In a Heartbeat Read online

  Sandrone Dazieri

  In a Heartbeat

  translated by A. Turner Mojica

  All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying

  or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in Great Britain in 2012

  by Hersilia Press, Oxfordshire

  www.hersilia-press.co.uk

  © Copyright 2008 Arnoldo Mondadori editore

  Translated by A. Turner Mojica

  This edition published by arrangement with Grandi & Associati

  English Translation © 2012 Sandrone Dazieri

  The right of Sandrone Dazieri to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted.

  ISBN 978-0-9563796-6-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9563796-9-6 (eBook)

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Day One

  1

  It was the cold that brought me back. I felt it slip along my spine and along the contours of my nerves and muscles. I was stretched out, spread-eagled on a cold, hard surface with my eyes closed.

  What the hell? Max screwed me over. Son of a bitch, I thought. Max was my business partner, a good-looking guy who vaguely resembled Rod Stewart with brown hair that he kept tied back in a ponytail. I met him one night outside Oreste’s bar, a dive where you took your life in your own hands if you went inside. I rarely went in; I just stayed outside and sold my dope. My name’s Santo. My line of work earned me the street name ‘Trafficante,’ just like ‘Santo Trafficante,’ one of the mobsters from the Kennedy conspiracy theories. It was better than Denti, my real surname, which means ‘teeth’ in Italian and sounds like something you’ve seen on an information card above some church relic.

  Max did what I did, but he had no style. He broke off pieces of hash with his teeth and accepted payment in loose change. You’d often see him totally wasted late at night slouched on the pavement staring at the sky and, on more than one occasion, you’d see Oreste sweeping him out along with the rest of the rubbish. I always saw him around, in the park, at concerts, but I never said a word to him. I just glared at him when he got within a hundred yards of me. Milan is big, and yet everywhere I turned I always saw this guy. Get your hustle on elsewhere, you loser.

  During the fine spring of ’88, nothing else was happening and we ended up cackling like old hens finding out that we had a lot in common. We were from the same brood: chronically poverty-stricken dealers with an acute case of ‘I just don’t give a damn.’

  We were talking away, so I opened up and told him about this idea of mine. I wasn’t bragging or anything, but Trafficante was the top dog in Milan. Students would fight to get me to their digs, hoping for a free smoke or a free line. The first round was always on me, and then I proceeded to clean them out soon after. I walked around those fabulous mansions drooling over all the amazing stuff that I saw. Those bastards. All this wealth around them like it was nothing. Yeah, daddy gave me this gold watch, of course the painting is expensive and we’ve actually had it insured for a mountain of cash.

  Did they deserve to keep all this? No way! While everyone smooched, I passed the time making floor plans, studying windows and house alarms. It would have been so easy, but for some reason I always chickened out. I couldn’t possibly shit where I ate; I had a secure income, and it wasn’t good for business to screw over the clientele.

  I didn’t want to burn any bridges but Max convinced me of the opposite. According to him it was the best idea of the century, far better than miniskirts and high heels. Besides, he also knew how to fence the merchandise. Max was a bit older than me and hard-core. In the seventies he was part of an ultra-hard political collective. He was one of the bulls on parade you’d see with a Molotov cocktail in hand, laying siege to the police barracks. Most of his playground friends wound up in jail and those still on the loose brought fear and trepidation with them. A couple of them moved all kinds of property and would’ve been happy to acquire the fruits of our labour at a fair price.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked him after the last call at Oreste’s.

  ‘Hell, yeah.’

  Operation Student went into action the following week. In the middle of the night Max and I slithered down the stairway of a mansion in the posh centre of town with the owner’s spare key, skilfully removed by yours truly during a recent toga party. I was damn scared. I was half-expecting Starsky and Hutch to jump out any moment with a cannon and cuffs. Instead, it all went smoothly. We came out in under a half-hour loaded like Santa Claus. So, we obviously continued the covert operations. Two or three jobs a month for about a year, in and out, fast and stealthy. Then someone finally got the hint of something. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to realise that all the cleaned-out houses had had the honour of a visit from Santo Trafficante in the weeks before the event. Some people began to look at me suspiciously, and invites were now mysteriously few and far between.

  But Max and I had a Plan B.

  We decided we would go back to dealing but big time, reinvesting the capital that we had put aside from the robberies. Our supplier was a guy named Alfredo, an ex-militant. He always answered the door in his dressing gown with a Celtic cross dangling across his hairy chest. His house was like a carnival, filled with strobe lights and vintage pinball machines that he would never let you touch.

  Our clients, however, came from Max’s circles, leftists and sympathisers. We didn’t deal in the streets anymore, and we only took orders over 100 grams for hash and ten grams for blow. Max had the contacts and I delivered the merchandise. Everything ran smoothly. I soon had a drawer filled with wads of money that I kept hidden in the basement. No way I was going to deal for the rest of my life. Sooner or later I would go straight, buy a bar, and hire someone willing to break his own back for me. I’d just stop by once a week, to check the accounts and collect the money. If it weren’t for Max, maybe I would’ve pulled it off.

  I knew that Max shot up, but I didn’t care as long as he was clear-headed and it didn’t mess with the business. Now he was getting wasted more and more often, which began to create problems at work. You tend to get a bad reputation when your partner shaves the merchandise and cuts it beyond any level of decency, blows off meetings, and disappears for days. If that wasn’t enough, I was sure that he was lining his pockets with what should’ve been my cut. Needless to say, our partnership ended when I turned his house inside out looking for what I thought he had stolen from me. I didn’t find anything, by the way.

  Different roads, different destinies. I continued to do what I did while Max embarked on that sad path that generally leads to winding up as a corpse in a ditch, a warning to the losers of the world.

  It went a bit better than that. They found him in Parco Ravizza with a broken jaw and his legs smashed by a baseball bat. I thought maybe Alfredo had done it; Max had accrued a series of debts with him. In better times, when I’d thought he could still be saved, I paid a few of them off, but I had my own life now; money doesn’t grow on trees. Max was out of circulation for about six months after that, and then one night in August he dropped in on me with a bottle of whisky.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight. His bones were healed but his jaw was crooked and he was missing half his teeth. He was so low that I offered him a line of credit to bring him back up. Then he started to blab about a big job.

  ‘Twenty kilos of Colombian, three thousand a gram. If that doesn’t convince you, then you’re not the Santo Trafficante I knew.’ He said it like he was doing me a favour.

  At that price he would have had to hav
e contacts with the Medellìn gang, and Max walked with a limp thanks to his past suppliers. No way he was suddenly hanging out with the heavyweights.

  I ran out of rolling papers so was preparing a joint using an empty cigarette. ‘Hey man, where the hell did this smoke come from?’ he asked.

  He started saying, you know I can’t give you all the details. Then he told me some story about a guy who travelled the world in a sailboat and who got lucky in Africa but now was in desperate need of cash. It was the kind of thing that would make you laugh in his face. I laughed in his face.

  He insisted, begged in the name of our old friendship, then sagged in his chair. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find someone else.’

  ‘Hey, the world is full of suckers,’ I said.

  He raised the bottle of whisky. ‘Here’s to your health.’

  ‘While it lasts,’ I said while I bent over to snort a line. That was when he hit me over the head with the bottle.

  I was on the floor and sure of two things: one, I knew I wasn’t dead, and two, I knew that all my hard-earned savings were gone.

  Strangely enough, I didn’t feel all that bad, I just felt unbearably cold. I’ve read what happens when you lose too much blood, and I wondered if my head was split open like a melon. Maybe the neighbours found me and now I’m in a hospital bed. When I open my eyes, maybe I’ll see a doctor or a cop.

  There was silence all around me; I could only hear my own breathing and the beat of my heart. I smelled burnt plastic and something like cheap cologne.

  I opened my eyes. No hospital, no house. I was lying on my back on a marble floor staring at a milky white ceiling. Even stranger, I thought. With some effort I turned my head. That still didn’t hurt even though I remembered the sound of bottle against bone. I was in a men’s toilet, a big, luxurious one, not like the dump at Oreste’s. On the wall to my left there was a series of marble washbasins. Further down were the cubicles. The other wall was bare except for a light switch that had probably shorted; a wisp of black smoke rose from the switch to the ceiling. That’s where the smell came from.

  I gathered my thoughts. I didn’t recognise this place, but someone had brought me here. Max? Highly improbable. I raised my arm and checked it for injuries and then stopped in mid-air.

  My arm was different. At home I had been wearing a T-shirt; now I was in long sleeves. I pushed down with my heels and was able to sit up and lean with my back against the wall and look at myself. Even the jeans and Dr. Martens were gone, replaced by a black dinner jacket, white shirt, slacks and black Oxford shoes. I was also wearing a black tie like John Belushi in The Blues Brothers. Was I dreaming? I thought not; I was lucid, considering the situation. I grabbed the edge of the nearest basin, trying to pull myself up and get to my feet, but I miscalculated and lost my footing; I fell and yelled in frustration. I had to close my eyes again because the room began to spin.

  When I reopened them a man was bent over me. I yelled again in surprise and he jumped back. He was in his late sixties, bald, in white tie and tails. A black medallion hung from a chain over his white starched shirt.

  ‘You almost gave me a heart attack,’ I wheezed.

  ‘Are you feeling unwell, sir?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I … ’ I was completely disoriented. The men’s toilet, these clothes, and this geezer dressed like a penguin. I couldn’t quite join the dots. Judging by his expression he was just as baffled as I was.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘I’m going to find a doctor.’

  Doctor, police charges, cops. Whatever the hell had happened I didn’t want them near me.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘But … ’

  ‘C’mon, old man, don’t be a pain, just help me up.’

  The guy took my arm, got me up, and stood there staring at me.

  ‘Is there a problem? Is my face dirty?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but sir, they’re going to start now.’

  I stopped myself before asking, Start what? I played along with him. ‘Oh, OK, then.’

  ‘May I accompany you to your seat?’

  ‘That’s fine, thank you.’

  He seemed embarrassed. ‘I hope you understand that I can’t just leave you here … if I could just see your ticket.’

  Ticket? Since when did you need a ticket to take a leak? I was pinned down and feeling desperate. ‘I don’t know where I put it.’

  The man gestured to my jacket. ‘It’s right there.’

  ‘Oh, you’re right’. I patted the jacket and felt the tip of the ticket sticking out of the pocket. I automatically gave it to him. Maybe Max killed me after all and, seeing that hell was full, they put me in the waiting room until my turn came along.

  The old man smiled again and read the ticket. “Row M, Seat 7.” It’s right outside, if you feel up to it.’

  ‘Of course, I’m up to it.’

  ‘I’ll show you the way.’ He walked towards the exit.

  I followed groggily, feeling as if I were wearing a lead-weighted diving suit. If I’d turned around, I would have been able to see myself in the row of mirrors above the washbasins. I didn’t even think about it. Maybe subconsciously I began to suspect the truth and wanted to keep it at bay. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a shadow staggering through the door.

  Outside I found that I wasn’t in hell after all but in a corridor that curved in a semicircle, the same beige colour as the bathroom. Small antique lamps glowed with warm yellow lights. The man motioned me inside through the open door, and I found myself in an enormous hall. There were hundreds of seats, balconies, gold leaf and velvet, an immense red curtain and people dressed in eveningwear. I had never been there before but, just like everyone else, I immediately knew the place. It was the most famous place in Milan.

  It was the one and only Teatro alla Scala, La Scala!

  Some of the spectators turned to look at me. I was expecting more of a reaction, but no one really cared. The lights dimmed and then went up again. It was about to start. Just as I had been told by the old man in tails, who I now realised was an usher and who perfectly matched the scenery. He smiled at me again.

  ‘Your seat is here,’ he said indicating the empty place between some business guy and an attractive woman in her thirties in a backless evening gown. I looked at him, confused, and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Your seat.’

  ‘Yes, my seat.’

  The woman was reading a libretto and when I sat by her side she raised her eyes and looked at me. She was a brunette with blue eyes and pointed features. She wasn’t perfect, but she was a far cry from the women I’d dated.

  ‘You took long enough,’ she said.

  ‘Me?’

  She frowned slightly, arching her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

  ‘What happened, Saint? Are you OK?’

  There are situations any sane person shouldn’t have to go through, and I was going through a load of them one after the other. I took a heavy blow to the head and woke up dressed like an idiot in a place where I would never have dreamt of setting foot, and I didn’t even know how the hell I got there. Now a perfect stranger was acting like my girlfriend, giving me some weird nickname. I tensed in my seat. I was so wound up that if that woman had touched me I would’ve punched her. The lights dimmed again and this time they stayed out. Protected by darkness, I allowed myself the luxury of trembling.

  2

  The actors jumped around on stage. Damsels, gentlemen, jugglers and vendors sang in French. I didn’t understand a damn thing. Ten minutes passed. Now there was a woman and an old man with a cane. In the dark, little monitors lit up on the back of every seat in each row. The one in front of me had the words Press Button To Start that blinked, while the ones next to me showed scrolling rows of white text in French.

  The woman next to me leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘They’re really good.’

  I cleared my throat and nodded, trying not to give myself away. The woman took my hand and didn’t seem to notice h
ow sweaty it was. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Then she nibbled my ear. The gesture was unexpected and I jerked my head away. I instinctively raised my hand to adjust my glasses, like I’ve always done since primary school, the same as all shortsighted kids.

  My glasses weren’t there anymore.

  It should have been the first thing that I’d noticed, but when you’re shortsighted you take your glasses for granted. When you can see it means that you’re wearing them. I could see, but I wasn’t wearing them. I wasn’t even wearing contact lenses. I tried them for a while, and it was torture so I knew when I was wearing them or not. Somehow, I was miraculously cured. After everything that had happened this was the discovery that really freaked me out and made me lose it. I fled.

  I went back through the door that I had come through, running straight into a group of people in tails and medallions. They yelled after me. I didn’t stop to listen. I ran through the corridor to a flight of stairs that went up, and I took them in long, charging strides. Finding myself in an atrium with marble statues, my eyes focused on a set of glass doors that appeared on the horizon. I burst wide through them to another shocking new surprise, even worse than the previous ones.

  It was winter.

  I remembered perfectly the suffocating heat of my house a few hours earlier, and now it was freezing. The trees in Piazza La Scala were bare and covered with a fine layer of snow. The pavement was slushy. Twinkling Santa Clauses and Christmas lights dangled above the tramlines. I stood still on the pavement while the wind whipped at me. Christmas? It couldn’t be. The blow to the head must have driven me insane, or maybe I had dropped acid and was having the worst trip of my life, or maybe I was dreaming and would soon fall out of bed. I had to get home. I had to go back to my lair, and then everything would go back to the way it was. I started walking, in winter, through a city that wasn’t what it used to be …

  Everything had changed.

  The streets were still the same. In Via Manzoni the mansions of the mega-rich were still there, but everything else was different. Small details, like the graffiti and the ads on the walls. I was never one to visit the city centre, but the few times that I did I couldn’t possibly have missed a place like Emporio Armani, with its twenty shop windows. And since when did they stick a cash machine on every corner?