In the yellowish dawn, down semideserted streets, under sleeping windows and clothes and sheets left out to dry in the night air, the scooters, one behind the other, croaked in falsetto as if they were a procession of altar boys lined up for Mass, spitting out verdicts of undersized engines. To see them from overhead, you might think they were cheerful, as they went the wrong way up every one-way street they found between Corso Novara and Piazza Garibaldi.
They arrived at the bus stop behind the Central Station, a slalom through and around Ukrainians trying to find their bus for Kiev, and Turks and Moroccans, hunting for the bus to Stuttgart. At the far end, between the parking areas and the bus shelters, there were four immigrants; two of them were small and looked Indian—one slight, the other a little bulkier. Then there was a third with ebony skin, and the fourth might have been a Moroccan. They were wearing work clothing. The two Indians were certainly heading out into the countryside, they wore boots filthy with dried mud; the other two probably to construction sites, because their T-shirts and trousers were spattered with mortar and paint.
The paranza came roaring up, a swarm of motor scooters, but none of the men thought they were in any danger, since they had nothing in their pockets to rob. Nicolas gave the signal: “Go on, Denti’, go, hit him in the legs.” Dentino pulled the 9mm out from behind his back, where he had it pressed securely against his tailbone with the elastic waistband of his boxer shorts, quickly flicked off the safety, and fired three shots. Only one shot went home, and that was merely a flesh wound, it grazed the foot of the Indian. The man screamed only after feeling the impact. They had no idea why these people had it in for them, but they turned to run. On his scooter, Nicolas chased after the ebony-dark young man and fired. He, too, fired three shots, two that missed and one that lodged in his right shoulder. The young man dropped to the pavement. The other Indian lunged toward the station.
“Ua’, with just one hand I hit him,” Nicolas was saying, as he drove the scooter with his left hand only.
Briato’ accelerated and took off after the young wounded Indian who was trying to get away. He fired three shots. Four shots. Five shots. It was no good.
At that point Nicolas shouted: “You’re just no good.” The young Indian dodged to one side and managed to get into hiding someplace. Nicolas fired two shots at the running Moroccan and hit him in the face, taking off a section of his nose, clipped in full just as he was turning around to see who was chasing him.
“We took down three pocket coffees.”
“We took them down? I don’t seem to remember that we did any complete piece of work,” Pesce Moscio said in a tense voice. Not being one of the chosen shooters was chapping his ass.
Pesce Moscio wanted to do the shooting himself and instead Nicolas only wanted to make up for the pathetic showing he thought he’d made on the terrace.
“They’re wounded, they’re still trying to get away.”
The Moroccan with the ravaged nose had vanished, while the African with the lacerated shoulder was on the ground. “Go on,” he said, handing him the pistol, taking care not to burn his hand on the barrel, which was still smoking hot. “Go on,” extending the grip toward him, “fa ’nu piezzo, finish him off, shoot him in the head.”
“What’s the problem?” asked Pesce Moscio; then he yanked his scooter up onto its kickstand and went over to the young man, who lay there, repeating a simple and fruitless cry: “Help, help me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What are you saying?”
“He’s saying he didn’t do anything wrong,” said Nicolas, without hesitation.
“No, he didn’t do anything wrong, poor little pocket coffee,” said Lollipop. “Still, we need a target, don’t we?” He revved his motor scooter and leaned down close to his ear: “You’re not to blame for anything, pocket coffee, you’re just a target.”
Pesce Moscio went over to him, but not so close that he could be sure his shots were hitting the target. He chambered a round. And from a few yards away, he fired two shots. He was convinced he’d hit dead center, but actually the pistol had kicked in his hand, and he’d only grazed him: the bullet had passed through the side of his throat. The young man lying on the ground was weeping and screaming. The roller shutters in the apartment house across the way were starting to open up.
“What is it, guaglio’? Weren’t you able to finish your piece of work?”
In the meantime, he was out of bullets.
“I didn’t want to wind up like John Travolta, taking a shit with his blood all over me.”
The Indian who’d taken a bullet in his foot had managed to make his limping escape, and the young Moroccan man with his nose split in two had gotten away as well. The young African, with a bullet in his shoulder and his throat split open, lay writhing on the ground, in his death throes. On the square in front of the station a squad car appeared, proceeding in their direction from the front gates. The eyes of the SEAT Leon suddenly flicked on bright yellow and so did the whining curse of the sirens. It inched along like a worm. Someone had called the cops or, more likely, it was just patrolling among the departing immigrants, checking out the cafés opening early on Via Galileo Ferraris, and the already weary lights coming down from the apartments. The squad car had just chanced to venture up into the deserted piazza.
“Your mother can suck my dick,” Nicolas shouted. “’A bucchin’ ’e mammeta,” and then, swearing, he led the charge: “Adda murì mammà, let’s shoot these assholes.”
They would never have done it, they were dangerously close to being caught, when Drone, who up until that moment had stood there watching, managed to stop the police car by unexpectedly drawing a pistol and emptying the entire magazine into the vehicle.
No one knew where he’d gotten the gun. He just started firing away, and his bullets hit the squad car’s hood and windshield.
Briato’ joined in the shooting, too, since he still had a few rounds in his pistol. One of the shots actually hit one of the two sirens on the squad car, not that he was even aiming at anything close. They managed to get away because at that point the police car slammed on its brakes instead of chasing them: not only because they’d seen smoke issuing from their engine, but because there were just too many guaglioni, and so they opted to call for reinforcements. At that point, the members of the paranza decided to go their separate ways.
“Let’s split up, guagliu’, talk later.”
They roared off, taking different routes, on the saddles of their scooters, with their fake license plates. They’d all already switched out the plates before getting caught in a police chase, but they’d done it only to avoid having to pay the insurance.
CHAMPAGNE
They had returned to their lair after deciding to take it easy for a few days: one or two had stayed home from school, faking fevers and queasy stomachs, others had taken the opposite tack and decided to go to school precisely to avoid arousing suspicion. But there were no suspicions to arouse. Though their faces had been glimpsed by two sleepy policemen at the end of the graveyard shift, no one had recorded them. Some of the guys were afraid they’d been caught on tape by a smartphone or a GoPro installed on a cop car’s dashboard, but the police didn’t even have enough money to put fuel in the tank, the last thing they’d think of paying for was a video camera. And yet the kids in the paranza felt the fear rise inside them.
After spending a week training on human targets, they met again in the apartment on Via dei Carbonari, as if nothing had happened. They went in without knocking, the whole paranza had the keys. They arrived one at a time, at different times. Some after school, others in the evening. It was all normal. It was all just as usual. Life had resumed in Forcella. Games of FIFA, where they’d bet cash or beers, and no one made any mention of what had happened, not even Nicolas. Only at the end of the day did he go out and, after heading down to the bar, came back upstairs with a bottle of champagne.
“Moët et Chandon, guagliu’. I’ve had it with this nasty atmospher
e. It was a great experience. What needs to be clear from here on is that we’re going to train every week on an apartment house roof.”
Upon which Drone said: “Yeah, but are we supposed to find a party with fireworks every week?” He’d been trying to work out a coast-to-coast by triangulating with his players, and now that he’d almost succeeded, Nicolas came out with this story.
“No party. We’ll just shoot for a short time. Bang bang, a clip, or two at the very most. And we’ll post lookouts downstairs. If someone shows up, the lookouts will give us the word and we take off across the roofs. But we have to make sure we pick apartment buildings you can get away from without having to go down the stairs. One apartment house after another. We’re going to knock down every antenna in Naples.”
“Nice, Maraja,” said Pesce Moscio, who still had his eyes fixed on the screen, indifferent to the calluses produced on his thumbs by the joypad.
“And now let’s drink a toast!”
Everyone stopped what they were doing to grab the first glasses they could lay hands on, and they were already raising them in the air when Dentino said: “You can’t drink Moët et Chandon in paper cups. We’ve got to get some real glasses. There must be some around here somewhere.”
They pulled open doors to cabinets and cupboards, and in the end they found champagne glasses, a legacy of the wedding dowry of who knows what family that had lived in that home—an apartment that had survived the bombings of World War II and the earthquake of the 1980s. Those stones had no fear.
“You know what I like about champagne?” Dentino asked. “The fact that once you pull the cork, you can’t put it back in. That’s just like us: no one can put a cork in us. We just need to let out all our foam.” And he hurled the cork against the wall, which ricocheted, lost forever under a sofa.
“Right you are, ’o Dentino,” Nicolas agreed. “Once our cork is pulled, no one can put it back in.”
He filled all their glasses and then said: “Guagliu’, first of all let’s drink a toast to Drone, who got the cops off our necks.”
All of the others took turns speaking eagerly to pay their compliments to Drone, while the glasses clinked and were drained: “Fantastic, Drone, bravo, Droncino, to your health, Drò!”
Then Maraja sat down, wiped the smile off his face, and said: “Dro’, you saved us. But you also betrayed us.” Drone started snickering but Nicolas wasn’t laughing: “I’m not kidding, Anto’.”
Antonio ’o Drone leaned closer to Nicolas: “Maraja, what are you talking about? You’d be in Poggioreale right now if it wasn’t for me.”
“First of all, who told you I didn’t want to be in Poggioreale?”
“You’re a complete jerk,” said Drone.
“No, no, stop and listen to me: the paranza has to move all together. The boss makes the decisions and the paranza has to support them. Is that right or not?” Nicolas saw that all the others were nodding, and he waited to hear Drone’s reply. Drone said: “E!” The letter e. But pronounced with all the imperative force of the verb, è, meaning “is.” The most heartfelt utterance of a yes. The most affirmative of replies.
“You stole a pistol from the gym bags when we were up on the roof. True or false?” Now Nicolas had set down his glass of champagne and was staring grimly at Drone. He seemed to be waiting for an answer but not to care much what it was. He’d already made up his mind.
“True, but I did it for the good of the paranza.”
“True, but my ass. How do I know that you didn’t plan to use that pistol on all of us? Maybe you sold yourself off to another paranza.” With a snarl, he slipped into dialect, suggesting who Drone might have sold himself off to. “Te venniv a ’o Micione.”
“Nico’, what are you talking about? I have the key, I’m a member of the paranza. We’re brothers. What are you saying?”
Dentino wanted to break in, but he remained silent. Drone held up the key to the door of the lair, the symbol of his membership. “The pistol defended the paranza.”
“Sure, okay, but you used it to defend yourself, too: who gives a shit about the pistol. You’re not trustworthy. This is a very serious infraction. There has to be a punishment.”
Nicolas looked around at the rest of the paranza: there were some looking down, others evading his glance with their eyes on their cell phones. In the background the theme music of FIFA didn’t seem to bother Nicolas, who continued: “No, guagliu’, look at me. We’re going to have to figure out a punishment, all of us together.”
Lollipop said: “Maraja, if you ask me, Drone just wanted to hold on to the pistol, that’s all, he wanted to take a few selfies, that’s all, right? He fucked up, but it’s a good thing he did, otherwise they would have caught all the rest of us.”
“Who says that’s what would have happened,” Nicolas replied. “Maybe we’d have been able to get away, maybe we’d have gotten off a couple of shots.”
Briato’: “Maraja, we didn’t have any more ammunition…”
“Then they’d have caught us. And you think it’s better to steal from your brothers? Is it better to let yourselves get screwed by Drone?”
And as is always the case with betrayals, the various sides naturally split up into accusers and defenders. It’s an instinctive rule. What side you take is decided for you by the strength of your friendship with the accused or how you suppose you would have behaved in the same situation. By empathy or difference. By blood and by situation. In the case of the paranza, Drago’ intervened; he knew Drone well because they went to school together at the Industrial Technical Institute: “Maraja, you have a point: Drone stole a pistol and didn’t say a word to anyone, but when he did it, he didn’t really think about it. He just wanted to enjoy having it to himself, but no way, he never would have used it. He was carrying it jammed down his shorts, and then he used it to defend all the rest of us. And that’s all!”
Dentino, irritable and on edge, played the role of the prosecution: “Sure, but if everyone did like that, the arsenal would be completely empty by now. You can’t do it where everyone just grabs what they want.”
Drone tried to defend himself: “No, it’s not like I was trying to steal. I just wanted to hold on to it for a while, I’d have put it back.” He was standing in front of Nicolas, while the others, again instinctively, had gathered around in a circle. A tribunal.
“Eh, my ass, you’d have put it back. Guns need to be stored the way we all decided. So you can’t do it. There needs to be a punishment, ja’, bbasta,” said Pesce Moscio.
Briato’ switched territory and went over to the side of the prosecution: “It’s true we owe you our thanks for keeping us from getting arrested. But the fact remains that you stole a pistol, you still did something that can’t be done.”
Drago’ threw his arms wide to get everyone’s attention: “Guagliu’, I’m in agreement, too, that Drone needs to be punished. He fucked up, but he just wasn’t thinking. He didn’t want to hurt us. If you ask me, he just needs to apologize to everybody and we’re done with it.”
“Eh, but if we do that,” Briato’ pointed out, “then everybody can fuck up and just apologize.”
When he finally finished drinking the third glass of champagne, which had softened him, Stavodicendo piped up, too: “Ask me,” he said, “and I say there should be a punishment. But a light punishment, not a heavy one.”
“No, if you ask me, we need a serious punishment, a heavy one,” said Biscottino, “because otherwise just anyone can start stealing our gats.” He’d kept out of the limelight the whole time, waiting for the right moment to speak his piece, and he’d pitched his voice to sound like a man, to make sure the others didn’t think he was just spouting off again.
“But I’m not just anyone!” said Drone. “I’m a part of the paranza, I only took something that belonged to me, and I would have put it back.”
Stavodicendo replied: “Yes, it’s true, ’o Dro’, but what the fuck would it have cost you to ask Nicolas, to ask all of us. That
is, I was just saying that when you stop to think about it, you did something wrong, but not horribly wrong. There are things that are wrong, things that are horribly wrong, things that are slightly wrong, and things that are almost wrong. If you ask me, I was just saying, you did something slightly wrong or almost wrong … but you didn’t go so far as to do something wrong or horribly wrong. That’s what I was saying and that’s what I think.”
Drago’ summarized the jury’s point of view: “Listen, ’o Drone pulled a boneheaded move. Let’s give him his punishment once and for all and be done with it.” There was no more wiggle room for the defense.
“All right,” Maraja decided.
“If you ask me,” Dentino proposed, “since he stole with his hand, what we need to do now is cut off his hand.”
Chuckling, they made fun of Drone: “Ja’, Dro’, you’ll wind up like ’o Mulatt’, with your hand cut off!”
“No, even better,” said Briato’, “let’s cut off his ears like in Reservoir Dogs, when they cut the ear off the policeman.”
“Nice, that’s just great! Let’s cut off his ear,” said Biscottino.
At first Drone was laughing along, but now he was starting to get annoyed. Dentino added, “But in Reservoir Dogs they set the policeman on fire. We need to burn Drone, while we’re at it,” and they all broke out laughing. “No, no, I think what we need to do,” put in Stavodicendo, “is just like in Goodfellas!”
“Yeah, that’s too great. We’ll give Drone the same treatment that Billy Batts gets when Henry and Jimmy pound him bloody: facimmo accussì!” Let’s do that, they crowed in excitement.
The atmosphere was relaxing. Nicolas had left his seat as judge, and now he was imitating Joe Pesci, while Drago’ responded as Ray Liotta. “You’re a funny guy.”
“How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me?” And they went on with the rest of the dialogue from Goodfellas, which was something they did constantly, each time trading off Joe Pesci’s role. Drone, as if lost in thought, or pretending to be, got up and headed for the door: “All right. Once you’ve made up your minds what you’re going to do to me, let me know.”
The Piranhas, The Boy Bosses of Naples Page 24
