The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (78 page)

‘You know him?’ Rafí asked. ‘He’s here all the time. His name is Salvatore, goes by
Graffa
. He lives in the palazzo opposite.’

Reed-thin, static, heron-grey and bald, the man wore workmen’s trousers and a workman’s shirt. Lila found his bird-like sharpness a little sickening and thought the man didn’t belong in the bar. If such a man wanted company he’d pick up women along the marina. Such a man, being fifty-five, maybe sixty, would be married or separated, and almost certainly would prefer young girls.

By the time Lila and Arianna reached the counter, Rafí was already at the man’s side. He rested his hand on the man’s arm and whispered to him. Cecco, watching, appeared bereft.

Lila watched Cecco as Cecco watched Rafí.

Rafí bought the man a drink. Salvatore, he said, persuasive, overusing the name, Sal.
Graffa
then followed him outside when he wanted to smoke and stood so close that when the man exhaled he blew smoke over Rafí’s shoulder. Arianna leaned close to Lila and said they should be going, her voice now hoarse. Although the bar was busy there would be no business, and she didn’t like the way things were going with Rafí. The man, this Salvatore, wasn’t interested – anyone could see. Lila shouldn’t encourage Rafí. Tomorrow she’d have a word and find out exactly what was going on with their money. They shouldn’t depend on him.

‘Have you heard him talk?’ She nodded toward the street. ‘These stories?’

When they tried to leave Rafí stepped up to the entrance, sly and pleased with himself.

‘It’s good,’ he said, his head turned so the man couldn’t see him. ‘He’s interested.’

‘In what? What have you told him?’ Arianna steered Lila toward the street, and there, on a low stone wall, with the dark furred shafts of palm trees behind him, Salvatore sat waiting, expectant. Music from other bars slipped through the night air. Lila could smell jasmine, and looking up she saw a rusted sign of a star and realized that what she could taste in the air wasn’t jasmine but scorched sugar and vanilla from a bakery. From the windows came the hum of fans and extractors.

Rafí whispered into Arianna’s ear then stepped back. ‘It’s agreed. Right? You agree?’

Arianna looked to Lila then nodded. ‘We do this, then we go.’

For a reasonable fee Rafí took the women to a car parked in the alley behind the bar.

Rafí shone a flashlight along the cobbles and spun the light over the sunken bags and newspaper packets bunkered into the doorways. Lila held her breath against the sweet boozy stink. Arianna became argumentative. A flashlight? A car? What was this exactly?

Salvatore turned his back to the group and spoke on his phone. When he was done he clicked his fingers to draw Rafí’s attention. He nodded at Lila. ‘Seriously. How old?’

‘I told you. Fifteen.’

The man sucked on his teeth and shook his head, certain. ‘She’s not fifteen.’

Rafí gave a small confirming nod and called to Lila. ‘Tell him. Fifteen?’

Lila nodded. Fifteen it was.

They kept their voices low, aware that above and about them were open windows to kitchens and bedrooms, the warren-like pockets of apartments dug side by side into sheer unornamented walls.

Salvatore repeated the information into the phone, one hand to his ear. ‘Is she clean?’

Rafí held out his hands, palms up, as if insulted.

‘Where’s she from?’

‘Originally?’ Rafí blew out his cheeks, and slowly, indifferently, spun a story about how Lila was Sicilian, how her dark complexion came from Arab blood, but being too live a firecracker her family had packed her off to Mostra to the sweaty attentions of a retarded uncle and cretinous second-cousins. He’d found her in the Veneto, he said, picked her up on an autostrada, or some such flat un-sunny hinterland. Lila was a naive unfortunate who surrendered her ass night after night to every male member of her family, who might be imbecilic but knew enough about business to save that other temple for a paying stranger. So, in a sense, she was untouched, and yes, definitely clean. Unschooled but not uneducated. Dumped at the side of the road by her uncle after a final refusal she was making her way back home. This story played better than the earlier version where Rafí claimed that the women were sisters, who slept cat-like, entwined on a single bed in a small stone hut in some dumb coastal village. Driven by misfortune to the mainland to sell themselves, Lila and Arianna delivered nightly shows on hollow mattresses in dry, dirty basements right across the peninsula. In their primitive understanding there wasn’t even a word for what they were, Arianna being a weird boy/girl hybrid so you couldn’t actually call what they did lesbian. Any story played better than the truth, which, in Lila’s case was nothing but bland. Lila came from Modena, and before that Skopje, the entire family uprooted when she was less than two years old, although she had no memory of this. End of story. Her father was a mechanic, as were her brothers. Her mother, gone too long for her to remember, had worked as a domestic. Now, Arianna, half-Spanish, was a more interesting bundle and told stories about her brothers who threatened her with knives, locked her in a room for an entire week the first time they saw her dressed as
Arianna
. The second she fled they told the neighbours she was dead. Rafí discovered her at a gas station ten kilometres outside of Pavia, where, he explained, she’d learned to suck the small change from a vending machine.

Salvatore listened without interest and repeated the information into the phone, and this time Lila could hear him repeating himself, as if the person he was speaking to could not follow the discussion. While the man listened he looked hard at Lila. ‘Is what he says true?’

Lila shrugged.

Rafí pinched his tongue between his teeth and nodded.

Salvatore cleared his throat. ‘What about the other one?’

Lila for her part was starting to tire; she couldn’t see why they were waiting, or why they were doing business outside and on the phone. She hoped these men weren’t Italian. Italian men talked everything to death, explained themselves and their sorry situations in endless preparation, each one of them secure in the notion that buggering a prostitute wasn’t hard-line adultery. As soon as they were done Lila didn’t exist, and this disregard seeded a real and terrible shame.

Rafí stepped away and shone the flashlight on Arianna, who stood with her arms folded, clearly unimpressed.

‘And she has a—’ The man whistled through his teeth and waggled his little finger. ‘This one, she has a cock? Yes? A pistol?’ He translated into the phone and then, speaking to Rafí, said that he needed to see for himself before they could decide.

Rafí turned the flashlight through the window to the back seat of the car. ‘Just to look,’ he cut his arm in a flat cross-swipe, ‘anything different and you pay more.’

Arianna shot Lila a glance as she ducked into the car. She signalled Rafí to come close and whispered to him, the streetlight stroking his jet-black hair and greasing Arianna’s forehead.

Inside the car Arianna sprawled across the back seat in an attempt to find a comfortable position. She raised her knees, struck up her feet and shimmied her hips lower and lower until her shoulders jammed against the door. Salvatore let her settle then took the flashlight and hunched through the front passenger door, folding himself inside as a man undertaking an unpleasant task.

Lila backed off and waited ten, fifteen paces away, poised on her toes. It wasn’t fruit she could smell, ripe and spoiled, but a heap of flowers brought out of the chapel beside the music conservatory. The air fizzed with their perfume. On the brighter cross-street a woman sat side-saddle on the back of a scooter and whooped at friends out of sight on another bike. Hearing the scooter Rafí shrugged, indicating to Salvatore, ducked inside the car, that this was nothing. The scooter’s buzz zipped across the shuttered shop fronts and the woman’s shouts echoed up, teasingly unstable, mapping her route down via Tribunali, up via Atri, and back about the hospital. Lila listened knowing they would return, because that’s what they did, these kids, they ran feckless circles round the Centro Storico until the police, or someone, stopped them.

Throughout the inspection Arianna lay across the seat, legs high and wide. It was hard for Lila to look without getting a little anxious. She wondered what it would be like if this car, the bags and newspapers, the armfuls of faded flowers, the mordant sticky stink itself, dislodged and tumbled down the hill with Arianna riding a tide of muck into the delicately detailed courtyard of the music conservatory.

Salvatore clambered out and straightened himself, tut-tutting, unimpressed. He wiped his hands on his shirt with the same distaste he’d demonstrated earlier. It wasn’t Arianna that disgusted him, so much, but the task itself. The man spoke into the phone and then turned to Rafí. ‘OK. They’re interested,’ he held the phone to his shoulder, ‘but they want to see. I’ll pay for one photo.’

‘How much?’

The man ducked his head to listen. ‘Twenty,’ he said.

‘Fifty.’

‘Twenty-five. No more.’

Salvatore took less time on his second visit, and while he didn’t touch Arianna, he shone the flashlight directly into her face.

Out of the car he straightened his shirt, and spent some time composing a message. Once he was done he shut the phone. Rafí stood with his hands in his pockets and bided time while they waited for a response. Lila wanted to go.

The phone gave one sustained trill. As he answered Salvatore coughed to clear his throat. He nodded as he listened. ‘How much do they earn?’

Rafí shrugged and stepped back, his hands in the air.

‘No. Don’t walk away. These girls. How much do they earn?’ Salvatore gestured at Arianna. ‘Do you know how much she earns?’

Rafí gave no reaction.

‘How much? Tell me what she makes in one night. Fifty? One hundred? Two hundred?’ The man made a small seesaw gesture. ‘How much?’

Rafí pursed his lips and refused to answer.

Salvatore redirected his question to Lila. ‘You tell me. How much? You understand? How much do you earn?’

Lila kept still and refused to look up.

‘They want to make an offer for both of them, for one night,’ he said. ‘What do you say? One hundred? Maybe two? Two hundred? Two hundred, let’s say?’

Lila looked to Rafí then Arianna. If they made two hundred a night their debt to Rafí would have been paid a long time ago.

Salvatore held up his hand, and listening to the phone he appeared confused. ‘How much do they weigh?’ He kept the phone to his ear. ‘Fifty kilos? Do you think she weighs fifty kilos? And the other? Sixty-nine?’ Salvatore cleared his throat. ‘I will pay you two euro per kilo.’ He squinted as he made the calculation. ‘So that’s – what – that’s the final offer. There’s a party tonight. A party with important people, businessmen, judges, people from Rome. Name a price and I’ll pay you now, and the women are ours.’

Rafí looked to Arianna, who now leaned out of the car. She shook her head at that final phrase, it suggested intention, sleight of hand, a game with uncertain parameters.

‘I have to be honest,’ Rafí explained. ‘Usually, the way this works, I bring men to them, or I take them to the men. Hotels, private parties, saunas . . .’

Salvatore nodded.

‘. . . if people know they are working, then other people are going to start expecting things. Money. Favours.’ Rafí softly rolled his head from side to side. ‘You understand? And everything becomes difficult. If everything is quiet then everything is good.’

Rafí looked back to Lila, then Arianna. Arianna curtly shook her head.

‘OK. You can all come with me.’ Salvatore made a final gesture of agreement, and took out a wallet fat with cash. Fingers flicking through the notes he peeled off five, six, seven, and held them out. ‘Here. OK? For you.’

Rafí accepted the money, but his eyes remained fixed on the man’s wallet, on the new, unspoiled notes.

‘It’s for you, OK?’ he said, ‘and something for the photograph.’

Rafí counted the money as he folded the notes into a small roll.

Salvatore walked ahead and crossed the street diagonally. Rafí followed behind, arm in arm with Lila and Arianna. The street cut directly through the old quarter, a broad barricade of shop-fronts. The buildings rose six or seven storeys in one face, a long line undercut by an arcade, with regular balconies along the upper floors, shuttered windows, and huge tarred carriage doors. Salvatore hesitated at the entrance to the palazzo and appeared to have trouble opening the small portal door. In the shop beside the entrance, spelled out across the glass were the words
S A L V A T O R E – G R A F F A
/
A R A N C H I N I
/
P I Z Z A
, the end of the sign obscured by a banner.

Rafí stepped back to Lila and Arianna. ‘They have a room,’ he said, ‘here, in the basement.’

Lila leaned backward to take in the full height of the building.

‘They?’

‘These brothers.’

‘How do you know this?’ Arianna blew smoke directly into Rafí’s face. ‘He said there was a party.’

‘They want to look. The brothers. First they take a look, then they take you to the party.’

‘You’ll stay with us?’

Rafí handed the flashlight to Lila and told them to wait.

With the door now open Salvatore signalled that they should be quiet.

Lila followed Arianna into a square courtyard to find Salvatore struggling with a second door – this difficulty set Arianna into a giggle, and the man stopped, held out his hand and indicated that she needed to be silent. The door, metal, smaller even than the first, refused to pull open.

Lila stood in the centre of the courtyard and shone the torch up the wall. A square of low cloud yellowed by the street lamps stoppered the opening. All but one of the shutters were closed, and Lila thought she could see a figure leaning out. When she shone the flashlight directly at the window the socket appeared empty. Lila switched off the torch but kept her eye on the spot, and there, too indistinct to be certain, appeared a face – what she took to be a child. Lila tapped Arianna’s shoulder, looked back up, but couldn’t quite tell in the darkness if there was someone at the open window or if this was her imagination.