Mambo by Campbell Armstrong Page B

place?” Caporelli posed questions with an authority that came from years of giving orders and having them obeyed. He had the often haughty dignity of a cardinal accustomed to having his ring kissed.
    Rosabal shrugged. “He has tastes, peculiarities. Sometimes he gives in to them.”
    â€œI don’t want to know.” Caporelli raised a hand. He had no interest in the sexual foibles of other people. “A man that allows his tastes to overcome his head – I don’t like that kind of man.”
    â€œI saw him yesterday. He’s in a safe place. I assure you the problem is under control.”
    Caporelli spoke gravely, his voice without cadence, his accent an odd hybrid of Calabria and Long Island. “At great expense, I gave you the financial backing you said you would need for the operation. My generosity resulted in tragedy. Who likes dead policemen and hysterical newspaper headlines? I’m too old for anger, my friend. It’s a drain. I only have so much energy. I want to spend it contemplating pleasant things.”
    Rosabal plucked a cube of sugar out of the bowl and placed it on his tongue, an old habit. He was amused by the way Caporelli talked about his “generosity”, as if everything had been an act of charity, a personal donation from Enrico’s private account, and there was going to be nothing in this for the Italian but a sense of well-being. San Enrico. All heart. The patron saint of terror.
    â€œWe got him back,” Rosabal said. “That’s the important thing, Enrico.”
    â€œWe should never have been placed in such a position to begin with. Having to bail out a man who’s supposed to be doing a job for us – tsssss, that’s not how to do business.”
    Rosabal silently cursed Gunther Ruhr’s proclivity for strange sex. It was the only cavalier aspect of Ruhr’s life, which was otherwise single-mindedly dedicated to terror. “Nobody else can deliver. That’s the important thing to remember.”
    All this violence made Caporelli touchy. He liked the idea that he was too civilised for violence. After all, didn’t he own some of the world’s finest paintings? Hadn’t he invested in great sculptures and financed operas and symphonies and ballet companies? A number of cities in North America and Europe were unknowingly indebted to Caporelli for their cultural lives.
    So it was no source of joy for him to be associated, even remotely, with men who were little better than animals, scum like this German who had had to be rescued four days ago in London. A goddam bloodbath, he thought. Who needed it? Even if this Kraut was the only man in the goddam known universe capable of doing the job, who needed the heartache?
    When Rosabal had requested many thousands of dollars to rescue the German, Caporelli, turning the same blind eye he’d turned all his life whenever profit was threatened, had managed to convince himself that the cash was for a vast amount of grease, la mordida , bribes for prison officials, guards, cops. In his wildest fantasies he couldn’t have come up with what the British newspapers were calling The Shepherd’s Bush Massacre. He had developed a form of immunity to the realities of violence and an awesome capacity to distance himself from any personal culpability. Like many men whose hearts are basically vicious, Enrico Caporelli had discovered the ultimate hiding-place: denial.
    He said quietly, “I don’t like the idea of new widows. I hate it when women cry. I’m suckered by tears. Orphaned children eat my heart out.”
    Hipócrita , Rosabal thought. A few orphans, a few widows, what did these really matter to the Italian? Caporelli sometimes strutted the stage of his life as if it were a melodrama. Rosabal said, “I’m not delighted either. But it couldn’t be avoided. The alternative was to dump Ruhr.”
    â€œWhat I also don’t like is this