Divas (42 page)

They were all males, she noticed. Even the kids. It was more than a little unnerving.

Leo gestured to Mario and her to remain by the car. Smoothing down his jacket, he walked past the kids, along the short cement path, and straight up to the young men who were guarding the
entrance door.

‘What’s he saying to them?’ she asked.

Mario shrugged, and she saw Leo was pointing at her. They stared at her appreciatively; one of them whistled, another laughed. Leo’s dour expression almost cracked into a smile. He put his
finger next to his head, swivelling it. They all laughed. A young man at the centre of the group said something. From the way the others fell aside, deferring to him, as soon as he spoke, he was
clearly the leader. They were all wearing jeans, much tighter than their American gangland equivalents would be caught dead in, light denim, with bright, equally tight T-shirts. ‘PRISON CAMP
SEX’, read the slogan on one. ‘69 4-EVER’, read another. ‘ROCK, ROLL, REV’, a third. Near-meaningless texts, printed probably in China and sold here cheaply at local
markets for a few euros, bought by people who barely understood the words but liked the Americana they thought they represented.

Leo turned back to the two waiting by the Fiat and beckoned. They were in.

‘Santo Dio, proteggimi
, ’ Mario muttered, crossing himself.

Lola was used to men staring at her, but this was something else entirely. She could almost believe that Leo had sold her to the young men, the way they were looking at her. In her jeans and
three-quarter-length sleeve T-shirt, a sweater knotted at her waist, she was pretty well covered, but she might as well have been wearing a string bikini and four-inch perspex stack heels. They
leered at her, laughing in her face, saying things that were clearly meant to taunt her but which, mercifully, she couldn’t understand. One of the young men flung open the steel door with a
mocking smile, and she passed through to a stream of whistles and catcalls, Leo and Mario following. Inside it was dark, dank and stunk like a cattery. Mario winced in horror. There was a lift
ahead of them, but they didn’t take it; Leo indicated a set of concrete stairs instead.

That ascent of the stairs she would always remember as one of the worst experiences of her life. The vials on the floor that their feet crunched over, the pools of piss and vomit in the corners,
the stench everywhere, the dried bloodstains, the streaks of human excrement, like children’s finger painting, on the concrete walls. It seemed an interminable walk. None of them spoke: all
of them were too busy breathing through their mouths, to avoid, as much as possible, smelling the odours surrounding them. By the time they reached the sixth floor, Mario was moaning audibly.

Number 45 was halfway down the walkway. Its front door had been painted a jaunty turquoise once, but was so peeled and sun-faded now that only a few bright chips remained to indicate its
original colour. Leo approached it, but Lola tapped his arm, shaking her head, and stepped forward instead.

Heart in her mouth, she knocked on the door.

To her surprise, it was opened almost immediately. But the young man who stood there had clearly been expecting someone else. His eyes bugged out when he saw her small figure and Leo, standing
behind her. She could see the cogs in his brain whirling as he worked out why her face was familiar to him, and who she was.

And then he started to shut the door in her face.

Leo was very fast. He had one hand past her and pressed flat against the closing door before she even realised what he was doing. And he was strong, too, because he held the door at that exact
angle very easily, even as Joe Scutellaro pushed, with his whole slight weight, against him, trying to get it shut.

‘Look, I just want to talk to you, ’ Lola said urgently. ‘Please can I come in?’

Joe Scutellaro closed his eyes momentarily.

‘Just you, ’ he said finally. ‘Not your animal.’ He added something rude in Italian, directed at Leo, who didn’t react.

‘We must check it inside, ’ Mario said anxiously. ‘To see there is no one else, who could hurt her.’

Joe let out a bitter laugh.

‘Sure, knock yourself out, ’ he said, throwing the door open wide as Leo took his hand away. ‘You can practically check it out from here.’

Lola went inside. It was so sparse, so pitiful, that her heart would have broken for him if she hadn’t known how much money of Carin Fitzgerald’s he must be sitting on. A front room
with an old stove and small, whirring refrigerator, two wooden chairs and a chipped Formica-topped table; a blue-and-white checked piece of cloth hung over a row of wooden shelves with a few scanty
provisions on them. Beyond was another small room, with a mattress on the floor, an orange plastic crate turned upside down to serve as a bedside table, and some clothes on hangers suspended from
nails on the walls. The bathroom was a sink, toilet and open shower all in one narrow cubicle, so that in winter, without the sun to dry off the tiles, the whole room would be perpetually damp. The
grouting was already rotten, lying in dark grey worms over the tiles.

She came out into the front room after thirty seconds.

‘There’s no one here, ’ she said to Leo, who nodded, understanding that much English, and closed the door.

She was alone with Joe Scutellaro. Slowly, Lola crossed the room to the table and sat down on the further chair, indicating that he should take the other one. His big dark eyes never leaving her
face, he sat down too.

‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Carin would never had told you. Nor anyone who works for her, ’ he said. ‘They’re all too well-paid. And too scared.’

He was very handsome; with his tight dark curls, liquid dark eyes and full red lips he might have walked straight out of a Caravaggio painting, where he would have been depicted as a faun, or a
young Bacchus, holding a full bunch of grapes to his mouth. His eyelashes were ridiculously long and thick, his jawline smooth as silk.

‘Whatever she gave you, I can top it, ’ Lola said, her dark eyes boring into his. ‘Name your price.’

‘I can’t! You must be crazy! She’s gone so far with this thing. Making me hide out here. “Bury yourself alive, ” were her exact words, if I remember right.
“Somewhere shitty. They’ll look for you in the nice places, not the shitty ones.”’ He gestured around him. ‘This is my cousin’s place. Nice, isn’t it? A
real palace. I gave him a bunch of euros and told him to fuck off for three weeks. You can bet he was glad to go.’

She cleared her throat.

‘Well then, ’ she said tentatively, ‘doesn’t that tell you something? I mean, you’re making all this money from her – she must have paid you tons – and
still, this is where you’ve ended up till she needs you again? Somewhere as shitty as this? She doesn’t care about you at all! She’s just using you!’

‘I know she’s using me, ’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s all about the money, OK? For her and for me.’ He looked around him once again. ‘You can see the
kind of thing I come from. I mean, not as bad as this. Nothing’s as bad as this, it’s one of the worst fucking places in Italy. Unless you’re down in Naples, living on a rubbish
heap.’ He spat over his shoulder. ‘But yeah, we come from nothing. I needed to set myself up, you understand? It wasn’t’ – he wouldn’t meet her eyes –
‘it wasn’t anything personal.’

He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a pack of Marlboro Lights.

‘I’ve got to give you points, ’ he said, still not meeting her eyes. ‘Managing to track me down here. Jesus, just getting into this place. It’s like Fort Knox. The
dealers don’t let anyone in they don’t know. Heroin, ’ he said, answering her unspoken question. ‘Straight up from Africa.
Roba
. My cousin shoots up every Friday
night, just for shits and giggles. Works all week and spends the weekend in a coma. I tell you, if I’d grown up here I’d be a junkie myself.’

He tapped out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and then offered her the packet.

‘Thanks, ’ she said, taking one.

He lit hers and then his.

‘Look, there’s nothing I can do for you, ’ he said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘Nothing. I’m all bought and paid for. Sorry, but that’s just how it
is.’

‘Like I said, anything she gave you, I can give you more, ’ Lola insisted. She hadn’t come this far to give up now. ‘She’s got money, but I have the Van der Veers
behind me, and they’re much more powerful than Carin.’

From the way he looked up at her, she knew she’d found a chink in his armour.

‘The Van der Veers have interests all over the world, ’ she insisted. ‘You could be set up wherever you want, with whatever you want. Right here in Italy, if you like. You know
about their textile factories. You could have an interest in them. I mean, you need a lot of money to be set up for life nowadays. A
lot
. I doubt Carin’s promised you that much. But I
will.’

‘How do I know you’re good for it?’ he asked, staring at her. ‘This could all be a lot of hot air. I mean, Carin’s got her hands on her fortune already.
You’ve got nothing for now.’

She fished in a pocket of her bag, extracting an envelope. ‘Fifty thousand euros, in cash, for starters. Yours to keep, just for listening to me.’

‘You’re kidding!’ he exclaimed, his eyes widening.

He snatched at the envelope with such instant, immediate greed that she felt her heart pounding with excitement as she reached into another compartment of the bag and pulled out a stack of
papers and a fountain pen.

‘Here, ’ she said, extracting a cheque that was paper-clipped to the top of the pile, and holding it up so that he could read it. ‘Made out to you. A hundred thousand euros.
Already signed, by Jean-Marc van der Veer.’

She tapped the stack of papers.

‘I’ve got a contract in here for you to sign. Drawn up by my New York lawyers. Really simple language, no loopholes or escape clauses. We get an acquittal, you get a cool million.
Read it. It’s unbreakable once you and I sign it. I’ve got copies here for me and for you.’

She was deliberately using the most neutral language possible. The man sitting before her had colluded in a murder, had committed perjury already, and was planning to do it again to send an
innocent woman to prison. He was a nurse, who had helped to kill the patient whose life he was supposed to preserve. She didn’t think she’d get very far with appeals to his
conscience.

And making him feel guilty, taking the moral high ground, would probably anger him so much he’d throw her out and refuse to enter into any more negotiations. The last thing she wanted to
do was provoke any resistance. So she was treating this as if it were a straightforward business deal, where the highest bidder would win out.

She just hoped that it was working.

Joe was reading through the copy of the contract that she had slid across the table to him, poring over it slowly, taking his time. That was a good sign. The tension was unbearable; she wanted
to beat her feet against the floor, to pace up and down the room, anything to let off some steam.

But she couldn’t. This was a business negotiation, and you never showed weakness if you wanted to win. Her entire body fizzing with nerves, she limited herself to lighting another Marlboro
Light off the butt of the first.

Minutes passed, and he was still reading. She stubbed out the second cigarette in the crumpled piece of foil he was using as an ashtray. A light tap on the door made her jump.

‘You get that, ’ Joe said. ‘It’ll be your animal, checking that you’re still in one piece and breathing.’

She opened the door and let Leo and Mario see she was OK. Leo was as impassive as ever; Mario looked on the verge of tears. She raised her hand in front of her, crossing her fingers, then shut
the door again, turning so her back was to it, watching the back of Joe’s head as he pored over the contract.

‘Any bank account in the world?’ he asked eventually. ‘I can get this paid in anywhere I want?’

‘Of course. It says so right there.’

She came forward to put her finger on the sub-clause.

‘I like Brazil, ’ he said. ‘I have a lot of friends there. But—’

Just as her heart was leaping into her mouth with excitement, he sighed and pushed the contract away.

‘I’ve committed perjury. You know? This would never work. They’ll arrest me as soon as I step off the witness stand.’

‘No, they won’t, ’ she said confidently, sitting down opposite him again, fully prepared for this. ‘You’ll cry. You’ll say Carin threatened to frame you if
you didn’t go along with her. You’ll say Rico threatened your family. And it was only grand jury testimony.’

‘I was still under oath!’ he protested.

‘Yes, but if you tell the truth at the trial you’ll be fine. Simon Poluck – the criminal lawyer – he says that no one ever gets prosecuted for perjury unless it’s a
Mafia trial or something to do with organised crime. You break down on the stand, you say your conscience is killing you and you have to tell the truth, and no one will come after you. Guaranteed.
Because they’ll see you did the right thing and told the truth in the end.’

He nodded, slowly, heavily.

‘And you
will
be telling the truth, won’t you?’ Lola said, leaning forward, taking his hands in hers. ‘You’ll be telling the truth where it matters. And that
means that for the rest of your life, you won’t have to live with me on your conscience. Look at me. You’re seriously going to send me to prison for killing my own father? When you know
I’m innocent? How do you think you’re going to live with that?’

He shuddered, but he didn’t pull his hands away.

‘Besides, ’ she finished, moving onto her last argument, ‘you’ll be safer on our side.’

‘Safer?’ he mumbled.

‘You’re joking, right?’ she said. ‘Carin’s already killed her own husband. Don’t you think she might want to tie up all the loose ends, after she’s got
the conviction she needs to inherit all her husband’s money? Don’t you think she might want to make sure that you can’t have a crisis of conscience in five years’ time and
go to the DA to tell the truth?’