“Sure it is.”
“And restaurants are closed on Mondays, Tito. Your place is closed on Mondays.”
“Is that right? Is today really Monday?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Now, you tell me—”
“Just think what an asshole you are, Tito. You come down here to buy fresh fish on the day your place is closed.”
The fat man started whining. Then sobbing. Then he burst into the open, melodramatic wailing that Malatesta knew by heart.
“Colonel, I’m up to my neck in shit. I’m running on fumes.”
“Honestly, that’s pretty old news.”
“The Three Little Pigs have stripped the flesh off me. What was I supposed to do? I had no alternative, the state I’m in, Colonel! They’re going to take my restaurant away from me.”
“That’s just terrible. The news comes as quite a shock.”
“They just told me to wait for this sailboat . . . ”
“Ah, so you’re waiting for a sailboat, not a trawler, not a fishing boat. And who told you to come down here with the van? What are you supposed to load?”
“No, I meant to say something else.”
“There, you see, I was right after all. You’re really just a poor asshole, Tito.”
“And now what’s going to happen?”
“What’s going to happen? You’re going to rest up for a while.”
“In prison?”
“What do you think? In fact, you know what let’s do? Let’s just smoke another nice cigarette and we’ll wait for it together, this boat. After all, it seems to me, we’re already here.”
The silhouette of the Runa, by now, could be clearly made out in the roadstead just off the mouth of the channel. The sails were furled, the running and anchor lights were on, and the water at its bow was just slightly ruffled by its three knots of headway. On deck, you could just make out two silhouettes. One was standing, working one of the two stern rudders, the other was crouching just to the port of the boom, which was bound to the cockpit by a taut bundle of shrouds.
Malatesta smiled. Uttered under his breath, the words merged with the nebulized gust of water vapor that he exhaled, a gauge of the dampness and chill of the night that surrounded them.
“Dear Max and Farideh, welcome home.”
“What did you say, Colonel?”
“Tito, don’t tell me you don’t even know the friends you’ve been waiting for.”
“To tell the truth, Colonel . . . ”
Malatesta raised his pea coat lapel to his mouth.
“Now, Northeast. Now.”
The beams of two powerful spotlights lit up Runa as bright as broad daylight, with a cold, blinding glare. For a moment, the man at the helm seemed to be frozen in a flash of sudden frenzy, as he attempted a fruitless about-ship, revving the engines and turning the wheel. Three police speedboats appeared abaft of the two-masted sailboat, turning on their flashing blue lights. An amplified voice ordered the skipper to ride in slowly to the wharf.
In just seconds the wharf was alive with Carabinieri, while Malatesta asked Maggio to get busy hauling on the hawsers that had been tossed from the cockpit of the Runa toward a large rusty bollard.
“Come on, Maggio! You’re not going to make us do all the work, are you? We seafarers like to help each other out.”
Max had switched off the motors and, standing in the cockpit, clutched Farideh to him as if she were a castaway. Preceded by a couple of uniformed Carabinieri, and by Alba Bruni, all of them with their firearms leveled, Malatesta presented himself with his badge held high.
“We all know each other, unless I’m mistaken. And let’s not forget that we ran into each recently at the restaurant of a mutual friend, didn’t we, Tito?” he said, turning to Maggio, who was standing on the wharf, extending his pudgy wrists to be handcuffed.
Farideh’s voice was throbbing with tears.
“Max, what does this mean? What’s happening?”
But there came no answer. Malatesta tried to prompt her.
“I’d like to know what’s happening myself, Farideh. Maybe, if Max doesn’t know how to explain it all, you can help out.”
The girl shook her head. In her eyes, the colonel could read the anguish of someone looking out over the abyss.
“Come on, Max, since when have you developed a taste for autumn cruises?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Well that’s a bad idea on your part.”
With a wave of his hand, Malatesta ordered the drug-sniffing dogs aboard the Runa.
“How long do you think it’s going to take them to find the cargo?”
Farideh grabbed Max and shook him.
“What cargo? My love, what cargo is he talking about?”
“Come on, Max, didn’t you hear her? Do it for love. Provided the two of you aren’t staging an impressive masquerade, and I still wouldn’t rule that out, why don’t you tell Farideh what kind of cargo I’m talking about. Come on, speak up. I’m sure that you’re a sincere kind of guy. And I’m sure that you also told her all about the night last summer when you brutalized her father in Romanina. Didn’t you?”
Farideh fell with a scream, huddling at the bottom of the cockpit in a fetal position. Every muscle in her body stiffened, her legs kicking frantically as if she were having an epileptic fit. Max watched her for a long time as she was helped gently into the back seat of a patrol car, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Then he turned to lock eyes with the colonel.
“You’re a bastard, Malatesta.”
“You think? I only see one bastard aboard this boat. And he’s standing right in front of me. Let me ask you one last time, you fucking dickhead. Where is the shit?”
Belowdecks, the drug-sniffing dogs were going wild, and they’d started scratching at an exact place on the sailboat’s internal bulkheads.
“Find it yourself.”
The voice of one of the ROS men called out to Malatesta.
“We’ve got it, Colonel. Take a look.”
The soldier pointed to the gauges of the potable water tank, indicating that the thousand-liter tank was full to the brim. Malatesta went back to the cockpit. Max had been handcuffed, his hands behind his back.
“You made that poor girl go without water. Three days aboard this ocean liner and you never drank so much as a drop of water. You didn’t even let her take a shower, what the fuck. Nice going, Max. You’re done for.”
They marched him off, pushing his head down with a hand to the back of his neck, while the ROS cameraman was capturing footage of the arrest that general headquarters would hand out in time for the midnight newscasts. The specialists were working with axes and oxyacetylene torches on the water tanks in the Runa. On the wharf, there was no one left in handcuffs but Maggio.
“Colonel, what should we do, take him away, too?”
“No, he’ll wait with me. Won’t you, Tito? An hour more or an hour less doesn’t make any difference. After all, the Rome Hotel never closes. Let’s see what you were supposed to pick up. You must be curious too, no?”
Marco stayed on the wharf in the old port until one in the morning. Until the last brick of cocaine had been extracted from the false bottoms built into the Runa’s water tanks and loaded into the Carabinieri’s Land Rover Defenders. Until even the car taking away the handcuffed Maggio had vanished down the road to Rebibbia prison. That pain in the ass had never stopped whining and whimpering for a second.
“Colonel, oh my God, Colonel, don’t ruin me. No one ever told me a thing. If you do this it’ll kill me, Colonel . . . ”
As he climbed into his car, Malatesta switched on the radio to cleanse his brain of that repulsive litany. The lead stories on the late-night radio news broadcast all had to with the sensational drug-smuggling bust. And once he’d heard enough, Mala
testa turned down the volume and put his smartphone on speaker. There was just one last thing to get out of the way. Maybe the most important thing of all.
“Hello, Roberto? This is Marco. I hope I didn’t wake you up. Do you have a minute to talk to me?”
Roberto Zanni was the head of DIGOS (General Investigations and Special Operations Division). They’d known each other for years. They were the same age, and they’d grown up in two rival operations, so they’d eventually learned to respect each other. In time, they’d even become friends. Though that was not for general consumption. Most important of all, it didn’t hurt their friendship that Roberto was as diseased a fan of A. S. Roma as Marco was.
“Ciao, Marco. As for being awake, I’m wide awake, and I certainly have the minute in question, but if you’re calling me up to bust my balls about the championship, let’s make it some other day, okay?”
“Don’t worry, Roberto, I wanted to talk to you about—”
“About the brilliant move you just pulled at Fiumicino? What are you doing, calling to get congratulations?”
“Roberto, what do you say I hang up right now, call you back, and we can start over, would that work?”
“Sorry, Marco, I always assume you’re a little less of an asshole than you actually are.”
“Listen up, I have a video that would interest you. Something you guys are working on.”
“What in particular?”
“The incidents at St. John Lateran.”
“Well?”
“What would you say about a Carabinieri marshal who beats an innocent person black and blue, draws up a false arrest report, and defames that person with false evidence?”
“What is this, a practical joke?”
“Never been more serious in my life.”
“How come this time you decided not to wash your dirty laundry at home?”
“It wasn’t something ‘we’ decided. It was something ‘I’ decided.”
“I understand. We never talked, and I found the film online.”
“And you think I’m the asshole.”
“Go fuck yourself, Marco.”
“One more thing. Your marshal is the one in the camelhair overcoat. His name is Terenzi. Terenzi, Carmine: he’s on staff at the Cinecittà station. And the girl is called Savelli. Savelli, Alice. And she’s in Rebibbia prison.”
“Do you want to come over and take my place? Maybe you could write the report yourself. You know I’m not a stickler about these things.”
“I love you, my friend. Give me an hour and the flash drive with the video will be on your desk. That way tomorrow morning you can get to work bright and early.”
XLIX
Two hours of sleep that were more like a duel to the death between his adrenaline and his sense of guilt. A completely shitty condition for Marco Malatesta: to be unable to enjoy his well-deserved triumph, to feel no joy at the thought of Rapisarda’s long face, to feel like pounding his head against the wall at the idea that he had ever doubted Alice. The thought of her, innocent, sitting in a jail cell and the thought of his own blindness wouldn’t let him alone. His brilliant move had suddenly catapulted him into the dizzying, stellar heights of the untouchables. Rapisarda had been muzzled. Thierry was delighted. Michelangelo de Candia was excited and ironic, though he remained too much of a gentleman for a sarcastic and richly deserved “what did I tell you?” Untouchable, certainly. He had the clear sensation that he was going to remain untouchable for a long, long time, because that confiscation, more than just a commendable exploit, was a full-fledged turning point. A result, to use the terminology of the bureaucrats who infested the Carabineri corps, just as they did every other vital nerve center of the Italian state. But most important of all, the first crack in the wall of a system that had long seemed completely invulnerable.
And yet, unless he was misremembering his readings in the mystical period, a time when he moved along cheerfully from Howl to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “untouchable” is an ambiguous term: it describes not only those who are too high above the masses to be besmirched by suspicion and slander, but also those who are too low to be considered worthy of the slightest interest.
Untouchable means to be alone. Deplorably alone.
And the idea that solitude amounts to the splendor of eagles, the clear-eyed, indecipherable gaze of the wise man, well, that was just more of the Fascist nonsense that he would gladly leave to Samurai and his comrades.
He’d disappointed her, no question. No, even worse. He’d betrayed her.
Had he lost her, too?
Alice would be released from jail that afternoon. Enough time to allow his friend Zanni to make his own brilliant move, and to let Setola swallow the bitter pill of her release.
He wanted to be there, and he was going to make sure that he was. Perhaps all was not lost. And, in any case, dodging out the side door at the moment of truth would be the act of a coward.
In the meantime, only a solid dose of hard work would be enough to stave off the demons of anxiety. And so, equipped with an authorization issued by de Candia, at exactly eight thirty that morning he was standing at the front gate of Rebibbia prison. Impeccably shaved, hair neatly combed, and with the mask of martial composure he usually wore when he had something to hide, he had Max summoned to the private interview room.
The young man must not have been having a much better time of it than he, at least to judge from his pallor, the dark circles under his eyes, his unkempt hair, and the first whiffs of the smell of confinement that wafted off his muscular body. Max had never been behind bars before. He’d get used to it quickly enough, the colonel decided. He was looking at a nice, long vacation. Unless he had other plans.
“Buongiorno, Nicce. How does a superman enjoy himself at the New Rome Hotel? Did you sleep well?”
The other man’s icy glare made it clear that, for the moment, there was no point in talking about other plans. Max was putting on his hard-guy persona. But you could never say for sure. He’d seen plenty of hard guys cave in. Professional armed robbers. Heartless murderers. Among the younger Mafiosi and Camorristi, after all, there had been a period when it was all the rage to turn state’s witness. To such an extent that the government had turned to stalling maneuvers, Marco thought back sarcastically, hastening to churn out a series of rules and regulations that made it increasingly difficult for bad guys to turn to conversion. So much the better, though. If Max really was a tough guy, it would become clear in the fullness of time. In the meantime, he could still put forward a proposition or two.
“Don’t waste my time, kid. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll keep Farideh out of this mess.”
“She has nothing to do with any of this,” the “philosopher” replied in a rush.
“Convince me,” Marco replied, “that’s why I’m here.”
“I give you my word.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“So what is it you want, exactly?”
“We could start with your friend, for example. Samurai.”
Max seemed to take a few minutes to think it over. Marco sensed an opening. He dug into his pocket for the pack of Camels and offered him one. Max grabbed the ciggie and rolled it around in his fingers. The colonel clicked his lighter into flame. Max crushed the cigarette into crumbs and blew the shreds of tobacco at him.
“You’re a piece of shit, pig. You’re much worse than I am.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He put the pack down on the table, got to his feet with studied leisure, tossed his head to summon the marshal who stood outside the interview room, keeping an eye on them, and had him open the armor-plated door.
Max continued to sit there, motionless, doing nothing but eyeing him with contempt.
“Think it over. The offer is still good.”
T
his was followed by hours of cigarettes, pointless walks, and rides on his motorcycle. Marco switched off his cell phone. But it was his brain that refused to be quieted.
Was he playing dirty with Farideh? Was there a real possibility that she really had known nothing about the boatload of cocaine? To hell with that, the girl had eyes in her head. There was a metric ton of shit aboard the Runa. But what if she was nothing more than a naïve young girl who’d fallen in love with the wrong man? Well, it was his duty to squeeze every last drop out of that story. He couldn’t let himself get swept away by sentimentalism. Still, perhaps, he might be making a mistake with Farideh. Just like he’d been wrong about Alice.
And there it was: his thoughts turned back to her. His obsession. The hours ticked by with exasperating slowness. He turned back on his cell phone. Congratulatory text messages and emails, one from the Minister of the Interior in person, the Northern League representative with the red-framed eyeglasses who believed in a “free Padania” and who now governed all Italians in uniform. Five unanswered phone calls from general headquarters. Maybe that was Thierry. Or else, who could say, it might be Rapisarda. Two saccharine text messages from Alba. One teasing text from Zanni, dismissing him as a misguided S.S. Lazio fan. Any other time he’d have called him back, and they would have wound up exchanging opinions over a couple of cold beers. He turned off the phone again. On impulse, he stopped and bought two dozen red, red roses from a Sinhalese flower vendor on Via Tiburtina.
He still had a half hour to wait. He parked the Bonneville within sight of the gate of the Rebibbia Women’s Wing and unwrapped his third pack of the day.
A young man with a ponytail pulled up in a fancy little city car. Diego from the Rebel Dragons. They shot each other hostile glares, then settled down to wait at a safe distance.
Twenty minutes. Out of the gate emerged a procession of official cars. He thought he glimpsed the silhouette of the assistant district attorney Setola. He turned away, and immediately regretted that instinctive move. What, was he ashamed? Of Alice? Diego was keeping an eye on him. He started to head in his direction, then changed his mind.
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