Blues for Outlaw Hearts and Old Whores by Massimo Carlotto

Author:Massimo Carlotto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2019-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

FIVE

I went on the lam three days and three nights. I switched off the cellphone that I used to communicate with Dottoressa Marino and lost Serj Balakian’s men. After recouping my fake documents and money, which I’d had the foresight to stash in a locker at the train station upon arriving in Munich, I checked into a room at a shoddy B&B near Dachau. Then I returned to Munich by train and hunted for a safe place to hide if things went south.

But that wasn’t my only reason. I needed to pry loose from that claustrophobic situation, where I was under surveillance day and night. I know myself too well. I can’t handle psychological stress for long. Plus I wanted to send a message to beautiful, know-it-all Angela Marino, who took a free and easy attitude toward an informer like me. Last, I had to teach Balakian’s skinny bitch a thing or two about life; she presumed to give me lessons on behaving like a fugitive—a way of convincing her boss that the time had come to quit with the foreplay and meet face to face. Then I’d have his ass. I couldn’t wait to get back to my life as a respectable, hardworking, and honest citizen of the Italian Republic.

Survival is a subject I could teach at the best colleges. The only way to hide in a large European city with a good degree of safety and elude high-class criminal organizations on your tail and cops armed with sophisticated means was to fly under the radar. Don’t use IDs, ATMs, credit cards, cellphones. Don’t sleep at hotels, rent apartments, or buy or lease cars. And don’t surf the Internet. I had to turn the clock back twenty years.

The best safehouse is a room to rent in a private home. But not just any home. Avoid families and couples like the plague. Look for single women in their fifties and sixties. After two mornings and two afternoons I’d zeroed in on five, but only one, Toska Köhler, had passed the first tests.

A widow for six years, retired one. Her closest relatives lived hundreds of miles away. The minute I entered her house I saw signs of loneliness and resignation in her face. It was clear she’d expected more from life and couldn’t figure out why that hadn’t come to pass. Her decision to rent a room in her apartment wasn’t a matter of money but a practical means of breaking up the monotony and warding off ghosts that can complicate one’s ability to carry on. I made an appearance of being polite, courteous, and a touch indecisive. I told her I came from Lugano and was looking for a place to stay in the city while I pursued my sommelier business, the one profession I could credibly lay claim to thanks to my lengthy tenure at La Nena. I got her talking about regional wine and gauged how pliable she was. She proved to be a malleable subject.

I acted hard

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