Marano was keeping Ninfa on a tight rein. The filly stuck her muzzle through the barrier. The others were all in already, apart from Monte Allegro, who was still putting up resistance. With a series of powerful blows to his flanks, and the help of a couple of attendants, Cabras managed to get him in.
Cassazione was almost as nervous as the black horse that had been last in. He was constantly giving nervous snorts. Standing beside him, Kociss didn’t feel comfortable with all that money in his pockets. It was more than he had counted in all his twenty years. He nodded to the men waiting for him over by the bookies, and slipped them the money in a single quick movement. They all set off at once, slipping their way through the punters who were besieging the bookies’ counters. Kociss held out the wad of banknotes: ‘A hundred thousand on Monte Allegro!’
The bookmaker craned his neck. ‘What?’
Louder. ‘A hundred thousand on Monte Allegro!’
The same scene was played out at the other three counters. The bookies turned round in a single motion to rewrite the odds on their blackboards. Down from 7–1 to 5–2. It had worked.
Kociss dashed like lightning to the totaliser, inside the covered building, pushed aside a few punters, and reached the betting office at the last available moment. ‘A hundred thousand on number six, Monte Allegro.’
The cashier didn’t bat an eyelid and handed him his receipt. At the totaliser, the odds for Monte Allegro went down from 18–1 to just over 9–1. Kociss smiled to Cassazione. ‘Let’s get going.’
The gates opened with a single metallic clang, spilling the horses out on to the track.
‘They’re off!’ thundered the commentator.
Saverio Spagnuolo saw them dashing past him. He clutched the crumpled banknotes in his pockets and prayed to his mother in heaven that everything would go smoothly.
All of a sudden Magione took a lead of a couple of lengths as they approached the bend. Marano let him go, holding Ninfa a little to the side in his wake. Immediately behind them was Verdi, flanked by Redipuglia ahead of Lario and Augusta, with Monte Allegro coming along the fence.
Iovene stopped a few metres before the gate. He told himself it was because he was curious to see the race, but he knew very well that it was fear. Fear that something might go wrong. He had a permanent sense that the case was slipping from his sweaty hand, or that someone might grab it from him. The syringe inside was worth 250,000 lire. He gulped.
After 1,000 metres Ninfa began to move up, overtaking Magione, who was running at the head along the fence, until she was head to head. Augusta and Lario started falling behind, on the unsuitable surface. Cabras held Monte Allegro on a tight rein, shortening their distance from the front runners and overtaking Verdi on the inside. Marano turned around to check the situation, and saw the black horse gaining ground until he was right behind Magione. All he could think, 400 metres from the end of the race, was, ‘Not yet.’
Kociss and Cassazione stood by the finishing line, holding their breath.
Two hundred metres from the line, Ninfa, thundering forwards, swerved slightly to the side, already more than a length ahead of Magione. In a flash Cabras slipped Monte Allegro’s muzzle into the open gap. Marano understood that the moment had come and worked his elbows up and down as though to get the maximum out of the horse, while actually holding back the forward surge. He saw Monte Allegro pushing at his flanks, and stretching his muzzle forwards before winning by a neck.
Salvatore Lucania watched the final dash with a contented smile, while everyone around him, and down below in the stands, exploded with rage and disbelief. Monte Allegro first, followed by Ninfa, Magione and Redipuglia.
Cavalier De Dominicis applauded. ‘Congratulations, Don Salvatore, you’ve won again.’
Lucania gave a seraphic smile. ‘Of course, everyone likes me. Even lady luck.’
The cluster of people thronging around them applauded and laughed in unison.
Stefano Zollo stayed impassive, moving only when Lucania decided that the moment had come to go down.
Having withdrawn the pile of money, Kociss and Cassazione felt their nerves settling, and relaxed into a laugh that stopped them from speaking for a few seconds. When they reached the group they grew serious again. Zollo took the piles of banknotes and made as if to go, but the boss intervened: ‘No, these are good lads, that’s the phrase, isn’t it? Good lads! Bravi guaglioni! Let’s give ’em a nice present, Steve, they’ve deserved it!’
His bodyguard held out some of the money to the two boys, keeping his eye on his boss until he had stopped nodding.
The two errand boys looked at the banknotes but didn’t have the courage to take them. Five thousand lire. Each. Zollo said, ‘Now clear off.’
They fled, wildly excited about the money and the fact that the big boss had deemed them worthy of his attention.
While the cavaliere was saying goodbye, bowing repeatedly, Zollo held out the envelope to the man in the black coat, muttering, ‘Everyone will get his share.’
It was at that moment that the slap rang out. Zollo saw it out of the corner of his eye. White scarf and hat. A young man, less than thirty, well dressed, had slapped the boss’s face. Not a hard slap, but a challenge, an insult. He turned around to grab him, to pulverise the lunatic, but Don Salvatore Lucania, known to the world as Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, flashed a look at him: don’t react.
He stayed motionless, his eyes fixed on the moron who was playing with fire. He imprinted those faces in his mind. There were two of them, and they both had the guts to stare Luciano straight in the eyes before the swarm of associates pushed them out of reach.
Lucky Luciano smiled. The smile that Zollo knew very well, the one with which he could invite you to your own funeral. ‘Don’t worry, just a bit of fun, nothing of any consequence! The ability to lose is something that comes with age, my friends. Clearly fortune smiles most kindly on old men like me!’
Words that did little to ease the tension.
Zollo gritted his teeth as they made for the exit.
Chapter 2
Bologna, district of St Donato, 4 January
Cold whose like only the oldest residents can remember, a long time before the war when so many of us had just been born. In all the bars in Bologna, the thermometer is the focus of everyone’s conversation. Long discussions, not to say arguments, about the coldest winter of the century, as though talking about it around the stove would keep shivers and flu away.
In the Bar Aurora, until just a few days ago, most of us maintained that in spite of everything the first few days of February ’32 had been the coldest in living memory. Then yesterday it said in II Resto del Carlino that the temperature hadn’t dropped to thirteen degrees below zero for sixty years. Someone immediately tried to contradict this, saying that, as everyone knew, the Carlino made up stories if it hadn’t got any, and anyway L’Unità, the communist paper, hadn’t said anything of the kind, and someone shouted from the little billiard room not to go talking rubbish, that in ’32 his sow had died of cold, and that meant that it must have been at least fifteen below zero.
In the end, the question was resolved by Garibaldi, who is one of the oldest of the regulars and still hasn’t gone soft in the head, even at the age of seventy-five.
‘Thirteen degrees, I remember it well, I was about seven years of age. It was called “the cold of the Dead” because of Death in the taroccho pack, number thirteen. And if Bortolotti’s sow died in ’32 it’s because he lived in Vergato before the war, and everyone knows it’s colder there than it is in the city.’