A Pimp's Notes (35 page)

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.

She disappears back down the hall. She returns fully dressed just as I finish pouring the espresso into the demitasse cups. She leans over her bag again and I see her slip the handgun into it. Then she joins me at the table. We don’t talk about whatever it was that just happened. I don’t know what it meant to her. For me, it was the answer to a question. And I choose to believe that it was exactly what I think it was.

She takes a sip of her coffee, unsweetened. Then she sits there, staring at that cup of steaming black liquid. The time has come to say things. And she knows it.

She starts talking without raising her gaze.

“Bonifaci was a very powerful man. More powerful than you could ever possibly imagine. Over time he had built up dossiers that he used to control most of Italy’s political and business elite. Photographs taken during the orgies at his villa, documents that gave proof of involvement with organized crime, evidence of corruption and malfeasance in the administration of public funds, illegal financing of political parties.”

Carla looks up at me.

“There was more than enough evidence in those dossiers to send an embarrassing number of people to prison for years. The kind of thing that would have decimated this country’s governing class. Bonifaci manipulated everyone for years as if they were so many puppets on strings. To his own advantage, of course. Then he decided to take things a little too far, push a little too hard. Somebody decided that the time had come to uproot the source of his power once and for all.”

“How?”

“It’s obvious. By getting the dossiers that he possessed.”

She drinks the last of her coffee and lays the cup down on the table. There are no coffee grounds at the bottom in which to read the future. The future is a child of the present, and for the two of us there may never be one.

But that’s not the point.

Right now I just want to understand the past.

Carla knows that and deep inside she has decided that it’s a fair request.

“There was a massive coalition of power and wealth ready to move against Bonifaci. Gabriel Lincoln, his right-hand man, had been corrupted with an astronomical bribe and was willing to cooperate. Unfortunately, Bonifaci fired him. Maybe he got wind of something. Or else perhaps it was nothing more than a manifestation of that sixth sense that certain individuals seem to possess.”

“I understand all that. What I don’t get is how the Red Brigades fit in.”

“We needed a cover organization to carry out the operation. The Red Brigades are in a very tough situation right now. The police are breathing down their neck because of the Moro kidnapping and they need support and money. In exchange, they were willing to supply men. The person who organized all this arranged to obtain contacts inside the organization. He made certain promises in exchange for other promises.”

“Are you telling me that there are people in the panorama of Italian politics who would be willing to abandon Moro to his fate just to get help in laying their hands on those documents?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The outcome would be mutually beneficial. On the one hand, it would give the Red Brigades a new victory in their armed struggle. On the other, Bonifaci would be eliminated as a danger to those who feared him most.”

I stand up and light a cigarette.

“But who would guarantee that once they got their hands on the dossiers and found out what was in them, the terrorists wouldn’t use them as a weapon and make them public?”

“Me.”

She said it with disarming simplicity. As if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I became involved in this operation for two reasons. First of all, because I work for a sector of the SISDE and I’m thoroughly trained. Second, because I’m a pretty girl. I was the contact with the Red Brigades, and at the same time I was the right person to gain the trust of the only man who had access to Bonifaci’s villa.”

“Me.”

I too utter that one-syllable word with disarming simplicity. An inevitable consequence of the fact that it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“That’s right. You.”

Carla allows herself a mirthless smile.

“When I found out that you lived across the landing from Lucio, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t planned. It was coincidence, pure and simple.”

She pauses, still incredulous at the way that chaos and chance govern the world.

“The one person who was indispensable to us in getting to Bonifaci lived just a few steps away from one of the people who was assigned the job of getting to him.”

Everything seems so simple and innocuous, in Carla’s calm and methodical account, now that it’s no longer real life but past history. Still, she’s explaining the reason she left a trail of murdered people behind her. There’s no gore in her words, just descriptions and memories.

“We learned about you from Lincoln. He told us that from time to time you sent girls to the villa in Lesmo.”

“And so you lured that poor devil Daytona into your camp.”

“That’s right. It seemed like the softest way of introducing myself into your circle of acquaintances. Getting to you through someone you trusted. From that moment on, you were under surveillance day and night.”

I break in.

“I know this part.”

I explain to her briefly how I figured out the truth. How I was rescued from Tulip, how she waited for me outside the Ascot, what happened with the car and its replacement, how I figured out where Daytona’s hideout was, the handgun in the door panel. As I tell my side of the story she watches me, focused, attentive, as if she were trying to puzzle out aspects that extended well beyond my words.

She doesn’t know it, but there are more wrinkles to it than she could ever imagine.

But that’s another story. Now there are other things that I want to know. I ask the question that most fills me with fear, the question that has been tormenting me ever since I heard the first news report about the massacre. With the certainty that if there is an answer, it will haunt me till the end of my days.

“What happened in Bonifaci’s villa?”

Carla lets her eyes wander the room. Maybe she’s gauging the difference between the bare space in which we’re sitting and the opulent luxury that surrounded her that night. Maybe there are images unspooling before her eyes that she’d just as soon forget. What I can only imagine, she has to remember, and she will have to deal with those memories for a long, long time to come.

“Can I have another cup of coffee?”

I stand up, go into the kitchen, and start to rinse out the espresso maker. I think I understand why she asked me for another espresso. She’d prefer not to have anyone see her face while she’s telling this part of the story.

Her voice reaches me as I fill the little aluminum basket with ground espresso.

“During the party I had left a French door open. When Lucio and the others arrived, bringing Laura with them, I was already holding a gun on the girls, Bonifaci, and his guests.”

I press down on the fine dark brown powder with the little espresso spoon.

When Lucio and the others arrived, bringing Laura with them …

That means that the men in the security detail were all already dead. And that the poor girl was dragged out there to be a human sacrifice to the Gods of Political Expediency. Perhaps by the very man for whom she’d decided to begin a new life.

Carla goes on. I twist the Moka pot shut.

“Gabriel Lincoln told us that the vault was hidden in the cellar. Lucio and I went down with Bonifaci. He insisted there was no such thing as a safe room and a vault in his cellar, so I shot him in the leg to convince him to open it.”

I light a match and turn on the gas. The pale blue flame licks at the base of the espresso pot.