“Namaste, Tito!”
Inside the lieutenant colonel a rage that was as savage as it was healthy began to build up. No, no, no diplomatic leave, no “I’m dropping everything and quitting this job,” nothing of the kind. In war, turning on your heels is known as desertion. And this, fucking hell if it’s not a war.
“There’s one thing you were right about, Samurai. Rome no longer has a master. Not even you know how to keep these dogs on a leash. I’ll start over from them. And I’ll nail you.”
Samurai cocked an eyebrow. Too bad. Marco still didn’t understand. The rules of the game had changed.
“La Paranza was no longer the place it used to be. Lately, you couldn’t get a decent meal here. Poor Tito, he was getting old. We’ll see you again soon, Marco.”
Out on the street, shortly thereafter.
While RIS strung fluorescent tape around the perimeter of La Paranza’s front door, Marco took one last glance at Scipione, kneeling in the puddle of his son’s blood, and at Tito Maggio’s corpse, which the rigidity of death was now turning even more grotesque in the stupefied grimace of his final farewell.
Bruni and Brandolin had arrived as well, and he had nothing more to say to them than a few gruffly muttered routine instructions and an appointment to meet the next day in the offices at Ponte Salario. Then he trudged off in the direction of Via del Gonfalone, where he had parked his Bonneville.
Rome was deserted. The night was chilly and the air was redolent with wood smoke, the wood they still burned in the fireplaces of the “important” palazzi of the historical center. How long had it been since he’d lit a fire in the fireplace, he wondered. When was the last time he’d allowed himself an evening of peace and quiet, letting his thoughts stop tormenting him for a change?
He crouched over the starter of the Bonneville and waited until it grumbled into life and the two chrome-plated exhaust pipes began to spit out white puffs.
The noise disturbed a seagull that was digging its beak into the carcass of a pigeon. The seagull seemed to glare at him, a long, angry look. Then it flew up into the air, squawking out its anger.
With slow, ritualistic gestures, Marco pushed his hands into the gloves, tugging them tight, fastened the chin strap of his jet helmet with the Union Jack emblazoned on the back, lowered the Plexiglas visor, and raised the pashmina scarf over his nose; that scarf reminded him of the other life, from which he had decided to return to settle this account.
The clack of first gear echoed in the silence of the alley behind the family courts building, though it was not loud enough to drown out the sound of an engine starting, the engine of a vehicle that, in the shadows, he did not immediately recognize as an SUV, an SUV that followed him with its lights out until it emerged onto Lungotevere dei Tebaldi.
As he was riding upstream along the river, passing one bridge after another and the blinking traffic lights that separated him from the Lungotevere Flaminio, he started keeping an eye in the ovals of his rearview mirrors on a pair of headlights that had had been following him at a constant rate of speed.
When he reached Ponte Duca d’Aosta, Marco felt sure that the car that was following him was still with him. He could have just pulled over, made a single call on his cell phone, and put an end right then and there to that undisguised tail, that threatening dance. But he didn’t. He turned his eyes to the far bank of the Tiber, to the Olimpico Stadium immersed in the darkness, and thought back to the words Samurai had uttered on the day their eyes had met again after many years.
“Forget about the motorcycle. You’re too old for that now, Marco. And Rome is a dangerous city.”
He rapidly downshifted into fourth and then third gears, twisting the throttle and heading straight for the stretch of the Lungotevere Thaon di Revel that led to the on-ramp to Corso di Francia. He shouted as if trying to drown out that other piercing scream. The scream of the horsepower throbbing under his saddle.
“I know that it’s you. I know that it’s you. Come and get me. Come and get me!” he shouted, rising to a standing position on the footpegs.
The SUV shortened the distance between them in a matter of seconds, and at the beginning of Corso di Francia the distance between the bumper of the huge roaring beast and the fairing of the Bonneville narrowed to a few yards. Marco stared at the straightaway ahead of him. He remembered the nights they’d spent as kids pulling wheelies on that kilometer of asphalt, defying the cement and marble of the parapets of the viaduct that loomed above the river.
The SUV swerved into the left lane and pulled up parallel to him. The needle on the Bonneville’s tachometer shot up into the red zone, while the massive wheels of the SUV came dangerously close to touching the front tire of his motorcycle.
Marco revved the engine, rearing up on his rear wheel to avoid impact. The SUV swerved to the right. The noise of the impact that followed was like the last sound of a wasted life.
Malatesta staggered to his feet. Blood was filling his mouth and drenching the pashmina scarf. His left leg was burning with a stabbing pain. He decided not to look down. He hurled his helmet into the distance and, looking up, saw that the SUV had finished its run and had come to a stop just fifty feet or so from where the Triumph Bonneville had been pulverized as it slammed into the asphalt. The SUV had wrapped itself around a traffic light. From the half-open driver’s side door, a man was trying to extricate himself from the interior.
Malatesta grabbed a piece of wreckage from the ground. It must have once been the motorcycle’s clutch handle. The impact with the asphalt had turned it into a sharpened icepick.
When he reached the SUV he saw him.
Samurai, of course.
He started pounding the chunk of razor-sharp steel clutched in his right fist against the car door, and then against the driver’s side window, which finally exploded into shards.
Face-forward on the airbag, the driver seemed unconscious. Samurai’s face was a mask of blood. Malatesta grabbed him with a vast surge of hatred and dragged him out of the car. His legs must be broken, because he collapsed like a sack. Supine on the asphalt, Samurai stared up at him without a whimper, eyes wide open. Marco spat on his face, freeing his mouth of clots of mucus and blood. Then, with just his right leg, the only one he could still control in terms of force and movement, he started stamping down on his ankles and shins.
A stream of tears inundated Samurai’s eye sockets.
“Do it, Marco. Do it now, or there will never be another chance.”
Malatesta raised the icepick high, then suddenly felt the impact of a massive hurtling body as it sent him slamming to the ground.
Sprawled on one side, he lifted his head and met Samurai’s gaze. Captain Alba Bruni was handcuffing Samurai’s hands behind him. Then Marco turned toward the man who had kept him from ruining his life. Or doing justice.
“Are you all right, Colonel?”
“Never better, Brandolin.”
“You missed your opportunity, Marco.”
Samurai’s gasping wheeze reached him, tangled up with the piercing screeches of the seagulls. They both came out of the night. Or out of who knows where.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Carlo Bonini is a staff writer at the Italian national daily, La Repubblica.
Giancarlo De Cataldo is the author of the bestselling novel, Romanzo Criminale, an essayist, the author of numerous TV screenplays, and a judge on the circuit court of Rome.
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