A Pimp's Notes (30 page)

She knew perfectly well I’d show up there eventually.

There was someone following me the whole time. Whoever it was saw Tulip kidnap me at gunpoint. We were followed all the way to Trezzano, and I have only my guardian angels to thank for the fact that I didn’t wind up in an unmarked grave in the countryside near a quarry. Though the only reason they sent Menno straight to hell was to avoid seeing their safe-conduct pass into Lorenzo Bonifaci’s villa torn to shreds right before their eyes. They saw me abandon the dead man’s car and set off on foot for Via Monte Rosa. When all was said and done, I played right into their hands. I handed my car keys to Carla and asked her to drive me home, allowing her to walk through my front door and into my life.

At this point, heaven-sent and anything but an accident, comes Laura’s defection. Carla emerged from her cocoon as the radiant butterfly that she was and I had already shown a certain weakness for her. Given no other options, the decision to send Carla in Laura’s place was inevitable, the only possible alternative.

All the same, it was crucial that for the evening of the murder I should have no alibi. Which is why Daytona, who I just happened to run into outside the Cinema Argentina, sent me with an envelope filled with bundles of newspaper strips in my pocket to a rendezvous where he knew no one would show up.

Next comes the sleight of hand of the switched cars. They used my car for the raid on the villa in Lesmo, replacing it with an identical vehicle designed to ensure I wouldn’t notice a thing. Unfortunately for them, I noticed. After the killings, they made sure to smear some blood on the floor of my Mini, they concealed the handgun in the door panel, and then they put the car back where it was originally.

Apparently quite complicated, but in practical terms, very simple.

I’m also reasonably certain of one thing.

The minute the police really did put out an all-points bulletin on me, I wasn’t going to be arrested. I was going to be found somewhere, in a Red Brigades lair set up especially to deflect the investigators, with a bullet in my head and a pistol in my hand. And on the table next to me a raving suicide note in which I openly declare my guilt and state that I refuse to give the Italian government—so brutally and victoriously wounded by my deed—the satisfaction of taking me alive.

End of story.

The one thing I don’t entirely understand, and can do no more than theorize, is the reason they included Laura as one of the victims in the massacre. Probably, even if she was in cahoots with them, they did it for two reasons. First of all to eliminate an inconvenient witness who they were going to have to kill sooner or later anyway, just as they did with Daytona. In the second place, to make sure that the numbers added up in what was, after all, an orgy: three men and three women.

The numbers would add up, and Carla’s presence at the scene of the crime would be erased. Once I was eliminated, and, with me, my version of what happened, even if Carla was somehow linked to me, she could just claim to be a poor defenseless girl who fell for me, only to run away in disgust once she discovered that my only interest in her was to turn her into a prostitute.

I consider my situation.

If I’m thinking the whole thing through correctly, then not only do I have the police on my trail, but also whoever it was that organized this whole elaborate prank. I could opt for the lesser of two evils and go to the police, but I don’t think that’s the right way. They’d throw me in solitary confinement so hard I’d bounce, and then they’d lose the key while they checked out my story. And it might not check out at all, in the end. Whatever happened, it would certainly mean an open-ended stint behind bars, given the gravity of the charges and the general dislike that cops and judges feel for people in my line of work.

The only solution that strikes me as acceptable, now that I know more or less how and why, is to try to find out who. I have to do it myself and I have to do it fast, before Tano Casale finds out about the trouble I’m in and goes to cash the counterfeit lottery ticket that I fobbed off on him. Instead of being in trouble twice over, my problems would multiply threefold. Unless he decides to pull the caper I suggested to him on his own, in which case I’d have a little breathing room.

The espresso pot huffs and puffs to let me know that the coffee is ready. I pour myself a cup and drink it, even though it’s the world’s worst, because the pot hasn’t been used in so long. I should force myself to eat something, but I just can’t do it. My stomach is in the clutch of an iron fist, and it won’t stop squeezing.

I get up and go back to the bedroom. I get my things out of the travel bag and get dressed. I find a reasonably secure hiding place for my money and lottery ticket, reassured by the thought that generally thieves don’t break into other thieves’ apartments.

After thinking it over, I pull the silencer off the gun and stick the gun down the waistband of my trousers.

I might be making a mistake, but I can’t bring myself to leave the apartment unarmed. The people I’ve interacted with for so many years have taught me that in certain desperate cases, the only satisfaction left to you is to take someone with you on your trip to the afterlife. I’ve always considered this school of thought to be utter crap, but I have to say that recent events have given me a new appreciation of its worth.

Right now, there’s only one handhold I can seize on in my attempt to make some sense of all this.

The last words Daytona uttered before he died:
White Isis
.

I have no idea what the White Isis has to do with this whole story. I have no idea whether it’s something or someone inside the public baths or if it’s something in the surrounding area. To make matters worse, the company has two locations in Milan, though the best known and most popular location is in the Galleria.

That’s where I decide to get started.

I put on a pair of sunglasses and take a look at my new appearance in the mirror. Anyone who knows me as Bravo would take a minute or two to link my name to this brand-new image. The people who are looking for me? Less than a second. I just hope I don’t meet anyone from either of those crews.

I leave the apartment without giving the key the final double twist for added security.

The hallway is empty, and in the elevator Luca is still a faggot and Mary is still a whore. The comment about Inter has been erased completely. Miracles of the soccer fan’s faith.

I head downstairs and walk toward the parking spot where I left the Fiat 124. It’s lunchtime and there’s nobody in sight. My stomach is starting to rumble and it may be necessary, once I get to the center of the city, to feed it a panino. I get in, start the engine, pull out, and head for the main gate.

The gate is wide open, so I’m not forced to get out of the car and fool around with keys and locks.

Once I get out in the street, I suffer an attack of agoraphobia. I have to make an enormous effort to keep going and resist the temptation to turn around, leave the car wherever I happen to be, and run headlong back to the safety of the apartment. I tell myself it’s only an anxiety attack, like the ones you get when you go scuba diving, when the air from the tanks doesn’t seem to be reaching your lungs. I force myself to breathe normally. Little by little, the fear subsides and I follow the traffic to the first Metro station I happen to find.

Today is Saturday, and there must be a huge crowd heading downtown. I’m more likely to go unnoticed. With my usual excessive caution, this time I double back and make multiple turns, twisting across the face of the street map of Milan, just to make sure nobody’s following me.

I decide to go and catch the Metro at the QT8 station, in Piazza Santa Maria Nascente, where there’s an adjacent parking lot. It’s a fair distance from Quarto Oggiaro, and just in case someone happened to recognize me, it would throw them off my track because they’d assume I was hiding out somewhere nearby. All this overthinking, all these precautions I’m forced to take, all these obsessive-compulsive rituals, are enough to drive me into a fury.

I tell myself that perhaps, in a way, that fury has been there all along. The events I’ve become entangled in are nothing more than a lens that has enlarged everything. A lens with a sharpshooter’s crosshairs etched into it. I’ve been maneuvered like a puppet, shoved this way and that like a piece of furniture, fucked up the ass without even the benefit of a joke or two, a little cajoling, and all with the clear intent of destroying me. They yanked me like a molar out of my indifference toward the world and toward myself.

Now that I’ve thought it through, ascertained the state of things, and accepted facts as they are, I’m armed and seething with fury. And I’m determined to take this thing as far as it goes. Which may mean I’m taking it straight to my grave, but at this point I don’t fucking care.

Now I want to know a name. I want to see a face in front of me.

What happens after that, for now, is a problem I choose to ignore.

I leave the 124 in the parking lot and I head for the Metro station marked by a familiar white logo:
MM
.

In the past, these two letters have been the object of fanciful interpretations by one and all. Daytona, Beefsteak, Godie, and the cabaret artists from the club. Now they seem like nothing more than an acronym for Mortal Misstep.

I walk down into the underground tunnel and discover to my relief that there are very few people. That’s good. I head over to the newsstand to buy a few Metro tickets and when I get there, I turn into a pillar of salt.

What I’m seeing isn’t Sodom and Gomorrah in flames, but a special edition of
Il Giorno
, with an identikit on the front page that does a stunningly good job of reproducing my features.

The banner headline is significant.

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THIS MAN

It’s lucky for me that in the sketch my hair is long and I’m clean-shaven, so I venture to approach the news vendor and ask for a copy. I also take the latest issue of
La Settimana Enigmistica
. The man hands it to me and takes my money without so much as glancing at my face. I’ve never felt such pleasure at the way people ignore other people.

I turn away and retrace my steps.

Shit.

That was the last thing I needed. I thought I’d have a little more of a head start. The fact that they’ve identified me comes as no surprise. The people behind this whole intricate plot have shown they’re not stupid. For that matter, the police aren’t stupid either, especially not when they’re handed such a carefully constructed chain of clues.

Now I don’t know what to do.

Maybe going downtown right now, when all the newsstands are filled with newspapers emblazoned with a reasonably good sketch of my face, might not be such a good idea. I don’t know how far along the investigators might be, but if by some chance they’ve figured out a link to the White Isis, rushing down to hang out near the place strikes me as a bad move.

The tiny gleam of light that had flickered into a flame now appears to belong to a candle stub that immediately died out. Now it’s pitch-black again and I’m stumbling around in the dark.

I decide to go back to my car and read the article.

When I open the door, a wave of heat pours into my face. I sit inside without opening the windows, as if those panes of glass were a barrier against the treachery of the outside world.

I start reading. At the same time, I start sweating without realizing it.

The investigation into what is by now generally referred to as the Massacre of Lesmo, for which the Red Brigades have claimed responsibility with an anonymous phone call that is still being checked out, seems to have come to a crucial turning point. This comes in sharp contrast to the investigation in the case of the Moro kidnapping, still apparently at a dead end. The murders at Monza seem to have been the work of one specific person, a man with a name and a face. That man is Francesco Marcona, also known by the moniker he uses in the milieu of the Milanese underworld: Bravo. He is currently a fugitive from the law. A search conducted in his residence in Cesano Boscone, in Via Fratelli Rosselli 4, turned up no evidence or material linking him explicitly to any subversive plots. Nor have the police found any photographs allowing them to work with a clear image of his face. Still, the investigators did find, in the pocket of a jacket he hastily abandoned in his escape, a gold watch believed to be the property of Paolo Boccoli, also known as Daytona precisely because of the watch in question. Boccoli’s dead body was found in an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of San Donato Milanese. He had been stabbed to death. The bloody murder of this major figure in the Milanese underworld comes on the heels of the killing of Salvatore Menno, another notorious ex-convict, murdered just a short time ago with one of the weapons that was later used in the mass killing in the villa of Lorenzo Bonifaci. All this leads the police to theorize that they were working as confederates in the …

This major figure in the Milanese underworld …

I note bitterly that the description affords Daytona a qualitative leap in status that he was never able to achieve while he was alive. I go back to reading the article, which adds nothing new, doing nothing more than rehashing the facts, offering a clumsy reconstruction of the murders, emphasizing the importance of the victims, and theorizing with many a nudge and a wink just what the presence of the young women at the villa might signify.

I fold up the newspaper, open the car window, and light a Marlboro. I can feel the sweat dripping under my armpits. On my forehead, it’s turned into a crown of thorns.

I never dreamed I was so hopelessly cornered, that the frame could be so thorough and so complete. All my best and worst intentions have collapsed pathetically. The handgun I’m carrying is no longer a guarantee of anything: now it’s just a heavy object tugging at my belt and hurting my hip.

I decide to head back to Carmine’s apartment, and I just hope that no one recognizes me. I repeat to myself that in Quarto Oggiaro people mind their own business, but it’s fleeting comfort, gone out the window with my cigarette smoke.