The Turks charged us forty million a kilo. We had a debt of eight billion lire on our shoulders. “Two billion a head,” Luigi calculated quickly. Instead of scaring us, the pressure just served as motivation.
We worked exclusively with Calabrians. Directly, one transfer only. People whose histories and families we knew. Safe people. We moved the stuff at forty-five million, earning five points per package. We wiped out the competition in a flash.
It was a potent product, one-five, one-six, meaning we could cut one kilo five or six times. Unprecedented potency.
After the first two weeks we’d run through over half of the goods, but had only collected four hundred million lire, which Sasà immediately brought to the Turks. Very few could pay us in advance; only the mob bosses paid in cash, using what they’d stashed away from kidnappings. The other Calabrians hadn’t yet been able to distribute such large amounts of product.
Things changed in the third week. The boys returned in good spirits, with plastic bags full of money. Before the month was out, ahead of the agreed date, the Turks had collected the entire eight billion lire they’d requested; a week later we visited the Brianza company again to claim a load that was twice as big as the one before it.
We started to organize ourselves better. We rented several apartments in different neighborhoods. We had a dozen cars at the ready, with duplicate license plates belonging to unsuspecting motorists with no criminal records. We did the same with driver’s licenses and personal identifications; from an official standpoint, we didn’t exist. Neighborhood bars served as our offices. We’d choose one street and frequent all the bars on it so as not to disappoint anyone. We always met in person, without ever using the telephone. We chatted, we drank, and we’d establish the time and place of our subsequent meeting. Deliveries took place in a completely different area. We would occupy the same street for one or two months before moving on.
Processions of customers came to see us wherever we went. It wasn’t long before people caught on, but when we paid the bill every night, the barman would find he’d collected double the cash he should have on the number of drinks we’d had. The bums who usually pestered the shops and the residents soon disappeared.
Milan loved us, and all the children of the forest like us. The city was too full of family men with their mortgages, promissory notes, bills to pay; it had everything to offer, but at a price. We met the needs of many, even among the boys in the Carabinieri or the federal police. Anyone who had a problem, economic or otherwise, found an answer in us, and we didn’t even bother to keep track of all the loans we made.
The off-the-books industrial entrepreneurs, the folks raking in political kickbacks and the tax evaders would take their money to Switzerland, spending some of it in private circles. We helped them distribute their earnings around the city. The Calabrians flooded Milan with billions of lire, providing handouts to everyone. It was a long honeymoon.
The drug was death, and yet it wasn’t considered a problem. Investigative units across all the agencies, absorbed for decades in anti-terrorist or anti-kidnapping activities, didn’t even notice us; or, perhaps, as we later understood, they pretended not to.
Statistically, crime dropped. Robbers, kidnappers, cheats, and scammers all converted to the drug trade, since no special skills or courage were required to pass a package from one hand to another and return home with full pockets.
They only worked during daylight, from Monday to Friday. In the evenings, the former goatherds could be found in restaurants, discos, and nightclubs. They were the best customers; they spared no expense, and certainly didn’t limit themselves to pizza and a beer. Every group of boys who worked for us had an entourage of people from all walks of life.
We knew people in every part of the city. No one ever cared who you were, only how you dressed, what watch you wore, what car you drove, and how much cash padded your pockets.
We trafficked in death and distributed an average of a thousand kilos a month, which, after it was cut, meant five to six thousand kilos of dark stuff on the market and hundreds of billions of lire funneling into the city.
At our table sat politicians, magistrates, policemen, doctors, journalists, actors, and even a few clergymen. The list was endless.
And while part of the city wanted to die, an ever-growing segment wanted to live, and live large.
Our activities had been going at full sail for over a year when we began to frequent the bars on via San Marco. On our first day there, we had several important meetings. No one showed.
Luciano and I were sitting at a table, reading the newspaper. We saw two carabinieri enter, one with the rank of marshal and the other in a second lieutenant uniform. We weren’t fazed; the carabinieri had never bothered us before.
For a moment the officer met my gaze. I bit my lip and lowered my eyes. I had made an unforgivable mistake. By nature, cops are similar to criminals. When you encounter one, you should avoid eye contact; otherwise you can read each other’s souls. It won’t matter if you are well dressed and well groomed and you look like a good boy. He can immediately see the evil in you.
As usual, we were carrying fake IDs and we were armed. I could feel the officer searching my mind. I kept my head down, but it was useless. As I’d known he would from the start, the second lieutenant approached our table, alone.
“Documents please, gentlemen.” We handed them over without looking up at him. He read our names aloud and when he read our stated profession—Sales Representative—he did so with sarcasm.
I glanced toward the door. Luigi and Sasà were entering—some of the boys had warned them. They arranged themselves on either side of the marshal, who drank his aperitif in absolute tranquility by the bar.
“You look more like two stinking goatherds to me.”
My blood stopped, and my hand jerked to the CZ-75 left to me by poor Sante.
“You think you’re invisible, but I saw you today. Just like I saw you, Luciano, and Luigi by my father’s grave on the Day of the Dead.”
I looked up. It was Sante’s son.
Luciano and I looked into his eyes, then we turned to Luigi and Sasà, who no longer knew what to do. They looked stunned as the three of us—big bruisers all, and cops and crooks to boot—were nearly moved to tears; only the marshal remained impassive.
My initial wave of emotion passed and I grew serious. “So what, are you a cop now?”
“Only in name,” he replied.
“What about him?” I pointed to the marshal.
“The same.”
They said they had things to do, so we said goodbye, planning to meet again later. That evening we all went to dinner together, except for Sasà, who had disappeared on one of his last-minute trips. Santoro told us how he became a carabiniere. After Sante’s death, he’d felt lost, he didn’t see us anymore, he didn’t know anyone he could trust for certain things. He went through a hard time. He was convinced that he would have to execute his plans by himself, and joined the police force, reassured by the idea that he would be able to avenge his father that way—though he didn’t plan to use his handcuffs when the time came.
“I thought you’d forgotten about my father, but then I heard about Don Vincenzo Sparta and instinctively I understood. Not even Sparta’s closest confidants had any information about his death. It seemed to be a lone gun, and you guys are the kings of that kind of work.”
He had been born and raised in the plains; we’d thought he was Milanese, but on the inside he was a son of the mountains like Sante, like us.
Sasà didn’t know it, but his request that we do him the favor of killing Don Vincenzo had only accelerated a decision that had already been made regarding the old man’s fate. The patriarch must have given his consent on Sante’s murder; no one from our territory could have touched Sante without that permission. Don Vincenzo’s blood was only the first that had to spill in order
for me and Luciano to avenge Sante.
We could not forget him, nor did we wish to; he was the greatest black soul ever born in Aspromonte and his spirit flowed through our veins.
Understanding this, Santoro had spent a long time searching for us, in vain. He had found us by chance in the heart of Milan, a stone’s throw from his office in Moscova. We were elusive shadows, even in broad daylight. We frequented the best establishments, we were the most visible people, and yet nobody knew who we really were. We were clandestine, but we lived alongside Milanese of every class. At any time we could have slipped our backpacks over our shoulders and disappeared back into the forest, never to be seen again. We had never really been there at all. We believed this, even as the city and its money tightened their knots around us. Oh, but we were there, of course we were, infusing the air with our stench, infesting the lives of others with our shit. We sold death and planned murders, speeding destructively toward an inevitable bullet or a set of handcuffs.
Santoro, as his father had done, assumed his mother’s surname, which had been Milanese for generations, so no one suspected his past. He had married his blonde girlfriend from all those years before, the one we saw him grow up with, and who was now a judicial auditor at the municipal court.
We talked about everything with him, and without reservations; he was my blood, my cousin, the son of Sante Motta. Betrayal was not a part of his genetic code.
A few days after that meeting, we went to see Anna, Santoro’s mother, who welcomed us like sons. She hadn’t found herself another man, nor would she ever; she had filled the house with photos of Sante. She even had photos of us, from the Christmas holidays we’d spent in our mountains—there was one of the men, all drunk, including old Bino, my father, Sante, and the socialist councilman.
Anna knew what we liked to eat, and she sent us to pick up a goat she’d ordered from Peck. As we were about to sit down to dinner, the doorbell rang. It was the socialist councilman. He’d done well for himself. Now he was a member of parliament with a party undersecretary appointment, but that hadn’t weakened his or his wife’s relationship with Sante’s family.
We raised the price of the dark stuff by one point per package to raise funds for Santoro and his faithful marshal. We maintained a cash pool among ourselves, and Luciano did the accounting, dividing proceeds into five equal parts: four for us, and one for Sasà’s Arab friends, the guarantors who had made the whole operation possible. Our income grew into the billions, and we divided the cash among the various apartments we kept around the city.
After our meeting with Santoro, we intensified our relationship with the undersecretary, who invited us to attend the parties he often organized at his house. He introduced us to the Milan that mattered most in those days, gleefully presenting us to everyone as his collaborators. And one evening, at one of those parties, we ran into an old friend of ours.
A charming Spanish countess was expected to make an appearance. She was the owner of one of the most exclusive salons in Milan. She was on her second husband, a luminary cardiovascular surgeon, the owner of a prestigious Milanese clinic. When she made her entrance, a small retinue gathered around her, signaling her importance. The crowd cleared and Rino, our host, introduced us to the noblewoman. Her beauty was exotic, if not breathtaking, and suggested her exceptional abilities as a lover.
Donna Natalia greeted us impassively; only for Luigi did she allow a slight smile to appear on her lips, imperceptible to everyone else.
Obviously we weren’t able to get her alone for even an instant during the party. When we said our farewells, she offered us her business card, to the astonishment of everyone present. It was extraordinary that Natalia would make herself so available after a first meeting. The probation period before entering into her good graces was usually much longer.
From time to time, we would run into her at some party, and very often we went to see her in private. The Andalusian Gypsy had come up in the world since the days of the Valenciano and her Sicilian pimp. We laughed heartily as we recounted the adventure on the express train to Milan. The pimp who had been relieved of such a large sum had never once suspected Natalia.
With her cut, she had taken over a bordello that had been an outlet for the cravings and vices of many important people. Then she had married the doctor, thus cloaking herself with a respectability that no one cared or dared to doubt, with all the people she had eating out of her hand. She hadn’t given up the brothel—out of superstition, she said—but entrusted it to her business partner while she hopped from party to party.
She described in great detail that world, which was populated by all kinds of individuals. Few were truly rich, and most lived far above their means. Outsized homes, villas by the sea and in the mountains, lovers for him and her. All of them constantly on the verge of economic collapse. And she generously assisted them toward it, allowing them to offer her IOUs, blank checks, pledges, and mortgages.
We didn’t explain our work to her, but we quantified our liquidity and she helped us organize it.
Right around the time of our reunion with Natalia, it happened that a boy from the Aurora, Tonino, who was younger than us, got arrested. We wasted no time in testing our relations with her.
Tonino had been caught by the narcotics squad while delivering thirty packages to the Neapolitans. The news caused an uproar; it was a huge seizure at the time. A preliminary forensics test confirmed that the powder in question was heroin of the brown sugar variety, with the highest percentage purity obtainable. Given the evidence and the flagrancy of the crime, Tonino and the Neapolitans were brought to trial within a matter of months.
At the request of the defense, the panel of judges ordered an expert report on the seized narcotics from a pharmacologist. The defense team appointed its own experts, and the hearing was deferred for the time necessary for the analysis to be completed.
Luciano and I stood among the crowd waiting to greet Tonino as he emerged from the courtroom. On the other side of the corridor were the narcotics team operatives who had conducted the seizure. As they stared us down with malicious, self-satisfied smiles, someone shouted an insult and a scuffle broke out. We managed to duck out before they could stop us and ask for our IDs.
We ran into the same officers at the next hearing, with their usual derisive air. This time, however, we had gotten the word out, and there were no other members of the public attending besides Luciano and me.
The court expert took his seat in front of the judges, stated his name and credentials, and was sworn in by the clerk. First, he described the method of the operations—the sampling of the packages seized, the type of analysis conducted, the reliability of said analysis, the number of repetitions—and came to the following conclusions: the substance consisted of a compound of fructose, glucose, rhubarb, and ginseng. A superficial analysis had detected a color, smell, and consistency similar to heroin but, scientifically speaking, the substance was completely free of the hallucinogenic and forbidden active ingredients. It was an easily metabolized product, excellent for low-calorie diets.
Tonino shouted from his cage: “Your Honor, I told the cops right away that I was trying to cheat the dealers.”
The prosecutor, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, said: “I demand that the expert examination be repeated, with samples taken from all the packages in the presence of an expert appointed by the prosecution.”
The defense teams objected, requesting the release of their clients. The court upheld the demand of the public prosecutor, denied the requests of the defense, and postponed the hearing.
Outside the courtroom, the magistrate vented his suppressed anger by spitting venom at the officers, who had stopped smiling and bowed their heads.
The postponement was useless. The experts, including the prosecution’s, confirmed the previous outcome, and Tonino left the courtroom a free man.
Prior to the trial, a friend of
Natalia’s had arranged to visit the court-appointed expert, and Santoro’s marshal had passed by the crime bureau with a heavy suitcase, replacing the drug with a benign dust.
A large gathering celebrated Tonino’s release at one of Milan’s most fashionable nightclubs, of which we were part owners. In those days, our happiness still hadn’t been overshadowed by the drama.
The work we did had dangerous consequences, but distributing packages didn’t get our adrenaline pumping anymore, and it had been a long time since we’d done anything truly exciting. So we were happy when, in October, Sasà took all three of us on one of his trips.
We slipped into one of the many cars that we always kept at the ready and set off toward Northern Europe. We arrived that evening and parked in front of an elegant building in Munich a few blocks from Marienplatz. The city was celebrating; everyone was drunk. In the very large and vacant apartment that awaited us, we found four of the boys I’d met in the Sierra Nevada massif. There were no beds in the house, so we slept in our sleeping bags, like in the old days in the mountains.
The following evening, we approached a small border checkpoint at the end of a bridge over the Rhine that connected France with Germany. Customs officers hadn’t manned the booth for twenty years, but officially, the border was still active. The offices were cleaned every morning and the prominent sign announcing the ten-kilometer-per-hour speed limit was respected by all those who entered Germany.
Six of us walked in, each stationing himself by a window. Luigi and an Arab stayed outside in two separate cars about fifty feet apart.
The target was an Arab politician who liked to go around mocking the customs and traditions of his country, claiming its dictators were enlightened leaders. That was how Sasà explained it, at least. We weren’t concerned with his motives; a problem for one of us was a problem for us all, regardless of grievance or reason.
The Arab we intended to kill had held a conference organized in Strasbourg under the aegis of the European Community, and would be returning on that road, which was regarded as more secure.
Black Souls Page 10
