The Master of Knots

by Massimo Carlotto

  The hotel had two other exits: the one used by staff and tradesmen, and via the garage. Twenty minutes later, one of us was posted at each exit. As soon as we saw the guy coming, we were to call the others on their cell phones. Donatella was the first to leave, by the main door. She saw me and gave me a wink—it had been an easy trick. Then came Blondy. He set off in the direction of the station, crossed the road, then turned down a side street. I followed him, keeping Rossini on the line while he caught up with me in his car. I watched as our man climbed into a large SUV and for a moment I was afraid we were going to lose him. Rossini drew up beside me just as Blondy was pulling away and we were forced to leave Max in Turin. I called him and told him to wait for us at Donatella’s apartment.

  Blondy drove nice and slowly, clearly not expecting to be followed. He led us to Milan, parking outside a gym in the Isola neighborhood. At that time of night it should have been closed, but as soon as he pressed the bell someone opened the door.

  ‘We’ve found their HQ,’ Beniamino said. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting the whole gang is in there watching Donatella on video.’

  ‘It’s not a bad cover,’ I remarked. ‘I can see now why they’re all in such great shape.’

  ‘Between push-ups and pumping iron, they organize some blackmailing, a few murders, and their S and M porn video business.’

  On the wall beneath the gym’s signboard there was a glass-fronted cabinet containing photos illustrating the different activities the gym offered. Despite the fact that the street was deserted, we decided to get out of the car and take a look. Rossini was armed, and if Blondy had seen and recognized us events would have spun out of control. Beniamino was twitching with impatience to settle matters.

  I took from my pocket the Ronson lighter, which I’d finally got around to refilling, and lit a cigarette. It was an excuse to light up the cabinet. There was a notice informing the gym’s patrons that it would remain closed till the first of September, after which their courses in all the latest gymnastic techniques would be starting up again. Courses were also available in one of the most ancient of martial arts, karate. The karate teacher, who had apparently studied in Japan, was called Bruno Chiarenza. There were quite a few snapshots showing him breaking piles of bricks, but there was one half-length portrait that let us get a much better look at him. He had a full, strong-willed face, icy blue eyes sunk in deep sockets beneath bushy eyebrows. He was wearing a kimono slightly open at the chest, revealing a glimpse of tattoo. The face of a geisha. Chiarenza was the Master of Knots. Rossini grunted with satisfaction and we went back to the car to wait, curious to see him in the flesh.

  Instead, it was only Blondy and the puny guy Docile Woman had identified as the gang’s cameraman. It was the cameraman we decided to tail, as Rossini was convinced he would prove to be the weak link in the Bang Gang’s whole operation. He climbed into a Ford Fiesta and headed for the ring road.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ I asked Rossini.

  ‘If he lives some place quiet, I’d like to invite him to take a ride with us.’

  ‘You think that’s a good idea? We know where to find them.’

  ‘Precisely. He can fill in the last details for us.’

  ‘I’m not convinced it’s the right move.’

  ‘It’s time to wrap this thing up.’

  The Fiesta stopped at the gate of an old house out in the country, not far from Lodi. We’d driven the last few miles with our headlights switched off, so he didn’t realize he had been followed until he felt Rossini’s gun at his neck. Rossini forced him into the back of our car while I got behind the wheel.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, terrified.

  Beniamino punched him in the stomach. ‘Shut up, dickhead.’

  I turned down a dirt road. After a while, Rossini signaled to me to pull up. He opened his door and dragged the cameraman out by his hair, then made him kneel and put the gun to the nape of his neck.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him, looking around. We were surrounded by vast fields of soya. Nobody was going to disturb us.

  ‘Ugo Giachino,’ he said faintly.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work for a commercial TV channel.’

  ‘And, in your spare time, you make S and M flicks, right?’ Beniamino asked.

  ‘That’s not true.’

  Rossini fitted the silencer then shot the guy in the foot. He screamed and collapsed on the ground.

  ‘If right now you don’t open that fucking mouth of yours I’m going to fill your legs as full of holes as a pasta strainer.’

  We smoked a cigarette, giving him time to pull himself together. He whimpered softly as he tried to plug the bleeding with his fingers.

  ‘I’ve got two kids,’ he blubbed. ‘Don’t kill me.’

  ‘It all depends on what you tell us,’ Beniamino lied. ‘If it interests us, we’ll let you go back to your brats.’

  It was Bruno Chiarenza who three years previously had had the idea of putting together a gang. He had been an S and M master for a long time, ever since his first trip to Japan, when he had become aware of—and given vent to—his sexual inclinations. Using his strong personality and charisma, he had gathered a group of four loyal initiates, carefully selected from the members of the gym. All of them viewed their karate instructor as a true spiritual guide. To dominate women and use them as slaves for their pleasure was the central purpose of all their lives. Their names were Graziano D’Introna, Franco Rocchi, Raimondo Fiorati, and Michele Narsi. It was Narsi who had asked Ugo to join the gang as cameraman—the two of them had got to know one another through S and M web-sites. The Master of Knots had decided to move into the illegal porn video business so they had needed a professional. Giachino swore on the heads of his children that he had never laid a finger on a slave. He was only interested in watching, and got excited looking through a camera lens. There was also a lot of money in it.

  To begin with, they had sold the tapes only to a limited circle of masters. Then Jay Jacovone, a Miami Mafia boss, had got involved, shifting the gang up a gear. Jacovone demanded images of fist-fucking and snuff footage, since that kind of material fetched a lot of money in the States and Canada. The Master of Knots gave him what he wanted. The women they blackmailed never rebelled, too terrified that the double lives they were leading might be made public. The gang had first made contact with Jacovone through Adelmo Pietronero, a Rome-based master who had ended up in jail in the States on porn-trafficking charges.

  ‘Maybe that was the guy we whacked along with Jacovone,’ Rossini interjected.

  ‘So that was you?’ Ugo exclaimed. ‘The Master thought it was Jay’s family that did him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said Jacovone had fucked things up for them in Miami and they’d never forgiven him.’

  ‘So who are you selling the tapes to now?’

  ‘Nobody. It’s all stopped.’

  ‘In that case, how come you’re on the lookout for fresh meat?’

  ‘The Master wants some new slaves.’

  ‘Tell us about Helena.’

  ‘You know a lot already.’

  ‘You have no idea how much.’

  ‘It was her husband who handed her over to us. Chiarenza wanted her to be in just the right psychological situation so he could fist-fuck her.’

  ‘Did Giraldi know his wife was going to be kidnapped?’

  ‘Sure. The Master was blackmailing him, too, but, in any case, he got off on the idea of Helena being dominated by other guys.’

  ‘And afterwards you killed him along with Barbie Slave, right?’

  ‘That was decided at the outset. It just sped things up a bit when Helena accidentally got killed.’

  ‘Where’s the tape you made this evening?’

  ‘At the gym.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

&n
bsp; Giachino didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Beniamino said. ‘You got any more questions for this piece of shit?’

  ‘Just the addresses of his accomplices.’

  Giachino reeled them off one after another, then he gave us an important piece of news. ‘The Master is off to Japan in a week’s time.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the information,’ I said.

  ‘Let me get to a hospital, will you?’

  ‘Wait a minute: first I want to sing you a little ditty,’ Rossini said.

  ‘Wh-what?’ Giachino stammered.

  ‘Just one little verse. You’ll see, you’ll like it:

  The King of Marabella

  Liked to dance the Tarantella

  But we, far wiser by half,

  Just had to laugh.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Giachino asked.

  ‘You really didn’t get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rossini said, pulling the trigger. We drove back to Turin and picked up Max from outside Donatella Morganti’s apartment block. ‘Boy, what a pain in the ass that woman is,’ Max scowled as soon as he had got in the car. ‘All she could do was keep asking me when I was going to leave.’

  ‘What did she tell you about how her trick went?’ I enquired.

  ‘The guy had some fun tying her up and then fucked her. Did you manage to tail the fair-haired guy?’

  I told Max what had happened after we had left him in Turin.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been so hasty,’ Max grumbled. ‘This guy’s death is sure to alarm the gang.’

  I agreed with Max and had been repeating the same point ad nauseam to Beniamino ever since we had left Lodi.

  ‘For now the main thing is to get our hands on the Master of Knots,’ Rossini retorted. ‘We know who all the other gang members are and I can deal with them in due course.’

  ‘If Chiarenza brings his departure forward, we’re fucked.’

  ‘Well, we couldn’t have known he was about to leave the country,’ Rossini said defensively.

  ‘Why don’t you just admit you couldn’t wait to kill somebody?’

  Rossini gave me a filthy look and I told him to go to hell.

  ‘Why don’t we go and drop in on Chiarenza right now?’ Max suggested. ‘The body won’t have been found yet.’

  ‘I got rid of the gun,’ Beniamino explained. ‘I couldn’t be wandering around with a gun I’d just used in a killing. Besides, I fancy something a little more powerful to deal with the Master of Knots.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That guy’s a black belt, and I’m not a kid anymore. I want to be using a weapon that doesn’t force me to come in too close and that blows the guy away at the first shot.’

  ‘You’ve seen too many Bruce Lee films,’ Max teased.

  ‘Do you remember that Dutch guy?’ Rossini asked me.

  I hadn’t thought about him for years, or about any of the other guys I had met behind bars. He had landed in jail after killing his wife on holiday in Italy. Like Chiarenza, he was a martial-arts expert. One day he had had an argument with a carabiniere officer assigned to the jail. The cop had returned with a whole team behind him and the Dutch guy had beaten the shit out of every one of them, and then coolly returned to his cell. To get him out of there they had had to use tear gas, after which they gave him the full Sant’Antonio: four or five of them beat him with batons as he lay on the ground with a blanket over his head. It put him in hospital for an entire month.

  The sun was high in the sky by the time we got to Padova. Rossini left for home, saying he would be back that afternoon. He was going to get the ‘tools’ he needed and grab some sleep.

  By seven that evening he still hadn’t shown up. I was worried so I phoned Sylvie, and she told me they had arrested him as soon as he arrived home. It turned out they had been waiting for him since five in the morning. For several minutes I couldn’t move a muscle. I was devastated. Beniamino was like a brother to me, and knowing he was in the hands of the police plunged me into the deepest despair. I held the cigarette lighter he had given me in my hand and squeezed hard. With tears welling in my eyes I went and knocked on Max’s door.

  ‘They’ve arrested Old Rossini.’

  Max also took it badly, and it was a while before he could speak. ‘There’s no way they can have connected him to the shooting of Ugo Giachino,’ he said after a long silence.

  I threw myself on the couch. ‘Give me a drink, will you?’

  ‘Now’s not the time,’ Max said angrily. ‘We need to speak to his lawyer and find out what he’s been charged with.’

  ‘I’d rather not. I don’t trust the man. After his old lawyer retired, Beniamino engaged a slick young go-getter.’

  ‘You mean the kind that’s all politics, willing to defend anyone if the price is right, and always alleging Communist manipulation every time a magistrate tries to raise the lid on the rich and powerful?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected an old gangster like Rossini to hire that kind of lawyer.’

  ‘Lawyers of the old school play far too clean to actually win trials and Rossini, given his criminal record, can’t afford to take chances.’

  ‘Then we’re going to have contact Bonotto.’

  I phoned Bonotto and arranged to meet him in a bar in the center of Padova. We found him sitting on a stool with a Negroni in his hand. He was talking with a couple of other customers and we had to hang around until they’d left.

  ‘A colleague of mine in Venice told me that Rossini has been charged with holding up a security van in Mestre last night,’ Bonotto explained. ‘The investigators have no evidence whatsoever, just Rossini’s previous convictions, but the fact is your friend hasn’t got an alibi, so naturally they feel entitled to hold on to him.’

  I was his alibi. Yet I could hardly go to the cops and declare that at the time in question we were in the middle of a field not far from Lodi bumping off a guy called Ugo Giachino.

  ‘Is there a chance of getting him released any time soon?’ Max asked.

  ‘When it comes to legal procedures, soon is a fuzzy concept,’ Bonotto said philosophically. ‘According to his defense lawyer, there is every reason to be optimistic about the eventual outcome and, when you’ve got a criminal record as long as your friend’s, that’s the main thing.’

  I felt like going around to Sylvie’s to try and cheer her up, but Old Rossini’s entire entourage had no doubt been placed under surveillance. Besides, I wouldn’t have known what to say to her. I felt so despondent I was finding it hard to keep focused. I wanted a drink. I needed a drink. But it wasn’t the right moment yet. Fat Max was reacting better than I was. We watched a couple of reports about the hold-up on the regional news. The security van, carrying cash bound for banks up and down the coast, had been held up by five gunmen at a junction on the Mestre bypass. They had used the well-worn trick of closing the carriageway with a truck jackknifed right across it, then they’d fired off a few Kalashnikov rounds at the van to persuade the guards to open the doors. It was a sizable haul and the cops had promised to find the perpetrators fast.

  ‘What are we going to do about the Master of Knots?’ Max suddenly asked.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest goddamn idea,’ I replied. It was the last thing I wanted to think about.

  ‘We’ll lose him for good if we hang around until Beniamino gets out.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I replied. ‘He’ll come back from Japan sooner or later.’

  Max looked me straight in the eye. ‘Do you really think he’s that stupid?’ he shouted. ‘By now he’ll know that Giachino has been killed and he’s sure to realize that somebody will have got him to spill the beans on the whole gang.’

  ‘Without Rossini, our hands are tied. Yo
u surely can’t imagine that the two of us could take him on.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon we could handle it.’

  I burst into nervous laughter. ‘The heat has melted your fucking brains. Neither of us has ever even held a gun.’

  ‘So? It can’t be that hard to pull a trigger.’

  ‘Cut out the bullshit, Max. We’ve had some rotten luck and now we have to pull back a bit.’

  Max stormed out, slamming the door.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ I yelled after him.

  Rossini’s arrest had unhinged Max, too. The truth was that without the old gangster’s help we weren’t up to tackling any really awkward investigative work. At most a case of marital infidelity or a hunt for runaway kids. Luckily, I had invested in La Cuccia at the right moment. But all I cared about right now was what was going to happen to Beniamino. It was a really bad time for me when Max was in prison. Someone dear to you behind bars is like a dead person who doesn’t come back to life until they’re released. I had no intention whatsoever of going through that again. Besides, I knew Old Rossini had sworn not to serve any more time, just as I had. No more prison. At any cost. I started shedding tears of rage and only alcohol calmed me down.

  The following morning I went to see Bonotto and asked him to phone his colleague in Venice again. He did so straight away. From Bonotto’s side of the conversation, I gathered that the police had found traces of gunpowder on Rossini’s clothes.

  ‘Things are getting complicated,’ the lawyer remarked.

  ‘He was with me the other night,’ I said. ‘Somewhere a long way from the scene of the holdup. He used a weapon . . . just to check it was working.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bonotto said neutrally. ‘And was the weapon he used of a different kind from that used by the security-van gang?’