Map 12, C2. A real suburban slum. Wow!
Max was convinced he could make a go of it with Martina. Even though he was rich and lived in the Parioli and had picked her up in a Mercedes worth a couple of hundred million lire and was taking her to a two-storey villa complete with sauna, gym and a fridge as big as a Swiss bank vault, he didn’t give a damn about any of that crap. His ambition was to be a drummer and he wasn’t going to slave his life away doing some crappy job like his boring old fart of a father.
He and Martina were on the same wavelength, he dressed scruffily as she did and they were similar even though they came from two different worlds, this was proved by the fact that they both liked XTC, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Husker Du.
It wasn’t his fault if he’d been born in the Parioli.
So here they were, Max and Martina, racing down the slope at a hundred and eighty kilometres an hour in the Mercedes of Professor Mariano Franzini who at that moment was sleeping beside his wife at the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul where he had gone to attend an international conference on hip replacements, convinced that his new car was in its garage in Via Monte Parioli and not in the hands of that good-for-nothing son of his.
The lamps of the fishing-boats shining in the night. The warm air. The fishermen grilling your supper on the boat. Calamari at midnight. Walks in the tropical forest. The four-star hotel. The swimming pool. The two-day stopover in Colombo, the most colourful city of the East. The sun. The suntan …
All these images spooled like a film through the mind of police officer Antonio Bacci as he stood numb with cold in the icy rain at the roadside, in a soaking wet uniform, clutching his signal stick and fuming with rage and frustration.
He looked at his watch.
By this time he should already have been two hours into his holiday on the Maldives.
He could still hardly believe it. He stood in the rain, incredulous that his trip to the Tropics had gone up in smoke because of those layabouts.
I’d succeeded in organising everything.
He’d requested holiday leave. Antonella, his wife, had also taken ten days off work. Andrea, his son, would go and stay with his grandmother. He had even bought a silicone underwater mask, flippers and a snorkel. A hundred and eighty thousand lire down the drain.
If he couldn’t come to terms with this he would go mad. The holiday he had dreamed of for five years had vanished in five minutes, the duration of a single phone call.
‘Good morning, Mr Bacci, this is Cristiana Piccino from Francorosso. I’m calling to say that we’re awfully sorry but your trip to the Maldives has been cancelled owing to circumstances beyond our control.’
Circumstances beyond our control?
He’d had to get her to repeat it three times before it sunk in that the holiday was off.
Circumstances beyond our control = strike by pilots and cabin crew.
‘You bastards, I hate you!’ he howled despairingly into the night.
They were the human category he hated most of all. More than the Arab integralists. More than the Northern League. More than the anti-prohibitionists. He had hated them with tenacity and determination ever since his childhood, when he had first begun to watch the TV news and to understand that in the world the worst are always the ones who come out on top.
A strike every week. What have you got to strike about?
They had everything life could offer. A salary he would give his eye teeth for, plus the chance to travel, screw air hostesses and pilot a plane. They had it all and they went on strike.
What kind of protest should I make, then?
What kind of protest should officer Antonio Bacci make, he who spent one half of his life in a layby on the state highway freezing his balls off and fining truck drivers, and the other half quarrelling with his wife? Should he go on hunger strike? Let himself die of starvation? No, better shoot himself in the mouth and have done with it.
‘Fuck it!’
Besides, it wasn’t himself he was worried about. He would survive somehow even without the bloody Maldives. With a broken heart, but he would keep going. Not his wife. Antonella wouldn’t let the matter rest. With that brooding nature of hers, she would take it out on him for the next millennium. She was already making his life hell, as if it were his fault the pilots had gone on strike. She wouldn’t speak to him, treated him worse than a stranger, she’d slam his plate down on the table and sit in front of the TV all evening.
Why was he so unlucky? What had he done to deserve this?
Stop it. Drop the subject. Don’t think about it.
He was torturing himself pointlessly.
He huddled his raincoat round him and moved closer to the road. Two headlights appeared round the bend, Antonio Bacci raised his baton and prayed that this Mercedes contained a pilot or a member of the cabin crew, or better still, both.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve just been flagged down by the police,’ Martina announced, taking a drag on her joint.
‘Where?’ Max slammed his foot on the brake.
The car skidded and swerved along the wet road. Max tried in vain to control it. Finally he pulled the handbrake (never pull the handbrake in a moving car!) and the Mercedes did two pirouettes and finally came to rest with its nose half a metre away from the roadside ditch.
‘Phew, that was close …’ Max gasped, with what little breath he had left. ‘We nearly went over the edge.’ He was as white as a sheet.
‘Didn’t you see them?’ Martina was perfectly calm. As if they had just spun round in a fairground dodgem and not at a hundred and sixty kilometres per hour on a state highway where they could easily have broken their necks.
‘Yes … Well, no, actually.’ He had seen a blue glow, but had taken it for a pizzeria sign. ‘What shall I do?’ Through the rain-streaked rear window the police car’s flasher looked like a lighthouse in the storm. ‘Go back?’ He couldn’t speak. His throat had gone dry.
‘I don’t know … if you don’t.’
‘I reckon we should drive on. They can’t have read the number plate in this rain. I reckon we should go on. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s a fucking stupid idea. They’ll chase you and beat the shit out of you.’
‘Shall I go back, then?’ he turned off the stereo and put the car into reverse. ‘Yeah, why not, all our papers are in order. Fasten your seat belt. And throw away that joint.’
* * *
He didn’t even slow down.
He had come round the bend at a hundred and sixty at least and gone roaring on by.
Officer Antonio Bacci hadn’t even had time to write down the number.
CRF 3 … then what? He couldn’t remember.
Giving chase wasn’t an option. It was the last thing he felt like doing at that moment.
It would mean getting into the car, persuading that idiot Miele to shift his arse out of the driving seat, you’d have to quarrel with him because he wouldn’t want to, finally you’d get going, you’d set off hell for leather in pursuit, but by the time you caught up with them you’d have gone at least as far as Orbano, and at the risk of ending up wrapped around a tree. And for why? All because some stupid idiot didn’t see a roadblock.
‘No. Not tonight, thank you.’
In an hour’s time I’ll knock off, go home, have a nice shower, make myself some packet soup and go to bed and if my damned wife won’t speak to me, so much the better. If she doesn’t talk at least she won’t be moaning.
He glanced at his watch. It was Miele’s turn to stand outside. He approached the police car, dried the window with his hand and peered in to see what his colleague was doing.
He’s asleep. Fast asleep!
He had been standing in the rain for half an hour and that piece of shit had been snoring away happily. According to regulations, the man in the car had to listen to the radio. If there was an emergency and he didn’t reply, there would be hell to pay. And because of that damn fool, he would be for it too. The g
uy was irresponsible. He’d only been in the force for a year and he thought he could have a snooze while Bacci did all the work.
It wasn’t the first stupid thing he’d done. And he was such a bastard. Bacci couldn’t stand him. When he had told him he had missed his holiday because of the pilots’ strike and that his wife was livid, the guy hadn’t had one kind word for him, one friendly gesture, he’d said that he would never have let the travel agencies mess him around and that he always went on holiday by car. Smart arse! And what a moronic face he had! With that squashed nose and those bulging eyes. With that blondish hair plastered down with gel. And he smirked in his sleep.
I stand in the rain like an idiot and he sleeps …
The anger he had repressed with such difficulty till that moment began to press like a toxic gas on the walls of his oesophagus. He tried counting, to calm himself down. ‘One, two, three, four … Oh, to hell with it!’
A crazed grin distorted his face. He started hammering on the windscreen with his fists.
Bruno Miele, the officer inside the car, wasn’t really asleep.
Head back, eyes closed, he was musing that although Graziano Biglia couldn’t be blamed for bedding Marina Delia, he’d have done much better to go for a showgirl.
You can keep your actresses, I’d take a showgirl any day.
And what turned him on, if possible, even more than showgirls was showgirls who presented sports programmes. It was an odd thing, but when those tarts talked about soccer and made predictions about the league table (invariably wrong) and gave analyses of team tactics (invariably ludicrous), it gave him a hard-on.
He’d figured out what those shows were really for. They were for getting those girls into bed with footballers. It was all set up for that purpose, the rest was just a sham. You only had to look at how many of them intermarried.
The club chairmen organised the shows so that the players would get laid, and consequently feel indebted to them and go and play in their teams.
If he hadn’t chosen a police career, that’s what he would have liked to be, a footballer. He shouldn’t have stopped playing so early. Who knows, if he’d worked harder at it …
Yeah, I’d love to be a footballer.
Not just any old footballer, mind you, if you’re a run-of-the-mill player the showgirls don’t give you a second glance, no, he’d have to be a top striker like Del Franco. Then he’d be invited to appear on the shows and would get to screw them all: Simona Reggi, Antonella Cavalieri, Miriana … ? Miriana whatshername, Luisa Somaini when she still worked for Telemontecarlo, and Michela Guadagni. Yes, every one of them, the more the merrier.
He was beginning to get horny.
Michela Guadagni. Man, does she turn me on. Underneath that peaches-and-cream exterior there’s a slut just waiting to get out. Only you have to be a fucking sports star to get anywhere near her.
He began to imagine himself engaged in an orgy with Michela, Simona and Andrea Mantovani, the presenter.
He smiled. With his eyes closed. As happy as a little child.
Bam bam bam bam.
A violent burst of knocking made him jump in the air.
‘What’s going on?’ He opened his eyes and screamed. ‘Ahhhh!’
Behind the glass a monstrous face was leering in at him.
Then he recognised it.
That son of a bitch Bacci!
He lowered the window a couple of centimetres and roared. ‘Are you out of your mind? You nearly gave me a heart attack! What do you want?’
‘Get out!’
‘Why?’
‘Because I say so. You were asleep.’
‘No I wasn’t.’
‘Get out!’
Miele looked at his watch. ‘It’s not my turn yet.’
‘Get out of the car.’
‘It’s not my turn yet. Half an hour each.’
‘I’ve been out here for well over half an hour.’
Miele checked his watch and shook his head. ‘No you haven’t, there are still four minutes to go. I’ll get out in four minutes.’
‘Fuck you, I’ve done over forty minutes. Get out.’
Bacci made a dive for the door handle but Miele was quicker, he pushed down the safety catch before that lunatic could open the door.
‘You son of a bitch, get out,’ yelled Bacci and started pummelling on the window again.
‘What’s the matter? What’s got into you, are you crazy? Relax. Calm down. Okay, so you didn’t get your holiday in the Tropics, relax. It’s only a holiday, it’s not the end of the world.’ Miele tried not to laugh, but the guy was such a loser, he had bored the pants off him for two months with his talk of tropical atolls, Napoleon wrasse and palm trees, and after all that, he hadn’t even got on the plane. It was such a hoot.
‘What are you laughing about, you bastard? Open the door! Or I’ll smash the window and ram your teeth down your fucking throat, so help me!’
Miele was tempted to rub it in and tell him he shouldn’t get so angry, it didn’t matter if he hadn’t gone to Mauritius, he was getting plenty of water anyway, but he restrained himself. Something told him the guy really might smash the window.
‘Open up!’
‘No, I won’t. I’m not opening up until you calm down.’
‘I am calm. Now open up.’
‘No you’re not, I can see you’re not.’
‘I am calm, I swear. Completely calm. Open the door now, come on.’ Bacci drew back from the car and held up his hands. By now he was soaked to the skin.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Miele glanced at his watch again. ‘Anyway, there are still two minutes to go.’
‘So you don’t believe me, eh? Well, take a look at this.’ Bacci drew his pistol and pointed it at him. ‘Do you see how calm I am? Do you see?’
Miele couldn’t believe this, how could he believe the fool was pointing his Beretta at him? He must have gone off his head, like those guys who get sacked and murder their bosses. But Miele wasn’t prepared to get killed by a psychopath. He drew his own gun. ‘I’m calm too,’ he said with a mocking leer. ‘We’re both calm. High on camomile.’
‘Look what the cop’s doing,’ said Martina.
Her tone contained a hint of surprise.
‘What is he doing? I can’t see.’ Max was leaning over towards her but he couldn’t see a thing, the seat belt restricted his movements and it was dark outside.
The blue light illuminated a human form.
‘He’s holding a gun.’
Max nearly choked. ‘A gun?’
‘He’s pointing it at the car.’
‘The car?’ Max put his hands up and started shouting. ‘We’re innocent! We’re innocent! I didn’t see the road block, I swear I didn’t!’
‘Shut up, you idiot, not our car.’ Martina opened her mini-rucksack, took out a packet of Camel Lights and lit one.
‘Well, what car, then?’
‘Be quiet a minute. Let me see.’ She lowered the window. ‘The police car.’
‘Ah!’ Max sighed with relief. ‘But why?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s a thief inside.’ Martina blew out a cloud of smoke.
‘You think so?’
‘Could be. He might have slipped in while he was stopping cars. Police cars are always getting stolen like that. I read about it somewhere. But the cop must have caught him.’ She seemed very pleased with this theory.
‘Well, what shall we do, then? Drive on?’
‘Wait. Wait a minute … Let me handle this.’ Martina put her head out of the window. ‘Officer! Officer, do you need any help? Can we do anything for you?’
Now I know why she came with me even though she’d never met me before, thought Max in a panic, she’s completely stupid. The girls I know have nothing on this, she’s completely stupid.
‘Officer! Officer, do you need any help? Can we do anything for you?’ A distant voice.
Bacci looked up and saw it, at the side of the road, the blue Merce
des that hadn’t stopped. A female voice was calling to him.
‘What’s that?’ he shouted. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Do you need any help?’ shouted the girl.
Do I need any help? ‘No!’
What kind of a dumb question was that? Then he remembered his gun and quickly put it back in its holster. ‘Are you the guys who didn’t stop earlier?’
‘Yes. We are.’
‘Why have you come back?’
The girl waited for a moment before replying. ‘Didn’t you flag us down with your stick?’
‘Yes, but that was earlier …’
‘Can we go, then?’ asked the girl hopefully.
‘Yes,’ said Bacci, but then had second thoughts. ‘Just a minute, what’s your job?’
‘We haven’t got jobs. We’re students.’
‘What do you study?’
‘Italian literature.’
‘You’re not an air hostess, by any chance?’
‘No. I swear I’m not.’
‘Why didn’t you stop, before?’
‘My boyfriend didn’t see the road block. It was raining too hard.’
‘It’s hardly surprising your boyfriend didn’t see me, he was driving like a maniac. One kilometre back down the road there’s a great big sign that says 80. That is the speed limit on this stretch of road.’
‘My boyfriend didn’t see it. We’re sorry. We really are. My boyfriend’s extremely sorry.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you off this time. Don’t drive so fast, though. Especially when it’s raining.’
‘Thanks, officer. We’ll drive really slowly.’
Inside the car Max was jubilant, for three reasons.
1) Because Martina had said ‘my boyfriend’. This probably didn’t mean anything, but it might do. People don’t just say ‘my boyfriend’ for the hell of it. There must be an intention, a remote one, perhaps, but it must be there.
Steal You Away Page 16
