The Colombian Mule Read Free Page B

nothing that obliged him to help me with my investigations. He did it on account of our friendship and because he liked getting into trouble. He had a gut loathing for the new-style underworld, full of snitches and dope-peddlers, and often the cases that I worked on gave him the opportunity to settle old scores. He lived with Sylvie, a French-Algerian belly dancer. She was a fine-looking woman of about forty, with blue eyes, amber-colored skin, a resolute character, a husky smoker’s voice and a genuine passion for motorbikes.
    My other associate was Max the Memory, or Fat Max. He had recently got out of prison, thanks to a pardon from the Italian President. The clemency motion had actually been the result of an agreement negotiated with an anti-mafia judge whom I had had no hesitation in blackmailing. Max had been avoiding the police for a long time, owing to a matter that dated back to the Seventies. At that time, he had been in charge of counterinformation for a Far Left group and had run a whole network of informants who spied on everything and everybody.
    Then, in the Eighties, several turncoats had accused him of passing information to groups engaged in armed struggle and he had been forced underground. Everyone just assumed he was in France, but in fact he hadn’t left the city. Holed up in safe houses, rarely venturing out, he just went on gathering information. I used him as an analyst in a couple of investigations I was working on at that time, and his assistance proved absolutely decisive. To get in touch with him, you had to go through his woman, Marielita, a Uruguayan street musician. As it turned out, she died in my arms, killed by a hit man acting on orders from the local Brenta Mafia. Old Rossini had then gone in and restored a modicum of balance. After he got his pardon, Max moved into one of the two flats I’d had built above the club.
    I looked up at the ceiling and pictured Max sitting at his desk, busily entering data in his computer or surfing the net. Later, as always, he would come down for a drink. Like everyone else, he had his vices. His fingers were yellow with nicotine and he had a hefty beer gut. Come to think of it, the only one of us in good shape was Old Rossini, with his trim and taut physique. That was the way it should be: it was his job to show some muscle. The only thing that rang a bit false was his old-fashioned moustache à la Xavier Cugat which, like the few remaining hairs on his head, had clearly been dyed.
    I popped behind the counter, picked up a clean cell phone and left the club.
    â€˜Ciao, Marco,’ Rossini replied at once.
    â€˜Are you busy?’ I asked.
    â€˜I’ve got to pick up Sylvie from the nightclub at three.’
    I looked at my watch. It was 10:30. ‘How soon can you get here?’
    â€˜About an hour.’
    â€˜I’ll wait for you at Max’s.’
    Â 
    While Max the Memory had been in prison, I had stocked his flat with anonymous furniture bought from a local manufacturer during one of their periodic clearance sales. With his shrewd eye for pictures, carpets and lamps, Max had somehow managed to make the place warm and comfortable. Every time I walked in I couldn’t help being reminded that the only personal touch in my flat was my record collection.
    I found Max in his study. The walls were completely covered with reproductions of pictures by Edward Hopper, Max’s favorite artist. As a Christmas present, I had given him a copy of ‘Nighthawks’ produced by an eminent forger and I was pleased to see that Max had given it pride of place on the wall opposite his best armchair. Rising from the club below, Eloisa Deriu’s voice filled the whole room with ‘Just to Sing’. Max’s fingers rattled over the computer keyboard. Glancing at the screen, I recognized the face of a well-known Venetian banker.
    â€˜I was going to come down in half an hour or so,’ Max said, without glancing