Michael Dibdin - End games

‘We just won the lottery!’ he said as they both pulled on their masks.

Tom Newman was seated up front in Nguyen’s Mercedes, beside the driver. Nguyen sat alone in the back, furiously silent. The car gave Tom the creeps. It was like a hearse for the living. Maybe it was this thought that sparked his idea when Nicola Mantega rang him. He kept his responses down to the ‘I’ll be there right away’ level. In theory his boss didn’t understand Italian, but Tom had already been around Martin Nguyen long enough to know that it would always be dangerous to underestimate exactly how much he understood about anything.

‘That was the police, Mr Nguyen,’ he said when Mantega hung up. ‘They want me to go to central headquarters right now. Some bureaucratic business involving my late father.’

He didn’t even get a glance of sympathy in return.

‘Get back to the hotel as soon as possible,’ was the reply. ‘These continuing distractions are a pain in the ass. If they continue, I’ll be looking for a new interpreter.’

Tom didn’t give a damn. He told the driver to pull over, stepped out into the balmy air and strutted off down the street as happy as a lord. Nicola Mantega wanted to talk to him in his office and then buy him lunch. This was very convenient, because Tom wanted to talk to il notaio about the big idea he’d had the evening before when he’d gone out to explore the dreary suburban streets of Rende, feeling lonely and disorientated for the first time since arriving, and in a weak moment had allowed himself to be seduced by an eatery named American’s Dream. The brilliantly lit interior vaguely resembled a bad acid flashback to a classic 1950s diner, with grilles and hubcaps from autos of that era arrayed on the walls and a Beach Boys album playing at an unsubtle volume. Tom had ordered a cheeseburger and fries, insalata Cesare and a beer. It took twenty minutes to arrive and was horrible. The meat patty was thin and dry, the fries limp and tasteless, the Caesar a soggy mess made with the wrong kind of lettuce, prefabricated croutons and gloopy sauce out of a bottle. The bill came to almost twenty bucks.

Big deal, he’d thought as he retreated to his gaudy, sterile, whorehouse-minus-the-whores hotel. If you travel, you’re going to have a bad meal once in a while. But while he was down at the municipio that morning, mindlessly offering Martin Nguyen a simplified version of the deputy mayor’s pronouncements, so shaded with multiple layers of nuance that they often appeared to be meaningless, Tom had had his idea. The stuff that he had tried to eat the night before had all been simple American dishes that were easy to prepare and in their way delicious — not great cuisine, but satisfying and tasty when they were properly made and you were in the mood for them. And there was evidently a demand or how could the place stay in business?

The problem wasn’t the concept, it was the execution. That was Tom’s area of expertise, plus over here political correctness hadn’t hit the table yet. Imagine being able to use raw egg in the Caesar, grind up nicely marbled chuck and foreshank fresh every day and soften hand-cut fries in pure beef dripping before crisping them at scorch temp. The concept felt solid, and in the changed financial circumstances following his father’s decease he might well be able to realise it, but he was going to need insider assistance. There should be enough seed money there once the will was probated, but Tom had already been in Italy long enough to know that money was not enough for what he had in mind. You couldn’t just rent a storefront property, kit it out with the necessary, turn on the neon sign and open the door for business. You needed some official paper or stamp to do almost anything — they even had one called the certificato di esistenza in vita, which officially affirmed that you were still alive, or at least had been when you applied for it — and while these were in theory available to any suitably qualified applicant on a first-come first-served basis, in practice the system didn’t work quite like that. If you wanted results, above all if you wanted them fast, you needed a fixer who could cut corners and get the job done. Nicola Mantega was a perfect match.

Outside the building that housed Mantega’s office, Tom noticed the stunning woman he had spoken to briefly at a cafe a couple of days ago and never heard from since. She was leaning up against some sort of maintenance truck, wearing a much more sluttish outfit than the last time, although she brought it off really well, and chatting animatedly to some handsome fuck in company overalls. Tom almost walked on, but then decided that if he was to make it in this town, he mustn’t duck the first challenge that came along.

‘ Salve! ’ he shouted in the loud but unaggressive manner of the local people his age.

The woman looked at him blankly, then seemed to fake a smile.

‘ Buon giorno.’

She seemed preoccupied and made no move to approach him. An interesting person, thought Tom, and possibly some interest on her part too, but a lot else besides. A complex situation, in short, and not without a certain promise. He strolled over to where she was standing beside the electrician or whoever he was. God, she had fabulous eyes! Huge olive-green ovals filled with an intense but indefinable expression, like the women portrayed on Greek vases.

‘You didn’t call me,’ he said.

‘No.’

That didn’t seem to leave Tom much to say, so after a long and meaningful look he turned and walked into the office building.

Given Mantega’s reputation, he had expected his business premises to have an air of discreet luxury, with lots of potted plants and a brittle, babe-aceous receptionist displaying her cleavage and her boss’s status. In the event it looked more like the back room of a failing used-car dealership, but Mantega’s welcome couldn’t have been more effusive.

‘Tom, my friend! What terrible news about your father! I am devastated, destroyed, deranged! To think that this unspeakable crime should have happened here, and that I — ’

Tom gestured negatively with his hand.

‘I’d prefer not to speak of that just now.’

Mantega effortlessly flexed his features from a tragic mask to the devotional image of a saint’s sorrowful but benign regard.

‘Of course, of course! Tactless of me. I cannot apologise enough. Please sit down.’

He waved at a lime-green plastic bucket chair with stainless steel legs that had somehow survived, tawdrily intact, from the 1970s.

‘You said you wanted to discuss something before we go to lunch,’ Tom began. ‘There’s also something I want to ask you, but that can wait.’

‘Yes, as it happens, there is something on my mind, something which would perhaps be better discussed in a secure environment. It’s a rather delicate matter, if you take my meaning, but I see no reason why the two of us, working together, shouldn’t be able to reach a mutually advantageous agreement.’

‘About what?’

‘Well, it concerns this American who arrived a few days ago.’

‘Martin Nguyen?’

‘I understand that you are working for him.’

Mantega laughed roguishly.

‘Strictly illegal, you know! Non-EU citizens are not permitted to work here without signing their lives away after months of pleading with half a dozen different heads of the bureaucratic hydra for the right to do so. After all, you’re taking bread out of the mouths of all our own poor Italian translators. I really ought to report you to the authorities!’

‘What about my father? He was working here, before…’

Mantega instantly became solemn again.

‘I managed to facilitate that on the basis that the work involved was of limited duration and scope and so straordinario that it could not be undertaken by anyone else. Your case is different. However, we’ll overlook that.’