“All of it?”
“The especially valuable pieces, those with fine stones, would be sold outside the country to a single fence, while the gold was parceled out to four others outside the Veneto region.”
“Did they pay cash?”
“Always.”
“And what became of the cash?”
“Some of it was divvied up among us, and the rest was invested in restaurants, bars, and cafés. We secretly financed quite a few places.”
“Was Gastone in charge of that?”
“No, an old friend of ours was. He was Gastone’s best man at our wedding.”
“So you’re not exactly going hungry.”
“He bought us out for a ridiculously small sum,” the woman admitted. “Our investor cut us loose. Fear and greed.”
“Maybe he’s the one who sold you out in the first place,” Rossini announced. “Because one of these gentlemen definitely did it.”
“Maybe the weak link is in Nicola’s gang.”
“I doubt it,” I put in. “There’s just three of them, and they do it all on their own. And then, there’s no upside.”
Gigliola crushed out her cigarette with the heel of her shoe. Max handed her a notebook. “We need names and addresses.”
She was diligent and as accurate as she could be, but when she left, she didn’t say goodbye.
One of the fences, Tazio Bonetti, was an old acquaintance of mine from prison. Like everyone in his line of business, there was no trusting him when it came to money, but he’d never posed any problems in terms of security. He lived in Brescia and, despite his initial surprise, he courteously feigned delight at being able to invite us to dinner in a venerable old inn, where a plaque listed Garibaldi among the illustrious diners from centuries past.
He showed up five minutes late. Actually, he’d gotten there half an hour early and peered in through the front door to make sure we didn’t have some nasty surprise waiting for him. Fences’ clients are never entirely happy with them. What with all the haggling over prices and the pretending that no one’s interested in buying, from time to time, people lose their tempers.
He was a man in his early seventies, not tall, on the frail side, not a hair on his head. He was nicely dressed, though in a style very different from the one favored by old Rossini, to whom he immediately paid his respects. Then he shook hands with Max and, last of all, gave me a hug.
He overwhelmed us with dull and pointless chatter until the waiter served the wine, then he came straight to the point. “What do you want from me?”
“Gastone Oddo,” I replied flatly, watching for his reaction.
He merely fluttered his hands, an untroubled gesture. “I miss him, may his soul rest in peace . . . I can’t think what else to tell you.”
“Have you come up any idea as to who might have ripped him off?”
“No. One of the many crews from the east, I’d imagine. They do plenty of home invasions in the countryside around here, too.”
Beniamino chose to treat him with old-school courtesy. “Could we show you a list of people in your line of work and ask your opinion of each?”
“Just in case I know them.”
“Just in case.”
“First I’d like to understand what part you’re playing in all this, and above all why you’re interested in the fences who were working with Oddo.”
“We can’t answer that because we wouldn’t want to show you any disrespect by trying to get some lie past you,” Max replied promptly. “But we would like you to take us at our word: You have nothing to worry about. As far as your name goes, our lips are sealed.”
Bonetti lowered his voice. “I’m not stupid, you know,” he snapped. “You’re convinced that one of us robbed Oddo.”
“We’re not all that sure of it, Tazio. We’re just checking out every possibility.”
“Spezzafumo already came to see me, and he asked the same questions.”
“He likes to settle his accounts with a bullet to the brain,” I retorted. “We have different objectives.”
Rossini handed him the list. The fence put on his glasses and scanned it. “Don’t waste time on Imbriani. He got out of the business shortly after the tragedy at Oddo’s house.”
Pierpaolo Imbriani, according to the information given us by Oddo’s widow, Gigliola, had left Trieste thirty or so years ago and had moved to Belgium so he could marry a woman from Liège. He fenced the most valuable jewelry, the pieces that it would be a crime to melt down.
“Why did he do that?” I asked.
“It seems that his wife is sick, and he’s devoting himself to her full-time.”
“And what do you have to say about the others?”
He grabbed the sheet of paper and tossed it onto the table with a testy gesture. “None of us would have allowed ourselves to get mixed up in such a miserable act.”
He stood up. “I’ve just remembered an urgent commitment I can’t put off, much less cancel,” he explained, icily.
I blocked his way. “Do you realize that you’re vouching for everyone but Imbriani? In a backhanded way, you’ve just put him right under the spotlight. Why?”
“The story about his wife was a fairy tale. That’s all. Maybe he’s got nothing to do with it.”
“But that’s not what you told Spezzafumo.”
“I don’t want dead men on my conscience.”
Tazio had behaved sensibly and properly, and I was sorry he’d taken offense.
I invited him to stay, but he had absolutely no desire to. As soon as he was gone, the waiter arrived with our meal. “Won’t the signore be dining?” he asked, stunned.
Max pointed at the table. “Go ahead and leave the food. We’ll take care of it.”
Beniamino shot him a glance. “Have you found a dietitian who recommends eating twice as much as usual?”
The fat man started telling him all about his experience with the last in a long series of nutritionists, but at a certain point, old Rossini interrupted him. “I was just kidding, Max. If you want to lose weight and live longer, just eat smaller portions; if you don’t, eat all the fucking food you want. But don’t come talk to me about holes in your life and all that bullshit from the seventies. Save that for Marco.”
“Don’t try and drag me into this,” I protested.
“You pipe down. You’re getting us into this mess to keep from losing your mind. The two of you are so off when it comes to mental balance that you’re like a couple of tightrope walkers.”
“And you’re A-OK in that department?” I asked tartly.
“No. By no means,” Rossini replied calmly. “But I do my best to go on living without busting anybody else’s balls. The two of you, on the other hand, are a pair of unbearable whiners.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “But you have to agree that Max is much more of a whiner than I am.”
“That’s not true,” the fat man said, defending himself, as he reached for the risotto the fence had ordered.
* * *
Liège.
I left the hotel shortly before noon and walked down the Boulevard d’Avroy with an Italian newspaper under my arm so I could be identified. Beniamino and Max had gone ahead in a rented compact car, but just then I couldn’t spot them. A sedan pulled up beside me and I got in back. The driver was a silent young man who started driving in the direction of downtown, though not to any precise destination. He couldn’t have been any older than twenty-five but he was already balding and the goatee he was clearly proud of was devoid of distinction. He kept sneaking glances at me in the rearview mirror; his eyes were dark and evil. He wanted me to understand that he was meaner than me and that violence was his daily bread. I guessed he probably wasn’t that tall, but his arms bulged with gym-hardened muscles.
After a while, I grew tired of that buffoonery. �
��Let me out of the car,” I demanded.
His only response was to take a picture of me with his cell phone and send it to someone who clearly needed it to recognize me. Someone who had to be Pierpaolo Imbriani. After a few minutes, he stopped outside the Café Lequet in Quai-Sur-Meuse.
“You can go now,” he said in a Pugliese accent. The asshole was Italian.
I stopped to look at the river. The waters of the Meuse seemed as thick as molasses and flowed sluggishly. I took advantage of the moment to look around. All seemed calm.
As soon as I walked in, a man of about fifty sitting at a table raised one hand so I’d see him. In jeans and a brand-name polo shirt, he looked more like a tourist than a respected jeweler.
I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. “It hasn’t been easy getting your attention.”
Imbriani remained impassive. “As I’ve tried to explain to you several times without success, I’m no longer interested in acquiring certain merchandise.”
I pulled out my cell phone and showed him pictures of authentic Art Nouveau-style bracelets, rings, and brooches in white gold and sapphire. “They’re impossible to trace. The product of some clever sleight-of-hand in a contested inheritance,” I explained. Actually, they’d belonged to Sylvie, Rossini’s woman, and they weren’t for sale just now.
The jeweler gave me back my cell phone. “This place is famous for its boulet meatballs and french fries.”
I took a look around. An old café, furnished in sixties style, with posters on the wall reminding patrons that Georges Simenon was born not far away.
“Let’s have the specialty of the house,” I said.
He caught a waiter’s attention and ordered for us both.
“I could be interested,” he muttered. “It all depends on the price, of course.”
The time had come to cast off the mask. “Before we start negotiations, there’s another matter we need to clear up.”
He turned watchful. He was starting to smell rip-off. “Which would be what?”
“There’s someone who thinks it was you who plotted against Gastone Oddo.”
It was the sudden dismay that gave him away. He didn’t even try to regain his composure. He stammered out a fairly unconvincing defense. “You’re wrong. I had nothing to do with that.”
“But right after the home invasion and the murders, you decided to retire.”
“My wife was sick.”
“That’s a lie. We checked it out.”
“All the same, I had my reasons.”
We were interrupted by the arrival of our drinks. Imbriani drank down a long gulp of beer.
“You have a major problem,” I started to explain calmly. “If you don’t tell me the truth or persuade me you had absolutely nothing to do with it, I’ll go back to Italy and give your name to Oddo’s partners.
“And someday you’ll have to confront them. They’ll use the same treatment on you and your wife that was used on Gastone and his housekeeper. Torture and death. If you think that lackey you use as a chauffeur is capable of protecting you, you’re making the last in a line of mistakes.”
“I’m ready to run that risk,” he hissed as he got to his feet. “You’re accusing the wrong person.”
I watched him leave. These days, it seemed like no one wanted to share a table with yours truly. I ate unhurriedly, satisfied that I’d identified the traitor. The meatballs and french fries lived up to their reputation. I ordered another beer before paying the check and leaving.
I barely had time to light my cigarette before I found myself face-to-face with the lackey from Puglia. “Pierpaolo doesn’t want you here. Get out, and don’t come back.”
“You seem like an actor. How many times have you practiced that line in front of a mirror?”
I didn’t even see the right hook that caught me on the chin; before I knew it, I was flat on the ground. He had just enough time to deliver one sharp kick to my ribs before Beniamino’s elbow shattered his nose. The youngster was certainly stronger and faster than the old bandit, but he didn’t have the necessary experience to face a professional who’d apprenticed as a street brawler and then refined his combat techniques in prison. Rossini worked like a blacksmith with a mallet and didn’t stop until he felt certain that the lesson wouldn’t soon be forgotten.
Imbriani’s enforcer had dared to hit a friend of his, and now he’d paid the price. Max helped me to my feet. “I’m fine,” I lied. I was in a lot of pain, but this was hardly the time or place to start complaining.
By the time we left, a small crowd had gathered to watch the show, though it hadn’t lasted more than a minute. The slyest member of the crowd tried to sneak a picture, but his cell phone went flying into the river Meuse.
We reached the rental car and found refuge in the botanical garden, blending in among the other visitors. One of those places the cops never think to check. The knuckles of Beniamino’s right hand were swollen. He put the hand under the cold spray of a fountain for a few minutes.
“You got here just in time,” I said. That was my way of thanking him.
“But I stopped pounding on him too soon.”
“Did you want to kill him?” Max blurted out in horror.
“Of course not,” he replied. “But professional heavies are people who aren’t right in the head, they need to be punished and stopped before they become genuinely dangerous. Sooner or later they cross the line into murder, and they develop a taste for it.”
We were the last to leave. We ate dinner in an out-of-the-way restaurant and then went to the movies to watch an Italian film that had recently competed at Cannes. Only after one last drink for the road did we head back to the hotel. Max called the reception desk and asked for us, and we watched for the reaction of the desk clerk from across the street. He hadn’t looked around, he hadn’t even looked up. He just went back to watching a soccer match on TV. In the end, Imbriani and his sidekick hadn’t reported us to the cops. I could finally collapse onto my bed, switch on one of the RAI TV channels, and watch an extremely boring talk show about the regional elections in Italy that had been held the day before.
The most significant piece of information had to do with Veneto, where the party in favor of defending the territory’s alleged rights had won in a landslide. A victory that jeopardized our future.
I called Max, who thanked me. “I needed to share a few thoughts I’ve had with someone.”
“I’ll settle for the condensed version.”
He fell silent as he searched for the right worlds. “The privilege of our generational defeat is that we aren’t forced to take part in this farce.”
“The people are sovereign,” I reminded him.
“And right now, we’re no longer part of the people. Light-years separate us, and we’re following paths that run in two opposite directions.”
I wished him goodnight and changed the channel. I found a program promoting revolutionary exercise equipment that, if used for an hour every week, could firm and sculpt every single muscle. Especially the abdominals. I fell asleep after a few minutes.
We were staying in a chain hotel not far from the cathedral. The rooms were brutally rational, carefully designed down to every last detail to provide comfort equivalent to the price, and no more. Conceived to house guests overnight and spit them out in the morning, after a quick shower and a frugal breakfast.
I was dunking a croissant in my caffè latte, and in the background, Johnny Cash was singing A Boy Named Sue, a renowned talking-blues piece recorded at San Quentin penitentiary. Beniamino had already left to return the rental car and rent out another one from the competition and Max was still snoring. Then I saw Pierpaolo Imbriani come in.
I pointed him to the chair across from me and went on with my morning croissant-dunking ritual. I’ve never given much of a damn about food, I’ve always preferred alcohol, but this pa
rticular way of breakfasting always brightened my day.
I ran the napkin over my mustache. “I’m pleased to see that you’re an influential person in this city,” I pretended to compliment him. “It didn’t take you long to find me.”
He sighed. “Jewelers do a great many favors and only rarely ask for any in return. Which means it’s easier to get a hard one when you need it.”
The fence was playing the part of the wise man in too irritating a fashion for me to let him go on. “I’m astonished by your visit. My friends and I were already working on convincing you to continue that conversation of ours.”
“I’m sure you were. That’s why I’m here,” he said. He looked around before going on.
“I can’t stand violence,” he hissed quietly. “It horrifies me. I can’t handle it. What happened yesterday makes it clear to me that I need to get out of this mess as soon as I can, and once and for all.”
I wasn’t especially good at dealing with violence myself, but over time I’d learned to appreciate its necessity. I’d also gotten used to seeing it up close without getting too upset. But I’d never—never—be able to raise a hand in anger or pull a trigger. Max was just like me. Luckily, we had Beniamino, who knew how to be lethal and who protected us, sweeping away our enemies. Without him, we’d both have long been dead.
“I’m an easygoing professional who’s always demanded that his jewelry not be stained with blood. It’s a condition of my work,” Imbriani continued. “I was very clear with Gastone, too.
“Then one morning in the shop, when there were no customers and my wife and I were arranging a new collection of jewelry, a guy came in, a Venetian. He spoke a mix of Italian and dialect, and he showed me an extremely finely made bracelet. Do you know anything about jewelry, Signor Buratti?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t bother you with the details. In any case, it was a magnificent piece, and I knew it very well because Gastone Oddo had sold it to me. I, in turn, had sold it to a Dutch colleague who, per our understanding, was supposed to place it in Dubai. But he didn’t always do as he promised, and he’d made the foolish mistake of displaying in his window.”
For All the Gold in the World Page 4