For All the Gold in the World (7 page)

“Is he trying to land some political office?” I asked.

“Not at the moment. But he's truly tireless when it comes to organizing.”

“Excellent cover if he really was involved in the robbery at the Oddo home,” Rossini commented.

“Do you have any doubts?” Max asked, astonished.

“A few,” he replied. “Why didn't he go to the police? After all, he's a civilian and his name never circulated in armed robbery circles. Nicola Spezzafumo would have caught wind of it.”

The old gangster wasn't wrong. “We can always ask him,” I suggested faintly, guessing at the eventual meeting's real reason: figuring out our role in all this and deciding what to do next.

Rossini shrugged. “It seems to me we don't have any other choice if we want to get to the truth.”

“Kevin Fecchio is a public figure. We have to be very careful,” the fat man broke in.

“Then we need to know more and that's your job,” I retorted.

A smile stretched across the fat man's face. He couldn't wait to get to work.

Old Rossini poured a round of drinks with a thoughtful air. “Spezzafumo and his henchmen are truly nasty people. That Maicol bled to death; very probably, he could have been saved. There's no need to kill anyone just to steal some gold.

“And after all, if you wind up shooting some poor bastard in the guts just because you don't know how to handle the situation, it means you're not that good at what you do, and it's time to retire.”

I felt a shiver run down my spine. “Are you planning to express your point of view to him?”

“At the first opportunity that presents itself,” he replied indignantly. “They need to find a new line of work before they start more trouble.”

I shot Max a look. This was proof that the job wasn't going to be painless, and that someone was definitely going to get hurt.

We dropped the subject and, when it was time to head back, Beniamino took the long way around. The
Sylvie
seemed to wander over the waves. Stretched out in the prow of the boat, we enjoyed a picture-postcard sunset, shooting the breeze as if we were little kids. Late that evening, I found myself in a nightclub, talking about my Cora with a Colombian hostess. We were in the mood to share personal stories. I told her about my romantic sorrows, she confided that she was flying a virgin cousin over and trying to place her on the bridal market. She wasn't sure what percentage she should take as a commission.

Rossini drank vodka in silence in the company of another “girl” who would most likely be forced into retirement soon. She'd been a friend of Sylvie's back when Sylvie had danced in that same club, on the stage that the old gangster was looking at now, lost in his thoughts.

Max of course was ranting on about diets with other girls who had no customers to take care of. They were amused and laughing. When he wanted to, the fat man could deploy a self-deprecating irony whose comic beats were as good as any actor's.

If we'd been younger, we might have—with a dash of imagination—resembled a trio of soldiers about to head back to the front or sailors getting ready to set out for the China Seas. Instead, we were just waiting to walk through the darkness of crime and lies, in the hope that the truth might help us to set matters straight.

 

Max the Memory didn't take long to track down someone he could chat with about Kevin Fecchio. The man was a union organizer who had also known Maicol very well. The fat man had met this guy in the movement, when politics was by and large a matter of dreams. They'd since drifted out of touch, but a mutual respect had remained intact.

We met him early one morning at a pastry shop in Creazzo, in the province of Vicenza, a place known for the quality—and size—of its brioches.

Enzo, skinny and sick and tired of no longer being able to properly represent workers who were ever more discontented as their jobs grew ever more precarious, was very useful in giving us a sense of the world in which the Fecchio brothers moved.

Maicol was an entrepreneur in the true sense of the word. He'd built his company according to a precise plan that he'd continued to successfully expand until the day of his death. He had a dozen or so full-time employees with full benefits, and when he was under pressure to meet his orders he, like everyone else, paid freelancers under the table.

Kevin, according to the union organizer, was a hard worker and an immensely likeable person, who'd grown up in the shadow of his older brother. Maicol's death had completely transformed him. He'd turned aggressive; it had become impossible to have a reasoned discussion with him. For a couple of years the company had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, not so much because of specific problems related to Maicol's death, but because Kevin had been unable to cope. Except for two of Kevin's childhood friends, everyone else had been fired. And his private life hadn't been going much better: His wife had left him, taking the children with her.

Then, suddenly, there had been a turning point. Fecchio had managed to get back on his feet and revive his company.

Max tactfully probed to flesh out the timeline, and the union organizer was able to be fairly precise: The winds had started blowing in the company's favor three months after the armed robbery at the home of Gastone Oddo.

As the evidence piled up, Kevin was becoming more and more interesting. The fact was that there was little doubt he'd been involved—but we were neither cops nor judges. We needed solid proof before we could present the check.

“I've heard he likes to play sheriff,” I tossed out, pretending I just wanted to make conversation.

Enzo lowered his voice: “He watched his brother die without being able to lift a finger to help him; the pain and grief sucked him dry of everything good he'd ever had in him.”

The union organizer had guessed that our interest in Fecchio went beyond the company and asked us if we needed to know anything in particular.

“We need to get in touch with him,” Max replied. “But we don't know how. We ought to have a thorough knowledge of his private life but we don't have time.”

The man made a baffled face. “He lives for his work and for the ‘cause.' In his free time he always and only sees two friends, Sante Zanella and Vasco Merlin. But to be perfectly honest, there's not much more I can add. After all, we move in completely different circles.”

“Are the other two men married?” I asked, following up on a hunch.

“Married with children, small-town life, the parish church, foosball, cafés. Normal guys.”

Once we were alone, we went out to smoke a cigarette. By then I had half an idea about how to continue our investigation. “A young man who works all damn day and spends his time with a group of good citizens whose politics are a little over the top, a man who wants to take justice into his own hands and who no longer lives with his wife—this young man, who does he fuck? Maybe he also runs with a more unusual crowd.”

“Are we really interested in finding out?”

“I think we are. Kevin Fecchio is the knot tying this whole case together. A chat with him is inevitable and urgent. And maybe by following this path, we can find a suitable situation.”

The fat man opened his hand, and I placed the cigarette pack in it. “Explain yourself,” he said.

“He's not yet forty-five and I don't believe he's given up sex. But at the same time, he's a public figure and he has to be careful. If you ask me he has some nice relaxed arrangement he can count on. An arrangement he's paying for.”

“Maybe he's found a girlfriend,” Max objected.

“That news would be public domain by now.”

My partner wasn't completely convinced. “Do you have someone in mind who can help us?”

“Yes, but I'll go alone.”

He flashed me a mischievous smile. “And why would you want to do that?”

“You aren't her type. She wouldn't talk to you.”

The world of prostitution is a complicated one, capable of adapting itself to the needs of the market. There's the street and the nightclub network. Then there are the Chinese women, set up in apartments, always available, 24-7. They work as intensely as they did in the clandestine sweatshops from which they were recruited. But there are potential customers who have trouble going out at night, whose family life makes that impossible, who have to carve out an hour in the morning or the afternoon, maybe on their lunch break.

For this specific sector of her clientele, Cinzia Donato had dreamed up and organized in Vicenza and the surrounding towns a network of housewives eager to earn good money, by and large leaving their legally wedded spouses in the dark.

Two women, never too young, per apartment, shifts of six to eight hours at the most. Discretion, select Italian clients, reasonable prices.

Those who might have problems calling their time and money their own were officially employed in boutiques, dressmakers' shops, millineries.

Cinzia had a very modern and managerial concept of her profession. The women who worked for her were treated like professionals, and she did everything she could to make them feel comfortable. Above and beyond a discreet system of video surveillance, security was handled by a pair of experienced guards who could, if needed, count on their numerous acquaintances in law enforcement for help.

Relations with the bigwigs were managed by the owner of the operation, and by her alone. Among the high rollers were politicians, industrialists, and the usual crowd of prominent men in the cities of the province—people who constituted, in Veneto, a real institution.

I'd first met Cinzia Donato when she'd hired me to track down a nephew who'd gotten mixed up with the wrong people. A story with a happy ending: The boy was now doing well at some foreign university whose name I couldn't remember.

The madam received me in an office tucked away in the back of a boutique on the ground floor of an ancient palazzo in the heart of Vicenza's historic center. French windows gave onto an interior garden, large and well tended. She was sipping a drink in the shade of an oversized canvas umbrella. She was approaching sixty by now and she'd never really been pretty, what with her coarse features and thin lips, but she had eyes of an intense blue that made her face interesting. As always, she was dressed with refined elegance. That morning she was wearing a white dress with light-blue horizontal stripes and sandals in the same color. She could easily have been taken for a wealthy French matron.

“It's hot out,” she said as soon as she saw me. “And now that we've exhausted weather as a topic, you want to tell me what you're doing here?”

“Do you know Kevin Fecchio?”

“Yes.”

“Is he a customer of yours?”

“No,” she answered. Then she smiled and tilted her head to one side. “Would you like a
chinotto
?”

“I haven't had one of those in years.”

“This one is special, it would be a mistake not to try it.”

I gave in, though I continued to insist that I wasn't crazy about soft drinks.

She got up and opened a small refrigerator. The bottle was ice-cold and the brand was unfamiliar. This was doubtless something very exclusive.

“Why are you interested in this guy?” the woman asked. “I'm asking you because I happen to like Fecchio. I like the things he says. There are lots of armed thugs around and citizens need to be able to defend themselves without being hassled.”

“And it's bad for business, too,” I threw in with obvious but pointless sarcasm.

“The less crime there is, the better it is for the local economy,” she shot back with total conviction. “And another thing, they need to clear the gypsies out of the city center. They're intolerable. They just bother people; there's no use for them. But let's get back to Fecchio: What do you want from him?”

“I have to persuade him to talk to me about something that happened, but I can't just go up to his front door and ring his doorbell.”

She lit a cigarette. From the first puff, the filter was smeared with lipstick. “I can ask around.”

“I'd be grateful.”

“So grateful you'd return the favor?”

“Of course.”

“What about the
chinotto
, do you like it?”

“You were right, it's good.”

“It's organic,” she explained, before dismissing me with a wave of her hand.

I was certain that if there was anything to be found out, Cinzia would be the one to find it. I informed Max and sat down at a bar to have a “good strong” long drink, as I'd instructed the waiter.

I received a phone call from Maurizio Camardi. He was on the train and was heading for Rome to play at the Bar Ergo on the Lungotevere.

He told me that the jazz woman had gone to see him at the music school to ask for some information on yours truly.

“I told her the truth,” said the saxophonist.

“Which is?”

He snickered. “That you're a good-for-nothing.”

“Well, you sure are a true friend.”

He changed his tone of voice. “She's definitely interested but she seemed a little upside-down, a little fragile.”

“I'll be careful.”

“You're not the type for that.”

“You're right,” I admitted easily. “Among other things, I've had to refrain from telling her one important detail that threatens to ruin everything.”

“Next week I'm playing with Marco Ponchiroli and Francesco Garolfi. Cora promised she'd come hear us. You could swing by,” Camardi invited me.

“I don't think I'll wait that long,” I retorted, checking the time.

 

I was the first customer to enter Pico's. I set myself up at the bar and got ready for my meeting with the jazz woman by ordering a couple of gin and tonics. There was no danger of getting drunk. The bartender had standing orders to skimp on the alcohol, to keep from knocking the clientele straight to the floor.