A Pimp's Notes (41 page)

I turn so that he can see my face. But especially so that I can see him. It’s a show I wouldn’t miss for anything in the world.

“He made me a member of the family of a married couple that had just moved to Australia to live with their relatives there. Unfortunately for them, the two poor souls died almost immediately afterward in a plane crash. The chaos and chance I was telling you about were working hand in hand, as you can see for yourself. Just consider the irony of fate. I’d only just come into the world and I was already an orphan. And think of poor Marisa and Alfonso Marcona, summoned to their maker without ever meeting their only child, a son: Francesco.”

It takes him a few seconds to put together first and last name. Then, all at once, he gets it.

The newspaper headlines; the identikit that, he suddenly realizes, matches me perfectly; the police reports about the hunt for me that, in his position of power, he has certainly read.

“Then you’re that…”

I can’t tell if his voice fails him or whether I’ve simply interrupted him.

“Yeah. I’m the guy they set up to get to Bonifaci. Didn’t Carla tell you that, if that’s really her name?”

I give him some time to try to guess how much I know. I’m going to savor the pleasure of letting him realize little by little that I know everything.

“Or did she just vanish without a trace, and without bringing you and your friends what you sent her to get from the villa in Lesmo?”

He leaps to his feet. There are sparks in his eyes. But they’re useless flames, flames that can burn only him.

“My brother’s body is still warm in his casket and you come here to bother me with this paltry nonsense?”

“Your brother’s in his casket because you put him there.”

I use the same tone of voice with which Someone first questioned Cain about what he had done.

For the first time in my life I see a sword pierce the invulnerable armor of Senator Sangiorgi. His voice cracks slightly as he walks over to the telephone and lifts the receiver.

“What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind? I’m going to call the police and have you arrested.”

“What for? The minute I leave your hotel room I’m going to turn myself in.”

I throw the dark brown envelope onto the sofa where he was just sitting.

“But first I wanted to make sure you had this. You’ve earned it.”

His eyes follow the trajectory of the envelope as it sails across the room. He slams the receiver down on its hook, leaving it slightly askew. He walks over to the envelope, his eyes never leaving that paper wrapper perched on the velvet sofa like a worthless jewel.

He sits down, picks up the envelope, and opens it.

Inside it is everything.

His own story and the story of Mattia Sangiorgi.

Photographs of my uncle naked in bed with a girl I’ve never met. Documents that prove both my father and my uncle were collaborating with the Mafia, specifically with Turi Martesano, the most powerful capo in all Sicily. The help that the Mafia boss gave the two brothers, elevating them to the highest political offices. After that, the rigged contracts, the wheeling and dealing, the bribes, the murder of citizens who failed to cooperate, the election fraud.

Documents that represent many years of life, as well as many years of prison.

When he’s done examining the dossier, my father looks up. There’s not a trace of the man who was there until just a moment ago. Which scatters to the winds every trace of the man I used to be.

There’s only one question I can ask.

“Why?”

He looks at me.

Suddenly, memories line up in my mind to claim their due. The beach house in Mondello, the smell of the soil, the blue of the sea, long walks through the streets of Palermo, the dog that used to run to greet me when I came home from school, dinner parties with my parents’ friends, and the way I’d make the rounds of the festive table, saying good night to each of our guests.

My father’s inflexible personality; the people who came to see him in his office; his face, which we saw less and less at home and more and more on the election billboards. My mother’s face, her cautious diplomacy with her husband and her staunch complicity with me. Her funeral, which I missed, because I’d already become Bravo and I cared more about myself than about the woman who had brought me into the world.

Then everything begins to spin and fade. The faces turn into blurred images and then into nothing but patches of color, while the words become indistinct sounds that all take shelter in the question that I ask him again.

“Why?”

My father stands up and goes over to the window and looks out. He’s wearing a white shirt, no tie, a suit vest, and dark trousers. Before, he was tall and erect and he emanated a sense of solidity. Suddenly his clothing looks a little loose on him.

His shoulders sag slightly, and his step is less brisk and determined. Now I’m looking at what could one day have been my own portrait if I hadn’t decided to come here today.

His voice has come back to earth. It’s the voice of a man now.

“When I first went into politics, everything was so clear. There was a point of departure and an ultimate objective and that was the point toward which I would strive, without wavering or making concessions. I had a thousand new projects, a million ideas. Important projects, the kind of thing that could change the course of history and the lives of people everywhere.”

There’s a pause, bowed down under the weight of regret. Or maybe that’s just me, believing he’s still capable of such a feeling.

“But then you’re faced with the first obstacle, the one you can’t overcome without giving up a tiny part of yourself. It’s nothing much, just a minuscule compromise. You tell yourself it’s for a good cause, that it’s just a minor detour on the way to something bigger, for the common good. But a compromise is a compromise. There aren’t big ones or little ones. There’s only the first compromise, which you always accept with the illusion that it’s also the last compromise.”

He breaks off, thinking how deceptive numbers can be.

“Until one day you stop counting them.”

He turns. Now we’re face-to-face. This is the longest conversation we’ve ever had.

“It’s been said that power erodes the soul. It’s not true. What eats away at the soul is the fear of losing power. Once you’ve tasted power, it’s not something you can easily do without. It’s just that much harder when the people who helped you to achieve that power are no longer willing to do without you.”

He walks over to the table and pours himself another glass of water.

“People like Bonifaci gain their strength from the weakness of other human beings.”

He takes a long drink. Then he sets down the chalice, but this time hard.

“That man held us in his grip. He had an enormous and diffuse power, touching people in every party, in the world of finance, and even in the Vatican. He had to be stopped, somehow. And we finally found the way.”

“And you didn’t hesitate to sacrifice your own brother.”

He rubs his face with his hands. He too has to deal with the exhaustion of the past few days.

“Mattia was clearly beginning to crack up. We could no longer rely on him. With the things he knew, he could have done just as much damage as Bonifaci, if he decided to talk. When he was invited to the villa in Lesmo, we saw that this was an opportunity to rid ourselves of two threats with one blow.”

“What about all the people who were murdered? Did you ever think about them?”

He looks at me the way you look at the most obstinate kind of deaf person, the one who refuses to hear.

“You still don’t get it, do you, Nicola? In the face of interests of this size and scope, there’s no one who’s not expendable. No one.”

An image surfaces in my mind. The picture of a man, utterly alone, kidnapped and locked up in a room, sentenced to death by a band of terrorists and by the Gods of Political Expediency.

“Is that true for Aldo Moro, too?”

In his eyes I glimpse the irrevocable certainty of a verdict before it’s uttered. His voice is an icy gust of wind, and I’m surprised not to see a cloud of frozen mist emerge from his mouth.

“Aldo Moro is already a dead man.”

We sit in silence. A pointed, sharp-edged silence, a silence that wounds and draws blood. The time has come to sum it all up, now that hidden thoughts have become words and intentions have become irrevocable acts.

In a flat, toneless voice he asks a question, though he already takes the answer for granted.

“What will you do now?”

“I told you. I’m going to turn myself in. I’m going to hand over to the police the originals of the documents I just showed you. And to make sure there is no chance of a cover-up, this evening the newsrooms of all the major dailies are going to receive a complete copy of their own.”

He nods his head, without a word. Then he goes over to sit on the sofa. He takes his head in his hands and rests his elbows on his knees. What I’m looking at now is nothing but his body. His mind is already long gone. It’s already abandoned the useless luxury of that hotel room.

But there’s still one thing I have to know. To complete the picture, to make sure that nothing I’ve done or am about to do is unjustified. That everything should have its specific point of arrival, because everything had its point of origin.

“I have one last question for you.”

He waits in silence. He’s drained of energy. He has no words, he has nothing.

As I ask the question, I can’t keep my heart from racing.

“When Turi Martesano gave the order to do what they did to me, did you know about it?”

The silence that comes as the only answer to my question is a chilling confession. I take a deep breath, because my lungs need all the air that I can manage to give them. I don’t know how this man feels right now. I can’t imagine what room he’s shut himself into, where he’s taken refuge from the ghosts of the people whose deaths are on his conscience.

I don’t know and I don’t give a damn.

I walk out of that hotel room, leaving on the floor behind me the shattered pieces of the Almighty Senator Amedeo Sangiorgi.

As I close the door behind me, a bitter thought runs through my mind.

I wonder if God felt remorse when He gave them permission to kill His son.

24

The taxi is heading for the airport.

The driver is a woman, which is something you don’t see that often. She’s nice to look at, about forty, blond, and shapely. She’d be much more attractive if she were willing to compromise and apply just a hint of makeup. When she came to pick me up, in response to my call, at the Quartiere Tessera, she gave me the once-over as I walked toward the car. I must have passed some sort of test just then, because during the drive to the airport she started telling me the story of her life. Maybe she felt she needed to explain why she was driving a cab. How her cabdriver husband was in bad health, too sick to drive; the financial problems that ensued, with the hack license going unused; how she decided to take over.

“I couldn’t very well go stand in the street and build a fire in an oil drum to warm my hands, could I?”

“Of course not.”

I gave her the answer that she wanted to hear. I skipped over the fact that a woman with her looks, if she was to take the correct approach and do things right, could find a much more remunerative line of work than driving a taxi. She might take that as a somewhat risqué compliment, without realizing that it was nothing more than a clear-eyed market analysis.

*   *   *

Now she’s done talking and, as she drives, she gives me a curious glance in the rearview mirror every so often. From the way she felt called upon to explain why she was driving a cab, I doubt she’s the type to make a pass at a passenger. So I have to guess this is nothing more than a creature of the female persuasion studying a creature of the male persuasion that she finds attractive. In a way, this too could be considered a market analysis, so I take it as a compliment. If I told her my life story, on the other hand, she’d probably have to pull over more than once to fix her hair, because I know certain details would make it stand on end.

I look out the car window, watching people, cars, and fleeting scraps of this city. I took this trip once before, not so long ago, with the barrel of a pistol pressed against the nape of my neck, on a night when I felt sure I’d never again see the light of the morning sun. I realize that every breath I’ve drawn since then has been a gift. A gift that I owe to a woman who could be anywhere on earth and whom I know only as Carla.

*   *   *

After I turned myself in, my ordeal in the police station on Via Fatebenefratelli lasted four days. Milla’s chest swelled with pride as he accompanied me and my lawyer into the office of Chief Inspector Giovannone. The version that we’d agreed on during the trip from the Hotel Principe e Savoia to the police station was very simple and, therefore, highly believable.

In short, here’s how our version went:

Milla couldn’t believe his ears when I called him at home and told him that I wanted to turn myself in, to him of all people. He hopped in his car and sped to pick me up at Ugo’s office. Because I was accompanied by my lawyer and because I’d voluntarily contacted him in order to turn myself in, he decided there was no need to handcuff me. The lawyer and I both agreed to confirm this version of events. In any case, we all knew that what was going to happen after my arrest would completely and immediately drown out all other considerations in the uproar, including the fact that the detective had failed to contact his immediate superiors.

Chief Inspector Giovannone froze with shock when he saw me. The ice that gripped his limbs and face turned even more solid and motionless once he heard my story. After he had a chance to leaf quickly through the dossier that Ugo Biondi, Esq., placed on his desk, he appeared to be carved out of marble.

I think the same thing has happened to every person who has held those documents in their hands.

I told my version of events over and over, dozens of times. To the chief inspector, to the chief of police administration, to investigating magistrates, and to high officers of DIGOS, the special operations and investigations branch of the national police. Then the mayor wanted to hear my story. Then I had to recount everything that had happened to people who listened without telling me who they were or where they worked. I’d guess they were probably from the intelligence services. These people were especially eager to hear more about Carla, and they asked me to tell them anything I could remember about her. What she said, what she did, even vague impressions I might have had. An undersecretary from the Ministry of the Interior even came to see me. He told me that he’d be reporting back to the minister himself, who had asked him to come. This undersecretary seemed to be especially interested in knowing whether there might be more documents similar to the ones I had handed over to the authorities.