Authors: Sandrone Dazieri
They checked the rest of the floor and the balcony. No more beeps.
‘Would you please check the first-floor bathroom? I kind of need it right now.’
The bathroom was also clean. I locked the door and took the envelope with the phone records from behind the cabinet. I ripped them and the envelope into minute pieces and dumped them into the toilet. Oh, what a relief! I was about to flush when I imagined the cops searching the pipes, finding a compromising piece of evidence.
Signor Denti, would you please explain this?
Better not. I knelt down, took out all the pieces, and squished them into a dripping ball of pulp that I then put in my pocket.
Outside the two tough guys were searching the house, doing everything better than Rosario and his wife had ever done. ‘How much longer will this take?’
‘If we don’t find anything, a couple of hours.’
‘Can I leave you guys here while I run an errand?’
No problem. It was better.
I got away from the building and I threw the ball into a bin. Try to find it now, I thought. I didn’t feel like staying there while they searched the place. I walked down Corso Vercelli and stared at the display windows. One caught my attention:
Internet Point
(Learn). Behind the glass about twenty computers sat on school desks, many of the computers available. It cost a euro for an hour. The pimpled sales assistant made a copy of my ID (‘
as required by anti-terrorism law
’). He suggested that I use the online white pages when I described vaguely what I was looking for. I put Max’s name in the window. Nothing came up in Milan, not even in Rome. I tried other cities, but I had no luck. It wasn’t going to be that easy.
I ate an ice cream, although out of season, and then I went home. The two were packing up what was left of the computer.
‘We’ll recycle it,’ said Paolo. ‘Don’t worry, we know how.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Finished. Now you can have sweet dreams,’ said the older guy. ‘We found something out of the ordinary but it’s not a bomb.’ We went into the living room, where he pointed to the fireplace. ‘There’s a metal rectangular box here in the chimney about eighty centimetres long and twenty centimetres wide. You can’t see anything inside the fireplace. Do you know anything about it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s not any of my business, but is this your house?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Because you should know that you have a hidden safe.’
The money! I looked inside the fireplace and up the chimney. I saw nothing odd.
‘And if there was a safe how would you go about opening it? I don’t see a lock.’
‘Maybe there is one even though it isn’t very visible.’ He indicated a small, round depression about as wide as my thumb beneath the stone mantelpiece. It was almost impossible to notice unless you knew what you were looking for. ‘A magnetic lock.’
‘How does it work?’
‘You place your key next to it and it opens. Every key has a microchip and a code. It works better than a combination lock. Without it you’d have to use an acetylene torch. If the safe isn’t yours, that is, or maybe the previous owner had it put in?’ He didn’t believe it for a second.
‘What would this key look like?’
‘It wouldn’t look like an ordinary key. But it wouldn’t be that big, probably a plastic body with a metal head.’ He shook my hand. ‘Thank you, and we’ll be in contact for the rest of the payment.’
They gave me back the house keys and I discovered that I didn’t have to look far. The magnetic key was simply attached to my key holder. I’d mistaken it for some ugly mushroom-shaped charm. It was blue plastic with a metal semi-spherical head. If that wasn’t it, I didn’t know what was. I placed it next to the depression and I immediately heard a click. A thin metal plate about two centimetres thick slid out from the mantelpiece towards the floor.
I put my head into the fireplace, not a comfortable position. The piece that had slid out brought with it two rows of bricks that revealed the inside of the safe, lit by a small lamp. I had already imagined getting my hands on piles of cash, and I almost thought I could see them stacked inside but there were only three envelopes … too small to contain three hundred thousand euros. Shit. I threw the envelopes on the floor. Then I replaced the key, and everything slid back into place.
I opened the larger envelope. There were more phone records. How annoying. The same heading: Mariano Roveda. They dated from last October. The Ad Exec had worked on it. There were numbers crossed out one right after the other. Only three with the same area code, 004191, were still legible, each circled in red. Hmmm. The second envelope contained four photographs taken with a zoom lens. In one Roveda was getting out of a car and shaking the hand of a bald and elegant man in his forties. No kisses on the cheek. In the background the tables of an outdoor café faced a piazza. In the following photos Roveda and the man were getting into a car with tinted windows. The license plate was blown up in the last photo, the letters
TI
visible. Swiss plates, from Lugano. If the area code matched it meant that the Ad Exec had found out who the guy with Roveda was and then had had Spillo follow them. Maybe he had followed them himself. This meeting had to have meant something considering the lengths the Ad Exec to which went to hide it. Monica’s father hadn’t said anything about this. Why?
The third, slightly smaller envelope was somewhat damaged. When I shook it several photos fell onto the floor. I was expecting more of Roveda, but they were of Salima and me, stark naked and going at it.
2
I didn’t recognise the setting but from what I could tell it was Salima’s apartment. I looked ridiculous, like one of those guys in the amateur photos that you see in personal ads with the black bar across the eyes. You’ve got to be a professional if you want the shots to come out well while having sex. Salima, on the other hand, could have made the cover of
Playboy.
Karate kept her in shape; she didn’t have a gram of fat on her, but she wasn’t bony like Monica.
Salima could kill you with her legs. From some of my facial expressions it looked like I was going to die right then and there. I was still wearing socks. I thought for a moment that the Ad Exec had taken the photos himself and that I had discovered another side to him. But then it dawned on me that the photos had to have been taken by someone else. The lens followed the two while they screwed, and judging from the quality of the images they had been taken from outside the window. The Ad Exec was also being trailed.
It was kind of funny.
It was time to go, and I couldn’t put the photos back where I’d found them. I certainly didn’t want to get rid of them until I found out exactly what all this meant. I put everything into the larger envelope and got a roll of tape from upstairs. I then went to the basement in search of a hiding place worthy of Santo Trafficante.
The pool was open, and two old hags with coloured swimming caps were splashing around.
‘Santo, come in for a swim with us!’ one yelled, waving.
‘It’s very tempting ladies, but I’m looking for my car keys.’
I went into the men’s locker room that was painted in several shades of blue with wooden benches and green metal lockers without locks. No one was around. I chose a random locker and stuck the envelope between the bottom of the locker and the tiled floor. Someone would have found it sooner or later, but I needed a quick hiding place until I thought of somewhere else. When I got up I saw a kid with a tribal tattoo on his shoulder and a ring through his eyebrow. When I was his age, my father would have branded me with a hot iron if he had caught me looking like that. The kid said hello rather respectfully. Did he see me stashing the envelope? I didn’t think so.
I walked out, spinning the keys. ‘Found them!’
‘Lucky you! I never seem to find anything that I lose,’ said the first old lady. ‘Stop and see me sometime, and we’ll talk.’
‘I’ll make a note of it on my computer.’ I got in my car.
*
The courthouse in Milan was a rectangular monster of a building constructed during Mussolini’s time. It had dark windows and grey pillars; it looked like it was ready to devour the guilty as well as the innocent. A group of protesters was on the pavement. ‘ALESIA CALL CENTRE WORKERS WANT JUSTICE!’ read the banner. ‘YOU TRY LIVING ON 700 EUROS A MONTH!’ That was about how much money I had spent on cabs these past four days. They always found a way of getting to you in the end.
Valentina was there to meet me at the foot of the steps as agreed. She wore a formal blue dress; she led me through the long corridors of the tribunal, which seemed more like a labyrinth. The lawyer seemed to possess some mysterious instinct that showed her the way. We took hidden elevators and staircases leading to floors that all looked the same. There were poor souls awaiting punishment and bastards walking around in judicial robes.
‘Do I have any priors?’ I asked.
‘None. My compliments. Who knows how you got away with it?’
‘I used to be very smart.’
‘If you’re still smart you’d better tell me anything else you may know.’
‘I’ve got nothing.’
The judge was a man in his sixties with white hair and a simian appearance. In the prosecutor’s office there was also a uniformed cop who would type the minutes into the computer. The first questions were basic: name, age, profession, my role at B&M. He asked me what my relationship with Roveda was like; I told him it was terrible. That was the only truth that I’d tell him. Then he asked me to elaborate on this and I lied. I knew the score well enough to come across as believable. He then asked when I had seen Roveda for the last time. I said that it was at the office meeting.
‘Did you see him again after that?’
‘I didn’t get the chance to,’ I sighed. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘Not even on Sunday?’
‘No. I was alone at home.’
‘Alone?’
Valentina intervened, saying one would not ask someone in general questioning, who was not formally a suspect, to justify himself with an alibi. They exchanged a few sharp remarks and in the end I had to respond.
‘Yes, I was alone. Then around seven I went to La Scala.’
‘May I ask what you did the entire day?’
‘I prayed.’
The judge looked as though he’d swallowed something that had gone down the wrong way.
‘My client is a practising member of an observant Catholic organisation,’ said Valentina.
‘I would like to know how such a pious man was accompanied home in a squad car the same night. By his own admission in the statement that he gave to the officers the day after, he was so drunk that he couldn’t walk.’
‘The flesh is weak, sir,’ I said. ‘I used to drink a lot so I pray as well to keep me away from the bottle.’
‘Did the defunct Signor Roveda know about this condition of yours?’
Careful. A minefield. ‘No. It happens so rarely, thank the Lord.’
‘I understand. Have you ever been to Signor Roveda’s home?’
I had no idea but it may have happened. Maybe they had found a sample of my hair there? ‘Yes, but not recently.’
‘Would you please be more specific about the time? A month? A year?’
I guessed. ‘A couple of months ago.’
I hoped that they wouldn’t ask me to describe it because the only thing that I knew was that there was a swimming pool there. The old man didn’t ask.
‘Do you know a man by the name of Stefano Manzi?’
‘It doesn’t sound familiar.’
‘He runs the private investigation agency,
Poirot
.’
Oh, God. ‘No.’
‘Have you ever contacted him on issues related to your work or private life?’
‘Was it him that told you this?’
‘Please answer the question.’
‘No.’
‘Signor Denti, from the information that we’ve gathered from the phone records of the Poirot agency as well as from the phone belonging to Signor Manzi, we have noted that some calls were made directly to you. In the light of this new information would you like to change your statement?’
I looked at Valentina. She didn’t move a muscle.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything,’ I stuttered. ‘It’s a private matter.’ I stalled them, trying to come across embarrassed. When you lie and do it halfway it’s always a mistake. You’ve got to go all the way and hope for the best. That’s what I did. ‘It was for my girlfriend, Monica Bonanno.’
I clearly heard Valentina swallow.
‘Did you contract the Poirot Agency to follow your girlfriend?’
‘We are supposed to get married … I wanted to be sure that she wasn’t cheating on me. Sorry, I’m a jealous man. Every time that she looks at a man I imagine the worst.’ Poor girl. ‘A guy hit on her in a bar once, and I haven’t had a moment’s peace since. I’m ashamed at what I’ve done.’
‘Do you have proof of this, reports or photographs?’
‘No.’
‘Normally private investigators write down the results of their efforts and give them to their clients.’