Sweet Money Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the desk. She looks at her watch and sighs.
     
    The whole thing took less than three minutes.

6
    Miranda spends the whole night as if he’d been bitten by a tsetse fly: tossing and turning, floating in a vague half-sleep, falling into a deeper sleep for mere minutes, maybe seconds, at a time. He spends his first night of freedom full of regrets, fears, guilt and the constant urge to cry. He is tormented as only a tough man, hardened and moulded by life’s harsh realities can be when all his defences fall away; he feels like a slug starting down a path strewn with salt. Even his pores feel sorrow and ache. He is overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo, and the only escape appears to be the end of this interminable night. Tomorrow he will confront his greatest fear, hear his final sentence. He knows this is one of those all-or-nothing moments he has had to confront several times throughout his life. There have been times he’s even gone looking for them and then boasted about surviving them. But now he’s weary, he wants it to stop. He cannot imagine life as an invalid, or without his woman or his son. He gets up, goes to the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror, where all the marks stamped on his face by the prison bars are reflected back at him, no detail spared: his left eye slightly crossed – which wasn’t like that before – the brown spot on his temple, his receding gums that now expose the tips of the roots of his teeth –
which themselves have yellowed. He is sick of that insipid face staring heartlessly back at him. He hates mirrors. Now that they’ve let him out of his cage he can allow himself this moment of tremendous weakness, which anyway was inevitable. He feels sorry for himself and hates himself for feeling that way. He despises the man he has always been, the one he no longer wants to be, the man who is determined to change, come what may.
    The black of the sky edges toward blue, then continues to lighten. The arrival of what Miranda waited for all night does not lift his spirits. Lying in the bathtub with his eyes closed and abandoning himself to the warmth of the water enveloping him, he thinks: This is the ideal way: a razor blade in the bathtub. Uncork the blood, fall asleep, let it flow like water. Leave his wife and son a pale, clean corpse, as if he were sleeping. Nothing pathetic, sordid or bloody. Something that can be buried with decorum.
     
    Doctor Gelser had to twice postpone his appointment with Peretti because the entryway was swarming with police. He is a prudent man and doesn’t want to run the risk of someone recognizing him and starting to ask questions. But at that moment, the entrance to Churruca Police Hospital is particularly peaceful. He looks at his watch. He walks from the corner with quick steps. He’s wearing a doctor’s white coat. As he enters, he keeps his head down, past the elevators and directly to the door that leads to the basement. The corridor is empty. He stops in front of the supply window and rings the bell. It opens briefly, then shuts with a bang. Gelser walks over to the door next to the window; Peretti, a big guy wearing blue overalls, appears.

    Come in, Sawbones.
     
    Gelser enters. Peretti looks up and down the corridor and closes the door. He takes a box off a shelf and gives it to him.
     
    Here’s your order. Great. As long as I’m here, I need something else. If I’ve got it, it’s yours. A Finocchietto rib-splitter. Wait a second…
     
    Peretti picks up a styrofoam box and places it on the table in front of Gelser.
     
    Anything else? That’s all for now. Did you work something out with the people in the pharmacy? We’ll have to wait till next week when the Turk comes back from vacation; that jerk who took his place would be better lost than found. Okay. Let me know if you need anything. You know I will, Sawbones.
     
    Gelser takes out a small wad of banknotes held together with a rubber band and stuffs them into one of Peretti’s