Death of a Showgirl (7 page)

‘Who was the go-between who brokered the deal?’ I asked Marinelli, waking him up from his reverie.

He smiled ruefully again. ‘A guy called Gianni Esposito.’

‘On what magazine?’

He let out a dismissive sigh. ‘I can’t remember. No idea. One of the usuals.’

‘Ever heard of him since?’

He shook his head. ‘He was tried along with Mori. Can’t remember what happened to him. Let off I think.’

‘Gianni Esposito,’ I said quietly. I committed the name to memory, wondering what role, if any, he had in this current case.

We heard the front door open and shut. Marinelli stood up and went to the window. We heard the sound of a moped revving up outside. It grew fainter as he came back to the kitchen table and rolled his eyes.

‘Not a word,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She won’t come back until after midnight and I’ve no idea where she is, who she’s with.’

‘Must worry you.’

‘Yeah, it does.’ It sounded like it made him more angry than worried.

‘Simona Biondi,’ I said slowly, ‘this girl I’m looking for, she hasn’t been seen since the day before yesterday. Her parents are very worried. Does that name mean anything to you?’

He suddenly turned to me as if I had woken him up. He shook his head conclusively, quickly. ‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve never heard her name before?’

He shook his head again, raising his palms as if to apologise for his ignorance.

I stood up and thanked him for the coffee. He walked me to the door and held it open as the dogs reappeared and snarled. He stared at them angrily, picking up an umbrella from behind the door like it was the only way to let out all his frustration. They yelped pitifully as they retreated. He clicked open the gate for me and I exchanged his cold, perfect house for the hot chaos of the capital.

I walked along the pavement above the Tiber, looking down at the light brown river and the oblique steps descending down to the banks. There were a few boats moored up there, rocking left and right in the breeze. I watched a few squawking gulls as they tried to snatch crumbs from the deck of a pleasure boat. One of the birds got what it wanted and soared up to the rooftops to enjoy its takings. I saw it alight on the top of one of the blocks of flats, disappearing amidst the forest of aerials and satellite dishes.

I stood there, staring at the ugly receivers. Strange that they were the means by which synthetic dreams were captured, that it was those metallic tangles that brought the tinny laughter and forced applause into people’s lives. Next to them the white dishes were all facing upwards to the sky as if in admiration of a orbiting god. There was something beseeching about their angle, about that recipient, passive pose, like the viewers themselves, with their gaze cast up to the passing stars.

Back in the city I checked into a hotel near Piazza del Popolo. It was an old-fashioned place, full of dark wood, antiquarian maps and quiet staff. I went up to my room in a slow lift and made some calls. It didn’t take long to discover that Gianni Esposito worked on a magazine called
Desire
. I called the publication and they told me that Esposito was in.

I wrote down the address and went round there. It was a short walk outside the centre, where the streets became boulevards and the shops, rather than selling designer outfits, sold discount underwear and cheap suitcases. There were fading posters from some recent political campaign, the politicians’ large faces smiling at pedestrians. There were trite slogans written underneath, many of which had been doctored or defaced.

I wondered to myself why I was chasing a story from twenty years ago instead of the current one. I had to follow any leads I found, and if I had none on Simona, then I would chase loose ends from back in the 1990s. I wasn’t sure if history was repeating itself, but I knew that as names came up I had to confront them, see what they could tell me about the past and what that might say about the present.

The magazine’s offices were in a large block housing various other titles. The ground-floor reception had lime-green sofas and copies of the covers of various magazines from years gone by. There were photographs of couples on snowy mountains, smiling outrageously at something as they stared into the far distance; there were pictures of fashionably dressed children running along the beach holding hands, their feet splashing in the water. I looked for a cover of
Desire
and saw a woman on her hands and knees, showing her cleavage. It was someone I recognised from the TV, but I couldn’t place the programme. She looked young and seductive.
The cat with nine lives
, read the headline.

The whole place exuded fantasy. This was what people aspired to: the laughter, the glamour of snowy peaks, feet splashing in a transparent sea, a beautiful wife with perfect teeth and voluptuous curves. On the far wall, in large letters, it said
Sogni Group
.

The woman on the front desk, though, looked like a sourpuss. She was the wrong side of plump, her face was barely symmetrical and her short black hair made her look like the austere adult guardian of these childish fantasies.

‘I’m looking for Gianni Esposito,’ I said to her.

She raised one eyebrow. ‘It’s press day today so he’ll be very tied up. Have you got an appointment?’

I shook my head.

‘Name?’

‘Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator.’

She looked at me like she wanted to ask more questions. She picked up the phone instead. ‘Someone here to see Gianni,’ she barked. ‘I know, I know. Shall I send him up anyway?’

I couldn’t hear the reply, but when she hung up she nodded towards the lift. ‘Eighth floor,’ she said.

‘All these magazines are part of the Sogni stable, right?’

She nodded.

‘Who owns Sogni?’

‘Mario Di Angelo. He’s got more titles than a medieval monarch.’ She didn’t smile as she said it, but picked up the phone again, ready to make another call.

I took the lift up to the eighth floor and came out into a reception area with frosted glass doors in all directions. The girl behind the front desk was cute and knew it.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘I’m here to see Gianni Esposito,’ I said.

‘He’ll be busy all day today. You got an appointment?’

I shook my head. She looked at me like there wasn’t a chance, so I showed her a copy of my badge. She looked nonplussed, but stood up and walked through one of the glass doors, moving like she was trying to swat flies with her hips.

I went and sat down, picking up a copy of
Desire
’s latest issue. It only took a couple of minutes to read. It was almost all photos, the usual sort of stuff at this time of year: minor stars sunbathing topless on a distant yacht, some actor who had a new squeeze, a few collages from parties in Sardinia and Forte. I only recognised a couple of the faces or names.

The girl came back and told me that Esposito would see me in a few minutes. She went and sat back at her computer and tapped away. The first time the phone rang she put on a headset so she could answer it without taking her hands off the keyboard. Her voice was from the streets of Rome, a hard, gurgling voice that sounded like it wouldn’t take any shit but could certainly dish it out.

It was quarter of an hour before Esposito came in. He had grey hair cut so short that it was only visible as white specks against his tanned scalp. His face was unnaturally tanned and what looked like a muscular torso was squeezed into a shiny mauve shirt.

‘You Castagnetti?’

I stood up and nodded. He held out a hand and he looked at me with curiosity.

‘Come on. It’s press day. I haven’t got much time.’

He walked back the way he had come, expecting me to follow like a faithful dog. He led me into an office with a large plasma screen showing some muted talk show. There were piles of newspapers and invitations and DVDs in all directions. He walked over to a water cooler and filled a small plastic cup. ‘What’s this about?’ He sat behind his desk and motioned with his chin that I should sit on a chair the other side.

‘A young girl’s gone missing. She’s called Simona Biondi. I’ve been hired to find her.’

He shrugged. ‘Who’s she?’

‘An eighteen-year-old girl.’

He flicked the bottom of a soft packet of cigarettes and put an emerging filter tip in his mouth. ‘How can I help?’ The cigarette bounced up and down as he spoke.

‘She’s with a man. Someone you know. Or did. Fabrizio Mori.’

He put his head back, looking at the ceiling. He rolled his jaw left and right so that the thin cigarette moved like the needle of a metronome. He leant forward and flicked open a lighter and brought the flame to the cigarette. ‘Mori, eh? Haven’t heard of him for twenty years.’ He sucked deeply and then turned to the side as he exhaled white smoke. ‘You got a photo of this girl?’

I passed over the shot from the magazine.

‘Cute. Very cute.’ He looked at the paper, turned it over like he recognised the magazine. ‘Was she in the business?’ He waved a vertical index round the office to imply, I guessed, the world of glamour.

I shook my head. ‘Mori saw this snap when it was published and moved in on her. I’m trying to work out why, understand what he saw in her.’

‘Probably what most men see in a girl that age.’ He said it wistfully, as if he wished men wouldn’t waste themselves on young girls.

‘Mori was in the blackmailing business. That’s how he made his money. Secret snaps of secret vices. I heard you used to help him out.’

Esposito fixed me with a stare and slowly started to smile. ‘Is that why you’re here? You think I’m something to do with snatching this girl?’

I moved my head left and right. ‘No. But I think you were involved in something twenty years ago, and I’ve got a hunch this case is connected.’

He dragged hard on his cigarette and blew out the smoke like an act of defiance. ‘The only mistake I ever made with Mori all those years ago was trying to help out some friends.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Listen, sweetie, I get sent snaps all day every day.’ He opened a drawer and threw a pile of stills angrily in my direction. I looked through them: naked shots of beautiful women, a man bent over a line of powder, a couple groping in the dark. ‘Every day photographers are hustling, trying to get me to buy shots of famous people. Every day I get sent this shit.’

‘And?’

‘I can make or break someone’s career. Put a flattering shot on the cover and they’re made. Put one of those somewhere and they’re ruined. You follow? I’ve got enormous power and they know it.’

I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to finish. He clearly liked his power, the possibilities of playing God with the stars.

‘A lot of these people are my friends. These are the people I hang out with.’ He ran off a list of names that I sort of recognised. ‘We go out together, they invite me to their parties and onto their yachts.’

‘So?’ I said impatiently.

‘When I get sent that sort of shit,’ he jutted his chin towards the snaps on my lap, ‘I let them know they need to be more discreet. I warn them that someone in their circle is taking the piss.’

‘The way I heard it, you were part of a dummy auction for these sort of snaps, upping the price so that Mori made a nice profit and shared it with you.’

His eyelids hung low on his eyes like he was bored with me. He crushed the butt into a large white ashtray and stared at me. ‘You heard wrong. I never publish this sort of stuff. Never would. Not unless someone deserves it.’

‘What would they have to do to deserve it? Not invite you onto their yacht?’

He threw me an issue of his magazine. ‘I made most of these people. Most of them love me for it, but one or two are ungrateful. They forget who made them, who put them up there.’

‘And they’re the ones you bring low?’

‘I’ll occasionally publish the truth about them.’ He shrugged. ‘Mori wanted me to publish compromising shots of some of my close friends. All I did was warn them what he was up to.’

‘Filippo Marinelli?’

‘Yeah, sure, I called him. Told him some punk was trying to ruin his career. Told him the name of the guy and suggested he keep things a bit more discreet. And for that I was dragged through the courts, subjected to years of judicial bullshit. And I was cleared of all charges. Cleared of all charges,’ he said again, more slowly.

The phone rang and he snatched it up. He barked some instructions and slammed the handset down again. He paused, recollected himself and pulled a false smile. ‘Are we done?’

‘Not quite. Mori was working with a girl called Anna Sartori.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, his smile turning nasty. ‘I remember her.’

‘She went missing soon after things blew up.’

‘You’re not going to blame that on me as well, are you?’

I shrugged. ‘You ever meet her?’

He had a look of wry amusement. ‘I had seen her in the snaps. Seen quite a lot of her, if you see what I mean. She certainly put herself about, didn’t she?’

‘You ever meet her?’

He ran a palm across his shaved scalp. ‘Sure. Just the once.’

‘When was that?’

‘Before the so-called scandal broke. She must have known her handler Mori was sending me those snaps and she,’ he chuckled quietly to himself, ‘wanted to make sure I printed them. You know, most girls wouldn’t want those sort of sordid pictures in public, but she was desperate for it, she was sure they were her ticket to the big time. You know, there she was – topless, even naked, cavorting with some politician or footballer. She was shameless. Was desperate for me to run them in the magazine.’

‘And you didn’t?’

‘Of course not. Those people are my friends.’ He wagged his index finger as if it were out of the question. ‘We deal with glamour here, not pornography.’

‘I thought it was all the same.’

His grin was condescending, as though he were surprised he even had to explain to me how things worked. ‘Glamour is about dreams, aspirations, lifestyle, fashion . . .’

‘Frolics,’ I said. ‘Fantasies, flesh.’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head from one side to the other like he was watching a game of tennis. ‘It’s about taste. Aesthetics. Those snaps were sordid, the sort of sleaze we’re completely opposed to.’

‘So she came in here, hoping to persuade you to publish. You gave her your little sermon about glamour – and?’

‘She started telling me her life story, how she had come to Rome with Mori and how they had tried to get her into the glamour game. Or that’s what she thought he was doing. But she had discovered he was using her, making money by keeping her out of the press rather than getting her into it. She started crying, you know, all the waterworks. I tried to console her.’

‘Is that all you did?’

He grinned, showing me his perfect teeth. ‘That’s not my thing. And that, by the way, is why people trust me. I don’t interfere with any of the girls here. I prefer consoling young men, if you follow.’

‘So, what happened then?’

‘Sartori wanted the same as all of them, wanted to get on TV. I knew the guy who worked as the studio manager over at Di Angelo’s station and put them in touch.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Guy called Tony Vespa.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s like the bouncer for the floor shows. He used to be the handler for all those young girls.’

‘And he still works for Di Angelo?’

‘Sure. Always has, always will. He’s been his fixer for decades. His job back then was to find the girls for those crazy shows, to find the dancers and strippers and the like. Normally they would be taken to Di Angelo for vetting, if you know what I mean. He liked to meet them in the flesh. Just the flesh.’ He laughed at his little joke.

‘So you introduced Anna Sartori to this man Vespa, the fixer at the TV studios?’

‘Right. And that was more or less the last I heard of her.’

‘Until . . . ?’

‘Until I heard she had gone missing.’ He stared at his desk as if that was the decent thing to do. ‘Anything else?’

‘Where will I find Vespa?’

‘Vespa?’

‘Where does he live?’

Esposito hesitated and then leant forward and slowly rolled a wheel of index cards. I looked at his tanned fingers as he flicked through the cards. He stopped and pulled one out. He held it between his index and middle fingers and offered it over, pulling away when I made a move to take it.

‘I’ll need something in return.’

‘You want to console me too?’

‘You’re not my type.’ He smiled sarcastically. ‘I want to know what this is all about, where it goes. You’ve aroused my curiosity.’

‘Or your greed?’

He stared at me, waving the index card in his fingers like he was asking a question.

I shrugged wearily. ‘I’ve told you. A young girl has gone missing. It seems likely she’s with Mori. I suspect he’s putting the squeeze on someone but I don’t know why yet.’