‘You don’t move.’
‘I don’t move… What I care, friend, is how we come out of this, before there’s an accident.’
‘They don’t take me.’
‘Not a surrender, no… Not paraded like some damn chimpanzee in a zoo cage. Absolutely not.’
‘You call me scimpanzé? Do you? A scimpanzé, chimpanzee, cannot shoot. I can. I am not taken.’
‘How about, friend, you try to shoot? Try. Not Eddie, not worth the cost of a bullet. You try to shoot me. You jam and—’
‘What is “jam”?’
‘It is “block”. Malfunction, does not fire, but you tried… a smart guy, you know about weapons. There could be dirt in the ammunition, dirt in the pistol with a build-up of cordite in the barrel, dirt in the magazine mechanism. It can be the extractor bar breaking. The automatic blow-back can fail. For many reasons it can block and jam… the word gets passed.’
‘I will not be taken.’
‘Yes, yes…’ Eddie thought then that he heard the first wisp of impatience. Like it had been a good game, and an interesting experience, and it had run its course, and the first twist of boredom was there, and a little of the confidence slipped in him. ‘What is important is your prestige and dignity, friend. You tried. You did not surrender. You were good to your word. It was just that the damn machine, the pistol, the kit, failed you. That message gets put around. Nobody can say that Salvatore, big man and smart man, bottled out. Not him. It was the pistol that failed. There’s another thing.’
Eddie could watch the eyes of Lukas. Every feature of his body was unremarkable, stunted, without authority, except his eyes. There was less of the window to see and the gap between Lukas and the two of them shortened, and it would only have been a short lunge for the touch. The eyes were extraordinary. They were locked on the man who pressed his body against Eddie. They had the quality to hold and mesmerise. Eddie did not think that he, himself, held interest to Lukas, only Salvatore – the friend. He didn’t know how it would end, but knew it would be very soon. A minute or two minutes. His comfort bled because he thought he recognised impatience.
‘The other thing… You get a good lawyer. You’re intelligent and you have the resources, and you get a top man to front up for you. You pull a prosecution case to pieces: not difficult because they’re always second rate. Maybe you walk at the trial. Maybe you go free on appeal. It doesn’t last, locked up. Show me, Salvatore, that you’re a big guy and a smart guy, and I already know you’re a generous guy.’
‘Do what?’
‘We all have some food. We all get some sleep. There’s no accident. What do you say, friend?’
Lukas had moved again, could have touched. Two bright flashes on the dirt and the concrete, which caught in Eddie’s glance. Two discharged cartridge cases. Two shots fired and two cartridge cases thrown out – no fucking jam, play-acted or otherwise… The comfort had gone and he felt the stress build again and his body was rigid.
‘You did not listen.’
‘Course I did, friend. I listened well. Heard all you said. Just giving you the good back way out and—’
‘You did not listen.’
The pistol was off Eddie’s neck, gone from his skin. It was out in front of Eddie’s face, and the arm was loosed that had been across his chest. Two hands on the pistol grip. Eddie understood. Should have taken longer… maybe too tired, maybe too hungry, maybe just bored pig-sick with a thug with a gun, maybe done it all before and so many times… saw the shock spread on Lukas’s face, like disbelief.
Eddie heard, ‘God, did I do this, did I?’
And then the pistol blast and the cordite dust flashed in his face, and the bright brass of the cartridge was ejected, fell, bounced and rolled. Blood came back at him, a fine spray, and there was more behind. He saw the slight ugly knees bend, then falter, then collapse, and saw the shock on the face, preserved, like the scale of a mistake and its consequences were the last thought that… He did a sort of hop. Eddie had no legs free to kick backwards. As he jumped up, held by the belt, he hacked his heels behind him and felt them hit and hurt, and he could punch with his hands, all done in one crazy, uncontrolled moment – his clenched fists hit the belly.
The pistol arced, fell and clattered.
They went down. He was underneath Salvatore and his head was held, gripped, and his face was beaten into the concrete… and they came. His eyes were closed, shut tight – couldn’t absorb more.
Nightmare engulfed him. He was crushed. Weight on him squeezed out the breath from his lungs. His head was in blood. He couldn’t move, see or breathe. There were voices, muffled and indistinct, and he didn’t understand what was yelled. He felt himself sinking, then falling, then lost, and the abyss closed over him… and the weight was lifted. Eddie dared to open his eyes.
He was ignored.
He lay in a smeared strip of blood that now sank into the porous dirt of the concrete. Two figures, huge in vests over black overalls, with firearms hooked on their shoulders, took turns to work on the chest of the man who had called himself Lukas. They pounded on the chest and didn’t stop until the door behind him, where he had been held, was kicked flat, then used as a litter. Two more of them took him. Hoisted on the door, Lukas was carried away. Eddie didn’t know whether it was boredom or impatience, or just shit luck that had failed Lukas.
He didn’t move his head. Beyond where Lukas had been, Salvatore lay on his stomach as his hands were hitched behind him and fastened with ties. One more of them in the black overalls and the masks stood over Salvatore and had a dirty boot across his neck, and Eddie knew he was alive because the chest heaved and there were small yelps of pain when the boot was shifted or pressed harder. Eddie was glad he lived. He thought it a worse, more severe punishment to live than to be proxy shot.
Last they came to him.
A big man towered over him, wearing a suit that now had rents at the knees and elbows and was stained with the dust of the concrete; a vivid tie was loosened at the neck and a collar button undone, and his hair was a tangled mess, and there was blood on his shirt and jacket. Eddie might have been wrong, but he thought he saw wet glisten in the man’s eyes. A short-bladed knife was used to cut the ties at his ankles and wrists.
He was turned over.
The man in the suit stood back. Another, whom they called Tractor, crouched over him and felt his face with mittened fingers, then lifted each of his arms and flexed them, did the same for his legs. There were cuts, abrasions and bruising on every part of his body that the hands touched but he didn’t cry out. The Tractor stood and backed away, as if he had no more interest. Another, and he was called the Engineer, stood over Eddie and reached down.
Eddie took the hand, the fist closed over his wrist and he was heaved up.
The suit led… The Tractor followed, then their prisoner with men close around him. Eddie trailed, and the one they called the Bomber was behind him. The cat that had been shut out scratched at a door but was not admitted. They went past the broken apartment he had run into and he saw the wreckage and didn’t ask about the man who had opened his home to a fugitive. They went through two barred gates, one open, one destroyed, and down three flights of stairs.
There was a crowd at the main entrance of the block.
He was not jeered or jostled. He was stared at. The black overalls were close round their prisoner and hustled him to the transport, but the crowd didn’t push or surge. Eddie thought they wanted either their beds or to get back to their work and trade. It was a far place that he had come to and he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him, so he gave them no greeting or acknowledgement.
The suit stood beside the door of a minibus. The prisoner was in already. The suit waited for him.
Eddie came to the door.
The suit said, ‘I’d known him for less than one week. He was the best… What are you? Are you worth the life of the best? But you didn’t think of that…’
He climbed in. He was driven awa
y.
20
It was still dark when they left the hospital, a great cavern of a building on the edge of the Scampia district. The pronto soccorso section was as grim a place as Eddie had known and he had been left with two black overalls on a plastic seat in a corridor, and the world had gone by him – beaten-up tarts, overdosed druggies, knife-wound victims, complicated pregnancies. He had known it was a formality but had sat still, and a nurse had come with a bowl and a towel and had cleaned his face wounds and had stitched, expertly, his lips, and he had had sutures under his right eye. He had not mentioned the pain in his ribcage, had thought it disrespectful of Lukas’s injuries. A little after the American consul had arrived, with a phalanx of security around him, Castrolami had emerged from behind the swing doors. It had been obvious when they had gone in that the injuries were terminal, that Lukas was dead, but Eddie supposed it necessary for them to go through the procedures of resuscitation and fail. Castrolami – the suit had given his name in the minibus in a curt growl and had not offered a hand for the greeting – had walked up to him in that wide corridor outside the emergency section, and had flicked his fingers as a gesture for Eddie to follow him and had kept walking. He might have been the damn dog.
They did not use the minibus. There were hugs and cheek-brush kisses between Castrolami and one called the Tractor, another called the Engineer and a third called the Bomber, and the one who had a sniper rifle – uncased – made a joke of complaining that he had not been given the opportunity to shoot. Eddie realised then that the prisoner was gone, would have been transferred to a different wagon and taken away. Beside the minibus was a marked carabinieri saloon, with a uniformed driver and an escort, and the engine idled. He was put into the back and Castrolami slumped beside him.
They left the hospital where a body would now be wheeled towards the mortuary building.
Not much to talk about. He was the best… What are you? Are you worth the life of the best? There was no warmth on offer, nothing that soothed the jumbled confusion in his mind. He supposed that, by now, a telephone call would have been made to England, to a corner of Wiltshire, to a bungalow in a lane, and that lights had flashed on in answer to the persistence of a bell, and that his parents now sat on their bed, in their night clothes, in shock and relief – his mother might have gone to make two mugs of cocoa. He couldn’t face making a call himself – would have to, but later. They sat silent and they looked out of their different windows.
The light grew, came slowly.
He did not ask where they went, why. What are you? Wasn’t prepared to try to answer, and the blood of the ‘best’ was caking his T-shirt and jeans. They didn’t go towards the city, but drove away from it and the first light, soft gold, was above distant hills.
There was no beauty, no majesty alongside the road.
They went by homes and small farms, scorched orchards, compact factory units and ribbon developments of advertising hoardings. He thought of the orderly, managed greenery of the village where he had spent his childhood; here there was anarchy. The sun peeped a fraction higher, and the first glimpse of a segment, still gold, was over the hills’ horizon.
Castrolami had taken from his pocket an old leatherbound notepad, with scuffed corners, and had started to write busily. It would have been his memory jottings for his report on the death of the ‘best’.
Eddie was, and he realised it, an intruder, not wanted.
He felt no anger at this but accepted it and sat deep on the seat, and the car was driven fast on empty roads. He had, of course, no watch, but if he craned forward he could see the dash in front of the driver, and thought they had been travelling for a little more than half an hour.
There was a sign beside the road, and the driver slowed and the escort studied his map, then written instructions. The place was called Nola.
They went into the heart of it, past a cathedral-sized church. The low sun was nestled on the tower, the road was rough, the pavements worse, and a very few hurried to be at work. Eddie thought the place desolate, as if hope had gone.
He did not ask why they had come here, for what purpose.
Nobody had fed him, nobody had offered him coffee or water, or a beer. He saw more churches, and the road took them along the perimeter of a hospital’s grounds. Then they veered off a main route and headed on narrower, meaner streets.
The driver stopped a few metres short of a cemetery’s main gates. They were of heavy ironwork and closed; Eddie assumed they were locked. There was a pedestrian’s door at the side… He could have played hard. He could have sat in the car and demanded explanations. A man was dead, the ‘best’ man. The man with the caved chest and the chair-leg-thin arms and the knees that had nothing pretty to them was in the mortuary. He followed Castrolami out of the car. He was led.
First light bloomed inside the small gate. A man was lit as he swept dried leaves, and when he saw them, he eased himself on to his witch’s broom and Castrolami must have asked the question with his eyes because the sweeper gestured to his right and watched them.
There was a girl’s statue on a plinth, life-size, and a single rose slotted by her hand. She had the sadness of youth snatched and her name, carved in the stonework, was Angelabella. He went through avenues of small chapels, all with artificial flowers flourishing, and some had candles burning and displayed photographs of the long-deceased when they had lived and enjoyed health. A great piazza for the dead opened in front of him and Castrolami. He was considered responsible for the loss of the ‘best’. He queried nothing, was obedient.
Between concrete paths there were gravestones, more flowers, more candles and more sepia photographs. At the far end of the square of the dead there was a wall with five layers of sealed shelves each large enough to take an adult’s corpse, and more flowers decorated it. Two men stood against it and the sun caught their faces.
One waved to Castrolami, who acknowledged and switched course.
He saw her.
She would have noticed the two men’s reaction and she stood, her hand across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, low and growing in intensity.
She did not run towards him. He followed Castrolami, kept Castrolami’s pace.
In his ear: ‘She wanted this. Myself, I would have thrown you on the plane, the first. She wanted to be here when news came of whether you had survived or not. Her friend is here, her most valued friend. Her friend is here because of the toxic pollution of what we call the Triangle of Death. The pollution is by the Borelli family, in part, over many years. It is why she has collaborated. It is in memory of her friend, a tribute.’
‘I was second to her friend?’
‘You were second, Eddie, to her friend. You could not compete… It is ludicrous to be here, but we are. You do not have long.’
Her arms were not outstretched, welcoming. They were behind her back. The light on her face did not flatter and there were bags under her eyes, lines at her mouth and a frown of worry. He thought her drably dressed – a plain grey skirt, a blouse that seemed darker – her hair was uncombed and she wore no lipstick.
Castrolami moved aside. The two men behind her edged clear.
He was in front of her. He was as far from her, and from the bulge of the blouse, as he had been from Lukas when he had thought the ‘best’ man was impatient, might have been bored and looked tired enough to drop. It was the face of the girl he had slept with and laughed with and… He was not certain he knew her, and he let his hands hang and hers were behind her back.
‘You survived?’
Not the moment for the trite or the sarcastic. ‘Yes, I survived.’
‘You are hurt? You have wounds.’
A shrug, a grin that dragged on the sutures. ‘I’m fine – like if I walked into a door.’
‘I couldn’t help you.’
‘You could have helped me. You chose not to help me.’
‘It was not easy.’
‘You made a choice.’ Eddie gazed into her eyes, he
ld them.
‘Do you understand the choice?’
‘I understand that my life was of secondary importance.’
‘Eddie, that is so pompous. Can you not…?’ She looked away, broke the intensity of the contact.
He said, ‘Sort of puts me in my place – second place.’
‘Should we talk of what’s been, the past?’
He smiled, almost managed to laugh, and the pain was in his ribs at the thought of letting his chest heave. ‘In the past, here – in this damn country, in Naples – there were people of quite outstanding courage. Top of the list, he was called Lukas and he tried to save me – he’s my past. There’s a fish-seller down via Forcella and he gave me the warning before the bastard bounced me, which was big – he’s in my past. A man in that block, when I’d broken free and was running and the dogs of hell were after me, he opened a door for me. I don’t know what happened to him, or the fish-seller, but Lukas died and I lived and… What bit of the past do you want to talk about?’
‘I put a padlock on a bridge in Rome, and I threw the key in the river,’ Immacolata said. The sun was in her eyes, worse than before. It made her squint, and took more of the prettiness off her.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Am I supposed to be impressed? What’s special about a padlock on a bloody bridge?’
She shrugged.
Eddie grimaced. ‘Do I get to see the padlock – whose significance escapes me – that doesn’t have a key?’
‘Maybe.’
‘When is “maybe”? Some day, some time?’
‘Perhaps… Go home.’
He swung on his heel and his trainer ground at the gravel chips on the avenue between the headstones. He walked briskly and Castrolami had to stretch his stride to catch him. The sun had now risen, up and flush on him.
Castrolami said that if they used the light and the siren they would be at Capodicino in time for the first flight of the day and to buy a new shirt.
The Collaborator Page 50
