I’ve always thought it was better not to entrust all my money to the banks. First of all, a steady and significant inflow of cash, without any plausible justification, might be hard to explain in case of an audit. In the second place, there might very well be cases in which it would not be advisable to leave a trail of checks and credit card receipts.
Events have proven my caution to be eminently justified, even though there were times when I wondered if I wasn’t taking it a little far. Still, folk wisdom suggested that being too cautious never killed anyone, and who was I to argue with folk wisdom?
I slip the cash into the bag and the lottery ticket into my pocket. I leave the pager on top of my nightstand: it might prove to be a booby trap. I pick up the bag, feeling the tortured emotions not of an emigrant about to leave home forever, but of a wanted man. The musical program comes to an end and the news broadcast begins. About to depart on a journey of unknown duration and possibly no return, I stop in the middle of the bedroom to listen.
I turn it off without even waiting for the newscast to end.
The newscaster’s voice has just entered my house and, word by word, shattered the world around me into pieces. As I walk out the door, driven no longer by haste but by fury, I wonder if the time I have left to live will be enough to put the pieces back together again.
16
I brake the Mini to a halt with the nose of the car pointing straight at the bars of a gate with flaking paint, on Via Carbonia, in the Quarto Oggiaro section of northern Milan. I get out of the car and it takes me a minute or two to find the correct key on the key ring in my hand. After a few attempts I manage to get the lock to click open. I swing the gate wide and get back in my car. I have to stop and get back out immediately, to close the gate behind me. Inside me is a lurking sense of panic that drives me to move as quickly as I can, with a rising feeling that daylight is my enemy and that everyone in the street behind me has eyes only for me.
During the drive from Cesano I took plenty of detours, making left turns and right turns and checking my rearview mirror each time to see if I was being followed. When I felt confident that everything was okay, that there was no suspicious car dogging my trail, I made a brief stop at a newsstand. I picked up the evening edition of all the newspapers, a few magazines, and a couple of weekly puzzlers. I got back in my car and drove off. I turned on the car radio, twisting the dial through a succession of voices suddenly snuffed out and songs instantly cut off, in search of a radio news broadcast that could confirm the report that I’d just heard, luxuriating in that fine-edged masochism that seems to surface along with the sense of anxiety in people in trouble.
At last I settled on a special RAI news broadcast, devoted to the latest developments of the mass murder in the Villa Bonifaci. A couple of hours earlier, an anonymous caller had contacted an office of the Italian wire service ANSA; the authenticity of the call was still being determined. The man had claimed credit on behalf of the Red Brigades for the murders at the villa in Lesmo, describing them as a new and victorious operation in the armed campaign against the Italian state and its representatives, a further success on the heels of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro and the annihilation of his security team. Next came a prerecorded statement from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, emphasizing the extreme gravity of the situation and at the same time the firm stand of the institutions of the state in the face of this growing terrorist threat. A special cabinet-level meeting of the government was now in progress.
That’s more or less what I had already heard at home. It’s what made me decide to get out of there fast, before Giovannone or someone like him decided that there were plenty of good reasons to swing by and pick me up for a little preventive detention until they could figure out just what my role was in this tangle of events.
Then the newscaster announced a new development, which might represent a turning point in the investigation so far. Something that on the one hand opened my eyes to a shaft of light and on the other hurled me down into a dark and slimy pit. An eyewitness, a young man coming home from a discotheque on the night of the mass murder, saw two cars carrying a number of people exiting the front gate of Villa Bonifaci. One was a large Volvo station wagon, the other was a small dark vehicle, either dark blue or black, which the eyewitness identified as either a Mini or possibly a Fiat 127.
That last item froze me to the spot. My shivers turned into an uncontrollable tremor, so bad that I had to pull over until it went away. Then came a ratlike frenzy to get to my destination, to find out whether the suspicion that had begun to blossom in my mind was realistic or not. The confirmation, when it came, wouldn’t solve anything: it would just transform a series of unpleasant questions into so many frightening answers.
The horn of a car waiting behind me wakes me up to the here and now.
About fifty feet away is a cement ramp leading down to a row of garages that line the basement. I turn down the ramp, clearing the way for the car behind me to move off toward the other outdoor parking spots in the courtyard of the building. When I reach the bottom of the ramp I turn right, heading for the garage marked with the number 28.
In the dim light that filters down from the grated windows up high, I park the Mini parallel with the long sequence of garage doors. I get out and open the garage in question. Inside, a brown Fiat 124 is parked. A nondescript, ordinary car, both in terms of model and color. The perfect car for me, in this context. I open the door and get in, and I find the keys tucked behind the sun visor. The engine turns over almost immediately, spouting a dense cloud of smoke from the exhaust pipe. I’ve kept the battery charged on a regular basis, and I bless the foresight that made this small miracle possible. I emerge into the open air with my new means of conveyance. I park the brown 124 in one of the parking spots marked in paint on the blacktop around the complex.
Every time I’m out in the open, the same obscure sense of danger sweeps over me again. My precarious physical condition amplifies the fear to an extreme degree. I hurry back into the half-light of the garage and the cool air.
I walk back to the Mini and pull it into the garage, where there’s more than enough room for it. I pull down the swinging garage door and I switch on the hanging lamp, which creates more shade than light in this tiny space. I add the glare of the car’s high beams on the dreary walls. I pull a flashlight out of the trunk. I get back into the driver’s seat and open the glove compartment. I pull out the registration booklet and then pop open the hood.
As I’m getting out of the car I say over and over to myself that I’m an idiot, that what I’m thinking is bullshit, that nobody could ever …
It doesn’t happen often in life, but there are certainties that, when they surface, are more devastating than any ignorance could be. That’s what I think, and that’s what I feel, at the instant in which I turn the beam of the flashlight on the chassis number and see that, this time, it matches the number in the registration booklet.
Suddenly a rancid taste floods my mouth and my breath seems to infect what little dank air there is in this concrete box, this stable for automobiles that suddenly seems to have been transformed into a cell on death row.
I begin a fine-tooth-comb search of the Mini. I tilt the seats forward, I pull up the floor mats, I check the side pockets on the doors and the contents of the glove compartment and the dashboard shelf, I empty the trunk. And as I’m searching, I tell myself that it won’t be that easy. If my suspicions are even partially true, whoever it is that put this whole thing together has certainly been more zealous and more imaginative than me.
I grab a pair of electrician’s shears and a screwdriver from the tool kit. I start with the trunk, pulling the spare tire out of its housing and lifting the upholstery of the compartment. There’s nothing unusual in there. I move on to the interior of the vehicle. I tip the front seats forward and I use the shears to cut into the upholstery of the rear bench seat, uncovering the fibrous padding concealed under the upholstery and then pulling it out too
.
I stop only when I’ve completely gutted the backrest and the seat and I’ve found nothing out of the ordinary. I’m covered with sweat. My head is throbbing and it feels as if someone’s inside my skull trying to shove my eyeballs out of their sockets from within. The burning sensation is back, and now it’s a flaming ribbon wrapped around my guts.
I move on to the front seats.
I slide the driver’s seat forward until it comes free of the rails. I set it on the garage floor in front of the beam of the car headlights and I inflict upon it the same methodical punishment as the rear bench seat, again with no results. I get back in the car and aim the beam of the flashlight onto the floor. There, like a novelty item on the floorboard, is a stain—dark red in color. I don’t have to be a doctor to know just what that is. Blood is a calling card that everyone knows how to read. I don’t know whose blood that is, but I’m certain that a lab technician would be able to tell me that the blood group matches one of the victims of Villa Bonifaci.
I continue searching like a maniac, and all the while I hear voices whispering incomprehensible words in my ear. Or maybe they’re just in my mind and it’s the fever and the panic that are making them seem so real.
I cut, I rip, I dismantle. And finally I find it.
Strapped into place with duct tape, inside the passenger-side door, is a pistol equipped with a silencer. It pops into the flat-white beam of the flashlight like a sudden threat. An inert and silent stowaway, and at the same time, a sinister and menacing unwanted passenger. Once again, I feel pretty sure that this is the weapon that one night, not long ago, in the open countryside, dug three bullet holes into the body of Salvatore Menno, aka Tulip, with no more noise than three arrows whipping into a target.
Pfft … pfft … pfft …
Even without the verification of an expert, I’m equally sure that this gun did additional work elsewhere, specifically at a villa near Lesmo, outside of Monza.
I pull it out of its constrained housing and take its full weight in my hand. It’s a Beretta, though I couldn’t say what model. I know a little something about handguns because my father owned a couple. I’ve never fired one, but I watched him while he handled them. I release the clip and examine it. It’s full of cartridges. Whoever put it here wanted to make sure they did things right and didn’t leave me defenseless. Or else give the impression, to whoever might happen to find it, that I was armed, dangerous, and ready for anything.
I check to make sure the safety is on and I slide the gun into my bag. I’m pretty sure it’s a mistake, but right now I feel just a little safer having it with me. Whoever hid this gun in my car did it to fuck me. If I ever find myself face-to-face with whoever did it, I’d rather not be emptyhanded. I’m up to my neck in shit, but I’d just as soon not dig my own grave in it.
I open the garage door and a gust of fresh air allows me to breathe decently again, after the damp heat of the garage. I pick up the bag and seal the remains of my car in its vault. I head for an elevator built into a bare cement wall on the far side of the entry ramp down to the private garages.
I push the button for the fifth floor and hope I don’t run into anyone. The apartment building I’m in is a beehive shaped like a giant letter C, on the outskirts of the city and the law. Quarto Oggiaro is a quarter of Milan that organized crime has colonized to its considerable profit, making this neighborhood a dangerous place to spend time—somewhere you would be ill-advised to stick your nose into other people’s business.
As usual, the devil’s not as black as they paint him and the situation in Quarto Oggiaro isn’t as dire as it’s described. But, given the circumstances, I’m fine with it: it’s a good place to hide out, especially now that the devil’s on my tail and he’s looking a lot uglier than any illustrations I’ve ever seen.
The elevator comes to a halt. I leave behind me the graffiti carved into the elevator walls, to inform posterity and the various passengers that Luca is a faggot and Mary is a whore. With corresponding phone numbers. Another message carved into the wall, and half erased by a hasty hand with a differing opinion, states that the Inter soccer team is a piece of shit. These little acts of vandalism, which once annoyed me, now strike me as evidence of normal life, life with time on its hands, life with no thoughts other than these kinds of trivial secrets.
I leave the elevator and find myself in a hallway. Long and silent: the plaster walls emanate a faint smell of moisture. The door immediately to the left is the apartment I’m heading for. When I finally get inside, I heave an instinctive sigh of relief.
I drop the bag and lean against the door.
My head is throbbing. The pain in my eyes has subsided. But the burning sensation hasn’t.
I pull the bottle of Furadantin out of my jacket pocket and I slip another tablet into my mouth. I gulp it down, again without water. Then I kneel down and extract a case with a reserve supply of medicines from the bag. While I was rummaging through the bag in search of it, my hand repeatedly touched the inert metal of the handgun. Instead of making me feel uneasy, that contact gave me a sense of reassurance. I walk to the kitchen and pull a glass out of a dish rack in a cabinet over the sink. I rinse the glass and I pour some Novalgin into it, a drug that serves both to bring down the fever and to relieve the headache. I pour in a little water and drink it, accepting the bitter flavor of the medicine, which seems to cut through the taste of bile in my mouth.
I go back to the living room and take in the apartment at a glance. It’s just a little larger than my apartment, with an eat-in kitchen and one extra bedroom. The furnishings correspond to what you’d expect in an apartment building and a neighborhood like this one.
Run-of-the-mill furniture, run-of-the-mill paintings, run-of-the-mill fabrics.
There’s a smell of confinement and a sense of neglect in the air. There’s a layer of dust on everything that I have no intention of cleaning up. Nor am I going to call anyone to do it for me. Until a year and a half ago, a man lived here who is now in a cell in the San Vittore Prison.
Carmine Marrale is one of the ugliest men in the world. He also has one of the biggest cocks on earth. I know that first fact about his anatomy because I have eyes and I can see; I know the second fact because one of my girls told me so in complete confidence. She was the only one who was willing to have carnal relations with him after two others refused in horror.
I met him under very particular circumstances, the kind of circumstances that will either make two people lifelong strangers or else create a strong friendship, no matter where it may lead in the future. To be specific, he and I are the protagonists of a classic story, the one about push and what happens when it encounters shove.
The irony of lives based on power.
I was in the countryside outside of Milan, not far from Motta Visconti, in a rural trattoria well known for its frog’s legs. Frog-leg frittata, frog-leg risotto, fried frog’s legs. For people who are fond of that particular cuisine, it’s a place worth knowing about. Back then, it was very fashionable to sit down at those bare, unadorned group tables, eat whatever the waiter served you, and drink wine from bottles without labels. It wasn’t uncommon to run into members of the Milan that matters there, along with the Milan that thinks it matters. I wound up there that night with a group of people whose names and faces I’ve long since forgotten, people I’ve fallen out of touch with. The only things I still remember are a girl I liked and my own bad mood, which slowly evolved from physical desire to a desire to be someone else and somewhere far away. When I decided that I’d had enough, I got up and made half of my wishes come true.
I stood for a moment in the doorway and lit myself a cigarette. A car with three people inside left the parking area behind the trattoria, peeling out from the corner on my right. I watched as the taillights moved off and vanished into the darkness, lost in the murk of the dust kicked up from the dirt road. By one of those odd twists of fate, of the eyes, and of the mind, I happened to memorize the license plate number.
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I walked out to get my car, parked at the far end of the lot. Halfway there I sensed, more than saw, the figure of a man stretched out on the ground.
He was flat on his back and was trying unsuccessfully to roll over onto his side. I knelt over him. I helped him sit up as he uttered a stream of curses under his breath. It didn’t take a lot of light to see that whoever had tricked him out this way hadn’t pulled their punches.
He had a broken nose and a split lip. The dim light prevented me from counting all the various bruises. I figured his body was in worse shape than his face. Now that he was sitting upright, the blood was dripping from his chin onto his shirt. I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“No broken limbs?”
He moved his legs and answered me through the thin cloth pressed to his lip.
“I don’t think so.”
“What happened to you?”
“They gave me one hell of a beating. Bastards outnumbered me: there were three of them.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“They were wearing ski masks. Chickenshits.”
“You want me to call an ambulance? You might have some internal bleeding.”