Malavita (16 page)

“Andretti runs a club, an exclusive club where gentlemen can…” Marchesi hesitated, then continued. “Can get certain needs met.”

“A brothel.”

Marchesi nodded. “I was photographed there without my knowledge. The photos were sent to me at the bank.”

“And you don’t want your wife to see them.”

“I don’t want
anyone
to see them. If they got out—” Marchesi stopped himself. “I’d be ruined.”

Rinaldo shrugged. “Your marriage might be over, but surely you exaggerate.”

Marchesi shook his head. “My tastes are… unusual.”

“Ah,” Rinaldo said, and Enrico wondered what his father was thinking. What could be so bad? Then Rinaldo said something that made Enrico blush. “Boys?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“No surprises. That’s one of my conditions.”

Marchesi set down the ring he’d been holding and braced himself against the case, his head hanging in defeat. “I like…” His voice warbled and he started over, turning a furious crimson. “I like women’s clothing. To wear it when I’m having sex. With a woman,” he added.

Enrico suppressed a laugh. Just picturing it, this man in a dress and wig—it was ridiculous.

“You’re not a
finocchio
?” Rinaldo asked.

Marchesi shook his head emphatically. “No. But you see why I can’t let this get out.”

“
Sì
.” Rinaldo put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “So, what is Carlo getting from you?”

“Money. Over two billion
lire
this year alone.”

Rinaldo whistled. “You have that kind of spare cash?”

“Of course not. I’ve been borrowing from customer accounts. The investment accounts. I’ve been able to hide some of it with trading losses, but sooner or later…”

“What else?”

“I clean money for him. And he owns half my share in the bank.”

“On paper?”

Marchesi shook his head. “It’s still in my name. So are his accounts.”

Rinaldo looked at Enrico and grinned. They had something. “Legally the assets are yours then.”

“
Sì
. He told me what the government didn’t know about, they couldn’t tax.”

“Clever,” Rinaldo said. “But risky at the same time.”

“How so?” Marchesi asked. “I wouldn’t dare cross him.”

“But
I
would.” Rinaldo leaned forward as if to talk to Parini. “How badly do you want help?”

“I’m desperate.”

“Enough to sell me your share of the bank—the part Carlo doesn’t already own?”

Marchesi closed his eyes and swayed slightly. “Romano,” Parini said, concern in his voice.

“I’m all right,” Marchesi finally said and opened his eyes. “The bank, it has been in my family for over a century.”

“From what you’ve told me, it is already in Carlo Andretti’s hands.”

Marchesi smacked a fist on the glass case, hard enough to rattle the rings inside and startle Parini. “You are no better than him,” he hissed.

Rinaldo stiffened and Enrico grabbed his shoulder. He wanted to hit the man too, but even he could see the opportunity. “Papà,” he whispered.

Rinaldo shook off Enrico’s hand and addressed Marchesi. “I will let you live. I will also let you leave with your dignity and some money in your wallet. Carlo will not.”

Marchesi let out a breath, his shoulders slumping. “I suppose that is the best I can hope for.”

“You are lucky I need you. Not many men insult me and live.”

Except Carlo
, Enrico thought. But if they were able to pull this off, Carlo would suffer plenty. And that might be better than seeing him dead.

“I beg your forgiveness, Don Lucchesi,” Marchesi whispered. “A broken man is sometimes foolish in his speech.”

“I understand,” Rinaldo said. “More than you know.”

How were they going to manage this? They didn’t have the money to buy Marchesi out. Enrico was dying to ask, but it would have to wait.

“Here is what I need from you,” Rinaldo said to Marchesi. He outlined a plan that made Enrico smile.

Carlo’s cleverness had led him straight into a trap of his own device.

After discussing his suspicions about Ripoli and Carlo with Dom, Enrico turned his sights on Leone Valentino. Valentino had been the right-hand to Bruno Macri, the probable architect of the massacre. Livio had told him that Macri hadn’t been seen since that night, so he was likely dead. But Leone Valentino was alive and well.

Enrico followed Valentino for six days, studying his routines. Every evening, around ten, the man had a cigarette in his car before going inside his flat in Milan and up to bed. His wife apparently didn’t want him smoking in the house. They had a new baby; maybe that was why. When Enrico had learned these details, he’d hesitated. He’d be leaving a child without a father, a wife without a husband.

But Valentino had dealt his own cards. He’d taken money to kill a defenseless woman and a young boy. Primo may have been fair game, but the ’Ndrangheta codes were clear on this point: Mamma and Mario were not.

Men like Valentino didn’t deserve to live.

Dom had given Enrico a throwaway gun. Now all he needed to be ready was the disguise of his youth. He kept himself clean shaven, his hair cropped close, his clothes those of a simple boy, not those fitting the son of a Mafia
capo
.

On the corner opposite Valentino’s home, Enrico fiddled with the open pack of cigarettes in his left jacket pocket. He didn’t smoke, but Valentino didn’t know that. He checked his watch. Almost ten. His eyes glued to Valentino’s door, Enrico took a breath to quell his nerves. His right hand found the loaded revolver in his jacket pocket. He’d carefully cleaned and oiled the gun the night before. He was ready.

And yet when Valentino’s front door opened, Enrico nearly jumped out of his skin.
This is it
. His heart thumped in his chest. He pressed himself against the stone wall, trying to look casual as Valentino came down the walk, jingling the keys to his dark blue Alfa Romeo. He let himself inside and put down the window. Soon smoke drifted from the car.

Now
, Enrico commanded himself. Yet his feet refused to move. Though the night was cool, sweat dripped down his back, his heart pounding as if he’d run a marathon.
Move, damn you. Move!

He took a step, then another, his movements awkward, forced. Inhaling deeply, he conjured up the crime-scene photos—Mamma, Primo, and Mario covered in blood. This man was one of those responsible.

Fishing the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, Enrico tapped one out as he crossed the street and approached Valentino’s car. When he was a few feet away, he said, “
Scusi
. Have a light?”

Valentino nodded and patted his jacket for his lighter. While the man was distracted, Enrico flicked the cigarette away with his left hand and pulled the revolver with his right and aimed it at the man’s temple. There was no going back. Yet his finger refused to pull the trigger. Everything slowed to a crawl—the frown on Valentino’s face, the scrunching of his brow, the flicker of surprise as he turned and saw the gun in the gleam of the streetlamps. The man’s mouth formed a single word: “Who?” as his hands scrambled in his jacket, his expression hardening in an instant.

Now, damn you, now!
Enrico’s brain screamed at him as blood rushed in his ears. Finally his finger obeyed, the gunshot shattering the night.

Valentino’s head snapped back and to the side, blood and gore spraying the passenger side of the car. The man slumped over. Enrico leaned inside, fired another shot into Valentino’s head, then stuffed the gun in his pocket and walked quickly away.

His heart pumped wildly and he shivered inside. Enrico wanted to run, but he forced himself to keep moving at a steady, controlled pace. He walked two blocks, then he doubled over and was sick beside a tree. When he felt completely wrung out, he spat, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Even though the night was cool, beads of sweat dotted his forehead. A wave of heat ran through him, followed by a wave of cold, as if he had a fever. Taking a deep breath, he resumed walking, wiped down the gun, and tossed it into a sewer drain right before he reached the nondescript car he’d borrowed.

His hands trembled; his mouth tasted like ashes. He dropped the keys beside the Fiat, his heart slamming in his chest at the enormity of what he’d done. He’d taken a life. He’d committed murder, the most grievous of sins.

Picking up the keys, he got in the car and drove toward home. Dom had told him the first time would be hard; what he hadn’t told him was that it would be excruciating. He was a killer now—a man who’d stepped out of the ordinary path, a man who’d chosen to live by violence. Enrico had never once in his life wanted to be that kind of man. He’d wanted a quiet life; he’d wanted to be an academic, or a banker, or an entrepreneur. He’d never wanted to be a killer. A Mafioso.

The plan had always been for Primo and Mario to follow in their father’s footsteps. Enrico had been destined for something different—everyone could see that, even Papà.

And then Carlo Andretti had come along and changed everything. He’d ripped the lives from Primo, Mario, Mamma. Papà. And he’d ripped Enrico’s life from him too.

Nothing had been the same since. And now that he’d killed Valentino, Enrico was committed to this deadly course.

When he reached a small church in the hills outside Como, he stopped. He needed to confess, to cleanse his soul.

The quiet church was empty but for an old
nonna
lighting candles and a young woman kneeling in the pews, praying fervently and crying.

He walked down the center aisle, his footsteps echoing as he made his way to the confessional. The sound seemed almost obscenely loud, and he tried to place his feet more carefully to muffle the noise. An old priest came forth and ushered him inside the booth. Enrico stepped in and sat, crossing himself and saying, “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

“What is troubling you, my son?”

The familiar question shook Enrico out of his shock. Prior to this, the worst thing he’d done was have premarital sex with Veronica. Murdering a man was something else altogether. He could not confess this. He could not ask for God’s absolution. Not when he intended to do it again. Not when he would ask other men to do the same in the future.

“My son?” the priest said again.

“I shouldn’t have come here. Forgive me, Father.” Without waiting for a response, Enrico scrambled out of the confessional and ran out of the church without looking back.

Somewhere in that church, somewhere on that side street in Milan, he’d left the boy he’d been behind.

He’d taken the vows two years before, but it was only now that he felt like what he’d become: an ’Ndranghetista. A man of honor. A man who lived and died by his gun.

The life he’d always resisted was his now, fully, irrevocably. The
malavita
.

It was nearly midnight when Enrico reached Cernobbio. He hadn’t been able to talk to the priest at the church. But there was one person he could talk to about what had happened with Valentino. Dom.

He pressed the intercom button at the gate to Zio Poldi’s villa. A guard answered and let him in. He drove through and up to the house, where Dom was waiting on the front steps to usher him inside. Dom took one look at Enrico’s face and said, “You look like you could use a drink.”

“I could. Several.”

Dom and Enrico headed to Zio Poldi’s study, and Dom poured them each three fingers of amber-colored whiskey while Enrico took a seat on a low sofa along one wall. Dom handed him a beautifully cut crystal tumbler, then sat in an overstuffed burgundy wingback chair across from Enrico, the leather creaking beneath him. “So you did it?” he asked softly.

Enrico nodded and took a sip of the whiskey, a sip that turned into a gulp. He took a deep breath before speaking. “I’m not sure I can do it again.”

“It’s not easy.”

“No.”

They sat in silence for several moments, Enrico’s stomach churning as he relived Valentino’s head snapping back, the smell of gunpowder and blood somehow still fresh in his nostrils. “I’m not sure I’m still human.”