At the End of a Dull Day (18 page)

Mingling with morning traffic I drove the SUV to the other side of town, near an abandoned factory that had been occupied by young activists from a community center, detested equally by the city administration and the police. I lit the cigarette and walked off with the backpack slung over my shoulder, wearing a visored cap and sunglasses. Exactly three minutes later I reached the terminus of a bus line that was scheduled to leave before the bomb went off. I got off at the stop for the train station, hopped into a cab, and told the driver to drop me off near where I'd parked my car.

At the first red light I called Martina.

She picked up on the first ring. “Ciao, darling, how are you?”

I turned around and looked at the half million euros sitting on the back seat. “Great. And your father? How's his treatment going?” I asked, pretending to be deeply concerned.

I missed my wife. I needed an extended session of sex. I'd committed an armed robbery and a couple of murders. Creative criminality had triggered an insane lust for life and pleasure. I couldn't restrain myself. I called Gemma.

“Ciao, King of Hearts,” she whispered. “I'm at work, so I can't talk about the filthy things you make me do.”

“Too bad. It would have helped me to hold out until this evening.”

“Do you have bad intentions, King of Hearts?”

“Very bad intentions.”

At La Nena, I asked everyone if they'd seen Tortorelli. I acted the part of the astonished dupe until it was obvious to everyone that that's what I was. I searched through every drawer that the bookkeeper had stuck his hands into. As I suspected, I found absolutely nothing that might be of any use. At last, I went back to managing my restaurant. My first official act was to eject a vendor of somersaulting light-up monkey toys.

“Get the hell out of here,” I said in a loud voice. That was greeted with a sprinkling of applause from the diners.

I told the youngest waiter to go get Ding Dong and tell him to come back to work.

After lunch I told my trusted waiter Piero that I'd be back in midafternoon and asked him to call me if the bookkeeper showed up.

 

“Do you have an appointment?” asked the secretary.

“No.”

“Just who are you? A supplier, a client, a representative?”

“A dear friend of Signora Marenzi's husband.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Pellegrini. Giorgio Pellegrini.”

The receptionist got up from her desk at the front of the large open space offices and went off in search of her boss. I had heard that Brianese's wife continued to run her fashion company just to stave off boredom. From what I could see here, that was just another typical small-town rumor prompted by jealous minds. Everywhere I looked, young people were busy discussing, designing, and creating. The actual apparel was produced in China, but it was unmistakable that the woman who ran this place was an old-school entrepreneur of northeastern Italy. Excellent. That would make it easier to come to an agreement.

The secretary came hurrying back and handed me a cordless phone.

“I know who you are, Signor Pellegrini,” Signora Marenzi's voice launched into me. “I don't believe you're one of Sante's friends at all. In fact, it's not my understanding that my husband even frequents your establishment anymore.”

“We've had our disagreements recently, it's true. And it's true that he no longer honors my restaurant with his patronage,” I admitted in a conciliatory tone. “But you really don't know who I am. Believe me when I tell you that you're all wrong about me.”

“Get out of here.”

“Whatever you say, but the merchandise I possess is negotiable elsewhere.”

She snorted. “You don't think you can bleed money out of me with some local two-bit scandal, do you?”

“I think no such thing. But this isn't about a little blot of mud that can be hidden away by ignoring it, the way your husband's colleagues usually do.”

“Why don't you approach him directly?”

“Because you're the only one who can give me what I want.”

She hung up and a few minutes later she emerged from the design department. She had to be at least sixty but she looked ten years younger and when she was a young woman she must have been a knockout. She waved me into her office. It was filled with objects of all kinds, swaths and rolls of fabric, and patterns. She pointed me to a chair across from her desk.

“We ordinary mortals who have to work for a living, instead of blackmailing our fellow man, usually don't have a lot of time to waste.”

I explained what was at stake and what I wanted from her. She had an intriguing way of running her fingers over her face when she was thinking.

”Part of me says I should just ask you: ‘Is that all?' and then I would be rid of you, but the matter would become uncontrollable if this information became public.”

“That's not going to happen. It's not in anybody's interest,” I reassured her.

“All right then. I accept your terms.”

I stood up and pulled a large bunch of keys out of my jacket pocket and set them down in front of her.

She picked up the keys as if she'd found them in a pool of manure and dropped them into a drawer. “You've ruined my day, Signor Pellegrini.”

What a woman. I turned on my heel and left.

 

 

They showed up Wednesday morning. Two days after the disappearance of Tortorelli, Terreti, and a million euros. I recognized them immediately. One of the pair was the guy in the white Fiat Punto who we'd blindsided at the service plaza. The other guy was a character with a peasant face and a cruel manner. They showed up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they never missed an aperitif. They sat in watchful, attentive silence. Apparently I was the only person or object in which they showed no interest whatever. At first the waitstaff took them for cops. Then they figured out these guys must be on the other side of the law and they simply ignored them entirely. When I went to take orders at their table they kept their eyes glued to their menus.

On Friday they started shadowing me. The following Monday they disappeared. As if they'd never existed. They didn't reappear until that night. At Gemma's apartment.

The guy from the white Fiat Punto came to open the door. I feigned surprise and fear and he jerked his head wearily, signaling me inside.

In the living room, Giuseppe and Nilo Palamara were waiting for me. The guy with the face of a peasant must have been in the other room with Gemma. I went on acting.

“What are you doing here? Where's my friend?”

“Sit down,” ordered Nilo.

I obeyed. It wasn't hard for me to display all the terror that was twisting my bowels. The two Palamaras stared at me for a long time with ostentatiously threatening expressions. Then Nilo went around to stand behind me. A typical cop move, a signal that my interrogation was about to begin. In fact, Giuseppe broke the silence.

“There's a thing that happened. No matter how we look at it, from below, above, from right or left . . . everything points to you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Nilo gave me a glancing slap. “Uncle Giuseppe's not done talking.”

“Pardon,” I hastened to apologize.

“Somebody put on a puppet show with people appearing and disappearing and all done special to pull the wool over our eyes. There was even an African in a jacket and tie.”

“An African?”

Nilo grabbed me by the hair and yanked so it hurt. “That's right, an African,” he breathed into my face. “A friend of yours.”

“You've got this all wrong.”

Uncle Giuseppe waved his index finger. “No. You're up to your neck in this puppet show,” he said. “Maybe you didn't direct the show because you're too stupid, but you definitely were one of the puppets. Here's why.”

He lifted his thumb: “First of all, Monday you didn't go to work.”

Then he lifted his index finger: “Bookkeeper Tortorelli disappeared that same night.”

Last of all, his middle finger, outspread: “Tuesday morning an SUV was burned the way people burn cars when all evidence needs to be destroyed because the car was used to do something wrong.”

“Tortorelli, an SUV . . . Signor Palamara, could you explain things a little more clearly? Because I don't know what you're talking about.”

Nilo hit me again. Harder and meaner this time. “Don't waste our time with this little game of asking us to tell you things you already know.”

Giuseppe raised a hand to stop his nephew. “Listen, Pellegrini, your friend is tied up like a salami on the kitchen table in there. And you know what you do with a salami, right? You slice it up. Is that clear?”

“Have you lost your minds? She has nothing to do with any of this and neither do I. Leave us alone!”

Palamara snickered. “I bet you were with her Monday night.”

“No. I was with a woman but it wasn't Gemma.”

“Who was she?”

“I can't tell you that. She's a married woman, and if her husband ever finds out I'll never hear the end of it.”

“That's what they all say,” he muttered in disappointment. He turned to his nephew.

“Go tell our friend to start with the nose.”

“All right, all right,” I practically shouted. “I was with Brianese's wife.”

An icy silence descended. Giuseppe looked at me and reflected. I twisted and turned in my chair, muttering meaningless phrases like an innocent but terrified man. I wasn't actually afraid anymore. In fact, the adrenaline of victory was sizzling in my veins. Those stupid Mafiosi had underestimated me. They'd fucked it up for themselves by adopting a standard procedure.

“But she's old,” he commented after a while. “Is there something wrong with you, Pellegrini? Why don't you have sex with women your age, like any ordinary Christian?”

“She doesn't look her age,” I explained. “And she makes love like a twenty-year-old.”

“Where did you two spend the night?”

I promptly supplied the addess of the residential hotel where Ylenia and the Counselor had their love nest.

“How late did you stay together?”

“I didn't leave until eight the next morning. I think Ombretta left half an hour later.”

Uncle and nephew exchanged a glance. Giuseppe pulled out his cell phone and moved into the bedroom. “Hello, Sante, sorry to call at this time of night . . . ” I heard him say, but then he closed the door.

Fifteen minutes later we were driving across town, heading for the Counselor's apartment. I was sitting in the backseat, wedged between the two thugs. The Palamaras were sitting in front and muttering in thick dialect.

Brianese was pale and worried when he let us in. “What's going on? At this time of night, at my home . . . ” Then he saw me and froze. “What the hell is he doing here?”

Giuseppe grabbed his arm to attract his attention. “We need to speak to your wife, tell her to come downstairs.”

“That's completely out of the question,” he hissed. “Come see me tomorrow morning in my law office and you can explain what you want at leisure, but Ombretta stays out of this.”

Palamara gripped his arm even tighter and the Counselor tried in vain to break free. “This is an important matter for us,” Giuseppe explained. “Important and urgent. Tell her to come downstairs now. Otherwise I'm going to have to send one of my boys upstairs and she'll have an unpleasant awakening, with a stranger in her bedroom.”

It became clear to Brianese that his being a prominent lawyer, not to mention a member of the Italian parliament, the fact that he was in his own home, these things meant less than nothing because the Calabrians simply didn't give a damn. They wanted something, and they were going to get it.

“Wait here for a minute,” he said, heading upstairs, his shoulders sagging in defeat.

A few minutes later, Ombretta Brianese née Marenzi strode downstairs briskly, followed by her husband. She was wearing an extremely elegant purple silk dressing gown and a pair of Friulian velvet slippers in the same color.

She threw everyone off balance by shaking hands all around and introducing herself. When it was my turn she caressed my cheek fleetingly, and greeted me by name: “Ciao, Giorgio.”

“You know him?” the Counselor stammered.

Giuseppe Palamara interrupted by coming straight to the point. “Forgive me, Signora, but I absolutely have to know whether you spent Monday night with Giorgio Pellegrini.”

“The answer is no,” Brianese butted in, increasingly aghast. “You can go now.”

“He asked your wife,” Nilo hushed him.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Ombretta began, as if she were upbraiding an incompetent parking valet. “You bust into my house at four in the morning demanding to know intimate details concerning my private life? Who the hell do you think you are? I doubt that you're from the police because you don't have the look. We may well be in Italy, where there's no longer any respect for personal privacy, but I think even the police would deal with these things in a manner more in keeping with such a delicate topic . . . ”

“Answer him, goddamn it!” shouted her husband in exasperation.

Signora Marenzi looked Giuseppe Palamara right in the eye. “Yes, we were together until eight in the morning. We meet in a residential hotel, located in Via Martiri delle Foibe, no. 8. Or rather, I should say, we used to meet, because after tonight's unexpected development good taste requires that we put an end to our relationship.”

She turned around, picked up her purse from an armchair, and pulled out a bunch of keys that she handed over to the Calabrian. “Don't pay the slightest attention to the furnishings; they're in terrible taste but they're perfectly suited to the purpose of the apartment,” she said, before turning and going back upstairs.