For All the Gold in the World (14 page)

“I know you have a tape recorder in your pocket,” he continued. “But still, I want to be clear: You can go fuck yourself, you and all your friends, who I'm guessing are somewhere nearby.”

Surprise overwhelmed me. “Do you think you can bullshit your way out of this situation?” I ventured, more or less at random.

A sarcastic smile appeared on his face. “Do what you have to,” he hissed.

“Lorenzo, please,” Patanè whined.

I took advantage of the opportunity to play the family card. “Don't you ever think about your parents?”

“They're a constant feature of every endless day and you'd only be doing me a favor if you got rid of them,” he grinned. “The day of the robbery my mother forced me to go down to the store to clean up the workshop when all I wanted to do was stay home and study. And my dad managed to get me shot. Instead of grabbing that fucking pistol and risking life and limb to defend his son and the shop, he started sniveling, exactly as he's doing now, and he couldn't even remember the combination to the safe in time.”

I turned to look at Ferdinando Patanè. He was gripping the wheelchair to keep from collapsing. He was a little man, broken by grief and remorse. It had to be a terrible thing, facing his son's implacable hatred day after day, but I didn't pity either of them. They were still accomplices to horrible crimes.

I changed strategy. “As you know very well, since we informed Kevin Fecchio of the fact, we represent the son of the housekeeper who was murdered along with Gastone Oddo.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Lorenzo interrupted me. “Though of course if it's the way you say it is, that kid may be running some risks himself.”

I ignored the threat. Young Patanè's objective was clearly to make me lose my temper.

“We're going to stay on you until we obtain the names of your accomplices, the ones who took part in the slaughter,” I said, my words clear and my tone harsh.

“I continue to have no idea what you're talking about,” the son retorted sarcastically. “But if you're done harassing us, I'm afraid I need to head home so my mama can change my big-boy diaper.”

The father turned the wheelchair around and started pushing. His back curved, his gait hesitant.

 

Kevin and Lorenzo: white-hot hatred. Pure, lethal. The idea of punishing and robbing criminals had sprung from their meeting, ripening in minds clouded by hate.

Ferdinando: a good-natured shopkeeper, a weak man whose sense of guilt had turned him into an accomplice.

The other two showed up later and were given the task of aiding in the assault on Oddo's villa, along with Fecchio. They couldn't have been selected purely on the merits of their determination to punish criminals with their bare hands. It was certainly a necessary condition, but not in and of itself sufficient. The two accomplices would have to be possessed of specific operational skills and a particular propensity for violence. Not everyone's capable of transforming himself into an armed robber, a rapist, and a murderer on the spot.

Lorenzo had won the first round. He'd gotten rid of us, and for a while we wouldn't go back to bother him. The way he'd slammed the door in my face still stung. For being just twenty-seven, he had a way with words. But it wasn't just that. I'd taken the pair's respective roles for granted because he was in a wheelchair. A stupid preconception.

After the crushing blow of our failure with the Patanès, we'd gone off to lick our wounds aboard the
Sylvie
. Beniamino had organized a light repast with an array of delicacies, chief among them Stilton and Sauternes. While we were nursing our wounded egos by stuffing our faces, we'd started going over the case, detail by detail; it was, as the fat man had rightly pointed out, nothing more than a series of fucking Russian nesting dolls.

Late that night, while I treated myself to a generous helping of calvados before stretching out on my bunk to try to get a couple of hours of sleep, Beniamino said: “In this case, we've committed one error of judgment after another. Let's try not to forget who we are and where we come from.”

Then he raised his glass. “To Marius Jacob, and to all free men with outlaw hearts.” Max and I joined in the toast.

The Marseillais criminal Marius Jacob had been the inspiration for the literary character Arsène Lupin. An artist of theft and a dedicated old-school libertarian and anarchist, at the turn of the twentieth century he'd robbed the rich to help fund utopian movements and help the needy. Once, he broke into the home of a physician by accident, and not only did he refrain from taking a single thing, he even left a note of apology. His targets were society's parasites. France rid itself of him by loading Jacob onto a ship bound for Cayenne and a life of forced labor. He shuffled off this mortal coil in 1954, leaving a suicide note and two liters of wine for whoever found his body.

The history of European crime over the past century and a half included the lives and exploits of a great number of gentlemen bandits. Their experience over time had resulted in the construction of a code of behavior to which we scrupulously adhered.

Thieves, smugglers, armed robbers, men and women who rebelled against the logic of organized crime and the various mafias, in perennial conflict with the corrupt. A practically unknown history, but one that we were proud to be part of. A history of people on the losing side, women and men who had lived through their eras with their heads held high and their dignity intact.

I set the empty glass on the table. “It isn't easy this time,” I said, before getting up and wishing them goodnight.

 

* * *

 

Dolo. Office of the All-Knowing Mirko.

The con man took fright when he recognized Rossini. “What have I done wrong this time?” he stammered.

“Calm down, Zanca,” I said. “We just want to ask you a few more questions; not about Ferdinando, about Lorenzo Patanè.”

The con man pulled anxiously at his chin while peeking over at Beniamino. He had the look of someone who's put his foot in it.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice hard.

“The conversation we had three days ago got me thinking and I reached out to a few of my customers, asked some questions,” the man replied without taking his eyes off the old bandit.

“We told you to keep your mouth shut,” Max reminded him.

“Maybe I can be useful to you,” the psychic lied.

“Maybe you could get a little money out of it,” I shot back. “You couldn't resist the temptation to worm your way into the Patanè household to sell your magic skills, am I right?”

“I thought they might be of some comfort.”

“And I continue to think that you ought to die, to rid humanity at large of your noxious presence,” said Rossini, who was examining the amulets scattered around the room.

“I might have found the person who can supply the information you're looking for,” sniveled the con man.

“And who would that be?”

“A nurse who quit last year. From what I understand, she couldn't take young Patanè's bullying anymore.”

“Are you able to get in touch with her?”

“I have her cell phone number.”

“Call her and tell her to come here.”

The psychic fished a scrap of paper off a tray, picked up the phone, and put on a show of his ability to deceive others. “She'll come at 3 this afternoon. She can't make it any earlier,” he informed us, wiping the sweat off his neck.

To kill time while we waited, we purchased swimsuits, beach towels, and flip-flops, and took refuge in the nearest public pool. We weren't the only ones to have had that magnificent idea; children and their mothers made their presences known by screaming, often for no reason.

I took care not to complain to my friends, because experience had already taught me how that would turn out. Old Rossini would berate me, accusing me of acting like the usual radical-chic elitist who claims to love the people while detesting their behavior.

At that moment, Beniamino was enjoying a pleasant conversation with two Ukrainian nannies off from work, while Max was on his tablet, searching the Internet for news.

“The Senate commission on justice is playing its usual games to prevent torture from being included as a crime in the penal code,” the fat man informed me indignantly.

I shrugged. “That proposal's never going to pass and even if it were to, it'd be so watered down that they wouldn't be able to prosecute anyone.”

“It's worth giving it a try,” Max retorted decisively. “The list of cases and deaths is getting longer and longer.”

Every so often the fat man would talk about civil and human rights in terms a self-righteous civilian might employ, forgetting how well he actually knew the reality, which was that our armor-plated democracy saw torture as just another resource. The justifications and the apologies always came much later, long after that resource had been fully exploited.

That the cops had carte blanche to lock down the streets and extort information was strategic to the government's long-term plans. Though of course no one was supposed to overdo it or, most importantly, get caught red-handed.

The criminal proceedings that laboriously worked their way through the system before emerging into a courtroom were turned into obscene puppet theaters. The victims were attacked and derided by a well-oiled media machine capable of harvesting consensus from the majority of public opinion.

The few who raised their voices in opposition were the usual intellectuals, artists, and professors who could afford to. And in any case they always counted for less and less. People are generally willing to renounce the rights of others if it means living in peace and tranquility.

Nothing new, for that matter. Public safety, investigations, the very administration of justice, prison—all institutions based on violence. Physical and psychological violence. Threats and blackmail were common practices.

Many years ago, I'd gone with Max to an excruciatingly dull public panel discussion on the Mafia. I had however been impressed by the pitiless realism of a Palermitan Jesuit who had maintained that suspicion was the prelude to truth.

And in fact, priests have the long tradition of the Inquisition behind them. In the end, the method hadn't changed; it had simply been refined and adapted to modern times and requirements.

Rarely did the discovery of the truth occur without the use of at least one of the countless forms of violence.

We knew that very well. We'd adjusted to it without the slightest moral qualm because throughout the history of the underworld, there had never been any ambiguities. And even in the case at hand, approached, as it was, with criminal intent by everyone involved, there was no room for doubts and hypocrisies.

Nor was there on our part. Our outlaw hearts, however, recognized a fundamental difference: Torture and rape weren't part of how we operated. Quite the opposite.

To investigate means asking questions and obtaining truthful replies. Whatever the cost.

“This is stunning!” Max blurted out, interrupting my chain of thought. “The new mayor of Venice has banned forty-nine children's textbooks because they call into question the traditional family. He's afraid that the gay lobby is trying to corrupt children's minds.”

The first citizen of one of the most beautiful cities on earth was an industrialist. He'd promised prosperity and had trounced his opponent: a judge who had instead promised respect for the laws, and had never had a serious chance of winning. The city of Venice was coining cash money as fast as it could shuttle tourists through. The problem was whether to give the whole city entirely over to business interests or make some attempt to protect it from unbridled invasion. The citizenry had made its choice.

I got up from the lounge chair. I needed something to drink. “And you're worried that in the Senate they're not sufficiently sensitive to the issue of torture?”

“I worry about everything, Marco,” Max replied, his tone ambiguous.

I slaked my thirst with a couple of glasses of white wine, went back to lie down, and decided to catch up on some sleep. I dreamt of a woman from my past who'd suddenly reappeared and wanted to marry me. If it had really happened, I would have thrown myself at her feet.

“The sun isn't kidding around,” Max exclaimed in a serious tone a few hours later, as we were walking toward the psychic's place of business. “The greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone have made the sun potentially quite dangerous and it's important to protect oneself.”

“Who are you trying to palm that sermon off on?” I asked.

“You,” he replied seraphically. “Beniamino doesn't need sunscreen because he got a tan out on the water, but you're white as a sheet and you forgot to put any on, and now you're red as an overripe tomato.”

I lowered the car's sun visor and studied myself in the mirror. The fat man was right. I ran my hand over the back of my neck and felt that it was tender to the touch. “I really did get burned. I need some kind of lotion or I'll go through hell tonight.”

Max handed me a small tube. “It's a good thing I went to the drugstore and stocked up.”

“You're certainly careful about your health aren't you?” Rossini needled him.

“If it's the diet you're referring to, I'd like to point out that I haven't put on so much as a gram of weight,” the fat man said by way of excuse, snickering with gusto. “I'm preserving my fat as if it were a UNESCO World Heritage site.”

 

When Zanca ushered the nurse into the room set aside for consultations and magical rituals, we found ourselves face-to-face with a very attractive woman in her early forties. Nice face, long legs. The only things that clashed were her hair, cropped short, the beige, raw-linen skirt suit in a cut long out of style, and her sandals. They were identical to the ones an old high school teacher of mine used to wear.