had hurt him physically before. Then, finally, the air came whooshing in, making him hoot, gasp, and hoot again. By the time he had finished hooting, he could hear his mother’s anxious voice from the bedroom asking if that was him.
Massoni had taken apart the living room, the bedroom, kitchen. He had done it professionally and quietly. Pernazzo saw he had looked in several places where he had hidden money in the past.
“Where is it?” Massoni had asked without even turning round, as Pernazzo staggered in behind him.
“I haven’t got it. You said to have it for this afternoon. It’s still morning.”
“If you don’t have it now, you won’t have it in the afternoon.”
“Yes, I will. I was paid for a Web site. Bank transfer the other day. The money’s in the bank.”
Massoni went over to the door leading into Pernazzo’s mother’s bedroom. As he reached it, he paused and turned around to look at Pernazzo.
“What’s in there?”
“My mother.”
“And maybe the five thousand you owe Alleva? Five thousand eight as it now is.”
“No, it’s not in there. She’s very old. She’s dying.”
Massoni stepped back a little from the door.
“She could have heard that,” he said.
“She’s too doped to know, too much in pain to care.”
Massoni leaned over and practically plucked Pernazzo from the ground. “We’re going to the bank together. I hope for your sake you were telling the truth.”
Pernazzo had been telling the truth. He had been paid five thousand for a Web design, five thousand more for some JavaScript that wasn’t even very good, and a few hundred from another client for some style sheet templates.
His bank balance was eleven thousand euros, of which he owed twenty-two hundred in VAT immediately, and around four thousand more in taxes, payable in a few months. After paying off his fifty-eight-hundred-euro gambling debt to Alleva, he would be unable to cover his tax bill. Unless his mother died first.
Pernazzo came out of the bank that day with sixty-three hundred-euro notes. Massoni was waiting for him. He handed him fifty- eight notes. Massoni counted them three times. Pernazzo allowed him to walk away a bit, then called out. Massoni stopped, walked back over, fists clenched. As he reached him, Pernazzo deftly inserted five one-hundred bills into Massoni’s hand.
“That’s for not going into my mother’s bedroom. I appreciate it.”
Massoni looked at him, closed his fist around the money. He smiled contemptuously at Pernazzo.
Pernazzo smiled back. Massoni could be bought. It took longer than he expected, and he had to pay Massoni off a few times, but eventually, Massoni told him the underdog trick, and together they laid out a plan for placing a large bet against Alleva. Massoni said he would get some other friends involved.
After his bath, he sat by the phone and waited. After an hour and ten minutes, it rang.
“Did you take the message?” said Massoni not wasting time with preliminaries.
“I did,” said Pernazzo. He felt a catch in his throat, and wondered whether he was going to vomit again. But then he realized it was joy rising from his chest. He did not want to vomit: he wanted to sing, roar, laugh. Pernazzo hugged himself in glee.
“Did he say anything?”
Pernazzo thought back. Had Clemente said anything? He could only remember grunts and gasps and those wet sounds at the end.
“No.”
“Shit. If he brings journalists again we’ll have to cancel for months.”
“I don’t think he’ll bring any journalists to the dog fight tomorrow,” said Pernazzo.
“Did he say that?”
“Not exactly. This is shit you can’t explain on the phone.”
He left the phrase hanging there, but Massoni ignored it. “You got the money?”
“Yes.”
“OK. I’ll be around in an hour.”
Pernazzo sat waiting. Listening to the radio. There was no news of Clemente’s murder. He was scared of what Massoni might do if he found out, but he was dying to tell him, too.
39
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 5 P.M.
Massoni sat down on a wooden-slat chair near Pernazzo’s desk. The chair let out a sharp crack. Massoni stood up, looked at it, and sat down more slowly. The chair held its own. He put a plastic bag on the floor, and lifted out a gray Puma shoebox, about to give way at the sides.
He slid the box across the floor toward Pernazzo, who had settled on the sofa. It hit something sticky on the floor, fell over and lost its lid. Inside, partly enveloped in a lint cloth, was a colorless Glock 22 that looked like it was fashioned from prison soap. Pernazzo bent down to retrieve it.
Massoni did not move a muscle.
Basically, Pernazzo was disappointed. The weapon did not look impressive. It did not even look real. He really did not want to part with fifteen bright green hundred-euro notes for this thing.
He picked it up. It was even lighter than he had imagined. With a sudden sense of panic, he wondered if it might not be a fake, and Massoni was brimming with silent laughter right now, dying to tell his friends about selling a toy gun for one and a half grand. Casually, he checked it. It looked real enough. He had read that all you had to do with a Glock was pull the strange double trigger.
“The money’s there, on the desk,” said Pernazzo. He watched as Massoni looked over, saw the envelope, and beside the envelope the magnificent knife. Now there was a real weapon. “Be back in a moment.”
Pernazzo took his gun, went to the kitchen and examined it more carefully. It was real. He exerted tiny pressure on the safety catch and trigger mechanism, and felt it begin to travel back. That’s all it would take. Then he opened the refrigerator, came back in with two tumblers and a one-and-a-half-liter plastic bottle of Fanta, his favorite drink.
“Want some?”
“No,” said Massoni.
Pernazzo twisted open the top, enjoyed the hiss and the gassy orange whiff, then poured himself a full glass. He put the glasses on the desk. The money was gone; the knife was in a different position.
He drank down his glass, holding the Glock by his side, in a natural way. He put down his glass, picked up the plastic bottle and carried it over to the sofa, and crammed it into the corner so that half of it was protruding from below the velveteen brown cushion. He leaned over, placed the barrel of the pistol right against the plastic and, as he had read he was supposed to do, squeezed rather than pulled the trigger.
The gun went click.
“You didn’t like your Fanta?” said Massoni.
Pernazzo kept his back turned. He could feel himself beginning to shake. He tried to modulate his voice, but the words came out vibrating with emotion. “The gun you sold me doesn’t even work!”
“It’s not loaded,” said Massoni. “Look.”
Pernazzo had to turn around now. He set a look of indifference on his face as he did so, but the grin on Massoni’s face almost made him lose it.
Massoni was holding out both hands. In one was a magazine clip, in the other a red and gray box.
“Bullets,” said Massoni. “Here.” His huge hand beckoned Pernazzo to give him back the pistol. Pernazzo thought about it, then surrendered the weapon.
Massoni popped out the magazine, inserted the new one, shook the box. “These are forty-caliber cartridges.” He opened the box, plucked out snub-nosed bullets and began pressing them into the empty magazine with his fat
