A Pimp's Notes

by Giorgio Faletti

  Milla looks at me.

  “Everything seems okay here. But we’re not done yet. You’re going to have to come with us.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “If you were, you’d already be on the road with handcuffs on your wrists. They just need some information at headquarters.”

  I stand up from the chair I’ve been sitting on since he kicked me off the sofa. I pick up my jacket and grab my shoes.

  “Then let’s get going.”

  We walk out onto the landing and in a couple of minutes we’re at the bottom of the stairs. There’s nobody outside. I try to count in my mind how many pairs of eyes are probably watching from the windows and how many I always suspected that he’s are wafting up toward the ceilings. Suddenly I understand that I don’t give a damn after all. It’s just curiosity piled on curiosity, suppositions added to suppositions.

  Outside the gate, a police squad car and a truck from the K9 unit are waiting.

  The dog disappears with a leap into the back of the K9 truck and I’m ushered toward the Alfa Romeo patrol car. The officer opens the right-side door for me and Milla goes around and gets in on the other side. Once we’re all aboard, the car pulls out, without the indignity of the siren, leaving behind us that portion of the world of honest folks who’ll never take a trip like the one I’m on.

  The car runs through the streets of Milan. Outside there are sounds and noises. Inside there is nothing but silence. Milla and I are seated side by side and we absorb the jolts of the asphalt without looking at each other. Each of us would pay a considerable sum of money to know the other one’s thoughts. Each of us would lie if we were asked what we were thinking.

  The trip ends at the police station on Via Fatebenefratelli. We drive through the front gate and park in the middle of the courtyard. We get out and walk to a staircase straight ahead of us. Two flights of beat-up old stone stairs and a wall of flaking plaster, then a corridor that echoes our footsteps. Finally, a wooden door.

  Milla knocks, and when he hears from the other side of the door the magic word that authorizes him to do so, he turns the handle and creates a void where there once was a door. I walk into an office that smacks of police even if you just suddenly found yourself there, without going through the front door. It’s the mismatched furniture and the paper on the desk and the halfhearted paintings on the walls. But especially the faces of the two men sitting in the room. One guy, around thirty, with a dark, mature face, long hair, and a scraggly beard, is sitting in a chair with armrests, in the left-hand corner. He’s dressed in an ordinary manner, which in the street might even help him blend in. In this room, he looks like a plainclothes officer or a member of the intelligence services—you could spot him from a plane.

  Milla addresses the man sitting behind the desk.

  “Buon giorno, Mr. Chief Inspector. This is the person in question. As for the other matter, negative.”

  “Fine. You can go.”

  While the detective leaves the room, the chief inspector points me to a chair across from him.

  “Take a seat.”

  I comply with his command and we sit facing each other. The chief inspector is older than the other man in the room and is dressed much more formally, with a light blue shirt, a gray three-piece suit, and a tie that should trigger an automatic warrant for his arrest. His hair is short and chestnut brown, his face is lean, and his gaze is enigmatic behind the lenses of his glasses.

  I look at him and wait.

  “I’m Chief Inspector Vincenzo Giovannone, just to introduce myself.”

  He says nothing about the other guy, the pale man sitting wordless in his chair. A man with no identity or position. In my mind he immediately becomes the Nameless One.

  The chief inspector opens a file that’s lying in front of him on his desk.

  “Are you Francesco Marcona, also known by the nickname Bravo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see that you were arrested once for exploitation of prostitution.”

  Predictable. The waltz begins the way these dances always do. I follow the steps, though I have the feeling that from a certain point on it’s going to become necessary to improvise.

  “Then you must also see that I was released and there wasn’t even an indictment, much less a trial.”

  “Right.”

  Giovannone finally looks up from the file. He shoots me a direct glance. His eyes are light-colored and sharp. They’re the eyes of a man who knows what he’s doing.

  “Do you know three young women named, respectively, Cindy Jameson, Barbara Marrano, and Laura Torchio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you aware of the fact that last night they were in Lorenzo Bonifaci’s villa, in Lesmo, outside of Monza?”

  I have a strong presentiment that sweeps over my head and stomach at the same time. The unpleasant sensation of falling that I sometimes get in dreams takes hold of me. There’s something grotesque and wrong about this list of names. I took Carla to Piazza San Babila myself. True, I didn’t wait around to make sure that Bonifaci’s car and driver showed up to get the girls and take them to their appointment, but the presence of Cindy and Barbara in that horrible place ought to mean that she had been there too.

  How the hell did Laura get dragged into this?

  The chief inspector’s harsh tone of voice drags me headlong out of my thoughts.

  “Well, were you aware of it or not?”

  “Yes. I know that they were invited to a party there.”

  Despite my best efforts, my voice is different this time. It’s the voice of a man who’s run out of wisecracks. The chief inspector notices.

  He bears in on me.

  “Did you know that all three of them were murdered?”

  I nod my head affirmatively.

  “Yes. Or I guess I should say I had assumed so. When the police came to my apartment, I was watching the television news. There was a special report about what had happened in Bonifaci’s villa.”

  “Then let’s talk about him. Did you know Lorenzo Bonifaci?”

  “Not in person. What I mean is that I never met him in the flesh. I only spoke to him on the phone.”

  The chief inspector puts on a look of astonishment, which strikes me as a piece of contrived mockery.

  “They tell me he was a fairly reserved and discreet gentleman. Practically impossible to get in touch with. How on earth did he come to have a direct relationship with someone like you?”

  I swallow the intentional provocation of the someone like you. I make a vague gesture and do my best to accompany it with an innocent tone of voice.

  “I know a lot of people in Milan. Especially in the field of fashion. When he has guests over, he calls me to send over a few girls, runway models and cover girls, to make his parties a little more decorative.”

  “Parties or orgies?”

  “I wouldn’t know that. I’ve never been to one.”

  Chief Inspector Giovannone suddenly springs a new topic on me.

  “Did you know a certain Salvatore Menno, an ex-con also known by the nickname Tulip?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that he was also found dead, with three bullet holes in his body from a handgun, in a quarry not far from Trezzano?”

  I’ll say I knew that.

  Pfft … pfft … pfft …

  “I read about it in the newspaper.”

  “In what context did you make his acquaintance?”

  “I met him on several occasions at the Ascot Club, on Via Monte Rosa. We had no relationship, except for the fact that now and then we were clients of the same club. Later on I had a disagreement with him over the fact that he was courting a friend of mine with excessive intensity.”

  “And what’s the name of this friend of yours?”

  “Laura Torchio.”

  “Ah.”

  This tiny monosyllabic word is suddenly as long as a novel and packed with far more information. Bad information. The chief inspector stand
s up and walks over to the window. He stands there in silence, looking out. When he finally does speak to me, he’s shifted from the formal lei to the informal tu. In Italian, theoretically, that should be friendlier, but the way he uses it, it sounds more like a threat.

  “You see, Bravo, there are certain elements in this network of acquaintances that strike me as rather odd.”

  I can hear him walking up and down behind me. I resist the temptation to turn around to look at him.

  “The people you know have a disturbing habit of winding up dead. A man with whom you had a disagreement, as you put it, is found shot to death. The same thing happens to three girls who are friends of yours, as well as a powerful financier with whom you’re in regular contact, in a villa where a full-fledged mass murder takes place.”

  I understand that the knockout punch is about to arrive. And it does.

  “The odd thing is that the gun that killed Salvatore Menno turns out to have been one of the weapons used in the murders at the Bonifaci residence. Do you have any idea of how such a thing could have happened?”

  He’s not really expecting an answer to his question. Or, in any case, there’s not any answer I can give him that the chief inspector is willing to believe, except for a full and unconditional confession. It’s just a piece of information that he spits in my face because he wants to see how I react. He’s putting me on notice that since a ballistics report was delivered in record time, I’m a prime suspect in this case.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Giovannone comes back and sits down across from me. Throughout the interrogation, the Nameless One hasn’t changed position or expression.

  “Can you tell me where you spent yesterday evening and last night, up until this morning?”

  “I had dinner at the Torre Pendente, on Via Ravello. Then I swung by the Budineria, on Via Chiesa Rossa. Then, around midnight, I went home and stayed there until this morning.”

  I make no reference to what happened with Daytona and the money I was supposed to deliver. An annoying thought has insinuated itself into my brain. A woodworm that gathers power and energy from the words that Stefano Milla tossed out the other night during our conversation.

  Only the stupid and the innocent lack an alibi.

  My alibi for the night that Tulip was killed had been Carla, and now she’s vanished into thin air. And I also have no alibi for the night of the massacre, because I was sitting like an idiot in my car, waiting for a group of strangers to show up—a group of strangers who never came to pick up an envelope full of bundles of newspaper.

  “Is there anyone who can verify what you’ve just told me?”

  Christ, no, there isn’t. Even Lucio was out. He was in a recording studio at the Castle of Carimate, playing his goddamned guitars. I can feel a rage of unknown origin choking off my breath.

  “No.”

  My answer is brusque and rude.

  “That no may cost you dearly. And the way you said it, even more.”

  The detective plays the role of an angry man. I really am angry. I look at him, and for once I ask the questions.

  “Am I under arrest? Should I call a lawyer?”

  “No, you’re not under arrest. Any stupid first-year law student would have you out in an hour, with the evidence I have at this point.”

  I relax and start to rib him a little.

  “Then am I free to go?”

  “Sure. But you don’t mind if we try a little paraffin glove on you for size, do you?”

  Now he’s toying with me. And he doesn’t even bother to conceal the fact. He knows perfectly well that all you have to do is scrub your hands and you’ve eliminated all traces of molecular particles. He’s just trying to bust my chops and remind me that he has the whip hand. He hasn’t made any reference to it, but I feel certain that he knows the precise nature of my relationship with Laura, Cindy, Barbara, and all the other girls. The police have a profound contempt for everyone involved in a certain kind of trafficking, no matter how high the level. Except when they can use their power to rake off a little extra for themselves, the way Stefano Milla does.

  “Go right ahead. I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

  “There are people who’ve never shot a gun, and they’re still guiltier than the guy who pulled the trigger.”

  Giovannone pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is dripping with contempt.

  “You’re a piece of shit who makes a living off the flesh of girls who are stupid enough to believe you and trust you. You’re nothing but a jerk-off who lacks the courage to go any further. How to put it: the smallest possible result with the smallest possible risk. If sheer squalor were against the law, I could get you a life sentence without parole.”

  He smiles at me. Only with his lips, though.

  “This time I’m afraid you may have overstepped your bounds and planted your foot right in the middle of a pile of shit the size of all Lombardy. With all the things that are already going on, you haven’t the faintest idea of the tornado that this latest twist has unleashed. And I’m certain that one way or another you’re involved.”

  He takes a second to wipe the smile off his face.

  “If it’s true, we’ll find out. I guarantee you that in that case, many long years in prison will no longer be a fanciful hypothesis, but a fragrant reality that I’ll bite into with all the gusto of fresh bread.”

  He pushes a button on his telephone.

  After a second or two the door swings open and a uniformed officer comes in.

  “Alfio, accompany the gentleman to the laboratory. And please extend our apologies if the paraffin glove we’re going to ask him to wear doesn’t go with his lovely designer suit.”

  I hoist my ass up off the seat before he can figure out a way to make it turn into an electric chair. Then I follow the policeman out of the room. As I leave without so much as a word from either of the two, I do have the slight satisfaction of seeing the Nameless One getting up. At least I now know that he possesses some motor function. I’m also certain that he wasn’t just there to complete his training.

  By the time I leave the police station, after a lengthy litany of chop-busting over attitudes and acts, it’s eight o’clock. The city that awaits me is no longer the city of the day before, when I still believed that the shadow behind the lights was a more than adequate hiding place. I do my best to be realistic with myself. I’m neck-deep in shit. And the worst thing about it all is the sensation that the shit is rising.

  I head off on foot toward Piazza San Marco, where I know there’s a taxi stand. There’s a sense of impending doom in the air, something I never noticed before because I’ve always slept through my days and at night I frequented a world that was impermeable to anything other than the relentless pursuit of pleasure. Every step is a thought, a question without an answer, a new version of a grim foreboding.

  I realize that I’m hungry. I haven’t had a bite to eat all day long: my urgent errands before the exchange with Frontini, the conversation with Tano Casale, the discovery of the mass killing, the arrival of the police.

  So many things, so little time. And what little time there is is rapidly dwindling, I’m pretty sure.

  I walk past a newsstand that’s closing for the night. Newspapers must have sold like hotcakes today. I buy one of the last remaining copies of La Notte, an afternoon paper that has devoted practically the entire issue to the Massacre of Lesmo, as the front-page headline screams. I duck into a restaurant and take a table, after carefully scoping the place out to make sure there’s no one I know. I have no interest in absorbing the river of bullshit that certain people spew from their mouths when they’re trying to be interesting or funny.

  While waiting for the waiter, I open the newspaper. The article alludes to a great deal more than it states, which means the journalist must have made some daring leaps based on the scanty information in his possession. Which was basically the names of the victims. Lorenzo Bonifaci, financier; Mattia Sangiorgi, Christian Demo
cratic member of parliament; Ercole Soderini, wealthy builder, with accompanying stock photos.

  Next come the names of the three girls, but among them Carla’s name stubbornly refuses to appear. I pause to admire the reporter’s deftness at leaving the field wide open to the reader’s imagination when it comes to the possible significance of the presence of three men and three women, while never actually making any explicit statements that might justify a libel suit.

  The security staff is given short shrift. The paper doesn’t even mention their names. Maybe it’s an oversight, maybe it’s to keep from tainting them by association with the rest of the squalid story.

  Finally, the article gives plenty of space to the larger picture of what Italy’s going through right now, speculating on a possible link between the Moro kidnapping, the ongoing trial of Red Brigades founder Renato Curcio and his comrades, and this new bloody mass murder, for which there have so far been no claims of responsibility.

  If there had been one, if this murder appeared to be related to a terrorist movement, I wouldn’t have had such an easy time getting out of the police station. When there’s even a hint of suspected subversion, the police are happy to trample rules and procedures underfoot.

  I sit thinking in the restaurant, rereading the piece once or twice, as if the facts might change, and eating food that I ingest as a form of nutrition without ever getting a clear sense of its flavor. Two questions keep pounding in my brain.

  Why Laura and not Carla?

  Why an envelope full of slips of newspaper instead of money?

  The answers fail to surface. What comes instead is the check, even though I hadn’t asked for it. The restaurant is closing. It’s not one of those places that’s willing to provide food and hospitality until late, like almost all the other restaurants in this part of town.

  I find myself back in the street, where nothing has changed: outside or inside of me. There’s just one addition to the equation: now I’m determined to get to the bottom of this, before someone else does it for me and establishes appearances in the place of facts.

  I head for the nearest taxi stand. Next to it is a phone booth. I step in, slide a token into the slot, and dial Daytona’s number. At this time of evening, there’s even a chance of catching him at home. The phone rings and rings but no one picks up.