A Pimp's Notes (13 page)

“Very good. I have a hunch you have more than one kind of weapon at your disposal.”

Carla seems to enjoy trading wisecracks with Lucio. And so does he. I’m so used to it that it’s nothing more to me than a small everyday pleasure. I push open the glass door and we walk out onto the street. There are parked cars. There are children playing. Some of them have unlikely English names, like Richard or Elisabeth, followed by surnames that are so Italian that they cut off any international aspirations the moment you hear them. A number of people, male and female, watch us go by with the curiosity of those who don’t know but would give anything to find out.

I decide that Carla has figured out everything at first glance.

“It doesn’t strike me that you socialize much around here.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

We walk around the corner of the building and head for the front gate, leaving behind us the whispers of the Quartiere Tessera.

“Bravo, what was that thing about the winners and the showers? And the other thing, the crypt—”

She stops short. I come to her rescue and complete the phrase for her.

“Cryptic clues.”

While we walk to the Mini I tell her about the routine that Lucio and I have developed of challenging each other to solve word puzzles. I explain the various kinds of puzzles to her and the verbal mechanism involved in solving cryptic clues. The whole time she listens raptly. Maybe she’s trying to impress my explanation on her memory.

As we talk, we get into the car and I start the engine.

“What was the one he just asked you?”

“
Everyone was in debt—that’s permitted
. The answer is one word of seven letters.”

She sits there, pensive, and looks around while I pull onto Via Vigevanese, heading for Milan. The light of day has changed the appearance of the houses, the industrial sheds, the people. The dark streetlights are intruders in this panorama. There’s traffic and there’s life, exactly what I was about to lose last night, when I drove this road in the opposite direction with a man gripping a gun sitting next to me. I was sure it was going to be my last trip anywhere.

Those three puffs of air were all that was needed to change everything.

Pfft … pfft … pfft …

The sound of nothing really, three flaps of a wing that turned the universe upside down. I am here, I’m alive, I’m breathing, I’m driving my car with a pretty young woman sitting next to me, armed with nothing but her determination. Someone else died the death that he had meant for me, may he roast in hell. All I need to know now is why. That’s the cryptic clue I want to solve: the motive. But I have no definition, no number of letters, unless
mors tua vita mea
—your death is my life—is the universal solution.

“Where are we going?”

“To take a spin through Fairyland. And to obtain some enchantments that expire at midnight.”

I smile at her, with mysterious complicity. Or at least that’s what I think I’m doing. With Carla I’m losing many of my bedrock certainties. She’s about to answer me when the pager beeps from my belt.

After a hundred yards or so, I slow down and brake to a halt next to a phone booth. Carla says nothing but keeps turning her head to look around, perhaps wondering what magic spell it could be that just transformed the world she lives in.

“I have to make a phone call.”

I step out of the car after providing an explanation to someone who hadn’t asked for one. I walk into the phone booth and slide the token into the slot, which gulps it down its metal throat. I dial the reliable number. They tell me that Laura was looking for me.

Her of all people. Speak of a whore and you hear the click of stiletto heels.

I slip in a second token and it seems as if everything is moving in slow motion, with the rage that’s building inside me. I carve the numbers into the dial. Laura answers almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“It’s Bravo. Well?”

“Well what?”

The sheer incongruity of this response makes me snap. So when I reply it’s not in veiled or allusive terms.

“Tell me something, you idiot, have you lost your goddamned mind? Weren’t you supposed to be at the Hotel Gallia at nine o’clock this morning? Why didn’t you show up? You made me look like a complete asshole in front of somebody who could have been a gold mine.”

She hesitates, unsure exactly what to say to me. Then, whatever it is, she decides that she has to tell me in person.

“Bravo, I need to see you.”

Her judicious tone fails to calm my nerves. Not after what just happened.

“I think so too. I need to see you,
now
. And I hope you have a pretty damn persuasive explanation.”

“Where?”

“I’ll be at your front door in just a few minutes.”

A pause. Then a voice edged with anxiety.

“Bravo, I’d really prefer to meet someplace else.”

I’d tell her to go fuck herself for the bitch that she is, but I can’t. Not right now, anyway. Laura is one of the three girls, together with Barbara and Cindy, that Bonifaci requested for his nine-million-lire evening.

I take a deep breath before I speak.

“I’m going to get my hair done by Alex, a hairdresser across from the Stazione Centrale. You know him?”

“At the Jean Louis David salon?”

“Yes.”

“Of course I know him.”

“That’s not far from your house. Next to the salon is a bar. I’ll wait for you in the back room. In twenty minutes.”

“Fine. I’ll be there.”

I go back to the car, get in, and slam the door behind me a little harder than normal. Carla looks at me and understands from my expression that my mood has changed.

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing that can’t be taken care of with a nice fat ‘go fuck yourself.’”

I put the car in gear and slip back out into the flow of traffic. Carla decides that silence is the balm that will let me settle down. That is clearly to her credit and it raises her standing in my estimation.

The whole thing with Laura has really pissed me off. In my relationships with the girls who work for me, there have never been elements of constraint or extortion, just total clarity. They work with me by their own free choice and they are free to do as they like, but they can’t abuse that freedom and make a fool out of me. In this case I gave but I was given nothing in return: the game is no longer fair. Maybe Tulip knew what he was doing when he smacked her around.

Still, by the time we get to Via Vittor Pisani my anger has boiled down a little bit. Just a bit, though, I decide. I guess it’s wrong to make Carla the scapegoat for another person’s faults. I find an unoccupied parking spot just fifty yards from where we’re going. In Milan, in this neighborhood and at this time of day, that’s a gift of the gods.

We get out of the car.

Carla glances at me with some curiosity. This must not be a part of the city that she spends much time in.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

I start off and she follows me on the first leg of this trip through a world of enchantment, which in this specific case is the salon of a beautician and hairdresser. When we walk into Alex’s shop, it’s packed as usual. There are lights, scents, women under hair dryers. Young men and women in black uniforms move soundlessly across the glossy floor. This place must make more money than the casino in Opera, even though I can’t imagine Tano Casale cutting anyone’s hair. Their throat, sure, but not their hair. Carla is attracted and at the same time perhaps a bit intimidated. I don’t imagine that a place like this—where a shampoo and a permanent cost more than she gets paid for a week’s work—is something she’s accustomed to.

Alex, who’s busy advising a young man on the best way to waste time on a matron whose face looks like a hen has been walking on it, sees me, and his face lights up. He tells the young man to wait, leaves the woman to her fate, and walks over to us. He’s a tall, skinny man, with the little remaining hair on his head chopped very short, indifferent to a case of incipient baldness that’s already as bad as it’s likely to get. He’s a likable guy. He knows how to treat people and how to do his job. It’s no accident that he’s one of the most sought-after hairdressers and makeup artists in the worlds of television, fashion, and advertising. And even though he’s no male model, he’s very successful with women.

“
Ciao
, Bravo. It’s about time you showed up here. Shall we give a trim to that bush you have on your head?”

“No, I’m not here for my hair. I need you to be in top form today.”

“I’m always in top form.”

At this point it strikes me that it’s time to tell my companion just what’s happening. Even though she must already have guessed, because her eyes are sparkling.

“Carla, let me introduce you to Alex, who’s about to turn you into a goddess.”

At last I explain to Alex the reason for our presence in his salon.

“You need to take good care of this young lady. Use all the tools in your tool kit—money is no object—and lavish your talent on her.”

Ever since my friend came over to speak with us, he’s clearly been evaluating Carla. Perhaps, just out of professional habit, he’d already been considering how to cut this diamond in the rough. Now that he knows he’s about to be given a free hand with her, he seems to be intrigued by the challenge that I’ve just issued.

For him, this too is a cryptic clue.

I’ve been filed away for later. I no longer exist. Alex’s mind is already humming with activity, summoning all his experience and all his imagination for the job. He reaches a hand out to Carla.

“Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

He drags her away without so much as a glance at me. As Carla moves off, she turns to look back at me with a puzzled expression. I make a meaningful gesture with my hands, as if to recommend that she relax, but also signaling my helplessness in the face of Alex’s creative fury.

I’m left standing alone.

I leave the shop. Behind me, photographs taped to the shop windows show models, both male and female, pouting for the camera in their new hairdos. It’s a few dozen steps to the neighboring bar. It’s a newly renovated place, with some aspirations to architectural style, but made ordinary and nondescript by an excess of mirrors and chrome. At lunchtime they serve hot and cold lunches to the neighborhood office workers. The rush has ended and the place is only sparsely populated. Men and women with all the trappings of executives, running a little behind schedule, indulge in a coffee or a snack.

A waitress takes her own sweet time before bestowing the privilege of her attention on me, which is as meager as her charms. I’ve finished my coffee and I’m smoking my second cigarette when Laura shows up. When she walks in, a hush falls over the café. It’s fleeting, almost imperceptible, but significant. She’s dressed in an understated manner: a pair of jeans, a blouse, the same jacket she had on last night. Still, she’s stunning, and she captures people’s eyes and imaginations. The few women present look at her with envy, while all the men reserve their envy for me. I could eliminate that envy by standing up and saying just a few words.
If you like her and you want her, and of course if you can afford her, step right up: I’m the man to see
.

But I stay where I am and I watch Laura as she pulls back the chair across from me.

“
Ciao
, Bravo.”

I don’t even give her a chance to sit all the way down before I launch into her.

“Well? And don’t answer ‘Well what?’ again or I’ll have to throw acid in your face.”

She takes off her dark glasses. Her eyes look drawn, as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Whether that’s because she cried all night or fucked someone all night, I don’t give a damn. What I care about is that she was supposed to fuck someone this morning and that she failed to.

“But didn’t you see the television news today, at one o’clock?”

“No. Should I have?”

She lowers her voice a little.

“Tulip was found murdered, near a quarry, on the far side of Trezzano. Three bullet holes from a handgun…”

She leaves the sentence open-ended and looks at me. I realize the question that’s lurking in her eyes, and at the exact same time I feel like upending the table onto her. Now I understand why she didn’t want me to come to her house.

She’s afraid of me.

“Laura, have you lost your mind? Do you think that I did it?”

“You told me that you were going to take care of things with him. And this morning they find him, murdered. What else would I think?”

“Did you talk to anyone about this?”

“No.”

“Ah, good. Don’t say a word. I took care of the situation between you and Menno by setting up an agreement with someone who has the authority to order him to stop bothering you. And it cost me quite a bit of money. That’s all. I didn’t even know that he had been killed.”

The lie floats across the table, lightly, with a muffled sound.

Pfft … pfft … pfft …

Laura believes me and looks relieved. I lay it on a little thicker.

“We’ve known each other a long time. We’ve done a lot of good work together. Do I strike you as the kind of person who goes around shooting people? Have you ever seen me carrying a weapon?”

Laura seems entirely reassured. Now she feels that in some sense she has to answer for what she thought.

“No, of course not. But put yourself in my shoes. When I saw that report on TV, I—”

But it’s not over. There’s something else she needs to answer for.

“You saw the news report at one o’clock. You had an appointment at the Gallia at nine o’clock this morning. So Tulip’s murder had nothing at all to do with your decision not to go.”

Laura lowers her eyes. When she looks up, they’re glistening with repressed tears. She sits there for a few seconds, without speaking, as if searching for the right words. When she does, they surprise me.

“Bravo, I’m twenty-six years old and I’m a whore.”

She raises a hand to halt any objection I might make.

“You can call me whatever you want. There are plenty of words to make it seem a little less harsh.
Hostess, escort, arm candy
. But the facts don’t change. I am and I remain a whore. And after some more time goes by, I’m going to wake up one day and discover I’ve become an old whore. I just don’t want my life to end that way.”