The Crossroads (18 page)

‘You bastard! Leave me alone, okay? You don't know me, so leave me alone.' Cristiano raised the club again. ‘If you don't leave me alone, I'll kill you.' He felt an overwhelming urge to hit him, to smash his fucking head in. ‘You think you're special, but you're nobody.' He swallowed. ‘You're nothing.'

Then he saw in Tekken's terrified eyes the belief that he was going to die and he realised that all his anger, as quickly as it had ignited every fibre of his being, had vanished. He had only had to look into his eyes and …

I was going to kill him
.

… it had gone, as if someone had pulled out a plug and all his pent-up fury, like evaporating gas, had whooshed out of him. Now he felt nothing but nausea and a terrible weariness.

‘Why? I've never done anything to you … I've never …' stammered Tekken, with his hands raised.

At that moment the van pulled up behind Cristiano and the door opened.

‘Get in! Get in, quick!' Rino beckoned to him.

Cristiano lowered his arm, dropped the club on the ground and jumped into the Ducato.

The Frecce Tricolori were coming.

At two o'clock in the afternoon the three hundred and thirteenth display team of the Italian Air Force would circle in the skies above Murelle, painting them red, white and green.

At eight o'clock in the morning Danilo Aprea phoned Rino Zena in great excitement. ‘What a show! The best pilots in the world. The pride of Italy. And I'm not just saying that because I saw them ten years ago … They're world-famous. And it's free.'

Rino asked Cristiano if he wanted to go and Cristiano said he did.

So it was settled.

They would go to see the Frecce.

Quattro Formaggi was called too, and since the display would be taking place above a big field they decided to have a picnic, with grilled sausages, bruschetta and wine.

Like a grey blanket, a layer of cloud had spread over the field where the Frecce Tricolori were to pass.

The plot of land, measuring several hectares, had been cordoned off with long ribbons of striped plastic. A few leafless trees rose up out of the mud like sad black aerials.

When our heroes reached the car park it was already occupied by hundreds of cars and minibuses. They weren't the only ones who had had the idea of a barbecue. All around, columns of smoke spiralled up from charcoal grills. There were also rows of vans with illuminated signs selling drinks and sandwiches, to the sound of electricity generators.

People sat on deckchairs and plastic stools, their feet in the mud and their noses in the air.

Quattro Formaggi parked alongside a big blue pickup.

A small family sat on the back, guzzling pizza, rice balls and chicken croquettes.

Rino Zena got out of the van and realised that he wasn't feeling at all well. His headache was still there, alive and pulsing. Sometimes, like an octopus, it hid in the crevices of his brain, but when he drank or smoked too much, it emerged angrily and extended its electric tentacles into his temples, his eye sockets, the back of his head, and down into his stomach.

I must give up drinking. I really must
.

Maybe he should join Alcoholics Anonymous, or follow Trecca's advice – he must do something, anyway. Although the social services might take this as proof that he couldn't look after Cristiano.

Before going into rehab I must get married. Preferably to someone
with a job
.

There had been one woman Rino had once thought of marrying: Mariangela Santarelli, who owned a hairdressing salon in Marezzi, a hamlet near Varrano. Mariangela had three daughters (five, six and seven years old) and was a young widow. Her husband, who had owned a building supplies firm, had died of leukaemia after eight years of marriage.

The real reason why Rino had stayed with Mariangela was that she had looked after Cristiano when he went out at night. ‘If three can sleep on it, I don't see why four can't,' the hairdresser used to say, leaning against the door frame, contemplating a double bed covered with children.

Rino, who hated spending the night with the women he screwed, would go and pick up Cristiano next morning and take him to kindergarten.

Then one day Rino and Mariangela had split up, because he wasn't a serious person and didn't want to marry her.

‘I bet you never find another woman stupid enough to look after your son while you cheat on her!' she had said.

And she had won her bet.

Maybe I could ring her
…

Though he doubted if Mariangela was still alone. She was an attractive woman with a steady income.

Cristiano came over to him, holding the plastic bag from the cash-and-carry. ‘Papa, how are we going to make the fire for the sausages?'

Rino rubbed his sore eyes. ‘I don't know. Look for some firewood, or ask someone if they'll give you some charcoal. I've got to lie down for a minute. Call me when the planes come.' He opened the rear doors of the Ducato and lay down on the floor.

Maybe he just needed a nap.

‘How are you feeling?'

Rino half-opened one eye and saw Quattro Formaggi looking at him, his head cocked on one side.

‘Not too good.'

‘I wanted to ask you something.'

‘Ask away.'

Quattro Formaggi lay down beside Rino and started scratching his cheek, then both of them stared in silence at the roof of the Ducato.

‘Will you help me with Liliana?'

Rino yawned. ‘You really like her, do you?'

‘I think so … What do you think?'

‘How would I know, Quattro? You're the one who's got to know.'

After their discussion by the riverside, Rino had made inquiries and found out that Liliana had been seeing a guy for over two years, but he hadn't yet found the strength to tell his friend.

‘No, you know best about my affairs. You always save me. You helped me in the children's home. Remember …'

‘For God's sake don't start going on about how I always save you … I've got a splitting headache.'

Undaunted, Quattro Formaggi reminded him of their time in the care home, when they had met. Back then he had still been plain Corrado Rumitz and had been teased, bullied, humiliated and bossed about by all the other kids, before the indifferent eyes of the priests.

And he had helped him. Perhaps because by protecting him he could show everyone that they had better keep away from Rino Zena and everything he owned, including the idiot. Yes, that was the truth of it.

Rino was fourteen years old and was sitting on a low wall outside
the care home smoking a cigarette while three bastards stuffed a poor idiot into a rubbish bin and kicked it around the yard. Rino had thrown away his stub and knocked one of them down.

‘You pick on him again and you'll have to reckon with me. Just imagine he has a label on him, saying “property of Rino Zena”. Okay?'

From that day on they had left the idiot in peace.

That had been the beginning of their friendship, if it could be called that. Well, twenty years had passed and they were still there, side by side. So maybe it could.

‘Will you help me, then, Rino?'

‘Listen … That Liliana's not for the likes of … us. Haven't you seen the way she behaves? She's after men who bring a bit of money home. What have we got to offer her? Fuck all. You'd do better to forget all about her. Anyway, what would you do? You won't even let me into your flat – where would you take her?'

Quattro Formaggi grabbed his wrist. ‘Has she got a boyfriend?'

‘I don't know …'

‘Tell me.'

‘Okay. Yes, she has! Are you satisfied now? Now stop going on about it. It's over. Finished. I don't want to hear any more about it.'

Silence. Then, quietly, Quattro Formaggi said: ‘Okay.'

Quattro Formaggi said, ‘Okay.' And he lay there in silence, staring at the roof of the van, beside Rino.

To tell the truth, he too had heard that Liliana had a boyfriend, but he had been hoping God had decided to lend a hand and would make her quarrel with him.

Besides, Rino was right, he had nothing to offer a woman like that. But when the crib was finished, he too would have something to brag about. His house would become a museum.

It was strange, though: now that he knew he had no chance with Liliana he felt as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders.

Rino passed him the bottle of wine. ‘Well, are we going to do this raid or not?'

Quattro Formaggi took a swig, then said: ‘You decide.'

‘Is the tractor ready?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, it's worth a try. But if we can't knock the cash machine out of the wall first time, we give up. The police will be there in a flash.'

‘All right. But when?'

‘Tonight. Will you tell Danilo?'

‘No, you tell him.'

‘We'll tell him later. It'll be a nice surprise for him.'

Then they lay there in silence, passing the wine back and forth.

Danilo Aprea, sprawled in the wheelbarrow with a bottle in one hand and a raw sausage in the other, unaware that a few metres away Rino had decided that his plan would be carried out, looked in awe at the three hundred and thirteenth air display team as they made tricoloured trails above his head, to the applause of hundreds of people.

He was drunk and smiling inanely, and the only thought he managed to produce was:

Wow, they're good. They're really good
.

Then, like a dopey camel, he lowered his gaze and saw Cristiano beside him silently watching the planes, and he succeeded in producing another thought:

If Laura was alive now, she would be sitting here between me
and Cristiano
.

It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. ‘What a thick black cloud that is!' she said. ‘And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it's got wings!'

Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking Glass

The terror dance began at half past ten in the evening, when a stormy front that had been tangled up for days among the mountain peaks was freed by a Siberian airstream which pushed it southwards.

In less than ten minutes the half-moon that hung in the middle of a clear, starry sky was smothered by a blanket of dark, low clouds.

Darkness fell suddenly on the plain.

At ten forty-eight, thunder, lightning and gusts of wind marked the opening of a long night of storms.

Then it started to rain and just went on and on.

If the temperature had been only a couple of degrees lower it would have snowed, and the rest of this story might have taken a different course.

Streets emptied. Shutters came down. Thermostats were adjusted. Fires were lit. The satellite dishes on the roofs began to creak, the Milan–Inter derby started breaking up into squares and furious viewers reached for their telephones.

While the storm was raging over the Guerra home, Fabiana Ponticelli was lying on Esmeralda's bed in her knickers and bra, contemplating her feet, which she had up against the wall.

Maybe it was only the effect of the pot, but from that position they looked like two cod fillets.

So white, thin and long. And oh my God, those toes! So bony, and with such big gaps between them …

Just like her father's.

Ever since she was small she had always hoped she was the secret daughter of an American millionaire who would one day carry her off to live with him in Beverly Hills, but those feet were worth more than a thousand DNA tests.

The previous summer the Ponticellis had gone to the Valtour holiday village on Capo Rizzuto, and a cute but rather obnoxious boy
from Florence had pointed out to her, on the beach, that her feet were identical to her father's.

Fabiana's consolation was that this was the only physical resemblance between her and her father, and that it could be hidden in her shoes.

Maybe I could put some nail varnish on them
.

Esmeralda had a collection covering all the colours of the rainbow in the bathroom.

But the mere idea of sitting up, getting to her feet and going to look for the right one made her lose interest.

Meanwhile, on the radio, Bob Dylan started singing ‘Knockin' on Heaven's Door'.

‘I like this song …' yawned Fabiana.

‘It's a masterpiece,' said Esmeralda Guerra, who was sitting cross-legged on the desk. She too was in bra and knickers. With the smouldering end of her joint she was boring holes in the head of an old doll, producing a black, toxic smoke which mingled with that of the cigarettes and of the incense burning on the bedside table among piles of fashion magazines.

‘Who's the singer?' Fabiana slowly turned her head and saw that the mute television screen was showing a heist film that she'd already seen, starring that famous actor …

Al
…
? Al
…
? Al
something or other
.

‘Some famous guy. From the Eighties … My mother's got the record.'

‘But what do the words mean?'

‘
Evven
means paradise.
Dor
, door. The door of Paradise.'

‘What about
nokkin
?
'

Her friend threw the doll in the wastepaper basket and thought about it a little too long.

She doesn't know
, Fabiana said to herself.

Esmeralda claimed to be practically a native speaker of English because she'd once been to California when she was small, but if you asked her the meaning of any word a little more complicated than
window
she never had a clue.

Let's see what crap she comes up with
… ‘Well? What does it mean?'

‘It means knowing … knowing the door of Paradise.'

‘And how does it go on?'

Esmeralda listened to the song with her eyes closed and then said, in a serious tone: ‘He says that if you know the door of Paradise it's easy to find it. And when you find it you can take your mother with you, even though it's very dark … Something like that, anyway.'

Fabiana grabbed a pillow and propped it under her head. ‘Jesus Christ, what a stupid song.'

If she ever opened a door and found herself looking at Paradise, complete with woolly clouds and fluttering angels, she doubted that she would go in. And certainly not with her mother.

Maybe I should put my head under the tap
. Her eyes felt as swollen as grapes and her skull so heavy it seemed full of gravel. All because of that yellow limoncello and the pot supplied by one Manish Esposito, a friend of Esmeralda's mother who lived in a community of orange-clothed freaks near Santa Maria di Leuca.

Esmeralda yawned: ‘Shall we have a bath?'

‘What?'

‘A bath. I've got a lovely lily-of-the-valley bath foam.'

It wasn't a bad idea. But what was the time? Fabiana looked at the big clock shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle that hung above the head of the bed.

Ten forty-five
.

They had been shut up in that room for at least eight hours.

We're burying ourselves alive
.

In the beginning it had seemed like an interesting project.

The Big Lock-Up
.

That's what they had called it.

They would stay in the bedroom all Sunday, watching DVDs, smoking joints, drinking and eating.

Better on their own than with that bunch of zombies who hung around in the shopping mall and only woke up to have a fight. They had come to this decision after that idiot Tekken had nearly thrown Zena off the bridge.

God knows why he had slashed Tekken's motorbike like that … What was he trying to do? If she and Esmeralda hadn't interceded they really would have chucked him off.

Zena certainly had guts. But he was a difficult guy. Very touchy. You couldn't say anything to him.

She had been thinking about Cristiano Zena a bit too much lately.

‘Well?'

Fabiana turned towards her friend. ‘Well what?'

‘Are we going to have this bath?'

‘I can't, I've got to go home.'

She had promised the Turd – aka her father – that she would be home by ten thirty.

The next morning, at half past eight, skipping the first lesson at school, she had an appointment with the dentist for a check-up.

Fabiana calculated that even if she left straight away she would be late home. It took a good twenty minutes from there. So she might as well take her time.

Lucky she'd switched off her mobile.

The Turd would have just got back from …

Where was it he went?

… and not finding her at home had no doubt jammed her voice-mail with messages.

Rino had switched off the television and was staring at the rain that beat against the sitting room windows, trying to understand what had made him watch that film. He knew it by heart, he had seen it dozens of times, yet he hadn't been able to tear himself away from the screen.

Dog Day Afternoon
. Starring Al Pacino. One of his two favourite actors, along with Robert De Niro. If Rino should ever happen to meet the pair of them in the street he would bow down before them and say, ‘You're two of the greats, and you'll always have Rino Zena's respect.'

They succeeded in portraying the crummy lives of ordinary folk better than anyone else.

But that evening he shouldn't have watched the film. Al Pacino went into a bank to carry out a robbery and it turned into a bloodbath.

He had realised that the raid on the cash machine was a mistake. A terrible mistake that he would regret for the rest of his life.

And although reason suggested that the downpour was a stroke of luck (the streets would be deserted), his stomach told him that this film shown by Channel 4 exactly two hours before the raid was a God-sent sign that he should drop the whole idea.

Now he kept thinking about the plan and his mind was haunted by images of blood and death. Raids like this, seemingly foolproof and unambitious, were exactly the kind that suddenly turned into massacres.

Are you out of your mind …?

How many reports had he read in the newspapers about service station robberies and car thefts that had ended in massacres? You could bet your life that as soon as they got there with the tractor, police would pop out from behind every corner.

Why did I let Danilo talk me into this? He doesn't know his arse
from a hole in the ground
.

If anything went wrong it meant prison. And a long sentence at that. A couple of years at the very least.

And if he went to jail, Cristiano would be put in a home or a foster family till he was eighteen.

How much money would there be in a cash machine, anyway? Splitting it three ways, too …

Peanuts
.

He must bite the bullet, phone Danilo and tell him he was backing out.

He won't be happy
.

When they had told Danilo, on the way home from the Frecce Tricolori air display, that the raid was on for that evening, he had almost burst into tears of joy.

But what does that matter to me?

It was a stupid plan, and the only reason he had listened to Danilo was that he had nothing to do all day. If Danilo really wanted, he could still do it with Quattro Formaggi. No, on second thoughts he couldn't do it with Quattro Formaggi either.

He'll just have to find someone else
.

Lucky he was still in time to drop out.

But what if that presentiment had been nothing but fear?
What
if I've lost my balls?

He turned to look at Cristiano, curled up on the sofa fast asleep.

Maybe I have. So what?

He was about to pick up the phone and call Danilo, but he changed his mind. It was better to wait for him to arrive with Quattro Formaggi and tell him to his face.

At the same moment when Rino Zena was being assailed by doubts, Danilo Aprea was sitting in front of the television and smiling.

What a stupid film he had been watching. A story where two crooks got trapped in the middle of a bank robbery. His own plan was perfect. There would be no people around, no weapons, no hostages or any crap like that.

He picked up the newspaper and, with his glasses on the tip of his nose, leafed through the pages of the property ads, reflecting that, if you had plenty of capital and a bit of intuition, there are a million ways of getting rich.

And since he was sure he had a natural instinct for business (he had predicted that the Quattro Camini would be a great success), he would soon have the cash to prove it to the rest of the world.

He had already drawn circles with his biro round at least five hot properties among the business premises for sale. All in shopping malls or in newbuild blocks near the bypass. Strategic points which would see immense commercial growth over the next few years.

After the shock of the euro, which had brought the country to its knees, there was bound to be an economic recovery.

The theory of flow and counterflow.

That was what Berlusconi said, anyway. And how could you not believe an industrialist of the north who was a self-made man and had become the richest person in Italy, despite everything the commie judges had done to thwart him?

And when the recovery came, Danilo would be there, ready and waiting, with his lingerie boutique.

Now the problem was that he couldn't imagine how many square metres it would take to set up a decent lingerie shop.

Would forty be enough? The important thing is to have a small
back room you can use as a store and where you can put an armchair
to relax in and a little fridge in case you get peckish
…

And then, a crucial point, it would have to be tastefully decorated, but Danilo wasn't concerned about that. That was Teresa's territory. He wondered if his wife would like a shop in a mall …

Y
ou must be joking
.

He was sure she would want one right in the centre, on the main street, to make the whole village green with envy. And, all things considered, she was right.

Eat your hearts out, you bastards. Look at the Apreas' boutique
.

Danilo breathed in deeply, closed the newspaper and went over to the window.

The wind had snatched all the clothes off the clothesline on the balcony of the flat opposite, and they had blown onto the leafless branches of an apple tree. The streetlamp was swaying to and fro and the alley had turned into a torrent which was gushing out into the canal beside his house. Through the double-glazing he could hear the roar of the current held in by the banks of the canal.

So much the better. There'll be nobody around
.

The display on the video recorder showed ten forty-five.

In a quarter of an hour Quattro Formaggi would be there.

He had lost track of time while looking at the small ads. He must get ready, and he'd better wrap up warm, or he'd catch pneumonia out in that downpour.

For too long his life had been parked in a dusty hangar; it was time to taxi it out onto the runway, ready for take-off.

Rino had told him the news on the way back from Murelle, and he had been so delighted he had almost burst into tears. Then, when he had got home, he had spent several hours sitting anxiously on the toilet, but now that the great moment had arrived he felt as calm as a samurai before a battle. Something told him that everything would go like clockwork, without a hitch.

He went over to the television and was about to turn it off when he saw a big painting on a green panel which occupied the whole screen.