The Goodbye Kiss Read online

  I sat down without saying hello. “So what’s up?”

  “We’ve conferred and decided to make you a proposition,” he began. “Your conviction is a done deal, and the only hope of getting it thrown out is a retrial. We’ve convinced a comrade with a life sentence to confess to your role in the bombing. He’ll say his conscience got to him, he was with Luca that day, and he’ll provide some credible details. The lawyers say it should work. But you have to get used to the idea of doing some time.”

  “How much?”

  “Two, three years, however long it takes to get through the courts. And then to make the conscience thing believable the comrade has to confess once you’ve turned yourself in. They’ll also pin some related crimes on you, but you’ll pay for those while you’re awaiting retrial.”

  This isn’t what I wanted. I lit a cigarette. “It’s too much,” I hissed.

  Sergio shook his head. “Even if you cooperate and spill everything, they’ll make you do some time. The lawyers say this is the best deal going on the bad rep market.”

  “Don’t push me,” I said calmly. “I’m resigning from the firm, and I’m just negotiating the settlement.”

  I ordered a beer and took a drag on my cigarette, weighing the proposition. “OK. I’ll turn myself in at the border.”

  Sergio heaved a sigh of relief. From his pocket he took out a notebook and a pen. “Write down what you remember about that night, details especially. The confession has to be precise.”

  While I was writing, he asked me if I wanted to know what my old friends and comrades said about my sellout.

  I smiled. “I already know. I know them inside out. They called me a piece of shit and made noise about getting revenge: a shot in the head, or an axe, just like Trotsky. A lot of hot air. The same old story.”

  “Don’t you even want to know which comrade is going to pay for your crime?”

  “No. I’ll read about it in the newspapers. Besides, if he’s doing it, he doesn’t have a choice. Among the names I could finger I bet there’s somebody who’s dear to his heart.”

  I closed the book and threw some cash on the table.

  “You really deserve to die.” He was serious.

  “Don’t be pathetic.” I left, certain I’d never see him again.

  A couple weeks later I forced open Régine’s desk drawer with a screwdriver, took her cash and jewelry and exited her life forever. The next day I’d surrender to the Italian police, and I planned to have a little fun before going to jail. I unloaded the jewelry on an Algerian fence from Barbès for some chump change. From the Gare de Lyon I took the train to Nice. I picked a deluxe hotel, a high-priced whore and a fine restaurant. When I woke the next morning, my pockets were empty. Thumbed it to the border.

  Before taking me to San Vittore, the cops made a stop at the headquarters of the Digos in Milano, the division of general investigations and special operations. Also known as the anti-terrorist squad. They locked me in a room used for interrogations. Cigarette butts were heaped on the floor; blood and coffee spattered the pale green walls. The bulls liked to throw coffee at suspects, paper cups filled with disgusting shit, just to show they were pissed off and didn’t drink what they tried to palm off on you. I felt calm, all things considered. I’d surrendered, delivering myself into the hands of the law. They couldn’t break my balls any more than this. Some cop came in with a file under his arm. He was tall, huge, with a face like a pig. He wore a swanky suit. I lowered my eyes to his shoes. Unmistakably pricey. Either he came from money or was on the take. I opted for the second hypothesis and relaxed.

  He slammed the file on the table and sat down. “My name is Ferruccio Anedda, and I am a very important person.”

  I limited myself to a slavish nod. Didn’t want any trouble. Cops like to have the situation under control.

  “Who made you come back from Central America?” he asked, letting me know straight off they had much more information than I imagined.

  “I just got out. I want to pay my debt to society—”

  He kicked me under the table. “We know everything. You blackmailed those shits who’re holed up in Paris, and you’re planning to act out a little farce for the judges.”

  I stared at him, amazed. “You’ve got an informer in Paris?”

  He cocked his head. “Only one?” he said ironically.

  “What do you want?”

  “Here’s what I would like,” he said, satisfied. Then he changed his tone: “We want the names of everybody who has never been identified. Especially the collaborators. Otherwise, at the proper moment, I’ll have a little chat with the chief justice and you’ll pay in full for the night watchman.”

  “The lawyers say it isn’t in my interest to play turncoat.” I took a chance, putting out a feeler to see if there was any room for negotiation.

  “You’re useless to us as a turncoat. We’re not planning to scrape the bottom of the barrel. The organization has been fucked for years. We simply put them under surveillance, so if somebody gets the crazy idea to jump-start the wreck, we’re on to them immediately and save ourselves a ton of work.”

  “What’s in it for me, apart from getting off for the night watchman?”

  “Doesn’t avoiding a life sentence seem like enough to you?”

  I spread my arms. “I can be very helpful.”

  The bull snorted. “We can help you and make your stay in jail more comfortable.”

  I lit a cigarette and started ransacking my memory. An hour later the organization was liquidated definitively. I could’ve kept on supplying information I gathered on other groups over the years, but at this point I felt it’d be a total waste. Might come in handy later. I’ve always had a good ear, and in Italy the militant underworld always distinguished itself by being offhand about security precautions. They talked in no uncertain terms about safeguarding the organization, but in practice they honored none of it, showing a downright weakness for shooting off their mouths and telling secrets.

  I got to the prison before nightfall. They brought me straight to the registration office, and Anedda whispered something into a sergeant’s ear. The officer turned towards me and winked. The cop had passed on the orders. I’d have to squeal for the prison guards too. A corporal took me by the arm and led me to a counter where he opened a register that looked like something out of the nineteenth century.

  “Surname?”

  “Pellegrini.”

  “First name?”

  “Giorgio.”

  “Date and place of birth?”

  “May 8th 1957, Bergamo.”

  The guard stopped writing. “May 8th,” he repeated. Then he turned to the others: “This guy was born on the same day Gilles Villeneuve died.”

  “I didn’t know. When did it happen?”

  The corporal glared me in shock. “Ten years ago, in 1982. The greatest tragedy in the history of car racing.” He pointed towards a wall where a little altar was set up with the photo of the Formula One driver between Ferrari pennants. Then he pointed his finger in my face. “In this office everybody supports Milan and Ferrari. Understood?”

  At San Vittore I settled in right away. Getting by without a scrape wasn’t hard; you just had to respect the unwritten rules and fuck all the rest. They made me work as a janitor. I had to sweep the corridor in my block and keep my eyes peeled, especially with the foreigners. Every so often they called me into a little room near the guard station and asked me for information about a few jailbirds. I soon learned the trick was to badmouth the ones who weren’t popular in the head office, even if they hadn’t done a thing. Sometimes I just cooked up tales; other times I reported what I’d seen. Now and then Anedda showed up to get more details or explanations. If I needed something, I bargained on the remuneration, and when all was said and done, the bull was openhanded. In time he even got into the habit of bringing me a bottle of whiskey. He was my only visitor. My family never came to see me. They disowned me when I skipped to Paris. My father’s curses chased me down the stairs of our house, and I ran like a shot, never turning back. In the beginning I was really racked, but fate took me a good ways off, and at this point I almost never thought about it.

  I was on friendly terms with the die-hard who took the rap for the night watchman’s murder. His name was Giuseppe. One of those guys who regretted nothing because he remained a communist and a revolutionary. He worked for Dalmine, the machine factory, like his father and grandfather. Started out gung-ho for the union and the party, photos of Lenin, Togliatti and Berlinguer on the kitchen wall. Then he took a different path and went underground. He was rousted by a stoolie, but when he opened his own mouth, he said only—in dialect, pure Bergamasco—that he was a political prisoner.

  In Paris they must’ve broken open the piggy bank. They bought me a lawyer who was once a militant in Soccorso Rosso but then established a solid career, joining a new center-right political party. He told me he took on the case because retrials were all the rage, they generated enormous publicity, and in my particular situation there were real prospects for success. He also showed himself capable of dealing with the press, since dailies and magazines were buzzing around me. Meanwhile days slipped by, and I began to mull over my future. So I wouldn’t leave with empty pockets I ran a little traffic covered up by some guards. For one stretch I took a Brazilian transvestite under my protection. On odd-numbered days, when it was our turn in the shower, I organized a series of tricks, not more than five at a time to avoid attracting attention. One carton of Marlboros for a blowjob, two for a fuck. I gave him ten percent and the assurance that nobody would slash his face. The guards would call on him in his cell at four in the morning. But that wasn’t any of my business. Nor was there anything to be gained from it. The prison staff never pai
d. At that time I also made a slew of interesting acquaintances. Professionals of every criminal persuasion offered me their friendship. In the past, a turncoat, especially somebody suspected of being in cahoots with the cops, would’ve been knifed as soon as he stuck his nose out of his cell. But nowadays even prisons aren’t what they used to be.

  The judicial process took its course. Slow but unstoppable. The Court of Cassation granted the retrial and sent the records to the appellate division of the Court of Assizes in Milano. At the trial, Giuseppe took pains to avoid looking me in the face. When the lawyer addressed the court, he explained Giuseppe’s attitude as shame for making me lead the life of a fugitive. Anybody could’ve seen it was merely disgust. But by then the 1970s was stale news around the court house. The judges’ deliberations lasted a couple hours, just long enough to write the decision. I was acquitted. Still had to serve another couple months for belonging to an armed group, but finally I’d be released from the nightmare. It started many years ago, when Sergio met me in a bar on the outskirts and proposed I join the organization. Secret, communist, militant.

  One morning they told me to turn in my mattress, sheets and mess tin at the storeroom. I’d just turned thirty-eight. At the exit I found Anedda.

  “Remember you belong to the Milanese Digos,” he barked.

  “I’ve retired,” I answered in a huff.

  The bull slammed me against the wall. “You owe me a shitload of favors. And don’t ever forget somebody else is doing your time.”

  I pried myself loose from his grip and set off along the perimeter wall. I spied freedom on the other side of the street, but I still didn’t feel ready to go for it. When I reached the tower, I crossed over.

  Flora

  The nostalgia I felt for my country and my once carefree life crystallized into a childhood memory. My paternal grandparents lived just outside Bergamo, and when they came to visit me and my sisters, they always brought us a gift, a box of Otello Dufour, the best bonbons in the world. I’d grab a handful of those goodies and retreat to my room or the garden with an adventure novel by Emilio Salgari, unwrapping one after another, laying it delicately on my tongue and letting it slowly melt away. During the years when I was either on the lam or behind bars, my most private and painful memories were always capped by the desire for a chocolate liqueur-filled bonbon. When you’re in prison, you’re thinking all the time about the first thing you’ll do when you’re set free. My desire was stamped Dufour. I bolted into the first pasticceria I came across and bought an entire box. But as soon as I unwrapped one, I realized something wasn’t right. Its shape was round, not oval, and it wasn’t made of smooth chocolate as dark as mystery, but lighter and dotted with bits of hazelnut. I slipped it into my mouth—and almost gagged when it didn’t taste anything like my childhood Otello. I felt double-crossed, ready to start bawling. For years I dreamed of something that didn’t exist anymore. I went back into the shop, and the owner clinched it: the Otello had been turned into a kind of chocolate-coated candy.

  “The things people like today,” he said with a shrug.

  I tossed the box into a trash can. I’d been let down, and it worried me. If I just got out of prison and ran into such tough luck satisfying my first wish, my life from here on wasn’t going to be a stroll in the park.

  Milano had changed too. It was crawling with freeloading foreigners bent on picking Europe’s bulging pockets. We were in the exact same situation. I was alone, and after so many years away I felt like I knew Italy even less than they did. I took shelter in a religious community that offered assistance to ex-cons. Had a long heart-to-heart with a priest, a tough Abruzzese in the Mercedari order who hung around prisons too long to listen to any bullshit. I leveled with him. “I’m scared stiff. I don’t know how to deal with this world; it’s not what I was used to.”

  He sized me up. “I’ve kept my eye on you these past few years. You’re a bad egg. As bad as they come.” Then he clapped me on the knee a couple times. “But everybody deserves a second chance. You can stay here a little while, but don’t dream of acting the way you did in San Vittore.”

  I thanked him, and as I walked away, he added: “Don’t bother pretending you’re a believer. It isn’t necessary here.”

  The money I saved in prison was slipping through my fingers, and what I earned in the community, assembling shoe racks for a company that specialized in TV sales, wasn’t even enough for cigarettes. Every time I went out I came back more broke. A meal in a trattoria to forget the slop cooked by a couple of former junkies. A toss with a streetwalker to make up for what prison forced me to do without. That was all I could allow myself. I’d go to the centro and spend hours eyeing the people and cars. A ton of cash was floating around, and mostly everybody was oozing confidence. I felt out of place. Tried to hook up with an elegant forty-something. Milano was full of women like Régine, but much prettier and much more screwable. Dieting, working out at the gym, going to the hairdressers. I got off on their need to be constantly competitive in terms of beauty and sensuality. But there was no way they’d notice me. My face told my story: I was a marginal, an outcast. I looked for work, but it dawned on me if I took that approach, I’d be fucked for eternity. I’d stay a bum. My plans for the future went no further than mere subsistence, observing the world from the back of a fast-food restaurant, my hair rank with grease. Money. I needed money to lift myself from the dung heap I was stuck in. Then I’d establish a respectable position and stroll through the centro dressed to the nines, flaunting the worry-free face of a winner. And I wouldn’t make the same mistake as everybody I met in San Vittore: try to make money, but stay a fucking hood. If you took that route, the only sure prospect was jail. Risking another court date made sense only if the cash was a means of elevating yourself socially. When I was living with my family, before getting involved with the movement and letting them fuck with my brain, I belonged to middle-class Bergamo. Thinking back on how I sneered at that scene made me feel like banging my head against a wall.

  I started to lose hope fast. Even being a criminal wasn’t easy. The city was armor-plated, and any action you might horn in on was already under the control of gangs from Eastern Europe, North Africa or the Far East. The priest made me take a job in a bar. It turned out to be my lucky break. One morning I served coffee to an old acquaintance from San Vittore. A guy from Bari who got time off for ratting on a boss in the Pugliese mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him, checking out his smart suit.

  “Aces with me,” he answered, eyeing in turn my plastic wristwatch. “But you . . . what are you doing working a counter? You’re wasted here. You sick? A big dude like you could be earning his living in a more dignified way, no?”

  His tone was sarcastic. I wanted to slash his face with the knife I used for peeling lemons. I smiled instead. “I’m looking for the right opportunity.”

  He drank his coffee and waved me over. “I’ve set up a business in Veneto, near Treviso,” he explained. “Lap dancing, a joint where girls dance topless and guys drool and slip cash down their knickers. I need somebody I can trust to keep an eye on the clientele. You interested?”

  “Does it pay?”

  He showed me a row of nicotine-stained teeth. “Very well. I kid you not.”

  “Then I’m interested.” I put some umph into it.

  He handed me a card with the details about the place. It was called Blue Skies—in English. Not what I’d call a stroke of genius. “Show up tomorrow night.”

  When he was opening the door to leave, he had an afterthought and turned back. “I know you’re an informer,” he said under his breath. “So am I. I just want to be up front so we don’t step on each other’s toes.”