“For my own good,” she lied to both of us.
I couldn’t understand why the powerful man to whom I’d entrusted the Counselor’s secrets should have decided to unite Ylenia in holy matrimony with his assistant, but it certainly did nothing to harm me. In fact, that first bag of fifty thousand euros was a clear sign that Brianese had been forcefully advised to reconsider my legitimate requests.
I looked at the two Calabrians who were stuffing their faces with hors d’oeuvres and prosecco at my expense. There was no way of getting rid of them.
I’d have to wait a few more months. Then, finally, one night I feasted my eyes on the television screen and the sight of the Palamaras in handcuffs, being carted off to prison. Giuseppe glared into the TV camera with fierce contempt.
One of the investigating judges clearly spoke about dealings between the ’Ndrangheta and politicians in Lombardy. One of the men who were arrested was identified as a major vote bundler.
If I wanted proof that the Calabrians would stop persecuting me, the clincher came later that day: they didn’t show up in the restaurant. I couldn’t be sure that Giuseppe would forget about yours truly and the humiliation I’d inflicted on him with my creative criminality, but he had other things to think about for the moment.
At the end of a dull day La Nena was packed with beautiful people celebrating Sante Brianese’s appointment as cabinet minister. The powerful man had predicted everything down to the smallest details. The Padanos had proven incapable of exploiting their victory and they had some serious internal fleas to scratch. The Counselor was a rising star but the prestigious government appointment would force him to abandon the Veneto once and for all and someone else would have to take over his network of dealings. Politics too was a form of creative criminality. In fact, it was creative criminality taken to its logical extreme. I might be excluded from the field of political endeavor entirely, but I’d decided to stay right where I was. I was born to ass-fuck my fellow man and it was something I really enjoyed. It made me feel alive. I had the distinct sensation that I had absorbed the life force of all the people I’d eliminated from the face of the earth, but maybe that was just the euphoria of victory, or at least of knowing that I’d come home alive but still having a hard time believing it. Now I’d need to look around and build new alliances, connections, and connivances. I’d have to grow a new politician all my own. Let him use La Nena as a springboard and then tend to him throughout the course of his career: city government, provincial government, regional government. I wasn’t looking for a rising star, like Brianese ten years ago. I needed a competent midfielder.
Signora Ombretta Brianese née Marenzi moved away from her husband’s side and came over to me. She gave me a sly, knowing glance and kept taking small sips of bubbly. The ring of lipstick on the champagne glass looked like a spot of fresh blood and she looked like a beautiful vampiress who had just banqueted.
She tossed back the flute of champagne at a single gulp and then handed it to me as if I were a waiter. Not a particularly attractive gesture for a lady of her class. “That villa in the countryside outside of Ferrara has belonged to my family for three generations,” she revealed with ill concealed pleasure, confident that the news would take me by surprise. “And I’ve been a close friend of the gentleman that you met since I was a child.”
“So Ylenia’s wedding was your idea.”
“Let’s just say that I wanted to make sure that a deeply unhappy future lay in wait for her.”
I shifted my gaze over to Brianese. “But that means your husband loses out, too.”
She snorted. “He may have lots of good qualities, but he’s still just an insatiable parvenu. He’ll cause less damage in Rome.”
“In the end, you’re always the ones who clean things up and make them presentable, aren’t you?”
“Who are you referring to, Signor Pellegrini?”
“The powerful families. The families that matter. The families that have always called the shots. Which is exactly why I got in touch with your old childhood friend from happy days gone by,” I replied irreverently.
Ombretta avoided responding and turned her back on me to graciously accept a compliment from the chief of the city police.
Rivers of champagne were flowing and for once I wasn’t giving out so much as a free toothpick. Midway through the evening I found a free corner of the bar and enjoyed a glass in blessed peace. Brianese was emanating happiness from every pore, Ylenia had her arms wrapped around her new true love, and Martina and Gemma were chatting with friends and acquaintances.
I had big plans for the two women. A daily routine involving a wife and a lover would degenerate into pure absurdity. But the three of us living together would be a perfect solution. That very night I was planning to tell my wife that as a woman she wasn’t complete because she lacked a live-in girlfriend with whom she could have sex on a regular basis. I would ladle a countercultural sauce of Sixties-style pearls of wisdom over the whole thing. “Free Love.” “Unleash the love that’s sleeping inside you,” I’d whisper into her ear while caressing her thighs. The idea might frighten her at first, then she’d accept the new situation and place it within the complexity of a love as grand as ours.
It wouldn’t take the same amount of chitchat with Gemma. The King of Hearts would give an order and she would obey with wholehearted enthusiasm. I’d develop a schedule of activities designed to keep both of them in shape, but first of all we’d have a plastic surgeon do a series of minor tweaks to our little girlfriend.
I greeted an art dealer who was helping me procure a painting by my beloved Grace Slick. I pointed to the wall I’d chosen, and she took a picture with her cell phone so she could select the frame. Then she went back to mingling with the other guests.
When I’d first shown her the painting on the Internet she’d made some comment about it being just a little too “flower power” to fit in with the interior decoration of La Nena.
“That’s me, in the middle, in the hat, running across the field,” I retorted, pointing out a detail.
She went on blathering some nonsense about the intrinsic metamessage contained in the act of purchasing the painting, then she asked me how I intended to pay. When I flashed her a wad of cash, her face lit up and she forgave my supposed lapse in taste.
The painting by my beloved Grace, hanging strategically across from the cash register, would help me to inject a stimulating and fecund dose of imagination into the vein of creative criminality, a pursuit to which I intended to devote myself regularly from now on.
I would no longer get bogged down in activities like the prostitution ring, which demanded a special dedicated logistical structure and organization. Flexibility would be the order of the creative local economy. Applied to my personal sector, it translated into a regular practice of robbing large amounts of money that had been procured through corruption. If restricted to that sector, armed robbery would immediately become a much less risky way of doing business. It meant the elimination of police reports and accompanying investigations.
An elegantly dressed gentleman who was new to the city was mingling with the guests. He was the head of a holding company that defrauded companies undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. Ylenia had explained to me how, in exchange for fifteen percent of the debt paid in crisp new bills, the man pretended to purchase the companies with the promise that he’d turn them around. Instead he’d transfer ownership to foreign corporations, pocket the money, and abandon the entrepreneurs to their fate. He explained to the suckers that the mechanism that would save them from their creditors, the banks, and the tax department was a judicial safeguard consisting of the term: “letter of indemnity.”
A lightning hunch had led me to cut that information from the interview with Brianese’s secretary, and I was glad I had done so, since the asshole in question was cruising my restaurant in search of victims.
All
he had to do was snooker one of my customers and word would get out that you had to watch your step at La Nena. That wasn’t going to happen, however. I’d clean the guy out and then send him to prison. Not because I had any problem with the idea of shooting him dead, but because there were too many people involved, and I couldn’t hope to kill them all. I’d be very pleased to give credit for removing them from circulation to the Carabinieri. The plan was still a nebulous cloud of images and thoughts. Inspiration would certainly come with the information that I was gathering.
I caught the man’s eye and raised my glass in his direction. Then I came out from behind the counter and walked toward him, with a great show of deference.
“There’s nothing better than a flute of champagne to set things right at the end of a dull day,” I said as I extended a glass to him.
“Are you the proprietor?”
“Yes, La Nena is my private kingdom and I’m Giorgio Pellegrini.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Massimo Carlotto is one of the best-known living crime writers in Europe. In addition to the many titles in his extremely popular “Alligator” series, and his stand-alone noir novels, he is also the author of The Fugitive, in which he tells the story of his arrest and trial for a crime he didn’t commit, and his subsequent years on the run. Carlotto’s novel The Goodbye Kiss was a finalist for the MWA’s Edgar Award for Best Novel.
At the End of a Dull Day Page 17