A Pimp's Notes (19 page)

“Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

I start the engine again and I pull out of the parking space. I must not have been all that convincing in my reply. The whole way to Piazza San Babila, as I go over the importance and exclusivity of the place to which Carla is going to be admitted for the umpteenth time, she keeps looking at me as if she were trying to decipher through my gestures and words a more complex message concealed behind them.

When we reach the center of Milan, Barbara is already there, standing outside of the Bar Gin Rosa, with a small overnight bag on the sidewalk at her feet. I pull up next to her and, as I open the door for Carla, a taxi pulls up behind us. The passenger door swings open and out come Cindy’s long legs, followed by Cindy. She gets out and comes over, carrying a Vuitton travel bag. Tall, beautiful, and without boundaries. Otherwise how could she ever afford that travel bag and the designer clothes she’s wearing? She steps up and joins the group.

She smiles, thrilled with life.

“That taxi driver wasn’t half bad. A good-looking boy, no question about it. He didn’t charge me for the ride. I gave him my phone number. If he calls me, I might not make
him
pay for the ride, either.”

Barbara laughs but Carla seems rapt, distracted. Maybe she’s thinking back to the words she said when we met for the first time.

If it was you, I’d do it for free …

Maybe, but there’s no way of finding out.

A cluster of beautiful girls at this level can hardly pass unnoticed. The problem is that I’m not going unnoticed either, and that’s something I don’t especially appreciate. I’m eager to get out of here at my earliest possible opportunity. I’m eager to be left alone with my car.

“So long, girls. Break a leg. Let me know when you get home.”

I acknowledge Barbara’s and Cindy’s farewells and I ignore Carla’s lingering gaze, which follows me as I get back into my car.

I take advantage of the green traffic light and turn up Corso Venezia heading toward Corso Buenos Aires.

The afternoon stretches out before me, long and full of questions. I’ve decided that this is the right time to go to the Cinema Argentina, located very imaginatively in Piazza Argentina. In a movie house that has seen better days, they show film series of various genres: science fiction, horror movies, Westerns, and tributes to this or that famous actor, changing the featured films on an almost daily basis.

The perfect place to kill a couple of hours.

As I make my way through the heavy Milan traffic I keep looking around the interior of the car, because that odd sensation I’d filed away during the drive in from Cesano has come back, stronger than ever. When I get close to the movie house, I look for a parking place. When I find it, I turn off the engine and light a cigarette. As soon as I exhale the first mouthful of smoke, I realize.

There’s nothing new in the car, but something old is missing.

The smell of cigarette smoke.

I pull open the glove compartment in front of the passenger seat and I decide that it won’t do me any harm to do what I’m about to do, since there’s no one around to witness it. I’ll look like a senile old man to myself and nobody else. I pull out the registration booklet and I yank the lever that pops the hood. I go around to the front of the car, lift the hood, and prop it into place with the hinged rod, as instructed by the manual. Then I compare the serial number on the frame with the number in the registration booklet.

My senility vanishes instantly, replaced by the feeling that I’ve been a dope. The two numbers don’t match up. I check them twice, but they remain alphanumerical sequences that fail to coincide, like the same sentence in two different languages.

I don’t know what to think.

Usually, in cases like this, I simply don’t think. This is a technique I use when I can’t manage to solve a cryptic clue. I take a break, I do something else, I wait for the part of my brain that’s out of my control to do the work on its own. And the solution, sooner or later, is a flash of lightning that’s followed by a stream of
Well, of course!
’s and
Why didn’t I think of that earlier?
’s.

“Hey, dickhead, does this strike you as a good place to change your oil?”

I turn toward the voice and there, within arm’s reach, is Daytona. He came up behind me along the sidewalk on my right. Immersed as I was in my own small mystery, I’d neither seen him nor heard him. He’s wearing, in impeccable style, a wrecked face and his usual dark blue, eminently rumpled three-piece suit.

I quickly hide the registration booklet that I’m still holding.

“There’s a sound I don’t like. I’m afraid it might be the timing belt.”

Daytona flashes me one of his smirky smiles, the kind that make him look like a character out of cartoons. He points to my car, without the slightest idea that there has been no noise at all and that the timing belt is in tip-top shape.

“It’s high time you decided to get yourself a decent ride instead of this ramshackle jalopy. You’re someone who ought to drive a custom-built vehicle, not a car about the size of a nostril.”

I pull the hood prop out of its socket and lay it down. Then I slam the hood.

“When you make up your mind to sell it, I could buy your Porsche, as long as it hasn’t fallen under the jurisdiction of the Commission for Historic Preservation.”

Cut to the quick, Daytona immediately treats me like the snob he is.

“Mine is a machine for aristocrats. You lack the necessary touch of class. If a plebeian like you ever got behind the wheel, as soon as you turned the key in the ignition it would explode.”

I decide to skip the banter: this repartee could go on forever without resolution. I trot out a bit of conventional conversational boilerplate.

“What are you doing around here? I thought at this time of day you’d still be sleeping.”

Daytona points in a direction that could mean virtually anyplace in the city.

“I wish I
was
still asleep. I had work to do: a business meeting in a street right around the corner. A very interesting project.”

I’ve always had a hard time combining the word
work
with the figure of Daytona, who leads such an unhealthy life that his face is often the color of an ice smoothie from the Viel fruit bar. Various flavors, either banana or strawberry, depending on the day. To avoid saying something unpleasant, I bring up my own personal program for the afternoon.

“I’m going to the Cinema Argentina.”

“People who don’t have anything useful to do. That’s who goes to the movies in the afternoon.”

Stung, I respond to the provocation with my finest sarcastic tone of rebuttal.

“And just what important appointments do you have today?”

“None at all. In fact I’m coming with you to the movies. What are they showing today?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. But walk with me for half a block and we can find out.”

We head for the box office. I would rather have spent the time alone, but I couldn’t find a believable reason to reject his company and his conversation. I pray that at least during the movie he’ll shut up. If he doesn’t, at least I’ll have a good reason to ask him to pipe down.

Once we’re outside the theater, the posters tell us that there’s a retrospective of films starring Paul Newman, and that today’s feature is
The Sting
. He looks at me, doubtfully.

“I haven’t seen it. Have you?”

I shrug my shoulders. One film’s as good as another, as far as I’m concerned. I just came here to kill a couple of hours in a quiet out-of-the-way place, minding my own business.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it, but I’d be glad to watch it again.”

We’re in luck. As we walk in, the signal on the device hanging on the wall above the cash register that indicates the first half of the film is being shown blinks on. When we buy our tickets, the cashier confirms that the movie just started a few seconds ago.

We walk into a room upholstered in shadow.

As for seating, we have the luxury of choosing at will. There might be ten people, certainly no more, in the theater. Guiding ourselves by the light flickering off the screen, we make our way to a couple of seats halfway up the aisle.

Daytona gets comfortable to my left and launches into a learned disquisition on the movie. One of those essays that will be carved into stone in the shrines of international filmmaking.

“Robert Redford’s good.”

I’m afraid there’s going to be more, but Daytona lapses into silence, and after a few minutes I’m overjoyed. His head slumps forward, his upper lip hangs freely, and his comb-over dangles pathetically into the void. He falls asleep, snoring softly like an enormous well-fed cat.

I lean back in my seat, I watch what’s happening on the screen, and I think. The two heroes of the story, dressed to the nines as you’d expect for a couple of Hollywood stars of their wattage, try to pull a con on a major boss of the Chicago underworld of the thirties. The fictitious tale of those two con artists blends with my own life and somewhere, in some corner of my brain, I have an intuition.

More than an intuition, a notion. But I immediately elevate it to the rank of an idea.

I get out of my seat and head for the exit, leaving Daytona to slumber in the arms of Morpheus—or Murf the Surf, as one of the cabaret artists of the Ascot likes to say. I reach the lobby, where there’s a pay phone in a corner. I can’t remember the number I need and I’m forced to look it up in the phone book.

I drop a phone token into the slot and my voice is authorized to travel across town.

My friend answers with a booming Lombard accent, after a long succession of rings.

“Hello, who’s this?”

“Pino, it’s Bravo.”

“Bravo, bravo, I applaud the way you jack off all day. Where have you been all this time?”

Pino is a little bit of a talker, but he’s a respectable, decent person and a wizard in his profession. His wife is an outstanding cook, and his daughter is an unsightly toad. We see even less of each other than we used to, and our friendship almost came to an end entirely when I realized that they were trying to set me up with her. And that the daughter was delighted at the prospect.

“I’ve been out of town. I’ve been really busy lately.”

“I’m going to pretend I believe you. What are you calling about?”

“There’s something I need. And I need it by tomorrow morning, at the latest.”

“What do you take me for, the Wizard of Oz?”

Stung where he lives, Pino raises his voice. All of which is predictable and factored in, knowing Pino. I can see him in my mind’s eye, skinny and short, in a wife-beater, hanging on to the phone on the hallway wall, standing up slightly on tiptoe as he shouts this last phrase into the receiver.

I flatter him, trying to manipulate him by appealing to his self-regard.

“No, just a wizard, nothing more. You could be from anywhere.”

“So what do you need?”

I tell him what I’m looking for. He expresses a predictable concern about my request.

“You’re going to get yourself into trouble. You’ll never get away with it.”

“I don’t have to get away with anything. I just want it for a kind of a prank.”

“You know, there are pranks that’ll get you express admission to San Vittore Prison.”

I can’t tell him that that’s exactly what I’m hoping for.

“Take it easy. No trouble, for me or for you. So?”

He seems to ponder timing and logistics. Then he gives in.

“I can do it. Come by tomorrow morning after nine o’clock. But be aware: this is going to cost you real money.”

“What kind of money do you call real?”

“A rock.”

“Shit. A rock. You’re not the Wizard of Oz. You’re John Dillinger.”

“Okay, then find someone else.”

“No, no, we’ve got a deal for one million lire. See you tomorrow morning.”

“You staying for lunch?”

“No, I can’t. Some other time.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

I hang up the phone and go back into the theater. Daytona is still slumped over, fast asleep. He’s only moved his head slightly. I’m willing to bet that he won’t wake up at all until the lights come back on. Which is exactly what happens, after Paul Newman and Robert Redford have successfully ripped off the unpleasant and wicked Doyle Lonnegan.

He blinks open his eyes and looks around with the expression of someone who doesn’t know where they are or how they got there.

Then he remembers and ventures a reckless bluff.

“That was a great movie.”

I decide to dig a little deeper. In fact, I respond in kind, just for the pleasure of leading him out of the movie theater and into the deep grass. I’m a little giddy over the idea I’ve had, and leading Daytona around by the nose is my idea of fun.

“I love it. The scene with Robert Redford on horseback was fantastic.”

He falls for it. And comes off looking like an asshole.

“Yeah. I told you that guy was a hell of an actor.”

In the meantime, we’ve gotten to our feet and we’re walking up the aisle. I shove him from behind.

“Oh, go take a shit somewhere. There wasn’t a scene with a horse. You slept like a log through the whole movie.”

He makes a pathetic attempt to justify himself, his eyes bloodshot.

“I’m just a little worn-out. I haven’t gotten much sleep lately. I’ve got some pretty challenging projects on the front burner.”

I decide to skip asking what kind of projects they might be. I feel fairly certain that if word were to spread, it would result in a squad car pulling up outside of a certain local institution that Pino mentioned just a few minutes ago. That’s the way Daytona is: take him or leave him. And in fact, many men and women prefer to leave him.

We walk out into the lobby and he spots the phone.

“Can you wait a second? I’ve got to call a guy.”

I step outside, smoke a cigarette, and watch the city go by, already poised for rush hour, but ignoring me, Daytona, and anyone else who wastes time, tires, and shoe leather on the sidewalks and the streets.