by Tobias Jones
I shook my head.
‘Name?’
‘Castagnetti. I’m a private investigator.’
She looked at me like she wanted to ask more questions. She picked up the phone instead. ‘Someone here to see Gianni,’ she barked. ‘I know, I know. Shall I send him up anyway?’
I couldn’t hear the reply, but when she hung up she nodded towards the lift. ‘Eighth floor,’ she said.
‘All these magazines are part of the Sogni stable, right?’
She nodded.
‘Who owns Sogni?’
‘Mario Di Angelo. He’s got more titles than a medieval monarch.’ She didn’t smile as she said it, but picked up the phone again, ready to make another call.
I took the lift up to the eighth floor and came out into a reception area with frosted glass doors in all directions. The girl behind the front desk was cute and knew it.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I’m here to see Gianni Esposito,’ I said.
‘He’ll be busy all day today. You got an appointment?’
I shook my head. She looked at me like there wasn’t a chance, so I showed her a copy of my badge. She looked nonplussed, but stood up and walked through one of the glass doors, moving like she was trying to swat flies with her hips.
I went and sat down, picking up a copy of Desire’s latest issue. It only took a couple of minutes to read. It was almost all photos, the usual sort of stuff at this time of year: minor stars sunbathing topless on a distant yacht, some actor who had a new squeeze, a few collages from parties in Sardinia and Forte. I only recognised a couple of the faces or names.
The girl came back and told me that Esposito would see me in a few minutes. She went and sat back at her computer and tapped away. The first time the phone rang she put on a headset so she could answer it without taking her hands off the keyboard. Her voice was from the streets of Rome, a hard, gurgling voice that sounded like it wouldn’t take any shit but could certainly dish it out.
It was quarter of an hour before Esposito came in. He had grey hair cut so short that it was only visible as white specks against his tanned scalp. His face was unnaturally tanned and what looked like a muscular torso was squeezed into a shiny mauve shirt.
‘You Castagnetti?’
I stood up and nodded. He held out a hand and he looked at me with curiosity.
‘Come on. It’s press day. I haven’t got much time.’
He walked back the way he had come, expecting me to follow like a faithful dog. He led me into an office with a large plasma screen showing some muted talk show. There were piles of newspapers and invitations and DVDs in all directions. He walked over to a water cooler and filled a small plastic cup. ‘What’s this about?’ He sat behind his desk and motioned with his chin that I should sit on a chair the other side.
‘A young girl’s gone missing. She’s called Simona Biondi. I’ve been hired to find her.’
He shrugged. ‘Who’s she?’
‘An eighteen-year-old girl.’
He flicked the bottom of a soft packet of cigarettes and put an emerging filter tip in his mouth. ‘How can I help?’ The cigarette bounced up and down as he spoke.
‘She’s with a man. Someone you know. Or did. Fabrizio Mori.’
He put his head back, looking at the ceiling. He rolled his jaw left and right so that the thin cigarette moved like the needle of a metronome. He leant forward and flicked open a lighter and brought the flame to the cigarette. ‘Mori, eh? Haven’t heard of him for twenty years.’ He sucked deeply and then turned to the side as he exhaled white smoke. ‘You got a photo of this girl?’
I passed over the shot from the magazine.
‘Cute. Very cute.’ He looked at the paper, turned it over like he recognised the magazine. ‘Was she in the business?’ He waved a vertical index round the office to imply, I guessed, the world of glamour.
I shook my head. ‘Mori saw this snap when it was published and moved in on her. I’m trying to work out why, understand what he saw in her.’
‘Probably what most men see in a girl that age.’ He said it wistfully, as if he wished men wouldn’t waste themselves on young girls.
‘Mori was in the blackmailing business. That’s how he made his money. Secret snaps of secret vices. I heard you used to help him out.’
Esposito fixed me with a stare and slowly started to smile. ‘Is that why you’re here? You think I’m something to do with snatching this girl?’
I moved my head left and right. ‘No. But I think you were involved in something twenty years ago, and I’ve got a hunch this case is connected.’
He dragged hard on his cigarette and blew out the smoke like an act of defiance. ‘The only mistake I ever made with Mori all those years ago was trying to help out some friends.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Listen, sweetie, I get sent snaps all day every day.’ He opened a drawer and threw a pile of stills angrily in my direction. I looked through them: naked shots of beautiful women, a man bent over a line of powder, a couple groping in the dark. ‘Every day photographers are hustling, trying to get me to buy shots of famous people. Every day I get sent this shit.’
‘And?’
‘I can make or break someone’s career. Put a flattering shot on the cover and they’re made. Put one of those somewhere and they’re ruined. You follow? I’ve got enormous power and they know it.’
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to finish. He clearly liked his power, the possibilities of playing God with the stars.
‘A lot of these people are my friends. These are the people I hang out with.’ He ran off a list of names that I sort of recognised. ‘We go out together, they invite me to their parties and onto their yachts.’
‘So?’ I said impatiently.
‘When I get sent that sort of shit,’ he jutted his chin towards the snaps on my lap, ‘I let them know they need to be more discreet. I warn them that someone in their circle is taking the piss.’
‘The way I heard it, you were part of a dummy auction for these sort of snaps, upping the price so that Mori made a nice profit and shared it with you.’
His eyelids hung low on his eyes like he was bored with me. He crushed the butt into a large white ashtray and stared at me. ‘You heard wrong. I never publish this sort of stuff. Never would. Not unless someone deserves it.’
‘What would they have to do to deserve it? Not invite you onto their yacht?’
He threw me an issue of his magazine. ‘I made most of these people. Most of them love me for it, but one or two are ungrateful. They forget who made them, who put them up there.’
‘And they’re the ones you bring low?’
‘I’ll occasionally publish the truth about them.’ He shrugged. ‘Mori wanted me to publish compromising shots of some of my close friends. All I did was warn them what he was up to.’
‘Filippo Marinelli?’
‘Yeah, sure, I called him. Told him some punk was trying to ruin his career. Told him the name of the guy and suggested he keep things a bit more discreet. And for that I was dragged through the courts, subjected to years of judicial bullshit. And I was cleared of all charges. Cleared of all charges,’ he said again, more slowly.
The phone rang and he snatched it up. He barked some instructions and slammed the handset down again. He paused, recollected himself and pulled a false smile. ‘Are we done?’
‘Not quite. Mori was working with a girl called Anna Sartori.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, his smile turning nasty. ‘I remember her.’
‘She went missing soon after things blew up.’
‘You’re not going to blame that on me as well, are you?’
I shrugged. ‘You ever meet her?’
He had a look of wry amusement. ‘I had seen her in the snaps. Seen quite a lot of her, if you see what I mean. She certainly put herself about, didn’t she?’
‘You ever meet her?’
He ran a palm across his shaved scalp. ‘Sure. Just t
he once.’
‘When was that?’
‘Before the so-called scandal broke. She must have known her handler Mori was sending me those snaps and she,’ he chuckled quietly to himself, ‘wanted to make sure I printed them. You know, most girls wouldn’t want those sort of sordid pictures in public, but she was desperate for it, she was sure they were her ticket to the big time. You know, there she was – topless, even naked, cavorting with some politician or footballer. She was shameless. Was desperate for me to run them in the magazine.’
‘And you didn’t?’
‘Of course not. Those people are my friends.’ He wagged his index finger as if it were out of the question. ‘We deal with glamour here, not pornography.’
‘I thought it was all the same.’
His grin was condescending, as though he were surprised he even had to explain to me how things worked. ‘Glamour is about dreams, aspirations, lifestyle, fashion . . .’
‘Frolics,’ I said. ‘Fantasies, flesh.’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head from one side to the other like he was watching a game of tennis. ‘It’s about taste. Aesthetics. Those snaps were sordid, the sort of sleaze we’re completely opposed to.’
‘So she came in here, hoping to persuade you to publish. You gave her your little sermon about glamour – and?’
‘She started telling me her life story, how she had come to Rome with Mori and how they had tried to get her into the glamour game. Or that’s what she thought he was doing. But she had discovered he was using her, making money by keeping her out of the press rather than getting her into it. She started crying, you know, all the waterworks. I tried to console her.’
‘Is that all you did?’
He grinned, showing me his perfect teeth. ‘That’s not my thing. And that, by the way, is why people trust me. I don’t interfere with any of the girls here. I prefer consoling young men, if you follow.’
‘So, what happened then?’
‘Sartori wanted the same as all of them, wanted to get on TV. I knew the guy who worked as the studio manager over at Di Angelo’s station and put them in touch.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Guy called Tony Vespa.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s like the bouncer for the floor shows. He used to be the handler for all those young girls.’
‘And he still works for Di Angelo?’
‘Sure. Always has, always will. He’s been his fixer for decades. His job back then was to find the girls for those crazy shows, to find the dancers and strippers and the like. Normally they would be taken to Di Angelo for vetting, if you know what I mean. He liked to meet them in the flesh. Just the flesh.’ He laughed at his little joke.
‘So you introduced Anna Sartori to this man Vespa, the fixer at the TV studios?’
‘Right. And that was more or less the last I heard of her.’
‘Until . . . ?’
‘Until I heard she had gone missing.’ He stared at his desk as if that was the decent thing to do. ‘Anything else?’
‘Where will I find Vespa?’
‘Vespa?’
‘Where does he live?’
Esposito hesitated and then leant forward and slowly rolled a wheel of index cards. I looked at his tanned fingers as he flicked through the cards. He stopped and pulled one out. He held it between his index and middle fingers and offered it over, pulling away when I made a move to take it.
‘I’ll need something in return.’
‘You want to console me too?’
‘You’re not my type.’ He smiled sarcastically. ‘I want to know what this is all about, where it goes. You’ve aroused my curiosity.’
‘Or your greed?’
He stared at me, waving the index card in his fingers like he was asking a question.
I shrugged wearily. ‘I’ve told you. A young girl has gone missing. It seems likely she’s with Mori. I suspect he’s putting the squeeze on someone but I don’t know why yet.’
He let me take the index card from his fingers. I looked at the address and passed it back.
‘Let me know what you find out, won’t you?’
I made a non-committal grunt and let myself out of his office.
‘See you around,’ I said over my shoulder as I retraced my steps back to the reception and the lift.
The next morning I went round to Tony Vespa’s place. It was a small villa that didn’t seem finished. It was trying hard to be Beverley Hills, but the result was a suburban building site. The bare bricks were unrendered and what should have been grand columns outside the house were still just steel supports. I rang the doorbell and peered through the window: there was a woman in knickers putting a silk gown on her shoulders.
She opened the door and looked at me. The gown was just hanging loosely on her shoulders so that most of her front was on show. She stood there provocatively, slightly side on so that I could see everything she had.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, like she was used to trouble. Her accent sounded East European.
‘I’m looking for Tony.’
She stepped aside, raising her hand inside the room as if I should come in. The action pulled her robe wide apart so that she might as well have been topless.
I walked past her and smelt the chlorine on her skin. The house looked expensively furnished: long white sofas, a large TV on the wall, a square, glass table with antiques lined up: large pots and dented coins.
‘He’s by the pool,’ the woman said, walking towards me as she belted up the gown.
I looked out through the double doors of the room and heard a remote splash. Through a hedge at the end of the lawn I could see specks of light blue. I walked out and followed the sound, rounding the hedge and ducking under a curling wisteria. He was there in the pool, gently swimming up and down. His head popped up out of the pool each time he drew breath, and each time he came up I got closer to realising where I had seen him before. He was the same thug who had attacked me in Mori’s little caravan.
‘Vespa,’ I shouted.
He didn’t hear me, but just kept on pulling himself towards the far end. I walked down there and stood waiting for him. Eventually, he got to the end of the pool, his knuckles holding on to the smooth, curving stone as he saw my feet. He looked up and seemed briefly confused. He pulled his hand down over his face to clear his eyes of water and looked at me again. Then he pulled himself out, his huge frame spilling water in all directions. He walked over to one of the white loungers and towelled himself off.
‘You’re the guy I met in Mori’s dump, right?’
‘Right.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you.’
‘Did you follow me here from that shitty campsite?’
‘No. I’ve been all over since then and the road leads back to you.’
‘Does it?’ He threw the towel down and looked at me. He had a barrel chest with grey hair. ‘Drink?’
‘Sure.’
‘Basia,’ he shouted impatiently. ‘Basia.’
The woman came round the hedge and stared at him. There was animosity in the body language.
‘Bring us drinks.’
She walked off towards a bamboo bar at the other end of the pool.
‘Your wife?’ I asked.
He sneered. ‘My concubine. You know what they say about no Italians wanting to do the dirty jobs any more. Well, it’s true. She’s Bulgarian.’
‘I thought you were surrounded by attractive young women.’
He stared at me, still sneering. ‘Who told you that?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Sit down.’ He jerked his chin towards a lounger. I sat on the edge, feeling precarious. ‘What are you after?’
‘I told you. I’m looking for a young girl who’s gone missing.’
‘What’s it got to do with me?’
‘You were looking for the man who’s abducted her.’
‘Still am,’ h
e said.
‘In the pool?’
He stared at me and then shouted furiously over to the woman in the short gown. ‘Where are those drinks?’
She brought over two large glasses with straws. Vespa put his hand under her gown and grabbed one of her buttocks as she gave him his drink. She pulled his hand off, muttering to herself in a foreign language as she walked away.
‘I’m still training her,’ he said.
‘You make her sound like an animal.’
‘She is.’ He nodded, smiling unpleasantly. ‘So?’
I took a sip of the drink. It was a strong, fruity cocktail. I put it down and stared at Vespa. ‘Let me tell you what I know and you tell me where I go wrong, OK?’
He assented with a twist of his head.
‘Fabrizio Mori,’ I said slowly, watching his reaction, ‘is a blackmailer. He’s spent his life gathering dirt so someone would pay him to bury it. There’s enough dirt around that he’s made a decent living in the past. He’s found some more dirt and you’re working for the man who is being blackmailed by Mori.’
Vespa threw his chin in the air to tell me to go on.
‘I guess you’re working for the TV magnate and now respectable politician, Di Angelo. He’s the man you’ve always worked for, from what I hear. He’s being blackmailed by Mori and he wants you to put a stop to it.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘is what Simona Biondi’s got to do with it.’
He looked at me, putting the straw of his drink in his mouth. He slurped deliberately loudly, as if defying me with his crude behaviour. Everything about him seemed vulgar. There was no veil cast over his lust, no disguise to his desires. But even that openness about his carnality seemed odd. It seemed like a front, only a pretence of honesty. It was the way he disguised something else.
‘What exactly does studio manager mean?’ I asked, losing patience with his insouciance.
‘Studio manager? I’m like a talent scout. I find the flesh, the skirt.’
‘All those showgirls who dance around but never speak?’
‘Yeah, something like that. It ruins the illusion if you let them talk. It’s fatal.’ He smiled to himself.
‘So you choose who goes on screen?’