Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

“You found them. And?”

I tell him that I found one, named Conti, who Martino remembered; it was the same guy. But before I could talk to him, somebody killed him; they ran him over with a truck.

I show him a newspaper clipping that I kept. He reads it.

“Okay, this guy is dead. And the other one?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me whether I killed him?”

“No, I’m not going to ask you, because you didn’t kill him. Get real. Who’s the other one?”

I tell him about Mosca. And how I met him. And that Elisabetta Renal confirmed he was Conti’s partner. And that he told her he remembered our father.

He shakes his head. “Yes, but … there’s no proof, there aren’t any documents anymore. It’s twenty-five years ago. You can’t catch him now. What are you trying to do?”

I tell him that the guy has a video showing my car in the parking lot where Conti was killed, while he was being killed.

“And why did he have that video?”

“Because he killed Conti himself, I think; he had to get rid of him.”

He’s grimacing in disgust. “What have you got to do with this story?” He waves his hands around. “What were you doing in the parking lot?”

I tell him that I was following Conti and I don’t even know why.

He starts rubbing his forehead and mutters, “I knew it — I knew you shouldn’t stay out here all alone. Spending all your time brooding about this crazy business. Instead of doing something more enjoyable. I shouldn’t have left you here alone.” He looks at me. “Okay, you were right to call me. Let’s phone a lawyer right away. We’ll go to the police with him. We’ll tell them everything. We’ll turn this Mosca in. What’s he demanding?”

“Huh?”

“What does he want from you?”

“Huh?”

“Money?”

I don’t understand.

“Why did he blackmail you? What does he want?” He’s shouting again.

I wasn’t expecting this. I’m unprepared. What does Mosca want?

“No, not money; no way. He’s very rich.”

“What then?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What?”

“Maybe he asked me not to see Elisabetta anymore.”

He stares at me, astounded. “What kind of blackmail is that? He’s threatening to turn you in for murder, and all he’s asking is that you stop seeing some woman?”

I finally wake up. “But who knows what he’ll ask me for next — you see?”

“What does Elisabetta Renal say to do?”

“Elisabetta? I haven’t told her anything.”

“You haven’t told her that Mosca is blackmailing you?”

“No, it’s none of her business. And if I told her, I’d have to admit that I was in the parking lot too, not just her.”

“She was there too?”

I tell him about the documents that Conti was supposed to turn over to Elisabetta.

“And anyway, that’s not the problem. She has nothing to do with this. She has nothing to do with our thing.”

“ Our thing?”

“The thing about Papa. She’s not part of it.”

He shakes his head. “I get it. Unlike her, I am part of it. Naturally.”

He covers his eyes with one hand. “Okay. We have to talk to Mario Banco — you remember him? We were friends when we both lived in university housing; he’s a very good lawyer, and that’s what we need here — we’ll call him tomorrow, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.”

“Why isn’t it okay?”

I tell him that Mosca can’t get away with it. That he has to end up like the other one.

He gets up and starts yelling at me again. “What are you saying? Jesus Christ, what are you saying? Do you want to kill him yourself? Are you gonna put fertilizer in his gin and tonic? Eh?”

I murmur, “Somehow. There’s some way to do it.”

“Listen: I don’t want to hear any more bullshit for tonight. Right now I’m hungry. Give me that couscous and tomorrow we’ll talk to Banco.”

We moved into the kitchen. I served him some food while he told me about how much experience his lawyer friend had. I thought that after dinner I’d talk to him about the pistol.

But then, when he was on his second mouthful, his cell phone rang.

I saw him blanch.

“Yes,” he said; then, “And you let her in? Why? I told you not to answer the doorbell. What do you mean, me? I’m here; I’m fifty miles away. No, no, no,” he shouted.

He got up and said he had to go back to the city right away, there was a hell of a mess there. Cecilia had turned up at his bachelor pad and found Anna — that student of his — there.

“Well, what was she doing there?”

“I can’t explain it to you right now.”

“But you were supposed to stay till tomorrow—”

“I can’t — Tomorrow … we’ll talk tomorrow—”

He ran out. I stood at the front door and watched him. He was already inside the Clio, he’d turned on the ignition, and then he rolled down the window and yelled out to me, “And don’t you do a fucking thing, you hear? Don’t pull any crazy shit!” He drove off, burning rubber.

After a whole night when I don’t think I slept more than three hours, and never for more than half an hour at a time, I go down into the courtyard at 7:30 to lie to Witold, who’s waiting for me near his Fiat Panda; I don’t feel well, I tell him, maybe I’ll join him in the afternoon. “I didn’t get drunk, I promise,” I say, making him blush. “It must have been the canned corn: I really shouldn’t eat it, nine times out of ten it makes me sick.” And it’s true that I’m not drunk, and it’s true that I look worn out (more worn out than usual), so Witold — honest, loyal, sincere Witold — believes me and doesn’t think I’m lying and reassures me: he suggests I stay home all day and rest; I repeat that I’ll try to come after lunch, and we go over the plans for the day again, and we agree about everything — or rather I agree with all his suggestions and I suggest things I already know he’ll like, to get rid of him quicker. And I do get rid of him; he takes off. I wonder dispassionately whether I’ll ever see him again.

Carlo won’t get back before Mosca and Giletti arrive; he may not intend to come back at all; in fact, my problems are almost certainly the last thing on his mind right now, so I can’t put this off any longer; I have to deal with it myself. And the first thing I have to deal with is my weapon. It’s 8:00 a.m., the air is still fresh, and I go out to the courtyard a second time; who knows whether Martino has ever pulled the trigger on this pistol? There’s a chance it might not work anymore. Guns have to be oiled, and he never did that, for sure. I cock the hammer.

I point the pistol at the sky. I try to pull the trigger, but I can’t. I’m afraid of the sound it’ll make, of the chance that the muzzle might flare, or that the gun might even explode and maybe kill me too. I run back inside and down to the basement to grab Carlo’s old full-face motorcycle helmet. Outside again, I lower the visor, reach my arm as high as I can, and shoot. The recoil knocks the pistol to the ground, where it almost hits my foot; but it works.

At the edge of the woods I aim into the shade beneath the trees and shoot again, to learn how to keep from dropping the pistol. It’s too big for shooting point-blank in an enclosed space; inside a car it would rupture my eardrums, and inside the house it would make huge holes in my walls. I was right to take it away from Martino before he got himself killed by some nutcase. I shoot into the woods without aiming at any particular tree; I shoot the woods straight in the heart.

I take off the helmet, and suddenly all the noises around me go back to normal volume: I can hear Malik’s dogs barking furiously, the hysterical magpies, and the distant hum of the main road — it’s the sound of people driving toward me, shocked and outraged by this sudden noise of mine, because I’m usually so silent … I must have been overcome by the heat. But the sound of moving cars doesn’t subside into the aural background again, even as the animals calm down and the echoes die out; after a few minutes the car noise intensifies, modulates down, and breaks out of its monotone — second, third, second gear — someone is shifting gears on the road that leads up here. I go over to my gate and see the car appear around the curve: it’s the black Ka.