I closed the wallet and put it in its place. I turned back to Angelo and leaned across his body and kissed him on the forehead, my lips feeling the cold of his flesh. I held his hands and rested my head against his cheek, his warm breath brushing against my neck.
I had come to watch him die.
His name was Angelo Vestieri.
He was my father.
A gangster.
By Lorenzo Carcaterra
A SAFE PLACE: The True Story of a Father, a Son, a Murder
SLEEPERS
APACHES
GANGSTER
“[A] VERY COMPELLING DRAMA . . .
What makes Carcaterra’s portrait of Vestieri so effective is not only the ‘adventures’ Vestieri experiences in a
career so cold and calculating, but also the author’s psychological fathoming of the kind of character that turns to a life of organized crime.”
—Booklist
“If you thought that the final word had been spoken about the rise of the Mafia and organized crime, Lorenzo Carcaterra’s new novel, Gangster, will change your mind. . . . This book is an excellent retelling of the Godfather story from a fresh viewpoint.”
—The Roanoke Times
“Even better [than] . . . Apaches and Sleepers . . . There is a richness of detail, both physical and psychological, in Carcaterra’s description that never gets in the way of the fast-moving plot, but which lends a depth to the novel that brings it closer to literature than standard bestseller fare.”
—Winston-Salem Journal
“[A] tantalizing coming-of-age story . . . As he did in Sleepers and Apaches, Carcaterra shows dexterity in humanizing the denizens of the urban underbelly. Through a fine characterization of the enigmatic Vestieri, he provides a stirring perspective on the ways of mobsters and their history.”
—Publishers Weekly
Read on for an excerpt from the next thriller by Lorenzo Carcaterra,
STREET BOYS
LUNGOMARE. NAPLES, ITALY.LATE NIGHT. SEPTEMBER 25, 1943.
TWO HUNDRED BOYS and girls were spread out around a large fire, the flames licking the thick, crusty wood sending sparks and smoke into the star-lit sky. Their clothes were dirty and shredded at the sleeves and cuffs, shoes held together by cardboard and string. All their memories had been scarred by the frightful cries of war and the loss that always followed. The youngest members of the group, between five and seven years old, stood with their backs to the others, tossing small pebbles into the oil-soaked Bay of Naples. The rest, their tired faces filled with hunger and sadness, the glow from the fire illuminating their plight, huddled around Vincenzo and Franco. They were children without a future, marked for an unknown destiny.
Vincenzo stepped closer to the fire and glanced up at the sky, enjoying the rare evening silence. He looked down and smiled at two small boys, Giancarlo and Antonio, playing quietly by the edge of the pier, their small legs dangling several feet above the water below. He glanced past them at a girl slowly making her way toward him, squeezing past a cluster of boys standing idle and silent. She was tall, about fifteen, with rich brown hair rolled up and buried under a cap two sizes too large. Her tan face was marred by streaks of soot and dirt. She stepped between Vincenzo and the two boys, her arms by her side, an angry look to her soft eyes.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked.
“The hills,” Vincenzo said with a slight shrug. “It seems the safest place. At least for now.”
“And after that?” she asked in a voice younger than her years.
“What’s your name?” Vincenzo asked, the flames from the fire warming his face.
“Angela,” she said. “I lived in Forcella with my family. Now, I live there alone.”
Forcella was the roughest neighborhood in Naples, a tight space of only a few blocks that historically had been the breeding ground for thieves and killers and the prime recruitment territory for the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. “Forcella?” Vincenzo said to her. “Not even a Nazi would be brave enough to set foot on those streets.”
“Especially after dark,” Franco said, laughing.
“But they did,” Angela said, lowering her eyes for a brief moment.
“What do you want me to do?” Vincenzo said. “Where do you think we should go? Look around you. This is all that’s left of us.”
“So we run,” she said, words laced with sarcasm. “Like always.”
Vincenzo stepped closer toward her, his face red from both the fire and his rising anger. “There is nothing else to do,” he said. “You can help us with some of the little ones. A lot of them are too sick to walk.”
Angela glared at Vincenzo for several moments, lowered her head and then turned back into the mouth of the crowd.
• • •
VINCENZO WALKED IN silence around the edges of the fire, the sounds of the crackling wood mixing with the murmurs of the gathered teens. They were all children forced to bear the burden of adults, surviving on the barest essentials, living like cornered animals in need of shelter and a home. They had been scattered throughout the city, gutter rats in soiled clothing, enduring the daily thrashings of a war started by strangers in uniforms who spoke of worlds to conquer.
They were born under the reign of Benito Mussolini and his fascist regime.
For close to two decades, the majority of Italians thrived under the rule of the Black Shirts. From 1922 until 1939, Italy underwent a rebirth of national pride and spirit, as old roads and structures were rebuilt, the train system modernized and the grip of organized crime loosened by the strict rules imposed by Il Duce’s followers. While the United States suffered through the pangs of a Great Depression, Italy lived under the warmth of economic prosperity. Its fields were flush with crops and its factories filled to capacity with the products that brought the country head-first into the modern age. But those were the years before the alliance with Adolph Hitler and a World War that never seemed to end. Now, the fields were burnt and barren, the factories bombed and bare. Where there was once hope rested only hunger. Where visions of great victories filled all Italian hearts, there was now nothing more than the somber acceptance of a humiliating defeat. And the people of a country that was once told by a dictator that every one of their dreams would come true, found themselves once again thrust in the middle of a nightmare, a long line of innocent lives left tumbling in thier wake.
“Naples has always been ruled by outsiders,” Vincenzo said, stopping alongside Franco and tossing two more planks of old wood onto the fire. “We’ve always been someone’s prisoner. But in all that time, the people have never surrendered the streets without a fight. This war, against this enemy, would be the first time that has ever happened.”
“Who are we to stop it?” Franco said, staring into his friend’s eyes.
Vincenzo stood in front of the flames, his shirt and arms stained with sweat, light gray smoke filled his lungs. He then turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness of the Naples night.
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2001 by Lorenzo Carcaterra
Excerpt from Street Boys copyright © 2002 by Lorenzo Carcaterra
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edition of Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-45954-1
v3.0
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