Free Escape by Dominique Manotti Page A

he feels that he has a scene where something is really happening between the four of them, he gives it a name, a number, and hangs it on the line between the breakout and the bank robbery. Sometimes, he moves a box up or down the line, inserts another. At first, the game amuses him, but soon he is hooked. It is not long before he has the bare bones of his entire story:
    After the breakout, the two fugitives and Luciana made it to a ruined farmhouse in the mountains. Marco, the small-time boss from Rome, was waiting for them there. He’d thought of everything, organised everything to enable them to hide out and survive – clothes, food and a few books for Carlo, who appreciated his thoughtfulness. But Marco never did anything for free. He immediately informed them that he had big plans. He wanted to expand his gang and consolidate his territory in Rome. To do that, he’d already done a deal with the local mafia bosses. He needed competent, reliable men, men he could count on, like Carlo and Filippo. Carlo was hesitant and asked for some time to think about it before making a decision. Marco reluctantly agreed, gave Carlo a week and went back to Rome. Luciana stayed at the barn and became Carlo’s mistress. Filippo accepted this situation, which he’d known was inevitable ever since they’d first met in the car park. If he was annoyed with Luciana, it was for depriving him of precious moments of intimacy with Carlo rather than for being unfaithful to him. Carlo got back in contact with his Milan friends, those who weren’t dead or in jail. To survive, they formed a little band of thieves and lived off run-of-the-mill burglaries, while cultivating the memory of ‘the years of fire’.
    Carlo trusted former comrades rather than anyone else. He was keen to hold on to his independence, and was instinctively wary of Marco. He suggested that the Milanese should build a solid team, that they should stop being amateurs and move up a gear – first of all, do a bank robbery, in the style of the best of them in the old days. Then, they’d see, they’d have money, the means to plan forthe future. The idea soon took shape. The bank was selected, the plans for the raid drawn up. All the logistics were entrusted to the Milan crew. Carlo would head the action group. He came back to the farmhouse with Pepe, one of the Milanese. Filippo, who’d been a pickpocket and bag-snatcher, let himself be sucked in, fascinated by Carlo’s eloquent tales of past exploits and his future plans. He would be the third man. Preparations for the robbery were steaming ahead. Marco felt he was losing control of the group and his grand plans were compromised. However, he did seem willing to make a deal: in exchange for his past help, he insisted that the first bank raid take place in Rome, on his turf, so that he could control the share-out. Carlo refused; he insisted on Milan, his home town, on his turf. Neither trusted the other. Besides, claimed Carlo, plans were too far advanced in the north now to change targets. Conflict.
    Filippo delights in imagining the clash between the two men, he knows he’ll enjoy writing it even more. Carlo, tall, slim, elegant, classy, icily polite, with perfect self-control. Then Marco, squat, burly, a square mug, deep-set eyes and very black, bushy eyebrows in a slash across his forehead, a scar down his left cheek that disfigures his face slightly – a souvenir of knife fights in the turf wars around Termini station – his thuggish manner and brutal gestures. A persistent memory – the mug of the getaway car driver. Filippo counts on writing to help him purge the fear he felt on meeting his gaze, back in the mountains.
    Class won out over violence. At least for the time being. Marco seemed to give in. Bank robbery, fiasco. Certainty: Marco grassed on Carlo. Who informed him, day by day, of Carlo’s plans, who gave him the means to betray him? Luciana, of course.
    The friend more faithful than the woman. Posthumous