‘It is not a large town. Yes, Niki sent them to watch you, but not me. I found out from them you were here. Niki doesn’t know I am talking to you. I have been talking about him to a policeman, a drunk and stupid policeman maybe.’
‘I am not drunk. The way you tell the story, Niki sounds like a swell guy. But the way I hear it, he picked you two up on the cheap. Bargain basement whores. Or am I being too hard? You’re a dancer. That’s what you are. Alina, too. Does she dance?’
Nadia sipped her wine and watched him, then nodded as if she had come to a decision. ‘I know your type, Blume. People like you prefer getting praised to fucking. It’s something you learn quickly as a whore.’
She flicked her wrist, as if tossing the word back across the table at him. ‘The fucking itself? About a quarter of the time. The rest is spent telling men how great they are. Even when you men are fucking you need to be reassured, are always saying things like “you like this babe, you want this, you want my cock there, don’t you, baby?” Of course I don’t. Who would? But you have to tell them it is the best thing ever, because if you say no, they go crazy with rage. I said no once or twice at the beginning, then learned to stop. Even the ones who just roll, slobber, and grunt all over you without a word, will usually ask afterwards if you liked it. The answer, by the way, is always yes. Oh, you loved it. Maybe it’s true that men don’t like to talk so much, but they sure as hell want you to talk. They want you to ask about their nice suit, their muscles, the size of their cock, their patience, their wealth, their importance, their job, their looks. They have to hear this from you, so you have to talk to them. And that takes up three-quarters of the time, and it’s worse than the fucking, because it makes your head tired, no? And you are saying all these things you don’t believe, and in Istanbul I had to say them in different languages. It gets into your soul, and you think you are a liar in your soul, because you are.’
She grabbed the bottle and refilled her glass.
‘I have had all sorts of requests,’ she continued. ‘Some you would not believe. But all men want you to suck their cock. You know why that is?’
‘Well, it’s a nice feeling . . .’ Blume felt his voice go small. ‘What I mean is . . .’
‘I’ll tell you why. It’s because it’s the mouth. They want to control your mouth. That’s the most important thing for a man. Alina has a beautiful mouth. In the end, that is not good. Not for what we do. What we did.’
Blume felt a trickle of sweat run down his neck, and the itching was starting up again. He dropped a few pills into his mouth, and drank his beer, which now tasted like floor cleaner, waiting for a break in the conversation into which he might slip some sort of apology. But Nadia was in full flow and no opportunity presented itself.
When she seemed to have finished, he cleared his throat experimentally. ‘So you don’t do that now? Maybe you can tell me about the arrangement you have with Niki?’
‘It is simple. We dance in the club. We attract customers. Sometimes we may go with a man, but only if we like him. It is far better now than ever before. Or I thought it was.’
‘Do they pay you?’ He intended it as a genuine question, not as an accusation.
Nadia looked at him and burst out laughing. ‘What do you think?’
He was still feeling ashamed of how he had treated her a moment ago, and chose his words carefully. ‘I think they might pay you. What I meant to ask is if Niki taxes you.’
‘Niki gets nothing, also because a lot of the men prefer to pay with presents rather than cash. We pay Niki for the accommodation, but he lets us keep our money and he pays us weekly wages. I like Niki. Unless he killed Alina, which I think he could have. In that case, I hate him.’
‘You think he could have killed Alina?’ said Blume. ‘Yet you say you like him. What is there to like?’
‘You should have met the others.’ She paused and gave him an appraising look. ‘You think you’re different from those men I was talking about, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm.’ She tilted her head and seemed to weigh up his body with her eyes, and he felt himself pushing out his chest a little and raising his chin. ‘You know who you remind me of?’
Blume had always fancied himself as having a certain resemblance to Harrison Ford, and wondered if she had spotted it. ‘No. Who?’
‘Niki.’
‘Niki who?’
‘Niki, Niki. Niki Solito. Who else are we talking about?’
‘That’s just stupid. I could fit three Nikis into each of my pockets. Not to mention the tan and the plastic surgery.’
Nadia laughed. He decided he didn’t like her laugh much. It was throaty, full-bodied, altogether too knowing, and masculine. He found it vulgar.
‘I don’t mean physically. I mean:’ she tapped her head, ‘in here.’
‘No, wrong again.’
‘I know men. Were you listening to what I just said? Good, well, some men need more praise than others, and some, who are quite rare, need praise all the time. It’s like a hunger. They can even forget about sex, or, how do you say, they make a sacrifice. All they want is praise. These men make you very tired but they can do some good things. And Niki is such a man.’
‘And what about this supposed similarity with me?’
‘That’s the similarity.’
‘I want you to praise me?’ Blume affected a tone of haughty amusement, just to remind her who was the whore here. He could feel the nasty tone of a moment ago creeping back into his voice.
‘About how kind and gentle and caring you are, yes. But you also want to hear how big and brave and strong and generous you are. Tough but gentle, no? Powerful or with some power, but kind and just. This is you?’
Blume reached out for the wine.
‘You are also lonely, yes? A lonely man. Most clients need to hear that, too. They are lonely. Not the girl with no family and no future lying on the bed in a foreign country being fucked by ugly tourists and beaten by psychopathic Russian pimps. No, the girl needs to hear how lonely these men are. They sit there and look for pity from her, and give her none back. Are you lonely?’
‘I am fine.’
‘Yes, you are. Poor . . . what is your name? Your Christian name?’
‘Alec – but . . .’
‘Poor, lonely, Alec.’
‘That will do. Shut up now.’
To his surprise, she did.
He drank the wine, refilled his glass.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I am upsetting you, even though I am the one who came looking for your help.’
Blume viciously scratched his chest with his fingernails. ‘I am not upset. I need to piss. Will you wait?’
‘Of course.’
When he came back, she was finishing another glass of wine. They had made short work of the bottle. Her lips glowed attractively.
‘I owe you more respect than I gave you earlier,’ said Blume.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome.’
They allowed a few minutes to pass in silence.
‘I told you about men and praise?’
‘Yes,’ said Blume. ‘No need to go through all that again. I am sorry – I have been drinking on an empty stomach.’
‘No problem. What I said is true, but some men deserve the praise. They still want to hear it, like all men, but a few deserve it. Praise for them is OK. Please, Alec? I express myself badly in many languages.’
‘You do just fine.’ A warm, forgiving glow had settled over him.
‘Niki likes praise. He wants to be thought of as a good and generous man. That is why he rescued us. He bought our freedom. We praise Niki and he deserves it, too, for that.’
‘Niki? You’re talking about Niki again? As someone who merits admiration?’
‘I think Alina really began to love him. And then he began to love her. So when Alina disappeared, he was very unhappy. Sometimes I think he wants her back, and sometimes I think he killed her. But Alina
did not just walk away, not without me.’
‘Niki was fucking Alina?’
‘He was also buying her presents.’ Nadia opened her purse and took out a gold chain, a string of pearls, and a golden bangle. ‘Look.’
‘Those are hers?’
‘From Niki. She showed them to me.’
Blume looked at the items with interest. ‘Alina would have taken her jewellery with her if she was running away.’
‘Niki did not ask me if I had them. You know what I think? I think he cared so much for Alina that he is not even interested.’ She dropped them back in her bag and shut it with a snap. ‘If he asks, I will give them to him, of course.’
Blume was thinking along other lines. ‘Maybe Niki does not want to ask for them, because to do so would prove that he knows Alina did not have them with her. And the only way he could know that is if he was there when she disappeared.’
Nadia’s eyes dimmed as the truth of this reasoning dawned.
‘In other words,’ said Blume, ‘if she had not run away because of whatever happened in Turkey, I would say Niki is behind your friend’s disappearance. Do you need help, Nadia? I can get you away from here if you want. Before I go after Niki. Right this moment.’
‘You? You don’t even have a car.’
‘I can call in help – how do you know about my car?’
‘I heard Niki. He was laughing on the phone to that mechanic. It was about you and your car. But I don’t need to run away. I need to know what happened to my best friend.’
‘I am not on duty. I don’t even have a weapon. You need to report this.’
‘But you are a specialist, no? You are very good at your job.’
‘Praising me, are you? We men just lap it up.’
Nadia shook her head, impatiently dismissing his attempt to be facetious. ‘They are worried about something. The old man, Domenico, he came round to Niki’s place last night, and they talked and afterwards Niki was tense and shouting at everyone. I have never seen the old man there before. So it must be something new, and you’re the only new thing here. Please say you’ll help.’
Chapter 18
Indistinct sounds of people shouting floated up from somewhere below. Blume glanced enquiringly at Nadia only to catch her looking at him with the same questioning look.
‘That’s the most noise I have heard at one time since I came here,’ he told her.
They abandoned their table and went around the corner to see. A group of around twenty people were standing at the next corner down, many of them shouting what seemed to be instructions.
‘A religious pageant?’ wondered Blume, though as he said it he saw the movement and shape of the crowd was too haphazard for a procession.
‘They are all men,’ observed Nadia. ‘So it won’t be anything important.’
Whatever the focus of attention was, it was out of sight behind a sharp corner at the end of the road. Some old men were to be seen standing at the corner waving their arms, and throwing their hands to heaven. The bar boy came out and looked wistfully at the fun, then returned inside to the till.
Without needing to ask each other, he and Nadia walked down to join the group. Everyone was enjoying himself immensely, none so much as those pretending to be thoroughly disgusted by the scene, which was of a yellow tow-truck that had become trapped on a hairpin curve on the narrow street.
The driver had manoeuvred his vehicle into a perfect snooker, with the front of the cab touching a wall on one house, the back lodged firmly into the wall of another. To complete the totality of the impasse, the front right wheel had slipped into a rainwater channel running down the side of the road. The cab was empty and the driver, visible in his reflective jacket, was in the middle of the crowd, throwing contemptuous open-palm gestures at the narrow street, at the pointless road sign that warned of a hairpin turn, at the unfair rut in which the wheel of his truck was now stuck. A puttering sound was heard as a man with no helmet on his bald head came travelling downhill on his scooter. He stopped, and by means of extensive use of his squawking horn, let it be universally known that the obstacle was so complete that not even a scooter could pass. From behind the truck came a car whose driver confirmed in oaths that the situation from below was just as bad. A car behind that joined in, and now women appeared at windows to shout Basta! E mamma mia! and Ch’è questo baccano?
Blume stepped back against the wall as Alfredo the mechanic and his oil-flecked son came down the road. Alfredo glanced at Blume and Nadia standing in the shadows, and gave a friendly nod. When he arrived on the scene, Alfredo, rolling up his wrinkles into the impressive frown of a true expert, examined the front of the truck, and peered for a while at the fender, then, hands on hips, looked at the back of the truck. He cracked his knuckles and kicked the tyres. The vigili arrived, Fabio and the unnamed woman with the unfriendly glasses, and parked their car with the flashing light behind the scooter, whose driver had lifted into its kickstand without turning off the engine. Nadia nudged Blume conspiratorially.
‘Is this something to do with you?’ she asked him.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The way you are hanging back, trying to stand in the shadow.’
Blume moved closer and stood in the sunlight.
For a minute or two, the vigili created a channel through the crowd, waving their arms and giving instructions, but they, too, saw the impossibility of the situation, and were swallowed up in the general hubbub. They reappeared soon after, busy examining the documents of the driver of the tow-truck. They handed back the papers. Everything, apart from the entire situation, seemed to be in order. The vigilessa, showing initiative and taking advantage of her thinness, climbed into the tow-truck cab, then slipped out the narrow gap between the other door and wall, and disappeared. Blume assumed she had gone to calm the motorists below, who, to judge from the noise, had gathered in strength and number. Children, which he had thought were completely lacking from the town, now appeared.
Fabio the vigile was now examining a new piece of paper that seemed to contain some quite remarkable information. He handed it back to the driver, then asked for it back, and passed it to Alfredo, who read it and handed it into the crowd for general inspection. Heads began turning in Blume’s direction. Straightening his uniform and adopting a stern manner, Fabio, accompanied by the driver and several witnesses, approached him.
Fabio indicated the driver, a deeply tanned man with a crew cut who was staring very hard at Blume, and said, ‘This gentleman alleges . . .’
He got no further, for the truck driver took great exception to the word ‘alleges’, and eventually had to be escorted back into the crowd before he committed an outrage on a public official, or perhaps two, counting Blume. Nadia was openly enjoying herself at his expense now, but Blume felt glad to have her beside him anyhow. Fabio affected not to understand or believe that Blume had really ordered an outside tow-truck to storm his town and make away with a car that was already safe in the shop of his friend Alfredo, an excellent and honest mechanic. Fabio was thin-lipped and regretful of the generous impulse that had prevented him from impounding Blume’s car. As the sheer spitefulness of Blume’s gambit dawned on him, his manner became increasingly frosty. The informal ‘tu’ became ‘Lei’ and he called up Alfredo to witness his chastisement of the arrogant Roman policeman.
‘Everyone from around here knows that a vehicle that size cannot make it to the top of the town,’ said Fabio. ‘Isn’t that right, Alfie?’
Alfredo, who seemed not the least put out, nodded.
‘Not everyone, apparently,’ said Blume nodding at the driver, who now sat in his cab, arms folded, refusing to react to the exhortations of the crowd to make another attempt.
‘That’s because,’ hissed Fabio, ‘he is not from around here. You called in people who don’t know anything about Monterozzo.’ He glared at Nadia to make sure she knew she belonged to the group of foreign outcasts.
Alfredo, whom, Blume was com
ing to realize, was a thoroughly decent chap, as slow to take offence as he was to fix a car, touched Fabio’s elbow. ‘It’s OK. I’ll get it off the corner.’
Fabio shook his head despairingly. ‘This is one of the worst I’ve seen.’
‘It’s all right.’ Alfredo spoke comfortingly, ‘We need to take the air out of the tyres on the left side. Get a wooden ramp, then we use some chains and my car. Same way,’ he looked at Blume with the mildest of reproach, ‘as we tow anything in this town.’
‘I don’t think we are much help here,’ said Blume, still keen to be associated with Nadia.
‘You certainly are not.’
‘So we may as well go.’ He forgot to inflect his voice, so that what he had intended as a request for permission came out as a statement of defiance. He was about to rectify with an ‘if that’s all right with you,’ but Fabio was too quick for him and had already taken grave offence.
‘You can’t just walk away! You’ll have to settle with the driver and his company for a start.’ Fabio reached for his pocketbook. ‘You may well be liable for any damage done to those buildings. And I would ask you, Signorina, to stop smirking like that.’
Nadia covered her mouth, but her smile was wider than her hand.
The crowd was drifting away now, because only so much fun can be had looking at a stuck truck, and the noisy drivers blocked behind had either found alternative routes or been cowed into silence by the vigilessa with the black glasses.
‘As I, too, am a public official and a good citizen,’ said Blume, ‘I’ll report to you in the morning, and we can settle all this. If I have to pay something, then I will.’
Fabio seemed mollified, then suspicious. ‘Where are you staying?’ His eyes wandered over to Nadia, and he gave Blume an insinuating, accusing look. ‘I didn’t know you were staying.’
‘I have no choice. The road is blocked and my car is in his shop.’
Alfredo interrupted the blackening of another cigarette to confirm. ‘Next Tuesday at the latest,’ he assured Blume. ‘But no sooner,’ he warned Fabio. He lit his limp cigarette and wandered off in the direction of the tow-truck.
Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Page 13
