Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores

by Massimo Carlotto

  “We get it. It’s not a problem,” said Beniamino.

  “Yeah, it is a problem,” replied Pierino. “It wouldn’t be honorable of me to abandon you right now. We’ve always been loyal to an idea of criminality that despises scumbags.”

  I looked at my friends. “You’ve already done a lot for us,” I said with a certain amount of embarrassment.

  “Out of friendship,” he added.

  “What about the safe?”

  He stretched his arms. “It can wait. And if I have to bag the whole thing, I’ll look for another one.”

  “But if you stick to playing a minor role, they might not discover you were involved,” remarked Max. “What we really need at the moment is information.”

  The waiter, a Tuscan in a Tuscan joint, interrupted to bring us the second bottle—a Brunello di Montalcino Cru—and fresh glasses. “Eighteen months in barrique, twelve in a barrel, and aged two years in the bottle,” he said with a certain solemnity, fearing, perhaps, that we’d guzzle it down without savoring it.

  I took a sip. It was a really intense, complex wine, with clear hints of ripe fruit. It should have been reserved for a more cheerful occasion, but we managed to appreciate it properly.

  Pierino countered the Fat Man’s argument with a sensible, practical consideration. “Portuguese mobsters are just like all the rest. When someone cons them and they don’t know who, they get to thinking, they turn over every stone, they check every contact. And in the end they put two and two together.”

  It was true: that was exactly what they were like. Criminal organizations like that can’t afford to let mistakes go unpunished.

  At that point Beniamino wanted to rethink the whole situation. “Maybe we ought to go back to plan A: Edith disappears, and no one risks getting hurt.”

  Pierino was the first to object. “I had coffee with Klaudia after lunch. She told me what happened to Edith. I’d rather not be involved, but it hurts knowing those crooks can exploit girls with the help of cops and get off scot-free.”

  There was nothing left to add. End of discussion.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  I had two questions at the ready. “Is Frau Vieira the real head of the operation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s she closest to? I don’t mean relatives, I mean members of the organization.”

  “You’re asking if there’s someone she can’t run the show without?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Rui Salgueiro,” he answered without hesitating. “Klaudia explained everything: Frau Vieira keeps everything in order and is in charge of the escort service—the legal front. But he handles all the rest.”

  “Klaudia said Luis Azevedo is the other heavy in the crew.”

  “He’s just Salgueiro’s right-hand man. A mindless proxy.”

  Max ran a search on his tablet and pulled up a photo of Salgueiro from an old assault case.

  “It’s an old photo, but he hasn’t changed much,” confirmed Pierino.

  “And where can we find dear Rui?” asked Rossini.

  “After dinner he hangs around Maxim, a nightclub in the middle of town, on Kärntner Straße, but his ‘office,’ where he conducts all his business, is in the back of a dive he owns, tucked away on a side street. It’s called Leiria, in honor of the city all the Portuguese in his crew come from.”

  “And Edith,” I said.

  We paused for a moment, moved on to simpler subjects, like wine and the beauty of the Tuscan hills. Martinenghi called the owner over to our table, a woman from San Quirico d’Orcia, who immediately had a sample of pici al ragù di cinghiale brought over. Our friend introduced us as clients of the hotel, and the woman didn’t press him for more details. But she was determined to talk about the current political situation in Italy, and our pleasant chat grew stale.

  “It’s always the same story with our compatriots,” Pierino remarked. “They left Italy because there wasn’t work or they weren’t making a living and they’re always quick to badmouth the government, rightly so. But if an Italian expresses a negative opinion about his own country they get pissed and refuse to even greet you. I prefer to keep my mouth shut. After all, I’m never returning to that backwater. The first safe to get cleaned out, the cops will come to take me away.”

  Me? I couldn’t wait to cross the border again, because Edith would be there by my side. I began to daydream, and the Brunello helped, but Martinenghi dragged me back to reality.

  “I take it you’ve already got a plan.”

  Rossini gestured in response. “More or less. The goal is to knock them flat on their asses.”

  “Vienna’s not used to a ruckus,” remarked Pierino.

  “We’ll try to keep the noise down,” promised the Old Gangster.

  We avoided dropping a thousand euro at Maxim just to locate our man amid a throng of horny guys and half naked girls. Besides, there were too many security cameras and bouncers to devise a plan. We set our sights on Leiria. Two rooms, dim lighting. The few clients in the place were mostly men.

  “I’m hungry,” said Max, as if that were news. “The wine’s doing dances in my stomach.”

  “I bet the food’s no good here,” said Beniamino. “But there’s no harm in taking a look.”

  We were greeted by a woman in her sixties who pointed to a table. The tablecloth was in sore need of a wash and the woman wiped off the crumbs with a rag that she kept tucked under her arm.

  She only spoke German, but the menu was in five languages. Nearby two large, heavyset men were packing it away. The Fat Man asked them what they’d ordered and we voted unanimously to trust them: roast pork with rice pilaf and potato salad. And three large light beers.

  The chef’s assistant saw to serving us, a kid no older than eighteen with a flower-print bandanna who exited the kitchen loaded up with plates.

  Right away we noticed a conspicuous stream of men passing by the restroom and entering a door labeled PRIVATE.

  “The office is open,” I mumbled.

  I got up to go to the bathroom, whose cleanliness exceeded my rosiest expectations. I lingered in front of the other door just long enough to hear several people talking, and went back to my friends. I’d been tempted to pull the old “Sorry, wrong door,” but that wouldn’t fly with hardened criminals; it’s in their nature to be suspicious.

  The food turned out to be better than average. Were it cleaner and had it adequate service, the restaurant might have a shot at being flagged by one of those specialty sites and attracting a couple more customers. But on second thought, management couldn’t have been all that interested in food and wine, seeing as the lion’s share of their profits came from exploiting prostitutes.

  A little later a couple came in. They were seated in a corner set apart from our room. He must have been 35 or 40. She was much younger, under 25 maybe. Wheat-blond hair, tarnished by a few pink highlights. She took off her long down jacket to reveal a skimpy dress, cinched at the waist by a large leather belt. Unlike her coarse face, her body was very attractive.

  “Hungarian,” said Beniamino after hearing them talk.

  They gave the impression that they were waiting for someone. They ordered drinks, and he kept checking his watch and looking up at the door. The girl was glued to her phone.

  “The son of a bitch brought his mare to the market,” said the Old Gangster bitterly.

  There wasn’t any doubt about it. We couldn’t say for sure how the man had convinced her to come with him to that restaurant, but clearly he was selling her to Frau Vieira’s organization. Maybe he’d already had her slagging for a while and had realized he wasn’t tough enough to match the competition. The one thing pimps were good at, generally speaking, was manipulating the women that turned tricks for them, roughly meting out violence and flattery. But they were reluctant to risk getting stab
bed to defend an inch of the block. They only became dangerous when they assembled a crew like Frau Vieira’s. Maybe the son of a bitch was looking to get hired and had shown up with the blond woman as a gesture of goodwill.

  The boy with the bandanna cleared our table and came back with three helpings of sweet dumplings stuffed with soft cheese topped with a blueberry sauce. We pointed out that we hadn’t ordered them.

  He shrugged. “We had extra. Crazy Dominick always fucks up when he mans the fryer,” he explained before walking away. Dominick must have been the cook. Relationships in restaurant kitchens can be complicated.

  The sweets were delicious, in any case. Unfortunately we didn’t get to sample them properly, because in walked Rui Salgueiro. We recognized him immediately. He wasn’t wearing a coat, clear proof he’d come from the “office.” He went over to the counter where the woman poured him two fingers of Asbach, a cheap brandy popular in Germany and Austria.

  He stopped to check out our table. He’d never seen us before, but the way we were all laughing, as if one of us had just told a joke, convinced him we were harmless.

  He was over 50. Not tall but burly. Bit of a paunch, the rest muscle. His skin was olive colored, his face like a peasant’s from a bygone era. He wasn’t good-looking but he could pass for alluring. You could tell he was a pimp by the way he dressed. Flashy clothes are their trademark. He didn’t rise to the level of a French macrò, but the snug red shirt, open at the chest to show off the typical gold cross, and the nut-brown pants tucked into his polished boots—they didn’t go unnoticed. In his left hand he held a pack of cigarettes and a solid gold lighter. On the middle finger of his right hand he wore a massive ring with the head of a tiger; it must have left a mark on more than a few faces.

  Just as we’d imagined, he walked over to the table where the couple was seated. The pair shot up, and the man greeted him with exaggerated deference. The girl just looked embarrassed. Salgueiro invited them to sit down and began talking to the man in hushed tones. The girl kept her eyes down. Every so often her friend placed his finger under his chin and lifted her head so that the Portuguese, who had yet to show an interest in the goods, could get a look at her.

  It was heartbreaking to watch. Beniamino was stone-faced. He watched the scene with a troubling look in his eyes. He was reliving the hell of Sylvie. She, too, had been sold. The deal had probably been struck in a joint just like this one. I turned to him.

  “Would you rather we left?” I asked in a calm voice.

  He gripped my arm. It hurt but I didn’t move a muscle. “No, we stay,” he replied. “Tonight the trafficker gets what’s coming to him.”

  “Seems just to me,” I said.

  “Just,” he repeated. “Just, motherfucker, just!”

  I exchanged a look with Max, who had been looking on. He sighed. A moment later, I did too. Rui Salgueiro decided he’d had enough. He stood up, shook the guy’s hand, and motioned to the girl to follow him. She turned to look at her friend, who urged her to get moving. Either the Portuguese wanted to sample the goods or he wanted to put her to work immediately.

  The other man stayed there nursing his beer alone. He had a perplexed look on his face, maybe the exchange hadn’t gone down so hot.

  After a while he stood up, put on his heavy sheepskin coat, and headed for the door.

  Beniamino did the same, giving the guy a few seconds head start.

  “Settle up,” I told the Fat Man. “And go home.”

  Night. Cold. The shoplights switched off. Ditto the blinding lamps and neon bar signs. It was the worst area to teach some piece of shit a lesson. I quickened my pace to catch up with my friend.

  “I can handle this myself,” he said drily.

  “What’s the harm in me tagging along?” I replied. “That way I can keep a lookout for cops. It could happen. We’re still in the center of a European capital.”

  He flew into a rage. “Are you trying to tell me I’m doing something stupid?”

  “No. But I would have preferred this to go down in the dark of winter on the outskirts of town.”

  “It’ll look like a mugging.”

  Stellar idea. It meant that he was meditating on what to do and that his mind wasn’t completely clouded by pain and rage.

  A square. A large church. The man made the mistake of hugging the side of the building. The Old Gangster covered his face with his scarf and ran up behind him without the man’s ever noticing. One shove and the man tumbled in the shadowy corner of the bell tower. He got up and tried to run. Rossini stood in his way and brandished his fists.

  “Put ’em up,” he said calmly.

  The other man accepted the challenge. Biggest mistake of his life. Beniamino hit him repeatedly in the face and ribs. When the man fell to the ground, Beniamino wailed on his legs. Sixty seconds the man would never forget.

  Then Beniamino knelt and searched his jacket and pants pockets for the man’s wallet.

  “That’s that,” he said, short of breath. “Three months in the hospital at the least.”

  A few minutes later we came across a dumpster next to the service entrance of a bakery and seized the opportunity to get rid of the loot.

  “Toss the gloves and scarf too,” I said, “they’re covered in blood. And tomorrow you’d better buy another coat.”

  Back at the apartment, Max greeted us in silence, trying to guess from our looks if things had gone smoothly.

  We sat down at the table and drained a couple of glasses to alleviate the tension and the chill in our bones. The Old Gangster held his head in his hands. His shoulders shook a little.

  I took the bottle of Calvados and stood up. I was in pieces. All I wanted was to have another drink and sleep until I had to get up and see Edith.

  But there was something I wanted to say to my friends. It had crossed my mind while I’d watched Rossini tear that scumbag apart.

  “Things have gotten out of hand, and now it’s too late,” I mumbled. “All we can do is hope our end isn’t too painful. Before that happens, I’d like to set a few things straight, saving Edith first and foremost.”

  When I woke up the next morning, the house appeared empty. The door to Beniamino’s room was wide open. The Fat Man’s was shut. He was probably still sleeping. The same old coffee, the same old first cigarette of the day, staring out the window. Comforting habits in a life that was anything but. I was used to anxiety. I knew its every nuance, but that morning it was almost unbearable. Not even the blues helped. And yet I let the voice of the Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins wash over me, singing “Postcard Blues” and “Walking After Midnight.”

  The anxiety that morning couldn’t be attributed to what happened the night before or my upcoming meeting with Edith. It came from my own shady depths, which I had never wanted to explore. So now I could do nothing but let it have its way with me.

  I dressed nicer than usual and removed a bottle of cologne from the bottom of my bag. The kind saleswoman at the perfume shop in Padua, who sold me expensive shaving products, had assured me women liked it.

  On my way out I encountered the Fat Man in the kitchen. He was in his pajamas making breakfast.

  “You’ll court her until she capitulates and falls into your arms, am I right?” he said in a pale imitation of a dramatic voice.

  “That’s the intention.”

  “Well then, good luck.”

  He’d slept on the wrong side of the bed too. I left without saying goodbye.

  I had time and looked for a taxi stand even farther than the usual spot. The sky was still gray but the people I passed by weren’t carrying umbrellas. If the Viennese were sure it wouldn’t rain, you could be confident it wouldn’t.

  I entered the bar where I was to meet Edith. I was two minutes early. I told the elderly waiter that I was waiting on someone. But after a half hour she still hadn’t shown up. It was
clear she wasn’t coming. I was at a loss. I hadn’t considered the possibility of her changing her mind, since she was the one who had chosen the time and place.

  I smoked a couple of cigarettes outside the door of her apartment building and worked up the courage to ring her bell.

  “Is that you, Marco?” she asked over the intercom.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not feeling well. Let’s meet some other time.”

  “Let me come up.”

  Silence. But after a while I heard the door click open.

  She lived on the second floor. I was barely up the first flight of stairs when I found myself standing face to face with her. She had on a black slip, there were still traces of pin-up make-up on her face.

  She let me in, shut the door, and went back to bed. I watched her walk the length of the hallway to her room. I waited a moment for her to say something to me, then took off my parka and followed.

  A little light filtered through the shutter, and she lay on her side with the duvet tucked up to her neck. I removed my shoes and stretched out beside her, terrified she’d kick me out.

  She didn’t. “Sorry. I had a difficult john yesterday. He hurt me, and I’d prefer to stay in bed.”

  “You don’t have to explain. I don’t want to hear about it anyways.”

  “If you insist on courting a whore, you have to bear the burdens of the job.”

  “You’re right. If you’re up to telling me what happened, I’ll listen.”

  She rubbed my face in every last detail. She wanted to test how much I really cared, to see if I’d still desire her after knowing that she’d been with a man who was infatuated with dilation. Every time she saw him he’d bring certain toys: the bigger they were, the more he paid. Because Edith couldn’t run the risk of his complaining to Frau Vieira’s minions, she couldn’t refuse.

  The body of an old whore is no longer protected by the prospect of its being exploited for a long time. It’s at the mercy of money, and the price is set by the client’s fantasies.