Numero Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll have to get a loan, but I still have to pay. And I need it now, for my investigation.”
    â€œSorry, you say you want to make money from your investigation to buy the car, but you need the car to do your investigation.”
    â€œTo piece a number of things together I need to travel, visit a few places, perhaps interview some people. Without the car and having to go to the office each day, I have to put it together from memory, do it all in my head. As if that was the only problem.”
    â€œSo what’s the real problem?”
    â€œWell, it’s not that I’m indecisive, but to understand what I have to do, I must put together all the data. A bit of data on its own means nothing, all of it together lets you understand what you were unable to see at first. You have to uncover what they’re trying to hide from you.”
    â€œYou’re talking about your investigation?”
    â€œNo, I’m talking about choosing the car . . .”
    He was drawing on the table with a finger dipped in wine, almost as if he were marking out a series of dots that had to be joined together to create a figure, like in a puzzle magazine.
    â€œA car needs to be fast and classy, I’m certainly not looking for a minivan, and then for me it’s either front-wheel drive or nothing. I was thinking of a Lancia Thema turbo sixteen-valve, it’s one of the more expensive, almost sixty million lire. I could even attempt two hundred and thirty-five kilometers an hour and acceleration from a standstill in seven point two. That’s almost the top.”
    â€œIt’s expensive.”
    â€œNot just that, but you have to go and search out the information they’re hiding from you. Car ads, when they’re not lying, are keeping quiet about something. You have to go through the specifications in the trade magazines, and you find it’s one hundred and eighty-three centimeters wide.”
    â€œThat’s not good?”
    â€œYou don’t even notice that in all the ads they give you the length, which certainly counts when it comes to parking or prestige, but they rarely give the width, which is pretty important if you have a small garage or a parking space that’s even narrower, not to mention how many times you have to go around before you find a space wide enough for you to park. Width is fundamental. You’ve got to aim somewhere under a hundred and seventy centimeters.”
    â€œYou can find them, I suppose.”
    â€œSure, but you’re cramped in a car that’s a hundred and seventy centimeters if there’s someone next to you and you don’t have enough space for your right elbow. And then you don’t have all those conveniences of the wider cars that have a whole range of controls available for the right hand, just by the gears.”
    â€œAnd so?”
    â€œYou’ve got to make sure the instrument panel is fairly generous and there are controls on the steering wheel, so you don’t have to fumble around with your right hand. And that’s how I came up with the Saab Nine Hundred turbo, one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters, maximum speed two hundred and thirty, and we’re down to fifty million.”
    â€œThat’s your car.”
    â€œYes, but only in one little corner do they tell you it has an acceleration to eight-fifty, whereas ideally it should be at least seven, like in the Rover Two Twenty turbo, forty million, width a hundred and sixty-eight, maximum speed two hundred and thirty-five, and acceleration at six point six, a thunderbolt.”
    â€œAnd so that’s where you ought to be going . . .”
    â€œNo, because it’s only at the bottom of the specifications they tell you it has a height of a hundred and thirty-seven centimeters. Too low for a well-built individual like me, almost like a racer for young sporty types, whereas the Lancia is a hundred and forty-three high and the Saab a hundred and