“How much do you charge?”
“Depends. Anyway, I don’t have any intention of going with you.”
“Me neither. But I’m tired of staring up at you. I’m getting a cramp in my neck. If your price isn’t too high, I’ll pay you for the company.”
She pulled up a chair. “I’m not that desperate yet,” she said, a little hurt. “I can drink with whomever I want without charging a ‘price.’”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I hastened to say.
“I don’t like the word ‘price.’ Never liked it,” she said. “It’s off-putting.”
“I apologize,” I said again. I was beginning to realize that maybe she was worth taking a look at.
Blonde, blue-eyed, her full lips fire red. She was real pretty. She must have just turned forty. She had on a snug jacket that showed off her ample cleavage. She reminded me of someone, and when I leaned over the edge of the table to get a look at her legs, it became clear who.
“What’s with you?” she snapped. “I don’t like being looked at like that. You’re a real pig. Italians usually have better manners.”
I put up my arms. “I humbly beg your pardon. It’s just I haven’t seen a replica of Tempest Storm this perfect in a while,” I explained admiringly. “You’re something special, Edith.”
She relaxed, and for the first time let me get a glimpse of her smile. “I see you know what you’re talking about.”
The blues are to blame. Once, looking for a version of Allison Heartington’s “Blues Heart” on YouTube, I came across a video from 1955 featuring a B-list burlesque star whose stage name was Tempest Storm.
I’ve never been a fan of burlesque, but I’ve always liked busty pin-ups and seductive stars in classic movies.
“Now I’m curious to see what you’re really like.”
“What do you mean?”
I brushed the sleeve of her jacket. “You’re faking. You’re reciting a script. I want to meet you when you’re not working.”
She smiled again. “I thought you wanted to see me naked.”
“I admit I wouldn’t mind.”
“But first you want to see the normal version. You’re a one-step-at-a-time kind of guy.”
“Not always.”
She patted her blonde hair. “I’m a brunette.”
“I imagined.”
“Now I’m blonde. Everywhere.”
“I imagined that too.”
“You imagine a lot of things.”
“It happens when I meet a girl I like.”
“And I like being called a girl.”
“Can we see each other again?”
She hesitated.
“I’m not a john,” I said firmly. “I wouldn’t break any rules that didn’t need breaking.”
“People think girls like me are alone in the world and readily available,” she said. “But I could have a man, children, relatives, a dog, two cats. A life all my own.”
“You could. And I still wouldn’t want any part of it,” I repeated. “All I want is to know the other Edith.”
“Who said the real one is worth knowing.”
“I’ll be the one to decide.”
She leaned in and put her mouth to my ear. “Clients follow a script too,” she whispered, sending a shiver up my spine. “You really think getting to know one another would do either of us any good?”
I was relishing the moment. “Your questions are too complicated, and I don’t know how to answer them. But the way you ask is delicious.”
She laughed and stood up. “Sometimes, around eleven, I go have breakfast at Jonas Reindl Coffee on Währinger Straße,” she said. “I might just be there tomorrow.”
“And I might just pass by.”
I kept my eyes on her ass as she left. I was intrigued, even if I’d used her presence to get shed of the disgust I felt after having had to interact with the deplorable likes of Abo.
I signaled the bartender to bring me the check. As I was paying I inquired about Edith.
“Nice, right? I’ve known her since I started working here,” he said. “She’s one of Frau Vieira’s girls.”
I was caught off guard. Prostitution is legal, regulated, and taxed in Austria.
“I thought she worked out of pocket.”
His tone changed. “Here in Vienna only repped whores set foot in luxury hotels.”
‘Repped.’ I turned the word over. Funny way of saying exploited by a madam.
I took out the phone Martinenghi gave me and called him.
“Trouble?” he asked in a sleepy voice.
“Sorry, Pierino, I’m just calling about a personal matter. What can you tell me about Frau Vieira?”
“A fucking madam?” he said, irritated. “You woke me up to ask about hookers in Vienna?”
“Just Frau Vieira.”
“Can’t we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Now is better.”
He sighed. “She’s an old Portuguese harpy. Arrived in Vienna thirty years ago. Got her start streetwalking in Prater before establishing a sophisticated organization backed by the cops.”
“I thought pimping was obsolete under the new law.”
“Only in legit brothels,” he explained, “but hookers mainly work outside in designated areas. There are only two in Vienna, and protection has become necessary, not so much for their safety but to keep the women in check. The majority come from the East believing they’ll find a job and instead wind up on the street.”
The same old story. “Thanks for the information, Pierino.”
“I don’t know how it’s of help, but I recommend you give Frau Vieira a wide berth.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s deceitful, perverse, cruel,” he replied, drawing out each word. “And her men, all Portuguese like her, are dangerous. Everyone who underestimated them, who thought they were dealing with the usual pimps that only asserted themselves with women, was forced to think again.”
“The guy I met tonight, Paz Anaya Vega’s envoy, had all the makings of a real mean son of a bitch too.”
“He tell you his name?”
“Said his name was Abo. Big man with a handlebar moustache.”
“Abo Tscherne. Back in the day he was mixed up with the Hells Angels. Later he did business with Tobias Slezak,” he explained. “Now he’s the number two. After Paz.”
“He acted as if he was an errand boy sent by the bosses just because he spoke Italian.”
Pierino chuckled, amused. “The guy wants to take the Spaniard’s place. Claims it’s his right. But some of the crew disagrees.”
“Why’s that?”
“Turns out he doesn’t have the brains for business. His role has always been to keep the street in check by breaking their competitors’ bones.”
He’d wanted to have his fun with me too.
It had stopped raining. The temperature had dropped. Despite the late hour, a few taxis idled in front of the hotel. I climbed into the one at the head of the line, driven by a Serb, and had him drop me off a few hundred yards from our apartment. Beniamino had advised us to take the most basic precautions. All I was adopting was a pale imitation of them, but I was tired and didn’t want to play hide-and-seek with a couple of tails through half of Vienna in the cold. I slipped into an entrance hall and smoked a whole cigarette while checking for anyone who looked suspicious. The street was desolate, empty.
My friends were waiting for me in the living room, smoking and drinking. Grappa for Max, vodka for Rossini. The bottle of Calvados was still sealed. They hadn’t forgotten. Kindnesses among people who care about one another. What greeted me across the doorstep was real warmth. Details, I thought, are what make the difference in people’s lives. Solitude can be unrelenting sometimes; it had always scared me more than death
itself.
As my time on earth slipped by, I increasingly felt the need to wake up with someone by my side. More and more often I opened my eyes and reached out to touch a face, a hand. A desire to love, to be loved.
Then there’s friendship. Which is a complicated, messy business. But its returns are priceless.
I gave a detailed account of my meeting with the envoy from Paz Anaya Vega’s outfit. “I’m convinced that they’ll break off communications,” I said in the end.
“What makes you think that?” asked the Fat Man.
“They know the police will make mincemeat of them. It’s just a question of time,” I answered, pouring myself just a splash of Calvados. I’d already had enough to drink that night. “The one shot they have at surviving is to bolt to another continent.”
“The only one capable of going underground is Paz,” Old Rossini broke in. “She’s already done it and I’m sure she has a plan to avoid prison. But nothing’s going to stop her from getting revenge. The reason she killed Pellegrini’s women was to signal loud and clear that he’d meet the same end.”
Max pointed at Rossini. “I agree with Beniamino. The Spaniard is clever, but now there’s just one thing on her mind: skinning Giorgio. That’s why she’ll team up with us.”
“And you think she’ll stop at him?” I added, mulling over the declaration of war I’d dished to Abo Tscherne.
“At this point there’s a line of people waiting to eliminate us,” the Fat Man replied, resigned. “What’s one more?”
Beniamino put out his cigarette. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Excellent idea,” said Max, following suit.
“What’s the rush?” I protested. “I haven’t finished my story.”
“What else happened?”
“I met a girl.”
The Fat Man sat back down, and Rossini leaned forward to get a better look at me. “So that’s what took you so long.”
“Out with it,” exhorted the other.
I didn’t need coaxing. And I didn’t leave out what Pierino Martinenghi had told me.
“Obviously you’re planning to go to that café tomorrow in the hopes of running into her,” Max said to change the subject.
“Obviously.”
Beniamino rested his hand on the Fat Man’s shoulder.
“Did you see the look on Marco’s face? Haven’t we seen that look before?” he asked. “Tomorrow he’ll be back to sing us the same old song.”
Max stood and began crooning an old Gino Paoli hit. Rossini joined in for the chorus:
Non ci sarà un altro amore
non ci sarà un’altra volta
non ho più il cuore libero
non c’è spazio per altre storie
“That never happened!” I cried, scandalized. But I knew I was lying, so I poured another round and stoically faced the memory of some entanglements about which I’d spent words of a certain gravity only to regret them bitterly shortly afterward.
“Well,” yawned Old Rossini a little later, “remember to bring the phone in the off chance Abo or Paz and their little pals get in touch.”
Jonas Reindl Coffee was a shrewd operation that married high-end design and quality coffee. Vienna had long been the European capital of the drink. A group of importers, roasters, and shops had staked their money on a superior range of products. After all, the first shop to serve coffee was opened in the Austrian capital right after the expulsion of the Ottomans, who had laid siege to the city for a long time. In the enemy camps they’d found sacks filled with dark beans. A Pole who’d lived in Turkey came up with the idea to sell cups of them. In Italy coffee made its first appearance in Venice around 1570, imported by a botanist from Padua.
I knew the whole history of coffee. It was the thesis subject of a student who had lost her head for yours truly. She was a real beauty, and I’d wanted to sleep with her, but I couldn’t get over the age difference. She pursued me for a couple months, and I got her to talk about her research in order to stave off subjects that I wouldn’t know how to negotiate intelligently. Then I backed off. I didn’t want to run the risk of alcohol drowning out the last vestiges of prudence and steering me straight into her bed.
As usual, I was early. I ordered a cappuccino and a slice of cake and took a seat at a table. While I tucked into my breakfast I scanned the clientele. This didn’t seem like a place Edith would normally frequent. There were several tourists, and the other patrons looked like they were just passing through. To my right a middle-aged couple was engrossed in their reading. She a book, he Der Standard. Their leather briefcases and formal attire gave the impression that they were professionals on break, lawyers maybe. Were I in Italy I wouldn’t have wavered—by then I could identify them at a glance. A little later three Italian women came in. As soon as they sat down they began talking about the city, like dutiful tourists. Judging from their accents they were from Puglia. They described a Vienna I’d never know, since beautiful places and fine art weren’t on my criminal itinerary. Luckier people find nourishment in beauty and culture. It’s a form of resisting the prevailing squalor. One necessary for bearing the idea that this world won’t ever get better, according to Max. I shielded myself with the blues but knew it wasn’t enough. Beauty and crime are incompatible, even if you’re one of the good guys, even if your intention is to set things straight, right some wrong.
In any case, I was intrigued, and I followed their talk with interest. Listening to them plan their vacation was pleasant. Then they started taking selfies to post to their Facebook profiles—another fundamental custom of the modern world that we were excluded from.
Suddenly I realized that Edith had arrived and was having fun scrutinizing me.
“Do you like them?” she asked in English, pointing to the tourists. “I don’t see a pretty girl among them.”
“I was envying their lightheartedness.”
“Do you always have deep thoughts first thing in the morning?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy drinking her in. Aside from the color of her hair, which she now wore in a ponytail, she was a completely different woman from the one I’d met in the hotel bar.
Her thick, Tempest Storm makeup had hid her delicately featured face. Her dark green eyes stood out against her pale skin. Her lips were full, yes, but more beautiful without lipstick.
When she removed her coat I let my eyes scroll down her soft curves, no longer hemmed in by her pin-up dress.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered.
She pretended not to hear and held out her hand.
“My name is Edith Amaral.”
“Marco Buratti, pleased to meet you.”
She glanced at the menu. “I’ll have a caffè moka and a croissant.”
I stood up, got in line at the cash register, and approached the counter—all without taking my eyes off her. I really liked her. I felt lucky to have met her. And I was ready to court her. Common sense told me to let it go, a fling was the last thing to pursue given the danger I was in.
But the odds of meeting another woman like her were as good as the odds of escaping Pellegrini and Dottoressa Marino’s trap unscathed. By the time I got back to the table with her tray I’d dismissed any doubts. But it wouldn’t take much to ruin the whole thing. Which is exactly what happened when I asked, given her last name, whether she was Austrian.
“I’ve lived in Vienna for over twenty years. But I was born in Portugal. My mother was Dutch and my father came from the District of Leiria.”
“Frau Vieira is Portuguese too,” I said, regretting the words the very next moment.
Edith stiffened. “How did you come to be so well informed?”
“I asked around.”
“Why? It’s not normal for some guy you meet in a bar to want to know certain things.” She was furious. And anxious too.
I’m not just some guy was the best answer that came to mind.
“What’s that mean?”
I’d backed myself into a corner. “I know how the world works, I’m well acquainted with certain scenes.”
“Either you’re a cop or a felon.”
“I’m neither,” I replied, embarrassed. “It’s hard to explain.”
It was probably my attitude and fuzzy explanations that led her to believe that Frau Vieira herself had sent me.
“She paid you to test me, is that it?” she asked, tears in her eyes.
“No,” I said, taking her hand. “I don’t know her. It’s just a name I heard. Bar talk, nothing more.”
She wasn’t buying it. She wriggled out of my grasp. Panic had taken hold of her. “I can’t take this anymore,” she stammered. “Tell her, I’m begging you. I ran off one time and I didn’t even like the guy. I’ve been good. I’ve taken on another persona just as she wanted. I still turn a good profit. Okay, I’m not young anymore and I don’t turn heads the way I once did, but I can count on a good group of johns in their fifties. She knows that. I’ll pay back everything I owe.”
“Knock it off,” I snapped. It hurt to listen to her.
But she carried on. She lowered her voice to an incomprehensible murmur then shot to her feet. “I’m still her old whore. She can trust me,” she said before snatching up her jacket and purse and running out.
The three Italians and the other customers looked on, baffled. I was sure they hadn’t understood a word of our conversation and that to them the scene they’d just witnessed was nothing more than a lover’s quarrel. In which I’d come off looking like the typical male asshole. And I was, in part.
I decided to follow her, but as soon as I stepped outside I realized it was useless. I didn’t know which way she’d gone and she was already too far away to pick out of the crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk.
I was upset. I kept asking myself how the hell I’d allowed myself to act that way. I’d managed to thread pearls of stupidity in almost scientific fashion. Once I calmed down I began to brood on Edith’s reaction. She was terrified and, as far as I could tell, she had unsuccessfully attempted to escape mistreatment at the hands of Frau Vieira before. She’d paid dearly for that rash decision.
Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores Page 9