The Crossroads (6 page)

The strategy that Cristiano Zena had adopted with the female sex was to ignore them. To act tough, play the guy who minds his own business, the mystery man. But he had the impression that his method wasn't very effective.

‘Have you missed the bus?' Fabiana asked him.

Cristiano lit a cigarette and nodded.

‘Wow! You smoke!'

He shrugged.

‘School will be over by the time you get there …' Fabiana eyed him, then gave a little smile. ‘You don't give a shit, do you? You don't give a shit about anything.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Do you want a lift?'

At this point Esmeralda, squirming as if she had nettle rash, lifted her visor and snorted: ‘For Christ's sake, Fabiana! We'll get stopped with three on the scooter. Forget about it. What does he matter to you? We're late.'

Cristiano only caught snatches of their conversation.

He was wondering which of them he liked more. Esmeralda was dark-skinned, with eyes as black as drops of crude oil. She had straight, raven hair and thin, plum-coloured lips. Fabiana was the exact opposite. Pure blonde, with eyes as green as pond-water and large, bloodless lips. But in other respects they were strikingly similar. They were both thin and tall, with little snub noses, long necks, straight hair that fell halfway down their backs, and small breasts. They dressed alike. And each of them wore a silver ring embossed with a beautiful skull, and had the same piercings on the eyebrow, tongue and navel. Minardi claimed to know for a fact that they had one on their fannies too and
that when they were alone they fixed a chain to the rings and walked around the house in tandem.

‘Come on, Esme, who's going to stop us in this weather?' Fabiana said to her friend. ‘Let's put him in the middle. We can squeeze up.'

‘I'll walk,' he said, without realising what he was saying.

Now it was Esmeralda's turn. She gazed at him and then said mischievously: ‘What's the matter, don't you like the idea of being in between us?'

There were stories going around the school that Esmeralda and Fabiana had threesomes with the older boys from the high school. Especially with one of them, a certain Marco Mattotti, nicknamed Tekken, a burly guy with a ponytail who was the regional Thai boxing champion. Whenever Tekken turned up in front of the school on his motorbike they would fawn all over him like cats on heat and kiss him on the lips.

But there was something phoney about that scene; it was like a show that was being deliberately put on to make their male classmates sick with envy and the female ones sour and bitchy.

Countless times Cristiano had wanked off imagining he was screwing them together. And the image was always the same. While he screwed one, the other kissed him. Then they would switch roles.

He tried to banish that image from his head.

What should he do?

‘Okay. I'll come,' he said with a bored sigh.

Esmeralda cheered triumphantly: ‘I win! I win the bet! I told you so! I get to copy your homework.'

‘Huh, some bet. Talk about predictable!' Fabiana slammed down her visor.

‘What?' Cristiano couldn't stop himself asking.

Esmeralda exulted: ‘I said you were all talk. That you weren't really tough and you'd accept a ride on the scooter with us. We had a bet on it.'

‘Congratulations. You won,' said Cristiano, and he bowed his head and trudged off, stabbed to the heart.

After picking up Danilo from the Bar Boomerang, Quattro Formaggi headed for Rino Zena's home.

The old Boxer disappeared under the two of them. Danilo's big buttocks bulged halfway out from the little saddle.

Danilo hated riding on the scooter with Quattro Formaggi, who drove like a maniac, went straight through any red lights he encountered, and to make matters worse never washed.

‘Today we mount the ram on the tractor and then it'll be finished, right?' Danilo yelled in Quattro Formaggi's ear.

‘Right.'

The day Danilo had read the article about the ram raid on the cash machine he had rushed round to Rino's house in great excitement.

He had found him with Quattro Formaggi, drinking grappa and roasting chestnuts on the resistor coils of an electric heater.

After reading him the article, Danilo had said: ‘Don't you see what a brilliant idea it is? No guns. No safes to open. No complicated plans. A nice clean job. With style. You take the cash machine away, hide it somewhere, then open it in your own good time and bingo! Loads of money, clean and ready to use.'

Rino and Quattro Formaggi hadn't been greatly impressed. They had looked at him with a glazed expression in their eyes and nodded their heads.

Over the next few days Danilo had kept on at them about the ram raid and the beneficial effects it would have on their standard of living. And in the end the other two, having nothing to do all day, had begun to come round to his way of thinking and to draw up some semblance of a plan.

First they would have to get hold of a robust car to smash through the wall of the bank. Rino's Ducato, the only vehicle they possessed, would have crumpled up like a beer can.

Danilo had suggested, after some painstaking research in
Quattroruote
, that they buy a Pajero Sport 3.0. A monster with a hundred and seventy horsepower under its bonnet.

‘And how much would this powerhouse cost?' Rino had asked.

‘Well, if you want it new, without optionals – and we don't need optionals – about thirty-six thousand euros.'

Rino had laughed so much he had almost choked. ‘Yeah. You think I'm going to smash a luxury car like that into a wall? Oh, and just as a matter of interest, who's going to give us the money to buy it, you?'

Danilo had said that his cousin's godfather was a second-hand car dealer and would give them a fantastic discount on a 1998 Pajero in perfect condition. All they would have to do was remortgage Rino's house. ‘I can't do it with my house, you see – the deeds are in Teresa's name.'

Rino had leaped to his feet and pinned him to the wall, growling: ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you expect me to run up debts with the bank for you and your knicker shop?'

Danilo, purple in the face, had gurgled: ‘Well, let's steal one, then.'

Ah, that was a different matter.

There was the Grand Cherokee owned by Giorgino Longo, the son of the owner of the Bottegone dello Sport, which was just waiting to be stolen. A four-by-four the size of a small truck, with huge wheels, which the young man was always showing off in outside the bar.

To Rino the idea seemed feasible, but the problem, when it came to venturing into the realm of crime, was always the same.

Cristiano.

Rino had to keep his nose clean. He was already under the supervision of a social worker. If the police once caught him stepping out of line the judge would instantly deprive him of custody of his son. ‘I could only be a lookout.'

‘And I don't drive,' Danilo had added.

The two of them had turned towards Quattro Formaggi, smiling sadistically.

As usual, he would have to do everything. How strange – he was the village idiot, the imbecile, but he was the only one who knew how to cut ignition wires and steal a car without the slightest difficulty.

‘I won't! I don't want to …' he had managed to stammer. He had a number of bones to pick with those two. A friendship was only a friendship if there was equality. He would walk through fire for them, but they would never do the same for him. And they took
advantage of him, because he was too good-natured and could never say no. But although these fine concepts were perfectly clear and distinct in Quattro Formaggi's mind, when the moment came to express them they got as tangled up in his mouth as a serpent's nest. So he had concluded, purple in the face, twisting his mouth and thumping his leg: ‘I won't.'

But to persuade Quattro Formaggi to do even the most incredible things all it took was a little stratagem. Refusing to talk to him and treating him coldly.

Before three days were up, desperate to get back into his friends' good graces, Quattro Formaggi had agreed to steal the off-roader.

One moonless night, when a Champions League match was on TV, Danilo and Rino dropped him not far from the villa of the owner of the Bottegone dello Sport and agreed to meet him on a piece of waste ground near the river.

And amazingly, less than an hour later two powerful yellow headlights lit up the weed-covered field and Quattro Formaggi stepped out of the four-by-four, jumping about like a madman, dancing a jig and spluttering: ‘Well? Well? I'm good. Aren't I good? Admit it!' All three of them climbed into the Grand Cherokee to celebrate with a nice big bottle of grappa.

Fantastic! Black leather seats like the ones in the dentist's waiting room. An arm rest in the middle where you could put your elbow while you were driving and insert your plastic cups. A walnut dashboard. Hundreds of little lights and indicators. They touched it in awe, as if it were an alien spaceship.

While they were fiddling about they accidentally turned on the stereo and Sting launched into ‘An Englishman in New York'. On this equipment, Rino observed, even that wanker Sting sounded almost passable. And as they went on pressing buttons a screen lit up, showing a little pulsing dot near two strips, one red and one blue.

‘What the hell is that?' Rino asked.

‘Don't you even know that, you ignoramus? It's the satnav! That dot is us and the blue line is the river and that line there is the highway. The computer even tells you which way to go. It talks: “Straight on, turn right, turn left, no that's wrong,”' Danilo explained in the tones of an expert.

Rino shook his head. ‘What the fuck have we done to our brains if we need all this electronic crap to get from one place to another?' But then he started insisting that before they used the Grand Cherokee for the ram raid they ought to go on a trip round Italy. ‘It'd be great … We could take Cristiano to Gardaland!'

‘Isn't he a bit old for Gardaland?' Danilo objected.

‘Fucking hell, I promised to take him there when he was only five years old … There's a pirate's ship. It'd be fun.'

‘Yes, it would be fun,' Quattro Formaggi concurred.

‘All we'd need to do is change the number plate, and …' Rino was explaining when the stereo suddenly fell silent and a voice with a posh Milanese accent interrupted him: ‘Good evening! Could you tell me the name of your father's favourite dish?'

The three men gaped at each other.

‘Tell me what your father's favourite dish is, please.'

The voice was coming out of the speakers.

Rino gazed at the others in amazement: ‘Who the fuck is speaking?'

Danilo said: ‘Don't worry. It must be the car computer.'

‘The computer? Why does it want to know what my father's favourite dish is? My father's dead.'

‘How the hell should I know?'

The voice said: ‘It's the security question. I need the answer so that I can tell whether you are the owner of the vehicle or whether the owner has lent it to you. He hasn't notified us … Would you please tell me what your father's favourite dish is?'

‘Whose father do you mean?' Danilo put his mouth right up against the speaker. ‘Mine? My father was very fond of rabbit stew.'

Rino was puzzled. ‘Can a computer really understand what we're saying?'

Danilo shrugged: ‘That's the new technology for you …'

Rino cleared his throat: ‘Hello, can you hear me?'

‘Loud and clear. Your father's favourite dish, please?' the voice went on unperturbed.

Danilo cocked his head on one side and then resumed his conversation with the dashboard: ‘Look, who are you? Are you the car computer?'

‘I am an employee of Sicurcar, the car's satellite-linked security
system. If you don't give me the right answer I shall be forced to transmit your position to the nearest police station.'

The three were speechless for a moment, then Quattro Formaggi said: ‘You mean you're human?'

‘This is the last time I shall ask you. Your father's favourite dish?'

They exchanged glances and all three of them shrugged.

‘You try,' Rino whispered to Quattro Formaggi.

‘I haven't got a father. He must mean yours.'

Rino had a stab: ‘Risotto with mushrooms.'

‘I'm sorry? Please speak clearly.'

‘Ri-sot-to with mush-rooms.'

‘That is the wrong answer. I'm sorry.'

‘Wait … Wait … The father … is he the owner of the Bottegone dello Sport?' Rino hazarded.

The voice did not reply.

Quattro Formaggi leaped out of the four-by-four. ‘He said he was going to call the police. Let's get out of here!'

So the three men, running in the darkness, abandoned the Grand Cherokee, climbed into the Ducato and fled.

About a kilometre down the highway they passed a police car coming in the opposite direction.

A few days later they found a rusty old tractor and decided to get it back into working order. That at least wouldn't talk.

Quattro Formaggi and Danilo had nearly reached Rino's house when they passed a beige Scarabeo with two girls aboard coming in the opposite direction.

Danilo didn't notice, but Quattro Formaggi felt in his heart a sharp, stabbing pain, which for an instant took his breath away.

Ramona
.

The little blonde on the front seat was just like Ramona, the heroine of
Ramona's Big Lips
, a pornographic video which Quattro Formaggi had found in a rubbish bin.

Ramona lived in America and hitch-hiked. She got picked up by
lots of men who fucked her in their cars or in the desert or in motels, and she was always kind and would screw as many as three or four men at the same time. Then she met a black motorcyclist who fucked her and beat her up, but Ramona was saved by the sheriff, who took her to jail, and there too all the prisoners fucked her. On her release she met Bob the lumberjack, who had a family that lived in the woods, and there she was given a very warm welcome: they gave her turkey for dinner and then, with his wife and son, they fucked in the kitchen and then on a boat in the middle of a lake, and they all lived happily ever after. Or at least Quattro Formaggi thought they did, because after the orgy on the boat the film ended.