For All the Gold in the World (20 page)

“Yes.”

They shook hands and Beniamino gave the order to cast off. Then he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. “You want to see how to steer the best boat in the world?”

We sailed to the archipelago of the Kvarner islands and tied up on one of the least popular islands, where we'd rented a large villa overlooking the water.

That was how Sergio's summer began.

Under old Rossini's kind and careful tutelage, he learned to dive off the rocks into the salt water, to get up in the middle of the night to set sail in a fishing trawler, to throw the first punch so that other boys wouldn't be able to bully him.

Max introduced him into the world of adventure books, the Internet, and the movies.

He fell asleep in the arms of old whores and working smugglers. He was adorable, curious, and kind, and everyone loved him.

Every so often he and Beniamino would go off on their own and Sergio would tell the old bandit about his mother, about what had happened to her. Most of all he wanted to understand why Luigina had always been considered so different. The old bandit would take him on his knee and wrap his arms around him and teach him how to defend himself against the cruel world of grown-ups.

I remained at a distance and watched. I never knew how to be spontaneous with Sergio; every word I said, every thing I did was always the product of complicated thought processes. Remaining on the margins allowed me to understand that this wasn't just his summer. It was also ours. After many years, we were finally able to enjoy an interval of relative peace and quiet.

One night, a Danish girl came in on the last ferry. Blonde, with skin the color of milk. The currents of her life had pushed her all the way to our little island. She understood that she had fetched up among other shipwrecked souls and decided to come live with us; she settled into an unoccupied room, spoke very little, but seemed to like our company. She was attractive and I thought about trying to strike something up with her, but for the first time a woman seemed too young and I decided to let it drop.

Sergio was very curious about the “foreign woman,” as Max had dubbed her. He was the only one who seemed able to draw her out of the lethargy that afflicted her, speaking to her in his junior-high English.

She'd claimed her name was Bente but Rossini, who had searched her room to make sure she didn't represent a threat to the boy, said that there was a different name on her “Swedish” passport. And that she didn't have a penny to her name.

We didn't give a damn about these little white lies. She lied because she couldn't possibly know that she could trust us; that there was no secret more terrible than the ones we were already keeping in our hearts and in our memories.

We found a way to give her a little money without offending her. She barely thanked us, as if it hardly mattered to her.

When the time came to leave the island she asked if she could stay in the villa a little longer. We paid another month's rent and the landlady promised she'd keep an eye out for her.

We returned to Punta Sabbioni the first week of September; a few days later Sergio was scheduled to start school again. We found the lawyer, Cocco, waiting for us. In the meantime, he'd found a young couple in Trieste who were interested in taking Sergio in, and eventually adopting him. A ridiculously long, complicated, and difficult process in our country, but the lawyer had high hopes.

I watched Sergio as he sobbed brokenhearted in the arms of Beniamino and Max. He'd understood it was unlikely he'd ever see any of us again. We'd always been straight with him on that point. He was greatly changed. His hair was sun-bleached, his eyebrows were white as tow, and his skin was the color of leather. He'd grown.

At last he left. Loaded down with gifts and memories of the strangest summer of his life.

And my friends left, too. Just enough time to fill the speedboat's tanks and they were gone. Old Rossini had some business to tend to and the fat man had decided to accompany him.

I remained on land. I missed my jazz woman. But when I got back to Padua I discovered that Pico's had been shuttered for good. A construction crew was already at work turning it into the branch office of some unfamiliar bank. I felt sadness at the sight of the old sign lying in the rubble.

For several mornings, I staked out Cora's apartment building. At last I saw her leave. I immediately understood that she had gone back to being Marilena. I simply made my presence known. She looked at me, perhaps she even gave me a slight smile, but she didn't stop. She kept on walking, straight to her car, started it up, and disappeared around a curve in the road.

I smoked a cigarette but couldn't thread together anything resembling a complete thought. I felt shattered, as if I'd gone to pieces once and for all, even though I'd always known that my relationship with her was all but bound to end the way it had.

Just then, I was unemployed and I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't even feel like getting drunk.

I phoned Antonio Santirocco, the mayor of the blues.

“I need a gig,” I told him.

And so I went back to working with the Triade. Bob on keyboards, Babe on guitar, Antonio on drums, and Stefano, the actor who told tales of blues and criminals.

We traveled every day, and every night we played a different club. And then we wound up in a hotel room with dirty windows, though it hardly mattered: There was never anything interesting to see.

I was living from day to day without much effort, limiting myself to keeping a safe distance from everything, not expecting anything, but not feeling too sorry for myself anymore, either. I met a couple of interesting women. Delia and Giannina. For Giannina in particular it would have been worth quitting the tour and saying farewell to my musician friends, but I kept myself from doing it. For her own good. I didn't want to do her the dirty trick of vanishing into thin air when I got a certain phone call. Because that's exactly what would have happened.

I kept on keeping on while waiting for another case where we'd need to step in to help straighten things out. The solution was almost never as simple as determining the truth. We needed to protect our clients' interests and, as much as possible, put things right, while respecting the rules of free men with outlaw hearts.

T
he fact that life was strange and capable of springing surprises on you when you least expect them was something I'd long known, but I could never have imagined the phone call I got; it was from the last person I expected. It was a lazy late afternoon, and I was sitting at a table at a bar on the piazza of a charming little village in Romagna drinking a beer. My friends from the Triade, the all-Italian organ trio led by the “mayor of the blues” Antonio Santirocco, were shut up in a club doing rehearsals for that evening's concert. My cell phone starting ringing and I waited until the fourth ring, just for effect.

“This is Giorgio Pellegrini. Don't hang up.”

The surprise left me speechless. The last time I'd seen him, I'd begged old Rossini to shoot him. Beniamino had refused because we'd promised him immunity to save the life of a kidnap victim. Giorgio Pellegrini was the worst criminal I'd ever met. Murderer, traitor, blackmailer, pimp, rapist. The list of his crimes was long. Too long to allow him to go on living, but he'd proven to be damned cunning, always able to dig himself a bolt-hole of some kind.

The way he'd done with us. He'd fled Padua, pursued by a warrant for his arrest issued by the district attorney and by a promise from Rossini that the next time we met he'd be a dead man.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I didn't do it.”

“Do what?”

I heard him sigh. “So you don't know anything?”

I hadn't read a paper or listened to the news in days. “I don't know fuck all,” I blurted out in irritation.

“Martina and Gemma were murdered.”

His wife and his lover. I knew them well. Two fully consensual victims of Pellegrini's perversions. They'd been dismayed at having been abandoned, but as far as I knew they'd begun running La Nena, the restaurant that handsome Giorgio had made famous all over the region.

“I want to hire you guys,” he said. “I want you and your partners to find out who killed them.”

“You've called the wrong person. The only thing I'd be willing to do for you is witness your death.”

“But first you and that museum piece of a friend of yours would have to find me. In the meantime, you can look into the case. You're mercenaries, you work on contract. I don't see where the problem is.”

“The problem is you, Pellegrini.”

“Don't be stupid,” he retorted, all smarm. “Otherwise you're running the risk of doing it for free because I'm sure that when all is said and done, you're not going to be able to resist the temptation to stick your noses into it anyway. I know you're going to want to find out the truth behind the brutal murder of two poor, innocent girls.”

The son of a bitch. I'd forgotten about his uncanny ability to understand people. I changed the subject. “You don't really give a damn about them, do you?” I accused him.

“Sincerely, not all that much,” he explained, still speaking in that pesky tone. “I'm interested in figuring out who's behind it, who's trying to flush me out by murdering my ‘nearest and dearest.'”

“The list of your victims is long enough to fill a local phone book,” I objected. “Just try to imagine how many people go to sleep every night with dreams of taking revenge on you.”

“Revenge has nothing to do with it. The motive for the killings is definitely something else,” he retorted confidently.

“Tell the cops about it,” I suggested. “They're sure to listen to you, since you're one of their confidential informants.”

“I used to be. Then we lost touch, the cops and me,” he huffed. “Right now, the police are stumbling around in complete darkness. When the district attorney decides it's time to get some results, they'll accuse me of the crime and wrap up the case in the space of a week.”

“Nothing could be simpler.”

“But you're not going to settle for the official version.”

“Don't kid yourself.”

He snickered. “I know you, Buratti, I've seen you at work. You're obsessed with the truth, you're not going to give up a chance to work on this case. I could arrange to advance you fifty thousand euros in a matter of days. The rest when the job is completed.”

“I told you: No!”

“Then you're going to investigate free of charge. Offering you money was just a nice way of salving your conscience of the grim thought that you'll be working for a shady character like yours truly.”

Pellegrini hung up and I finished drinking my beer; my hand was trembling slightly. You couldn't trust that character even when he was telling the truth. He always had a plan, every single move he made was thought out well in advance. And that phone call was no exception.

I held out long enough to drink another beer, and then I rushed out in search of an Internet café so I could dig up some information about the double murder.

When I saw their photographs, I felt sorry for those two poor women. Martina and Gemma had always paid dearly for the joke destiny had chosen to play on them by delivering them into the hands of Giorgio Pellegrini. He'd manipulated them so thoroughly that they had no will of their own. They'd become docile marionettes, and they'd remained loyal to him even after he vanished from their lives.

According to the investigators, they'd been surprised by one or more people inside the restaurant just before closing time, when the cooks and the waiters had already left. They'd been forced down into the basement and there they'd been tied up, tortured, and then strangled with piano wire.

The day's take had been found in Gemma's purse, ready to be deposited at the bank.

Once robbery was ruled out as a motive, the police shifted their focus to Giorgio Pellegrini's shadowy past, looked for a motive there. He was currently wanted and on the run.

Nonsense. Too ridiculous to be anything other than a red herring. The investigators had done their best to keep the journalists at bay: At last the press had caught hold of a case they could cover for a good long time to come. In exchange, they'd been tossed a few succulent bones to gnaw on, but the cops and judges had treated Pellegrini with exaggerated care, almost as if they were eager to protect him, forcing the press to fan out in pursuit of leads they knew would play well, but which were devoid of any real investigative basis: gangs from eastern Europe, immigrants who, back home, were professional bandits, serial killers, satanic sects, and other bullshit.

Certainly this had been the work of professionals. At least three. One outside the restaurant, acting as a lookout. And two inside. The fact that piano wire had been used to finish off the two women was a message meant for Giorgio Pellegrini. It said: We're good at what we do; efficient, dangerous, and lethal.

If what he said was true and the motive wasn't revenge, then this was the work of a criminal organization powerful enough to have its own well-trained, professional killers. I found myself examining the case as if I really had been hired to investigate, and I had to make a real effort to focus on anything else.

Pellegrini had used the right arguments to capture my interest, but I had no intention of giving in. You simply can't work for a client you'd like to see dead with all your heart. It's neither right nor healthy.

I spent the evening with Triade's purebred blues, but every once in a while, memories of my interactions with Martina and Gemma bubbled dangerously to the surface, and I was forced to thrust them back into a corner of my mind with a healthy shot of calvados.

At six in the morning, the cops entered my room using a skeleton key. They could just as easily have come in two hours later and we all would have gotten more sleep, but there are certain habits that law enforcement isn't about to break.