Read Online A Pimp's Notes by Giorgio Faletti - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Giorgio Faletti
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couple of curves, and after a short straightaway we see a warehouse and a parking lot cluttered with the decrepit automotive carcasses of a scrapyard. The area is surrounded by a hurricane fence. A few well-meaning streetlights do their best to scatter a little light.
We pull up to a gate. It’s closed. Micky flashes his brights and immediately, on the other side of the fence, the silhouette of a man emerges from the dim shadows. He walks toward us and the twin cones of the headlights reveal a short, powerful individual wearing work pants and a denim jacket, peering with light-dazzled eyes through the mesh of the gate.
He recognizes the car and starts swinging the gate open. We drive past him and through the gate. We continue along the road that leads to the warehouse, past stacks of flattened automobiles, cubist shapes, lifeless relics. A series of totems erected at the cost of a chain of human and mechanical sacrifices, though there’s no one around who seems willing to worship them.
Micky stops in a clearing where a number of other cars are already parked. In the first row I see a shiny new Porsche and, parked next to it, in all its tawdry desolation, Daytona’s old orange Porsche. Speak of the devil. As if he were declaring: This is what I am and this is what I wish I could be. Then there are a couple of Mercedes-Benzes, a 240 and a Pagoda, a BMW 733i, and a string of other cars of various makes and models and engine displacements. All of them intact, motionless, and gleaming, as if to mock the crushed automotive carcasses that surround them. There’s a sense of rust and melancholy in the air that only failure can convey.
I kick myself for the asshole I am.
I’m here for other reasons and to run other risks. I have no time for dreary animistic reveries.
If I make one false move tonight, I could wind up looking like one of these stripped automobiles, just waiting to be handed over to the tender loving care of the crusher.
Micky gets out of the car and I follow suit. I follow him toward the building on our left. We walk along the outside wall of the structure for a certain distance in the inadequate light of the overhead lamps. We walk around the far corner, and on our left we see a sliding metal door. There’s a man standing guard. Having heard our footsteps, he’s already walking toward us. He’s a completely different-looking type from the squat guy at the gate. He’s dressed in a dark brown suit and has the appearance of a man who would ring a doorbell and pull a trigger with the same unruffled calm: maybe the trigger of the gun sticking out of his belt, visible through his unbuttoned suit jacket.
When he recognizes Micky, he relaxes slightly.
Without a word of greeting, my friend comes right to the point.
“We have an appointment with Tano.”
The guy looks me up and down before deciding that my escort is reference enough for my admission. Then he jerks his head toward the interior and opens the smaller door carved out of the sliding metal door.
We walk through the door and suddenly we’re in another world. On the side of the warehouse we’ve just walked into, we’re surrounded by all the equipment and machinery needed for the operations of the ostensible host company. Workbenches, metal presses, lathes, and other heavy machinery I couldn’t identify. In front of us are the glass doors of a painting department. There’s a diffuse odor of solvents, milled metal, and lubricant. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this shop was used not only to scrap cars with regulation certificates of demolition but also to modify the appearance of vehicles of much murkier provenance.
But the real surprise comes with what we see on the opposite side of the interior space. Under the lights hanging down from the ceiling and on a modular wooden floor is a genuine miniature casino. There’s an American-style roulette wheel with a croupier, a long craps table, and another table where a number of people are sitting,
We pull up to a gate. It’s closed. Micky flashes his brights and immediately, on the other side of the fence, the silhouette of a man emerges from the dim shadows. He walks toward us and the twin cones of the headlights reveal a short, powerful individual wearing work pants and a denim jacket, peering with light-dazzled eyes through the mesh of the gate.
He recognizes the car and starts swinging the gate open. We drive past him and through the gate. We continue along the road that leads to the warehouse, past stacks of flattened automobiles, cubist shapes, lifeless relics. A series of totems erected at the cost of a chain of human and mechanical sacrifices, though there’s no one around who seems willing to worship them.
Micky stops in a clearing where a number of other cars are already parked. In the first row I see a shiny new Porsche and, parked next to it, in all its tawdry desolation, Daytona’s old orange Porsche. Speak of the devil. As if he were declaring: This is what I am and this is what I wish I could be. Then there are a couple of Mercedes-Benzes, a 240 and a Pagoda, a BMW 733i, and a string of other cars of various makes and models and engine displacements. All of them intact, motionless, and gleaming, as if to mock the crushed automotive carcasses that surround them. There’s a sense of rust and melancholy in the air that only failure can convey.
I kick myself for the asshole I am.
I’m here for other reasons and to run other risks. I have no time for dreary animistic reveries.
If I make one false move tonight, I could wind up looking like one of these stripped automobiles, just waiting to be handed over to the tender loving care of the crusher.
Micky gets out of the car and I follow suit. I follow him toward the building on our left. We walk along the outside wall of the structure for a certain distance in the inadequate light of the overhead lamps. We walk around the far corner, and on our left we see a sliding metal door. There’s a man standing guard. Having heard our footsteps, he’s already walking toward us. He’s a completely different-looking type from the squat guy at the gate. He’s dressed in a dark brown suit and has the appearance of a man who would ring a doorbell and pull a trigger with the same unruffled calm: maybe the trigger of the gun sticking out of his belt, visible through his unbuttoned suit jacket.
When he recognizes Micky, he relaxes slightly.
Without a word of greeting, my friend comes right to the point.
“We have an appointment with Tano.”
The guy looks me up and down before deciding that my escort is reference enough for my admission. Then he jerks his head toward the interior and opens the smaller door carved out of the sliding metal door.
We walk through the door and suddenly we’re in another world. On the side of the warehouse we’ve just walked into, we’re surrounded by all the equipment and machinery needed for the operations of the ostensible host company. Workbenches, metal presses, lathes, and other heavy machinery I couldn’t identify. In front of us are the glass doors of a painting department. There’s a diffuse odor of solvents, milled metal, and lubricant. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this shop was used not only to scrap cars with regulation certificates of demolition but also to modify the appearance of vehicles of much murkier provenance.
But the real surprise comes with what we see on the opposite side of the interior space. Under the lights hanging down from the ceiling and on a modular wooden floor is a genuine miniature casino. There’s an American-style roulette wheel with a croupier, a long craps table, and another table where a number of people are sitting,
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