They had, and the ratings had been good enough for the TV station to come back for a mini-series of six episodes. Ratings had climbed by leaps and bounds with each screening-all word of mouth-and Rinaldi got a contract to do a full series for the rest of the year. When that expired, he was in a position to negotiate a very much more lucrative contract with the nation’s most-watched channel, plus a prime-time slot right after the smash hit Filthy Rich Stupid Sluts reality show. At first the friend involved had run the production company, but the momentum of the product had soon exhausted his meagre skills and Romano Rinaldi had reluctantly been forced to dispense with his services.
Like all ideas of genius, this one was basically very simple. Italian cooking was dying. Not at the restaurant level, but in the home. Men had never dreamt of learning how to cook, and nowadays most women were too tired and preoccupied to do so. In any case, they wouldn’t know how. The oral tradition that had passed down recipes and techniques from mother to daughter for countless centuries had virtually died out, along with the extended family and stay-at-home wives.
Hence Lo Chef’s appeal. His warm, unthreatening, campily flirty screen persona tapped deeply into his viewership’s culinarily challenged subconscious, allaying its anxieties and sense of inadequacy while validating its dream and aspirations. The popularity of his show was not based on educating the younger generation in the basics of putting food on the table, although the scriptwriters were constantly reminded that their target audience included people who thought that milk came fresh from the cow at 5°C, and even those who had never realised that cows were involved at all. But Lo Chef’s viewers didn’t want instruction, they wanted glamour, a few ‘authentic’ tips from the top, and above all a bit of fun.
This was where the singing came in. Sections of the recipe, directions, ingredients, preparation methods all floated out in Rinaldi’s very serviceable light tenor-another link to his childhood, and possibly even his parentage-to the melodies of famous operas and popular songs. Everyone relaxed and smiled as the chubby, lovable TV personality whipped up another stunning, authentic dish ‘from our incomparable and timeless gastronomic tradition’, accompanied by two scantily clad, inanely grinning bimbettes with pneumatic boobs who got the male audience on board while giving the average housewife the satisfaction of jeering at their utter incompetence, for which they were always being indulgently scolded by the star, his eyes raised to heaven.
It had been a dynamite concept, and one he had managed carefully. By now he was less interested in direct revenue from the TV station than in exposure for the ever-expanding line of products marketed under the Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta trademark. This was the sweetest aspect of the whole enterprise, since it required no effort on Rinaldi’s part whatsoever. Even initially, all he had had to do was to find a reasonably good product available at a knockdown wholesale price, then contact the producer and make a bid for exclusive retail rights. Now, of course, the producers contacted him. He was deluged with offers. Then it was just a matter of hiring some marketing hack to write a lyrical blurb to print on the label beneath a cheery image of the star in his white coat and chef’s hat, his hand held out and mouth open as he reached for a high C, and ship it out to the supermarkets.
He had started with the Coop chain that controlled most mass food outlets in central Italy, then moved on to Conad and the other national chains. He knew just how women felt as they trudged up and down the aisles in those smelly, crowded food marts. They longed for the personal contact and preferential treatment they got at the small, old-fashioned shops, but doing the rounds of all those was just too much of a bother after a hard day at work. The supermarkets were quick, convenient and cheap, but they felt chilly and impersonal. So when Signora Tizia spotted Romano’s cheerful, friendly features on the distinctive red and yellow label, she reached for it as if he had been holding her arm. No need for expensive hitor-miss advertising either. The shelves of the studio where he recorded his show were stacked with those very same products, all with the labels turned outwards and sporting the Lo Chef logo that was also back-projected on the false rear wall of the set. And whenever a new product was introduced to the range, Rinaldi would extol its virtues in an extended aria based on the rhapsodic publicity gush.
He took another swig of Coke, then headed back to the glass-topped table. He knew he was overdoing it, but he had a tough decision to make. Quite some time passed before he realised that he had in fact made it, and he reached for the phone.
‘All right, I’ll do it.’
There was an audible intake of breath at the other end.
‘That’s wonderful, Romano! You’ve absolutely made the correct decision. But time is pressing. You need to come to Bologna this evening, okay? As in right now. I’ll arrange a car and book a hotel and email you the details ASAP. And once again, congratulations!’
11
As a parting shot on learning of Zen’s imminent departure from Lucca, Gemma had reminded him of their collusion in the death of Roberto Lessi and the subsequent disposal of his body at sea. In his view, this had been a clumsy man?uvre-Gemma was brandishing a weapon they both knew was far too dangerously destructive to be used. She would have done better to have reminded him that on the occasion to which she had referred, when the truth about his identity had finally emerged, he had promised her that whatever happened he would never tell her any more lies.
Despite itself being a barefaced whopper of some considerable magnitude, this had passed without comment, perhaps because at the time Zen had believed it himself. And until recently the atmosphere of the relationship, seemingly charged with infinite promise, had indeed appeared to make lies an irrelevant anachronism. Incredibly enough, he really had believed that in getting together with Gemma, and in the move from his apartment in Rome to hers in Lucca that resulted, he had magically reinvented himself. The events of recent months, however, had returned a different verdict, namely that this belief had been just another coil in the spiral of illusions that his life had come to resemble.
As with the gradual deterioration of the body, it was hard to say exactly when it had all started, but the rows were coming more frequently, and with them the lies. A trivial example had occurred when Gemma had asked why Zen was going to Bologna, mistakenly believing this to be a free choice on his part. ‘Years ago I was stationed in the city and I loved it,’ he’d replied. It was true that he couldn’t wait to leave, but it was not going back to Bologna that he was looking forward to; anywhere would have done. During the journey up in the train, he tried to remember the last time he had been posted to the city, some time during the 1970s, the terrorist anni di piombo, when ‘red’ Bologna had been one of the hotbeds of unrest. But that side of police work was handled by the DIGOS and other specialised anti-terrorist units, while Zen, as a very junior officer attached to the criminal investigation department, had been left to deal with the usual routine crimes committed by people whose interest was not in overthrowing the state but in lining their pockets or settling some personal dispute.
All he could recall were isolated incidents, such as the time he’d followed a small-time gangster to a tough suburban bar, where his target was menaced by a rival. Zen’s man responded by pulling out a flick-knife and driving it, almost up to the hilt, into his own leg. Then, without the slightest flicker of expression, he turned to the other thug and said, ‘That’s what I’m capable of doing to myself, Giorgio. Imagine what I would be capable of doing to you.’ The aggressor looked like he was about to faint and left in extreme haste, after which the gangster pulled out the knife, replaced it in his pocket, then rolled up his trouser leg and removed his prosthetic limb, to the general merriment of the company.