“They parked on Corso Milano. Then I saw them walk into an apartment building, at number 78.”
I was struck by the fact that they were living in the secret hideout of the two pathetic lovebirds. They seemed like natives of the Veneto, not outsiders: the fat man talked like a typical Paduan.
“I have to find out who they are, Federico. And fast.”
“I have their license number and a couple of pictures I snapped with my cell phone. I can ask Brigadier Stanzani for a favor; he’s on duty in Padua. He’s a dear friend of mine but he certainly doesn’t stick his neck out for nothing.”
“How much does he want?”
From his smirk I understood it wouldn’t be money. “A woman, cocaine . . . We’re set up to make him happy.”
“A complete evening out. Dinner and then a whore in a luxury hotel.”
I thought how cute it would be to send Maria José. She had the necessary experience to make him enjoy all the delights of corruption. I resisted the urge. “You’ll take care of everything, right?”
Federico nodded. “Tomorrow afternoon at the latest I’ll let you have the first batch of information.”
I turned off the lights, activated the alarm, and finally went home. Martina and Gemma were dozing on the sofa in front of the TV, waiting to receive their instructions for the night. Usually I issued directives at dinner in the restaurant, but those two snoops had distracted me.
“Good night, Martina,” I said and she stood up, docile as always, gave me a kiss, and headed for the bedroom.
Gemma came to me and started unlacing my shoes. She’d been living with us for three years now; she’d always been my wife’s best friend and I needed someone to keep Martina company. So, when it became clear to me that her husband running off with another woman to Salento had pushed her to the very edge, I started manipulating her. It was what she wanted. She put out very specific signals to that end. She was clearly letting herself go, at times with a kind of abandon. She wasn’t a bit stupid and she’d read my intentions. She hated and loved me with the same intensity. She couldn’t live without me or the life I offered her because I hadn’t left her anything else. Martina never batted an eye, not even when I demanded that she have sex with Gemma. Neither one of them liked it, but for my wife it might as well have been an hour of spinning. For that matter, I was her love forever, the doting husband who made her happy. I deserved complete satisfaction even when I made the most unusual requests.
“Tell me all about those two,” I ordered.
“There’s not a lot to tell. They showed us that picture, then your wife slayed them with her topic of the month: discount shopping.”
“How did they explain that strange request?”
“A friend of theirs who comes often to a restaurant in the center of town sang its praises and they just wanted to make sure that he’d been talking about La Nena.”
“What a bullshit excuse,” I thought to myself.
“Actually, though, I think I’ve seen him before.”
“Who?”
“That guy in the picture.”
“Where?”
“On TV. You know that show about missing people?”
Gemma never missed a chance to rev her brain and let me know about it. It was her way of letting me know she was well aware that I was a criminal.
I stroked her hair. “Did he come to La Nena?”
“A couple of times with a well-dressed lady.”
“You have a good memory,” I observed coldly.
“So I can be useful to you, as I have been in this case, King of Hearts.”
She called me that when she wanted to get a rise out of me.
“I’ll bet you want to go to sleep and the last thing you feel like doing is giving me a blowjob.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Then I’m afraid that that’s exactly what you’re going to have to do, because that’s what I want.”
“You can do better, King of Hearts.”
I look at my watch and sighed. I wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight. “You couldn’t have picked a worse night.”
A hoarse sound emerged from deep in her chest, something that must have been meant as defiant laughter.
I got to the restaurant shortly before eleven, when people move from late breakfast to early aperitifs. The tables were occupied for the most part by middle-aged matrons, swathed in elegant skirt suits snatched up on the very first day of sales. I ordered a smoothie, made with organic bananas and chamois goat milk from the Alps, and sat down to read the local papers. Just then it was a real delight. The Veneto region had been thrown into an uproar by the arrest of a substantial number of politicians, businessmen, government administrators, and other peripheral figures, on charges of belonging to an honest-to-goodness criminal conspiracy designed to milk the area’s taxpayers of their hard-earned cash. Millions and millions of euros worth of bribes had been pocketed in exchange for a piece of the usual major public works. Money that had wound up in Croatia and Dubai, invested in lavish villas and large-scale developments.
I knew all about it. The attorney and member of the Italian parliament and even, for a brief interval, cabinet minister Sante Brianese, who’d been looking after my interests since I’d landed in Veneto, had persuaded me to invest two million euros in the construction of a skyscraper in the emirate of Dubai. Money I’d sweated to lay my hands on, which he decided to cheerfully pilfer because he assumed I’d be grateful for the opportunity. I’d been forced to flex my muscles and make life difficult for him. He’d fought back by tossing me into the arms of the Palamara ’ndrina, or clan. Another unsuccessful attempt that had forced him to surrender and give back his ill-gotten gains.
Like his cronies, Brianese had been convinced of his own omnipotence. He’d operated with brash arrogance until one day the political winds had shifted: he’d lost power and the men he’d set up in all the key offices had been replaced. The real trouble began with the arrest of Ylenia Mazzonetto, his former secretary and ex-lover. His rightful spouse had eventually demanded that Ylenia be put somewhere safely out of reach, and my ex-lawyer had done his best to placate Ylenia by finding her a position in a major construction company that owed him a bunch of favors. Charged with a long list of crimes including money laundering, Ylenia had decided to turn state’s witness, accusing as coconspirators other corrupt politicians, none of whom had the slightest intention of keeping quiet and serving time in prison. They all accused Brianese of being the mastermind, the brains behind a criminal network designed to “make local politics more flexible.” A phrase that he was fond of repeating to those he asked for money. His attempt to defend himself in parliament and stave off arrest had been pathetic and pointless. He’d tried to play the pity card by requesting house arrest, trotting out an old shoulder blade fracture with the help of major names in local medicine, but the best he’d been able to obtain was a cell in the medical wing of a major high-security prison in Piedmont.
The Veneto that had once sung his praises now turned its back. His photograph had vanished from the walls of cafés and restaurants. Hundreds of signed, personalized copies of his book, Il mio Nordest, had been tossed into the region’s recycling bins. Everyone kept his distance. Even the newspaper that had shamelessly brownnosed him back in his glory days now treated him as if he were the most miserable outcast.
His wife and daughters watched from the sidelines as he was forced to submit to the humiliation of a plea bargain: a little over two years in prison and a little over two million euros to be paid back to the Italian state.
It was a way to prevent a dangerous trial during which a delicate equilibrium would have been held in place by the slenderest of wires. The powerful families and their new allies, elected by the people of the Veneto, had achieved their goal of issuing a stark warning to the intricate world of business and politics: the age of Brianese was over, once and
for all. No one could ever again claim the right to plunder without sharing.
I had long believed that politics was the pinnacle of criminal creativity. I’d been forced to reconsider. No one, in the end, had been able to achieve liftoff, creating a lasting, stable alliance between the state, systematic corruption, and organized crime. Sante Brianese was the model case study. A corrupt politician is useful only as long as he faithfully does as he’s told, otherwise he’s just fucking himself over.
The true boundaries are the rules of the game. You can’t dedicate yourself to the fine art of theft, extortion, bribery, and money laundering unless you’re willing to resort to violence. I’d done my best to explain this to him when we were still on speaking terms, but the Honorable MP and his lover had just gotten scared. To death. Maybe that’s why the idea of cutting me in on their deal had never even occurred to them.
As had so often been the case in my life, I’d been once again forced to reinvent myself, professionally speaking. I’d always opted for the kind of criminal pursuit that guaranteed profitability and at the same time helped me achieve personal satisfaction. I’m a predator. I like to possess other people, take over their lives. Control them, exercise mastery over them, and as such wield the power to make them even worse than they already are, keep them from being able to look at themselves in the mirror without a shudder of disgust.
I’d emerged from my clash with Brianese and his Calabrians stronger and richer, and I could have been happy with what I already had. But I never would have been able to put up with the boredom of such a narrow existence, nor would I have been satisfied repeating familiar experiences—turning, for example, to drugs, whores, and robberies. Not only because I needed the thrill of the new, but also because one of the requirements of this line of work is the kind of flexibility that allows you to elude the notice and sanctions of the law. Long-term criminal specialization inevitably leads to a prison cell.
The fact is that not everyone has the capacity and the courage to change. I’ve always been something of a thoroughbred. A winner. A pioneer. The proof is in the sheer number of crimes I’ve committed and for which I’ll never pay the price. I’ve never been presented with the check at the end of the meal; if anything I present the check to others at La Nena, my undisputed domain, the treasure that not even the Calabrian ’ndrangheta has been able to rob me of.
My customers arrive, take their seats, think only of enjoying themselves, blithely unaware that all the while I’m observing them, cataloguing them. I judge whether and to what degree they can be useful to me. One day, at lunch, a guy came in with his fourteen-year-old daughter. He’d made a point of saying that’s who she was when he made his reservation. Only I knew that it was a lie. He probably didn’t remember, but we’d met a couple of years earlier in Friuli, at some enological-slash-gastronomical initiative for local restaurateurs. His name was Pierluigi Zettina, and he ran a family-owned business that produced first-class prosciutto and salami. His daughter was quite pretty, likable and competent too—only she was twenty-five and the youngest of three siblings. The businessman was fifty-five and he’d made plenty of money; he drove a big, flashy car, but he was ignoring the golden rule that says if you want to fuck a minor without running too many risks, you’d better not take her out in public.
The age difference was unmistakable and unless a physical resemblance instantly certifies paternity, as a rule people are liable to think the worst. I’d watched the two of them carefully, and the man was on pins and needles, swiveling his head constantly, on the lookout for glares of reprobation. This outing must have been the little girl’s idea. Maybe she’d thrown a tantrum to get what she wanted and demanded an expensive restaurant to boot. Or else she was just an underage whore on the first rungs of the professional ladder and her pimp wanted to show her off.
Their heads were close as they talked quietly. At a certain point, I noticed her hand fleetingly caress his. Zettina had instantly yanked his hand away, scorching her with an angry glare. It didn’t look as if the young babe was a product of the lower middle class. She had a sharp haircut, her jeans and sweater were brand-name. And she was clearly at her ease in a fine restaurant. Before too long I’d figured out she was the one running the show, and that to a certain extent the man obeyed her.
There’s a joke I’ve always liked about a guy who finds himself tied to a tree. A car pulls over to help him, and he tells the driver about the insane day he’s having, how fate has unleashed its fury on him, plaguing him with mishap after mishap. The last piece of bad luck involved an attack by an armed robber who not only took his car and all his belongings, but left him bound to the tree with a rope. The good Samaritan listens in silence, then with a smile tells him how sorry he is, drops his trousers, and ass-rapes him.
When presented with the perverse fragility of that man’s situation I felt the exact same desire to toy with him, to burst into his life with my elbows out. To fuck him over. I suddenly felt relaxed, my mind was agile and alert, there was a pleasant warmth in my gut.
I personally tailed them to a motel halfway between Padua and Venice. Zettina got out of the car to pick up the room key. When thirty minutes had passed, I walked into the front office.
The desk clerk welcomed me with a smile. “Do you have a reservation?”
“No. I need to make a phone call. I’d like to call Room 29.”
The man caught a whiff of trouble in the air and was immediately on the defensive. “I don’t know if I can allow that. Our guest left no instructions about calls to the room.”
“The gentleman in question is entertaining my niece, who is underage, in that room,” I explained frostily. “I can always just call the police.”
The desk clerk grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “I think I’ll go have a smoke,” he announced.
The businessman picked up on the sixth ring.
“Yes?”
“Ciao, Pierluigi.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Giorgio, your best friend.”
“Who are you? I don’t know any Giorgio.”
“Tell the girl to get dressed,” I said brusquely, cutting him off. “I’m taking her home.”
Zettina was immediately plunged into a panic. I had a hard time calming him down. “No one will ever know a thing because we’re going to work together to find a way to muzzle my conscience, which tells me to shout from the rooftops that you’re a goddamned child molester.”
“You don’t scare me,” the man stammered.
“Not even a little bit, right?” I retorted mockingly. “You’re such a tough guy. You’ll hold your head up, right through the media firestorm, the trial, the reactions of your family, of her family . . .”
The girl came out of the room a few minutes later. She shot me a hate-filled glare through the windshield. I pushed open the passenger-side door. “Get in,” I ordered.
She obeyed. She wasn’t scared. “It’s not what you think,” she said. “We’re in love.”
I burst out laughing. “My name’s Giorgio, what’s yours?”
“Virginia.”
I laughed even harder.
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Where do you live?”
“In Udine.”
I pointed to my GPS navigator. “Type in your address.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked after a while.
“Because at your age you shouldn’t go to bed with men forty years older than you.”
“We don’t have intercourse.”
“Oh, really? So what does your handsome Pierluigi do? Does he touch your pussy, lick it? And do you suck his dick?”
The girl’s eyes welled over with tears. “Don’t talk like that, you make it all sound so dirty.”
I shook my head. This poor idiot was actually in love.
“What are yo
u going to do now? Are you going to report him to the police?” she asked between sobs. “He says that he’s ready to kill himself.”
I gripped her arm and spoke gently. “There’s no need for things to go that far. If he shows a little common sense, I won’t say a thing to a soul, but I’m going to need you to promise that you won’t see him again until you turn sixteen.”
“That’s impossible. I’m his niece. Our families see each other all the time.”
I sighed. “I meant alone, Virginia. No more outings, no more intimate meals in restaurants, no more motels, got it? You’re just lucky I’m the one who found you, someone else could have permanently destroyed your reputations. Do you have any idea of the risks that Pierluigi is running? If you really do love him, two years isn’t really such a long time.”
With that priestly little sermon, I managed to win her trust. She told me everything. Zettina had been wooing her since before she turned twelve.
“You’re an idiot,” I insulted him as soon as I was face to face with him a couple of hours later. “How long did you think your romance with that little girl was going to last? You’re a hop, a skip, and a jump from the border, you can find some girl from a poor family in a shitty village and screw her to your heart’s content, with her parents’ blessing to boot, like all the other sickos do.”
“You don’t understand . . .”
I lifted my fist, ready to deck him. “Don’t even think of trying to palm the star-crossed lovers shtick off on me. Virginia already busted my balls with that bullshit.”
“How much do you want?” he asked in a weary tone of voice. “I have to warn you that I can only pay once, and not very much.”
I slapped him jovially on the back. “Don’t fret, Pierluigi, I’ll be happy to settle for a single truckload, packed to the rafters. Your driver can stop for an espresso along the road and someone with a copy of the keys will make the truck disappear. The insurance company will take care of your losses. As you can see, you’re getting off cheap.”
“All right,” he said.
Gang of Lovers Page 10
