In a Heartbeat

by Sandrone Dazieri

  Maaaaaaaaaassssss. Maaaaaaaaaasssss.

  It was only when the sun began to come up that I was able to lie down. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow but I didn’t dream. I was hoping never to dream again.

  Monica shook me. She was in a bathrobe and was brushing her hair.

  ‘It’s time to get up.’

  ‘What time is it?’ I grumbled.

  ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘It’s too early … leave me alone.’

  She spanked me with the brush. ‘Get up, lazy boy. It’s time to rise and shine a little bit of heaven.’

  ‘Does Zurloni feed you this crap?’

  ‘No, it’s the Cibosanto slogan. You came up with it.’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘Should I say that you’re going to be late?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘They’re getting used to seeing less of you.’ I heard her getting dressed. Keys jingled on the nightstand. ‘Leave them in the drawer.’

  I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got my clothes that were spread around the room and I made a coffee. The cooker was a crystal plate that didn’t give off heat but when I placed the little stainless steel coffee maker on one of the circles it came to life. Nothing surprised me anymore.

  I got to B&M around ten-thirty, still sleepy. I swiped the card through the slot and a red light came on. I tried again, another red light. I tried a few more times before going to the guard booth to find out what was wrong. It was the same guy who had printed up the info on Salima. ‘Good morning, Signore,’ he said, slightly sarcastically. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘This thing doesn’t work.’

  ‘No Signore, the thing works; it’s your card. Would you give it to me please?’

  I gave it to him. He then put it in a drawer and closed it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot, this is for you.’

  He gave me an envelope. It had the B&M logo on it. Dear Signor Denti …

  It was about fifty lines that could have been summed up in one word: suspended. The director of personnel was sorry for the inconvenience but considering the recent investigation the agency thought it best for me to focus full time on my defence. I was suspended with salary ‘until further notice.’ I could see Bonanno staring at me through the lines on the page. He had already had the letter written before talking to me at the Flock party last night. ‘Trust me.’ Why not? If I’d complained my salary would have been shot to hell as well. Until further notice was self-explanatory. I should’ve been relieved; no more early mornings or meetings. But I wasn’t happy. I would’ve loved to strangle that old bastard and throw him down a flight of stairs. At that moment I saw Pippo and he pretended not to see me. Everyone already knew. Word had got around fast.

  ‘If you need anything from your desk I can accompany you,’ said the guard. He was really enjoying this. He’d have loved the chance to escort me like a prisoner in transit while everyone looked on silently, poking their heads out from their cubicles.

  ‘I don’t need anything, thank you.’

  I took out my last fifty-euro note and I laid it on the counter. ‘Take it; buy something that’ll make your life less miserable, you arsehole.’

  I walked away leaving the guard torn between greed and pride. I was outside when Monica called.

  ‘Yeah, I know everything,’ I said while I walked. Any suicide bombers or killer bikers around? None.

  Good.

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’ she screamed. ‘I spoke with my father and he said that Manetti’s heirs weren’t moving on this. He assured me that it was only a question of days until the investigation was finished.’ Pause. Breath. ‘Santo, are you there?’

  ‘You’re really a nice woman. I don’t know how you’ve been able to make it until now, but Monica, you’re a sweet girl. Don’t ever change.’

  I hung up.

  I got away in my car, choosing streets randomly. Then I parked and went for a walk to clear my head. Stopping in front of the new monument in Piazza Cadorna I stared at the ten-metre- metal cylinder in the shape of a sewing needle that punctured the ground. A monument to fashion. But it looked more like a tribute to the junkies in Milan. Junkies like Max. Where the hell are you, you bastard? Whose money are you stealing, now? I tried to fight back the desire to find him.

  When I’d woken up I’d thought it wasn’t worth digging up the past. Max had certainly screwed me over and Trafficante had disappeared so long ago it wasn’t worth defending his honour. But now it was eating at me. For me, only a week had passed. Now, knowing what he had done to me, I lived with it every time I closed my eyes. I couldn’t let it go. I’d find that piece of shit even if he’d had a sex change and was turning tricks in Shanghai.

  The Giant called me. I’d put him in my address book and responded. He had organised a meeting with ‘the plumbers’ for that morning if I was available. Would twelve o’clock be good? I had time to make it back home so said yes.

  ‘The work on the pipes will cost you, and they want cash. They won’t invoice you for the job.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two thousand up front. You can pay the rest off later. Well, not too much later.’

  So there’s a rest to pay off? The bank certainly wouldn’t give me credit. I was surprised that I hadn’t received a phone call from them regarding Spillo’s cheque. I needed the PIN numbers for the credit cards. There was nothing helpful in my wallet. I asked myself where they were written down. The Ad Exec would’ve put them in a safe place close to him just in case he came down with amnesia … I looked on his phone and found Saint. When I’d first read it I thought that it was just an odd phone number. But inside were three series of numbers with four digits each.

  To associate the numbers with the corresponding cards took an attempt or two, with an alarming voice that said, ‘Please try again.’ I took out the maximum amount allowed for each card. (Learn: PIN Number. Learn: Pre-Paid top-up Card.)

  I put the cash in my pocket for the job and had some left over just to get by.

  When I got home I found two men in dark suits and sunglasses standing on my doorstep. They were the most elegant-looking plumbers that I’d ever seen. One was about thirty and the other was in his fifties. Both had broad shoulders and sharp jaw lines. Tough guys. They carried two metal briefcases that contained the sniffers. The older of the two extended his hand. ‘Signor Denti?’

  ‘A pleasure.’

  ‘My name is Carlo, and this is Paolo.’ Paolo nodded. ‘Where can we talk?’

  ‘Let’s go to the garage.’

  They followed me down the car ramp, and we stopped in front of my garage. ‘Officially, what we’re going to do is search the area for bugs. This is legal,’ said Carlo.

  ‘I understand.’

  I gave them the money; he counted it and put it in a gold money clip that disappeared into his jacket pocket. ‘Is this your garage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you please give me the keys and step aside?’

  They took out a couple of devices from the briefcases. One looked like a battery-powered mini-vacuum cleaner. The other was a small box about the size of a 12-pack of cigarettes. Each had buttons and lights.

  ‘I don’t think that you’ll find anything sophisticated.’ I explained to them what had happened with the computer.

  ‘Did it explode when you turned it on?’ asked Paolo while he checked one of his instruments. When he knelt I noticed the bulge under his shirt. A bulletproof vest, I guessed.

  ‘No, it went off after a few hours.’

  ‘An amateur. The explosive should have gone off immediately. It was probably connected badly and the bomb went off from the heat generated by the computer and not from the trigger.’ He had the air of a person who could make a bomb in his sleep. ‘Unless he used a remote control, but to set it off he would have had to be close by. The further away, the weaker the signal, especially if it has to go through wa
lls.’

  The thought was rather disturbing. What did I really know about my neighbours?

  They looked at the garage door. When they were satisfied, one of them turned the key while the other watched the pulsations of the needle on the smaller device. ‘Go,’ he said.

  Carlo opened the door. I covered my ears but nothing happened. Then they examined the Cayenne from top to bottom, opened the doors, and searched inside.

  ‘Clean,’ said Paolo. He patted the boot. ‘Nice ride. How many kilometres per litre?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘If you don’t know that means that you can afford it.’ I saw the final bill grow.

  The job in the apartment wasn’t as simple or as fast. They began from the doormat and before opening the door they examined the lock with a device that looked like a hospital probe. They looked at the image on a small monitor. ‘Nothing,’ Carlo said.

  They opened the door and I waited a few minutes before following them in. You never know, there might have been a timer somewhere. No bombs.

  They took off their jackets and placed them on the back of a chair, careful not to wrinkle them. ‘Where’s the computer?’ Paolo asked.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Would you show us the way please?’

  They checked every step going up. We finally made it to the desk where the computer was. The sniffer began to beep.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, sticking my head in the room from outside.

  Paolo read the numbers off the display. ‘It’s probably combusted potassium nitrate,’ he said. He put on a pair of latex gloves and wiped a piece of cotton on the desk and inserted it in the device. He waited a few minutes and read the indicator. ‘Just as I thought. It’s not dangerous anymore.’

  ‘What’s potassium nitrate?’

  ‘A component of gunpowder, the most common product on the market. To sum up, it was a light explosive, nothing more.’

  They checked the rest of the floor and the balcony. No more beeps.

  ‘Would you please check the first-floor bathroom? I kind of need it right now.’

  The bathroom was also clean. I locked the door and took the envelope with the phone records from behind the cabinet. I ripped them and the envelope into minute pieces and dumped them into the toilet. Oh, what a relief! I was about to flush when I imagined the cops searching the pipes, finding a compromising piece of evidence. Signor Denti, would you please explain this? Better not. I knelt down, took out all the pieces, and squished them into a dripping ball of pulp that I then put in my pocket.

  Outside the two tough guys were searching the house, doing everything better than Rosario and his wife had ever done. ‘How much longer will this take?’

  ‘If we don’t find anything, a couple of hours.’

  ‘Can I leave you guys here while I run an errand?’

  No problem. It was better.

  I got away from the building and I threw the ball into a bin. Try to find it now, I thought. I didn’t feel like staying there while they searched the place. I walked down Corso Vercelli and stared at the display windows. One caught my attention: Internet Point (Learn). Behind the glass about twenty computers sat on school desks, many of the computers available. It cost a euro for an hour. The pimpled sales assistant made a copy of my ID (‘as required by anti-terrorism law’). He suggested that I use the online white pages when I described vaguely what I was looking for. I put Max’s name in the window. Nothing came up in Milan, not even in Rome. I tried other cities, but I had no luck. It wasn’t going to be that easy.

  I ate an ice cream, although out of season, and then I went home. The two were packing up what was left of the computer.

  ‘We’ll recycle it,’ said Paolo. ‘Don’t worry, we know how.’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Finished. Now you can have sweet dreams,’ said the older guy. ‘We found something out of the ordinary but it’s not a bomb.’ We went into the living room, where he pointed to the fireplace. ‘There’s a metal rectangular box here in the chimney about eighty centimetres long and twenty centimetres wide. You can’t see anything inside the fireplace. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not any of my business, but is this your house?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Because you should know that you have a hidden safe.’

  The money! I looked inside the fireplace and up the chimney. I saw nothing odd.

  ‘And if there was a safe how would you go about opening it? I don’t see a lock.’

  ‘Maybe there is one even though it isn’t very visible.’ He indicated a small, round depression about as wide as my thumb beneath the stone mantelpiece. It was almost impossible to notice unless you knew what you were looking for. ‘A magnetic lock.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘You place your key next to it and it opens. Every key has a microchip and a code. It works better than a combination lock. Without it you’d have to use an acetylene torch. If the safe isn’t yours, that is, or maybe the previous owner had it put in?’ He didn’t believe it for a second.

  ‘What would this key look like?’

  ‘It wouldn’t look like an ordinary key. But it wouldn’t be that big, probably a plastic body with a metal head.’ He shook my hand. ‘Thank you, and we’ll be in contact for the rest of the payment.’

  They gave me back the house keys and I discovered that I didn’t have to look far. The magnetic key was simply attached to my key holder. I’d mistaken it for some ugly mushroom-shaped charm. It was blue plastic with a metal semi-spherical head. If that wasn’t it, I didn’t know what was. I placed it next to the depression and I immediately heard a click. A thin metal plate about two centimetres thick slid out from the mantelpiece towards the floor.

  I put my head into the fireplace, not a comfortable position. The piece that had slid out brought with it two rows of bricks that revealed the inside of the safe, lit by a small lamp. I had already imagined getting my hands on piles of cash, and I almost thought I could see them stacked inside but there were only three envelopes … too small to contain three hundred thousand euros. Shit. I threw the envelopes on the floor. Then I replaced the key, and everything slid back into place.

  I opened the larger envelope. There were more phone records. How annoying. The same heading: Mariano Roveda. They dated from last October. The Ad Exec had worked on it. There were numbers crossed out one right after the other. Only three with the same area code, 004191, were still legible, each circled in red. Hmmm. The second envelope contained four photographs taken with a zoom lens. In one Roveda was getting out of a car and shaking the hand of a bald and elegant man in his forties. No kisses on the cheek. In the background the tables of an outdoor café faced a piazza. In the following photos Roveda and the man were getting into a car with tinted windows. The license plate was blown up in the last photo, the letters TI visible. Swiss plates, from Lugano. If the area code matched it meant that the Ad Exec had found out who the guy with Roveda was and then had had Spillo follow them. Maybe he had followed them himself. This meeting had to have meant something considering the lengths the Ad Exec to which went to hide it. Monica’s father hadn’t said anything about this. Why?

  The third, slightly smaller envelope was somewhat damaged. When I shook it several photos fell onto the floor. I was expecting more of Roveda, but they were of Salima and me, stark naked and going at it.

  2

  I didn’t recognise the setting but from what I could tell it was Salima’s apartment. I looked ridiculous, like one of those guys in the amateur photos that you see in personal ads with the black bar across the eyes. You’ve got to be a professional if you want the shots to come out well while having sex. Salima, on the other hand, could have made the cover of Playboy. Karate kept her in shape; she didn’t have a gram of fat on her, but she wasn’t bony like Monica.

  Salima could kill you with her legs. From some of my facial expressions it looked like I was going
to die right then and there. I was still wearing socks. I thought for a moment that the Ad Exec had taken the photos himself and that I had discovered another side to him. But then it dawned on me that the photos had to have been taken by someone else. The lens followed the two while they screwed, and judging from the quality of the images they had been taken from outside the window. The Ad Exec was also being trailed.

  It was kind of funny.

  It was time to go, and I couldn’t put the photos back where I’d found them. I certainly didn’t want to get rid of them until I found out exactly what all this meant. I put everything into the larger envelope and got a roll of tape from upstairs. I then went to the basement in search of a hiding place worthy of Santo Trafficante.

  The pool was open, and two old hags with coloured swimming caps were splashing around.

  ‘Santo, come in for a swim with us!’ one yelled, waving.

  ‘It’s very tempting ladies, but I’m looking for my car keys.’

  I went into the men’s locker room that was painted in several shades of blue with wooden benches and green metal lockers without locks. No one was around. I chose a random locker and stuck the envelope between the bottom of the locker and the tiled floor. Someone would have found it sooner or later, but I needed a quick hiding place until I thought of somewhere else. When I got up I saw a kid with a tribal tattoo on his shoulder and a ring through his eyebrow. When I was his age, my father would have branded me with a hot iron if he had caught me looking like that. The kid said hello rather respectfully. Did he see me stashing the envelope? I didn’t think so.

  I walked out, spinning the keys. ‘Found them!’

  ‘Lucky you! I never seem to find anything that I lose,’ said the first old lady. ‘Stop and see me sometime, and we’ll talk.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it on my computer.’ I got in my car.

  *

  The courthouse in Milan was a rectangular monster of a building constructed during Mussolini’s time. It had dark windows and grey pillars; it looked like it was ready to devour the guilty as well as the innocent. A group of protesters was on the pavement. ‘ALESIA CALL CENTRE WORKERS WANT JUSTICE!’ read the banner. ‘YOU TRY LIVING ON 700 EUROS A MONTH!’ That was about how much money I had spent on cabs these past four days. They always found a way of getting to you in the end.