The Night of Rome Read online

  “Alice Savelli, the spokesperson for the Five Star Movement, says that . . . ”

  “I’ve already had opportunities to talk, both in private and publicly, with Councilwoman Savelli. What I was telling you earlier applies to her as well. My lawyers are ready to take full legal action against anyone who ventures to claim that I put my name to the motion against Martin Giardino.”

  “So then, you have nothing to blame yourself for?”

  Temistocle Malgradi, at this point, lets a sad smile play over his face. Sad and self-aware. “I was wrong about Martin Giardino, and I mean to apologize to him. Let me take advantage of this opportunity to do so publicly. I should have appealed to him in a more open fashion. Martin is a very intelligent person, he would have understood that I was simply a spokesman for a widespread politic malaise, and this darned misunderstanding would never have arisen.”

  “The malaise you’re talking about, it’s resolved now?”

  “Completely. During the terrible days around Easter, the mayor showed the world that he knew how to keep things firmly on track. He proved himself to be a great statesman. Rome should be as proud of Martin Giardino as I am.”

  Adriano Polimeni finished scanning the article and handed the paper to the mayor. That stuff really was enough to make you throw up.

  But he didn’t like one bit what he could read in the eyes of Martin Giardino: complacency, flattered pride. And, he thought, with a stirring of anger, the usual, intolerable vanity.

  “Look out, Martin. He’s just hunting around for a path back to viability.”

  “Of course, certainly, but still . . . ”

  “But still, nothing. That man is a snake in the grass. You won’t be able to rest assured that you’ve neutralized him until you’ve crushed his head underfoot.”

  “Don’t be silly, I’d never fall for such a pathetic attempt to cozy up, Adriano. Clearly you don’t know me.”

  When he was alone, the mayor luxuriated in the pleasure of his triumph. Malgradi publicly apologizing to him. If that wasn’t a triumph . . . Malgradi humiliated, Malgradi calling him a “great statesman.” No question, the phrase might be just a shade arch, that he had to admit, but since one should, as the saying about open arms to a defeated foe would have it—“for a fleeing enemy, build golden bridges”—he dialed Temistocle’s phone number.

  Malgradi let the phone ring and ring before answering. He’d been expecting the call since the minute that the news services, early that morning, had started excerpting pieces of the interview. When he finally did answer, he began with a restrained, sober: “Good morning, Martin, thanks for calling.”

  “If you think that all it takes is an interview to make me forget the mess you kicked up, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “I only wanted to apologize to you, Mr. Mayor.”

  “You could have picked up the phone.”

  “You wouldn’t have answered my call. And anyway, it needed to be a political apology, not just a private one.”

  “Well, I appreciated it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But if you think that’s enough to get you your job back . . . ”

  “That was never my intention, Martin. I really only ever wanted to apologize. And I’ll say it again: I was wrong, and I’m paying for it. All I wanted to tell you was that you can count on me and my colleagues. Whenever you need us. From now on, ask, and it shall be given.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You won’t be disappointed, Martin.”

  The conversation came to an abrupt end. The mayor had done his part. And yet Malgradi could practically glimpse, physically, the gleam in Martin Giardino’s eye; he certainly heard his pride-filled sigh; he could imagine him clenching his fists and maybe even improvising a happy little dance step around the famous desk that had once belonged to Mayor Ernesto Nathan. The games were on again. It was just a matter of time. And patience. That was why he had taken care not to send his regards to Polimeni. In the future, those regards might be looked back upon as a sinister omen.

  XIX.

  APRIL 15TH

  Saint’s Day: St. Theodore the Martyr

  VIALE MAZZINI.

  The pact that he’d negotiated with Chiara Visone had no margins for ambiguity. And all that was lacking to make it final and formal was the stroke of a pen. Which Sebastiano applied to the document in the offices on Viale Mazzini of the notary Somma—an old friend of Samurai’s—thereby liquidating his company, Future Consulting s.r.l. The company would thereby be officially deleted from the registry of the Italian Chamber of Commerce. Practically speaking, the company would simply change its name once the waters had calmed down a little. It wouldn’t even move from its current offices on Via Ludovisi. He just needed to take a break. A break whose duration was a dependent variable, bound up with too many conditions—not least of which the fate of Samurai—to be able to venture even a rough prediction. At least, not right then and there. In the meantime, the new armada of builders with clean faces would do whatever he had instructed them. The churn of business would continue with no significant interruptions.

  Everything else had worked like a charm.

  Sebastiano had miraculously freed Rome from its siege. The collection of garbage had resumed, the buses were making their rounds again, the fires in the outlying areas had been extinguished, the national state of emergency had been declared over, to the immense satisfaction of the Prime Minister’s office in Palazzo Chigi, the security forces had been summoned back to their barracks, and the circus sideshow of newspaper and television reporters from all over the world had folded their tents and stolen away, unable to provide answers to the only questions that mattered: Why had it happened? And why had the gates of Hell swung shut again, just as suddenly and inexplicably as they had swung open in the first place?

  For that matter, only he and Chiara shared that secret. And neither of the two of them had any interest in sharing it with anyone else. Martin Giardino had accepted the sudden return to peace and quiet with the amazement of someone with a terminal illness who had awakened one morning to discover they were cured. Now he was somehow convinced that his “political resistance” and the few concessions he’d made to the AMA and ATAC trade unions had finally ground the revolt to a halt. Adriano Polimeni, pragmatically, was ready to put an end to his “crusade for the rule of law.” A new group of companies would handle the contracts for the public works projects connected with the jubilee.

  As for Fabio Desideri, Bogdan had let Sebastiano know that the boss had announced in a couple of emails his imminent return to Rome. With the city all cleaned up, Wagner’s boys were all at Sebastiano’s service, and he knew that he could count on the Anacleti clan, as well. That meant that this game, too, was about to be tied up with a bow.

  And after that, they’d see . . .

  Sebastiano headed off to the Prati quarter. It was a bright morning, full of magnificent sunshine, and he decided to give in to his sense of melancholy by strolling down the wide treelined sidewalks toward Piazza Bainsizza, and from there toward Viale Carso, Via Chinotto, and the waterfront embarcadero, the Lungotevere. The streets of his younger life.

  He decided, then and there, that as far as he was concerned, he’d come to the end of the line. He had plenty of money. The time had come to leave. Get free. Abandon everything about Samurai, even his shadow. He’d settle matters with Fabio Desideri: his sense of fairness and gratitude demanded that of him, but then . . . Start over. Anywhere else. Nothing could keep him from doing it. He decided to leave Rome.

  He looked at his watch. It was time. Chiara was waiting for him in a little bar on Via Oslavia.

  It was still light out, just like that evening at the DP club. A lifetime ago. He felt calm, distant, and remote. She was sitting at an outdoor table, and at the center of the table were two ice-cold glasses of nonalcoholic fruit aperitifs.

  �
��Ciao,” he said to her.

  “Ciao. I ordered for you. I hope I got it right, if I still remember your preferences.”

  He recognized in her smile that blend of seductiveness and ferocity that he had once found so deeply troubling and attractive. A lifetime ago. He sat down at the table and handed her a copy of the official documentation of the liquidation of Future Consulting.

  “Here you are. I’ve officially downed tools. You’re looking at a very young retiree. A guy with a great future behind him.”

  Chiara smiled again.

  Sebastiano went on.

  “There, now you have what you asked for, Chiara. Or, if you’d rather stay on a formal footing, you have what you asked for, Honorable Visone. Future Consulting no longer exists, Mariani has taken a very long vacation, and he’ll no longer work as a builder in this city, Malgradi is a piece of political wreckage. The triumph of the rule of law, as even Polimeni might put it, right?”

  Visone nodded.

  “And in this new context of the rule of law, the public works contracts can finally be issued. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Chiara’s voice cut sharply.

  “It’s a pact that’s in everyone’s favor, Sebastiano. But all it is is a pact. With no ancillary implications. Whatsoever. I’d like that to be crystal clear.”

  There was nothing more to be said. Sebastiano stood up without having touched his aperitif. He extended his hand to Chiara, who took it in a cautious, dubious grip, a manifestation of ostentatious disinterest that, this time, did nothing to wound him.

  “I’m afraid I have to go, sorry. But it seems to me that we’ve said all we needed to say.”

  “Good evening, Dottor Laurenti.”

  As he was heading back to the Audi, he realized that he’d made the right decision. Leave town.

  Then came Bogdan’s phone call.

  The bastard had returned to Rome.

  XX.

  APRIL 17TH

  Saint’s Day: Hieromartyr St. Simeon the Bishop

  Wagner and his boys would pass themselves off as financial police, in an unmarked car. The proprietor of a gun store in the Salario district to whom he regularly gave gifts of cocaine had taken care of the bib vests and the official police paddle. A clever guy Wagner had met during one of those clownish shoot-out games that were raking in money these days, called “Airsoft.” Where you pretend to fight a war, and you shoot 6 mm plastic pellets because you don’t have the balls to do it with real guns and real bullets. Anyway, right, one of those guys who knows not to ask fucked up questions, like “What do you need these things for? What are you planning to do with them?” One of those guys who always have everything. Who never say, “Oh, that’s not going to be easy,” or, even worse, “That’ll take a while.” Especially since they didn’t have time to spare, they needed to put an end to this chapter. Game over. There had been some discussion about the car, a midnight-blue BMW 3 Series sedan, stolen and fenced of course, and with a collaged license plate, that is, one that had been put together with pieces of other stolen plates. He’d had to sit through the reasoning, if that’s the word one would use, of that scientist Kessel.

  “I don’t know, I’ve always only seen the financial police in those squad cars with the yellow stripes down the side. I’ve never seen them in plain clothes.”

  Wagner had been forced to claim full authority to make things clear.

  “Because you’re a penniless thug. A street bandit. That’s why. Someone like you, the financial cops with green berets might bust you for a stick of hash, at the very most. You have to raise your sights. When you hit a higher level, the uniform disappears, raus, and they start putting on a jacket and tie. And they travel in unmarked cars. Got it?”

  “Got it, Wagner, and don’t get mad.”

  But Wagner was mad, really mad. Because he didn’t like this plan, not one little bit. They were supposed to pick up Fabietto at the port of Ostia and, before that dickhead realized that they weren’t heading for a Financial Police barracks at all, he would find himself in the hut out at Coccia di Morto that had once belonged to Number Eight, the late and lamented two-bit boss of the armada of Ostia, God rest his soul. Samurai had taken him out of circulation when he’d gotten too big for his britches. Just like Fabietto. Only they weren’t being sent to do a complete job on Fabietto, no. The order was to scare him good, once and for all. Maybe by working him over proper and leaving him some nice big souvenirs, scars on his face, or under his feet, or on his knees. In other words, until it was clear to him that the time had come to settle down and behave. And what’s most important, to clear out. And that’s when Wagner had dug his heels in. And he’d done everything he could to make it clear to Sebastiano that this wouldn’t work. Aside from the fact that he had a personal grudge against the bastard, on account of Beagle Boy, a brother, more than a brother, what kind of a ridiculous clown act was this kidnapping? Just two bullets and off you go, the problem is scratched off the list, once and for all. But there was no way around it. And in the end, Wagner had shrugged and gone along. After all, Sebastiano was paying, and generously, so he could do more or less as he saw fit.

  Wagner had inspected the building with his boys. It looked like no one had set foot in that hovel since Number Eight had given up his soul to his Creator. It was a shanty made of raw concrete and corrugated tin in the middle of an abandoned field. When the twins walked in, they commented admiringly on the furnishings. A swayback armchair, a tripod for video cameras, a set of batteries hooked up to jumper cables. Baseball bats, pliers, metal bars of different lengths and thicknesses, a fireplace poker. Even an oxyacetylene torch.

  “What’s all this?” Ring had asked.

  “It looks like an ISIS torture chamber, damn it,” his brother had pointed out.

  “Since you guys are Nazis, you ought to like it,” Wagner had put a brusque end to the chitchat. And then, drawing on his imagination, he’d stunned them with bloodthirsty accounts of all the things Number Eight had been capable of getting up to in there when he had to deal with anyone who got in his way. At least until his path brought him face-to-face with someone more lethal than him.

  It was Sebastiano who had taken care of the piece of paper to wave under Fabietto’s nose. That was a job that demanded expert hands. Certainly not their hands. At last, everything was ready. They only needed to saddle up and go collect that miserable piece of shit. On April 17th. A Friday. A very unlucky day in Italy, the equivalent of Friday the 13th elsewhere. And to hell with superstition. After all, it was always on a Friday that Fabietto climbed aboard that floating steam iron he kept tied up alongside the wharf in Ostia.

  Wagner and the twins swung through the gate bar of the port a little after ten. They wore the dark blue bib vests, with the big letters, in phosphorescent white, spelling out “Financial Police.” Their BMW hardly even had to slow down when the bored security guard saw them. He immediately snapped to attention, nodded, and raised the bar when he saw the official paddle being waved out the car window. They purred along at walking speed until they reached the wharf where the big boats were tied up. Even from there, they could already see the deck of the Mykonos IV. They slowly emerged from the car and clicked off the safeties of their Beretta 92 pistols, slipping them behind their belts at the small of their backs. Then they strolled toward the yacht.

  On the wharf, Bogdan was washing the stern of the boat with a hose, spraying away the dull stains of salt and brine. He exchanged a glance with the three young men and then, with a nod of approval, he turned off the faucet, piled the rubber hose in a tangled heap, and then headed off in the opposite direction from the way that Wagner and the twins had come.

  They had Fabietto all to themselves.

  “I’ll do the talking,” Wagner had instructed them in a low voice, since he was the only member of the crew capable of speaking a decent, proper Italian.

  “D
ottor Desideri? Dottor Desideri?”

  The voice that came from the stern cockpit woke him up once and for all from the state of torpor in which he’d been mulling over the images from the night before. Before taking her to Fiumicino to catch her plane, he had insisted on taking Miss Colombia for a tour of the cabin of the Mykonos IV. He handled plenty of pussy, but he couldn’t remember anything like it in a long time. They should have made her Miss Universe, not just Miss Colombia. A statuesque body. Dazzling white teeth. A belly as flat as a surfboard. And then, one orgasm after another. Even if she was just faking it, that was some job of acting.

  “Coming!” he muttered, grabbing a sweater he threw on over his bare torso, and then pulled on a pair of heavy cotton trousers.

  At the sight of those official bib vests on the deck of his boat, he kept his cool. If anything, he wondered what the hell had become of Bogdan and why he hadn’t told those three cops to wait on the wharf. He put on a winning and hospitable smile, invited them to sit down, and asked whether they’d care for an espresso.

  “We aren’t here on a courtesy visit,” Wagner said, stiffening.

  Strange, thought Fabietto. He’d practically grown up with the financial police busting his chops. But he’d never seen one who looked like this.

  “Normally, an officer identifies himself. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” he asked.

  “Lieutenant Mauro Arnese, tax task force. And that’s the reason we’re here,” Wagner replied, and laid down the file he was carrying.

  Fabietto opened the file and started reading the papers attentively. A confiscation warrant referencing tax evasion for the fiscal year of 2013.

  “Wow,” he said with a smile, never looking up from the papers, “you’ve picked up speed. You’re already auditing tax revenues for 2013?”

  “The country has changed,” Wagner pointed out, starting to enjoy himself.

  “It may well have changed, but it’s still just as sloppy and incompetent as ever. You see, Lieutenant, I don’t find in these papers any precise reference to the boat, aside from the name and the registration number, nor, what’s more important, any reference to its owner.”