At the End of a Dull Day (17 page)

“Hey, big man, explain something to me: I've got a nigger with a handgun that I wouldn't expect to see around here. You're Italian, no doubt about that, but it strikes me that you're the only one . . . ”

I broke my silence. “Tell him that if what he's saying turned out to be true then we'd have to eliminate him.” Hissène repeated my words.

A bitter laugh came out of the Calabrian's mouth. I knew that laugh. It was the laugh of a killer who'd done the killing himself too many times not to know that he'd reached the end of the line. I wondered why he didn't just crash the car and kill himself along with the man who was threatening him. That would foil all our well-laid plans. Maybe he wanted to go out in style, or else a thin thread of hope kept him from being swept away by anger. No. That wasn't it. He was just a Mafioso without an ounce of imagination. Mafia procedures absolutely forbid any independent thinking, unless it's been vetted in advance by the local boss.

About fifty yards from the offices of the car rental company was a small supermarket with an empty parking lot behind it. The African told him to drive around back and showed him where to park the car.

“Turn off the engine and give me the keys,” he ordered.

The man did as he was told and a bullet blew his kidney apart.

“Just like in the movies,” the Russian commented when he saw the powder flash light up the interior of the Lexus for a fraction of a second.

We got out of the SUV and started ridding the Lexus of every single object we could find, while the Chadian took care of the dead man's personal effects. Perched on the rear seat of the Lexus were four identical bags. I opened one at random. Cash. For a second I was tempted to pull out my gun and eliminate both my accomplices. I'd done that once before and I knew nothing could be easier. Unfortunately, I still needed them. I looked up and my eyes met Mikhail's. He was watching me. I smiled at him. Might as well be straight with him. “I'll admit it, it did occur to me,” I whispered.

“I know. But it's not worth trying to figure which of us has the faster draw. That usually winds up with both of us gut-shot on the pavement.”

“Cossack wisdom?”

“Hollywood.”

In three minutes flat we'd cleaned out the Lexus, leaving nothing but a corpse with empty pockets. Another morsel of
confusion
for the Palamaras. I checked my watch. We were running behind schedule.

“Don't break the speed limit but do your best to make up some time,” I told Mikhail.

I checked the dead man's wallet. His name was Zosimo Terreti and he'd shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of forty-nine.

I called Nicoletta, who according to our plan was supposed to spend the evening with Gemma at La Nena to keep an eye on Tortorelli. “How's it going?”

“He got a phone call and now he seems anxious. He keeps calling someone but gets no answer.”

“Warn me if he leaves the restaurant.”

I turned the Calabrian's cell phone back on. In a short time a cascade of messages came in from three unavailable callers. The contacts directory was empty and so was the queue of sent messages. Zosimo was a disciplined soldier.

The Russian and the African had done their jobs perfectly. As the mileage separating us from both the Veneto and the city diminished, a critical moment for our little gang was drawing closer: time to split up the take. I reached down and touched the silencer where it was taped to my leg. The gun had a bullet in the chamber.

My cell phone rang. It was Nicoletta. “We're leaving. We're the last customers.”

I figured out the timeline. The waitstaff still had to clean up. What with one thing and another, Tortorelli would have to stay at La Nena for at least another hour. According to my original plan, I was supposed to wind up face-to-face with the bookkeeper but solo, after we'd split the take and said our farewells at Nicoletta's house. There wasn't time for that now.

“There's been a change in plans,” I announced. “We're going to have to swing by and pick up the bookkeeper after the little puppet show at the hotel. He'll help us count the money.”

Mikhail and Hissène didn't blink an eye. I realized that by now the tension in the SUV was so dense you could slice it.

Mikhail parked a hundred feet or so from the front door of the Negresco Palace, where the bookkeeper had been staying. I handed Hissène a dark blue bag. He hopped out and vanished into the lobby. He was supposed to go up to the night clerk and ask for Tortorelli. When the clerk told him that Tortorelli hadn't come in yet the Chadian was to act annoyed and beat it fast. Just one more brainteaser for the Palamaras to try to figure out.

As soon as the Chadian got back in the car I used Zosimo Terreti's cell phone to text Tortorelli: “Appointment confirmed.”

“You think he'll fall for it?” the Russian asked.

“I can't say,” I answered. It depended on how deeply steeped in the 'Ndrangheta's culture the dickhead really was. The guy we killed in Milan would have seen it for what it was from a mile away, but the bookkeeper was a different matter. He was a technician, as he'd described himself. He was exactly the kind of trained personnel that the 'Ndrangheta needed in order to modernize, but which the various crime families hadn't yet had time to develop from within the ranks. Probably the initial contact had been through the loansharking operation that had stripped him of his company and had turned him into an employee of the Calabrians.

When we pulled into Piazza Vittoria di Lepanto he was already there, waiting for his fellow Mafioso Zosimo. His eyes were scanning traffic for a metallic gray Lexus, and he only noticed the SUV when it pulled up beside him. I swung open the rear passenger door.

“Hop in,” I said, showing him the dark blue gym bag. “We'll drive you to the hotel.”

“How do you fit in?”

“I'll explain while we drive.”

His eyes flickered forward to the front seats. He took in Mikhail and Hissène. He shook his head with determination. “I'm not getting in.”

“Then I'll kill you,” I threatened him, extending the pistol.

“Do you have any idea of who the Palamaras are?” he mumbled in fear.

“That's exactly why you should get in the car.”

His legs were trembling and I had to help him in. His Eighties-era face was deformed by a grimace of terror.

“What happened to Signor Terreti?”

“He had a bad case of saturnism,” I replied. “He couldn't come.”

Mikhail broke in, asking what I'd just said. I explained: “It's another word for lead poisoning.”

The Russian and the Chadian both burst out laughing. The bookkeeper took my hand. Delicately. As if I was his parish priest. “You don't know what they're like. I had to divorce my wife and leave my children to save their lives.”

“So you decided to come bust the balls of yours truly, who never did a thing to you?”

“I was just obeying orders.”

“Bullshit! They'd already decided to kill me, hadn't they?”

“It was going to be a car crash,” he admitted. “Right after you sold us La Nena.”

“And you kept treating me like shit even though you knew they were going to kill me?”

“You're just so obnoxious that it came naturally to me,” he answered frankly.

I couldn't believe my ears. I put a hand on his shoulder. “All right, Tortorelli. Now just behave and keep quiet. We have a ways to go.”

The SUV left the city, followed a stretch of state route, then started climbing gentle slopes along twisting narrow roads. Mikhail knew exactly where to go and after forty minutes or so turned off onto a dirt lane. The powerful headlights lit up orderly rows of grapevines.

“Where are we?” asked the bookkeeper.

“Everything you see belongs to Brianese,” I answered. “Downhill from here he's building a fabulous villa.”

The Russian turned off the engine but not the headlights. “We're here,” he announced.

I shoved Tortorelli out of the SUV and threw an arm around his shoulders. “Just think what a lucky guy you are. You love wine, and you're going to spend eternity in a beautiful vineyard.”

He fell to his knees. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a
prestige cuvée
champagne bottle. “You remember this?” I asked. “You drank one to my health.”

“Cut it short,” the Russian warned me.

I listened carefully and caught the distant barking of a dog. It wouldn't take long before the others joined in a nice canine chorus.

“You're right. But you have no idea how this asshole tortured me.”

The bookkeeper started whining and I hit him over the head. He collapsed to the ground after the fourth blow from the bottle.

“Is he dead?” asked Mikhail.

“I have no idea. Let's bury him and if necessary I'll just finish him off with the shovel.”

We dragged the body a few dozen yards along the slope. “This is the place,” said the Cossack.

“Where's the girl?”

“Right next to him.”

I congratulated myself for my farsighted brilliance in ordering Mikhail to bury Isabel on Brianese's estate. One day this could become a serious embarrassment for the Counselor. Especially now that it was turning into quite the little cemetery.

I started to dig. The Chadian stuck a cigarette into his mouth but when he flicked his lighter the Russian stopped him. “Didn't you notice that I haven't smoked a cigarette all day? You leave your DNA on the cigarette butt and that just makes it easier for the cops.”

The African mumbled an apology and skipped his cigarette.

“I can't do this anymore,” I announced, dropping the shovel. “Hissène, you take a turn.”

He bent down to pick up the shovel and went on with the digging. I sat down in the dark and wiped my face with the sleeve of my jacket.

”It's getting hot,” I tossed out. It wasn't, actually, but I had to drown out the noise of the duct tape peeling away from my leg so that I could remove the silencer. As I chatted with Mikhail about how spring and fall were disappearing as seasons because of global warming, I managed to screw the tube onto the pistol, flip off the safety, and get off two shots into the Chadian's body. I'd hit him in the back. He wasn't dead and he was panting heavily, trying to get out a few words.

I waved the pistol in the air to empty the hot fumes out of the silencer. I stepped over and fired a final shot right behind his ear.

“I'm willing to bet you've got the drop on me,” I murmured to the Russian who was behind me.

“It's nothing but a precaution, my friend. Now, I wouldn't mind pulling the trigger, but my gun would make too much noise and there are only two roads out of here.”

“We should find a solution. This is starting to wear on me.”

“Let's throw away our weapons and search each other before we split up the money.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

I laid the pistol with the silencer on the ground and went back to digging. A good yard deep for a double grave. Tortorelli was on the bottom, with his arms wrapped around the bottle of champagne that had killed him, with the African on top of him. We scattered a kilo of pepper over the bodies and filled the grave back up with dirt.

On our way back to the city we stopped at a bend in the river and got rid of our weapons and the cell phones we'd used in the robbery. We searched each other thoroughly, then I insisted on going over the interior of the SUV with a fine-toothed comb. I tossed everything into the water that could cut you or hit you over the head.

“All right,” I said with satisfaction. “Now I'm going to give you your share.”

“What the African was supposed to get and a little extra,” he specified. “We never said anything about me helping to take care of Tortorelli.”

Each duffel bag contained 250,000 euros. Four bags made a million. The 'Ndrangheta that had taken root in Lombardy, and which the Palamaras belonged to, had been forced to turn to the Veneto under pressure from a police investigation and was laundering four million euros a month there. Not bad.

I dropped the Russian off at an intersection on the outskirts of the city. In my rearview mirror I saw him freeing a bicycle from the chain that secured it to a metal fence and pedaling off with 400,000 euros stuffed into a duffel bag. It didn't make me feel happy to know that he was still alive, and not so much because of the money, which was certainly a substantial sum, but because you just never know. People have the bad habit of doing fucked up things like emerging out of the past, and maybe showing up years later to ask a favor. Mikhail was a die-hard and the only way of killing him would have have been a gunfight at close range. Experience taught me, however, that ever since the times of Johnny Ringo, gunfights were a very good way of catching a bullet in the gut.

I went straight to Nicoletta's house and parked in the courtyard. The sun was already well over the horizon and I wanted to make an effort to get into La Nena at a decent hour. Cigarette trailing a stream of smoke, breath reeking of alcohol, face drawn with weariness and tension, Nicoletta seemed to have aged overnight.

She pointed to the dirt on my shoes and clothing. “A little nocturnal gardening?”

I pulled a hundred thousand euros out of the bag and slammed it down on the table. “Today you're going to call a moving service and get everything out of this house. You have forty-eight hours to get out of town.”

“Don't worry,” she said. “I've got it all organized.”

“Good. Now go to your bedroom. I've got things to do.” She stood up.

“Lock the door when you leave.”

I changed my clothes and I examined every scrap of paper and object that we'd taken out of the Lexus and the Calabrian's pockets. There was nothing that could be useful to me in dealing with the second part of the plan. That was going to be the really hard part, with the 'Ndrangheta investigating and me as one of the prime suspects. I wrapped everything up together and stuck the other 500,000 euros into my backpack. Last of all I mixed up a concoction of cough lozenges made up of potassium chlorate and confectioner's sugar and I put it into a plastic receptacle. I made a hole in the cap and inserted a cigarette with the filter snapped off. I put it under the back seat of the SUV, where the Russian had already placed a five-liter gas can. I'd learned to make rudimentary bombs in the Seventies, when I had talked myself into believing I was a revolutionary, and I was still pretty good at it.