Gang of Lovers (8 page)

I got onto the train and found a seat, moving automatically. The blood ran so cold in my veins that I could barely move my arms and legs. By the time I got off the train in Milan I'd made an irrevocable decision. I turned off my cell phone. And I used three different trash cans to get rid of the parts.

None of it concerned me anymore. Guido must have made some mistakes and broken the rules I had imposed. He had only himself to blame . . .

You think you know people, but you can never really trust them completely. Perhaps my lover had debts, and he was in cahoots with someone to get my money.

In any case, one reason kept me from involving myself in any way. And that reason was my husband. If Ugo ever found out about what happened, he'd throw me out of the house, and I'd lose everything, including my daughter.

Turning to the police would have meant attracting the interest of the media. I'd wind up in the news and our beautiful love story would be transformed into a squalid affair, just sex and betrayal. Even my own family would repudiate me, and I'd be forced to flee Switzerland.

No. It made no sense to ruin my life just to save Guido. That is, if it even was an actual kidnapping.

I went back to Massagno and waited for Guido to turn up, a corpse in a ditch somewhere, once the deadline had passed. But more than anything, I feared the criminals might take revenge by publicizing my illicit love affair. Instead, nothing happened at all.

Professor Di Lello was officially reported a missing person. The Italian press talked about it at length and even now, more than a year later, every so often that show on the RAI brings the case back up. His fiancée, Enrica, can't seem to let it go. Nor can his family and his colleagues at the university. They can't figure out why he would have decided to abandon his loved ones and his profession. Police investigations have produced no results. They've only ascertained one fact, through security camera recordings: the man boarded a train from Rome and got off in Padua.

He'd told Enrica that he had to go to Venice to meet a few of his students, but there is no evidence that this appointment ever existed. And so the question that torments her is this: why Padua? Was he planning to meet someone?

The only one who knows the truth is me. Guido was kidnapped by one or more criminals who wanted to extort three hundred thousand euros' worth of jewels out of me. I had no alternative but to protect myself and remain silent. I lived the first few months in terror. Then, once I realized I was safe, I could no longer stave off the desire to know the truth. I have to know what happened to Guido. If he's still alive. I want to know the names of the criminals who've stormed into my life. I don't feel the slightest sense of guilt, but the anxiety is eating at me. I've started to punish myself, displaying a weakness that I've never had before, allowing others, and in particular Ugo, to take advantage of me.

I can't go on living like this, you understand? You have to help me, Signor Buratti. I'll pay you well. Extremely well. The first real lesson I've learned from all this is that you can never rely entirely on family wealth, life is full of surprises and personal assets that no one knows about are precious, fundamental. And now I possess them.

I hope I've been clear. If I could, I'd use threats to force you to carry out this investigation. I don't like you, I suspect you're a criminal no different from the ones who tried to blackmail me, but I trust Giannella blindly.

How much do you want as a retainer? I imagine that asking for an estimate is foreign to your professional ethics, but in any case, the hotel safe contains enough cash to satisfy even your wildest dreams.

 

“Your beloved Guido is dead. There's no point in continuing to use the present tense when you talk about him,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth.

The Swiss woman glared at me, full of hatred. “How can you be so sure of that?”

“You know it perfectly well yourself. Or do you think that the gang that kidnapped him decided to adopt him?”

“It's unnecessary for you to be so unpleasant.”

“Signora, you need help,” I said. “You can't hold out for long like this; you'll collapse and no one will be able to save you then.”

“You just think about doing your job.”

“Fine, I'll take the case, but on one condition: that you agree to take care of yourself. Take a vacation, sign in to a nice clinic for rich people, and get back on your feet.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me too, Signor Buratti?”

I huffed in annoyance. “Call Giannella and give me the phone.”

“Don't you know how to be courteous and polite?”

I shook my head. “No, Oriana. Just get used to it.”

She pulled out her cell phone, spoke in an undertone with her old classmate, and then finally I was able to hear her voice myself.

“
Ciao
, attorney.”

“So now you've heard the story, eh?”

“I'm going to repeat to you what I've already told this woman: I'm willing to investigate on one condition only, that a qualified shrink assume responsibility for arranging to get her put away for a while. And you've got to guarantee that this will happen very quickly; tomorrow morning I'm going to put her on the first plane and the minute she's back in Lugano she has to start a cure.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“No, you have to give me your word right now,” I shot back sternly. “Don't you see that she's undergone a trauma so powerful that not even her wealthy, old-fashioned, bourgeois defenses are enough to keep everything under control? There are cracks in her mind and her heart, she's a ticking time bomb, and if we aren't careful she'll take us all down with her.”

“All right. Let me talk to her now.”

Once again the cell phone changed hands. I caught the waitress's eye for another aperitif. And another bowl of peanuts. That day I would gladly have eaten a bucketful.

About twenty minutes later she returned to her seat. Her shoulders were slumped. “I'm not crazy, Signor Buratti.”

“Of course you're not. You just need a complete overhaul.”

“There is a note of hostility in your voice. Do you judge me for the way I behaved with Guido?”

“I have my opinions on the subject,” I replied. “But you're a client and I'll keep them to myself. As you can see, I'm even pretending not to be offended by your insults.”

“Then why did you accept?”

“Because two people who are secretly in love should be left alone. Instead, a man was kidnapped and murdered and the woman he loved has been blackmailed. In my world, these crimes are unacceptable, but that's something you wouldn't understand.”

“No,” she admitted. “And to tell the truth, the circles you move in don't interest me. They only scare me.”

I thought to myself that I'd never encountered a bigger bitch in my life. I moved onto practical details. “Does the apartment in Padua still belong to you?”

“Let's just say that I still have access to it.”

“Fine, and now I have access to it. And I'd say that fifty thousand euros would be an acceptable down payment.”

“Actually, I was thinking of a smaller sum.”

“And you were wrong. Another fifty thousand if I solve the case. Plus expenses, obviously.”

She stood up. “I'm tired, I'm going to get some rest. Tonight at dinner, I'll give you the money and the keys. I always have them with me, in case Guido comes back and wants to see me.”

 

I paid the check and started walking back to my hotel. What I'd told the Swiss woman was only a half-truth. The real reason that was driving me to hunt down this gang of kidnappers was that it would keep my mind off my own problems for who knows how long. And the same went for Max. Investigating means starting down a tunnel where the darkness keeps you from looking around. Figuring out the truth about things that had nothing to do with me was a remedy for the emotional collapse I'd slid into after Sylvie's suicide. Actually, it had always been this way. From the first case I'd taken after getting out of prison. The problem was that I was accumulating stories I'd have to settle accounts with someday, when the past decided that those bills had come due. Just not today, and not tomorrow either. Before then, I needed to solve the mysterious disappearance of Professor Di Lello.

I phoned the fat man. “We have a client,” I began.

“Partners again,” he said promptly, making no secret of his relief. “Is it routine or an ugly mess?”

“It's a gigantic ugly mess. Nasty and foul.”

“What kind of trouble has the lady gotten herself into?”

“You can't even begin to imagine. I'll tell you all about it when I get there, tomorrow or the day after, at the latest.”

“Marco . . .”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

“For what? Before I called you I was just thinking that we needed something to take our minds off our nightmares. And luck stepped in. That's all.”

I stopped in a Chinese-run shop and bought a pen and a notepad. While I was paying for it, I ripped off the cover. It had a picture of such a sad-looking panda that it made you imagine all sorts of mistreatment.

I wasn't in the habit of taking notes. That smacked of TV detectives; but Oriana wasn't going to be around in the near future and I needed to be sure I was familiar with all the details.

Stretched out on the bed, I started jotting down the most important questions but by the time I got to the eleventh, I'd nodded off.

I woke up to the ringing of the phone in the room. The shrew informed me that Signora Pozzi Vitali would be expecting me at 8
P.M.
at the restaurant Lo Zodiaco on Via Sassari.

“She was very clear: be on time!” she told me, before slamming down the receiver.

 

I showed up twenty minutes late. I hadn't done it on purpose. I'd just lingered too long in the shower. The signora was turning a glass of white wine slowly in her hands with an absent expression. As I sat down I noticed she was sweaty: the hair at her temples was matted down.

“Hot out this evening, isn't it?” I said. “Luckily, there's a breath of fresh air out here in the garden.”

“Well, if nothing else it's not raining,” she retorted in a flat voice. “This summer it's done nothing but rain in Lugano, and lakes and rain don't go very well together.”

“It's true, it's a little depressing. When it's sunny, it's quite another matter.”

“Right. So can we say we're done with chitchat and move on to more serious matters?”

“Perhaps we could order first, what do you say?”

“You have quite an appetite, for an alcoholic.”

“I've gone to the very edge more than once but I've always managed to pull myself back just in time,” I explained agreeably. “When I'm in love I drink less. Right now I'm not emotionally involved so I'm drinking more than usual, but hardly to excess.”

“I can't imagine what kind of woman would be involved with someone like you.” She waved her hand to take in the other tables. “Do you see any specimens here that might illuminate me?”

“Appearance has nothing to do with it. The important thing is that she not be a bitch, or arrogant, or a snob, just for starters.”

She flashed me an ambiguous smile. She was enjoying herself.

“Shall we say we're also done with insults?” I asked.

She ignored me. “The food here is truly first-class,” she said, opening the menu. “Both fish and meat.”

I ordered both. A bowl of spaghetti
ai frutti di mare
and a steak an inch thick.

Oriana was irritating even when she ate. The careful accuracy of the movements with which she deboned her gilthead bream in
vernaccia
made me want to pick a fight.

I forced myself to stay focused on the details that could prove useful to me in the investigation. I asked how she communicated with her Guido, what kind of places they went together, bars, restaurants, theaters.

After exactly half an hour of questioning I had to conclude that their affair had been too well-kept a secret for anyone to have been able to find out. It was governed by very precise rules, the same kind that a fugitive or a member of a secret gang might have adopted. She had made very sure that no one would develop even the faintest of suspicions and that, in the unfortunate case that such a thing did happen, there would still be no evidence to bear that suspicion out. All the same, the worst had happened. This illicit, clandestine couple had been spotted and attacked by a gang of criminals.

“Obviously someone must have recognized you,” I said. “This morning you told me that several pictures of you have been published in magazines and newspapers.”

“Only in the Ticino canton. In Italy I'm completely unknown.”

“Did you use a credit card to pay your bills?”

She pierced me with a pitying look. “Cash. All payments exclusively in cash.”

“Then the professor must have talked with someone about it,” I theorized, having eliminated all other hypotheses. “He must have confided in a friend, or bragged to one: you know what men are like, and that act put in motion the mechanism that led to the kidnapping.”

“That's the first thing I thought myself. But Guido isn't the type.”

“Wasn't,” I corrected her, breaking in. “Put your heart at rest on that point.”

“I can't bring myself to do it,” she confessed from behind a film of tears that worried me.

“Forgive me, go on, please,” I said, doing my best to make up for what I'd said and refilling her glass.

“Yes, he has plenty of friends. He's also a musician, he plays the guitar, but he understood that we'd have to lead double lives if we wanted this relationship to continue. We love each other very much. I am his one true love, his real woman, that much at least is clear to you, isn't it?”