The Ballad of Mila Read online

  Guo Xiaoping planned to kick the Pagnan family in the ass, just to show that he was serious. He planned to overpower the Italians and wanted to send them a message: Today I am killing your accountants. Tomorrow, if I want to, I will kill you. And my hired gun is one of your own men, Ottorino Longhin.

  Ottorino Longhin was in his car, where he could keep an eye on the service station toilets without being seen. He was busy screwing the silencer onto the barrel of his Heckler & Koch, only one thought in mind: he mustn't fail. The Chinaman had been very clear about that. Hadn’t left him any options.

  But as time passed, he felt less and less sure of himself. He kept repeating in his head what he needed to do: stick a card saying “Out of Order” on the toilet door; get in; hide in one of the stalls; wait for those two idiots; shoot them both in the back of the head, twice; get out leaving the card where it was; cross the parking lot; climb into his black BMW 120; get the fuck out of there.

  That was, ideally, what he would do. He had repeated it to himself thirty-seven times that afternoon already.

  Thirty-seven, he'd counted them.

  And then? Then he'd get a further fifteen thousand Euros, a new passport and a flight to Martinica. His wife? An old, fat, acne-scarred bitch addicted to horse racing. That was over. His kids? Two petty criminals who'd sucked his life away like leeches. Over with them too. His old life? Over, as well.

  The Pagnan family? No longer any of his business. Ten years of hard, dirty work for that bunch of retards. Husband, wife, their sons, the usual family of distrustful, greedy people from Veneto, always busy pillaging their family business and thus forcing him to produce mountains of cash courtesy of a host of shady activities.

  Thus Ottorino Longhin decided to become a turncoat. A local screwing over another local. Typical. All to the advantage of the Chinks. As if those fucking Slant-Eyes needed help putting the already-troubled Italian north-east in a difficult position. The economic miracle had become a mere shadow of its past self. Fucking immigrants, Longhin thought. But they paid well. Cash. And he was already in up to his neck.

  So, thank you and goodbye.

  But first he needed to kill Marco and Mirco Galesso.

  He saw them coming in. Fat, reeking of smoke, clumsy, even more so than usual thanks to their identical grey suits, at least one size too small. Two fucking sacks of shit decorated with Armani glasses with perfectly round frames. Ottorino, he was thin as a rake, his face sunken by poverty, sharp as a knife. He would walk in and blow them away. Just give them time to grab hold of their cocks and then he’d finish them off. He waited a little longer, reminding himself that this was his last hurdle before he could leave his old life behind.

  The Galesso twins walked into the toilets, stood in front of the urinals and started chatting.

  “You prepared the sauté sauce?” said Mirco.

  “Hey, I did everything just right,” replied Marco.

  “Oil, onions, roasted the rice properly...?” continued the former.

  “I just told you I did, for fuck’s sake! And I added the broth and the Amarone.”

  “Parmesan to make everything creamier?”

  “Christ, Mirco, you really think I'm an idiot? I followed the recipe step by step.”

  “There's nothing quite like risotto, remember!”

  “Actually there's at least one thing: did you see that fucking hot piece of skirt you just bumped into?”

  “What piece of skirt?”

  “Christ, are you that stupid? The one with a Negro hairdo, the huge boobs and the leather trousers outlining that sweet ass!”

  “Ah, that one... right, right, don’t get upset. Of course I saw her.”

  “Christ Almighty, sometimes I wonder if you're a queer.”

  “Hey, no woman ever complained. God's gift between the sheets, me...”

  “Yep, of course you are! You're standing here jerking off over a risotto. You realise that's not normal?”

  “These things need to be done carefully!”

  “Yeah, whatever. Me, I like pussy.”

  “What’s up with you? I just asked how you prepared the risotto. No need to insult me!”

  “Hm. Right, OK, let me take a piss in peace.”

  And as he was saying “peace” the door to the toilets opened. Ottorino Longhin appeared like a puppet in a theatre.

  He smiled as they opened their mouths. Then without even taking aim, he emptied the magazine of the Heckler & Koch.

  Tumpf, tumpf, tumpf.

  Tumpf, tumpf, tumpf.

  Within four seconds, Marco and Mirco were human jam. They crumpled onto the floor, which was already soaked with their blood.

  Ottorino Longhin had gone a little over the top. But it was all good. He removed the empty magazine and dug out a new one from his leather jacket. Now he needed to get out and scarper at the speed of light.

  Severino Pierobon stopped at the Limenella Nord service station.

  Even though he'd already gone at the racetrack, he needed to take a leak. Urgently. Maybe it's the adrenalin kicking in after the win, he thought.

  As soon as he'd parked he saw a patrol car. A couple of cars had crashed in the parking lot and their owners had called the police.

  Whatever. He closed the door of his Citroën and ran towards the toilets. He was running hard; he was afraid he’d burst. The chill didn’t help. It was late January, the coldest time of the year; his full bladder and the cold air formed a deadly alliance against his urinary tract.

  On the wooden toilet door, the paint flaking, he saw a sign saying “Out of Order”. But he was fucked if he was going to piss his pants. Without thinking twice he headed towards the door, which opened that very instant.

  Severino's impetus made him crash into a man who was hurriedly barging out. He found himself grabbing him and, a second later, lying on the tiled floor.

  “Fuck!” shouted Longhin, venting his frustration at finding himself in the arms of the living dynamo that had crashed into him. Now they were swimming together in the Galesso twins' blood.

  “Shit!” shouted Two Hundred as soon as he saw the slaughterhouse in which the two bodies – torn apart by bullets – were floating. He saw splatters of blood all around. Felt like throwing up. Brought a hand to his mouth to hold back a retch and tried to stand up, but his old Clarks skidded in the blood and he lost his balance. He managed to stand up and make his way to the door, filled with a terror that held him by the throat. He felt a warm liquid trickle down his legs. He was pissing himself.

  Longhin saw the man dash towards the door. He dashed after him.

  When Longhin and Two Hundred burst out into the parking lot one after another, the former shouting with his eyes bulging out of their sockets and the latter's face white with fear, they ended up about fifty yards from where the policemen stood, completing their reports.

  One of them heard shouts and turned around. Just in time to see Longhin raise his arm, aim and fire.

  Tumpf.

  Two Hundred felt a sharp pain in his thigh. Suddenly his legs became as steady as cake mixture. He crashed to the ground, bleating like a wounded calf.

  Before the policeman could utter a word, Longhin was standing over Severino, aiming the Heckler & Koch at his head.

  “Don’t move or I’ll put a hole in his brain,” he shouted at the cop.

  “Put the gun down” the cop replied as he unholstered a .9 Beretta.

  “Don’t shoot or he’ll kill me!” shouted Two Hundred just to make his presence known. Sure his opinion would have some weight in the current situation.

  The situation was: bad guys, one hundred points. Good guys, nil. Victims, exact score unknown, but pretty low.

  Anyone within twenty yards seemed to realise that it was not a movie set. Guns, shots, blood: all real.

  After a few moments in which silence froze time, men, women and children started shouting in unison, as if they had arranged it, and started running around like headless chickens.

  The policeme
n didn’t move.

  Two Hundred was shivering. The blood oozing from his right thigh had turned his jeans dark red.

  Not knowing what to do next, Longhin opted for some sound effects. He thought that covering the screams of terror with the roar of his gun might be a good idea. He removed the silencer and started shooting.

  Bang, bang.

  Bang, bang.

  Bang, bang.

  A round of lead sweets for all, windscreen blown to pieces like broken mirrors, tyres hissing as they collapsed. Amidst all the bullets and screaming, Longhin grabbed his bleeding hostage by the neck and walked towards the small shop in the service station.

  Inside the shop, seven people.

  A cashier, her head awash with platinum blonde curls as if someone had poured a tray of cannelloni over her. An elderly German couple, the man skinny and nervous with pale blue eyes, the woman fat, as big as an aircraft carrier, but with a charming shepherdess-like face. Two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands, the former with a humungous bubble of snot hanging from his nose. A guy with sleek hair, muscular under a Jacquard-style sweater.

  And her.

  A bombshell: medium height, red dreadlocked hair, green eyes; sheathed in leather trousers and a tight jacket perfectly highlighting her curves. Breathtakingly hot.

  On the left a small table covered in coffee cups, empty glasses, two-day old croissants.

  Longhin loaded a new magazine. Then he did something that some might consider obvious.

  And quite cruel.

  He fired.

  A bullet from his Heckler & Koch hit the huge German woman in the middle of her vast belly.

  Her husband shouted “Scheisse!” and used his hands to try to stop the blood that was flowing from his wife’s gut as if a pump was sucking it out of a ship's hold.

  Two Hundred stared at the scene, numbed by his blood loss. His jeans, wet with blood and piss, were sticking to his leg.

  The children were crying.

  The German man kept spitting words in a harsh, dark accent, pretty much the same noise an anvil would make spin-drying in a washing machine.

  The muscular guy was hiding behind the ice cream fridge.

  The cashier was praying, “Please, sir, don’t hurt me.”

  “Down on your bellies!” screamed Longhin. “And nobody do anything stupid or you’ll find yourself with an extra hole in you, big as the one I put in the fat woman.”

  “She needz a doctor or she vill die!” said the German.

  “Shut up or I’ll kill you, you fucking Nazi.”

  As everyone went down, the red-haired woman walked towards Longhin and Pierobon. Her green eyes looked like Indian jade; they didn’t betray any nervousness, any fear.

  “The fuck’s up with you?” Longhin shouted at her. “You a Rasta looking for trouble?”

  She didn’t reply. Kept walking straight ahead, stopped right in front of Longhin, put on a pair of glasses with weird yellow-tinted lenses and opened the front of her jacket to display a white T-shirt.

  Under her T-shirt: big, firm breasts.

  On her T-shirt, “Girls kick ass”.

  “If I lie on the ground I’ll get my T-shirt dirty, and I'm particularly fond of it,” said the girl, her mouth stretching into a grin that meant trouble.

  “Are you taking the piss? I’ll give your throat a lead tattoo!”

  “With a water pistol?” she asked, shaking her head as if to tell him off. “You're going to get hurt. Bad.”

  Outside, a loudhailer started to croak.

  “Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up,” the voice of a policeman said.

  Longhin kept his gun trained on the side of Two Hundred’s temple, Two Hundred who couldn't feel his right leg and was leaning heavily on the counter behind which the cashier was obediently lying on the floor.

  The two Germans were silent. Mr Muscle, as motionless as a cowhide rug, was also on the floor, behind the ice cream fridge.

  The children were watching the scene unfold, also from a prone position.

  The girl stopped waiting.

  She planted her feet on the ground and head-butted Longhin. She hit him hard, as if she was hammering a nail into a tree trunk. The blow gained power as it struck. There was a noise like a stick hitting an empty trunk.

  Longhin moaned softly; maybe he was trying to scream.

  He staggered backwards.

  She lunged forward and hit him with her right hand, a chop to the throat, the natural conclusion of a fluid, seamless motion. She had practiced that move thousands of times until it flowed perfectly.

  Longhin struggled to breathe. He muttered something, his hands covering his face. The blood started oozing down his chin, down his neck.

  The Red Fury jumped in the air and kicked him smack in the groin. Ottorino fell to his knees then crumpled to the floor like a puppet broken by a moody child. She didn’t waste any time. Took the Heckler & Koch, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him outside like a pig’s carcass.

  She dropped him at the feet of the policeman holding the loudhailer. He had been watching the scene, wide-eyed.

  “Here you go,” said the girl.

  “Thank you,” replied the man.

  Behind them, the flashing lights of ambulances and squad cars.

  Two Hundred dragged himself out of the small shop, limping heavily.

  He looked at the policemen. “In the toilets...” he started babbling, “...a massacre... in there. And a woman too... in the shop...”

  Then he looked at the beautiful woman with the red dreadlocks who was smiling at him.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.

  “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to say,” she replied. “Everything’s fine.”

  They walked together towards the ambulance.

  Two Hundred took his winning ticket from his pocket. It was red, blood red.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mila.”

  “Here you go, Mila.”

  “No, thanks. I don’t like betting on the horses. I prefer motor racing.”

  “But this is a winning ticket!”

  She looked at him coolly and told him, “So am I.”

  2.

  Great.

  She had given her witness testimony to the police.

  She was holding the keys of the twins’ car. Leaving the toilets earlier she had seen them and had “accidentally” bumped into one of them, taking the keys out of his pocket; that idiot hadn’t even realised it. Easier than stealing candy from a kid. Then she'd saved the people in the small shop. So she was coming out of it completely unscathed.

  All perfect.

  The Mercedes C30 shone in the sun like a shark beneath the waves.

  She opened the boot: two black leather cases.

  Inside the first: wads of cash, at least two hundred banknotes in each brick. Five-hundred Euro notes. A lot of money.

  Inside the second: the same.

  She closed the cases and the boot. Got into the car and drove it towards the service station exit. A few yards away the police had cordoned off the area and scene of crime officers were now gathering all the usual evidence.

  Zhang Wen was holding his mobile phone. He had just slid a couple of green pills under his tongue.

  Zhang personally managed the trafficking of those little pills through a network of very young pushers. That horse tranquiliser was doing well on the Veneto market. At twenty Euros per pill, it helped him make a lot of money.

  After visiting Chen’s minimarket, he'd changed his clothes. He always had at least one spare suit in his car, in a sealed plastic bag from the dry cleaner’s.

  While he waited, he found a way to admire himself in the flat surface of a window. He was wearing a tailor-made dark blue suit. Beneath it a pearl-coloured tie and a white shirt. On top, a black jacket that went down to his ankles. Reflective shades and a crew cut completed the image.

  He had been swallowing the last sip of a watered-down ice
d Coke from the pedestrian bridge over the motorway at the Limenella Nord service station, when he finally saw the Mercedes leave the parking lot.

  He dashed towards his Porsche Cayenne. Back in the car again, he dialled the number he knew he had to call and started following the girl. After the usual sixteen rings, Guo Xiaoping picked up.

  “I'm listening.”

  “We're screwed,” said Zhang, and snorted. He was annoyed that his uncle was speaking Italian to him. They were Chinese, from Wenzhou. Why the fuck did they need to use that barbaric language? Yes, of course, his uncle had told him that it was very useful to learn the language of their enemy, that doing so gave them a precious advantage. They had discussed it several times, and there had been no way to change Guo’s mind.

  “Why?”

  “The police have Longhin! Alive.”

  “How?”

  “Some girl beat him to a pulp and delivered him to them.”

  “What about the accountants?”

  “He killed them.”

  “So the damage is minor. We need to get rid of Longhin. And the girl. Nobody can be allowed to think they can make me a fool out of me by treating my men like idiots.”

  “Even if they are big polenta to the Italian north east?”

  “From the Italian north east,” Guo corrected. He was a precise man, he loved discipline and grammar and couldn’t stand the fact that his nephew kept using the wrong prepositions after so many years.

  “Of, from, to... the Italian north east, it’s all the same!”

  “No,” Guo spat, nearly choking. “It is not all the same. You need to learn! You promised!”