“My friend told me that you don’t usually spring nasty surprises on him. But he was especially satisfied with someone named Laura. Does that check out?”
My silence is taken as confirmation.
“Fine. That’s who I want. As an incentive, let me tell you that money is not a problem.”
That’s good news. And I need some good news, considering the phone call I’m going to have to make a little later.
“Where and when?”
“I’m at the Hotel Gallia, room 605. Nine o’clock would be fine. I’ll leave word at the reception desk to let anyone who asks for me come upstairs.”
I freeze and say nothing. He understands and reassures me.
“I’m in a business suite. I have a direct line. If it can be of any assistance to you, call the hotel and have them put you through to my room. Do it now, if you like.”
I don’t know who the man I’m talking to is, but he definitely has brains. And money. He’s someone who knows how the world works and how much money you have to spend to make it work the way it ought to. Those two aspects of his personality arouse a feeling of unquestioned esteem in me.
“Agreed then, nine tomorrow morning. The person will be paid one million lire by you. In cash.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“When you see the girl, you can decide whether or not she’s worth it.”
This time there’s a pause on the other end of the line. Then a clarification, in a slightly more authoritative tone. In fact, a great deal more authoritative.
“Let me remind you that this could be the beginning of a long and satisfying relationship for both of us.”
“Naturally. That’s why I’m happy to give you the right to check out the merchandise.”
The tone becomes conversational, as before.
“Very good. It’s been a pleasure.”
“It’s been a pleasure for me too. Talk to you soon.”
I hang up. Now it’s time to make the second call, much more demanding. I dial Laura’s number. The voice that hastily responds is that of a person waiting by the phone.
A frightened person.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Laura, this is Bravo.”
Her relief at hearing my voice comes surging through the phone line.
“At last. Where the hell have you been?”
I let a second or two pass before I answer. That silence ought to let her know that where the hell I’ve been is none of her business. So I add no further explanations.
“I heard your message. What happened?”
“What happened is, that man is insane. Now he wants to stick me in an apartment, where I can watch television and wait for him. When I said no, he hit me.”
Without prompting, Laura takes care of my main worry. “He didn’t leave any marks, but he hurt me just the same.”
Good. Her face is intact. And all the rest, maybe. When a horse throws you, the best thing is to get right back in the saddle. Now the problem is to make her see it.
“I have some interesting new projects. Important ones. You feel up to doing some work?”
“Have you lost your mind? If he catches me going out with somebody there’s going to be a murder. He’s not normal. You should have seen his eyes.”
None of that comes as a surprise. I’ve heard that Tulip has more than one screw loose. I know a couple of people who have seen him lose his temper, and they are willing to confirm that he’s not normal. Other people who wound up in that situation aren’t around anymore to confirm anything. Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. But certain chatter, in certain cases and with certain people, generally has a fairly high percentage in terms of reliability.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”
“But how?”
But how? Good question … With a little brains and a lot of luck, I hope.
“I know someone who can give me a hand.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Absolutely.”
Absolutely not.
“I’m afraid, Bravo.”
And who wouldn’t be, when it comes to certain people?
“There’s no reason to be afraid. Everything is going to turn out fine.”
I can’t say whether the silence I receive as a reply means hope or mistrust. I intervene with a suggestion that refers to a familiar setting, and therefore to the usual nightlife and the usual mood.
“Why don’t you meet me at the Ascot around eleven? I need to talk to you about something that might be of interest.”
“Today’s Monday. It’s closed.”
“No. There’s a really great group of mimes from the BBC, the Silly Dilly M. This was the only date they could make. The Ascot skipped its day off just to book them.”
Another brief pause to think, and then she gives in.
“All right, I’ll see you there. At eleven.”
“Okay, see you later. Ciao.”
Her voice vanishes into the phone line and is sealed in place by the receiver. With a demitasse in hand I go back to my little galley kitchen to pour the rest of the coffee, which has cooled off in the meantime. I light a cigarette and then my bladder urges me into the bathroom. This business with Tulip is definitely the last thing I need. But here it is, and I can’t pretend it’s not happening. I could say to hell with it and leave Laura to her fate as an unwilling concubine. But every arrangement is propped up by a certain degree of credibility, and no matter how questionable and compromised mine might be, I can’t afford to lose it.
I sit on the toilet, close to the window. Next to the toilet, on top of the wicker laundry hamper, lies a copy of La Settimana Enigmistica, the puzzler’s weekly, with a ballpoint pen next to it. I pick it up and look at the picture of Dustin Hoffman smiling up at me in black and white from the little panel on the cover. Then I smile too, in spite of myself. Every time I read the slogan emblazoned on the masthead I remember Beefsteak, one of the idlers who spends his evenings at the Ascot, the occasional dispenser of devastating lightning-bolt wisecracks, usually absolutely pitiless. One time, when he was in the control booth watching a truly dreadful impersonator doing an audition, he issued a verdict in his nonchalant voice that branded that aspiring artist for the rest of his days.
“This guy is just like La Settimana Enigmistica. He boasts no fewer than 206 unsuccessful attempted imitations.”
I open the little pulp stock magazine and I’m presented with the Page of the Sphinx and a cryptic clue.
Outlaw leader managing money (7)
I give myself a second to think. Maybe more than a second. Word puzzles excite me and relax me. Sometimes the solution comes immediately, sometimes it never does. Like everything else in life. Life has made the enigma, the puzzle, the mystery, its underlying concept. In this case, intuition flashes into the darkness after a few seconds.
To outlaw is to ban. A leader could be a king. Managing money, I suppose, could be described as banking. Ban + king = Banking.
I put down the magazine and stand up. This insignificant achievement has put me in a good mood. In the mirror over the bathroom sink, there’s my face, punctual as ever. A dark man, with long wavy hair and black eyes. Handsome, they say. Once, in a rumpled bed, a woman with soft breasts and fragrant skin told me: “With eyes like that, you can get into hot water every day. There’ll always be a woman to get you out of trouble.”
I was so young and hungry for certainty that I accepted the fact that that unimaginative woman had recycled a phrase from a Brigitte Bardot movie to pay me a compliment. No question, she achieved her objective: I don’t even remember her name, but I remember what she said to me. Too bad that when I did get into hot water, she wasn’t around. None of the women were.
I wet my face and start soaping my cheeks with the shaving brush. The faint scent of menthol wafts over me in waves of cool freshness, reddening my eyes. Without warning, like all memories, a character comes to mind, a character I invented when I was a l
ittle boy watching the town barber lathering a client’s face with his shaving brush until he was half covered by that foamy white stuff that reminded me of whipped cream. I wonder what ever happened to my poor Foam Man. I wonder whether in all these years he ever discovered whether under that mound of insubstantial whiteness there really was such a thing as a face.
I, on the other hand, know that I have one. I found that out far too young. That’s always been my problem.
I start to shave.
The razor blade slices swaths of reality through my childhood games and I find myself smooth-cheeked, gazing at myself with eyes made adult by the passage of time, by my own personal choices and by choices that were forced upon me. The kind of choices that age you fastest, deep inside.
I turn on the shower, and while I wait for the flow of water to heat up, I try to think of a new cryptic clue for Lucio. As I step into the spray, the stable-like enclosure of the shower stall gives me a Eureka moment.
Here it is, the new enigma.
Forms of luck: horses that come in first, gold mines, or where a losing team is sent after the game (7, 7, 3, 7)
That means that the solution is composed of four words. Two seven-letter words; then one three-letter word, followed by another seven-letter word. It isn’t hard, and I imagine he’ll solve it right away, even though apparently easy challenges often conceal tangled welters of complication.
I take a sponge off the counter, squeeze some body wash onto it, and start to soap up. I prefer to wash myself through the mediation of this inanimate object, as if avoiding the contact of human hands on the body could change something. Sometimes a minor mania can forestall a major problem.
If it was you, I’d do it for free …
The girl reappears in a flash before my mind’s eye. Her words never really went away. I imagine her body, slender and strong beneath her clothing. I feel her breast, firm in my cupped hand. The smell of soap brings to mind other scents, the sublime aroma of sex, its taste a mixture of sickly sweetness and rust, before and after the fury. Desire surges implacably, running its slimy soft fingers over my belly. I start to massage my groin, and in exchange I get only a confirmation that becomes harder to accept with every day that passes. I do it faster and faster, as if to erase myself or to reconstruct myself, until my heart begins to race and I let myself slip to the floor, beneath the spray that jets down indifferently from above. I lie there, waiting for a conclusion that will never come, welcoming as a benediction the mingling of the shower water with the one and only ejaculation still allowed me: the slow drip of tears.
4
I stop my car on Via Monte Rosa, a hundred meters or so from the brightly lit entrance of the Ascot Club.
I light a cigarette and sit smoking in the car, trying to clear my head and draw a few conclusions about my own evening’s headlines.
When I left my apartment, back in Cesano Boscone, I walked over to Via Turati and into what they call Michele’s bar. I’ve been there once or twice, to buy a pack of cigarettes or to grab an espresso, but I can’t claim to be a regular client. So I don’t know anyone there and no one knows me.
The bar, practically empty, was a single large open space, with a rectangular floor plan and two plate-glass windows in the long wall, looking out onto the street. On the left is the space set aside for the soccer lottery ticket counter and all the posters proclaiming the glories of soccer and the glorious future that the SISAL lottery offers you. In the middle is the bar, arranged perpendicular so as to split the space into two sections. Facing it, a few little café tables and chairs with plastic backs, exactly the kind you’d expect in a place like this. On either side, the multicolored masses of a pinball machine and a jukebox.
On the wall opposite the entrance is a door. I knew there was a backroom where people played cards. Gin rummy, for the most part, at decidedly affordable stakes. Anyone who could afford to play for more robust stakes was certainly not going to come lose money in Michele’s. They would frequent certain illegal open-air gambling dens, informal casinos on the street that aren’t very hard to find in Milan.
I stepped up to the cash register and stood there, waiting. A tall skinny guy, with a gray cast to his complexion and an air of annoyance, finished serving an espresso and then came over to find out what I wanted. No greeting, no smile.
“What’ll it be?”
“A pack of Marlboros and a piece of information.”
In places like this, the second part of that request tends to make people a little wary. The man behind the counter was no exception to that rule, so he took his time with the first part. He turned around and extracted a pack of cigarettes from the rack on the wall and put it down in front of me.
Then he gave me a quizzical glance.
“What information would you be looking for?”
“I need the address of a guy named Remo Frontini. I know this is his usual café.”
I laid a fifty-thousand-lira bill on the counter. And I flashed a half smile that was meant to stand in for human fellowship.
“Considering that times are hard all over, you can keep the change.”
He eyed my face, my clothing, and my smile, calculating just how dangerous I might be to him and why. Then he threw the fifty-thousand-lira note into the equation. When he was done evaluating the various factors, he decided it wasn’t worth ratcheting up from annoyance to full-blown hostility. He reached out a hand and made the money vanish.
He pointed to the street outside and muttered under his breath, “Second door on the left, number ten. Above the grocery store.”
I nodded my thanks and left the bar. I walked at just the right speed, hunting for the address and the right words at the same time. The way I put the proposal would be crucial to the success of this first approach. I skimmed past the subsidized housing, surrounded on both sides by parked cars. Here, too, numbers. Fiats: 124, 127, 128, with the occasional luxury of a 131 and, as exotic touches, here and there an Opel or a Renault, until I found the number plate marked ten. I walked up to a row of buzzers, where I found the name I was looking for. There was no lock on the street door. I mused that probably even the tenants had no idea how long the lock had been missing and how long it would be until it was replaced. So much the better. I hate to telegraph my arrival by ringing the downstairs doorbell. I went in and walked up the stairs to the third floor, where another name plate told me I was standing in front of the right door.
I rang the doorbell and got lucky. He opened the door himself. He had a smile on his face, and he was still talking to someone inside, but when he caught a glimpse of me both smile and words faded from his lips. He was a little taller than average, with a normal build, an unguarded facial expression, and the uncertain glance of someone who’s experiencing something that’s much bigger than him. Through that half-open door, I could see an apartment inhabited by people of modest means, with run-of-the-mill furniture and the smell of fried foods in the air, along with the unmistakable odor of the monthly struggle to make ends meet. If what I’d heard about the winning lottery ticket was true, I could see at first glance what 490 million lire would mean in a place like that.
“Good evening. Are you by any chance Signore Frontini?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m a neighbor of yours. I live here in the Quartiere Tessera. Do you have a minute to talk?”
He courteously opened the door to let me in. I raised one hand to decline the offer.
“You’re too kind. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer that we talk alone.”
Without a word, letting the curiosity on his face serve as a reply, Remo Frontini stepped out onto the landing, pulling the door behind him and leaving it just slightly ajar.
The ball was in my court. And I had to haul back and throw it straight and hard if I wanted to win the kewpie doll.
“Signore Remo, let me come straight to the heart of the matter. I have the impression that you’ve had a stroke of good luck recently. A huge stroke of good luck.”
br /> The curiosity on his face was instantly replaced by alarm. He squinted and turned wary.
“Wait a minute: who are you and who told you…”
I interrupted him, sketching out a reassuring gesture.
“Don’t worry. I’m not a problem. If anything, you can think of me as another stroke of good luck, Signore Frontini.”
I paused.
“Let’s just say, ten million lire more than what is already due to you. Which rounds out to a nice fat half a billion lire.”
When the word billion jumped in right after the word million, it had a satisfying effect. And the sight of him standing there, listening to what I had to say instead of kicking my ass down the stairs, confirmed that the rumors I had heard were true.
Which was lucky for him and, I hoped, for me.
Little by little, winning him over despite his reluctance and assuring him that no one needed to know about it but the two of us, I managed to get him to admit that he was the one with the winning lottery ticket. The most important thing, to my relief, was that he hadn’t turned it in yet; it was tucked away in a safe-deposit box while he tried to figure out what to do next. I explained what I wanted from him, how it would be to his advantage, and just how we’d work the deal. I made him understand that I represented certain people who were known for being extremely grateful and generous with those who did them favors, or else deeply resentful toward those who refused. In the end, I could see that he was willing to accept my proposal, more out of fear of the consequences than greed.
“All right, if you say that’s the way things really are…”
I gave him my very sunniest smile, the one that over time had won me the charms of many women and a razor blade.
“Of course that’s the way things really stand. You’re running absolutely no risk. You’ll have a great deal to gain and nothing to lose.”
I extended my hand. He gripped it. Not one hundred percent convinced, but still, he shook my hand.
“You’ll see that you made the right choice. You’ll have no reason to regret it.”
I took a step toward the stairs, a signal that our brief business meeting was over.