You know those residential hotels, designed for discretion, where you park in the underground structure and use the elevator to get upstairs?”

He waited for me to nod in agreement before continuing. “This one's outside of town and the apartment's in the name of a company, Nasco Costruzioni SpA, that officially uses it as accommodations for the structural engineers that come in from out of town.”

“How did you manage to find out all this information at this time of night?”

He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his down jacket. “A phone call to the right person.”

The two partners who owned Nasco had attended a number of dinner parties in the back room with Brianese and enjoyed the charms of my girls. But I was careful not to tell that to the private investigator.

“I want to know if you're asking me to keep pursuing this trail,” he asked me.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I'd prefer to know exactly what you're looking for, rather than running the risk of finding out things I really don't want to be involved in. I can smell a distinctive aroma of shit and of politics too, but I can't say which of the two smells is stronger.”

“You've been frank and I want to be just as clear. I want to know exactly how many hairs there are on the ass of Signorina Ylenia Mazzonetto, and if you happen to find out anything else, I'm ready and willing to pay the difference.”

“There's no need. You're a good client and this is a nice place with good food and good drink.”

He sketched out something like a military salute and turned to go.

So I'd seen clearly: Brianese and Ylenia were in a relationship and I found out late. Doing my best to be an upright and honest citizen for eleven years had made me blind, foolish, and defenseless. The Counselor had figured that out and decided that I deserved to be ripped off to the tune of two million euros. I had reacted and he'd been forced to adopt a counterstrategy to keep me on ice, but the message was unmistakable: he was still and would always remain the stronger one.

I was deeply uninterested in trying to see whose dick was longer. My only objective was to get my hands onto the 2.25 million euros that he owed me.

Time seemed to stand still. I needed Martina and the incessant swishing of the freewheel of the spinner bike. I locked up the bar and was walking briskly home when I happened to cross paths with three girls out strolling, carefree, chatting and smoking. I changed direction.

“I wasn't expecting you,” said Gemma in a voice that quavered slightly.

I extended my foot inside the door and then withdrew it quickly. “I can come in or I can pretend I was never here. What should I do?”

She swallowed. “You can come in, if you want.”

I did the same thing with my foot, but very slowly this time. “This game has different rules: I'll come in only if you ask me. I promise you, though, if I come in, nothing will ever be the same.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I just want you to be well aware of what's going to happen,” I murmured. “I'm the Big Bad Wolf, and I gobble up Little Red Riding Hood and then I take the grandmother and the hunter and I fuck them both in the ass.”

She closed her eyes to enjoy the shiver that was running up and down her back. “Come in.”

I left the apartment a few hours later. Gemma, nude and drunk, was smoking and crying, curled up on a sofa.

My wife was on the sofa too. She must have waited up for me and then fallen asleep. On the large and expensive plasma screen scenes from an old television series were flowing past. I went to take a shower to get the smell of Gemma off me.

“Sorry if I fell asleep,” Martina apologized the next morning as she poured my coffee. “You must have come home late and I didn't hear you.”

I said nothing. I just looked at her. Actually I was thinking about something else, and specifically I was musing that I couldn't believe that Brianese would take the risk of making use of a network of women of easy virtue without a corresponding certificate guaranteeing total discretion. He had too much at risk and for the most part his business partners were individuals of the stature of Domenico Beccaro, ready to engage in foolish and reckless behavior with women very different from the ones they'd married, and then brag about it like little boys. My beautiful girls, in contrast, were fleeting apparitions between silk sheets in the beds of unfamiliar villas, and even if cops and investigating magistrates focused on reconstructing dates, locations, and situations, they wouldn't be able to lay their hands on anything solid.

As far as I knew, there were no organizations capable of offering that same level of security. The only possible explanation was that Brianese himself had assigned one of his clients to take care of it, and suggested the proper methods and procedures.

I grabbed Martina by the shoulders. “I'm expecting you to come up with something appropriate tonight.”

She heaved a sigh of relief. “Of course, darling. Tell me how you'd like me to . . . ”

I raised my voice slightly. “Maybe for once you could make the effort and use a little imagination, what do you think?”

 

Nicoletta arranged to meet me in a shopping mall in a neighboring province where she had paid a call on a woman she worked for. She had the Chinese girl with her. She'd named her Lin. She'd given the same name to all the Chinese girls she'd managed before this one. They were all the same to her.

“Go look at some shop windows,” I ordered Lin.

“Are you in a bad mood? Is there some problem?” my partner asked.

“Brianese has cut us off. At least until after the elections.”

“Is there a reason?”

“He said he doesn't want to run risks.”

“Bullshit,” she snarled. “During election campaigns all of them fuck like rabbits. Orgies, betrayals, new alliances, expressions of gratitude. You name it, it's an occasion for sex . . . ”

“Well, whatever the reason, we're out. We need to make a decision.”

“Shutting down the operation makes no sense,” Nicoletta shot back with determination. “We have the girls, the houses, we know how to do this . . . it'll be tough at first but in a few months we can put together a nice network of customers.”

“What kind of network?” I asked. “There'll never be enough of a critical mass just working with foreign businessmen and I can't send you people from La Nena or even spread the word. That's the easiest way to wind up in jail.”

“I've made investments and I can't risk losing everything.”

“Neither can I,” I said to myself, thinking of La Nena. “In a little while time's up for this group of girls,” I announced. “And while on the one hand we're technically in the black because we sell them for twice what we paid for them, on the other hand we have to dress them, train them . . . I don't think it's worth it.”

“I agree. I think we need to hold onto these four until we can get through the crisis.” She could see I was skeptical. “Trust me. I have these girls living in a world of cocks, lingerie, reality shows, and South American and Chinese soap operas. They don't know anything dangerous.”

I wasn't completely convinced, but maybe it was worth giving it a try for a few months; after all, in terms of sales we wouldn't be losing anything.

“All right,” I snorted with some exasperation. “Keep me posted. I'll take a look around and see if we can find a politician to take Brianese's place, though I don't have very high hopes.”

As I headed back into the center of town I did some rough calculations. With the revenue from the election campaign I'd be able to cut La Nena's losses considerably, but I'd still have to put a little of my own money into it to close the books without a loss, and the whores weren't bringing in the money that they used to. It was a mess. My future increasingly hung from the money that Brianese had promised to pay me back.

 

Three days later, Roby De Palma showed up at lunchtime. “Do you have a minute to drop by my office this afternoon?”

“Today we're serving pasta fagioli and baccalà alla vicentina, accompanied by a spectacular red Tokaj,” I tempted him. “If you want, pick a table and we can chat after you have dessert.”

He pointed to a couple that was enjoying an antipasto made of shredded air-dried horsemeat. “I'll sit over there. The man is a dentist and I need a couple of cavities filled . . . ”

Martina was tired. She'd taken care of her father all morning. I took pity on her and told the waiter to bring her a slice of
pinza
, a pastry dating back to the earliest Venetian tradition, made of cornmeal and dried fruit. She blew me a kiss from the table.

At 2:30 on the dot the kitchen closed, and latecomers had to settle for sandwiches and cold dishes. Roby De Palma was sipping his second grappa when I waved to him to join me in the back room.

“I've never been in here,” he said.

“It used to be a private space, for corporate clients only, but now I'm making it available to all my clients. Even the biggest companies are trying to save money these days.”

The private investigator booted up a laptop. “After we're done I'll give you a flash drive with the report and the pictures.”

I sat down beside him. “Did you find what I'm looking for?”

“I couldn't say,” he said. “I just know I'm not taking this any further.”

“You must have your good reasons.”

“I don't want to make any enemies,” he said. “In this line of work, I can make a very nice living if I stick to the lower levels, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“Should I start from the day she was born or should I skip the preliminaries?”

“Get straight to the point, Roby.”

He clicked on a folder containing photographs and started scrolling through them. Each picture had a date and location. “Our fair Ylenia doesn't go with Brianese to Rome but she's never in the office either,” he started to narrate the images. “She meets plenty of people all over the Veneto, most of them in the light of day . . . ”

“She's drumming up votes for her boss.”

“Sure. But sometimes she acts a little funny,” he added in an ironic tone of voice. “She meets people in odd places, like at gymnasiums, department stores, parking structures . . . Now do you understand why I'd just as soon bring this investigation to a close?”

I was about to answer him when I suddenly recognized a person who was talking with Ylenia in the coffee shop of a major bookstore outside of Treviso; my blood ran cold when I checked the date.

“That woman's been a regular in your restaurant for years,” the private investigator commented.

“She's the only one who has nothing to do with the alleged business dealings of Brianese and Mazzonetto,” I lied, doing my best to be persuasive. “Nicoletta Rizzardi sells lingerie to all the women she knows. She supplies my wife regularly as well. They meet after her Pilates class.”

I had the impression he'd taken me at my word. He showed me a few more photographs, which I looked at without paying any attention at all, then he turned off his computer. “When do I get paid?” he asked in a flat, pragmatic tone of voice.

“Come by tonight, I'll buy you an aperitif.”

I walked him to the door and then returned to my post at the cash register. Good old Nicoletta! Even my business partner had decided to screw me. I'd been racking my brains trying to figure out who was supplying Brianese with call girls that met my security standards and all along it had been me. I'd even let them take my whores away from me. By now it was clear that the Counselor had laid out a strategy to ensure that I could no longer do him any harm while he enjoyed the benefits of my money, or perhaps to ruin me, or worse, to destroy me.

Then and there I felt like going to see Nicoletta, load her into my car along with the other girls, and pay a call on the Maltese gangsters. I'd be rid of her for good, just like all the other girls that we'd managed and dispatched to our various clients as call girls. But that would have been a mistake. Another in a long succession of mistakes. The time had come to remember who I once was, what I'd done to get ahead.

I'd shot my best friend in the head, I'd betrayed, cheated, raped, robbed, and eliminated anyone who got in the way of my reaching my objective.

They'd all known a different man, a man who was willing to do anything to please people and to be accepted. None of them had even the slightest idea of who Giorgio Pellegrini really was.

I
spent a little time verifying Nicoletta's betrayal. It didn't take much: all I had to do was keep an eye on the villas. I eliminated all doubt the day I saw Brianese step out of a Porsche Panamera along with two members of the provincial administration and a well-known face from local television, only to be greeted at the door by my partner.