A Pimp's Notes by Giorgio Faletti Read Free Book Online

body, slender and strong beneath her clothing. I feel her breast, firm in my cupped hand. The smell of soap brings to mind other scents, the sublime aroma of sex, its taste a mixture of sickly sweetness and rust, before and after the fury. Desire surges implacably, running its slimy soft fingers over my belly. I start to massage my groin, and in exchange I get only a confirmation that becomes harder to accept with every day that passes. I do it faster and faster, as if to erase myself or to reconstruct myself, until my heart begins to race and I let myself slip to the floor, beneath the spray that jets down indifferently from above. I lie there, waiting for a conclusion that will never come, welcoming as a benediction the mingling of the shower water with the one and only ejaculation still allowed me: the slow drip of tears.

 
    4
    I stop my car on Via Monte Rosa, a hundred meters or so from the brightly lit entrance of the Ascot Club.
    I light a cigarette and sit smoking in the car, trying to clear my head and draw a few conclusions about my own evening’s headlines.
    When I left my apartment, back in Cesano Boscone, I walked over to Via Turati and into what they call Michele’s bar. I’ve been there once or twice, to buy a pack of cigarettes or to grab an espresso, but I can’t claim to be a regular client. So I don’t know anyone there and no one knows me.
    The bar, practically empty, was a single large open space, with a rectangular floor plan and two plate-glass windows in the long wall, looking out onto the street. On the left is the space set aside for the soccer lottery ticket counter and all the posters proclaiming the glories of soccer and the glorious future that the SISAL lottery offers you. In the middle is the bar, arranged perpendicular so as to split the space into two sections. Facing it, a few little café tables and chairs with plastic backs, exactly the kind you’d expect in a place like this. On either side, the multicolored masses of a pinball machine and a jukebox.
    On the wall opposite the entrance is a door. I knew there was a backroom where people played cards. Gin rummy, for the most part, at decidedly affordable stakes. Anyone who could afford to play for more robust stakes was certainly not going to come lose money in Michele’s. They would frequent certain illegal open-air gambling dens, informal casinos on the street that aren’t very hard to find in Milan.
    I stepped up to the cash register and stood there, waiting. A tall skinny guy, with a gray cast to his complexion and an air of annoyance, finished serving an espresso and then came over to find out what I wanted. No greeting, no smile.
    “What’ll it be?”
    “A pack of Marlboros and a piece of information.”
    In places like this, the second part of that request tends to make people a little wary. The man behind the counter was no exception to that rule, so he took his time with the first part. He turned around and extracted a pack of cigarettes from the rack on the wall and put it down in front of me.
    Then he gave me a quizzical glance.
    “What information would you be looking for?”
    “I need the address of a guy named Remo Frontini. I know this is his usual café.”
    I laid a fifty-thousand-lira bill on the counter. And I flashed a half smile that was meant to stand in for human fellowship.
    “Considering that times are hard all over, you can keep the change.”
    He eyed my face, my clothing, and my smile, calculating just how dangerous I might be to him and why. Then he threw the fifty-thousand-lira note into the equation. When he was done evaluating the various factors, he decided it wasn’t worth ratcheting up from annoyance to full-blown hostility. He reached out a hand and made the money vanish.
    He pointed to the street outside and muttered under his breath, “Second door on the left, number ten. Above the grocery store.”
    I nodded my thanks and left the bar. I walked at just the right speed, hunting for the