For All the Gold in the World

by Massimo Carlotto

  Twenty or so minutes later, I was shown to the office of the big boss. He called himself, quite prosaically Mario Bianchi—an extremely common name—but he was actually a prince of the Venetian underworld. The façade was that of an eminently respectable insurance executive, but the business that had made him rich was that of clandestine investigation. Once or twice, I’d worked for him. He had resources, professionals, and covers at his disposal. And he would stop at nothing. He was rotten to the core, but if you were part of the underworld, you could count on a certain degree of discretion. He’d treated me well because he knew that as long as I was protected by Beniamino Rossini, I remained untouchable.

  Neither short nor tall, roly-poly, horn-rimmed glasses, and an unfailingly optimistic expression stamped on his face.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “I need four subjects checked out,” I replied, handing him the list of names and the address of the Pescarotto residence. “One woman and three men. She travels between her home and a small business. Just now, she’s being protected by the three men; they take turns. I suspect that they’re in the middle of planning a criminal act, a robbery. A few days. I’ll inform you once I no longer need the coverage.”

  He nodded. “You know the fee.”

  I pulled a twelve-thousand-euro retainer out of my pocket and set it down on the desk. At fifteen hundred euros per person, that was equivalent to two days of surveillance. Mario Bianchi commanded a high fee, but in case Spezzafumo went to meet his maker, no one would be able to connect my interest in his person with that murder.

  I decided to stay out. An aperitif in the piazzas, lunch at Anfora da Alberto, and then to a multiplex to watch a couple of movies. Why the movie theaters tended to run B-grade horror movies during the summer would forever remain a mystery to me.

  I watched two of them just to kill an afternoon in a dark, semi-deserted theater with good air conditioning, but the plots were flabby and contrived.

  I turned up at cocktail hour. Max had set the fixings up at home, with delicacies meant to please Antun and Dalibor’s palates.

  At a certain point Rossini got up. “It’s time.”

  We arrived at the rendezvous in two cars a good half hour ahead of time. The Patanès and the two ex-mercenaries were already there. Ferdinando was standing behind Lorenzo’s wheelchair. Bellomo and Adinolfi played their roles to perfection. They got out of an SUV garbed and armed as if they were expecting a firefight with a platoon of terrorists. All for show. I’d been right when I’d decided that the mercenaries were low-level lackeys. I peered over at the two Dalmatians. They were snickering, unimpressed, the barrels of their assault rifles pointing at the ground. Rossini was holding his pump-action shotgun like a boar hunter would. His eyes were focused on the hands of the two assholes. At the first suspicious move, he’d send a hail of pellets blasting in their direction.

  I took a few steps closer, illuminated by the headlights of the cars. I was about twenty yards away from their weapons.

  “I’m happy that you’ve accepted this meeting,” I said, speaking loud enough to make myself heard. “In these situations, talking is always a necessary step in the process of finding a solution. I hope you also appreciate the choice of location. We suggested it to make you understand that so far every decision you’ve made has been a mistake. Including the decision to eliminate Kevin Fecchio. You were such good friends and yet you didn’t hesitate to lure him out here and drown him. I’ll bet you got him drunk at the Bad Boys Pub and then you loaded him into the car.”

  Adinolfi waved his Kalashnikov. “We didn’t come here to listen to this bullshit,” he shouted; he had a strong Roman accent.

  “All right. We’re listening,” I replied amiably.

  “You can take your proposal and stick it up your ass,” the former mercenary went on, his tone combative. “You’re in no position to dictate terms. If you want, we can duke it out, here and now. We’re not afraid of you. Otherwise, get out of here and don’t let us see you again.”

  I heaved a sigh. This was turning ugly, and I was right in the line of fire. My instinct was to drop to the floor and cover my head with both hands, expecting to hear a fusillade of gunshots. Instead, there was just one.

  Bellomo, who’d taken care to remain behind his partner, had pulled out his gun and shot him in the back of the head. One shot, a sneak attack, and the Roman asshole, who hadn’t realized he was the only one who could be sacrificed, dropped to the floor, dead on the spot.

  His murderer threw the gun to the ground, followed by the submachine gun he was carrying over his shoulder. From one pocket of his combat vest he pulled a yellow envelope and tossed it to me. “That’s twenty-six thousand euros,” he explained, his voice quavering slightly. “That’s all we can give you. Now or ever. We ask you to appreciate our goodwill.”

  I pretended to consult with my partners. They were probably lying to us about the money but the important thing was that someone had paid for Luigina Cantarutti’s death.

  We withdrew in silence, abandoning them to their fate, which wasn’t really all that hard to imagine.

  Ferdinando, the father, wouldn’t be able to go on for long carrying the burden of the horror to which he’d become an accomplice. A heart attack, a stroke, or a fast-growing cancer was sure to free him from the armed robbery gone wrong that had defined his fate.

  Lorenzo, paralyzed from the neck down, would have all the time in the world to cultivate his hatred, but he’d go on paying for it every minute of the rest of his life. He was, of all the pieces of shit in that story, the biggest loser, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel any pity for him.

  Ludovico “Vick” Bellomo. The traitor who hadn’t hesitated to eliminate his partner was the filthiest of the bunch but, like all those of his kind, he was destined to survive. He’d make Adinolfi’s corpse disappear, would spread the right lies, and then he’d become the owner of the Bad Boys Pub. Just waiting for the next friend to betray.

  “Now it’s Spezzafumo and the widow’s turn,” Beniamino commented.

  I was sick and tired. “Let’s take a couple of days off,” I suggested. “After all, they’re under control.”

  “I agree,” said Rossini. “I can take advantage of the opportunity to take my friends back home.”

  “Are you sure you’re not going to need them again?” asked Max.

  “No,” he replied. “I can handle those guys on my own.”

  I called the widow. “You can relax, we’ve settled things.”

  From the other end of the line, I heard a long sigh. “In a definitive manner, I trust.”

  “That’s none of your business,” I said, and hung up.

  I was afraid to go to Pico’s Club for fear I’d run into Cora’s husband. So I waited for her at the usual café where she ate breakfast. She sat down beside me and smiled.

  “I have the morning free,” she said softly. “Do you have a place to take me that’s not some seamy hotel room?”

  My jazz woman really didn’t like making love between the sheets. “Certainly,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking about suggesting this place for a while now.”

  I made a phone call and took her to a recording studio midway between Mestre and Treviso. A nice place, and very advanced in terms of recording technology.

  Cora looked like a little girl in a toy store. “Can I record?”

  “There are no musicians,” I said. “But you can make do with the basics.”

  She gave me a kiss and started talking intently with the sound technician. There was enough time to record just one piece, and she chose a song by Carmen Lundy, the musician she’d styled herself after, one of the singer’s warhorses: Old Friend.

  “I’m dedicating it to you,” she told me before stepping into the soundproofed booth.

  “I just hope you’re not investing money in her,” the technician muttered
. “Technically she might be passable, but for an amateur, she’s overreaching. There are passages where she’s ridiculous.”

  I shrugged. “Everyone has their own version of jazz,” I retorted, paraphrasing an old blues adage.

  Two hours later Cora was holding a CD with her performance in her hands. She was happy. I dragged her into the musicians’ break room. Just then it was deserted. I shut the door and turned the key and kissed her on the neck. She was humming to herself and she let me do what I wanted.

  When we stretched out on a sofa, she said: “Slowly, nice and slow, kid.”

  No hurry, no urgency. Just slow tenderness, kisses, caresses. It was wonderful.

  When we got back in the car she froze me to my seat with the three words I’d been afraid to hear from the beginning of our relationship. “I know everything.”

  I lit a cigarette and braced myself for the worst.

  “All I had to do was ask my husband who told him about Pico’s and he gave me your name. He told me a story about an unlicensed private investigator so stupid he didn’t even notice I was screwing the piano player.”

  “The piano player?”

  “Last night they had a fistfight. My spouse threw a tantrum and the piano player jumped him.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “I figured as much.”

  She slipped the disc into the CD player and we listened to the song. It occurred to me that her choice had been intentional.

  “You lied to me,” Cora said bitterly. “I betrayed my husband. For a few moments of freedom from our lives, in order to make love without being weighed down by bad thoughts, we were forced to build castles of lies. I don’t regret it but I don’t know if I’ll ever have the strength again to put on Cora’s emerald-green dress.”

  “I don’t want to be pathetic and try to justify myself, but I do have a few things to say.”

  “I don’t want to hear them. I’m certain of your good intentions.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. We retreated into silence until I parked my car next to hers.

  She caressed my cheek. “So long, kid.”

  I stopped in a well-stocked liquor store and bought a bottle of aged calvados. Back home, I shut myself in my room to listen to the blues, songs that told heartbreaking love stories, puzzling out the meaning of that farewell. Was it a “goodbye” or an “until we meet again”?

  Before dinnertime I heard a knock on the door. “Will you condescend to join us?” Max the Memory shouted, furious. “The case isn’t closed and you’re behaving like a fucking high schooler.”

  I sat up on the bed and the room started spinning. “Coming,” I slurred.

  I went to the kitchen pantry and pulled out a bottle that contained a yellow liquid. A cleansing, herb-based solution that was particularly well suited for recovering from a bender. I gulped down a couple of mouthfuls and joined my friends.

  Beniamino put his arm around my shoulder. “Did she leave you?”

  “I’m not really sure,” I replied. “But she found out I was lying to her.”

  “That’s what always happens,” Max commented.

  “I had no other choice if I wanted to court her,” I said in my own defense.

  “Stories that start out complicated end up the same way,” Rossini pronounced. Then he changed the subject. “Now let’s have a nice plate of spaghetti and focus on Spezzafumo, okay?”

  The following morning, after beating back a ferocious headache with a couple of Advils, I went to see Mario Bianchi.

  “There are going to be a few extras on the tab,” he pointed out, first thing, as he read through the reports. “We ended up having to tail the subjects.”

  “No problem.”

  “The three men went to the same place, once each, but at different times of day: a goldsmith’s workshop in the Vicenza area,” he continued, handing me a sheet of paper with all the information. “Our surveillance of the woman turned up nothing out of the ordinary.”

  I paid the bill and left. I’d been right; once they thought they were safe, the gang had gone straight back to work. Their cash reserves must have been down to their last few euros, which meant they needed to pull off a job. They’d had all the time they needed to carefully pick a target and the fact that they were checking it out with such care meant that it was just a few days until the robbery. They’d steal a car, don gloves and ski masks, and burst in armed and ready to shoot. The exact same approach that had led to Maicol Fecchio’s agony and death.

  The unwritten laws applied every bit as much to crimes that merely involved the use of weapons as they did to those that necessarily involved violence against their victims: home invasions and kidnappings were the acts of cowards and pariahs. Armed robberies are governed by one fundamental rule: the safety of those being robbed must be ensured. Going in with the assumption that a trigger was going to be pulled meant that it was a bad plan and should be abandoned.

  Old Rossini considered armed robbery to be an art; he’d never shown up for his hits with a bullet chambered and he’d even been able to empty armored cars manned by armed guards without anyone getting hurt.

  Personally, I had never liked armed robbery because weapons, generally speaking, scared me. But for all those years I’d lived off the armed robberies Beniamino had pulled, and I’d never allowed myself to say a thing about it.

  “Assholes! Stupid assholes!” Rossini hissed in disbelief. “I don’t want to have to go after those two overgrown kids, Denis and Giacomo, or whatever the fuck their names are. I made myself clear, very clear, but if they’re going to ignore my warnings then words aren’t going to be enough and mothers are going to be weeping over the graves of their sons.”

  “We can’t afford to wipe out the whole gang,” I put in. “The widow would try as hard as she could to make us pay the price, and we definitely don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where we have to kill her, too.”

  “You have a better idea?” asked Beniamino.

  “I don’t know if it’s a good one, but I think it’s worth giving it a try: Tazio Bonetti.”

  “You’re thinking about going to the fences?” Max asked, surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a risky move,” the old gangster commented. “If negotiations don’t turn out, then we’ll be at war with them, too.”

  “We wouldn’t do anything that reckless,” I retorted, “and we’ll settle for Spezzafumo. I’m inclined to think that, without their boss, these two enforcers are going to find some new line of business.”

  “You’re an optimist,” said Max. “But it’s worth giving it a shot.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go on my own this time,” I declared.

  My friends burst out laughing. “We were actually hoping you’d spare us another meeting with that nasty old geezer.”

  I pretended to be surprised. “Tazio isn’t all that bad, for a fence.”

  I got in my car and headed toward Brescia, the interior of the Felicia vibrating with the sheer volume of the music. I was listening to Pork Chop Willie and doing my best to keep my mind off Cora. I was tempted to turn the car around and rush straight to her, but I knew I’d never do it. I had very different priorities at that moment and, in any case, getting a door slammed in my face was a very real risk. As well as the last thing I needed.

  The heat was intolerable and for once I found myself complaining about my un-air-conditioned Škoda. I made it to Brescia around lunchtime and went straight to the fence’s house. I hadn’t warned him and he was sure to be extremely annoyed to have his lunch interrupted.

  He lived in a villa surrounded by greenery in a residential neighborhood. The house was surrounded by a small, well-tended yard, but the windows on the ground floor were protected by metal bars and, on the second floor, by bulletproof glass. These days, even a
major local crime boss was forced to take defensive measures against burglars.

  His granddaughter opened the door. “We’re eating lunch,” she politely pointed out. “Couldn’t you come back later? Maybe after my grandfather’s had his nap?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Please tell him that it’s Buratti and that this is an emergency.”

  I waited a couple of minutes and then I was ushered into a tiny sitting room which, to judge from the magazines scattered over the coffee table, must have been Bonetti’s wife’s favorite place in the house.

  Tazio walked in, in sandals and a tank top. “Fuck, I was eating lunch,” he complained.

  “Sit down, Tazio,” I said, cutting him off.

  “You’re in my house,” he shot back, belligerently.

  I came straight to the point. “If the widow Oddo and Spezzafumo were going to put their gang back together and plan a job, who would they turn to, to fence the gold?”

  He froze for a couple of seconds, staring at me, then he went to shut the door. “Why are you bothering to ask? You already know the answer.”

  “I want to be straight with you,” I said. “We ordered Spezzafumo and his two young partners in crime to retire from the business, and they chose to ignore us. Moreover, Nicola threatened us, and now the situation has been compromised. There’s no avoiding a clash. Are you all sure you want to be involved?”

  Bonetti tried to talk reason to me. “The plan dates back at least a year, but they never felt safe and they kept putting it off until now. They came to see me, I talked it over with the others, and now we’re ready to unload the swag. There’s a hell of a lot of money at stake. Can’t you cut each others’ throats afterwards?”

  I ignored the question because it was likely to bring the conversation to an end. I pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “There’s no smoking in here,” he informed me as he reached out for a heavy crystal ashtray that looked as if it hadn’t been used for years.