A Pimp's Notes (21 page)

“I don’t need to go get it.”

He sticks his hand into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out an envelope. The same gesture that Daytona made, the day before, with his little Trojan horse full of cut-up newspaper. But performed by a different man. A very different man.

“Here’s the lottery ticket.”

I open the envelope and check it against my newspaper clipping and the photocopy. Everything matches up: date, scores, validation strips, number of the lottery office. I look at him and this time I’m the one who’s caught off guard. Remo Frontini smiles at me again.

“Bravo, I think that I’m a decent person. And whatever you might think of yourself, I’m pretty sure you’re a decent person too. I want to thank you for your advice, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to give you a piece of advice myself.”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s the exact opposite of the advice that you gave me. I’m going to wait before I change the way I live. I think you should change the way you live as soon as you can. You deserve better. Have a good day.”

Before I have a chance to answer, he stands up and strides off at a brisk pace toward the bank, to tuck his little nest egg away from prying eyes and clawing fingers. I sit there alone, with my envelope in my hands.

This is an unexpected piece of luck. I can do what I planned out without haste. From my inside jacket pocket I extract the fruit of Pino’s recent labors. Pino is one of the best counterfeiters around. I commissioned him to make a fake lottery ticket. It would certainly never pass the scrutiny of the experts in the verification office set up by SISAL, but it’s just the thing to make Tano Casale believe he’s holding the winning ticket in his hands. If he tries to collect his winnings tomorrow morning, then it’s quite likely that tomorrow night I’ll be at the bottom of the Ticino River with a rock tied to my ankles, learning to speak Trout. But I’m counting on his greed to make sure that doesn’t happen. I have an idea to suggest to him that ought to cover my ass for a little while.

Just enough time …

I slip the bogus lottery ticket into the envelope and a second later Milla materializes next to my window, on the driver’s side.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s okay.”

I hand him the envelope I’m holding.

“Here. You need to deliver this to Tano.”

“You’re going to deliver it in person. He told me that he’d like to speak to you. So I think you’d better come with me.”

His Jolly Joker face pops out of a chaotic deck of cards, and this time there’s no smile. His tone of voice suggests that he wouldn’t want to be in my shoes. The fact is, I would just as soon not be in my shoes myself. He can’t know that this is just one more unknowable factor tossed onto the pile of unknowable factors.

“All right. You lead the way. I’ll follow you.”

He walks off and a few minutes later his car drives past mine. I pull out of the parking lot and I follow his Giulietta. Because of the various traffic lights, we’re almost separated more than once as we’re leaving Cesano.

I look at the back of Milla’s neck as he drives ahead of me. I don’t know what I can expect from him. Before this, I thought of him as a protector of sorts—whatever a partnership of that kind is worth in a world where at the slightest whiff of trouble everybody’s willing to toss their mother and grandmother overboard into the salty sea. Now that he’s shown his true colors and made it clear that he’s one of Tano’s men, I have no doubt whose side he’d be on if push came to shove. What I can’t quite figure out is how deeply he’s involved, and therefore how far he’d be willing to go.

We pull onto the beltway around Milan not far from my house and we head south. My car struggles to keep pace with the Alfa Romeo. The two lottery tickets are like anvils in my pockets. If for some reason that I don’t dare to imagine Tano Casale decides to have me searched, my plunge into the waters of the Ticino might be moved up to this evening.

I try to get my mind off the subject, and I think about Carla.

The fact that at this very moment she might be in bed with one or more men makes me neither jealous nor depressed. The day that a straight razor steered me once and for all away from certain activities, in a certain sense it also cut me loose from the corresponding emotions. Not the urge. That’s still there. As a way to compensate for a desire that can be piercing and painful at times, an impulse that can never again be satisfied, women have become an instrument of communication with the world of men.

Women on one side, men on the other.

And me in the middle, still scarred by the aftermath of my own perineal urethrostomy, the operation that affords me a less chaotic relationship with my body when I experience the very human need to piss.

Carla is one of the few people on earth who knows about that. And who understands. I guessed that when she asked permission to make love with Lucio and at the same time offered it to me as a gift. I had further confirmation later, when I felt her slipping into bed next to me and then seeking physical contact.

Milla’s car takes the Opera exit. I instinctively guess that we’re going to the industrial shed with the car crusher where Micky took me. The one that turns into a gambling den at night. The picture in my mind of a rock tied around my ankles as I sink into the dark waters of the Ticino is replaced with one of my body jammed into a junked car and then crushed into a cube. These aren’t pretty thoughts to have as one’s traveling companion, especially on a nice sunny day that, as Lucio Battisti once sang, conjures up salt spray and your laughter.

Instead, the Giulietta continues straight along the road, and a few kilometers farther on turns right onto a narrow lane that ends a few hundred meters later in the parking lot of a trattoria. The building is low, with windows protected by iron grillwork with some degree of artistic aspiration. The walls, which must once have been brick red, are now a faded pink, stained and discolored by the elements. In the back is a pergola with an enormous wisteria spreading overhead. In the summer, this must be the garden for outdoor dining.

We park among the few other cars in the lot, get out, and without a word we head for a small wooden door, beneath a sign that touts Jole’s home cooking. Inside, the windows provide little light for the few diners, so there are several electric lights burning. A listless waiter doesn’t even bother to glance in our direction, while a blond matron, corpulent and perspiring—maybe she’s the Jole mentioned on the sign—can be glimpsed through an open door, working in the steam and smoke of the kitchen.

Milla strides without hesitation toward a hallway that leads to a secluded private dining room, where we find Tano Casale and his bodyguard sitting at the only occupied table. We walk over to the table. The boss is eating a bowl of spaghetti. His underling, who’s dressed in the same suit as the first time I saw him, is in the throes of a noisy battle with a bowl of minestrone.

Tano points to the chair across from him without speaking. As I take a seat, he gestures to Milla and the man sitting to his right. The guy stands up without a word, and he and the policeman vanish into the large dining room.

We’re alone. I can’t figure out if that’s a good sign or a bad one.

“You want something to eat? The carbonara here is fantastic.”

“No, I’m not really hungry.”

He swallows his mouthful of food with a gulp, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and extends an open hand across the table.

“I think you have something that belongs to me.”

I pull the envelope out of my pocket and hand it to him. He opens the envelope and pulls out the lottery ticket. He stares at it for a long time. Maybe he finds it difficult to believe that he bought this meaningless little rectangle for a huge chunk of cash. Then he looks up at me again with an undefinable expression on his face.

“You’re a smart boy, Francesco Marcona, born in Sellano, in the province of Perugia, in November 1943, to Alfonso and Marisa Giusti, who later emigrated to Australia. You are certainly one smart boy. I think you’ve blazed a trail, with this clever ploy you’ve come up with.”

He smiles at the look of surprise on my face.

“Did you think that I’d let you run this thing without getting a little information about you? Otherwise, what good is it to me to have a police detective on my payroll?”

I take the facts at face value.

“That’s understandable.”

Tano takes another look at the lottery ticket. Then he puts it down on the table in front of him, as if to keep an eye on it.

He speaks to me in that voice that I know.

“We still have that minor matter of Salvo’s death. I want you to tell me what you know, so I can watch you while you tell me.”

On the exterior I seem relaxed. Inside, I’m anything but.

“I don’t know anything about that. The night it happened I was with a girl.”

He eyes me intently. As far as he’s concerned, I’m not done talking.

Only the stupid and the innocent lack an alibi …

I lean my elbows on the table and stretch my neck in his direction.

“Tano, if you don’t mind my being charitable toward myself, I’ve always been more of a diplomat than a man of action. I’ve never owned a gun and I never expect to. When I had trouble with Menno, I came to you and I did my best to resolve it as a business transaction. Peaceful, easygoing, profitable for both sides. You’ve got the evidence of that right in front of you.”

I point to the lottery ticket, in order to emphasize the concept and prepare the ground for what I’m about to say.

“And as far as I’m concerned, we can continue along that path. If you’re interested, I have another proposal that could let you double your money in just one hour’s time.”

A light glitters in his eyes. He’s done with his spaghetti, but his appetite for this new opportunity has just been aroused. After all, I’ve earned just a crumb of credibility by now. Tano takes a sip of his wine.

“I’m listening.”

“Among your many clients, would you happen to have anyone who works for a bank? Someone who has a bad gambling habit, maybe someone who owes you a lot of money?”

I see that he’s curious to hear how this story turns out.

“Maybe I do. Go on.”

Doing my best to be as persuasive as possible, I explain my new idea. It’s a shade riskier than the one that procured him a 490-million-lira lottery ticket, a little more complex to put into action, a bit more of the sort of thing that only real men with hairy balls would take on. I emphasize the fact, instead of trying to skirt around it. However powerful he’s become, however cunning he may be, Tano is still fundamentally a street crook, a guy who’s made his way through life with all the tools that physical courage and a lack of scruples have made available to him. His temperament remains that of a man who accepts challenges.

And that’s exactly what he does.

“It could work. Jesus, it could actually work.”

He smiles and throws back the rest of his wine in a single gulp, a little giddy and a little arrogant at the prospect that my words have opened to him.

“I really feel like sticking it up those bastards’ asses. Four hundred and ninety million cocks up their asses.”

When he’s done turning the idea over, he remembers about me.

“Do you want to be involved in this thing?”

I shake my head.

“I told you before. I’m not a man of action. I’m a small fish, and that’s all I ever want to be.”

Tano shoots back with an expression that seems to be carved out of pure relentlessness.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get a little bigger this time, youngster.”

He stares at me with his dark eyes, deep pools of a certain benevolence. Real or put on, I couldn’t say.

“I like you, Bravo. I want you to take care of this. You’ve got a first-class head on your shoulders.”

“Thanks very much. But I’d really rather keep it right there, firmly attached. That’s why I bowed out of this one.”

“In the world we live in, you can’t always sit out every dance.”

As if to say: You’re in, boy, up to your neck. And there’s no kidding around.

I look at him. Being dragged into this pool of venom is exactly what I set out to accomplish. But I couldn’t make it obvious that that’s what I wanted. I wanted him to insist on it. In spite of everything, I haven’t been able to eliminate the last little shadow of doubt. I’m afraid that when you’re dealing with someone with his mind-set, you’re not likely to eliminate suspicion entirely. But he clearly likes me, and that’s a big step forward.

He leans toward me ever so slightly.

“Are you up to this?”

I lower my head and pretend to ponder the question, as if I were still unsure. Then I look up, suddenly confident.

“I can do it.”

“Do you have the right men? People you trust?”

“Yes. I know just the right people. Determined and discreet, when necessary.”

He relaxes. He fails to notice that I just did the same thing.

“Then you take care of them. I’ll see to that other detail.”

I add a few words that signal my consent.

“Then we’re agreed. I’ll get busy and I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

“That’s fine. While you’re here, are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”

This is either an invitation or a dismissal, and it’s up to me to choose which. I prefer to have the session end there, awaiting further developments.

I stand up.

“Thanks, but I really have to go.”

“Whatever you say.”

I leave the private dining room where I just pulled a potentially fatal con job on a very dangerous individual, happy to do so without a bodyguard or a gun at my back. In the big dining room I notice his henchman sitting in silence on a chair. Maybe he’s thinking that his minestrone must be cold by now. Maybe he’s not thinking a thing and is just waiting for orders from the guy who does his thinking for him.

I don’t say anything to him and he doesn’t say anything to me.

Stefano Milla has the receiver of a phone with a click-counter glued to the side of his head, next to the cash register. He waves good-bye with his free hand. I wave back, relieved I don’t have to talk to him. We wouldn’t have a thing to say to each other. That fine thread connecting us—a thread of complicity based on a sense of fun more than anything else—has snapped. He’s been playing both ends against the middle for so long that he’s become too twisted for my tastes. I walk out and take a deep breath.