The paranza had just paid ten thousand euros for a delivery van that might be worth half that, optimistically, but an extra five thousand euros was a tip they could easily afford. Briato’ took the wheel, while the others handed out roses and tulips to the girls they met on the street: “You’re a flower among flowers,” “A rose for a rose.”
Viola’s shop had three plate-glass windows on a corner: Drago’s SUV would shatter the display window with a swerving side impact and then it would be able to continue on its way. The job would be simpler that way, and they wouldn’t have to clean out the car to loot the shop. Drago’ shook his head: “Destroying my brand-new Maserati is one fucked-up idea.”
“Just the tip of the car’s hood, Drago’.”
“Fuck off, Nico’. Let’s just use the delivery truck, no?” Drago’ tried again.
“So how are we going to take the stuff away from here?”
“There’s always Briato’s Cayenne.”
“No, it rides too low. We need your car. Adda murì mammà, you’ve busted my balls once and for all, Drago’, I’ll buy it off you,” Nicolas snapped, and Drago’ realized he had no choice but to give in.
The “Celeste” sign was purple. A clash of colors that was annoying, but apparently the owner of the shop had decided to claim it openly and with determination, considering that in one corner she’d placed her initials with flourishes and curlicues: VSF, Viola Striano Faella.
Lollipop went to get the SUV; he was going to drive it as a battering ram. Drago’ would drive the Fiat Scudo. Now they just had to wait for Rome to empty out a little bit, so there was less traffic, fewer people.
Around midnight the noise in the streets subsided and, like in a fairy tale, the city seemed to put on its slippers.
“Out in sixty seconds, are we ready, guagliu’?” Nicolas asked, but it wasn’t a question.
None of them tried to conceal their presence: they just stood there, some smoking cigarettes, others with their arms crossed as if waiting for a bus, as untroubled as professional safecrackers. The SUV with Lollipop at the wheel appeared, moving slowly—if it rammed the shop window of Celeste at 60 m.p.h., there was a good chance the driver would spin out of control and smash into the building across the way. Instead, the plan was to limit the sharp, fast acceleration to a final sprint of the last few yards. Lollipop rolled to a distance of about a hundred and fifty feet from the expanse of glass and shifted into first gear. The grinding manual transmission echoed in the Roman night.
First came the noise, like a waterfall crashing down onto boulders. It was almost a peaceful sound, reassuring, and in the end the shattering glass built up incrementally into a terrifying roar. Drone filmed the whole scene with his high-definition smartphone: the powerful silhouette of the SUV shunting through the havoc of breaking glass and screeching metal, and all around, a hail of crystal shards. He ended the video with a wheeling panoramic shot, to record for posterity the lights switching on in the apartments and the shutters timidly swinging open.
Ten seconds or so after ramming through the front window, Lollipop stepped out of the Maserati unhurt and triumphant, twerking the way he’d seen Jamaican girls do on YouTube. In the meantime, the others had darted into the store, while from the same street the SUV had come down, Drago’ was approaching at the wheel of the Fiat Scudo, with the side doors already open.
“Fifty seconds,” said Nicolas.
The paranza grabbed everything they could lay their hands on. Shoes, boots, handbags, but the paintings on the walls too, the carpets, the armchairs.
“Thirty seconds.”
Viola was going to have to answer “Everything” when the carabinieri asked: “What did they take, signora?”
“Ten seconds: get out of here!”
The paranza piled into the Cayenne, while Nicolas leaped first onto the hood and then the roof of the Fiat Scudo. He pulled out the knife that L’Arcangelo had given him and, next to the logo, complete with fluttering curlicues that Viola had placed under the name of the shop—VSF—he carved the letter and numbers F12. He jumped down and got behind the wheel of the Scudo, which placidly puttered out of Italy’s capital. In the seat next to him. Drago’ gazed out the window, sunken in the springs and upholstery, his eyes on the abandoned Maserati.
* * *
The paranza was celebrating its knockover at the Casilina Ovest roadside diner when Viola woke up Micione, shaking him by the arm.
“They robbed me, Diego! Those traitors! Those snot-nosed kids! Doesn’t family count for anything anymore, Diego? Answer me! Do something!”
Micione sat up and tried to focus on his wife, who was already fully dressed and made up. What time is it? he wondered, but what he said was: “What’s happened, my love?”
“It’s the Piranhas. They destroyed Celeste. They took everything. We’ve got to do something, Diego!”
“Are you sure it was them, my love?”
“Those pieces of shit basically signed their work.”
Micione sat back down, propping the cushion comfortably behind his back. Those kids were overdoing it now. First the piazzas and now his legal businesses. What were they driving at? Then he, too, stood up and went over to hug her. Viola is right, Micione thought, I have to do something.
* * *
While Nicolas and his men were playing at being tourists, Stavodicendo was lying on his bed, repeating the mantra that he had used as a child to make the time go by: “Garella, Bruscolotti, Ferrara, Bagni, Ferrario, Renica, Caffarelli, De Napoli, Giordano, Maradona, Carnevale, Romano, Marino, Volpecina, Sola, Muro, Bigliardi, Di Fusco. Coach: Ottavio Bianchi.”
That handler of wanted men on the run, whom Nicolas had hired to pass meals for him through a hole in the wall, along with scraps of information, had also brought him a tray of cookies as an extra treat. He knew that that night the paranza was going to ram its way into Viola’s shop, and that then they’d give the authentic handbags to the vendors along with the counterfeits. To insult her. To mortify her. The plan amused him and he was happy that the paranza had sent those crunchy pastries as a way of drawing him into the celebration, but having a valid excuse not to take part in the operation also relaxed him. No one was going to look to Stavodicendo to display the courage that he often lacked: all things considered, being on the lam had its advantages.
He was so sick of being on the run that that squalid little apartment had struck him, after just a few days, as a cozy and welcoming nest. When he’d been in Milan, it had taken him a while to stop jerking in fear at every small sound, at every insistent glance, but here, where not even daylight could penetrate, he felt protected. The fears that he’d expressed to Nicolas had evaporated, because now he understood that it was just a matter of being patient.
To kill some time, he thought about soccer: he’d been thinking about it, truth be told, but in here it was a passion he could easily cultivate. He’d asked the hands that provided him with food to bring him a championship calendar and from then on he’d obsessively studied it for days at a time. He was anxiously awaiting the Naples-Juventus game. It wouldn’t be long now. From the walled-in neighborhood, the echo of the city reached him, muffled, and it seemed to him that it wouldn’t be too very dangerous to sneak out for the ninety minutes of the match. He’d studied the door that sealed him in for quite some time now and he’d noticed that the bricks weren’t solidly connected, they looked like stacks of Lego piled up by an apathetic child. If he gave it a hard shove, he could knock it down. Or at least he’d give it a try; it would be worth it. In the meantime, he waited for the day and ate his pastries.
* * *
The next day, Micione summoned ’o Pagliaccio and ’o Gialluto and started questioning them.
“All right, how many shops and cafés pay monthly protection to the paranza?”
“How do I know?”’o Gialluto replied.
“Pagliaccio, which ones?”
“How do I know?”’o Pagliaccio replied, following suit.
Micion
e blew up: “You never know a fucking thing, how can it be? How much do you make a year, you? Two million euros. And you? Four million. And that’s not counting the shops, the business, everything you do. You exist because I exist. And you don’t know a fucking thing.”
“Give me my orders, and I’ll execute them.”
The historic center filled up with new faces, as if a foreign army had marched out of San Giovanni a Teduccio to sow terror. A man walked into Zi’ Pe’s delicatessen and fired a shot into the counter—the bullet came to rest in a mortadella. “Next time, that bullet will wind up in the middle of your forehead, if you keep paying off the Piranhas.” Another man from the Faellas’ gang fired a burst of bullets from an AK-47 into the clothing store, and before turning to go, shouted that they must never again pay so much as a penny to Maraja. They stuck knives into the tires of a delivery van that was unloading merchandise and warned the driver that from that day forward, this territory was off limits to him, if he dared to go on paying the Piranhas.
The terrified shopkeepers complied, some of them felt relieved, as if they’d been liberated from a tax. “So now who do we pay?” they asked, but received no answer, because Micione had issued no instructions on that point. ’O Pagliaccio and ’o Gialluto coordinated their soldiers, scolding them good-naturedly when they overdid it a little, and in the end they, too, went into a pastry shop, ordering pastries in abundance, but when the time came to pay, drawing their handguns: “If you continue to pay the Piranhas, this is the money you’ll be paid in, pure lead.”
When they told Micione about it, he paid them no mind. He’d been exposed; now he’d publicly acknowledged the power of the Piranhas, who had been able to buy the shops that he had just ripped out of their grips. What could I do? he justified himself. When they lay hands on your wife, there’s no such thing as strategy, you just have to lash out blindly.
* * *
It was Drone who informed Nicolas, who already knew everything.
“No one’s paying us anymore, they’re taking our shops away. Even the restaurants we’re protecting have gone back to the shitty old online reviews.”
“Well, that must mean that the restaurants we’re protecting serve bad food,” Nicolas replied sarcastically. He’d already worked out his anger by destroying a few of the tables in their private room.
“What are you talking about, Nico’?” asked Drago’. “When on earth? It seems as if you’re living on another planet—here they’re taking everything away from us. If you don’t know how to protect, you’re not protected. And you know that very well.”
“And where the fuck were you all? When you want to piss and moan, you all come here,” said Nicolas. He could sense the violence from before starting to surge up inside him again, and he kicked them all out, all except Tucano.
“We need to impose our will,” he said, “we need to send a signal, we need to show our strength. Go challenge ’o Gialluto’s dog.”
“But Skunk isn’t ready,” said Nicolas.
“But ’o Gialluto’s dog is a piece of shit, he’s an all-black German shepherd, they just make sure he wins because he’s ’o Gialluto’s.”
Nicolas nodded his head, unconvinced and worried about Skunk. But she was a member of the paranza, too. A female soldier of the paranza.
* * *
’O Pagliaccio’s men were working full-time. They entered and left Forcella, making it clear that the Piranhas were no longer in command, and then they started hunting down Stavodicendo. Micione had made it very clear. He wanted the head of Vincenzo Esposito, aka Stavodicendo, he wanted to get his hands on that kid who had made him look like a fool in the newspapers, by adding ’o Tigrotto’s death to Roipnol’s murder.
’O Pagliaccio was heading out to an ARCI organization restaurant and club in Forcella. But first he was going to see the Naples-Juventus game, and then he’d play his usual game with the proprietor. Maraja was done. The Piranhas were done.
And that’s where he saw him.
Alone, sitting at a table, with a Red Bull in his hand. On the television set hanging in a corner, the game was under way. He couldn’t believe that he’d just stumbled upon him, that he had him at his mercy, here and now. ’O Pagliaccio walked in, indifferent to the few witnesses; this was an opportunity he couldn’t overlook. He stepped a little closer and fired.
The bullet entered Stavodicendo’s cranium and exited on the other side, lodging in the wall. A perfect hole, cauterized instantly. Only then did the heads of the other customers swivel in that direction, but ’o Pagliaccio had already taken to his heels.
PYRE
It was a warm winter. School was soporiferous, for those who still attended, and the afternoons drowned in lassitude. The supply that was supposed to arrive from Mario ’o Bross was nowhere to be seen and the paranza had nothing to do: they got bored, just like in the old days. Maraja, on the other hand, was increasingly edgy, continually making phone calls to talk to the system administrators, the Albanians in charge of transporting the cocaine. He frequently seemed distracted, absentminded.
“That’s normal,” Briato’ had said. “Now he’s about to become a father, he has a lot of responsibilities.”
“And he wants a mortgage for the place in Vomero,” Pesce Moscio added, since Nicolas had asked him for some advice about the neighborhood. “And then there’s ’o White, who expects his end, you can imagine how he pounds his balls…” Lollipop had piled on. They’d all started laughing and decided that the next day they’d do something different to distract him. Tucano suggested: “Shall we have a grill at the lair?”
The lair had undergone progressive improvements, technological upgrades that Drone had installed personally. The thing Drone was proudest of was the Bluetooth audio system that he’d connected to the paranza’s phones so that when they were still on the stairs all they had to do was touch their screens and in the apartment the woofers of the four Marshall Stanmore speakers were already pumping out bass notes. They’d agreed by unanimous vote on the password to connect to the system: “Stavodicendo.”
After a long back-and-forth with Drago’, they’d gutted the old television set and used its carcass as a narcotics safe for their own personal consumption. To replace it, Drone had opted for an 84-inch 3D Ultra-HD television set.
Nicolas had chosen to shuffle his playlist of Enzo Dong, and he’d sprawled on the sofa, taking up every inch of its length, while the others busied themselves around the grill, claiming superior knowledge when it came to barbecuing meat. Lately he’d thought back frequently to ’o White’s accusation, that there was a traitor in his paranza. At first he’d taken it for one of the usual pieces of bullshit, but then he’d noticed a series of details, muttered words, and he’d started doing a few stakeouts.
The smoke from the grill filled the lair, and Briato’, limping quickly along with his cane, ran into the bedroom to open the window to create a draft. A two-door red Smeg refrigerator that occupied almost half of the bedroom wall had for some time now been set aside as their cooling unit, and so the beers started circulating. The party could begin.
Eight young men spending their time eating steaks and drinking beer, mocking one another savagely and tenderly cultivating their dreams, sitting cross-legged on the floor as if they were out in the woods camping. That’s what they were that afternoon. Money, drugs, L’Arcangelo, the confederation with the Longhairs—it all seemed to be put in parentheses and postponed until tomorrow. The redemption of youth.
Briato’ grabbed the ketchup bottle and drowned his steak in red sauce. “Adda murì mammà,” he said after taking a bite. “Fucking disgusting!”
Lollipop talked about his new girlfriend, the umpteenth. She was at the university and liked threesomes with another girl.
“Oh, fuck off, Lollipo’,” said Drago’, “the girl you’re talking about is Rosie, your five-fingered girlfriend.” And he tossed him a chunk of sausage that stained his white shirt. They all burst out laughing, even Lollipop.
&
nbsp; In the background, Enzo Dong was saying that on the Italia 1 TV network they did more dealing than he ever had, while Nicolas regulated the volume with his cell phone. Every so often a chorus would start up: “’O Sicario! ’O Sicario! ’O Sicario!” and Biscottino was forced to take a drink from his can of Heineken.
It was a time for fucking around, when you discover that even more than members of the paranza, you’re just friends.
Pesce Moscio sang along with Enzo Dong’s lyrics, adding a few of his own, while the others bobbed their heads up and down. All except for Nicolas. The others were keeping their eyes on him and they noticed it immediately.
“Maraja,” shouted Drone, “go on, slice this provolone!” And he tossed him the cheese. Nicolas, still sprawled on the sofa, caught it in midair, though he had to jam the steak he’d been gnawing on into his mouth in order to free up his hands. Then he undid the string on the provolone and wrapped it around his wrist: “The provolone paranza,” he said, and the others all burst out laughing.
“Tuca’,” said Nicolas, “pass me the cleaver.” The “cleaver” was a knife with an eight-inch blade that he’d found while rummaging through the kitchen drawers.
Nicolas started slicing the cheese. He would cut a slice and then lay it on the blade of the cleaver, and extend it to the others.
“Let’s take communion, Maraja,” said Tucano, cautiously receiving his slice.
“Ua’,” said Briato’, “now Maraja is handing out the bread to the Apostles.”
One at a time, they all gathered around Nicolas, who continued to slice the provolone. Lollipop fell to his kness, hands clasped in prayer, and let Nicolas slip the piece of cheese directly into his mouth.
Savage Kiss Page 26
