'I don't see it. Marotta's just a gofer, when all's said and done. The other three are in the upper echelons of the Gaetano clan, the command and supply level. I could see why they might want to take them out of circulation, but Marotta? He doesn't know enough to be a danger to anyone but himself. They'd just hand him over and let him sweat it out/ Another silence.
'Vallifuoco used to frequent prostitutes/ the man in the suit murmured as though to himself.
'So?'
'Maybe that's where he went last night, under cover of that business meeting.'
His companion considered this a moment.
'Maybe. We could look into the car, too. He drove a late model Jaguar, very distinctive.'
'One of the whores I spoke to said he had very particular tastes. Bondage, whipping, drawing blood, that kind of thing. Apparently he used a different woman every time. He blindfolded them and took them to a place he had somewhere near the station where he kept the gear he used for these sessions. They could all remember what the place looked like inside well enough, but none of them has any precise idea where it is.'
'Maybe that's where he's hiding out.'
'That's where I'm going to start, anyway. And you?'
The other man shrugged.
'I thought I might look into the car. That's harder to hide than a man. Probably won't get anywhere, but it'll make the time pass more quickly/ As before, they exchanged a glance of silent collusion.
'I wish I knew what was going on!' the man in the suit exclaimed in a tone of irritation.
The other shrugged again.
'We'll just have to wait and see. It might even be good news, who knows? Maybe there's been a change of heart.
At management level, so to speak/
They got to their feet.
'See you tomorrow, then/ said the elegant man.
'Good hunting.'
'You too.'
X
'So is it really beautiful?'
'It has its charms.'
'You're going to stay there for ever?'
'When's that? All I know is that in a few more years I can retire, and a few years after that…'
'You never used to be morbid, Aurelio.'
'Blame it on Naples. The place reeks of mortality/ 'I thought it reeked of rancid oil and bad drains.'
'It comes to the same thing in the end.'
They were sitting at a corner table in a restaurant near Rome's main railway station. It was called Bella Napoli, whence Gilberto Nieddu's original question. They had the place to themselves, this being just about its only virtue. The decor — all seashells, mandolins, dusty bottles of undrinkable wine, fishing nets and photographic murals of Vesuvius and the bay — had been applied with a heavy hand, and the food couldn't begin to redeem it.
Gilberto had suggested that they stick to pizza, on the grounds that they surely couldn't screw that up.
'So did you find anything?' asked Zen, taking another bite which confirmed beyond doubt that, yes, indeed they could.
Gilberto Nieddu glugged some beer and lit a cigarette.
'It's a joke! When you called me from Naples, I thought we were talking about some cutting-edge product, so I started calling around. That meant putting on my disguise and creeping out to a bar, of course. Then I had to scare up someone with the equipment to run whatever it was you were bringing/ He sat back, smoking contentedly.
'And?' prompted Zen edgily.
'That meant telling Rosa where I was going. One thing my attorney was very clear about was that I must never ever leave home without leaving an accurate itinerary and estimated time of arrival. Apparently some people in my position have been snatched off the street and pressured into doing some deal before their family or lawyer even knows what's happened…'
'But you didn't tell Rosa about me?' Zen interrupted.
'Of course not! We've all got our little problems, Aurelio.
You respect mine and I'll respect yours.'
This was true enough, although in reality their problems were of a very different order. Zen's involved sneaking up to Rome without calling in to visit his mother.
Since Signora Zen had become a sort of honorary granny to the Nieddu children, this in turn meant seeing Gilberto Nieddu without his wife finding out. If Rosa learned about Zen's visit, it would inevitably get back to Giustiniana and he would never hear the end of it.
Gilberto's problems were altogether more serious. But despite the fact that the Sardinian was one of his oldest friends, Zen found it hard not to feel slightly smug about them. Since leaving the police, Nieddu had built up a thriving business in the electronic surveillance field, specializing in industrial espionage. He had never lost an opportunity of gloating more or less openly to Zen about his successes out there in the 'real world', the implication being that it was at once lazy and unenterprising of Zen to keep slogging away at his safe but dead-end statale job when such rich pickings were to be had, for those with the get-up-and-go to pursue them, in the private sector.
But Gilberto was no longer gloating. A former client of his company, Paragon Security, had brought himself to the attention of the anti-corruption Mani Pulite team of judges in connection with a contract for the widening of a motorway in Lombardy. In the course of a lengthy interrogation, one of the regional politicians involved revealed that, in addition to the sums specified in the winning bid, several billion lire had also changed hands privately.
One aspect of the affair of particular interest to the authorities was how the entrepreneur in question managed to be so well-informed about the competing bids and bribes being offered by other firms, all of which, thanks to the seizure of his extensive records, were also under investigation. In the circumstances, the contractor felt no compunction in throwing a minnow like Nieddu to the judges, in the hope — vain, as it proved — of appeasing their feeding frenzy for a while.
It being just as onerous and risky to remove bugging devices as to install them, they were still in place. The truth of the contractor's allegations was proven, and Paragon Security itself came under investigation. Unfortunately, in addition to providing a range of services which were illegal in the first place, Gilberto Nieddu had also been fiddling his taxes. According to the declarations he filed, he had been earning barely more than Aurelio Zen's modest stipend from the State. The sums disbursed by his clients, though, were larger than this by a factor of about ten. The judges were naturally curious to learn how he proposed to account for this discrepancy.
'My only hope is Wojtyla/ Gilberto announced in a mournful voice when he met his friend at Stazione Termini that afternoon.
Zen looked askance.
'How he help you?'
'By dying. They still have an amnesty whenever a new Pope is elected. Anyone convicted of a non-violent crime with five years or less to serve gets out. My lawyer — who incidentally has already accounted for about half the assets I'd salted away where the judges can't get at them — reckons he can get me off with five to seven, less whatever I've served before being brought to trial. So it's a fine calculation. For example, if I get six, with nine months detention pre-trial, I want the big Polack to buy the dacha three months after sentencing. On the other hand if I get five, he should drop dead right away. It's about time, anyway.
