At the End of a Dull Day (7 page)

He smirked. “That's it?”

“Counselor, you never had the slightest intention of paying me back the two million euros you stole from me with the fake scam in Dubai,” I started to explain. “You were planning to string me along with just enough bullshit to keep me happy and when the time was up you weren't planning to give me a cent. And you know why?”

“I'm all ears,” he replied arrogantly.

“Because you made the mistake of continuing to think of me, with a healthy dose prejudice and contempt, as the man I once was, the man who first came to your office with a bag full of money and a criminal record that needed a good scrubbing.”

“Well, what happened, have you changed?” he taunted me.

“That's right. And you're the only one who hasn't noticed.”

“You go tell my housekeeper or my wife about your transformation. You turned my home into a nightmare and now you tell me you're an innocent lily of the field?”

“I'm more of one than you are, anyway. And it was the only way I could get your attention.”

“You're a sick, dangerous man,” he hissed. “In this system nobody does any physical harm to anyone else. You might lose money, which is what happened to you, or you might lose your reputation, or even wind up in jail, but we don't wind up in the hospital or in the boneyard. We're in the Veneto, not in the south of Italy!”

“Then I must just be one of those unpredictable variables in your fucked-up system, Counselor, and I can promise you that I've shown considerable restraint and offered no more than a tiny demonstration of the extent of my professional skills in the field of inflicting violence. You can't even begin to imagine how good I am at the work I do . . . ”

He turned white as a sheet, but his tone betrayed no fear. “Don't you dare threaten me.”

“I wouldn't dream of it. Otherwise I'd be sitting here with a lengthy list of demands,” I shot back. “I want just one thing: from now on you are going to have to respect the obligations you've undertaken with me.”

“Is that all?”

“Two million euros, plus 25 percent interest, within a year.”

He stood there in silence and stared at me for a while, then he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

“Counselor,” I called after him in a loud, cutting voice. “The Nena, as always, is at your service, but it's not free anymore.”

“That's fine,” he said, as he wrapped his cashmere scarf around his neck in a loose knot. “I'll have Ylenia get in touch with you. She takes care of all those details.”

“Go fuck yourself, asshole,” I muttered through clenched teeth. I sat there enjoying my cognac in the silence of the back room. I had created that room so that he'd feel secure as he negotiated deals and laid traps for his enemies.

Instead, the smart thing would have been to salt the place with microphones. As I came and went with plates and bottles I'd overheard snatches of conversation that, offered for sale in a tidy package, would have allowed me to triple the sum the Counselor owed me now.

The toxic leachings from a dump poured into the open sea in order to reduce waste disposal costs, bribes paid to tamper with the health department statistics on tumors caused by an incinerator, more bribes to persuade world-renowned university professors to express support for nuclear- and coal-powered electricity, defective but inexpensive prosthetic limbs and hip replacements, which would later have to be replaced at the price of two operations instead of one, engineering studies designed to ensure that two absolutely useless highway bypasses . . .

I remember once having to separate two furious engineers, each of them the director of a respected planning firm, who were trading punches over some deal involved in the design for a new hospital.

I'd been an idiot. Instead of playing dirty with Brianese, I'd protected him, coddled him, even served as his bootlicking pimp with the sole objective of winning the honor of his respect and his patronage of La Nena.

And how did he repay me? By conning me out of two million euros.

I shut the place down and went home to Martina and her creams and ointments.

The next morning my wife talked at length about Gemma and her efforts at self-improvement. The more she talked about her friend the more uneasy I felt. There was no way I was going to be able to restrain myself. The only thing left was to figure when and how I was going to cross that line.

I changed the subject. “How is your father?”

“No better. It's inconceivable to me that modern science can't come up with a cure for it.”

I looked up from the jar of yogurt that my cook made for me. “And it seems inconceivable to me that you should utter such claptrap.”

She stuck her tongue out at me while she added a spoonful of cane sugar to her mug of tea. “I thought I'd spend three mornings with him, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I'll reschedule my Zumba Fitness, Pilates, and Gliding Disc classes for the afternoons, along with my massages and my jogging.”

“That's too many things clustered together,” I commented as I glanced over at the sheet of paper with her weekly schedule hanging on the refrigerator. “Your body can't take it all. You're going to have to give up running.”

She looked at me in surprise. She hadn't seen that one coming. “I can tweak your diet, but there aren't any other solutions,” I added. “Obviously, you'll have to give up alcohol entirely, because that sly dog just turns into a nasty yellowish fat that you can never get rid of.”

“But I hardly drink anything!”

“So it won't be a sacrifice to give it up completely.”

I smooched and cuddled with her for a couple of minutes. “Now I really have to go.”

“I wish we could just go on a holiday somewhere together. Just the two of us, alone on a dreamy beach . . . ”

I shuddered at the thought as memories of our honeymoon in Polynesia came back to me. “When La Nena is running smoothly enough for me to leave,” I said offhandedly, as I opened the door. I paused but there was no need for me to turn around to make my meaning clear. “This is a tough period and the last thing on my mind is a vacation.”

 

Ylenia was waiting for me, consoling herself with a cappuccino and rice cake. I ordered a glass of Alpine chamois milk for myself, La Nena's newest breakfast offering.

“I've drawn up a prospectus with the various initiatives and a preliminary estimate of costs as a basis for discussion,” she began her pitch, opening an elegant leather portfolio. “We expect you to make a special effort with favorable prices, as a personal contribution to the political battle we're about to undertake to defend the position of the party here in the region.”

I looked at her. She was attractive in spite of the severe cut of her suit, her flat heels, her smooth shoulder-length hair. Her body was petite but shapely, her features were slightly angular but agreeable. Her legs were her weak spot, with oversized ankles and calves.

She returned my look with an arrogant glance and at that very moment, for no exact reason, I felt sure that she and Brianese were lovers. I'd considered that possibility before but I'd dismissed it. I'd never assigned much importance to that young woman in her early thirties, always impeccable but never spectacular. I'd written her off as “the secretary that any professional would want”: presentable and efficient.

And once again I'd been wrong. The many years of difference in their ages had done nothing to prevent her from having a relationship with the Counselor, the famous lawyer, the man who never lost a case, who'd gone into politics and was becoming increasingly famous and powerful. And corrupt. I wondered how much she knew about his business dealings. If he was just taking her to bed then maybe not much, but if the two of them were really in love then she was his accomplice and his confidante.

Ylenia interpreted my silence as an invitation to go on with a presentation of their political objectives.

“There's no need for you to talk me into it,” I interrupted. “Let me have that prospectus.”

I was afraid that I was going to have to endure prolonged negotiations, but the prices set out in the prospectus were quite reasonable. “These aren't the kind of prices that I was expecting,” I lied. “But given my many years of friendship with Counselor Brianese and in view of the contributions that we must all make to the party, I'm going to accept them without discussion.”

I saw a smirk of contempt play across her lips that I didn't like one bit. I asked her to sit and chat a little longer, and to call me by my first name. I unleashed the full force of my personal charm, but to no avail. She put away her papers and stood up. She held out her hand, nicely manicured and adorned with at least 20,000 euros' worth of rings.

“Arrivederci,” she said, without meeting my glance.

That bitch knows a lot more than she ought to, I mused. My instincts as a former guerrilla warrior and an ex-armed robber had saved my ass on more than one occasion, and now they were warning me to be wary of Ylenia. She suddenly looked like she could be a dangerous adversary or, even worse, a loose cannon. I felt like kicking myself for the idiot that I'd been. I'd known her since the day Brianese hired her, and I'd never noticed a thing.

I quickly got rid of a sales representative touting French cheeses and told the senior waiter that I was going to be away for a while.

Roby De Palma was an assiduous customer of La Nena and many other clubs, bars, and restaurants frequented by people with money. He was a private investigator, and being well known was the best way to get jobs. He mostly did small-time investigations, and I used him to check out my employees. Both when I hired them and afterward, with periodic check-ups. I wasn't interested in running the risk of finding out too late that one bad apple had fucked up the reputation of my establishment. Roby was no genius, but the good thing about him was that he knew the right people and he managed to lay his hands on information that was completely confidential.

I hopped into a taxi and rode over to his office, in a big nondescript building in the industrial district, now almost entirely occupied by Chinese import-export companies.

When he ushered me into his office he pointed to the
Gazzetta dello Sport
lying open on his desk. “I was just going over an important case,” he joked.

I sat down on the office chair. “Ylenia Mazzonetto.”

“Brianese's secretary?”

“That's right.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything she doesn't want people to know.”

“You're not going to get me into trouble, are you?”

“Don't worry. I think she's hot and I'm curious about her.”

“You think she's hot? Come on, don't bullshit me! She's cute, but there are so many choice pieces of ass at your restaurant . . . ”

I shrugged. “I've got a lot of money on the line in this upcoming election and she's managing it all . . . ”

“That's better,” he responded. “But do you have enough money for me? This is the kind of investigation that can drag out.”

“Don't take advantage,” I warned him. “Most of all, don't think of handing over ‘my information' to the Padanos. I know you've crossed over . . . ”

He made a show of taking offense. “Who do you take me for? You know I have solid professional ethics.”

He counted the bills in the envelope that I'd handed him. “Let's say, twice this amount, agreed?”

“Sure, when you've completed a first-class investigation,” I replied as I got to my feet.

“You should think about joining us,” he said as he walked me to the door. “The Padanos are the future, here.”

I extended my arms helplessly. “I've been joined at the hip with Brianese for far too long and La Nena is going to be his reception space during the election campaign . . . It's too late to change course now.”

“It's not like you'd have to have a membership card . . . ” he commented. “Shit, I remember when my dad used to carry four or five party membership cards: Christian Democratic Party, Italian Socialist Party, and even the Italian Social-Democratic Party, whatever the hell that ever was.”

“I'll think it over,” I lied.

 

At the end of a dull day the Honorable Brianese came in to drink an aperitif, accompanied by Ylenia and Nicola. He behaved the way he usually did and was especially affectionate and courteous with me. He sang my praises so that everyone could hear and announced that La Nena would be a major venue for the party's campaign events.

“If you want to tip back a glass in the company of major figures of the Italian political landscape, you'll have to come here.”

Then he waved me over. “You can open the back room up again,” he said in a hushed voice. “The establishment is now a public place and there are going to be plenty of journalists in here. We can't afford to run any risks. A smart reporter can put two and two together in a flash.”

I smelled a rat. “What about my girls: they're still available to you, right?”

“Maybe before the elections we'd all better try to be good boys. I think not until afterwards . . . ”

The Counselor stood up, apologized but said that he couldn't stay for dinner, and then left with his trusted colleagues. I noticed Roby De Palma down his spritz in a gulp and then discreetly follow the trio.

With one deft and technically impeccable move Brianese had cut me off from all access to the important circles. With the excuse that he didn't want to be seen in the company of individuals who might arouse the curiosity of professional busybodies, he succeeded in preventing future conversations like the one that had allowed me to discover through Domenico Beccaro the way he'd cheated me on the Dubai scam. But it didn't make any sense that he no longer wanted to make use of my service for his supply of pretty girls. Nobody else but me could reliably protect him and his friends from gossip and scandals, and there was no question of any of them being able to keep their dicks in their pants through an entire election campaign.