And yet I feel strangely chilly and remote.
I’d been afraid to ask the only questions that I really cared about getting the answers to. Why ask questions that would only make me more helpless and defenseless?
What happened to Carla?
What role has she actually played in this whole thing?
I can’t imagine her with a gun in her hand, pulling the trigger and eradicating the lives of people that a twisted ideology identifies as her enemies. Wiping out the lives of girls with whom she had been laughing and kidding around just a few hours earlier, masking her contempt and her intentions. I can’t bring myself to envision her in the garb and the mind-set of someone who looks at the world around them and sees only dead bodies sprawled in puddles of blood and considers what they’ve just done to be something normal.
Perhaps that’s because every time I try, those sequences in my mind are overlaid by her eyes, too beautiful to be true, too beautiful to be false. Maybe because, in spite of everything that’s happened, I never really moved away from that sidewalk, cool with the dawn air, and from the warmth of her words.
If it was you, I’d do it for free …
I look at Lucio and remember his body clinging to the body of Carla. As I sat there watching them, it was as if their pleasure was mine. Suddenly I feel a wave of resentment and self-pity sweep over me. Not because I’m a prisoner, not because I’m about to die. But because when it’s all said and done, the only thing I really want to know is whether that night, in a nondescript apartment in the Quartiere Tessera, that act of love was a gift meant for me or for him.
We drive on along Via Rivoltana, past Segrate. At a certain point we take a right turn. A couple of kilometers later we come to a small, isolated house. A gate, a low enclosure wall topped by a metal railing, a small patch of lawn dotted with rock-spray bushes and a pine tree in the distance.
No lights in the windows.
Lucio gets out to open the gate. Seeing him move so easily still seems odd to me.
In the glow of the headlights that open out like a curtain after clearing the gate, the house is nondescript, white, two stories high. The house that little children draw in their notebooks in elementary school, if it weren’t for the garage alongside the building, on the right. The little driveway ends right in front of a lowered metal garage door.
Lucio gets back in the car and we pull up to the panel of sheet metal painted green, which reflects and tinges the glow from the headlights. The garage door is opened by someone inside, alerted to our presence by the sound of the engine.
We pull in and come to a stop next to a Volvo 240, just as the noise and the Cyclops eye of a motorcycle burst out of the darkness of the road.
A Kawasaki 900 brakes sharply alongside the Kadett. In the same motion, Giorgio Fieschi extends the kickstand and dismounts from the motorcycle. He pulls off his helmet, revealing a head of curly hair that, if he let it grow, would make him look like Donovan. He unzips his leather motorcycle jacket and he could be any kid coming home from a night out with his girlfriend, if it weren’t for the fact that a pistol butt is protruding from his waistband.
Lucio gets out of the car. There’s no anxiety in his voice, just the confidence of someone who’s used to watching his plans work to perfection.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. After I left the apartment, I hung around for a few minutes to check things out. Nothing fishy.”
“Very good.”
Lucio speaks to one of the two people waiting for us inside the garage, the one who opened the metal door. He’s a short, squat guy, about thirty, with dense eyebrows, fleshy lips, and a powerful bone structure. His head, which protrudes from a turtleneck sweater, seems to be attached directly to his torso.
“Alberto, close the gate and make sure no one followed us.”
Without a word the guy walks out and heads off with a slight limp to obey his orders. From the expression he shows the world he must not be particularly bright, just a thoroughly indoctrinated brain and a reliable hand.
I look around, by the light of the two fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The garage is actually something on the order of a warehouse. Inside it is everything that you could hope to find in a space of this kind.
A bicycle hanging from a hook, a workbench with a vise against the wall on the right, a tool panel with a drill and other equipment neatly arrayed. A steel tool chest that must contain wrenches and other tools. A shelf filled with canned foods. An old pair of skis propped up in a corner, next to a mimeograph machine. On the floor, a pile of printed leaflets bearing the logo of the Red Brigades. I feel certain that all through the rest of the house is scattered material that will identify it as an authentic terrorist hideout.
The set is ready, and the screenplay has been written for a long time. The star of the show has just arrived.
Lights, camera, action.
Lucio speaks to the other person, a tall young man who looks as if he were still a student. At first sight, you’d place him outside a high school, with an armful of books, talking to a friend or a girl he likes. Instead, in all likelihood, he was one of the passengers in the two cars that set off to carry out a mass murder, convinced that those murders were not crimes but acts of some higher justice.
“How’s everything here?”
“Everything’s quiet. We’re all ready.”
“Perfect.”
Lucio glances over at me. It strikes me that he wants to see whether this demonstration of his authority has had the proper effect on me. Every man has his weaknesses, his vanities, small or large though they may be. If I’m here in this situation, it’s because I yielded to my own weaknesses.
So I ask.
“Do you really think that all this is going to change anything? That it’s really going to bring about something new?”
“I don’t know. All I can say is that I’ve been living for years in something old and I don’t like it.”
Giorgio breaks in.
“Don’t waste time on this collaborator. How could he understand in ten minutes what he’s failed to see in a lifetime?”
I look at him. I see him in my mind’s eye on the stage as he was giving a crowd of people one of the most beautiful gifts that one man can give another: a hearty laugh. I remember the desolate tenderness of his face as he delivered the closing line:
Having ruined our childhood …
Whatever it was that ruined his, it’s too late to fix it now. Or else that’s just the bullshit that psychiatrists love to spew and there’s no real reason. Maybe nature alone is responsible and he’s just one bad apple in a bushel of good ones.
There are those who can spot them and avoid them.
And there are those who can spot them and know how to use them.
I answer him in the same tone of voice.
“There’s one thing I’ve figured out, in all this mess.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
He plants himself in front of me, waiting. Arrogant, with a challenging look in his eye.
“There are people who plant bombs because they believe in something. And there are people who plant bombs because they like to hear the boom and the screams of the dying and the injured.”
I let the concept sink in.
“I’m just trying to figure out which category you belong to.”
The burst of rage explodes from somewhere very close, because in a flash it’s in his eyes. He whips the pistol out of his waistband and jams it under my chin, forcing me to tilt my head back.
“You lousy piece of shit, I ought to—”
I don’t have time to find out what he ought to, because Lucio intervenes.
“Giorgio, stop it! Put that gun away.”
The rough pressure of the muzzle slackens, but the fury remains intact. He reluctantly obeys the orders given by the man in charge. So Lucio is just like Tano Casale, and Giorgio is just like Tulip. As if I needed any further confirmation, I can see tha
t everything’s the same wherever you go.
It’s the illusion of the airplane. It’s the places that change. Not the people.
The gun slides back into the belt and he takes a step back.
Alberto, the guy who went to close the front gate, comes back to the garage. He pulls down the garage door and leaves the cool of night locked outside. Now we’re shut up in this box of bricks, roof tiles, and sheet metal, under pitiless lights, each of us a prisoner in his own way.
The door at the top of the short staircase on the left swings open.
Carla walks out and stops on the landing to look down at the men standing beneath her, who have all instinctively turned their heads to look up at her. She comes down the steps with her lithe, fluid gait, and I have the impression that when she walks down those few steps it’s happening in slow motion, so that I have all the time I need to relive moment by moment the hours we spent together. All her expressions, all her transformations. From cleaning woman to ingenue full of disbelief at her own beauty to grown woman well aware of her power over men and determined to take the world by the horns. Right up to the Carla I’m looking at now, a stranger with a hard gaze and a grim twist to her expression.
Not even the fluorescent lights can dull her beauty. Nor can the cheap jeans and sweater that she’s wearing. Nor the fact that she approached me with the clear and specific idea of luring me into something from which I’d never get out alive.
She ignores Giorgio and Chico, who’s still right behind me, just one step and a pistol muzzle away. She goes straight to Lucio, wraps her arm around his waist, and presses her lips to his. Then she jerks her head in my direction.
“I see we have company. How did you manage to find him?”
Lucio glances at me with a half smile. But I don’t find his irony funny anymore.
“Bravo was true to his nickname. Unfortunately, I have to say he was just bravo, and not bravissimo! He figured out almost everything all by himself, though he made the mistake of turning himself in to me instead of to the police.”
Carla makes no comment and turns to look at me.
He eyes aren’t friendly or flattering.
“So here you are.”
A flat statement. She says it as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to come face-to-face again in this situation, with a gun in Chico’s hand as he warily monitors my infrequent movements.
“Yeah. Here I am.”
What can I add that hasn’t already been said or would be pointless to state? Is there an emotion I could express that she hasn’t already seen stamped on my face or implicit in my gestures?
I look at her and she looks at me. Once again, as with Lucio, I’m still the same person.
She’s not.
And as if there were any need for it, her words make it crystal clear to me.
Harsh, precise, merciless.
“You disgust me, Bravo. I wanted to tell you that the minute I met you. Because of what you are. Because of how useless you are. Because of the filthy rotten world you represent and that you serve in your slimy way.”
There’s only one thing that I can say. So I say it.
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Neither have I. Only people who deserved it, but they don’t count.”
The others have listened in silence to this exchange. It’s not hard to figure out whose side they’re on and who they’re agreeing with, in their hearts.
Lucio intervenes.
“This is exactly what you’re never going to be able to understand, my friend. We have no opponents, no adversaries—we have only enemies. Politicians can talk about their opposition as a cover, a way of disguising a series of frauds and connivances, abuses of power and state-sanctioned murders. To the point that the word adversary has become a synonym for accomplice. What strengthens us in our convictions is the knowledge that nothing is irremovable, ineluctable, irreplaceable. When you believe in something, that puts not only the lives of others, but your own life into the background. Carla has agreed, like so many other comrades, to lower herself to acts that disgusted her, in order to attain the goal that we have set for ourselves. She didn’t close her eyes, no, she kept them open, looking far into the distance, while she was letting you fuck her.”
He caresses her hair. He smiles at her.
“The world of tomorrow owes you a debt of gratitude.”
Carla watches me. On her face I can see an expression that confirms the chilly words she spoke to me just a short while ago. But all I can hear are Lucio’s words.
While she was letting you fuck her …
That means she didn’t tell him anything about me, about my pathetic mutilation, which would have created an outburst of wisecracks and giggling if it were tossed like a bowling ball at the pins of the Ascot Club. It would have been a source of sarcasm and derision among these men, capable as they are of snuffing out lives in the name of nothing and then vanishing suddenly into that same nothing.
She let him believe that she and I …
“I think it’s time to get moving.”
The young man who looks like he’s still in high school has just broken into that moment. Words spoken aloud because that’s the way life is and other words left unspoken because that’s the way people are.
All important words, all useless words.
Lucio takes command again. He extends the gun that I found hidden in the door panel of the Mini to Carla.
“Here, leave it on the workbench. They need to find this in the house. Leave a couple more of the ones we used in Lesmo: it’ll make the whole setup look more convincing.”
Carla grips the handgun as if she’d never done anything else in her life. She’s steady, strong, a born liar. I wonder once again why she bothered to lie about the two of us. I’m afraid I’ll never know the answer. While I still have some time, I can only try to imagine one.
Lucio gestures with his head toward the door at the top of the stairs.
“Is he upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. Let me go talk to him, then we’ll grab the stuff and we can go.”
We can go.
I’m reminded of Daytona and the way I used to kid him. This time I wish I was included in the plural. But I’m pretty sure I’m not.
Chico lets me hear his voice again. The pistol barrel jabs my ribs.
“Through there. Get moving.”
We follow Lucio over to the steps. On the other side of the door is a hallway wallpapered with geometric patterns. We walk in Indian file, man-man-gun-man, until we enter a living room where the wallpaper clashes with curtains that need to be washed thoroughly and hung out on a clothesline until the end of time. The area on the right is concealed from view by a bookshelf that serves as a partition. On the left are several pieces of walnut furniture, with a sofa and two armchairs in Naugahyde in front of a television set. On the floor, next to the sofa, are a number of bags, the fugitives’ luggage.
Sitting in one of the armchairs is Gabriel Lincoln. I’ve seen him only once in my life, but he’s one of those people you never forget, both because of his features and because of the circumstances.
“Buona sera, Mister Bravo.”
His perfect Italian and his British accent are as distinctive as his cologne. He’s a man of certainties, a conservative. The elegance of his suit is like the screech of a fork on a china plate in this roomful of ordinary mortals.
“As you can see, it’s a small world. A small, nasty world, I should add.”
I couldn’t say why, but I’m not surprised in the least. Gabriel Lincoln is a logical answer, a tile that fits into the mosaic entirely naturally. The man who was always one step behind or two steps ahead, the faithful assistant, the Judas Iscariot with his many, many pieces of silver all deposited in an offshore bank account.
“I can’t say it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“To tell the truth, neither can I. It’s really just, let us say, one of the duties of the
job. Unfortunately for you, this time it’s not your job, but mine.”
“Just out of curiosity, do you work for the intelligence services?”
He smiles and pretends to ward off a compliment, feigning modesty. Still, I doubt that modesty is one of his strong points.
“To put it that way smacks overmuch of James Bond. All the same, let us say that the field in which I operate could be described in that way.”
“So why me? You were Bonifaci’s trusted assistant. Why did you need to use me?”
He stands up and smooths out his gabardine trousers.
“Regrettably, Lorenzo dismissed me a few months ago. A minor stumbling block. I know everything about him but I was no longer able to interact with him. Villa Bonifaci was off-limits to me.”
He makes a gesture with his hands that explains everything, including the reason I’m going to take a bullet to the head in just a few minutes.
“The only person who could get us into that house under those circumstances was you. Nothing personal, just a matter of opportunity.”
He pauses. Then he gives me a sign of sympathy.
“So sorry.”
From the hallway I hear the sound of the door that leads into the garage. The sound of footsteps on the floor and a few seconds later Carla walks into the living room. She has a gun in her hand. A funny smell trails after her. It takes me just a moment to recognize it, at the exact instant that it overpowers Gabriel Lincoln’s French cologne.
It’s the smell of gunpowder.
Lucio takes a step to one side.
“All done?”
She does two things practically at the same time. First she nods her head yes, then she lifts her right hand and
pfft … pfft …
two tiny spurts of blood right above Chico’s heart stain Mister Lincoln’s fine suit. Lucio moves fast, as if in his mind’s eye he had already envisioned the sequence of what was about to happen. Before Chico’s falling body hits the floor, he’s already torn the gun out of his lifeless hand.
So this time there’s no silencer. The shot rings through the cramped space and out into the broad silence of the night like an explosion. A hole appears in the center of Gabriel Lincoln’s forehead. A thousandth of a second later, his blood and his brains are flung against the curtains over the window right behind him.
A Pimp's Notes Page 26
