The Ballad of Mila

by Matteo Strukul

  “I'll propose a truce and arrange a meeting between you,” Mila added.

  “Why? What for?”

  “It makes sense,” she replied with a smile, “if on the day of the meeting I'm five hundred yards away with a sniper rifle to take out all the Chinese. You'll only need to make sure I have a clear shot and then take cover so I can kill them all.”

  “Brilliant idea.”

  “I think so.”

  “Fine. Now let me drink this fucking Margarita.”

  “Boss, one final detail,” Pretty Boy said.

  “What the fuck is it now?”

  “Longhin. What do you want us to do with him?”

  “Longhin? Ah, right. Shoot him.”

  8.

  From Mila Zago’s journal.

  Rossano Pagnan was under investigation for incitement to murder, an offence valid when it's proven that the defendant “incited or induced to act” the person who committed the crime. To be clear, the subject must have instigated or provoked the criminal intent in someone else.

  That’s what Pagnan’s lawyer mouthed into journalists’ microphones on the day his client was set free. He was spouting forth with that crystal clear voice of his, wearing a bow tie and a linen suit. I watched it on television. Dozens of times. I felt utter hatred towards him when he gave the cameras one of his best smiles.

  I hadn’t understood exactly what he was talking about. But it was clear to me that his ludicrous speech pattern, full of legal jargon, would have stuck in our throats. And above all it would have been what saved Pagnan.

  I should have expected it to end up like that. The Public Prosecutor, after having talked more than once to each witness during the preliminary investigations, had decided that the evidence to support the accusation of incitement to murder was not enough and had himself asked for Pagnan to be released from prison.

  So, a fish always stinks from the head down. Isn’t that what they say? And everything in that story sounded dubious, even before the avalanche of bullshit began.

  Luckily the judge rejected the request for Pagnan’s release, explaining the existence of the incitement to murder charge with a series of facts: Pagnan and the killers were close friends, and the relations between the subjects suggested with a reasonable certainty the existence of a criminal conspiracy. Further elements supporting the accusation had later appeared thanks to the investigations conducted by my father before he was murdered. Investigations that, according to the judge, had caused his death.

  But it was not enough. Can you believe that? Shit! Pagnan’s lawyer didn’t give up. He insisted that the motivations given by the judge, besides not having precedents, could open a path to a very dangerous legal interpretation: contributory negligence to be pinned on anyone unlucky enough to be friends with a person who has committed a crime.

  In my opinion it was much more straightforward: the Public Prosecutor was on Pagnan’s books. You can’t be the number one criminal in Veneto if you're unable to corrupt the right people at the right time. Everybody was aware of the relationship between Rossano Pagnan and Saverio Donolato, aka Mule. Where one went, the other followed. And my father had been investigating Rossano Pagnan for quite a while. The judges and the police knew, they damn well knew.

  Our defending counsel, Mr Carraro, told us to stay confident as the preliminary judge was on our side – or rather on the side of Truth.

  But I didn’t believe him and more importantly I couldn’t wait.

  It felt like living through another nightmare. Not only was my father dead, but I also had to listen to an asshole in a linen suit pontificating to the world while he tried to get Pagnan sprung from jail.

  I tried to unwind by training. In the afternoons, in the evenings, all the time. I’d run mile after mile, I’d have the longest gym sessions imaginable, crazy stuff.

  One day, after a first run, I got to the fourth station in the fitness trail. The Brenta was swaying, soft and slow, under the sun. I'd gone to ground on my back, my legs under a log so I could train my abs, when a disgusting, sickly sweet smell assaulted my nostrils. A rank, pulsating whiff that dominated the air. An obscene, violent, unbearable smell. I moved my legs from under the log, stood up, looked around.

  Then I saw it.

  Someone had nailed a toad to one end of the log. Its body was now a brown slush, blood and guts leaking out of its small belly, deflated like a punctured ball.

  They had made a thorough job, those bastards. After gutting it, they'd used it as a pincushion. Who the fuck would enjoy doing something like that? I remained there, my mouth gaping and my eyes wide open staring at that little, mangled body.

  An icy sadness coursed through me. I closed my eyes and remained there, on my feet, without moving, crying silent tears and facing the blood-red dusk.

  It was as if I had seen my father’s tragedy reflected in that small, dead animal. Trampled on and nails driven into him in life and memory. Crucified and displayed in the public square so people could spit on him.

  Grandpa went to and fro between home and the lawyer’s office. Most of the time he came back empty-handed. He insisted on being seen every day, as if Carraro was able to focus only on our trial. Now I believe he was using it as an excuse to have something to do every day in order to exorcise the frustration that was increasing daily.

  At the end of the investigation the Public Prosecutor applied for the case to be dismissed. Carraro opposed the request, and his opposition was accepted. But at the following hearing the judge delivered a verdict of non-suit.

  Which meant that Pagnan, that fucker, got out of jail with his police record still immaculate.

  It all ended in such a sad, pathetic kind of way. When I think back to those days I feel an overwhelming rage. I want to break everything around me.

  My father had ended up in the gutter in this fucking town, and nobody had lifted a finger to help.

  Many said that the judgement was a scandal, an insult to the law. Stupid, damned, useless words.

  I still remember Mr Carraro’s face as he tried to explain what had happened. He couldn’t understand how the system had cheated us so badly. He cried.

  That was what hurt me most. I looked at him, in his sober and refined office, bent over his oak desk. His hands desperately crumpling his paperwork.

  I was still staring at the documents, the acts, the enormous folders, unable to believe. That sea of paper evoked only a feeling of impotence. In silence, Grandpa put an arm around my shoulders. Grandma had long since run out of tears.

  Everything had happened “in the name of the law”.

  I was studying Law. I realised once more how pointless it was to study a system of rules that has completely failed.

  Because it is managed by human beings.

  Nothing will ever persuade me that most of those who could have spoken out or done something to help, didn’t do so because they were on Pagnan’s books. Including the Public Prosecutor and the preliminary trial judge.

  After all, why did the judge who accepted our objection die a year later in a very suspicious car crash?

  In my opinion human beings are incapable of getting close to justice. Not even a little bit.

  What should a girl think when her mother doesn’t want her, her father is murdered, she gets raped and the person behind the murder is free, plotting his next criminal enterprise?

  That’s why I decided to become who I am.

  That’s why my only objective is to punish Pagnan. I can’t stand the idea that he is allowed to breathe the same air that normal people breathe. It just doesn’t make sense. As long as I have the strength, as long as I still breathe, I will live only to hunt him down – him and the people like him. To flush those pieces of shit out of their hidey-holes, embodying a superhuman strength that causes fear, panic, despair.

  The strength of a Fury.

  Strong-arm tactics.

  An eye for an eye.

  A tooth for a tooth.

  Those are the only words I know
. The only words that work. Because there must be something rotten in us. The civilization we built has deprived us of a sense of justice, of ethics, of dignity to the extent that we don’t even know what those words mean anymore. We fill our mouths with words such as politics, transaction, parole, rehabilitation, reduction of sentence, statute of limitation, pardon. The good guys and the bad guys don’t exist any longer, they're all mentally ill now. Of unsound mind, “inciter to a crime” at a stretch: what does “inciter to a crime” mean? One who assists without acting but rather instigates, favours, promotes a criminal deed.

  So what?

  Once they called them instigators, that was it.

  But the instigator is the scariest of all. He's the one who can cause more crimes. I mean, who is more powerful, an entrepreneur or a factory worker? Easy answer I think.

  Rossano Pagnan is still alive, at liberty. He gets richer, he steals, he deals drugs, he orders murders, he pimps. But he hides it all with a mountain of money, he lines his disgusting life with banknotes and makes eyes and mouths close at his whim. Everyone’s mouths. He owns the best lawyers, the best accountants, the best whores. They all do the same job, and they're great at it.

  My father lies under the ground.

  Murdered in a shoot-out because he was upholding the law. He was serving the country.

  And what did the country do for him?

  Did it give him justice?

  Did it punish those responsible for his death?

  Did it reward him for having defended the order and the values that are supposed to be the foundation of our country itself?

  Like fuck it did!

  I promised myself, in front of a mirror, that I would no longer feel fear, no longer allow mercy. For me they now are empty words, spent words, worn out, melted away.

  I will be Fury and Torment.

  I will enjoy the pain I inflict on those who caused pain.

  I will feed on this. My cruelty will be my strength. And the more I am able to mutilate, torture, crush, cut, destroy, murder, the more my smile will become sweet, sparkling.

  An eye for an eye.

  A tooth for a tooth.

  9.

  Guo had withdrawn to the quiet of the relaxation room, where he used to go to smoke a cigar or read a book.

  Just a few minutes earlier he had talked with the president of the local SME confederation to agree the minutiae of his short speech on cultural integration. That had helped cheer him up.

  He was enjoying the feeling of being on the right path when Xing, the waiter, announced visitors.

  Ah, she was here. Guo was more than curious to see this woman in the flesh. But he played it cool.

  He gave a tired glance at the wonderful teak panels that covered the walls of the room. Delicate watercolours hung there, illuminated by the soft light of brass lamps with silk shades. On the smooth stone floor was a striking sky blue carpet; at each corner, a golden embroidered dragon clawed at the planet Earth, placed in the centre of the carpet like an ancestral seal.

  “Sir...” said Xing.

  “What?”

  “A foxy-looking girl and a bloke who looks like one of those local gangsters want to talk to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Since when do people think they can talk to me?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “A girl, you say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Foxy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you mean by ‘foxy’, Xing?”

  “Well, she's wearing tight-fitting clothes and has quite striking red hair.”

  “Have they been searched?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Were they carrying?”

  “Both of them, but not any longer.”

  “Let them in.”

  “OK, sir.”

  “Properly escorted, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I wonder why I always need to do everything myself.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Screw your ‘very well’, Xing.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  After only a few seconds, a girl walked in through the big central door that led from the dining room to the relaxation room, a girl that even old Guo considered very good looking, followed closely by one of those blasted locals in a dark blue suit, his teeth mostly gold, watery eyes, bright like the sky, and a protruding chin.

  To complete the procession, three of his men: Zeng, Lin and Quingguo. Two positioned themselves at either side of Guo, one behind Mila and Mule.

  Mila stared at the three men as they took their positions. Took off her leather jacket and tied it around her waist, then dropped the burlap sack she was holding in her right hand.

  The thud of the sack was sinister.

  “Good evening, Mr Guo,” said Mila.

  “Good evening,” replied Guo, his dark eyes staring at the girl with curiosity while he softly touched his silver but still thick hair.

  Guo already knew how it would end.

  “So, Mr Guo, I'll not waste anyone’s time,” Mila added. “As you're about to see with your own eyes, this sack contains the heads of two of your men.”

  The Chinaman didn’t even flinch as the heads of Xan and Wu rolled out of the sack like two balls, stained with coagulated blood.

  Zou Kai and Tonk Liy were running like hell.

  Two Rottweilers were catching up on them. Black, huge, monstrous.

  A crying child was watching the scene from the door.

  The wall surrounding the villa seemed far away, unreachable for the two sprinting Chinamen, when they noticed a cherry-red Seat Leon parked on one of the paths in the garden.

  An unexpected glimmer of hope. They just managed to get in and close the door before the dogs reached them. Jaws wide open, the dogs started prowling around the car in which those juicy meals were locked, prowling like things possessed.

  Zou Kai and Tonk looked each other in the eye and started to scream, then they started to empty the magazines of their guns at the beasts.

  The bullets bounced off the glass like olive stones thrown at an unbreakable mirror, ricocheting everywhere.

  “Stop!” Zou Kai shouted.

  They were lucky not to get hit.

  Fucking bulletproof glass.

  They should have thought of that. It was one of Pagnan’s cars, after all.

  Zou Kai looked for the keys, but couldn’t find them.

  While he was still searching for them, he heard the doors being locked.

  Clack!

  Central locking.

  Tonk’s hand gripped his shoulder.

  Zou Kai raised his eyes. On his friend’s face was an expression of pure terror.

  Then Tonk nodded towards the house.

  Zou Kai saw a series of terrifying images: the locked windows, the dogs preparing to devour them, the grass under the pitch black sky, the vast distance both from the wall and from the house and... and the face of a child.

  Who was the child? Where had he come from? They hadn’t noticed any children in the house. And why was he holding something that looked a lot like an ignition key?

  The child was smiling.

  He was smiling because he had screwed them over.

  Zou Kai tried to close and reopen his eyes. The child was still there. Holding them by the balls.

  They had just massacred everyone in Pagnan’s house, Tonk and him had. Like old mental Guo, bloodthirsty as ever, had ordered.

  It had been an execution, not without gory special effects. They'd really gone to town on this job.

  Unfortunately the one thing a professional killer who has just finished turning his (or her) enemy’s family into a bloody pulp can never afford to do is to stay in their house.

  Unbelievable! They were at the mercy of a smiling little gnome who they had stupidly failed to spot. And who was now taunting them.

  When they entered the villa they'd only see
n the woman and the Filipino waiter and had slaughtered them immediately. After trashing the house, decorating the walls with ideograms and Triad symbols, ruining the floors and ripping up the curtains, they'd left the same way they went in. But, as soon as they crossed the armoured door towards the garden, they had heard the dogs’ angry barking and started running like men possessed.

  Their sudden flight had not allowed them to think clearly. That garden gnome had probably been hiding under the bed or somewhere. They'd missed him and now they were going to pay for it.

  “We're fucked,” said Zou Kai.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Tonk, who was clearly hoping for some supernatural intervention.

  It was a stupid question. So stupid that Zou Kai decided to vent his considerable frustration in his reply. “What don't you understand? When Pagnan and his men come back, it'll be a total clusterfuck. As soon as he sees what we've done, he'll be furious. He'll be happy to drag us out of here and torture us for days on end, ripping out our organs one at a time. You know what I think? We should kill ourselves. At least that way we get to screw them over.”

  “We decided to resolve the issue with them, old man – your nephew and your friends. So, if you weren't aware of it yet, you’ll see now that Rossano Pagnan is someone you better not fuck with,” said Mule who wanted to make his entrance with words intended for effect.

  “And who would you be, sir?”

  “I'm the one who'll squeeze your testicles in a vice, Mr Guo.”

  “Damn, I'm quivering like a hare in a net.”

  “Yes, right. Make all your ping pong jokes, you’ll see how it ends.”

  Mila observed the elderly Chinaman's steady gaze as he stared at the severed heads of his men lying on the floor. Guo’s lips seemed to be cracking in a faint smile. She was just a little impressed. “You don’t seem too bothered, but those are the heads of two of your men – aren’t they?” she said.

  Guo nodded slightly.

  “You're not wrong. Point is, deep inside I knew it would end up like this. I'm simply realising that my darkest expectations have come true.”

  “Well done, old man, so please realise that something else might happen – or rather, has already happened. We have your nephew. He's alive at the moment, but we plan to shorten his lifespan as soon as possible,” added Mule. He felt the urge to pick up the Chinaman and shake him, he was so cold and apparently deprived of any feeling. Mule would have liked to wipe that frozen turkey expression off his face.