The Silence of the Wave Read Online Free PDF Page B

temple, as if to underline the meaning of a sentence he hadn’t uttered out loud.
    “As I was saying, I was inside that world now, and I’d built up quite a reputation as a criminal.”
    “Why?”
    “Whenever the subject came up of what we all did for a living, I’d say I was in the import-export business. Without saying what exactly I imported and exported. Sometimes, though, I’d go into a bit more detail. Without ever being explicit, I’d mention South America, Colombia, Venezuela. The luxurious life I led when I was abroad, the important friends I had, things like that. Plus, I often turned up at these places in expensive cars that my colleagues and I were lent by car dealer friends of ours. And that naturally impressed people. Then there were the languages. Did I tell you that apart from English I also speak Spanish?”
    “No. How did you come to learn it?”
    “It’s normal in California, especially close to the border with Mexico. And Spanish was the language of my father’s family. His parents—my grandparents—were Mexican. They were the ones who emigrated to the United States.”
    “Oh, yes, of course. Your surname is Hispanic.”
    “One evening, one night rather, I was in one of these clubs, sitting at the counter with a girl, a prostitute who hooked her clients by asking them to buy her a drink. She was one of the people I’d gotten friendly with and we were having a drink—it was a slow evening forher—when this guy arrived who looked like he’d come straight out of a gangster film.”
    “In what way?”
    “Dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie, thick sideburns, a gold cigarette lighter that weighed half a kilo, a gold watch that weighed a kilo. He looked like a caricature. He had these two gorillas with him who were obviously his bodyguards. They were caricatures too. Anyway, he said he wanted to talk to me. Alone. The girl—Agnese her name was, I remember it well—knew the score, and even before he’d gotten the words out, she’d already vanished. So this guy and I sat down at a table in a booth—the two gorillas kept their distance—and he ordered a bottle of champagne that cost three hundred thousand lire, just to impress me. A real clown.”
    “What did he want from you?”
    “He asked me how come I spoke Spanish so well. Someone had heard me talking to a Venezuelan girl who worked in the club and had mentioned it to him. I made a vague reference to South America and the business I did there, which required a knowledge of Spanish. He gave me a crafty look, as if I’d said exactly what he was expecting to hear. He was congratulating himself on his own intuition. ‘And what kind of business do you do in South America?’ he asked, but as if he already knew the answer. ‘Business where the first rule is to know how to mind your own business,’ I replied, smiling and looking him straight in the eyes.”
    * * *
    “Keep your shirt on,” the guy had said. He hadn’t intended any disrespect, he only wanted to see if there was any possibility of their working together. It came out that the guy earned his living running a stable of girls, lending money, and occasionally handling small consignments of cocaine, intended for the same clientele as his girls. Now he’d been presented with an opportunity to take a qualitative leap. Someone had suggested he get involved with bringing in a major shipment of Colombian cocaine. He had immediately accepted and then immediately realized that this thing was much bigger than him, and the people involved much more dangerous than those he usually dealt with, and he had started to get really scared. Beating up some poor bastard who didn’t pay interest on his loan when it was due fell within his area of expertise. Handling his girls, gently when it was possible, violently when it was necessary, also fell within his area of expertise. They were things he knew how to do well, because he was a professional.
    But when it came to the big time—and the thing