The Colombian Mule (10 page)

I kept Max company while he washed the dishes and then went downstairs to the club. I wanted to see Virna but as soon as I walked in, Rudy Scanferla, the club manager, came up to me. ‘We've got to take a look at the books, Marco. Would tomorrow afternoon suit you?'

‘Sure. How's business?'

‘Good. We've got some pretty loyal customers now and the takings are steady and good.'

I looked around and felt a glow of satisfaction that this club was mine. People were smoking and drinking, having a good time listening to Eloisa Deriu, who was just then paying tribute to Billie Holiday, singing one of Lady Day's greatest numbers, ‘God Bless the Child.'

 

. . . Mama may have

Papa may have

But God bless the child
That's got his own!
That's got his own!

 

I closed my eyes. For a second I imagined I was in the Ebony Club on 52nd street. The audience called out for another Billie Holiday number and our resident singer obliged them with ‘Fine and Mellow.'

Without making a noise Virna came up behind me, stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the neck. ‘I thought you'd vanished.'

‘I've been avoiding you the last couple of days.'

‘Afraid of heavy talk?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘Will you come and sleep at my place tonight?'

‘I'd love to.'

‘I've missed you.'

‘Me too.'

I sat down at my table. After a while, Max arrived and began looking around to see if there were any girls he might try to pick up. ‘I feel like falling in love,' he said, with a chuckle.

I pointed to a table where three young women were engaged in light-hearted banter. ‘That brunette in the middle is really nice-looking,' I said.

‘I prefer the one that's just walked in.'

I turned to look. ‘You've got good taste, Max, but she's not available. That's Nazzareno Corradi's woman.'

Victoria picked her way through the room to our table, attracting the appreciative stares of every man in the club. She was wearing a long coat left unbuttoned. At each step she took it fell open to reveal a leather miniskirt with a chunky golden zip up the middle, and a pair of fantastic legs.

‘Bonotto told me I'd find you here. May I sit down?'

I pointed to the chair beside me. ‘What are you drinking, Victoria?'

‘Bourbon. With ice and water.'

I called Virna, who took the order without taking her eyes off Victoria for a second. Jealousy spurted from her every pore.

Victoria used my cigarette lighter. ‘I came to say sorry for the other evening. I'd been drinking and was feeling sad.'

I placed a hand on her arm. Generally I keep my hands to myself, but Victoria had the power to confuse me. ‘Don't worry about it,' I said. ‘Nothing happened. My friend is just a little old-fashioned.'

‘He was right, though. I hoped I might find him here and apologize to him too.'

‘He's not here this evening, but I'll pass on your message. As you can see, Bonotto is a good lawyer. He knows what he's doing. Thanks to him, the murder charge has been dropped and Nazzareno is no longer in solitary.'

Victoria smiled. ‘I'm going to visit him tomorrow. At last I'll see him.'

When Virna arrived with the tray of drinks, my hand was still on Victoria's arm. She shot me a look of pure poison. I was going to have some explaining to do. She went off to wait on other tables.

Victoria raised her glass. ‘I miss Nazzareno more and more. Is there any hope he'll be out soon?' Her eyes filled with tears. The way Max was looking at me, I felt I had no choice but to try and reassure her.

‘It's an awkward case,' I began to explain. ‘Your man has police headquarters gunning for him. They're doing all they can to frame him. Right now, we've got nothing concrete to put him in the clear, but we're following up a couple of leads that may well give us something we can work with.'

Her eyes lit up. ‘What have you found out?'

I shook my head. ‘For the time being, there's nothing I can tell you.'

Victoria got up and shook our hands. ‘I would like to thank you for everything you're doing for Nazzareno,' she said.

‘That's some woman,' said Max. ‘There should be a few more bombshells like that wandering through this joint.'

‘That's not such a good idea,' I replied. ‘Bombshells like that attract a type of male clientele that I don't wish to see at La Cuccia.'

At half past four I drove to Padova, following Virna's car along icy deserted roads. The fields on either side of the main road were covered with thick frost. Even in the city center, there was no one stirring.

We made love slowly and for a long time. Virna was in great need of tenderness. As I smoked my last cigarette before going to sleep I told her I would like to go away with her somewhere, just the two of us. For a weekend, say. She weighed my words in silence.

‘It's the first time you've come up with anything so romantic. I have to say the idea attracts me, even if a weekend is a long time. I'm not sure you can play the lover for more than a couple of hours at a stretch.'

I could hardly blame her. Still, I pretended to be wounded by her lack of faith. ‘Think it over,' I said, to end the conversation. ‘You can take your time. Right now I've got to finish this investigation.'

‘Is the bimbo you were caressing tonight a key element in the case?'

‘There's no need to be catty, Virna. Her man's in prison. I was just trying to comfort her a little.'

‘I never realized a private investigator's job description included that type of service.'

Somehow I couldn't take that in silence. We had a row.

Ten minutes later I was back in my car, heading home. I stopped off at a bar that I knew sold Calvados, not far from the covered market. I was intending to have just one and then go straight home to bed but I bumped into a couple of transvestites I had known for years and who were keen to talk. They told me how hard street-work had become since the Albanians had gained control of the racket, and then they related a whole series of amusing anecdotes about their clients. I didn't get home till midday. Just in time to grab a couple of hours sleep before Rossini came to pick me up. We were going to see La Tía.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doña Rosa and Aisa had been out shopping. They were parading up and down in clothes and footwear by top Italian designers. Aisa had a split lip. The wound was recent and she kept running her tongue over it. I glanced at La Tía's hands. On the ring-finger of her right hand she wore a large Colombian emerald mounted on white gold. She noticed my glance and felt obliged to explain that she had caught Aisa flirting with a shop assistant. Aisa burst into tears and ran off into the bathroom.

Doña Rosa looked at us conspiratorially. ‘The little tramp is beginning to tire me. Sooner or later . . .'

‘We don't give a shit about your aching heart,' Old Rossini hissed.

La Tía pretended she hadn't heard. ‘Did you bring the list?' My associate had concealed it in a cigarette packet, which he now handed over. ‘The names underlined in red are police informants. Those in black are mid-to-high level dealers. The others are all nobodies.'

La Tía extracted the piece of paper and stuck it in her bra. It was her turn now. ‘Guillermo met the man you're looking for in Bogotá, in a high-class whorehouse. He was there to find a girl he could take to Tokyo and put to work in Pleasure City . . .'

I raised a hand to interrupt her. ‘What's all this about Japan?'

‘The Japanese are crazy about our girls, but it's hard to get them into the country. Japanese immigration makes a lot of fuss about illnesses, vaccinations and, well, drug trafficking.'

But if the girls arrive in the company of some European or other, and if they can prove they've spent some time in the West, then everything's much more straightforward. Naturally, you need the right contacts.'

‘Yakuza, the Japanese mafia,' Rossini muttered.

‘Sure. They're the ones in control of the brothels.'

‘Who pays for the girls?' I asked, my curiosity aroused.

‘The Japanese brothel-owner pays one half and the Colombian prostitution ring the other. It's fifty thousand dollars per girl. But it's quickly recouped, with the girl herself sending seventy per cent of her earnings back home each month.'

‘And what if she doesn't?' I asked.

‘They all have families,' La Tía explained, running an index finger across her throat.

Old Rossini opened the minibar and took out a miniature bottle of vodka. ‘Why didn't you get the people who run the whorehouse in Bogotá to give you the Italian's name? They must know him.'

‘I didn't want the whole of Bogotá knowing someone had stolen nearly a kilo of coke off me. They might get the idea I was no longer able to run my business.'

I motioned to her to continue.

‘It was the fifth girl the Italian had taken to the Far East. Anyway, he met Guillermo and suggested that instead of distributing the coke around Bogotá, like he was supposed to, he could smuggle it into Italy. The idea was for Guillermo to do the trip, return home, pay me the amount I was expecting, and pocket the difference. Coke costs ten times as much here as in Colombia.'

‘Right,' I said. ‘Is that it?'

‘Is that it?' she repeated. ‘How many Italians are there living in the Veneto region who traffic Colombian girls to Japan?'

She was right. It was a good lead. It was just that neither I nor my associate had ever heard of this particular line of business. The man we were looking for had to be a freelancer, working on his own. He might not be that easy to identify.

Old Rossini threw his empty vodka miniature into the waste-basket. ‘Why didn't you question the Colombian girls who work in the clubs around here?'

‘Like I said before, I don't want people to know I got ripped off.'

He was unconvinced. ‘Then how come you tried so hard to find your nephew's offloader?'

‘I can assure you that if I had managed to lay my hands on the son of a bitch, he wouldn't have gone around shouting about it.'

To make her meaning clear, La Tía reached behind her back and extracted from the seam of her dress a hairpin just like the one Aisa had threatened us with the first time we had met. It was about twenty centimeters long and its handle consisted of a ball of amber. As on the previous occasion, I had no doubt as to their ability to murder Guillermo's contact. It would have been a quick, clean job. A blow straight to the heart or through an eye and into the brain.

The conversation was at an end. It was time to go. ‘I'm leaving in exactly eight days,' La Tía said. ‘If you need me, you know where I am.'

 

As we strolled past the reception desk, Signora Gianna winked at us. ‘All the gorgeous chicks in this place and you two waste your time on that pair of dykes.'

‘If I only could, I'd waste a little time with you, Bella Sig­nora,' Rossini replied.

We walked through the fog to a well stocked wine bar. I asked the owner to mix me an Alligator, specifying as always the precise ingredients and measures as well as the origin of the cocktail. My associate ordered a glass of Prosecco and some sandwiches.

‘Can you call Mansutti, Beniamino? Tomorrow I want to talk to Nazzareno.'

The bent prison guard answered at once. Rossini gave him his orders and then listened patiently. ‘Okay, you can go back to the Thai chick. And if you behave yourself, I'll see you get a reward,' Rossini reassured him.

‘Any problems?' I asked.

‘None. He just asked me for permission to go back to the nightclub.'

‘What do we do now?'

‘We search for our man. We've got a physical description: fiftyish, large build, light brown hair. And we know he's involved in a very particular kind of trade.'

‘I guess we could start with Victoria, then.'

‘You really like her, don't you?'

‘Yes, I do,' I replied simply. ‘She's sweet and lovely. Just the way I like them.'

‘There are some things you shouldn't even think about. Her man's behind bars.'

‘Don't start with your nagging. I just like looking at her, that's all. You know perfectly well I'd never go after a prison widow.'

Rossini took a bite from his asparagus sandwich. ‘Don't take offence, but when it comes to the ladies you've always been a total innocent. Just look at the way you behave with Virna. She'll end up dumping you and then, as usual, you'll come crying on my shoulder like a bullcalf.'

‘That's not going to happen. You'll see,' I snapped.

‘What's not going to happen? Her dumping you or you coming and crying on my shoulder?'

I got up and went to pay the bill.

The journey to Ormelle was even longer than usual. Owing to an accident near the turn-off for San Donà di Piave a long tailback had formed, obliging us to crawl along at walking pace for over an hour. A Slovenian semi had sailed through the central crash barrier hitting an oncoming Peugeot 206 with two young men on board. They had just got out of the bicycle factory where they worked Mondays to Fridays.

‘No clubbing for them this week,' Rossini muttered wrily.

I lit my umpteenth cigarette and took a sip from the bottle of Calvados I had purchased at the liquor store. ‘You know somehow it never occurs to me that I might die in a road accident,' I said, thinking aloud.

Rossini touched his bracelets nervously. He didn't like that kind of talk. ‘Me neither. And as long as I'm at the wheel, don't worry, it's not going to happen.'

 

I rang the bell at Corradi's house. The fog was so thick you couldn't see the front door from the gate.