Wu Ming - 54

He knew it would not survive for long.

He had to get out of there. Stick two fingers in his throat and that would be that. Otherwise, he risked throwing up in his hiding place, and drowning the pigeon. A terrible way to go.

The outline of the mountains dissolved on the horizon, there was nothing but water all around. Zollo headed towards the hold for his usual mid-crossing check. With a cargo like this, you could never be careful enough. He chucked his cigarette end over the parapet and started climbing down the stairs towards the lower deck.

When he had reached the bottom, just before he got to the hatch, a noise to his right attracted his attention. If it was something human, it was not unlike the final appeal that J. J. Clancy Frongillo had made to the world, before dying with his windpipe crushed by the thumbs of Steve Cement. Zollo leaned forward, over the base of a gigantic goods lift, and saw someone behind it, bent double, one hand on the wall and the other clutching his guts. Between his open legs, a pigeon stared at him from behind the bars of a cage.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Zollo asked the pigeon, when the retching noises stopped.

The guy just turned his head, didn’t change his position. A boy. He mumbled something incomprehensible, then managed to articulate, in English: ‘Wh-what?’

The trick of speaking English always worked with the police in Bologna. It gained you a couple of minutes, long enough to make up a story. Pierre undoubtedly needed it. The guy with the Sicilian accent standing in front of him was pretty big and, to judge by his clothes, he didn’t come up with the last drop of rain.

‘You’re not in the crew, are you? Who are you?’

As with Cary Grant, Pierre managed to catch only the last part of the question. The guy spoke much better English than he did. That had never happened with the police in Bologna. Better get a move on.

‘My name is Robespierre Capponi,’ he said in Italian. ‘I embarked at Dubrovnik.’

‘You did? And how the fuck did you get on board?’

The sailor had told him clearly: if they discover you, don’t give my name. They won’t touch you, they don’t want any problems with customs. I’d lose my job.

He had an answer ready. ‘Last night, as they were loading the ship, I hid among the cases and climbed on board.’

‘You’ve really fucked up. Why?’

‘I was supposed to be coming back with a friend, but I had a mishap and had to leave early.’

‘What kind of mishap?’

Pierre shook his head. ‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.’

Zollo went over to the boy, wearing a face that would have put the wind up a wolf.

‘Listen to me carefully, boy. I don’t give a flying fuck about what happened to you. Now tell me the whole thing again, but cut the crap this time, ok?’ It was one of the longest sentences he had ever spoken to a foreigner.

‘Done,’ Pierre replied, icebergs in his veins. ‘I’ll start at the beginning: I was on an island, to find my father, and we were minding our own business when someone tried to kidnap Cary Grant, who was on the island as well, I know it’s incredible, but that’s what happened, I swear, so then my father fired and the kidnappers escaped —’

‘Horseshit!’ Zollo interrupted. ‘What does Cary Grant have to do with it? Yesterday evening the ferry set off for Bari. If you were in such a hurry, you could have taken that.’

‘What? Where would I have got the money?’

‘I see. The money’s the problem.’

‘Yes. that is no, in fact, I told you: this thing that happened…’ Pierre didn’t mention the actor’s name again to avoid annoying the man. ‘Hang on, look at this, I’ve got proof.’ He rummaged in his bag and took out the copy of Casino Royale . ‘You see this book? In English? You can’t get it in Italy. He gave it to me in person, that is, he left it on the beach and I. ’

Zollo stood there with Ian Fleming’s book in his hand, and instinctively started flicking through it.

‘Unfortunately,’ Pierre went on, coming to stand beside him, ‘there’s nothing to show that it’s really his. The underlinings in pencil are all mine, words I’ve got to check in the dictionary, you see?’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Zollo exploded. ‘Just pray that the cops don’t come looking for you, or you’ve had it. But if they see you wandering about the ship, if you get into trouble, I’ll chuck you overboard with an anchor around your feet.’

‘Fine,’ Pierre gulped. ‘I won’t give you any problems.’

Zollo stared at him for a long time, then turned on his heels and clambered over the goods loader, and when he turned around to ask what the hell that pigeon was all about, the boy and the cage had disappeared.

He went back up on the upper deck. He liked the cool evening air. The boy with the cage was just some poor bastard, probably crazy. What was all that crap about Cary Grant? You end up meeting the strangest people. Nothing to get worked up about, though. Not now that things were going his way. He’d creamed three kilos off the last cargo. Along with what he had already set aside, that meant a decent pension for Steve ‘Son-of-a-Bitch’ Cement. Once he was in Naples, he’d put the three kilos in safe keeping along with the rest, as he waited to arrange his appointment with Lyonnese Toni. He had to be careful. Luciano would send him to Marseilles to take care of the bulk of it. No nonsense. Steve ‘Careful’ Cement in action. Meeting the buyers for his drugs. The trip to France on Luciano’s behalf was the best cover in the world. Loyal Steve sells the snake’s heroin, and without anyone noticing, he sells his own as well. All nice and clean. All sorted. All he had to do was decide where he was going to disappear to.

Zollo saw the glowing cigarette-end roll overboard, perform a perfect parabola and extinguish itself among the waves. From his pocket he took the little flask and allowed himself a consoling swig.

Chapter 56

Naples, 2 May

He turned up, jolted about in a nameless truck, after a journey that was anything but peaceful. Blows and shakes must have damaged him, but he couldn’t expect the care he needed from yokels like these. The guy with the big hands and the beret over his eyes loaded him on to his shoulder with a jerk of his elbow. The door opened in front of them: they could barely get through it.

A fat, dark man with a toothpick sticking out of his mouth pointed to the niche in a chest of drawers, suitable at best for the basic model. Who the hell did these troglodytes think they were dealing with? A McGuffin Electric Deluxe isn’t just an accessory, he’s an essential part of the furniture of a modern house: a beauty, twenty-eight inches by twenty-four high, with a seventeen-inch rectangular tube, available in various colours to adapt to the shade of your furniture. Shovel-Hands, with Toothpick behind him, pushed with all his might, but there was nothing to be done, that much was clear, and fortunately he noticed, a stream of invective later, before scratching the woodeffect cover, ideally matched to a walnut buffet table, and entirely out of place on blue formica.

In the end, they laid him on two chairs placed side by side. Toothpick took three steps back and studied him with his head on one side, like Michelangelo contemplating one final touch to his statue of Moses, then walked over again to put in the plug and shouted a name, something like Concetta, two or three times, until a fat, aproned woman appeared and launched into an interminable series of condemnations of the size of the new arrival. God , what ignorance!

Toothpick stared obliquely at the floor, in a desperate attempt to restrain himself, a titanic effort that proved to be unsuccessful. ‘Shut up,’ he exploded a few minutes later. ‘Bloody hell, woman, shut up!’