“But who guarantees me that I’ll get the money?”
I put on a face that expresses just how uncertain the future is for us all.
“So sorry, detective. I’m afraid you’re going to have to trust me this one time.”
I get out of the car and pull my bag out of the backseat. I close the car doors, and as I do I leave him sitting at the same time on both ordinary automobile upholstery and a bed of nails. A few quick steps and I ring the doorbell marked LAW FIRM OF UGO BIONDI, ESQ.
The street door clicks open almost immediately.
I walk into the lobby. The light filters softly through the frosted glass of a massive courtyard door across from the entrance. In the dim light, the decorations on the walls appear even more austere. I walk up a couple of steps and I’m on the elevator landing. Inside the cabin of the elevator there is no graffiti. The wood paneling glistens with a handsome sheen. The scent of wax is in the air. I smile at the sight of a velvet-upholstered bench for added comfort during that short journey upstairs.
I push the button for the fifth floor and ride up. Ugo’s waiting for me at the door.
“Ciao.”
“Get in here, quick.”
He closes the door behind him and leads me through an office that smells of paper, ink, and leather. All the doors are closed, so I have no visual cues to remind me of what functions the various rooms lining the hallway serve. But the room we wind up in is unquestionably his own office. I have to say that my lawyer treats himself nicely, and it stands to reason that as a result, he treats his clients very well. Few enough of them deserve it, of course, since he’s a criminal lawyer.
His desk is an imposing American antique from the turn of the twentieth century. The other furniture and bookcases, groaning with books and bound legal codes, covering almost every wall, are in keeping with the style of the occupant of the office. The paintings look like some pretty decent artwork.
Ugo points me to one of the two Poltrona Frau office chairs standing in front of the desk.
“Have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
My lawyer sits down at his proper place. I’m already sitting at mine. Despite everything, this is nothing more than a dress rehearsal for what usually follows meetings like this. A chair in the dock for the defendant, a throne on a raised lectern for the judge.
He picks up a pencil. He starts to fiddle with it. This must be something he usually does when he’s meeting with a client. The stories that a criminal lawyer has to sit through would make anyone look around for a distraction.
He’s tense, no question. He’s sitting with Milan’s most wanted man. And he wants to make sure I know it.
“No two ways about it. You’ve become a celebrity. I don’t think I’ve seen this big an uproar as long as I can remember.”
“Just think what it looked like from inside. An entirely different point of view, I can assure you.”
He lays his forearms on the desktop.
“I’m all ears.”
“Where should I start?”
“Starting at the beginning has always seemed like a good tactical approach.”
I tell him everything. As I talk, I’m amazed at my ability to unspool such a complicated story line without getting anything tangled. With every word, Ugo’s eyes widen a little more. By the time I’m done, he’s stopped fiddling with his pencil.
“Fuck a duck.”
I decide to stretch the concept a little further to make it fit the facts.
“A rather large, fat duck. But that’s not all.”
I reach into the bag that I set down on the floor next to my chair and toss the file folder onto the desk.
“Take a look at what’s in there.”
He takes the file and unhooks the elastic: he doesn’t yet know that he’s pulling the pin on a hand grenade. It takes a little longer than the classic count from one to ten to go over the various documents, several times over. Then the wrecked expression on his face must look more or less like the expression I had when I first saw them.
“Jesus, Bravo, this is an atom bomb.”
“And there’s a real danger it might not detonate at all.”
We both know the meaning of what I just said. This is such a major scandal that the possibility of it being buried very deep is anything but remote. State secrecy is a magic phrase that can close door after door instead of opening them. But there’s another possibility. He’s the first to put it out there.
“Or it could go off right under our asses.”
The moment he saw those documents, he knew that our lives might now be worth less than the loose change in our pockets. There are things that you might think could happen only in the movies. But no one stops to think that the reason they put those things in the movies is that they’ve already happened in real life.
I decide to take a practical step to make some of the murky confusion swirling through our heads settle.
“Do you have a copy machine in the office?”
“Yes.”
He looks at me. Perhaps a thought had already begun to form in his mind. Now he waits, curious to see if that thought has already become fully formed in my mind.
“Do you have a safe?”
“Of course.”
I shift forward to the edge of my chair.
“Here’s what we could do. A series of envelopes, each with a copy of the documents, and each addressed to the Milan newsroom of a major national daily: Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Giorno, La Notte. Put them in your safe and leave a note for your secretary to take them tomorrow morning and deliver them personally to all those newspapers.”
He thinks it over for a minute.
“We can do even better than that.”
He picks up the phone and dials a number. He gets an answer after a few rings.
“Buona sera, Federica. This is Biondi. I know it’s Sunday, but I have a very big favor I’d like to ask you. This is something of the greatest importance.”
He waits for a positive answer. He must have received it, because he continues.
“An hour from now there are going to be several envelopes with Milan addresses on my desk. Would you be so kind as to come by and hand-deliver them yourself?”
On the other end of the line, a logical objection is raised in an attempt to rescue the remaining shreds of the holiday.
“I’d really prefer you do it this evening, not tomorrow. I’ll explain everything later.”
The person he’s talking to must have realized that this is a very serious matter.
“I knew I could count on you. I’m sorry to bother you, but this coming week I’d like you to take a day off, the day of your choice. And I’d like to give you two tickets to La Scala.”
The conversation ends with a formal good evening.
“Buona sera to you too, Federica. And thanks again.”
Ugo hangs up. He points to the phone as if it were the person he just spoke to. Even though I didn’t ask, he provides me with her references.
“Federica Isoardi is my secretary. She’s smart, reliable, and capable of keeping a secret. She’s also very cute, but she’s such a good worker that I’ve never even winked at her. I’m afraid of losing her.”
He looks me in the eye with a meaningful glance, both hands resting on the file.
“It may be excess caution, but I’d just as soon not leave this kind of material in the office overnight.”
He sighs. The world really is a terrible place. A terrible, filthy, dangerous place.
As if it took a considerable effort, he gets to his feet.
“Outstanding. Let’s get to work.”
I stand up, too.
“There’s another thing I’d like to ask you to do for me.”
“Which is?”
I put my hand in my pocket and pull out my wallet. I open it and extract the lottery ticket and the newspaper clipping with the scores of the soccer games on that lucky Sun
day.
“I want you to cash this in, when I give you the word.”
He takes it from me, holding it gingerly between two fingers. He studies it with some curiosity.
“What is this?”
“A winning soccer lottery ticket worth 490 million lire.”
He looks up suddenly. I have to say that Ugo Biondi, Esq., has a fairly narrow range of exclamations of surprise.
“Fuck me.”
“Well, for once that would be you, not me, is all I can say.”
He compares the scores on the newspaper clipping with the numbers on the lottery ticket to make sure they match up. I knew he’d do it. Partly out of personal curiosity, but mostly because that’s what he does for a living. If his own mother had given him that ticket, he would have checked it out, just to make sure. Check box by check box, he runs down to the thirteenth matching score.
At that point an exclamation bursts from his lips.
“Wow: 490 million lire. Nice win.”
Holding the slip of paper as if it were the most fragile thing on earth, Ugo steps over to a painting on the wall to my left. He swings it open to reveal the wall safe behind it. Not even a successful lawyer like him, with all the authoritative experts he must know, has been able to come up with a less clichéd hiding place. He dials the correct combination and the safe clicks open. The lottery ticket is placed carefully inside.
“While you’re at it, could you add these?”
I lean over and pull out all the bundles of cash my bag contains. I walk over and put the money in his hands. My increasingly astonished lawyer walks the money over and places it next to the lottery ticket worth half a million dollars. The painting is considerably more valuable when he swings it back into place.
We go back to the desk. Ugo picks up the file.
“I’ll write you a receipt for everything you just gave me. But now I think we have some more important things to do.”
“Agreed.”
I follow him out of his office to a cramped utility closet where there’s a copy machine. We work together, without speaking, at a steady rhythm, until we have all the copies we need. When we’re done, a series of dark brown envelopes are laid out on the table. Each has an address written clearly on the front.
All but one. That’s for me.
We go back to his office, where we pile the envelopes on his desk. Ugo sits down and promptly handwrites a few lines on a sheet of letterhead stationery. He adds a date and a signature and then hands it to me.
“Here’s your receipt. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to use a typewriter.”
“I’ll manage somehow.”
Another sheet of paper, with a few lines of instruction for his secretary, is set carefully on the stack of envelopes.
We exchange a glance. We know there’s nothing more to do here.
Ugo swivels around and picks up a leather valise from a small table on his left. He opens it and places the file with the original documents inside. Then he stands up with the eyes of a man ready for a fight. Only during the battle will he know if he’s fighting against giants or windmills.
There’s one last thing to add. And I add it.
“Ugo, there’s a police detective in a car downstairs.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. I asked him to come. We’re going to come up with a convincing story of my arrest. I wanted him to bring us in to the police station.”
Ugo studies my face. Suddenly he’s a lawyer looking at a fugitive from the law.
“Why him in particular?”
“Because I know him and I want him to get the credit for this. And because he’s the only cop who’d be willing to make another stop before taking us to police headquarters.”
“To do what?”
“To tell an old friend good-bye.”
Ugo, as a human being and as a lawyer, cannot stifle an instinctive question.
“Who?”
I look at him and smile.
“Francesco Marcona, better known as Bravo.”
I turn away and head for the front door.
Successful lawyer Ugo Biondi, with his leather briefcase, standing next to a desk that cost several million lire, in his centrally located and beautifully decorated law office, is disconcerted.
I, with my dark brown envelope in my hand, am happy.
23
The Alfa Romeo Giulietta hums along Viale della Liberazione at a reasonable speed.
All around us Milan is lit up and ready to celebrate yet another nocturnal ritual. The usual characters of the night will be on the move. The wealthy, the misfits, the cops, the crooks, the artists, the whores. Sometimes the faces change, but the roles remain the same. It’s always hard to tell just who’s who. I’m the slight exception to that rule. Things in my life have hurtled forward at the speed of light. For the rest of the world, one short week has passed. For me, years have sped by.
Too much blood, too many dead bodies, too much naked reality.
Which is exactly what I’m going to confront.
The whole way, Stefano Milla has driven almost as if he were practicing for his learner’s permit, as if he were afraid to commit some minor infraction that might attract the attention of one of his fellow policemen. The presence of the lawyer made him decide not to tell me any details about his phone call to Tano Casale. The unexpected side trip, which I told him about only when Biondi and I got in the car, added to his existing anxiety.
The nails he was sitting on have now been transformed into daggers.
We turn onto Via Cartesio and we stop at the corner of Piazza della Repubblica. On our right are the trees that screen the main façade of the Hotel Principe e Savoia like a small verdant park.
I open the car door.
From the backseat, Ugo expresses a thought out loud that I know has been echoing through Milla’s brain.
“Bravo, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Oh, yes: one hundred percent.”
The actual percentage of confidence that I feel is much lower than that. But there are things you’ve been waiting your whole life to do. Sometimes even a lifetime isn’t long enough. When the time comes, there’s nothing for it but to go along for the ride. This is one of those times. And, after all, the future is in the hands of the gods, which isn’t actually much of a guarantee.
I get out of the car and I walk unhurriedly up the ramp to the main entrance of the hotel. There’s plate glass and wood and stucco. The lamps inside the hotel pour their light out onto the roundabout where cars stop to unload travelers’ luggage. The air is filled with the scent of playthings and perfume. In places like this hotel, when evening falls you always have the impression that you’re living in a perennial Christmas.
On either side of the entrance a couple of police patrol cars are parked, something that always happens when an important person is staying at the hotel. The policemen are sitting in their cars on upholstery of pure boredom. One officer glances at me through his open window as I walk up to the front door. A bored look, then he goes to back to his conversation with his partner.
Maybe they’re discussing the violent events that have put law enforcement officials and the police on red alert across the country. Or perhaps they’re just calculating that even if they took a whole month’s salary, they couldn’t afford to spend a weekend in the hotel they’re guarding.
As I walk through the front door, I muse that there are two things in the world that are difficult to master: boredom and fear.
I go over to the reception desk, where a clerk in uniform is gazing with some distaste at my rumpled clothing, my leather jacket, and my scraggly beard. All the same, he’s still courteous and formal. Not out of respect for me, but respect for himself.
“Buona sera. Is there something I can do for you?”
I can read in his eyes the words that he’d really like to use.
Why don’t you turn your ass around, stop scuffing up the carpet, and get out of here, you filthy
bum?
It’s typical of small people who are given small powers. Strong with the weak, weak with the strong. Kiss up, kick down. He would be dismayed if he could read my mind and find out how little I care about him. As far as I’m concerned he can go fuck himself, but I’m still courteous and formal. I’m being ironic toward myself, not toward him.
“There certainly is something that you can do for me. I know that Senator Sangiorgi is staying here. I have an envelope to deliver to him. Personally.”
He looks me up and down as if I’d asked him to heft my travel bag and guess its weight.
“Signore, I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’m sure you can understand why. If you’d like to give it to me, I’ll make sure it reaches him. The senator has—”
I break in. I guess I’ll never know what the senator has.
“Call the senator or his assistant right now and tell him that Nicola Sangiorgi is in the lobby and would like to come up.”
The name causes a slight shift in attitude. Still, it might be a case of a simple coincidence, involving identical surnames. He takes care to make sure that such is not the case.
“Do you have family ties with the senator?”
“Abundant family ties.”
I let a pause fall, a pause that’s more than ten years long.
“I’m his son.”
It’s been a lifetime since I uttered those words. To my ears, they land on the marble counter with quite a thump. Evidently to the ears of the clerk, too, because he suddenly puts on a new expression.
“Could you excuse me for a moment?”
“Why, absolutely.”
He moves away to the far end of the counter. He picks up a receiver, dials an extension, and talks to someone. It must be an important person, because he keeps bobbing his head submissively.
When he comes back all that’s left is courtesy.
“Would you care to be so kind as to wait right here, Signore Sangiorgi?”
“Certainly. I would indeed care to be so kind as to wait right here.”
I believe that he’s so caught up in his exquisite manners that he doesn’t even notice that I’m mocking him brutally. I walk a short distance away. There’s a nice scent in the air, the warmth of velvet on the sofas, and the glittering pomp of gilt paint is everywhere. But there’s the sense of the ephemeral and fleeting that no hotel, even the finest hotel in the universe, can ever completely disguise. Whatever the thread count of the sheets you sleep between, the variety of hardwood in the chairs you sit on, the price of the champagne you sip, and the hourly rate of the women you invite upstairs, a hotel room is still just a hotel room.