Gang of Lovers (20 page)

“In my life, I've learned to mind my own business, and I can't tell you how much it's helped me.”

“Was that before or after you went to prison?”

I snorted in irritation and looked at him. “I served my time and paid my debt to society, and now I'm a citizen like any other.”

“Sante Brianese gave you a hand. In fact, you might say that you owe him everything.”

I decided that the time had come to stop being polite and stood up. “The espresso is on the house,” I said as I went back to work.

The cop sat in silence and didn't move. After a while he started chatting with someone, then he moved on to someone else. He left his table a little while before lunch began serving, but didn't go far from my restaurant. While Gemma was gulping down her tripe in consommé with tears streaking her face, I saw Campagna pacing back and forth in front of the entrance, his eyes scanning for Togno.

The inspector belonged in a class of his own, definitely one of the worst of his kind. And he could cause trouble. But I'd dealt with even tougher and more dangerous colleagues of his, and I'd gotten off scot-free.

Campagna didn't give up until we lowered the metal roller blinds. He'd spent a shitty day hunting someone he hadn't been able to find and for all I knew a long time might go by before he'd get a chance to talk to him.

On my way home, strolling down the deserted porticoes, I realized that I'd slipped into a state of euphoric excitement. Buratti, Campagna, the fat man in the hospital, Togno, and Signora Palazzolo. The machinery entwined their various fates, and the one turning the handle was always me. I noticed with satisfaction the development of a pretty substantial erection. I turned a loving thought to Martina, I was going to give her the pleasure that she deserved. Gemma, on the other hand, was in the doghouse. She'd be left to watch, struggling to digest the tripe that I'd made her eat for dinner, too.

W
ho was that?” Beniamino asked when I hung up the phone.

“Campagna.”

He couldn't conceal a grimace of disappointment. “Any news?”

“Togno has vanished,” I replied. “But the cop did have something interesting to tell me, which is that his wife, a certain Maria José Pagliaro, used to be a high-end prostitute. He questioned her and she clammed up, but his gut tells him that she knows a lot more than she's saying.”

“And he wants you to go get to know her.”

“Right. He gave me the address.”

Beniamino, sitting on the expensive sofa in the lovers' apartment, slowly lit a cigarette. He closed his eyes as he took the first drag. “You guys got yourselves involved in a dangerous game,” he said. “The cops play by their own rules, and those rules are always different from ours. This kind of alliance is always a losing bet.”

I disagreed. “Without him, we wouldn't have found out much of anything.”

“It's my fault, Marco. My fault and no one else's,” he blurted out suddenly.

“That's not true.”

He jerked to his feet, grabbed my hand, and gripped it hard.

“I should have been here with you guys, my closest friends, but instead I abandoned you, I couldn't even find the strength to pick up the phone to hear your voices.”

“Why not?”

“Because you were there when Sylvie jumped out the window,” he replied in a voice so low that I had could barely hear it. “Every time I relive that scene, you guys are there, and I thought that having you around would drive me crazy.”

“Then you did the right thing by keeping us at a distance,” I replied, totally honestly. “Sylvie's suicide is a wound that will never heal. The sound of her body hitting the pavement tortures me, I feel a pain so intense it's almost physical.”

“It was a mistake for me to think that all this suffering affected only me,” he confessed. “I did my best to fight my despair by throwing myself into one robbery after another, just hoping I'd find myself in the middle of a firefight. Only my duty to protect Luc and Christine kept me from starting down the road of no return.”

“And now?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“I've come back to settle accounts and to stay. For good,” he whispered. “When I heard that Max had been wounded I suddenly came to my senses, I opened my eyes and found myself on the brink of a cliff, an instant before tumbling into the void. The fat man saved my life.”

“He saved mine too. He shielded me with his body.”

“It won't happen again. I swear it.”

I wrapped my arms around him to keep from crying. He hugged me hard. Then he went into the kitchen. I heard him rummaging around with the coffeemaker.

I went into the restroom to splash some water on my face. Now that Rossini was here I felt a little calmer. Max's condition was improving and now Christine, playing the role of the fat man's courteous and likeable French girlfriend, was there to look after him. No one would ever have supposed that in her purse she carried a high caliber pistol and that she would have used it without a second's hesitation to protect Max, should the unsuccessful hit man get any unfortunate ideas about coming back to finish the job.

The woman from Marseille had appeared unexpectedly in the surgical wing and had played her part very believably. When she showed up, I'd been sitting in the waiting room, surrounded by the relatives of the other patients. Christine hadn't so much as glanced at me and I was astonished not to see Beniamino with her. I ran into him a few minutes later in a long corridor; he was slipping coins into a vending machine that dispensed hot drinks.

“I need a cup of coffee,” was the way he said hello. “I drove all night long. I was in Brittany when our friend called. I went by to pick her up and now here we are.”

“
Ciao,
Beniamino.”

He'd looked at me with clear, tired eyes. “
Ciao
, Marco.”

“We're in trouble,” I'd told him. “We need help.”

“The people who need to pay are going to pay.”

I had brought him up to speed on everything that had happened while I drove him back to the apartment that Signora Oriana Pozzi Vitali had put at our disposal. The old bandit had listened in silence.

“I know people like Pellegrini all too well,” he had commented flatly. “They need to surround themselves with victims so they can experience that constant sense of power that keeps them alive. They are well organized, astute, intelligent predators.”

I got the point of what he was saying, but Max and I had made a promise to our client.

“We have to find out the truth,” I emphasized. “We can't leave that poor woman moldering in her misery for the rest of her life.”

He'd stood up and walked over to me. “I agree. This whole mess is dripping with such cruelty that before we can mete out justice and settle accounts, we need to think of the victims. But I'm not just talking about the Swiss woman or the professor's family. Pellegrini is feeding on a daily basis on the suffering of Gemma and Martina.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. As I told you, I've had plenty of opportunities to interact with people like this. They're all the same, Mother Nature shaped them all with the same mold, and there's only one way to stop them, and that's to put them six feet under.”

“I'm afraid he's not going to be the only one who'll meet that end.”

“We're going to have to move very carefully,” Rossini had concluded. “But no one will go unpunished.”

 

The next morning we rang the buzzer at Vico dell'Angelo, 34, where Signore and Signora Togno resided. We immediately realized that someone was looking at us through the peephole, and we decided to encourage them to open the door by using the “What, don't you understand that we're cops?” method of knocking, which involves a steady pounding and a string of angry obscenities.

It worked. The door swung open and we found ourselves face to face with a woman who looked about thirty-five, frightened and angry. Dark haired, well built and lithe. A pretty face, with soft features. Under other circumstances, I'd have tried to flirt with her.

“What kind of manners do you have?” she asked, stepping aside to let us in.

“Somebody from your department already came by yesterday,” she told us, clearly referring to Campagna. “And I have to say he behaved like a complete jerk.”

“The inspector is a rather peculiar individual,” I commented. “But let me assure you that we are very different from him.”

Beniamino refused to back me up in my little game. “Because, among other things, we're not from the same department at all,” he specified, his tone cutting. “We've never liked cops.”

The woman blanched and slumped onto a taupe-gray armchair that clashed with the rest of the furnishings.

“Tell him that there's no need for this,” she stammered in terror. “I know how to behave. I didn't tell that cop a thing because I don't know a thing. Federico phoned to say that he'd be away from home for a few days and not to worry. I understand that something's going on, but trust me: there's no need for this.”

“There's no need for what, Signora?” I asked.

“Would you stop calling me Signora,” she shouted in exasperation. “I know what you're here to do to me, but I told you, there's no need. And he knows that I've always been a good girl. I don't understand why he sent you.”

“Why
who
sent us, Signora?” I insisted.

“You really want to have some fun with me, don't you?” she snapped. She was desperately looking for a way out. “Let me talk to him, I'm begging you.”

Rossini grabbed a chair and placed it before her. The woman recoiled, afraid he was about to hit her. “We call you ‘Signora' because we consider you just that, a lady. We don't care what you've done to make a living,” he began to explain calmly, looking her in the eye. “We aren't cops, but we aren't working for Pellegrini either. We only came here to ask you a few questions. Maybe we can help each other out.”

“Well then, what do you want?”

It was my turn to talk. “Giorgio Pellegrini. We want him and we want his accomplices.”

She was disappointed and she sneered obscenely to make that fact clear. “Get out of here,” she told us, jerking her thumb at the door. “You don't know Giorgio. He's untouchable, and you know why? Because he's the fiercest man on the face of the Earth. If you dare stand up to him he'll cut you to pieces, and after he's done with you, it'll be my turn next.”

We weren't going to get anywhere like this. She was clearly terrified of Pellegrini. I tried another approach. “You're very well-spoken, I'm guessing you've been to school, right?”

“The
liceo classico
, graduated with the highest possible grades. But then, instead of going on to university like my father wanted me to, I came north and got mixed up with a bad crowd,” she explained. “But I know you didn't come down here to listen to the sob story of Maria José Pagliaro, a Sicilian girl with great expectations who ended up in the worst of all worlds, did you?”

“We're interested in hearing anything you're willing to tell us,” I replied. “But before you say anything else, I want to tell you the story of two people who were very much in love. Her name is Oriana and his name was Guido.”

I showed her the picture of the professor. “He taught at the university. Does that interest you?”

She nodded and stretched out her legs. She was starting to relax. A very good sign. I started talking, leaving out details as needed to protect those involved and our investigation. I took about ten minutes to tell the story because her interest seemed genuine, and I included the part that concerned the woman's husband, La Nena and its proprietor, and Max being shot.

“Federico didn't shoot him,” she told us immediately. “At that time of night we were in another club to collect some money owed to Giorgio. A horrible night out.”

She immediately noticed the disappointment on our faces. “You'll have to look elsewhere, I'm sorry to tell you.”

She pointed to a tray that held bottles and glasses. “Even though it's only eleven in the morning, a lady can still have herself a little drink, can't she?”

I hurried to pour out a little cognac into the appropriate glass. She took a few sips while watching us. “You might not have planned to do it, but you've forced me to come over to your side.”

“I don't understand,” Beniamino said in surprise.

“If my husband ever found out that you'd been here, Giorgio would know it an instant later, and he'd force me to tell him every single word you said to me. In the end, I'd wind up dead in a dumpster.”

“Even if you haven't done anything wrong?” I asked.

“That's his method,” she replied, cold as marble. “You really don't know anything about him.”

“All we know is it's our job to rid humanity of his existence,” Rossini replied.

“That won't be enough. Now I'm going to tell you a story: there were seven of us girls. Six foreigners and me, the only Italian, because there were customers who wanted only certified domestic pussy. We all lived together in a pretty little house on the outskirts of town. We were managed by a woman named Nicoletta, and she reported directly and exclusively to Pellegrini. One day something went wrong and he had to get his affairs in order. The foreign girls all vanished. A week later, so did Nicoletta.”

Beniamino and I exchanged a glance. Maria José was confirming the rumors about Pellegrini's involvement in the trafficking of prostitutes with the Maltese mafia.

“I lived in fear,” the woman went on. “I was sure I was about to be murdered. I got down on my knees, told him I was willing to do anything, and Giorgio decided to show mercy. He married me off to Federico Togno, telling me to keep an eye on everything he did and report back, to push Federico to do whatever Giorgio wanted. He's turned me into a slave who can never say no. You have no idea of what it means to satisfy every desire of a troll like my husband.