Gang of Lovers (14 page)

Sometimes blackmail wasn't enough. Then it became necessary to resort to threats, depriving the half of the couple who had the money of the company of the other half. I had put together a little gang. Two brothers, Furio and Toni Centra, failed dental technicians who had gone out of business not only because of the larger financial crisis but also because of their general lack of interest in hard work, held my guests hostage for a reasonable fee in the cellar of their now defunct company. These were very short periods of captivity and none of my targets were taken by force. They all believed that they were going to an appointment where they would finally be able to resolve this extremely unpleasant episode, and instead they soon found themselves bound and gagged. They were treated well, all things considered. The Centra brothers had only gone overboard once, with a woman who owned a perfumery, the wife of a well-known chief physician with outsized ambitions; she was having an affair with another woman who was prominent in hard-right Catholic circles.

Certain that they'd be curing her of her homosexuality, they'd gotten a shade too enthusiastic and it hadn't been easy to hush the matter up.

In spite of the fact that we were able to act with impunity, a product of our victims' guaranteed silence, I'd decided that the Swiss woman and her professor would be our last marks, reasoning that any criminal activity tends to have a short shelf life. And also because, as Italian children like to say, “
il gioco è bello se dura poco
”—“the best games don't last too long.” And I was already getting sick of this one. I wanted to move on to something else, though exactly what I wasn't sure. My comfortable economic position allowed me to take my time looking around.

The two of them had come in one night and I'd immediately taken a shine to them. She belonged to that slice of the upper class almost entirely unknown in Veneto. There were just the few prominent families that had controlled most of the land since the time of the Venetian Doges, and eventually ended up in industry, but you'd never find any of them in my restaurant. They knew all about my troubles with Brianese and avoided me. They considered me well beneath their notice.

He, on the other hand, was truly insignificant. He was unassuming in his appearance, dress, and tastes. Once, pouring him a glass of wine from a hundred-euro bottle she had obviously chosen, I'd caught the scent of a cologne he'd applied liberally and which I knew cost half that much. The two of them came from distant universes, fate had brought them together and then set in motion that strange alchemy that made them fall in love and then walk into my restaurant.

Because between the two of them it was true love. Without a doubt. An island of sincere feeling in a dining room full of people who didn't know the meaning of either of those words. Including—especially—me. So I decided that this couple would be the perfect capstone to my brief foray into crimes against illicit lovers.

Two months to gather the necessary information. The weak link was undoubtedly Guido Di Lello.

He surrendered immediately and unconditionally. I intercepted him as he was leaving the university in Venice and showed him, on my cell phone, a picture I'd taken at La Nena.

I invited him to come have an espresso with me, and he followed me like a steer to the slaughter. When I told him that my goal was to relieve his lover of a little of her cash, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was willing to do anything I asked in order to get off scot-free. I had a little fun humiliating him, making him tell me every detail of their relationship, even the most intimate ones.

It was easy to get him to go along with a fake kidnapping. Half a day, at the very most. Oriana would get out her jewels, cross the border, and once she'd handed over the “ransom,” he'd go back to living his life.

“Here's a piece of advice,” I said as I drove him over to the Centra brothers, who would host him for as long as it would take—obviously much longer than I had promised him. “Forget about secret affairs. You're not built for this kind of complicated relationship, you're too weak and cowardly.”

He burst into tears, and I pretended to be surprised.

The plan that I'd considered conceptually perfect was flawlessly implemented, and still it turned into a resounding defeat thanks to one simple fact: the wealthy matron refused to pay the ransom. She simply cut all ties and vanished. She abandoned the man of her dreams to his fate. Those two really were hilarious. They'd sworn undying love, and then each had betrayed the other in the worst possible way without batting an eyelash.

That big Swiss slut needed to be punished. I could have done it by making public her affair with the professor, but that would have attracted the attention of the cops.

Instead I went to see the Centra brothers and ordered them to kill the hostage. A job that was handsomely paid, of course. Furio and Toni were a pair of thoroughly debauched individuals. They had both reached their forties without being able to construct any lasting personal relationships. They devoted their emotional lives to whores, whores they paid for with the cash they always seemed in desperate need of, seeing as they'd never been able to make good use of their skills. Coarse and ignorant, they hated all that was different, all that was foreign to the Venetian boondocks where they lived. Like Guido Di Lello: an intellectual, a Roman, a musician on the side, who didn't even understand dialect and only spoke in proper Italian. The idea of rubbing out this parasite excited them.

I just loved the Centra brothers, monsters who escaped all suspicion, waiting to be shaped and pushed toward unimaginable excesses. Tools as useful as they were expendable. I had met them through an old partner of mine in the prostitution business; she used to arrange for them to enjoy a girl's company once a month. None of the girls wanted to make herself available to those two, and I had to remind them more than once of the rules of their employment. Intrigued by their reputations as filthy swine, one time I accompanied a recalcitrant Dominican prostitute who was going to meet them and instantly sniffed out the rot at their core. I only had to pretend to like them a little, and Furio and Toni soon threw open the abyss of their hearts and minds to me.

Even though more than a year had passed, I still couldn't find the words to describe the way in which the professor had faced his death. He was certainly terrified but there was something in his eyes that suggested he was somehow too dismayed to beg for pity. He was tortured until I finally grew bored with his screams and his suffering. Then they hammered him to death. I convinced the two brothers to bury the corpse in the garden behind the building that had once housed their little operation as dental technicians; that meant I'd have one more chip to bargain with if and when relations between us went south.

I repaid Signora Oriana Pozzi Vitali in the same currency: silence. I was hoping that uncertainty over her lover's fate and a sense of guilt would turn her life into a living hell. Instead, she managed to surprise me a second time by hiring two mercenaries to find out who'd kidnapped and murdered her professor.

I wasn't afraid of them. There was just one thing. After a long search, I'd finally found one last pair of lovers who could adequately make up for the slap in the face I'd taken from that Swiss woman, and before I could move forward I'd have to make sure those two amateur sleuths surrendered, confronted with the fact that there was no way to get to the bottom of what had happened.

 

Federico Togno showed up around lunchtime. I didn't have any empty tables, so I seated him at the bar. I took care of my customers while he chowed down on
tagliatelle ai funghi
, noodles in a nice mushroom sauce.

A building contractor who wanted to make a good impression on a few clients he'd invited to lunch took me aside and asked me to pick the wines to accompany the meal; money was no object. I took a quick look at what they had ordered so I could get an idea of what would go with what. “It'll cost you about a thousand euros,” I informed him, aiming high.

“That's fine. The main thing is I want to make sure that my guests know it.”

“Leave that to me.”

Once I was done playing the part of a sommelier overjoyed at the chance to finally serve such fine vintages, I managed to get over to my trusted snoop.

“Well?”

“Marco Buratti and Max the Memory. They used to work as unlicensed private detectives,” he said, handing me a file folder. “But no one's seen them around here in years. At a certain point they sold off everything they owned and disappeared. Brigadier Stanzani says they're harmless.”

As I skimmed the Carabinieri reports I glimpsed a name that gave me a shock: Beniamino Rossini. People who had made an enemy of that man had lived to bitterly regret ever tangling with him.

“Has Rossini been spotted?”

“No. Apparently he lives in Lebanon.”

I nodded with satisfaction. Just as well. I could handle those two assholes but their badass friend would be a tough nut to crack even for someone of my caliber.

“Keep following them.”

He made a face. “It's Maria José's birthday.”

“This is an emergency and it's not as if you're doing me a favor, since I give you a paycheck every month.”

“You're right, it's just that my wife was really counting on it and she's going to hold a grudge. You know yourself what women are like.”

I smiled. “Put the blame on that heartless bastard of a boss of yours. You'll see, she won't bust your chops.”

The phone rang. I immediately recognized the voice that wished to reserve a table. It was the woman of the couple I had in my sights.

“For you, there's always a table, Signora Moscati,” I chirped. And then I wondered how she'd come up with that surname as an alibi. Perhaps it was the name of an old schoolmate or a neighbor. I couldn't wait to get the chance to ask.

T
hree more restaurants and we'd be done with the list the Swiss lady had given us.

“I'm not going to remind you that I warned you,” Max said. “In terms of food and wine it's been interesting, but personally I can't wait to get back into the kitchen.”

“You're getting old.”

He waved his forefinger in my face vehemently. “No. I've reached a degree of maturity in my work at the stove, both theoretically and in practice, so that I feel the need to express myself in my own medium, just as any other artist would.”

“You're getting old,” I reiterated firmly. “Left-wing radicals in their fifties like you, left behind by history, have all been infected with the cooking virus; it's an epidemic that's spreading faster than Ebola because it's hitting even greater numbers. In fact, like any epidemic, it's cutting across class lines throughout society. Old and young, left-wing and right-wing, women and men, straight and gay, atheists and believers.”

“So what?”

I shrugged. “I was just venting,” I explained. “After all the crap they've been stuffing us with in these restaurants, I'm feeling a little bloated. Every trend has its observant orthodox ballbusters.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder with an affectionate gesture. “To tell the truth, some of them were pretty heavy-handed, trying to palm pompous names, fashionable chefs, over-adventurous wine lists off on us,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming. “Luckily you can count on me and my cuisine, in which the concepts of the regional and the seasonal merge with a bioethical vision of globalization.”

I pulled out my cell phone.

“What are you doing?” asked the fat man.

“Making a reservation at Alberto all'Anfora.”

My partner raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Whatever you say. Let's make it at eight, so we have time to drink a spritz together in the piazza.”

Actually, Max went to have a spritz in the piazza alone, because he categorically refused to go with me to meet Cam­pagna in a bar just outside of town that was popular with retirees. The furnishings hadn't been replaced since the seventies, and neither had the bartender behind the bar.

“The white wine's decent here,” the cop recommended.

“I don't think you invited me to this out-of-the-way little dive just so I could sample the wine.”

“I bought five euros' worth of Indian jujubes and they were soft. This time of the year they ought to be hard and crunchy. The fact is that the heat isn't letting up,” he told me, without bothering to reply. “Then the cold air pours down from the north and we get hit with hurricanes, cyclones, and all the crops are ruined. It's always the countryside that pays the price.”

“Should I be noticing the pun on your surname, because
la campagna
means the countryside?”

“Certainly. Giulio Campagna, country cop, at your service,” he hissed sarcastically.

I stood up. “You certainly know how to try my patience.”

At that point he grabbed my arm. “Sit down, Buratti. I need to talk to you.”

“As long as you've exhausted your store of bullshit.”

He told me to go to hell, waving one hand in the air dismissively. “The other night there was a pretty decent little raid in a local hotel,” he began to explain. “My colleagues had come to learn that there was an arrangement between the owners and a ring of escorts who used a certain number of hotel rooms without registering the IDs of the guests. One of these young ladies has a long-standing relationship with a drug dealer who's on the run from the law, so they understandably figured that he too might be making use of this facility to see her.

“No such luck. The woman was there with a traveling salesman from Varese who had made a reservation with her through a website two weeks previous. Now, I ask you: how does a guy know so far ahead and with such precision that fourteen days from now he's going to feel like fucking a professional? Does he have preprogrammed erections?”