He tumbles backward with the expression of someone who fails to understand why they’re dead. No one who’s killed ever really understands why. His limp body is made up of broken lines and it forms a strange geometric pattern contrasting with Chico’s.
Carla has joined us now and stops, looking at the two corpses. Maybe that’s how it happened at Lesmo. With that cold gaze she checked that all life had been expelled once and for all from the bodies strewn on the floor, ready if necessary to fire a final kill shot.
Lucio asks.
“The others?”
Carla answers.
“All gone.”
“Get the suitcases. I’ll finish up here.”
Carla walks quickly past the sofa and through a door at the far end of the room. Through the open door, once she turns the light on, I can see a bedroom. She vanishes inside and the only living souls left in the room are Lucio and me.
He raises the handgun and places the barrel against my temple.
“Sorry, Bravo. The real puzzle was much more complicated than the solution you found.”
“That is to say?”
“What we found in that house made us change plans. Now our plans have nothing to do with our comrades, the struggle, the day of victory that may never come. Now our plans concern only Carla and me.”
A few terse words from Carla block my next question before it leaves my lips.
“I’m afraid you’ve got one name too many in your future plans, Lucio.”
We both turn our heads toward her voice. Just in time to
pfft …
see a small burst of flame emerge from the muzzle of the handgun that Carla is aiming in our direction and carry off a fragment of Lucio’s head. A light spray of blood splatters my jacket and my face. The pressure of the barrel against my temple disappears. Another body joins the other two already sprawled on the floor.
Carla points the gun at me. She waves me to a corner of the room with the barrel of the handgun.
“Get over there and no funny business, unless you want to wind up like him.”
She moves fast. She pulls a rag out of the back pocket of her jeans and she wipes down the handgun she just used to shoot Lucio. Then, holding it by the barrel through the cloth, she kneels down next to the body of Gabriel Lincoln and squeezes his fingers around the handle, to impress his fingerprints upon it.
Then she lets the gun fall to the floor and stands up. All this time she has kept one eye on me. And all this time I’ve been keeping an eye on the second pistol that’s sticking out of the waistband of her pants.
She looks at me. There’s no anxiety in her voice, just the urgency of practical considerations.
“Did you touch anything?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Wait here.”
She disappears through the bedroom door again and reemerges dragging two suitcases. She sets one down next to me.
“Take this one. We have to work fast. Someone might have heard the shot.”
It all happened so fast and without explanation. Lightning, thunder, hail, and suddenly the downpour was finished before I had even realized that water was falling from the sky. Except it wasn’t water, it was blood. I’m stunned by the noise and the smell of the shots, the relief that I’m not one of those bodies lying motionless on the floor.
The only thing I know for sure is that I’m still alive.
We walk back down the hall. The door is still open, the wallpaper’s still ugly, the pungent scent of cordite is still strong. When we walk out onto the landing I can see at a glance what the garage has become. Giorgio is on the floor next to his motorcycle, the front of his shirt soaked with blood, his leather jacket gaping open above his heart. The high school boy is sprawled out on his side, his eyes staring. A red puddle is spreading across the cement from his head. He seems to be looking at Alberto, flat on his belly, even more stout and awkward in his inelegant way of death.
Carla doesn’t give them so much as a glance, as if they formed part of a scene that her mind recorded in the moment and then immediately archived. We walk fast down the stairs. My suitcase is heavy. I don’t know what the fuck’s inside but it’s heavy. Though it’s only a short distance, I’m already panting.
Carla is stronger, leaner, calmer, more efficient.
The word lethal comes to my mind, but I dismiss it immediately.
We get to the Kadett and she opens the trunk. She pulls out a pair of work gloves and tosses them to me, one at a time.
“Put these on. Lift the garage door just partway and check to make sure there’s no one out there. Then go out and open the gate.”
I do as I’m told while she puts the suitcases in the car. I find myself outside, in the odorless air of the night, which is already a blessing. I walk up the little concrete drive, guided toward the gate by the violet glow of the city in the distance.
The minute I swing open the metal gates, the engine of the Opel starts up and the car pulls out in reverse. The beams of the headlights glance over the bodies on the ground and then recoil, as if they were disgusted. Only the neon lights on the ceiling remain to illuminate the scene.
The car pulls out onto the road and stops, its headlights pointing in the direction from which I arrived, either a few minutes or a few hours ago. For a second or two, I expect the car to keep going. I expect to be left all alone here in the courtyard of this house filled with corpses, to try to figure out what happened and then have to explain it to the people who would be questioning me.
But the passenger door swings open. In the faint glow of the dashboard I see Carla gesturing for me to get in. With a sigh of relief I sit down beside her, finally allowing my arms and legs to tremble freely. We drive fast to the highway and turn left. Once again, the Luna Park, once again, the Idroscalo, once again, Linate Airport. At the traffic light, as we turn left and head for the city, there’s a prefabricated wall made of cement panels along Viale Forlanini. Someone took a can of black spray paint and left us a graffiti message.
What the fuck is Nelson doing on our ship?
20
We park outside Carmine’s apartment building. Above the roofs there’s a vague promise of light. A new day is dawning and Carla and I are together again. I indulge in the luxury of a dream, a chimera, the only one available to me in this particular moment. I wish I could go back to a morning like this one and hear her tell me for the first time
If it was you, I’d do it for free …
and believe that it’s all true and answer yes, Jesus Christ yes, from here to the last light my eyes can see yes, for what I am and for what I’m not yes, Goddamn it yes, anywhere you name yes, anyhow you want it yes …
In any world you care to name yes, just not in this one.
Carla’s hand turns the key and kills the engine.
* * *
I gave her the address of the apartment in Quarto Oggiaro when she got back in the car after making her phone call.
Toward the end of Viale Forlanini, she stopped outside a phone booth. She got out and I watched her through the windshield as she walked around the hood and then through the car window as she lifted one hand and dropped a token into the slot, dialed a number, waited for someone to answer. Then I watched as she spoke with someone, a short conversation, during which she seemed to be blocking and cutting short questions that the other person was asking.
She hung up and got back in the car. She drove off without haste, her eyes carefully watching the road. Too carefully for me to fail to understand that she was deciding what to do next.
Not what to do with me.
What to do about me.
I was the one who broke the silence. I had lots of questions. I wondered how many of them would be answered. I started with the first question, the one prompted not by curiosity, but by surprise.
“Why didn’t you kill me too?”
Immediately after asking that question I turned away and stared at the road ahead of us, for fear of seeing from her face t
hat she had just been asking herself the same thing.
I went on, challenging her intentions and her silence.
“It would have been perfect. Everything would have fit into place. According to the logic of this whole frame-up, my dead body’s the only one missing in that house, on the top of the pile.”
Carla rummaged around in the glove compartment. She held out a package of Kleenex to me.
“Wipe off your face. And take off your jacket, it’s all covered with blood.”
I understood that this was just one of many ploys she had at her disposal to delay answering my question. Or for making me understand that there wasn’t going to be an answer at all. I took off my jacket and tossed it onto the backseat. I turned the rearview mirror toward me, turned on the dome light, and began to wipe spots of Lucio’s blood off my face.
“Where have you been hiding for the past few days?”
I answered without looking at her.
“In a place.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go there.”
I turned off the light and let Milan illuminate Carla instead. She took my silence for uncertainty.
“When I stopped back there I called the police. I told them I’d driven by the house and I thought I’d seen some bodies flat on the floor in the garage. I played the part of a frightened citizen doing her duty but anxious not to get involved.”
She looked at me.
“You need a place to stay until the police find the bodies and reconstruct what happened. The presence of Gabriel Lincoln, Bonifaci’s former assistant, fired without notice, and the discovery that Lucio wasn’t blind, as he wanted the world to believe, will shore up the theory that in this mess you’ve been made the victim of a plot, that you were framed.”
“A lot of points are going to remain murky.”
“In cases like these there are always plenty of murky points. Left murky or intentionally made murky.”
“No. There are other moments for which I have no alibi. And anything I could say or do would only look like an effort to construct one for myself.”
Carla sat in silence. Maybe she’d already thought the same thing and my words were nothing more than a confirmation. Through the windows of the car come the images of a city that just a few days ago I had the gall to consider as something like my own private property. Without realizing that in reality no one owns anything. You can only choose to belong to something. Skill and luck are great aids in making that decision.
Love does the rest. Love can fool you sometimes, but it’s not for sale and it can’t be bought.
Ever.
* * *
After giving her the address, I slumped back against my seat. Until we reached our destination, I didn’t say another word. I just sat there, replaying the course of events in my head. I told myself that over the course of just a few days I’d had some unbelievable strokes of good luck. One was when I was saved from Tulip. The other was when I walked out of a house, alive, leaving five corpses behind me. I’m afraid I’ve completely wiped out any credit I might have had with the bank of good luck.
I avoided putting together any theories on why on earth this whole mess was assembled in the first place. The Italian state, the intelligence services, the Red Brigades, various ideals, the class struggle, the armed struggle, were all just so many meaningless clues. I knew that however good my imagination and my skills at solving cryptic enigmas and puzzles, this one was too tough even for me. I had the key to everything sitting next to me. And I still didn’t know whether to expect an explanation from Carla or a bullet in the head.
We get out of the car. I toss the bloodstained jacket into the Dumpster. I doubt that Lucio will have a much more dignified burial. My back aches and my eyes are burning. We walk around to the back of the car and we get out the suitcases. Carla also pulls a travel bag out of the trunk.
I wave my hand at the Kadett.
“Is it okay to leave the car here, in plain view?”
“Yes, it’s clean.”
I walk ahead of her to the elevator. The suitcase seems even heavier than before. But maybe it’s just my exhaustion and the black cloud extending over my future that makes the load seem like such a burden.
While we ride upstairs, my eyes happen to light on the graffiti again. Now they strike me as testimonials to life, a prank played on time rather than on other people. I tell myself that when I get out of prison, Mary and Luca will be adults and I’ll be an old man. A smile escapes me that’s so bitter that it would arouse compassion, a smile that my fellow elevator passenger fails to notice.
Once we’re in the apartment, after dropping her bag on the floor, Carla looks around. Nothing has changed, except for one minor detail. The grim squalor is wiped away completely by the feeling of safety.
“It’s not the Ritz.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s a place where for now nobody’s going to come looking for us.”
“Who lives here?”
I conjugate the verb in the proper tense, to put her at her ease.
“The person who used to live here is in San Vittore Prison. It’s the apartment of a friend of mine who was sentenced to twenty-two years.”
She takes in the information without further comment. She moves her head, as if to stretch her spine.
“I need a shower.”
I point down the hall.
“The bathroom’s that way. I’ll make a cup of coffee in the meantime.”
Carla has an odd expression on her face, as if she’s sorry for what she’s about to say.
“I’d prefer to have you stay with me.”
I understand and eke out a smile. The smile from before, on the elevator, was a sugar cube compared to this one. There’s nothing morbid, no exhibitionism in what she just suggested. She’s not trying to give me any visual pleasure. She just wants to be able to keep an eye on me the whole time, because she doesn’t trust me. The rule followed by people who kill other people is that no one, ever, for any reason, must be given the chance to kill you.
In silence, I walk ahead of her to the bathroom. I wonder when it will be time for us to talk. Time for the words that will tear away dark shrouding veils and allow a little light to shine in.
I pull open a cabinet and lay a couple of towels on the sink, next to the shower. She pulls the handgun out of her belt and lays it on the towels. The black metal stands out like an insult against the threadbare whiteness of the terry cloth.
I sit down on the can and indulge in a cigarette.
Carla begins to undress. There’s nothing provocative about it. She’s simply a person getting out of her clothes with brisk, asexual movements. She pulls her sweater over her head and underneath she’s not wearing a bra. Her breasts are firm and full. Her nipples are swollen from rubbing against the wool. She leans against the sink and, one at a time, pulls off the camperos that I gave her at my house. She unbuckles her belt and with a single motion slips out of jeans and panties.
She’s nude.
She’s stunningly beautiful.
She’s a woman who’s murdered people.
Only now does she look at me. Her eyes are full of something I can’t place. Regret, grief, or perhaps just exhaustion. Whatever it is, it fades in the presence of another gaze, the one-eyed glare of a pistol watching me from its perch just inches from her hand.
The gaze lasts only a brief moment, then Carla swivels around to turn on the water. Her buttocks and her hips are perfect, despite the faint outline left by her leather belt and the rough denim of her jeans.
She finds the right temperature and then steps into the spray jetting down from above. She doesn’t pull the shower curtain. She begins soaping herself and the water that pours over her body is no longer the ordinary product of pressure and pipes and mechanisms. Instead it’s rain falling from the sky to outline and blur her beauty, only to restore it intact to my gaze. I watch her until she closes her eyes and tips back her head. With both hands
she pulls back her hair and lets the spray cleanse it of the suds.
Then she walks to the edge of the stall and gestures to me. A few drops of water fall from her hand onto the floor.
“Come on in.”
A yearning for the soft touch of her hand stirs within me. As I stand up I know that that touch will become a talon and that with her razor-sharp claws she’ll hurt me. But I don’t care anymore. For the first time in a long time I strip off my clothing in front of another person by my own choice and my own free will. I ignore my mutilated body. I’m aware only of her perfect body.
I take a few steps and then I’m next to her, under the shower spray.
She wraps her arms around me and clings to me and the water glues us together and I find her tongue and her mouth. I explore her with my hands. I find her and I open her and she welcomes me with a moan. In some fashion she finds me and I am and I exist, and in her pleasure something comes to me too that I can’t describe and there’s no more slashing talon and the pain has vanished.
Afterward we remain locked together under the spray of water that has gone back to being an ordinary shower, but it’s perfect for that very reason. The things it was supposed to carry away have whirled down the drain and the things it was supposed to remind us of are now emblazoned on our flesh.
I move away first. She turns off the faucet and the rush of water is replaced by silence. I step out of the shower, move the pistol, and hand her a towel. She rubs it over her hair and then wraps it around her breasts.
I don’t have the nerve to look at her.
There are too many things I’m afraid I’ll see in her eyes.
There are too many things I’m afraid I won’t find there.
I run the other towel over my body briskly, then I gather my clothing and leave the bathroom. I finish drying off in the bedroom and put on a clean pair of slacks and a shirt.
I go into the kitchen and start making a pot of coffee. The espresso maker is gurgling away when Carla walks into the living room. She’s barefoot and still has a towel wrapped high around her chest. She squats down on the floor and rummages around in her bag. She pulls out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. She lights one and takes a drag as if it were the source of life. Finally she pulls out a pair of panties, a pair of pants, and a light T-shirt.
A Pimp's Notes Page 27
