Gang of Lovers (17 page)

There was a period when I'd kill time until sleep came by pigging out on TV shopping shows. Now the television landscape offered something better: a voyeuristic tour of poverty in the great land of America. The message was always the same: “Go fuck yourselves. It's up to you to pay the costs of the great recession.”

 

The next morning, for no particular reason, I decided to grow out my mustache. It just seemed like a good idea and I looked forward to the day with a mild surge of enthusiasm. I got in my car and headed for La Nena, where I planned to have breakfast, both to mark my territory and to annoy Pellegrini and Togno. When I got there, I found neither. I leafed through a newspaper and sated my hunger with a cappuccino and a pastry, which the menu informed me would cost an arm and a leg. As always, the place was packed with people chatting, laughing, making deals. Five bejeweled ladies were seated near me, intently attacking a tray of
tramezzino
sandwiches and a bottle of pinot grigio. After exhausting the unusual September weather as a subject, they moved on to parish priests. To my surprise they favored a changing of the guard, the advent of a younger generation. They were sick and tired of old priests with backward ideas about separation and divorce and as I listened it became clear that each of them could boast of one or more controversial cases in their own families.

But at a certain point the youngest supplied the boundaries delimiting this group's concept of change. “Just so long as some fresh-faced young priest straight out of the seminary doesn't come along and decide to welcome a herd of Roma into the parish church or else organize a used clothing drive for convicts,” she said, to a chorus of approval. “I mean, already nobody seems to know what this new pope has in mind.”

I would gladly have continued following this debate, but just then the proprietor made his entrance. Pellegrini noticed me almost instantly, and came over to my table flaunting an exaggerated smile, far too big given the degree of our acquaintance.

“I'm so happy you've come in to sample our breakfasts. Every ingredient is carefully selected,” he said in a jovial voice.

“I certainly hope so, considering the prices you charge,” I thought to myself, returning his smile.

“Your friend decided not to come?”

“No, not today.”

He moved closer and lowered his voice. “The fact that you've come back means that yesterday's unfortunate incident has already been forgotten, right?”

“Certainly,” I replied, doing my best to be convincing.

I couldn't pull it off. Pellegrini made that clear to me by shooting me an icy glance.

He turned on his heel and headed straight for the table where the ladies were dining, cheerfully scattering compliments on their outfits, handbags, hairstyles, and makeup, provoking ecstatic reactions. The man had a way about him. He was a true professional when it came to coddling customers. While I was paying the check, an attractive woman of about thirty-five, drinking an espresso at the counter, started staring at me and smiling in a manner that was extremely discreet but also unmistakable. I smiled back just long enough to figure out she was a housewife who was hooking on weekday mornings, when she was free from family obligations. I waved goodbye and headed out the door to my Å koda, which waited faithfully in the parking lot.

But I'd gone less than fifty yards when I ran into Gemma, who was walking wearily and with a bored expression.

“Breakfast at La Nena, I'll bet,” she said without bothering to say hello.

“That's right. And you're going in for breakfast now?”

She checked the time on her cell phone. “Yes, well, actually I'm killing time until Martina's done with her zumba class.”

“You two are inseparable,” I said, not thinking.

She decided to have some fun with me. “We live together, in fact,” she explained, staring at me. “Her, me, and Giorgio.”

My curiosity piqued, I accepted the challenge. “A ménage à trois?”

“There's nothing wrong with that, don't you agree?”

“Nothing at all.” I decided that she wanted to chat and that maybe she could give me some information about Togno, since she and Pellegrini's wife spent so much time in the restaurant.

“Can I treat you to an espresso, Gemma?” I asked, using her given name for the first time.

“Gladly,” she replied, without a second's hesitation. “It's been quite a while since another man invited me to spend a little time with him.”

“You're living in a relationship that's become too exclusive.”

She broke into a forced laugh that clearly revealed the mask this melancholy woman hid behind, devastated as she was by a complicated existence she didn't seem at all proud of.

She linked arms with me and walked me to a very unpretentious café overlooking a piazza crowded with stalls.

She ordered a glass of red wine and a couple of meatballs. She'd get along famously with Max. I settled for a glass of prosecco.

“I'd recognized him, you know?” she said suddenly.

“Who?”

“The man in the picture you showed to me and Martina. Professor Di Lello.”

“Had you seen him at La Nena?”

“Plus on TV, and in the papers. I'm a girl who likes to keep up with the news, you know?”

“But you didn't say anything the other night.”

“At La Nena discretion is the first rule, and the second, and the third.”

“Giorgio said that he didn't remember him.”

“Neither did Martina,” she replied in an ambiguous tone of voice. Then she ordered seconds on wine and meatballs. She didn't kid around in the morning either.

I wanted to ask her about Togno but there was something unsettling about that woman that kept me from dismissing her entirely.

“You don't take care of yourself the way your girlfriend does,” I said frankly, pointing to her plate and glass.

She snickered. “I'm the lady's companion. I can't be perfect, quite the opposite. My defects have to be as evident as possible, to please my lord and his lady.”

I stared at her, trying to gauge if she was serious. She smiled and tapped me sharply on the hand. “I'm only kidding.”

“Do you know Federico Togno?” I asked. “He's always hanging around at La Nena.”

She didn't answer. “Why are you and that fat friend of yours looking for the professor?”

I took the time I needed to construct an adequate answer, certain that every word I said would be reported back to Pellegrini.

“There's a person who's suffering and can't seem to put her heart at rest, and she's asked us to help her.”

“His sweetheart?”

I avoided the question. “The tragedy of being forced to live without news of a person you love is a terrible thing, and in time it becomes intolerable. There's nothing that can alleviate that suffering. Nothing.”

Gemma grabbed her glass. “Not even this?” she asked, trying to quiet the anxiety I'd provoked in her.

I wasn't trying to be cruel, but I kept after her. I was precise and detailed, feeling sure I'd be able to break through her armor of self-destructive cynicism. Toward the end, I asked her once more about Togno.

She didn't answer this time either. She preferred to slip into ambiguity, her favorite territory.

“Giorgio is a king of hearts,” she said. “What kind of king are you?”

“Maybe I don't want to be a king at all,” I replied at random.

She shook her head in disappointment and started to get up. I took her hand.

“Can I give you my cell phone number?”

“What for?” she asked warily.

“Maybe you'll feel like calling me sometime.”

“All you want from me is answers,” she retorted bitterly. “There's nothing else you're interested in.”

It was the right time to lie to her. Gemma was ready to believe anything as long as I made her think I was attracted to her.

Instead I remained silent. That woman was strange and unhappy, she deserved respect. In my world there was no such thing as a lady's companion.

She picked up her cell phone and entered my number, then left the café with her head down. She stopped to dry her eyes and light a cigarette. I followed her to a building in the center of town that housed the gym where Martina went to stay in shape. When Martina emerged, Gemma greeted her with a smile and told her something that made her laugh. They walked together, stopping to look at shop windows, then they went into La Nena.

 

Max called toward evening. “I'm coming back on the last train. Make sure there's something for me to eat.”

I was the least suitable person imaginable to entrust with the task of satisfying a fat man with culinary pretentions. I hurried out to the finest deli in the neighborhood where I was advised by a woman whose only fault lay in her portions, which tended to be overlarge.

After a quick sprint over to the wine shop I headed home and killed time drinking spritzes and watching TV. While channel surfing I happened upon a show about medical cases that featured the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who weighed 675 pounds. His mother, scarred by the death of her first child, stuffed her second-born like a French goose, until he eventually turned into a statue made of lard, partially reclining under a canopy. To save his life, with the financial assistance of the television network, they finally rushed him to the hospital in a fire engine and there he became, for all intents and purposes, a body to be snipped at, weighed, and displayed whenever the opportunity arose. His mother kept bringing him “a little something” to snack on, but since she was a cast member, no one dared to shoo her away much less banish her.

I changed the channel when it became evident that that kid had no chance of ever leading a normal life again. The TV crew had showed up too late.

A fucked-up story, but one I couldn't stop thinking about as I walked toward the train station. That night I wanted to keep my mind free of all thoughts until Max returned.

My friend and partner stepped off the train, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Of course, the air conditioning wasn't working,” he said, plunging into a ferociously articulate jeremiad against the management of the Italian railroads.

“So what did you find out?” I asked abruptly.

He gestured for me to offer him a cigarette. “Sorry,” he muttered, “I'm a little shook up.”

“Pellegrini?”

“A real piece of shit,” he decreed. “He was a member of one of the splinter groups in the larger solar system of freebooters in the armed political struggle, but then one day he and a partner set off a bomb and by mistake blew up a security guard who was about to retire, an old guy just making his rounds on a bicycle.

“The only thing left for them to do was to run, and the two of them soon found themselves carrying AK-47s in the ranks of a liberation movement in a country in Central America. I'm skipping over lots of details, but soon his young lordship got tired of the struggle and went back to Europe alone, because his comrade had met a bad end. First he stopped in Paris, where he announced that he had absolutely no intention of paying his debt to society, and then went on to openly blackmail his old comrades: either they were going to find a diehard militant already serving life without parole who'd be willing to cop to the crimes he was accused of, or he'd testify against everyone who was still walking around free, whether innocent or guilty.

“The others gave in of course, and he turned himself in at the border. He got off with a short stint in prison, where he distinguished himself by his disgraceful behavior, but he failed to hold up his end of the bargain after all, and named all the people he'd promised to protect to the DIGOS. And even though none of them actually wound up behind bars, they all found themselves forced to at least make a show of collaborating with the police. Luckily for them, it was all over by then, the organization no longer existed, and after a couple of years they were left alone.”

I was stunned. It was hardly news that some had avoided prison by blackmailing the people with whom they'd once shared dreams and decisions, but it was clear that Pellegrini had the background and the skill set to lead the gang of lovers, or the gang that was kidnapping them anyway. There was no concrete proof, but by now I felt sure of it.

“It's him,” I said.

“Yes,” Max agreed. “In Milan, in great secrecy, they introduced me to one of their trusted lawyers, and he told me that he'd run into Pellegrini while defending a member of the Maltese mafia. Apparently Pellegrini had been implicated in a prostitution and human trafficking ring, but suddenly his name disappeared from the investigator's files.”

“Friends in high places.”

“Sante Brianese,” my partner confirmed. “Now he's fallen into disgrace but the attorney in question helped handsome Giorgio to clean up his image and open La Nena.”

“Costly operations,” I commented. “It's fair to wonder where he found the cash.”

We lit two more cigarettes and smoked in silence as we walked through the streets in the center of town.

“We need a plan,” I said suddenly, thinking that what we really needed was old Rossini and his pistols.

“Right. But first we need to eat. Good ideas stay far away from empty stomachs.”

On Corso Milano, a line of cars was parked alongside the porticoes onto which shops and bars looked out. At that hour, they were all closed. A man emerged from the shadows, his face wrapped in a scarf, his right arm extended, his right hand gripping a pistol.

“He's got a gun!” shouted Max as he lunged at me and shoved me to one side.

Two shots rang out and a second later my friend's oversized body slid to the ground. The stranger fired again but these shots missed their mark. Then he took off, vanishing down a narrow side street.

I leaned over the fat man. He was moaning in pain and losing a lot of blood from his back and side. I felt as if I was losing my mind because I couldn't manage to move a muscle. I was petrified. Max needed help and I was standing there reliving a very similar scene from years ago, when the body hitting the ground, riddled with the bullets of hit men sent by the crime families of the Brenta river basin, belonged to Marielita, his woman. She had died in my arms under a portico in Marostica and I couldn't bear it all happening again.