Stojkovic continued to rattle off statistics and names, but he still hadn’t told us anything significant or interesting about the heist. He came to the point after explaining the real estate interests at stake in the expulsion of the Serbian minority from Kosovo.
“One thing you should know is that the structure of the Kosovar mafia is very similar to that of the Calabrian ’ndrangheta. There isn’t a commission at the top. The organization is structured horizontally, by biological families. That’s why there are no turncoats or informers. You can’t rat out your father and your brothers. But the families are often at war with one another. In 2004 the Padua prison was filling up with members of one of the three major clans that controlled the KLA. Among those convicts was Fatjon Bytyçi, the oldest son of a boss in Pe´c, who had been arrested with his girlfriend after a rival family informed on him to the police. To avoid a general gang war that would have created an international incident and undermined their larger objectives, the families called for a summit meeting to reach an agreement, and on that occasion the Italian intelligence services were asked to find a way of getting the Kosovars out of jail fast.”
“Evidence Stolen, Acquittal in View?”—Max la Memoria sang out, reciting the headline that had appeared in a paper at the time.
“More or less. Some of them plea bargained for lighter sentences . . .”
“But not the son of the boss and his girlfriend, who were sent back to Kosovo.”
“Exactly.”
“And what happened to the narcotics stolen in Italy?”
He shrugged. “The intelligence services can always use that stuff.”
Nothing more was said for the rest of the meal. Stojkovic skipped dessert, apologized for not having the time to drink a cup of coffee with us, and left the restaurant followed by his two goons.
“What the fuck is Greta Gardner going to do with this information?” the fat man said angrily. “I mean, it might have been useful immediately after the heist, but now?”
I revolved my coffee cup in its saucer absent-mindedly. “I told you before: she doesn’t want the information; she just wants to make us do her bidding, like puppets on a string.”
Then I turned to Beniamino. “You know they’re going to fill your speedboat with heroin, right?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to bring Sylvie home.”
There are cases where life gives you no options, where you’re forced to betray your own principles. That’s what had just happened to Old Rossini. I never expected to witness such a thing.
He touched my arm. “Are there problems, Marco?”
“Lots of problems, too many problems,” I answered. “But whatever you do, I’ll always be your friend.”
Forty-eight hours later, one of Stojkovic’s men showed up at Beniamino’s house. The speedboat needed to depart in just one hour’s time. The weather conditions weren’t ideal for an open-sea voyage, but the merchandise had to arriva in Croatia the following morning, so that it could be forwarded on immediately.
While Rossini was battling the waves, Greta Gardner turned Sylvie’s cell phone back on and called me.
“Have you completed the job?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then you’ve taken care of your first debt.”
“Then let Sylvie go.”
“She’s how you take care of your second debt,” she told me. “There’s no price on that one.”
“Why should you kill her? Take it out on us.”
“That’s what I’m doing. You’re going to have to live your lives in the knowledge that she will dance for many men, that she will satisfy the pleasures of many men, for years to come. Then she’ll die.”
“Can’t we come to some sort of understanding?”
Greta Gardner laughed heartily. “In your letterbox you’ll find another envelope. This is the last one.”
“You don’t want to know what we found out?”
“I already have all the answers. It was just a matter of principle.”
She hung up, but this time I didn’t rush downstairs. I walked down one step at a time. I felt as confused as a boxer nearing the end of his career. Greta’s words had cut my legs out from under me. In the photograph this time, Sylvie was nude. So were the two men with her.
“Beniamino can never see this,” I told Max a few minutes later.
“He has the right to know.”
“In all likelihood, this is going to be the last picture we’ll ever have of Sylvie. You want him to remember her like this?”
The fat man said nothing. I tore up the photograph.
“That was a fucked up thing to do, Marco,” he scolded me. Then he added: “But I’m glad you did it.”
“Alcohol?”
“No, thanks. I’m too depressed to drink.”
“You think the Serbs will find anything?”
“I hope they will. It’s in their own interest. They can use Beniamino and his speedboat.”
Old Rossini called me mid-morning the next day to say that the bora wind out of the north was kicking up whitecaps as tall as houses, and that he would ride it out in a little bay in his speedboat, until the weather improved.
I was secretly pleased. I needed some time to recover. Beniamino knew me all too well. I didn’t want to arouse his suspicions. He would have pushed to find out what had happened and sooner or later I’d tell him.
The cell phone rang again. This time it was Morena. I didn’t want to talk to her; I didn’t answer. I gave in the fourth time she called.
“What do you want?”
“I want to buy you a drink.”
“You weren’t very nice to me last time I saw you.”
“You want an apology? Or would you rather I told you something that might interest you?”
“About that old case?”
“Right.”
“I’m not interested in it anymore.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s how it is, though. And besides, weren’t you the one who said you didn’t want to hear about it anymore?”
“I had a stroke of luck.”
“Good for you, though I doubt you’ll find any buyers.”
She finally realized I meant it. I was about to hang up when she said: “Look, let’s try it this way. I tell you what I found out, and if you’re interested, you’ll open your wallet.”
“And I decide how much.”
“I rely implicitly on your honesty and the goodness of your heart,” she deadpanned.
Nice work, Morena. She’d roped me in for a second round. All my resolutions never to see her again had vanished into thin air the minute the phone rang.
It was raining, the traffic was even worse than usual, and finding a place to park in Padua had become an increasingly challenging proposition. I arrived late. The aperitif hour was over, the little café tables were already set for quick lunches. Frozen pasta dishes, heated up in a microwave, and fanciful “mega-salads.” Morena was sitting with her back turned. Since she was a regular customer, she was allowed to go on nursing her spritz. I sat down across from her, and the first thing I noticed was the pair of oversized sunglasses. I delicately lifted them from the bridge of her nose. The bruise under her right eye was turning yellow, a sign that it was on the mend. I did some mental calculations.
“This was the guy who took you to that nonexistent resort in Tuscany, wasn’t it?”
“One of his two friends. And the spa was a fucking mini-villa. I was the only one having no fun.”
“Big disappointment, I’m sure.”
“Pitfalls of the profession,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “That’s what my handsome policeman told me.”
“And he’s not going to lift a finger to help you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I sighed. “You want me to tell you what I think?”
“I know, I know: the years pass, and the older I get the more men are going to take advantage of me.”
I thought
of Sylvie and what she was going through: I suddenly lost my desire to teach anyone a lesson.
I ordered a couple of sandwiches and a glass of red and thought: At least Morena is free to choose.
“I always wanted to be in business for myself, but I think the time may have come to sign up with one of these luxury escort services.” She sighed: “I missed my chance when I couldn’t manage to marry ‘the right guy.’ By now, I’d be coddled, well cared for, and revered.”
I changed the subject. “So, what’s the news?”
“It was a gang of policemen who stole the narcotics.”
“Crap.”
“No, it’s the truth. They work in Friuli and they had an accomplice on the inside. My handsome policeman is one of a team that’s tapping their phones.”
“And he told you this?”
“Yes.”
So you’d come tell me, I thought to myself. But if he was trying to get me off the case, why would he invent a story that involved crooked cops?
“They kept the stuff hidden until six months ago, and now they’re handing over a kilo a week to a gang they have dealing it for them.”
“My wallet stays in my pocket. I’m not interested.”
“Fuck you,” she grumbled disappointedly.
“Give me the name of that guy and his cell phone number.”
“What, have you become the avenger of mistreated hookers?”
“Yes, but I’m not doing it for you,” I thought. This is for Sylvie. I couldn’t get that damned photograph out of my head. “You going to give them to me or not?”
She slipped her hand into her purse and pulled out a business card. “I don’t need it anymore.”
Rocco Ponzano was barely 5’ 7” but he was a born hitter. When he was fourteen, to keep him away from bad company in the alleys of Genoa, his father locked him up in a boxing gym.
He came out four years later, but the same friends were waiting for him; they’d been wondering what had become of him, and they showed him the way to prison, where I met him. Now he was free and he lived in Padua. He worked for a cooperative that provided counseling and aid to ex-convicts.
He’d gone straight, but he couldn’t refuse to do this favor for me. He owed me.
The shitbag who’d gotten his jollies by punching Morena in the eye lived in a villa in the center of Este, a lovely town in the Venetian provinces, with his wife and daughter. That same evening, when he got out of his 50,000 euro automobile and turned to go into his house, he found himself looking at Rocco. Rocco didn’t say a word; he just fired off a series of violent and very accurate punches, focusing on the nose and eyebrows.
A few hours later, when I was sure that he’d been released from the emergency room, I called him from a public phone booth. I gave him a little lecture on the idea behind good manners. He swore to me on his daughter’s head that he understood the lesson.
Then I lost control. “What the fuck is the matter with you all?” I screamed into the phone. “Don’t you know how to have normal sex anymore? Do you always have to be violent fucking bullies?”
I smoked a couple of cigarettes in my car with the windows rolled up, and then I drove to La Cuccia, where I found Max; he had spent the whole day in his apartment. He showed me the photograph of Fatjon Bytyçi that was taken the day he was arrested.
“He looks more like a dirt farmer than the heir to a mafia empire. Look at how the fuck he’s dressed.”
He wasn’t wrong. “These Kosovars are still a little rustic. They’ll find their style when Hollywood discovers them.”
“You watch too much television.”
“You can never watch enough. What else have you found on him?”
“Nothing.”
“I saw Morena.” I told him what she’d said about the gang of policemen.
He waved one hand in the air with a gesture of annoyance. “Bullshit. Even if it was true, it wouldn’t help us find Sylvie.”
Pavle Stojkovic kept his word; on the seventh day he summoned us to a meeting. This time, it was in an elegant pastry shop in Vicenza. He asked Rossini how the trip had gone, and said he was sorry that it had been so long and challenging. He seemed to mean what he said.
We were surrounded by old people and mothers telling their children not to get chocolate and whipped cream on their clothing. Everything kept getting more Christmas-y. All around us was glitter and sparkle and blinking lights, making those days seem even more unreal and tragic.
The Serbian gangster ordered a cup of tea and waited to be served without saying a word. He finally began speaking, and just in time: a few seconds longer and Rossini might have lost it and slammed him against the wall.
“We haven’t found out anything about Greta Gardner,” he explained. “But we have learned that a belly dancer, who matches the description of your kidnapped girlfriend, has recently begun performing in a bordello on the outskirts of Grenoble.”
I glanced over at Beniamino’s face. He seemed to be carved out of marble. Stojkovic looked him right in the eye.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this . . . It’s a very particular sort of place.”
My friend gulped. “A gang bang parlor?”
“I’m afraid so.”
For an instant I could barely breathe. Gang rapes. The men would watch her dance and then, once they were thoroughly excited, take off their pants.
“The address,” Rossini snarled. “Tell me where she is. I’m going to get her back.”
“There’s a problem; I assure you, I had no say in this decision.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I can only give it to you after you do two more trips.”
The smuggler’s mouth snapped open in amazement. He was too appalled to react.
“How can you be so pitiless?” I demanded indignantly.
“This is just business to us, Signore Buratti.”
Max la Memoria broke in. “The agreement was information first, merchandise transported afterwards.”
“In Belgrade they’re worried that if something should happen to Signore Rossini, then the merchandise would not be transported. The value of the merchandise is much greater than that of the woman. I feel sure you can understand our point of view.”
Finally Beniamino found the strength to speak. “In the smuggling business, everyone knows me, they know that I’ve always kept my word. You can’t treat me like this.”
“Yes, we can,” the Serbian cut him off.
“How long do you think she can hold out?”
“That’s not my problem.”
“If she winds up dying, it will certainly become your problem.”
“I appreciate your feelings, but threatening me isn’t a very good idea.”
One of his goons had slipped his right hand into the left sleeve of his heavy jacket. The first one of us who moved would get a knife wound for his trouble. The other one had his hand in the pocket of his overcoat, certainly gripping a pistol.
But Rossini was a desperate man, betrayed and worn out by tension and exhaustion. In a word, dangerous. I felt sure of it when I saw that he was carefully noting the location of the two thugs. He was calculating his odds of managing to hit Stojkovic before they could intervene.
I dug my fingernails into his thigh and shook him. “The kids,” I hissed. “The children.”
“What?” He looked around realized he was in a pastry shop full of innocent people.
He drained his glass of beer at a gulp and gave me a grateful glance.
Now it was my chance to negotiate. “Seven days from today for both trips.”
“I can’t guarantee it.”
“Help us,” I implored. “You’re in charge here.”
He stood up. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He walked out of the shop accompanied by one of his bodyguards. The other one stayed behind with us, sitting and staring at Beniamino. He was going to stand up and leave only once his boss was safe.
A few minutes later, the cell p
hone rang. Unknown caller. I answered anyway. It was Stojkovic. “Okay, we have a deal in seven days if your friend can leave on his holidays tomorrow morning.”
We walked for a while along the porticoes, in silence, catching our breath.
“You go to Yugoslavia, and Max and I will go to Grenoble to lay the groundwork. We’re going to need a safe house, and we need to check out the escape routes.”
Rossini shook his head. “Greta Gardner would know you were there, and that would spell death for Sylvie.”
“We’d be careful.”
“Beniamino is right,” the fat man broke in. “If she can deliver two envelopes to our door, it means she has someone working for her in the area. There’d be nothing easier than for her to keep us under surveillance.”
I glared at him, but the cat was out of the bag.
“Why did you say two envelopes?” Rossini asked.
“Ask Marco.”
“The second envelope had a picture I chose not to show you. I tore it up.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
He nodded and turned his face toward a shop window, where he pretended to be looking at sets of porcelain. “I’ll ask Luc and Christine to go to Grenoble.”
“Who the fuck are they?” I’d never heard their names.
Bandit Love Page 7