'Time to go get the package.' Vanni raised his voice. 'Time to go pluck the rooster.'
He thrust the gear lever forward, eased his foot on to the accelerator, nudged the car out into the narrowness of the road as all three peered left and upwards to the bend.
A black monster of a machine. The Mercedes, sleek and washed. A machine that justified its existence only on the autostrada but which was now confined and crippled on the broken surfaces. Clawing towards them.
Ear-splitting in the confines of the car, Claudio shouted.
'Go, Vanni. Go.'
The Alfetta surged forward. Swinging right with the tyres protesting across the loose roadside gravel. The wrench of the brakes took Mario and Claudio unawares, punching them in their seats. Thirty metres in front of the Mercedes, the Alfetta bucked to a stop across the road, blocking it, closing it. The drumroll of action as the passengers dragged the stockings over their heads, reducing their features to nondescript contours. This was a moment for Vanni to savour – the visible anger of the driver as he closed in on them. He knew the man's background, knew he had been nineteen months in the country, and saw framed in his overhead mirror the caricature of the Italian gesture of annoyance. The flick of the wrist, the point of the fingers, as if this were a sufficient protest, as if this were a common drivers' altercation.
Vanni heard the door beside him and the one behind crash open. As he spun in his seat to see the scene better there was the impact of splintering glass, vicious and vulgar. He saw Claudio, hammer in one hand, machine-pistol in the other, at the driver's door, and Mario beside him and wrenching it open. A moment of pathetic struggle and Mario had the collar of his jacket and was pulling him irresistibly clear. Making it hard for himself, wriggling, the stupid bastard, but then the men usually did.
Vanni felt a shiver in his seat, involuntary and unwelcome, as he saw a car turn on the bend of the hill, begin its descent. Unseen by Mario and Claudio, both wrestling with the idiot and on the point of victory. He reached for the pistol from his lap, heart pumping, the cry of warning gorging his throat.
Just a woman. Just a signora from the hill in her little car, hair neatly coiffed, who would be on her way to the Condotti for early morning shopping before the sun was up. He eased his fingers from the gun and back to their places on the gear stick and the wheel. She'd sit there till it was over. A woman wouldn't hurt them. Hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing.
The man still struggled as if the shrill of the brakes behind him had provided the faint hope of salvation, and then Mario's fist caught him flush on the jutting chin, and the light, the resistance, died.
All finished.
The man spreadeagled over the back seat and floor of the Alfetta, Mario and Claudio towering over him, and there was a shout for Vanni to be on his way. Critical to get clear before the polizia blocked the roads, stifled their escape. First fifteen minutes critical and vital. Vanni wrenched at the wheel, muscles rising in his forearms as he spun left at the junction, flicked his fingers to the traffic horn, dared another to cut him out, and won through with his bravado. From the back came first a grovelling whimper and then nothing but the movement of his friends and the breathing of their prey as the stench of the chloroform drifted forward.
The crisis for Vanni would soon be over. Clear of the immediate scene, the principal hazards would disperse. A few hundred metres on the narrow Tor di Quinto, then faster for two kilometres on the two-lane Foro Olympico, before he slowed at the lights at the Salaria junction and then left on the main road leading to the north and the autostrada away from the city. He could have driven it with his eyes covered. There was no necessity now for speed, no need for haste, just steady distance. He must not attract attention, nor invite notice, and there was no reason why he should if he did not fall into the panic pit. He felt Claudio's fingers tighten on the collar of his shirt and press against the flesh of his shoulder; ignoring him, he kept his attention for the road as he pulled out behind a lorry, passed it, slotted back into the slower lane.
Claudio could not sense his mood. He was a big man, heavy in weight and grip and with a dulled speed of thought unable to judge the moment when he should speak, when he should bide his time. Past the lorry safe, and clear and cruising. Claudio did not look down at the prone body, easy in its sleep, the head resting on his lap, the torso and legs on the carpet floor enmeshed between Mario's shins.
'Brave boy, Vanni. You took us clear and did it well. How long till the garage?'
He should have known the answer himself; they had made the journey four times in the previous week; they knew to within three minutes the time it would take to cover the distance. But Claudio wanted to talk, always wanted to talk, a man to whom silence was a punishment. He could be removed from his cigarettes, his beer and his women, but he would die if he were left to the cruelty of his own company. Vanni appreciated the loneliness of a man who must be spoken to and talked with at all times.
'Four or five minutes. Past the BMW depot and the Bank sports place… just past there.'
'He fought us, you know. When we had to take him from the car.'
'You took him well, Claudio. You gave him no chance.'
'If he had gone on then I would have hit him with the hammer.*
'You don't know the sap in your arm,' Vanni chuckled.
'They'd pay little for a corpse.'
'How long did you say to the garage?*
'Three more minutes, a little less than when you last asked.
Idiot of Calabria, are you frightened of losing us? You would like to come with us on the train this afternoon? Poor Claudio, you must endure a night of the boredom and the tedium of Rome.
You must be patient, as the capo said. A bad night for the whores, eh Claudio?'
'We could all have travelled together.'
'Not what the capo said. Travel separately, break the group.
Give Claudio his night between the thighs. Don't you go hurting those girls, big boy.' Vanni laughed softly; it was part of the game, the prowess of Claudio the lover. If a girl spoke to the buffoon he'd fall on his arse in fright.
'I would like to be back in Palmi,' Claudio said simply.
'Calabria can wait for you just ohe day more. Calabria will survive without you.'
'It's a bastard strain – on your own.'
'You will find someone to talk to, you'll find some fat cow who thinks you're a great man. But don't go flashing her, not your money anyway, not five million.' And the laughter faded. 'That's how they get you, Claudio, how the polizia take you, when you have the money running free in your palm.'
'Perhaps Claudio should put his money in the bank,' murmured Mario.
'And have some criminal bastard walk in with a shooter and take it? Never! Don't do that, Claudio.'
They laughed together, heaving their bodies in the seats.
Exaggerated, childish humour because through that came a relaxation from the tension that had taken three weeks to build since the outline of the plan was first put to them.
Beyond the Rieti turn-off they went right and drove on a rough track skirting a recently completed four-floor block of flats and towards the garages that lay to the rear, partly shielded from the upper windows by a line of vigorous conifers. There was a van waiting there, old and with its paintwork scratched from frequent scarrings and the rust showing at the mudguards and road dirt coating the small window set in the rear doors. Two men lounged, elbows on the bonnet, waiting for the arrival of the Alfetta. Vanni did not hear what was said as Mario and Claudio carried the crumpled, drugged form of their prisoner from the back seat to the opened rear doors of the van. It would be of little interest, the passing of a moment between men hitherto unknown to each other who would not meet again. When the doors were closed an envelope passed between fingers, and Claudio slapped the men on their backs and kissed their cheeks, and his face was wreathed in happiness, and Mario handed the grip bag to new owners.
Mario led the way back to the car, then paused by the open door to watch the men fasten the back of their van with a padlock and drive away. There was a certain wistfulness on his features as if he regretted that his own part in the matter was now completed. When Claudio joined him, he looked away from the retreating vehicle, and slid back into his seat. Then the vultures were at the envelope, ripping at it, tearing it apart till the bundles in the pretty coloured plastic bands were falling on their knees.
One hundred notes for each. Some hardly used in transactions, others elderly and spoiled from passage of time and frequency of handling. Silence reigned while each counted his bounty, flicking the tops of the notes to a rhythm of counting.
