The Ballad of Mila

by Matteo Strukul

  “Promised, promised... in the meantime I'm learning to pronounce R rather than L. And I hate you talking to me this way. You're my uncle after all, and you owe me some respect!” Zhang pronounced the R in “respect” like an angry Spaniard. Perfectly enunciated.

  “Right. Back to the matter in hand. Anything else you need to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “The girl left with the Merc.”

  “And you didn’t follow her?”

  “I’m fifty yards behind her, on the motorway.”

  “Good. Find out where she's going.”

  “OK.”

  “Where did they take Longhin?”

  “Padua hospital.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes uncle, trust me.”

  “Good! So, while you're following that girl, call Zou Kai and tell him to go to the Padua hospital with some of his guys. We need to eliminate Longhin from the equation before Pagnan’s men grab him. The less they know about him selling out, the better for us. We need to hang onto the surprise factor. And even if Pagnan’s men fail, that idiot might tell the police something. So we need to be fast.”

  “I agree, uncle.”

  “Right, that’s all from me.”

  “Same here.”

  In the relaxation room of his house, Guo Xiaoping shook his head. His nephew was still far from adept at pronouncing the Italian language. An amateur, he told himself. Guo strongly believed that it was important to perfect the pronunciation. It was necessary to show he had integrated completely in order to screw up those ignorant nationalists all the more effectively.

  In two days, he was taking part in a debate about cultural integration. He had been invited by the president of the provincial SME confederation, a man who considered Guo a rare example of a non-European entrepreneur who had integrated so well into the social fabric that he had become an asset to the local economy.

  Guo really wanted to make a good impression. And he was afraid his nephew would do something stupid. He had to make sure Zhang stayed at home, but unfortunately he was sure that the young man would do everything he could to be there.

  Guo snorted.

  Then he thought back at how he had devised his speech. He planned to start from an historical perspective, explaining how, century after century, the Chinese had always shown respect and gratitude towards the people who had welcomed them. He'd thought of several excellent examples, one of which was about the Chinese workers who helped build the American railroad, sleeper after sleeper, from the east coast to the west.

  He felt that he could do a really good job and impress the president, thus becoming a player. And thereby eliminating any doubts they might still harbour about him.

  If only his stupid nephew, that dumb-ass loose cannon, would behave himself.

  The Mercedes was running like a dream.

  The clouds had cleared.

  Mila felt like a bird in spring.

  She had left the motorway, rejoined it in the opposite direction and was now heading for Marco Polo airport outside Venice.

  She planned to leave one of the two cases in a left luggage locker before taking the next step. But first she needed to buy a big holdall, a tennis bag maybe, to put the cases in. Just to avoid entering the airport looking like someone who'd stolen a couple of million Euros.

  Soon both the Chinese and the locals would realise that they were being fucked with. Then she'd turn them against each other and dice them, like mozzarella on a pizza. Spring cleaning. She was already dreaming of having to pick them up with a spoon.

  The Porsche Cayenne kept following her.

  It had to be a total idiot behind the wheel. A car like that was as noticeable as a turd in a bowl of soup.

  Mila drove at a steady speed until the motorway ended in Mestre, then she suddenly turned and took the ramp towards Porto Marghera. The Porsche was left behind and disappeared from sight.

  After a couple of turns she got to the town centre. She parked the Mercedes in front of a sport shop. A few minutes later she came out with a Nike tennis bag. She opened the boot and put one of the cases in the bag.

  She got back into the car and drove to the airport.

  The Porsche, which had reappeared meanwhile, parked a short distance behind her.

  Mila entered the arrivals terminal and walked to the left luggage area. She picked a locker at random and put her bag inside. Then added the key to her keyring to make it look inconspicuous.

  She went back to the motorway, following the same road she had taken earlier to get there. She left the motorway at Padua West and drove the A road towards Castelfranco Veneto until she reached Vigodarzere. Once she had reached Saletto she got to a residential area.

  She parked the Mercedes in front of a small, semi-detached house.

  She grabbed the remaining case from the boot and entered her home.

  She flung off her clothes and left them on the floor, got to the bathroom and entered the shower, imagining the sensation of the hot water on her skin. She wanted to pamper herself a little before having dinner, but most of all she wanted to free her mind. She had a pretty challenging meeting coming up and wanted to be fully fit for it.

  After fifteen minutes of what seemed to her a sweet anti-stress therapy, she left the shower and wrapped herself in a white honeycomb robe.

  She went to her shiny kitchen. Washed some strawberries and prepared a smoothie. She smiled; her smile was sweet and cruel at the same time.

  Zhang Wen had not understood one single iota of what was going on.

  After the call with his uncle, he had followed the girl, but lost her near the Porto Marghera exit. He left the motorway and reached the town, where he had driven around aimlessly until he spotted her leaving a sports shop. Then he followed her, still at a distance, to the short stay parking lot of Marco Polo airport. There he remained in the car, hoping he wouldn’t have to wait for long. After about fifteen minutes he saw her walk back to the Mercedes without her sports bag.

  Maybe she had delivered it to someone inside the airport, or she'd left it in a locker. He couldn’t think of any alternatives. But it looked dodgy. Decidedly dodgy. If that girl was driving the car belonging to Pagnan’s accountants, then that bag contained either money or sensitive documents. Anyway, he was close to deciding to put an end to wandering around Veneto after her. He was planning on squeezing all the information he could out of her before putting a couple of bullets in her head and bye bye baby.

  Zhang followed the Mercedes again. He parked his Porsche Cayenne half a block after the pretty house the redhead had walked into.

  Only then he remembered that he was supposed to call Zou Kai and send him to the Padua hospital to kill Longhin. Shit, he'd fucked up. Guo would murder him.

  With trembling hands, he called Zou Kai’s mobile. After fourteen rings, Zou picked up. Zhang told him what had happened at the service station. The other man understood immediately that there was a fuck-ton of trouble on its way. He said he would call a couple of friends and then leave immediately, but he was not exactly in the area and it would take him a while to get there. Zhang shouted that he needed to be fast.

  He ended the call with the unpleasant feeling of having a dirty conscience.

  Immediately afterwards, he phoned Xan Jingyu and asked him to come over, along with Wu Jingjing. He had decided to call for help: after having seen the girl at work, he would rather avoid any further trouble.

  As he waited, he got out of the car to stretch his legs. He checked the two Walther PPK 7.65s he kept in his shoulder holsters and started thinking about how best to enter the house.

  Fat, salt-and-pepper hair and with a discoloured, nearly platinum goatee, Pagnan had really bad taste, talked too much and was unbelievably greedy: three traits that allowed him to become the undisputed boss of the Veneto underworld.

  Over time, he had been diversifying his activities: loan sharking, arms dealing, armed robberies of security vans, dru
g trafficking – especially cocaine, distributed by his pushers in all the nightclubs and discos in Veneto. And of course the very remunerative activity of money laundering that had allowed his company, Fresh Air, to become the leading producer of air conditioners in the north east. And there was a lot to be earned through Fresh Air as well, via crimes such as collusive tendering and of course tax evasion.

  As he'd always been able to afford the best lawyers and accountants, he had managed to stay clear of the law courts. Good relations with politicians, both left and right wing, and attendant bribes and backhanders, allowed him to enjoy total immunity. To the money he invested in corruption, he added a healthy entourage of high-end whores passing for escorts, and oceans of cocaine. All of which almost always helped him get what he wanted. And if ultimately somebody wasn't satisfied with that, he always had the right man ready to close their mouth in a committed and professional way.

  Until now, everything had been great for Rossano Pagnan. On the job, at least.

  His family didn’t give him as much satisfaction, though.

  His wife and kids were adept at methodically wasting all the money Rossano earned with his hard work. Each of them followed a strictly individual code of conduct, making sure they invested the family’s money in a creatively crazy way.

  Marisa, his wife, was the kind of woman who infested the supermarkets: fat, buxom and swollen with coke. She complemented this with a fondness for alcohol that caused her to start drinking vodka from the moment she woke up, just to calm her morning nerves. On Sundays she liked to play Rummy with her friends, betting staggering amounts of money that she regularly lost.

  Their oldest daughter, Selvaggia, had had the great idea of going to study law in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pagnan paid for her studies – several thousand US dollars – and of course a pile extra, such as a Ford Mustang and a Pontiac Firebird. But Selvaggia didn’t only like sport cars. She also loved designer clothes: Roberto Cavalli, Vivienne Westwood, Dolce & Gabbana, Jean-Paul Gaultier.

  Giacomo, their eight year-old son, spent his time faking various illnesses to skip school and play on his PlayStation, and in his free time he showed his love for their two Rottweilers. Once a week his mother brought him to Media Markt in the Padua Industrial Area, where he bought all the newest electronic devices.

  So, Pagnan needed to keep grinding out money not only to satisfy his vast desire for power, but also to be able to keep up with his family’s brainless purchases. But he still didn’t lose his good spirits; after all, he was happy to be a successful man.

  He was wolfing down a portion of thick spaghetti in a Bolognese sauce, his enthusiasm a harbinger of joy. On the table a bottle of Cabernet Franc – half empty – and a crystal glass – full. Before him an enormous fireplace, no fire lit.

  Above the fireplace, a plasma TV screen dominated the room as if it was a Caravaggio. It was showing the local news. But what he saw made him gulp down what he was eating.

  “Uh... urgh,” he grunted. The enormous mouthful was choking him.

  A Filipino waiter in a blue uniform decorated with small crimson mushrooms rushed to him and started vigorously patting his back.

  Pagnan spat the cud on his plate just as the pictures of the Galesso twins appeared on the screen. A journalist with a colourless face was explaining how they had met their demise in the toilets of a service station at the hand of a madman who was then beaten within an inch of his life by some heroic girl.

  “Wine!” shouted Pagnan, and as he did so he saw Ottorino Longhin’s face on the plasma screen. It was all too much, even for a man like him. He started to squirm like a carp that had just bitten a hook.

  “Fuckingbastarddirtysonofabitch,” he belched as soon as he started to breathe again. Then, staring at the Filipino waiter with his piggy eyes, he started to shout: “Come on, you stupid black ape, what the hell are you looking at? Go call Mule, that genius – everything's going balls up! For fuck’s sake!”

  The waiter nodded and obeyed.

  Mule picked up after ten rings.

  “Mule! Where the fuck are you?”

  “In Monselice, boss. I’m about to get our money from that asshole Schiavon.”

  “Leave that shit alone and listen to me!”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “Mule, we are so badly fucked that I can’t even start to explain. Imagine a turbine going full speed, splashing shit everywhere. But there’s only us there. With our mouths open.”

  “OK boss, I get the idea.”

  “Someone killed the twins.”

  “What twins?”

  “Mule, get with the programme, for fuck’s sake! The Galesso twins, my insurance policy against jail!”

  “Oh shit!”

  “Oh, finally! That's the first smart thing you've said!”

  Mule clenched his teeth and held his breath. He knew well that in these cases keeping a low profile and behaving like a robot was the best way out.

  “But it's not over!”

  “Ah!”

  “We've been betrayed.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yes! Fuck, fuck, a thousand times fuck! And do you know who by?”

  “No.”

  “Ottorino Longhin, that son of a bitch.”

  “Shit!”

  “Right! Shit! Now, Mule, pay attention, pay close attention to what I'm about to say. The news is reporting that Longhin is at the Padua hospital along with the poor assholes he shot like mockingbirds. Genius! He'll be in a private room, watched by the cops, right?”

  “Right, boss.”

  “So, Mule, what I want you to do, and don’t fuck it up, is to go to the hospital and don't leave without him, you got it, Mule? I don’t know how you'll do it but I want him, I want him alive, and I want him now. We can’t run any risks, and we will if the cops have him. First of all, we need to find out who bought him out. Second, we must make sure he doesn’t sell us to the fucking cops. Third, I want to torture him with my own hands. Am I clear, Mule? Take anyone you want, someone like Tripe, Schiavo or what’s his face, and bring that son of a bitch to me at the bowling alley. I’ll be waiting there. Am I clear?”

  “Crystal clear.”

  “Any questions?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll see you tonight at the bowling alley, then. Don’t fuck this up. See that salary I pay you every month? Today you have to earn it, Mule!” concluded Pagnan, exhausted by the poeticism of his long speech. “The news says it was a bloody mess. Longhin, that twat, lost it and riddled the twins with bullets. We must find out who's behind this, find out and make them pay. Take the guys with you. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “So one last time: I’ll be waiting at the bowling alley.”

  “Yes boss, I’m going now.”

  “Yes, right, you better go!”

  “One thing, boss.”

  “What?”

  “Well...”

  “Come on, Mule, speak! We don’t have all day! What’s up?”

  “Thursday’s opening ceremony.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The riding stables!”

  “The riding stables?”

  “Yes, the riding stables.”

  “What the fuck is happening, is there an echo? I got it, the riding stables, what about the riding stables? Mule, we're in deep doodoo, you should already be at the hospital and instead you start a game of twenty questions?”

  “Boss, I meant... don’t forget the opening ceremony for the riding stables. The mayor will be there and you need to deliver the opening speech.”

  Pagnan felt a mote of revulsion immediately followed by a feeling of dread that clenched his stomach muscles. Right, the riding stables, that spaceship-looking thing the mayor of Muson had built on the Euganean hills. Rossano Pagnan had donated oodles of money to the municipality in order to maintain the appearance of being a really nice man, always the best guarantee of hiding anything illegal.

  Pagnan gulped.
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  “Right,” he said, “you're right, Mule. Good that you reminded me of it, but now hang up and go do what you have to.”

  “OK boss, see you at the bowling alley.”

  Pagnan was thinking of that goddamned speech. In order to look good he'd prepared a series of quotations good enough to impress a philosopher, but now he couldn’t remember any of them. How had he decided to start again? Something like “Horses are extraordinary animals...” but he'd forgotten everything that followed. His mind wandered to the stack of money he'd donated to the mayor and the parish priest, that dirty old sod who shagged his housekeeper and milked shitpiles of money – “offers” he said – off those who'd bought country houses in Muson. Bastards! Initially it was intended to be a simple riding stable, fences, horses. That was supposed to be it! Then they added a restaurant, a recreation ground, a five-star hotel. What the fuck! How come he had to be their main backer? Still, both out of pride and because it would have probably ended up being a useful move, he’d allowed himself to be screwed over. And now he had to give a fucking speech in front of all those people, restaurant owners, hoteliers, professional people, doctors, lawyers, all people with a lot of money who liked that corner of the hills, who considered it a safe harbour to rest after a long week’s work.

  To him personally, that stupid idea of building a riding stable up in the hills was trouble from day one. Like that time when, driving home, he destroyed his car after hitting a boar. A furious, hairy beast that some asshole had decided to repopulate the hills with, pretty much handing over one of the nicest areas in Veneto to a bunch of wild pigs that in a few years had bred at a ridiculous rate. Which was one more thing he couldn’t understand: they were boars, not rabbits! Still... still he had hit one, and anyway it was Monday, only three days to go, and he couldn’t remember a single passage of the speech he was supposed to give.

  3.

  Thanks to Rossano Pagnan's contacts with some of the doctors in the Padua hospital, Mule knew exactly where he’d find Longhin: Geriatric Medicine, room number six, a single room guarded night and day by two agents of the Penitentiary Police.