Savage Kiss

by Roberto Saviano

  “He won’t bite anymore,” said Nicolas, his eyes focused on L’Arcangelo and the smile of someone ready to savor the scene. “Do you recognize him, Don Vitto’?”

  L’Arcangelo was motionless, his face white; ‘o Cicognone, covering mouth and nose with the bottom of his T-shirt, stepped close to the box again. In a greenish fluid, with black veins running through it, studded with worn-out magic pine tree deodorizers, floated a man’s head.

  “Why, it’s ’o Tigrotto, Don Vitto’,” said ’o Cicognone in the piercing voice of a little boy on his birthday.

  “Now your son Gabriele can rest in peace,” said Nicolas.

  L’Arcangelo got up from where he was sitting, took a step, getting close enough to peek into the box, and then collapsed back into the armchair. Nicolas was now looking at a decrepit old man, stunned, mouth agape, the same man who just a few weeks earlier had kicked him out of the house. He’d dropped his Toscano cigar on the floor, while ’o Cicognone continued to shout, “’O Tigrotto! ’O Tigrotto! ’O Tigrotto!” extremely excited, to the point that he actually stuck both hands into that purulent water and hauled out the head of Gabriele Grimaldi’s murderer.

  “Put down this death’s head,” L’Arcangelo ordered, then went over to hug Nicolas. He held him tight, and stood there for a while like that, chest to chest, his arms crossed over Nicolas’s back, like a couple of lovers who hadn’t seen each other in far too long. At last Don Vittorio straightened up, placed both hands on Nicolas’s ears, and pulled him close. A kiss with lips clamped. Nicolas was overwhelmed by L’Arcangelo’s cologne. He felt his stomach contract, but only for a second, because he actually felt fine. On his tongue, he felt the silence that is created between father and son when they make peace.

  All was forgiven and now they could start over. They were even now—but from two different positions; the father who punishes and absolves, the son who learns and grows, surpassing the parent.

  ’O Cicognone had come back to the kitchen to get the Chivas Regal so they could drink a toast, caught somewhere between a repressed urge to vomit and a proliferation of sweet words in memory of Gabriele and libelous insults against ’o Tigrotto.

  Nicolas wanted to tell him about the general Hasdrubal Barca who lost to Scipio, who then sliced off his head, which is the way of victors. He’d watched the documentary on the History Channel, even he couldn’t have said how many times he’d sat through it, and he’d prepared very specific words to say to L’Arcangelo. But that impetus Don Vittorio had shown, and the way he was still holding him tight, had jumbled that little speech in his head, so all he could get out was the question: “Don Vitto’, is this loyalty enough to make you trust the paranza?” And as he said it, he realized that he ached for another one of those fatherly kisses. “We’re allies,” he forced himself to continue, “we’re a single thing, united,” and in the meantime he wondered if this was what it felt like to be a son.

  L’Arcangelo gazed at him contentedly, nodding his head almost imperceptibly, stroking Nicolas’s cheek. The sound of clinking called them out of that embrace. ’O Cicognone had come back with three champagne flutes full to the brim. For that very special occasion the whiskey had to be consumed out of party glasses.

  “Cicogno’,” said Don Vittorio, jabbing his thumb at ’o Tigrotto’s head, “go throw this garbage in the garbage. And look out for the video cameras.”

  They were alone again. “Whoever avenges a son becomes a son,” said L’Arcangelo, accompanying Nicolas out onto the balcony. The air was hot, suffocatingly so, but still better than the air in the apartment: ’o Cicognone would take quite a while to get rid of that stench. Side by side, hands grasping the railing, they looked out in silence at that expanse of buildings and streets, and farther on was the heart of the city, invisible but perceptible. All the way down was the sea. Nicolas knew that it was up to Don Vittorio to break that silence. He had brought him the head of his enemy; now L’Arcangelo would return the gesture by revealing a secret to him. It’s by sharing secrets that you distinguish a real relationship from a false one.

  “Maraja,” said Don Vittorio, and then he stopped. He’d used his title and it was right to let it hover between them for a while.

  “Maraja,” he continued, “a contact is like water, everyone drinks it but they don’t know where it comes from. Only one person can know the contact. But not even all of that person: the ears can’t hear, the stomach can’t digest it, the mouth can’t even know who it is. Only your heart can know it. The more people know your contact, the more your contact is burned once and for all.”

  Nicolas knew all these things, and L’Arcangelo knew that he knew them, but that’s the way it had to go.

  “I’m giving you the keys to the safe, Maraja.”

  Nicolas nodded. He knew that, too.

  “The contact’s in Albania,” he said, looking into the distance again, “his name is Malen Duda, aka Mario ’o Bross. I’ll call him. Starting tomorrow, you’re me as far as he’s concerned. ’O Bross does business from four to six in the morning, but he decides which days. Now I’ll arrange a date for you to go.”

  Nicolas turned to look at L’Arcangelo. “Don Vitto’…” he began, but then he stopped immediately. Everything had gone better than expected. He’d won forgiveness, regained trust, and got access to the cocaine, hashish, and marjiuana. He had everything. What should I do, he asked himself, say thanks and go?

  “Are you wearing fresh underwear?” L’Arcangelo asked, surprising him.

  “Yes, Don Vitto’.”

  “Then that’s all you need.”

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “Because you’re leaving right now.”

  THE CONTACT

  On the Naples–Tirana flight, Nicolas Maraja had had the impression he was flying straight into the heart of his kingdom, and he’d fallen asleep amid fantasies of elephants, plantations as far as the eye could see, and flying carpets. I’m going to take my scepter, had been his first thought upon reawakening, as the plane descended into the Albanian capital.

  His first flight had gone just fine, and when the wheels touched down on the runway, he’d shown his approval of the trip’s completion with a burst of solitary applause. Now he was looking out the windows of the car that had picked him up at the airport. He’d climbed in with a hunch that this was the Range Rover that Aucelluzzo had described to him when he’d given him the airline tickets. The interior of the car was austere and bare, it was like being in a tour bus; the doors had no handles on the inside, and this detail, rather than unsettling him, reassured him: he was in the right place, that certainly had to be the car that Mario ’o Bross used to transport people. The driver, concealed behind a panel of smoked glass, still hadn’t spoken a word. He was driving the Range Rover through traffic, pushing at speed and with arrogance, and before long Nicolas saw Tirana spread out before his rapt eyes. Big, square, majestic buildings, which he imagined just as teeming with people as those in his own city—though these buildings bore the marks of the passage of time differently. You could clearly see a before and an after: the rough gray of the façades shifted sharply in color, and then dulled back to gray after just a few yards. “It looks like the work of some crazy painter!” he said aloud, as if the driver really was someone you could chat with.

  The car slowed to a crawl, now the traffic was intense; outside the window, Nicolas heard music he hadn’t noticed before. The eighties hit song, popular with Italians living overseas, “L’italiano” by Toto Cutugno.

  “Fuck, we have quite the musical connoisseur in the front seat,” he commented sarcastically. The volume sank until the music was indistinguishable from the rumble of the engine, turning at low r.p.m.

  “We’re almost there,” said a voice in perfect Italian, with a light Pugliese accent. It came out of a loudspeaker hidden somewhere in the car, and Nicolas spoke loudly in response: “Is this the road to Lazarat?”

  A harsh, metallic burst of laughter filled the interior of th
e vehicle, followed by hacking coughs, the coughs of a smoker, and of someone who hadn’t laughed that hard in quite some time. “Son”—the driver’s voice this time had gained a hint of warmth—“Lazarat is just a sweet dream. Before you get there, you have to go to the office.”

  The Range Rover lunged forward and Nicolas grabbed the headrest to keep from being slung against the car window. Outside, the great anonymous apartment blocks had given way to modern apartment buildings, looming high in the sky. Fountains, well-tended streets, busy, well-dressed people. His disappointment over Lazarat passed quickly: it’s in these buildings that the decisions are made, he told himself, the plantations are postcards for tourists.

  “Here we are,” the driver said at last, turning down the ramp to an underground parking structure.

  Livello −2. The metal panel was written in Italian, as were the directions to the elevator. The driver had pushed a button to pop the door open: “Go up to the sixth floor, someone will meet you there.” Then, again without setting foot outside the Range Rover, he added a “Buona fortuna, ragazzo,” a phrase that somehow rang spectral. Nicolas hurried toward the elevator, four walls covered with fake wooden planking.

  It’s all a fake, Nicolas thought to himself. He felt strangely at ease in that city, it reminded him of the time—a time that seemed all too distant—when he had put together the paranza. No means, no resources, just a burning ambition to reach the top, to become number one. Tirana was small, not yet powerful, but it dared to pose as a financial center, like that building with an old freight elevator that ran down to collect its visitors directly on the parking level. The point was to churn out business, and who the fuck cared if the floors weren’t polished to a sheen or the wall-to-wall carpeting was coming up at the corners.

  The elevator doors slid open onto a reception area.

  “You would be Signor Fiorillo?” asked a woman of indeterminate age, who seemed to have been waiting her whole life for his arrival.

  “Yes, I’m Signor Fiorillo,” said Nicolas. No one had ever called him signore before.

  “Please go right in.” And she pointed the way down the hall on Nicolas’s right.

  In the conference room the executive chairs were still wrapped in plastic. The ficus plants and coffee machines, the luminous whiteboard and the black conference table with outlets for laptops—everything there was ready to be inaugurated. A corner window looked out on the neighborhood below, but before Nicolas had a chance to take anything more than a perfunctory glance, a man’s voice from behind him summoned his attention: “Signor Fiorillo.” Two men in suits and ties, both bald and with wired earpieces running under their shirt collars, stood looking at him, arms crossed on their chests, as they might have seen in some film about CIA agents.

  Either their suits are too small, Nicolas thought immediately, or they spend too much time working out.

  “Come with us,” said one of the two men, while the other stepped close to Nicolas, and together they escorted him to the office across from the conference room.

  * * *

  Nicolas couldn’t see Mario ’o Bross because he was circumfused with light. The light came pouring in through a skylight over the door, bouncing off a painting that L’Arcangelo’s contact had arranged to have hung behind his back (a red cube contained inside a yellow cube). That flood of light overwhelmed the visitor, who, for an instant, found himself blinded. Slowly, Nicolas was able to focus on the aluminum desk, the 27-inch iMac, the white sinusoidal office chair. And last of all, the contact himself, the broker. Handlebar mustache, black hair parted to one side, white shirt without a tie, jacket with a blue pocket square. And for an instant, Nicolas felt as if he’d stumbled onto the set on an old porn film, except that really the man was a perfect copy of Nintendo’s plumber. Mario. The spitting image, thought Nicolas.

  Mario ’o Bross gestured for him to take a seat.

  “Why didn’t you blindfold me when you brought me here?” Nicolas asked, rudely dragging the chair closer to the desk. “That’s what Pablo would have done.”

  “Signor Fiorillo, this isn’t an episode of Narcos,” the other man replied with a smile. “Things are decided by accountants, bureaucrats, and business consultants these days. We make the numbers work, and the numbers make things work. There’s no such thing as Pablo anymore.” He, too, spoke a passable Italian, but a few words now and then struggled to get out right. He double-clicked on his Bluetooth mouse, and then did it again: he’d found the file he was looking for and now he was scanning it.

  Nicolas thought about the gentle slopes of Lazarat, saw himself as he’d imagined the scene during the flight: intently stroking the tops of marjiuana plants stretching out as far as the eye could see, discussing the properties of the soil, the quantity of water required for irrigation. All the same, he had to confess that those words—signore, business, partner—did make him feel bigger, greater somehow.

  In Naples the term of address signore would have been considered effeminate by the paranza. But overseas, it was the first step toward his dream, which was to call himself Don Nicolas Maraja.

  “Vabbuo’, Marietto,” said Nicolas, but the other man didn’t seem to take the nickname assigned him amiss. “So now what do we do?”

  “Now what do we do?”’o Bross parroted back to him. “Signor Fiorillo, that’s something you need to tell me. In your opinion, do you think I built this import-export waste business by asking questions of the sort?” Nicolas understood that, in spite of his outward calm, the man was starting to lose patience.

  “How much is the ante?” Mario ’o Bross asked. A quick swipe of the mouse, just one click, as if closing the file that he’d opened before.

  “The ante…?” Nicolas stammered.

  “The system administrator. Who’s sysadmin?”

  Nicolas hesitated and ’o Bross inundated him with new questions: “Who’s taking care of customs? And the cover shipments. What cover shipments have you arranged? You need to have a man at every stop along the way. Do you have enough men?”

  He’d stood up and now he was planting both fists on the desktop. “Don’t you know that the job of system administrator is the most highly paid position in this whole line of business?” He’d lost all his composure, and in his vehemence he was spitting out drops of saliva along with the words. “Don’t you know that without a system administrator, any broker or one of those narcos that you’re so crazy about would be forced to deal door-to-door without ever being able to set foot outside his neighborhood? Don’t you know that a system administrator might not even see the stuff once in his whole fucking life?”

  “Of course, I know all that,” Nicolas bluffed. He, too, had got to his feet, and now he was staring straight into Mario ’o Bross’s eyes.

  “So where do we situate him, huh? Where do we place him?”’o Bross attacked him. Not even schoolteachers bore down so hard during oral exams. But then he lowered his voice: “But why do they send me little kids? Grow up, Fiorillo, and then we’ll talk.” Mario ’o Bross strode toward the door, and in the blink of an eye he’d walked through it, shutting it behind him. Nicolas chased after him, shouting, “Hey, what the hell!” and threw the door open and grabbed Mario ’o Bross from behind, but the two bodyguards lifted him physically and carried him back into the office. They set him down on the chair and then stood on either side of him, like a pair of gendarmes. After a few minutes, Mario ’o Bross returned to his seat at the desk, calmer now: “The only reason I don’t just eliminate you is respect for L’Arcangelo.”

  “It’s not L’Arcangelo who saved me,” said Nicolas, “it’s the fact that you need the money that the Piranhas can bring you.”

  “We’ll use the money from your paranza for coasters under our beer glasses. Show some respect. Let’s start over from the beginning, Fiorillo. Who is your system administrator?”

  Mario ’o Bross simply wanted to make his own earnings as high as possible and depress the paranza’s to the lowest. Nicolas crossed his legs and
knitted the fingers of both hands together on his knee.

  “We don’t have a system administrator,” he replied.

  “You see, you know the answers already, Fiorillo! So let’s do this. I’ll pay the system administrator up front and we’ll deduct that from your end.”

  In the two hours that followed they settled all their issues. Varying quantities and qualities for weed, hash, and cocaine, cover shipments, numbers of containers, methods of recovery, emergency fallback plans, percentages, systems of communication. Everything.

  At the end of this intensive course on how to become the compleat narco, Nicolas felt exhausted and ravenous. He felt happy, and he felt the impulse to tell Mario ’o Bross so, but he restrained himself.

  “Grazie” was all he said.

  “Grazie a lei, Signor Fiorillo,” retorted Mario ’o Bross, couching his “thank you” in the formal lei that they’d started out with, now that the meeting was about to end. “One last thing,” he added as he buttoned his jacket. “You understand that you’re now in possession of extremely sensitive information and I can’t just let you wander around Tirana. Your plane takes off in thirty-six hours, and I need you to spend the time here, in my office. But don’t worry: my men will bring you provisions, enough to keep the wolf from the door. So long, Fiorillo, it’s been a pleasure.”

  “Fuck, thirty-six hours. But where do I sleep?”

  “The wall-to-wall carpeting is very comfortable.”

  Nicolas was tempted to say, “This just isn’t happening,” but he swallowed his words and watched Mario ’o Bross leave the office, followed by his bodyguards, who locked the door behind them.