A Pimp's Notes

by Giorgio Faletti

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 5.

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 7.

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 4.

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 6.

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 5.

  Trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … trrr … 5.

  Now I have a phone number: 57 46 55.

  The next thing I need is an address to go with it. Of all the people I know, there’s only one I can turn to. I start the car, drive for a short distance, and stop at the first phone booth I find. I could call the phone company and ask Information, but I’m afraid that service is available only from a home phone. I have only one alternative. I can’t deny that the finger I use to dial the main switchboard of the police station on Via Fatebenefratelli is a little shaky.

  I ask the switchboard operator to put me through to Detective Stefano Milla. She puts me on hold, and a few seconds later I hear his voice.

  Very professional, and therefore with a sharp edge of irritation.

  “Detective Milla.”

  “This is Bravo.”

  The leap in tone is sudden. I’d have to imagine it corresponds to a leap off his chair.

  “Have you lost your mind, calling me here?”

  “Mabye so. But I have a problem.”

  “I know you do. You want me to have one, too?”

  “No, not if you give me a hand with something.”

  That last phrase sounds like a threat. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The important thing is for Milla to think it is.

  “What do you want?”

  “I have a phone number. I need to get the address that goes with it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long, murky story. The minute I figure it out, you’re the first person I’ll come to with the details.”

  “Bravo, don’t fuck around.”

  “That’s the last thing I would do. Which is why I need your help to find that address.”

  In the end he gives in. It’s partly out of fear and partly out of that inborn curiosity that makes a man want to be a cop.

  “All right. Go ahead and give me the number.”

  I repeat the numbers one by one, giving him plenty of time to write them down.

  “How long will it take you?”

  “As long as it takes. Where can I reach you?”

  “At home. If I’m not there, leave a message on my answering machine.”

  “That’s a risky thing to do.”

  “I’ll erase it the minute I listen to it.”

  The silence that ensues indicates hesitation. He’s trying to weigh how much trouble he might be getting himself in by helping me. He doesn’t need to think too hard about the consequences: he knows them in detail. You always have to know how to count your steps when you dance with different pairs of shoes.

  I try to tip the board in my direction.

  “Stefano, I really don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that I have nothing to do with all this crazy bullshit. I sent three girls over to Bonifaci’s house for a party, just like I’ve done dozens of times before. And that’s all.”

  For the moment, I decide it’s best not to give him any more information. There are things I need to find out and understand before I share them with anyone else. My position is already sufficiently precarious, and I have no intention of giving anyone any information that they might use to destabilize it further, tipping me over the edge once and for all.

  In the end, Milla gives in.

  “I’ll get it as fast as I can.”

  I thank him, for what that’s worth. I hang up and find myself all alone, waiting for an address where my last slender hope resides. I look around. The weather seems to be particularly kind these days to humanity. A springlike blue sky and beaming sun, a cool breeze that pushes away the city’s smog. Busy people up and about; the rough customers still in bed, sleeping off the hangovers of their vicious pursuits. If it was a normal day, maybe that’s where I would be. Or else I’d be kicking around Milan, shooting the shit with people and making my deals, having lunch at Santa Lucia or eating a panino at Bagi.

  But that’s not the way it is. It’s impossible for it to be that way again anytime soon.

  A number of people are dead now. I helped three of those into a car and sent them to their deaths. I stood to collect 30 percent of the money they earned. I have a sneaky feeling that I’m about to collect 100 percent of the guilt that attaches to whatever happened.

  I look around.

  Without paying attention to where I was going, I’d driven around Milan’s Monumental Cemetery, and I’d wound up on Via Cenisio. A hundred yards or so from where I parked my Mini is Pechino, a Chinese restaurant where I eat fairly often and which serves Milan’s finest grilled wontons.

  I decide that, as little appetite as I have, one place is as good as another. As I walk toward the restaurant I feel a stab of discomfort in my groin, a faint burning sensation that I know all too well. Inflammations of the urinary tract, with my anatomical condition, are fairly frequent. I also feel an occasional shiver, though I don’t know whether it’s due to stress or a degree or two of fever.

  Tac. Got you! Feverish and on the lam.

  That’s what Godie would say as he jabbed his two fingers in a scissors-grip against my neck. But those times are gone now, and I’m not sure they’ll ever come back. I’m in too much of a hurry to waste time lingering over my own misery or letting tears drip down my shirtfront. I’m finally keeping pace with the city that surrounds me, where haste reigns uncontested, where everyone runs, even when it’s time to go to sleep. In the middle of all this feverish bedlam, my life is at stake. Now I have nothing to do but kill time waiting for a corrupt cop to give me the information I need and then go to clear up a couple of matters with my friend.

  Fifty yards from the restaurant is a pharmacy. Behind the counter is a pharmacist I know, a woman dressed in a white lab coat, with the glasses and acne of the grind that she is. The discomfort is getting worse but I have no wish to discuss it with anyone, especially not with a woman. I ask for a box of Furadantin, and after a little back-and-forth, even though I have no prescription, the pharmacist agrees to sell me one.

  I leave the pharmacy and toss back a tablet without water. I don’t want to be seen at a table in a restaurant taking certain pharmaceuticals. It’s a learned sense of caution that goes with my handicap. I open the front door of Pechino and walk into a little restaurant decorated with red lampshades and other Chinese bric-a-brac. The place is usually pretty empty at lunchtime. In fact, right now only one of the tables is occupied.

  The proprietor of the restaurant, who knows me well, comes beaming to welcome me. He’s a competent and jovial guy. He speaks perfect Italian and equally perfect Milanese dialect. It’s odd to hear Milan’s distinctive dialect—meneghino—spoken by someone with his distinctly non-Italian features. The restaurant is successful in large part because of his likable personality, as well as the first-rate food.

  We exchange greetings and I think he sees from my face that I’m not in the mood. He wastes no time in chitchat. He shows me to my table, takes my single order, and heads off to the kitchen, where his wife does the cooking.

  I sit down at an angle to the counter of the bar, which is on the right side of the restaurant, just inside the front door. A young Chinese man is working the espresso machine and watching a small portable television set that he has placed, with the sound turned down low, on the marble countertop.

  The evening news is on, and I imagine to myself the panic of the producers as they try to keep up with the flood of news pouring in from all directions. But the chief news item right now is what happened outside Monza. From where I sit, I have a fairly good view of the screen, which is showing a stream of images that one way or another I’d already glimpsed in the newspapers I’ve read.

  I stand up and walk over to the television set.


  The young man, a guy whose voice I’ve never actually heard, goes on with what he’s doing and says nothing to me. I ask if he could turn up the volume a little.

  He does, and even turns the television set in my direction.

  On the screen I see a man get out of a long dark car. He’s immediately surrounded by a cohort of police officers to protect him from the frenzied mob of reporters. Behind the swirling crowd I can see the front entrance of the Hotel Principe e Savoia in Piazza della Repubblica. The man at the center of attention is tall and powerfully built, his thick head of hair marked by white patches at the temples, and he has the determined expression of a man who knows where he’s going and exactly how to get there.

  I know him well.

  Everyone knows him well.

  He’s Amedeo Sangiorgi, a Sicilian, a parliamentary group leader in the Italian senate, and a leading figure in his party and in Italian political life. His much younger brother Mattia was one of the men found murdered in Bonifaci’s villa. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and one of the rising young figures of the Christian Democratic Party, seen by many as a potential future prime minister of Italy.

  The fact that his brother was found dead in the same house with two other men of his same social milieu and three beautiful young women, all likewise dead, does not appear to have left any marks on the face of Amedeo Sangiorgi. Without a doubt, deep inside he’s seething with fury at the way this aspect of the matter has become a topic for public debate, instead of remaining safely concealed in the folds of judicial secrecy. But he’s too experienced and consummate a politician to reveal his emotions and not to know that we live in a strange country, where certain foibles are forgiven and forgotten with extreme ease. With a little help from your friends, as someone once said. I’m sure that, after the initial leering speculation in the press, and with the proper pressure applied judiciously in the appropriate venues, Cindy, Barbara, and Laura will simply become three dedicated and unfortunate secretaries who paid too high a price for attending a business dinner that day.

  An RAI journalist approaches Amedeo Sangiorgi with a microphone in his hand, followed by a cameraman with a television camera on his shoulder. The senator waves away the policeman who’s about to block the journalist’s path and agrees to issue what is commonly known as a brief statement.

  He then proceeds to do so in a deep voice, steeped in grief and indignation.

  “This act is the product of an unprecedented savagery, the kind of barbarity that is an expression of total contempt for the sanctity of human life. It leaves us aghast and grief-stricken, wondering what sort of men can harbor such ferocity deep inside their souls. We weep over the loss of brothers, husbands, sons. These are moments in which our hopes and our faith in the institutions of the state seem to waver and fail us, along with words themselves. But it is precisely in moments like these that it is our right and our duty to react. We must be certain of only one thing. Wherever this cowardly attack may originate, whether it is a terrorist plot or the work of some organized crime family, it will not go unpunished. The police are hard at work trying to lay their hands on the guilty parties, to bring them to justice and to mete out the punishment that they so richly deserve.”

  His voice wavers slightly as he comes to the end of his statement. A shadow of grief passes briefly over his face. It’s a perfect performance: the very image of what people expect from a man in his position—a resolute dignity capable of transcending the tempest of emotions.

  The screen goes back to the news anchor in the studio, who begins to explore the question of how many men were in the squad that attacked the villa where the massacre, as everyone now refers to it, took place.

  The words of Chief Inspector Giovannone surface in my mind.

  You haven’t the faintest idea of the tornado that this latest twist has unleashed …

  Oh, I have a very clear idea. A politician of Aldo Moro’s stature, held captive by the Red Brigades; another one of equal prominence lying dead on a slab in the morgue, slain by persons unknown. Add to that the strain of ongoing terrorism trials and the chilly veil of fear that touches everyone and everything.

  Right now, every police and Carabinieri officer in Italy must be on high alert, along with all the operatives of the DIGOS intelligence service and the other intelligence agencies, as well as who knows who else. In the various ministries, all the most important politicians in the country must be tearing their hair out, wondering what the hell is happening in the Bel Paese, sending their men—and there are never enough of them—from one point to another on the map, like tin soldiers in a war game.

  I see the proprietor emerging from the kitchen with the dish of wontons that I ordered, which he sets down at my table. I go back, sit down, and eat in silence, and the burning sensation in my groin increases instead of diminishing. I force myself to finish my food, hoping fuel will produce energy.

  I look at my watch. Maybe Milla has already found the information I need. In any case I no longer have the patience to sit here, waiting, doing nothing, the victim of events, with the growing impression that I’m not the master of my own existence.

  I pay the check, leave the restaurant, and go back to the phone booth near where my car is parked. I drop a token into the slot and I dial my home number. I listen to my own voice announce my absence and ask me to leave a message for myself. I wait for the message to end and I pronounce the sequence of sounds that activates the remote control.

  After a few clicks and hisses, the answering machine plays back the entire sequence of messages. A couple of phone calls from clients who have no idea how much trouble they could get in just for leaving a message on that strip of tape. Sandra, one of my girls, asking me to call her. A phone call from someone who hung up without leaving a message. My phone conversation with no one from the house of Signora Crippa, Teresa. Then, last of all, the voice of Stefano Milla, who provides me, without any further comment, the address I’m looking for.

  As soon as I get back in the car I make a note of it, even though I’m sure I would never forget it. I pull out into traffic, thinking to myself that it’s going to be a long drive to San Donato Milanese. The burning sensation, in the meantime, has become a red-hot wire that someone has twisted around my groin and through my stomach.

  15

  My small dark blue car is racing down the road at the top legal speed, heading in the direction of the metropolis that everyone knows as San Donato Milanese, an outlying development that in the past two years has risen to the rank of a full-fledged township. A satellite city, with everything that this term implies. It’s a strange place, an ENI company town, where a considerable number of the inhabitants work for that large, state-owned oil company. Two structures in one. One half industrial plants and office buildings, the other half a bedroom community, equipped with all the services that a settlement of that kind demands and requires. A classic instance of hardworking Lombard enterprise, which I will never entirely be able to wrap my head around.

  As I drive, my mind continues to wander through the twisting labyrinth that someone has decided to force me to explore. The characters that crowd into this story—whose beginning I can’t understand and whose end is nowhere in sight—are all sitting in the car with me.

  Tano Casale, with his familiar voice, who’s waiting to collect his winnings on a counterfeit lottery ticket so that he can double his money thanks to my brilliant idea. Laura, who should have have been a happy, free woman with a cabaret artist boyfriend but who wound up dying in a place she was never supposed to be. Carla, who was supposed to be there instead, and who has now vanished into thin air like a ghost after pretending to be something and someone she never was, possibly under a name that was never hers. Daytona, who did everything he could to make sure I met her and then, after all hell broke loose, took to his heels. And last of all me, a member of that category of the stupid or the innocent who wander through stories like this one without the protection of an alibi.

  I ca
n feel the fever chills racking my body. The pain has stabilized at a tolerable level, but it’s no fun to live with. I leave the beltway and turn onto Via Rogoredo. I continue on for a while, passing the various factories that have sprung up over time like warts on what was once farm country. I keep driving until I find a place where I can pull over and park the Mini.

  I pop another tablet and pore over the street map of Milan and surrounding territory that I always carry with me in my car, looking for the address that Milla found for me. The house where the phone company installed the phone that Daytona’s mother called is number 106 of Via dei Naviganti Italiani, and the service is in the name of a certain Aldo Termignoni. A name that’s new to me. But with all the connections and business dealings my friend is constantly juggling, it would be hard to keep up with all the people he knows and sees.

  It’s stop-and-go driving for a while, as I pull over frequently to double-check my route on the map. I leave the city and the directions steer me farther and farther away, out into genuine countryside. Buildings arranged around a square courtyard, the last outposts against the onslaught of progress and development. As I drive, the roar of low-flying airplanes coming in for a landing at Linate Airport glides over my head and over the houses around me.

  At last I turn onto the street I’ve been looking for. There’s a small cluster of houses and a road that continues straight toward a stand of trees in the distance. I check the street number of the last house on my left and discover that that side of the street is odd-numbered. I drive on slowly until I come to other buildings. The street numbers seem to come one by one out of a bingo tumbler cage.

  There’s no one in sight. The cars are parked in the courtyards or else along the side of the road, and the people are all inside their houses. A little boy plays alone in a yard. He doesn’t know how that loneliness can grow over the years. Everyday life, everyday words, everyday deeds. An alarm clock rings, a child to take to school, paydays that never seem to come in time, two weeks of vacation every year, polkas in the local dance hall, sex in a car with your girl until you can get married.