Bandit Love

by Massimo Carlotto

  He began walking the heavy gate open on its rollers without noticing that Beniamino had already gotten out and was coming behind him with a pistol in one hand. He jammed the barrel of the gun hard against the small of the Serbian bodyguard’s back and Bozidar stiffened, raising both hands. There was enough room for me to get by, so I revved the motor and drove the van past the gate. Once we were inside the warehouse, Max got out too. We were in a cellar, roughly a thousand square feet, the walls lined with metal shelves filled with large cardboard boxes.

  After Rossini ordered the bodyguard to kneel down, the fat man and I tied him hand and foot with plastic pipe-fasteners. It was an Israeli method. No way he could get free. We gagged and blindfolded him, then we dragged him into a corner.

  He put up no resistance. He was a professional and he knew when it was time to admit the enemy had him outnumbered. In the meantime, Beniamino had been keeping an eye on the internal staircase. We climbed up, step by step, soundlessly, and we emerged into a small windowless room, perfectly bare except for a desk and chair; on the desk sat the monitors of four surveillance cameras. One of the monitors showed Bozidar rocking back and forth, trying to get off his back and onto one side. Two others were monitoring the exterior, and the last one showed a hallway. We exchanged alarmed glances. Had Vladan seen what was happening and sounded the alarm?

  Rossini shook his head. It was too quiet; no one knew we were there. He kept moving forward, pistols leveled. We followed a few steps behind him. We could clearly hear the voice of the woman talking on the phone. Before long, we could glimpse her through a door that had been left ajar. We could tell Vladan was there because of his habit of whistling as he made tea. He must have been inside the little corner kitchen, and there was no way to sneak up behind him.

  Beniamino materialized at the kitchen door, two .45s aimed at his midsection. “You don’t want to die this morning, do you?” he said softly.

  The battle-hardened veteran rapidly calculated his chances of surviving the situation he was in; he ran and reran the odds in his mind, but he couldn’t see a way of avoiding one or more bullets. He spread both arms to signal his surrender, but Rossini hadn’t forgotten from their last encounter that Vladan had a dagger concealed up his sleeve. “Pull it out with two fingers.”

  The bodyguard froze in surprise and looked at him quizzically.

  “Bozidar told me,” Rossini lied, treacherously.

  Vladan would never forgive his fellow bodyguard. Actually, we’d noticed when Vladan made a move for the dagger up his sleeve during our meeting in the pastry shop in Vicenza. These are things that you can’t forget, even years later.

  The Serbian obeyed and extracted a commando stiletto, flat, short, and lethal. He laid it on the table. Rossini ordered him to turn around and get down on his knees. Max and I giftwrapped him like his partner.

  “You two go take care of the woman. Bring her to Pavle’s office.”

  The secretary, still absorbed in her phone conversation, hadn’t noticed a thing. She spoke good Italian but she was obviously Serbian. As soon as she hung up the phone, we walked into the room, with our hands in our pockets.

  The woman’s reaction dispelled any doubts we might have had that she was a member of the gang: she didn’t scream, she certainly didn’t look like she was about to faint.

  She was pretty, but her facial features were a little harsh, and tension didn’t help. “Who are you two?”

  “Come with us. Let’s go have a chat with your boss.”

  She didn’t make us say it twice. She walked ahead of us down the hall, then she opened a door. The office was expensively appointed. The Serbian gangster was seated at his desk, both arms extended, both hands flat on the mahogany writing surface. Rossini was sitting across from him, both Colts resting on his thighs. He pointed the woman to a sofa.

  “Sit down over there.”

  “So all of you decided to show up,” Pavle hissed contemptuously. “Not even a shred of brains.”

  Beniamino gave him a withering glance. “Our good friend was just asking me why we were paying him this ill-mannered surprise visit.”

  “What did you tell him?” asked the fat man.

  “That he’s making a mistake by continuing to consider us a bunch of idiots.”

  Now it was my turn. “Do you want to continue down this road? Are you looking to die, or would you rather negotiate?”

  “I imagine that I’m going to die no matter what I do.”

  “You’d deserve it,” snarled the old smuggler.

  I unbuttoned my overcoat. It was hot, and I would gladly have taken off my latex gloves, too. “Sure, we’d be delighted to murder you, but we made a deal with the Kosovars of Fatjon Bytyçi’s family. So we’re going to hand you over to Agim, Fatjon’s little brother.”

  The woman started talking rapidly in Serbian, with a thin piercing voice. Only a wave of Beniamino’s pistols managed to shut her up. I hadn’t taken my eyes off Pavle. I wanted to enjoy the instant of pure terror that would wash over him when we informed him he’d be handed over to the Kosovar Mafiosi. Instead, I thought I detected a flicker of relief in his eyes.

  It didn’t add up.

  I grabbed the woman by the arm and turned to Max.

  “Let’s find a place to lock her up.”

  We found a tiny windowless closet filled with office supplies. “If Pavle won’t talk, we’ll come back to see you,” I threatened her.

  We wouldn’t do it in any case, so she was bound to believe that her boss and lover had betrayed her. She just gave me a scornful glance. We turned the key in the lock and, to make doubly sure, tipped a chair back under the door handle.

  “You’ve got to imagine these people have been through the mill. They are tough-skinned, no question about it,” Max commented.

  “There’s something wrong here. Let’s try to figure this out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why isn’t Pavle terrified at the idea of winding up in the hands of the Kosovars?”

  “I just told you: they’ve got balls and a willingness to be martyrs.”

  “How did they manage to get word to Agim Bytyçi that we killed Fatjon?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe just putting out word was sufficient.”

  I wanted to smoke, but I resisted the impulse. There are plenty of people in prison because they left traces of DNA on cigarette filters dropped in the wrong places. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m pretty sure that the Serb’s not afraid of Agim Bytyçi.”

  “I have a hard time believing it, but if you’re right, what do we do?”

  “Let me improvise.”

  We went back into the office. Stojkovic was exactly where we’d left him; he hadn’t moved an inch. I watched him closely for a few more seconds and then decided to go ahead and listen to my instincts; I’d rely on the impressions of the moment.

  “We want to know where Greta Gardner is.”

  He cleared his throat. “Like I told you before, we weren’t able to find out anything about her.”

  “Have you ever heard the name of Arben Alshabani?”

  He shook his head. “He must be a Kosovar.”

  “That’s right. And he’s a profoundly stupid young man who runs the Pe´c family in this region, because his boss, Florian Tuda, wound up in prison. He can’t wait to get his hands on you; he’s hoping to give his old boss and Agim a nice surprise by sending them your head and your hands in a box. Get it? He’s the only one who knows that we’re here right now.”

  He clenched his fist once, and then twice. Maybe his confidence was beginning to waver or perhaps, much more simply, his arms had gone numb. I decided to take a chance.

  “If we leave here without you, he’ll come in with his knife and cut you all to pieces. What do you think he’ll do to the woman? And do you think that when you beg him to talk to Agim he’ll listen to you?”

  I could feel my two friends staring at me. They must be thinking I’d lost my mind.

&n
bsp; But my instincts had been right. The question Stojkovic asked proved it.

  “What are you offering me?”

  “Escape,” I lied. “Only you get out of here. Your bodyguards and the woman belong to Alshabani.”

  “Her name is Slavka and I’m not giving her up. I’m not leaving here without her.”

  The love of a Serbian gangster. He was ready to die for his sweetheart, but he’d taken no pity on Sylvie. This was neither the time nor the place, but I couldn’t help but asking him: “Why don’t you two live together?”

  “She’s married to an Italian.”

  I looked at Beniamino, who shrugged. “All that matters to me is to get him to talk.”

  Then I turned to Max, who nodded in agreement. “Arben’ll have to settle for the two enforcers.”

  “What do you want to know?” Pavle asked.

  “The truth,” I answered. Then I realized the stupidity of what I’d just said. Someone like Stojkovic didn’t even know the meaning of the word: Truth. If he did, he’d never tell it. He would cautiously restrict himself to what he judged strictly necessary to ensure his own safety and freedom. I’d better try to be a little more precise.

  “We want to understand how we got dragged into this mess, and we also want information that’ll help us track down and neutralize Greta Gardner.”

  Unobtrusively, Max pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket and turned it on.

  The former intelligence service officer sat silently for a few seconds. Once he’d collected his thoughts he started telling a story. From the beginning. From long-ago 2004.

  The Serbian intelligence service wanted to uncover the truth about the theft from the Institute of Legal Medicine in order to make the Kosovars an international laughingstock, and they sent two active agents into Italy.

  The guy who wanted to coerce us into working for him, and who had done everything he could think of to get Rossini to murder him, was named Milan Markovic. He was Greta Gardner’s boyfriend, from her university days, when she was studying and he was keeping an eye on the students to make sure they didn’t get any inconvenient ideas. The strange cross-shape that we’d noticed on his ring was a reproduction of the cut that they’d carved in their flesh with a kitchen knife so that they could mingle their blood, right after making love for the first time.

  Milan, ten years older than her, was handsome but certainly no genius. We had proof of that from the way he’d provoked us into murdering him.

  The brains of the couple was Greta. Her real name was Natalija Dinic, but only Pavle knew that, because he had enlisted her in the intelligence services on Milan’s recommendation. After personally overseeing her training, he had sent both of them out of Serbia. Then the civil war had come, and the pair of agents had carried on operations under the banner of Greater Serbia.

  After Pavle left the intelligence service to become a gangster, he lost sight of them. He had heard that after Milan was killed and the operation failed, Greta was expelled from the intelligence service. She changed careers, devoting herself to the profitable business of high-end prostitution. In short order, she had created a small but very efficient organization capable of catering to any fantasy that happened to flit through the mind of a wealthy man. And when he said “any fantasy,” Stojkovic specified, he meant even the most taboo and diseased fantasies.

  In the meantime, she had continued to nurse her thirst for revenge. She was waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. That’s exactly what happened when Pavle began dealing with Agim Bytyçi on a regular basis. Top secret dealings, given the wall of hatred that separated the Serbs and Kosovars.

  Agim had no intention of murdering his brother, at least not at first. At least not until the prospect of his brother’s wedding appeared on the horizon. The girl who had been promised as Fatjon’s bride was madly in love with Agim; he was just as much in love with her. Agim could never have tolerated the idea of his beloved in the hands of that depraved beast.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Pavle Stojkovic had told him, and he’d begun to organize the plot, putting to use the experience he’d developed in many years of honorable career in the intelligence services of, first, Yugoslavia, and later, Serbia.

  He’d reached out to Greta. She’d immediately come up with the idea of offering Fatjon the unprecedented thrill of running a gang bang parlor. In fact, the Kosovar gangster was notorious not only for his fondness for mature and sensual women, but also for group rapes, and so . . .

  I turned sharply to look at Rossini, certain that he was about to pull the trigger.

  Beniamino’s hands were wrapped around the grips of both his pistols, but his index fingers were far from the triggers. Two fat tears dropped from his eyes, running down his cheeks.

  “That’s the story,” Pavle concluded. “Do you want the details?”

  “Spare us the details,” Beniamino answered, his voice cavernous with grief and pain.

  Greta’s love. Agim’s love. Pavle’s business affairs. What a fucked-up mess.

  By the way: “What kind of business dealings do you have with the Kosovar?” I hastened to ask.

  “Well, I guess I can tell you now. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to change careers.”

  The Serbian gangster led us down into the warehouse. Without so much as a glance at his bodyguard, bound, gagged, and blindfolded on the floor, he picked up a box cutter and opened a large cardboard box, tipping its contents out onto the floor: packaged pharmaceuticals.

  Max picked up one of the brightly printed packages. “This is an antiviral medicine for bird flu.”

  “It’s all counterfeit merchandise,” Stojkovic explained, waving at the shelves. “The first ones we developed were counterfeit Viagra and other pharmaceuticals to cure impotence, then we went on to anti-diabetic drugs and medicines for cardiac diseases . . . Most of it we sell on the internet, but the operation is growing, and now we can sell these things anywhere. They’re really popular among illegal immigrants, because they’re afraid to go into legitimate clinics and hospitals. They’re made in Kosovo. Agim has started up a number of labs, with Indian and Pakistani chemists. He’s a smart young man. He got a degree in economics at an American university, and he came back home with modern ideas . . .”

  I heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. Rossini had thumbed back the hammer and was aiming one of his .45’s right in the Serbian’s face. “I just got over my misgivings about breaking our agreement.”

  I stepped into the line of fire. “He still has to tell us how to track down Greta Gardner.”

  “Counterfeit pharmaceuticals: I’m sorry, that’s just too shitty to let him live.”

  “I agree with you, but we have to choose what we care about most, what’s most important for Sylvie.”

  “Right, Sylvie. I’d like to remind you that this is the son of a bitch who dropped photographs of my woman in the mailbox, and then pretended to understand the pain I was feeling.” With a sharp gesture, he lowered his pistol. “If I ever meet you again, Pavle, I promise I’ll kill you.”

  The Serbian drew a deep sigh of relief. It hadn’t been a very smart idea to brag about the fake medicine ring.

  Max went to get the woman and brought her down into the cellar store room. He pulled a duffel bag out of the back of the van and opened it. “Now the two of you, take what’s in this duffel bag and put it into these two sacks.”

  The woman plunged her hands into the duffel bag and pulled out bracelets, necklaces, and rings. “It’s gold.”

  The Serbian did the same thing and understood. “With our fingerprints on it.”

  I complimented him. “You’re a smart boy.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “According to eyewitnesses, the armed robbers spoke in Serbian. I think it’d be a good idea to get as far from here as possible.”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s time to go. Arben Alshabani will be here soon. You just have enough time to tell us exactly how to find Greta Gardner.”r />
  He reeled off an address in Paris and a cover name.

  “You aren’t shitting me, are you?”

  “You’re going to have to take my word.”

  I gave him a nasty grin. “And so will you, because now you’re going to join your lovely Slavka in the supply closet. The story about the Kosovar arriving was just a fairytale to get you to sing.”

  He showed no sign of surprise. He did nothing more than to mutter that this wasn’t part of our agreement.

  “In a couple of hours, you ought to be able to kick down the door and get out of here.”

  Beniamino jabbed him in the back with his pistols. “Get going, piece of shit.”

  Max pushed the play button on the tape recorder. The sound of Pavle’s voice confessing his arrangements with Agim Bytyçi cut through the air.

  Stojkovic spun around, his mouth twisted into a bitter grimace. “I should have known.”

  “You forget we ever met, or this recording goes on YouTube.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been playing this kind of game a lot longer than you.”

  The fat man and I hid one of the sacks behind the cardboard boxes; it contained five kilos of finished gold jewelry. Then we climbed aboard the delivery van and got the hell out of that cursed place.

  I lit a cigarette and called Attilio Carini, the handsome policeman. “Okay, I’m going to give you an address in Treviso. Get there fast, and you’ll find a nice little pigsty. I recommend that you be the first one in the door, if you want to make it look more believable. But I guarantee you’ll come out smelling like a rose . . .”

  “Fine. Give me the damn address.”

  “One last thing: I’m going to need you to make sure that the surveillance camera out front of the bar where Arben Alshabani hangs out is out of order for the next twenty-four hours.”

  Beniamino stopped the van outside of a toy store; a little while later he came out with two enormous stuffed animals. He’d taken it to a ridiculous extreme, like all the bandits of his generation.