“I don’t get why the madam is being so accommodating,” he remarked, puzzled. “I’d have expected her to send two gonzos to knock the tar out of you.”
“Lucky for me she didn’t,” I remarked, relieved. “I think it’s time we lay our cards on the table.”
“But she’s holding the trump card: Edith.”
“Any advice?”
“Treat her the way she deserves.”
The showroom belonged to an Italian stylist, an image consultant in high demand, or so I gleaned from the salesperson from Friuli while waiting for Frau Vieira to turn up. The madam was an excellent customer but never on time.
Twenty minutes later I watched a seventy-year-old matron step out of a taxi. I had no doubt it was her. She gave the impression of being the matron of a powerful family of businesspeople, with a horde of children and grandchildren, rather than the head of a criminal organization that exploited prostitutes.
I walked over to her, and she took me by the arm. “Thanks for waiting. An old lady like me isn’t as agile as she once was,” she said in English.
She told the attentive salespeople that she’d be using the sitting room to talk with “this handsome Italian man” and not to worry about serving us coffee, that we’d help ourselves.
“You don’t do your shopping here,” I said, noting the difference of style between what she had on and the fashion line of the maison.
“I pick out the patterns for my girls. The high-end girls, I mean.”
She must have been an attractive woman once upon a time. You could still make out traces of her former beauty in her lightly touched up face. Only her lipstick was conspicuous, maybe to make her lips stand out. They must have driven many men crazy once.
She asked me to fix a coffee while she selected the pastries and placed them on a small plate with her plump fingers. Her nails were painted burgundy.
“What kind of girl is Edith?” I asked.
“Why do you ask me questions you already know the answer to? Edith told me everything. We’re very close.”
“She’s scared of you is all,” I observed. “I hope you didn’t hurt her.”
She didn’t answer. She stared at me while she sipped her coffee. “Is it true you want to take her from me?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“No. But I can assure you that I don’t intend to rip her off,” I told her. I wanted her to understand that I knew Edith’s backstory.
“I have a theory, tell me if I’m wrong,” she proceeded, ignoring what I’d just said. “You want to take her abroad to turn her into a drug mule.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “What makes you think that?”
“You encountered my employee after meeting Abo Tscherne, and a few days later, at the same bar in the same hotel, you were seen with Paz Anaya Vega.”
I couldn’t mask my surprise, and she leapt at the chance to take command of the situation. “I pay well for my information, and waiters don’t make much as it is. I know your friends by reputation only,” she added before biting into a honey and lemon madeleine. “We have different interests in the hotels in Vienna, and we’ve always been careful not to step on each other’s toes.”
So that explained why she’d done me the courtesy of setting up a civil meeting and her gorillas hadn’t broken my arms and legs: she wanted to avoid entering into a conflict with the drug dealers, whom she believed I did business with.
“I’ve looked after Edith for many years,” she continued. “I want to know what you want with her, because the fairytale she told me doesn’t bear scrutiny.”
“It’s none of your business,” I barked. “Let her go. You’ve already abused her enough.”
“Edith is my old whore. She still turns a nice profit. If you’d like, I’ll let you have her, for a fee.”
“I don’t buy human beings.”
“Well then, I don’t see how we can resolve this situation.”
“There’s just one way: let her go.”
“And if I don’t?”
I was careful not to respond. Frau Vieira was an old fox; she wanted me to threaten her to determine if I was bluffing.
She nibbled on another cookie while she waited. “I take it you won’t abandon your decision to rob me of my source of income.”
My silence confirmed her suspicion. Frau Vieira couldn’t begin to guess the reasons for my obstinacy, and it confused her.
“I requested this meeting to find a solution,” she insisted, “but at the moment I seem to be the only party interested in one.”
I decided to speak her language. The only one she understood. “You’re overlooking a fundamental aspect of this business: the costs and benefits. Right now all you should be asking yourself is if it’s worth it to continue forcing a woman to prostitute herself rather than give her back her freedom and dignity.”
“Sounds like a threat.”
“Frau Vieira, you’re an old madam,” I explained with a pinch of contempt, “you’re perfectly aware of the meaning of that word and you know it doesn’t apply.”
“And why’s that?”
“There’s no room for negotiations,” I replied. “You decide. Either way, there’ll be consequences.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re overplaying your hand. Has the thought ever occurred to you?” she said, trying not to cross the bounds of civil discourse. “This is my city. I have a good relationship with the authorities. I employ people of a certain class.”
“I imagine you mean Luis Azevedo, Rui Salgueiro, and the dirty cops you pay off monthly,” I shot back. “I’m familiar with your empire, Frau Vieira: solid, influential, violent, brazen. That’s why I made myself crystal clear about the costs and benefits.”
The madam sensed she was taking a real risk but refused to accept that sometimes it’s more convenient to capitulate, quit pounding your chest, and act as if you were doing the other person a favor. Her thick-headedness would force both of us to draw this out to the bitter end.
I stood up and checked the time. “At 4 P.M. I’ll pick Edith up at her place,” I stated.
“Then you still have time to think it over,” remarked Frau Vieira, reaching for the last cookie.
I ran back to the apartment, spooked about the consequences of my meeting.
My friends felt the same way. “We go for broke,” Old Rossini kept repeating, “and see how this all shakes out.”
All three of us were convinced Frau Vieira wouldn’t free Edith. We were wrong. When we arrived at Edith’s I saw Nuno pull up in his car and help her out. She was pressing a napkin to her cheek and seemed unsteady on her feet. The pimp dropped her on the curb and hightailed it out of there. I ran to her. She was pale, clearly in a state of shock. I saw the blood running down her neck.
“Look at what they’ve done,” she mumbled.
They’d disfigured her. Frau Vieira had rendered her inoperable in the sex trade. She’d wanted to brand her so that Edith would always be hers.
I heard Beniamino talking on his cellphone to Martinenghi. “I need the best plastic surgeon in the city. Immediately.”
A little before midnight, while Edith was resting after surgery at a high-end clinic, Rossini and I entered Leiria’s. Our faces covered in scarves, we walked briskly toward the “office” of Rui Salgueiro.
He was with another guy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Nuno.
“Call Frau Vieira,” I barked in English.
“What do you want me to say?” asked Rui, not taking his eye off the gun.
“Costs and benefits.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Get out of here, I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Beniamino put two bullets in his man, and the pimp quickly obeyed the order. After that, the Old Gangster emptied a whole magazine into Rui.
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br /> In the hallway we bumped into the woman who ran the joint. She shrugged her shoulders. Didn’t say or do anything else. Maybe she’d always known, or hoped, that that was how things would end.
Max was waiting for us in the Superb, the motor running. A half hour later we were safe, for one last night, in the house on Oswaldgasse.
TEN
One late afternoon in May I was seated at a table at the Libarium in Cagliari. I was drinking an Alligator. Seven parts Calvados, three parts Drambuie, plenty of crushed ice, and a slice of green apple to nibble on when you’re done, to console yourself that the glass is empty. The recipe was concocted by the creative genius Danilo Argiolas, owner of the joint.
Edith, at my side, sipped Pastis. When she sensed she was being looked at, she covered her scar with her right index finger. That bastard Nuno had used a serrated blade to keep the scar tissue from fully healing. The surgeon did what he could, over time it would fade, but she needn’t get her hopes up.
It didn’t bother me. I was growing increasingly fond of Edith. We’d just begun to sleep together, and I was hopelessly in love with the most beautiful and bewitching woman in the world.
Whenever I told her so, she’d burst out laughing. The word “love” had yet to escape her lips, and I wasn’t really holding my breath.
I’d watch her dance and feel moved. She’d raise the volume and Natalie Merchant’s voice would fill the little living room of the house we’d rented. Edith would lift her dress above her thighs and take her first steps toward a new life. We were happy together, traveled, lived from one day to the next, made do with the money that Beniamino provided us.
The Old Gangster called often for news of Edith. He never asked about me. He knew I was happy to watch her coming back to life, and that by concentrating on her, I could put off having to reckon with myself.
Max wasn’t in touch as often. He wrote me a long email to say that he had returned to Padua. He had decided to “momentarily” leave the mountain and the woman he loved in order to throw his weight behind a party in the local election. He used words like hope, change, turning point. Despite grueling disappointments and the price that he’d paid in the past, the Fat Man continued to believe that politics could still play a positive role in the country. And give meaning to his life.
“I want to stay here all summer,” said Edith out of the blue.
“Seems like an excellent idea to me.”
“Last night I dreamed about going back to Portugal.”
“We could cross Sardinia, Corsica, France, and Spain to get there.”
“There’s no rush.”
She took my hand and squeezed it hard. It was her way of letting me know that once she felt better she might go it alone. And that she’d be sorry to see me suffer, but there was nothing she could do about it.
My outlaw heart knew it all along. Every day was a gift, and I’d get over another goodbye. There was an old blues song by James Carr that summed up my situation:
At the dark end of the street
That’s where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don’t belong
Living in darkness to hide our wrong . . .
MEANWHILE, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF VIENNA
I need morphine. Or some other fucking painkiller. The wound’s healing but still hurts. I feel like I’ve got coal in my guts. That bungling surgeon—an alcoholic, clearly, who’d been banned from practicing—couldn’t manage to extract the bullet. And he had the nerve to keep complaining: “I don’t have the right equipment, the patient should be admitted to a hospital immediately.”
But that’s not what Abo wanted. “Do what you can. It’s not the end of the world if he dies.”
But he did want to see me among the living, so that he could hand me over to Sabine, his bat-shit daughter with her Viking braids. I’d made her a widow when I shot her husband Guntmar.
Now I’m a guest in her basement. She comes to see me two, three times a day to check to see how I’m convalescing and whether I’ll be able to handle what she has in store for me. Paz was a schoolgirl in comparison. This one’s head is crammed with bunk. She goes on and on about the god Odin, his spear Gungnir, his eight-legged steed Sleipnir. And about how her children weep, how they have to grow up without a father. She says she wants to nail me to a table and rip my heart from my chest. She bought a replica of a sacrificial dagger on some basket case website. She says she’s going to plant it in the exact same spot where the bullet pierced me and slice upward from there.
Did it not run counter to my interests, I’d have pointed out that the dagger didn’t look sharp enough for a chisel job. I should be worried and seriously reflecting on the fact that I can’t spend my entire life prisoner to pissed off women who want to carve me up. Yet every day I’m increasingly convinced that I’ll walk out of this shithole on my own two legs. That’s what I spend hours thinking about. About Sabine the Viking.
The poor girl’s alone. She needs a man. Not only to beat her and show her a good time, like she was Odin’s mother, the giantess Bestla, but to prop up her mythological drivel. And I think I can do that for her. True, I shot the man she married, but as far as I can tell, I’m the one male she’s seen lately. The others seem to be avoiding her. To be honest, I’d do the same if I were them.
Had she wanted to butcher me, she’d have done so already, but I think she’s been taken aback by my “courage.” She’s in no position to see that it’s something else entirely and, for the moment, that’s a good thing. Now I’m doing all I can to appear indifferent to pain and the prospect of being killed.
Yesterday I tried another angle: Guntmar died a warrior’s death. I’m sure tonight she’ll want to explore that thought further. I don’t know shit about her Valhalla tirades, but it strikes me as logical and natural that the widow of a hero should marry another brave man.
Sabine isn’t easy, she holds a grudge against me, and I still don’t have a clue what she’ll do. But I’m Giorgio Pellegrini. Nowhere is it written that I should die by the hand of a psychopath.
If she let her guard down just a tad to free one of my hands, her children would become good little orphans.
Lucky for me I have money stowed away all over Europe, enough to vanish into thin air and recover from these shitty experiences. Then there’s always kind Toska waiting for me in Munich, and Attorney Charents and Miss Bones, who aren’t actually waiting for me, but merit a visit. I have an idea knocking around in my head to return to Italy with a new identity. And maybe a nip and tuck. The fact is, I miss my country and some of my old friends. Dottoressa Marino, for one. I haven’t gotten over the fact that she shot me to keep me from going around bragging about her blowjobs. And I intend to shed some light on that thorny fact. And then the tres amigos: Burrati, the Relic, and the Fat Man.
Everyone thinks I’m dead, and there’s nothing more exciting than a resurrection. That’s a surprise no one sees coming.
Anyways, what’s the rush? Right now, I have to convince Sabine that I’m her darling warrior.
THE ALLIGATOR’S FAVORITE WOMEN OF THE BLUES
Cee Cee James—Blood Red Blues, Low Down Where the Snakes Crawl
Barbara Blue—Sell My Jewelry
Gina Sicilia—Sunset Avenue, It Wasn’t Real
Anni Piper—More Guitars than Friends
Janiva Magness—Love Wins Again
Ana Popovic—Trilogy
Rita Chiarelli—Breakfast at Midnight
Ina Forsman—Ina Forsman
Fiona Boyes—Box & Dice, Blues in My Heart
Deb Callahan—Sweet Soul
Shaun Murphy—It Won’t Stop Raining
Meena—Tell Me
Zora Young—The French Connection
Shemekia Copeland—Turn the Heat Up
Ruthie Foster—Promise of a Brand New Day,
Joy Comes Back
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Debbie Davies—Key to Love
Melanie Mason—Bendin’ the Blues
Robin Rogers—Back in the Fire
Kellie Rucker—Ain’t Hit Bottom
Eden Brent—Ain’t Got No Troubles
Jane Lee Hooker—No B!
EG Kight—Southern Comfort
Nicole Hart & Anni Piper—Split Second
Julie Rhodes—I’d Rather Go Blind
Jan Jams—Limousine Blues
Teresa James—The Whole Enchilada
Joanna Connor—Slidetime
Deborah Coleman—Soft Place to Fall
Sue Foley—Love Comin’ Down
Layla Zoe—The Lily
Kelley Hunt—New Shade of Blue
Shannon Curfman—What You’re Gettin’ Into
Lisa Mann—Chop Water
Mary Gauthier—Mercy Now
Allison Moorer—Down to Believing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Massimo Carlotto was born in Padua, Italy. In addition to the many titles in his extremely popular “Alligator” series, he is also the author of The Fugitive, Death’s Dark Abyss, Poisonville, Bandit Love, and At the End of a Dull Day. He is one of Italy’s most popular authors and a major exponent of the Mediterranean Noir novel.
Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores Page 19