Savage Kiss

by Roberto Saviano

  “Everyone take some,” said Nicolas.

  “Amen,” they replied, amid gales of laughter.

  “Bless me, Father! Bless me!!!” shouted Pesce Moscio, pretending to talk in tongues, and he took his piece of cheese over to the grill to toast it.

  Drone got down on his knees and raised his arms, as if he were venerating a holy man.

  “Come on, Drone,” said Nicolas, “I’m going to let you take communion, even if you’re a Muslim infidel.”

  A general round of laughter, and the sound of pull tabs on beer cans.

  When it was Biscottino’s turn, Nicolas called for silence, laying on the hands, and everyone stopped talking, with no sound in the air except for the noise of mouths chomping on provolone. And the music pounding away.

  “’O Sicario! ’O Sicario! ’O Sicario!” Lollipop started shouting, jumping up and down on the cushions, and the others followed him in that savage dance.

  “’O Sicario! ’O Sicario! ’O Sicario!” Biscottino shouted along with him, raising high his can of beer. After all those difficult weeks, he finally felt relatively carefree.

  Nicolas stuck the cleaver in the back pocket of his jeans, and once again displayed the palms of his hands.

  “Maraja! Maraja! Maraja!”

  Then he stood up and, starting to sing along with Enzo Dong, invited them all to form a circle, the arms of each on his neighbors’ shoulders. They started singing and spinning faster and faster, in the smoke from the grill that the wind was once again pushing indoors:

  “Maraja! ’O Sicario! Maraja! ’O Sicario!”

  We’ve never been so united, thought Nicolas, as he observed the sweaty faces of his paranza as they circled around him. Drago’. Drone. Lollipop. Tucano. Briato’. Pesce Moscio. Biscottino. Just how beautiful are we, right? he told himself. A step in one direction, a step in the other, and off they went in a dizzyingly fast complete rotation, with Drone falling and then being jerked upright with a massive tug from Drago’, and then they were off again, spinning in the opposite direction, and this time it was Briato’ who lost his balance, hopping along on his good leg, he too hauled back aboard like a man who had fallen into the sea. In the end, they’d all come to a halt, packed close, panting into one another’s faces.

  Oooh, I have fun only if the one

  Who dies is a Higuain, a traitor.

  And everyone:

  Oooh, I have fun only if the one

  Who dies is a Higuain, a traitor.

  When the next verse came around, Nicolas turned and faced them all, drowning out their voices: “The best team is one with me and only me.”

  He looked at each and every one of them, pulled the cleaver out of his pocket, and speared what remained of the provolone. “’O Sicario wants to play on a team that consists of him and him alone,” he said.

  Drago’ laughed, and the others laughed with him. Nicolas’s voice was deadly serious, but after all, it was a Carnival afternoon, every joke was allowed.

  Only Biscottino wasn’t laughing: “I don’t play alone,” he said. “I always pass the ball.”

  “Ua’, Maraja, ’o Sicario has a point here,” said Lollipop, and he slapped Biscottino generously on the back.

  “How true,” said Nicolas, “but still, he does play alone.”

  “Maraja,” Biscottino defended himself, “I performed the ritual with the rest. We’re all part of the same blood, we’re all bros.”

  Nicolas lowered the volume on the music to zero: “Are you really sure, Biscotti’, that we’re brothers? Because if you ask me that blood oath wasn’t worth a thing, it didn’t do a bit of good.”

  “What do you mean?” Tucano exclaimed. “Afterward my dick grew to twice the size!”

  More laughter and voices that overlapped, hastening to contradict Maraja, like in some new game of that afternoon’s fiesta: “So did my wallet!” said Drone.

  “And I go wherever I go, but I always feel that I’m with my brothers,” said Drago’.

  Biscottino, on the other hand, stood there, silent, his big eyes focused on Nicolas.

  When Nicolas shouted the refrain into Biscottino’s face, though, the others finally realized that this wasn’t a joke.

  “You’re not a sicario, not a paid killer,” said Nicolas. “Biscotti’, you’re a Higuain.”

  The euphoria had evaporated. The smiles were slightly twisted, the eyes narrowed to slits.

  “We put our balls in his hands, and now he’s going to get us all arrested,” Maraja went on.

  “Nico’,” Lollipop tried to say, “I don’t…”

  “There’s the social worker who comes to talk to your mother every blessed day. Tell the truth, you took money and sold us out to the police,” Nicolas accused him, at last.

  “Maraja, Biscottino is a bro, he’s the one who put a cap in Roipnol’s ass…” said Drone. And Biscottino did the only thing that Maraja wished he hadn’t. He confessed it all.

  “I didn’t tell anyone but my mother. She’s the only one who knows,” Biscottino blurted out. “She knows that I’m the one who shot Roipnol and ’a Culona, she found the pistol…” He decided it would be best to leave Pisciazziello out of it entirely, in part to limit the damage of who all knew the truth, and in part because Pisciazziello was his friend. “But I only confessed to my mother.” He exhaled. He felt better now, with a weight off his back. There, he thought, the worst is over.

  “Hey, he talked to his mamma!” said Nicolas, but it was clear that that answer didn’t satisfy him.

  “Wait, hold on, let me get this straight, what did you tell her? And who did your mamma talk to?” asked Drago’. He was pale, the ends of his hair glued to his sweaty brow.

  “No one,” Biscottino stammered.

  “Did you mother talk to the police?” Drago’ persisted.

  “Adda murì mammà, no!!!” Biscottino practically shouted, but his voice came out thin and faint.

  “What about the social worker, did she talk to the social worker?”

  “Sure, but she’s all right…” said Biscottino.

  Drago’ tried one last loophole: “Can you retract your statement?”

  “Eh,” Nicolas broke in, “and now here’s the lawyer who’ll fix the situation for us.”

  “Maraja, it’s just a social worker.” Drago’ tried to minimize.

  “And who do you think the social worker would talk to? You know that they’ve already searched the basso, and maybe they’ve already found the pistol he used to kill Roipnol.”

  “No, that’s not true. My mother threw the pistol into the sea.”

  “Right, into the sea of cops. There’s a cop car in front of your school and another one that follows your mamma everywhere. You’re already under police protection.”

  Biscottino took a step back, terrified, and whimpered, “It’s not true, it’s not like that.” He didn’t even have the strength to cry, the tears just wouldn’t come, he could only stare at the blade of the cleaver buried in the cheese.

  But it remained right where it was.

  That blade seemed like the pivot around which the entire room was spinning; everyone was staring at the steel knife but no one was moving: by remaining motionless, perhaps they thought they could make time stand still, or even make it run backward, walk out that door and never walk back through it, instead go home and have sex with their girlfriends, walk into the New Maharaja and get drunk, delete this whole experience.

  For the first time, Biscottino felt small, extremely young and small around them. Nicolas walked around behind him, rapidly untethered the string from the provolone that he’d wrapped around his wrist, grabbed both ends of it, pulled it taut, and then wrapped it around Biscottino’s neck. He’d moved so quickly that Biscottino noticed that Nicolas was behind him only when he realized that he could no longer breathe. The others, too, had been caught off guard, a couple had started to make some movement or other, but nothing more than that. Nicolas was executing Biscottino.

  The body compensate
s, it’s programmed to do that. It takes energy from one part and channels it where it’s needed most. Biscottino scraped his throat raw as he struggled to fit at least a finger between cord and flesh. As less and less oxygen reached his brain, the most obvious defense snapped into operation. It’s in that fraction of a second that the body tricks you. Even though he weighed a good forty or fifty pounds less, if it had occurred to Biscottino to struggle, to kick Nicolas in the balls with his heel, maybe he could have wriggled free, or at least staved off the inevitable for a little longer. But instead he focused on the cord.

  “What the fuck are you doing!” Drone broke in after a few seconds. He grabbed Nicolas by his belt buckle and gave it a yank. Biscottino managed to get a gulp of air into his lungs, but Nicolas shoved Drone away with a kick to his shins, yelling: “Get back!

  He stretched and pulled, and yanked again, and Biscottino’s eyesight blurred, his legs gave way beneath him. He fell to his knees, his hands still on the cord, which by now was cutting into his windpipe, the fatty odor of the provolone wafting into his nostrils. Then he sprawled headlong onto the floor, his legs shuddering in convulsions. He looked as if he were climbing a tower. Drone and Briato’ had left; the other boys gathered around Biscottino, watching motionless, staring at their feet: to meet the eyes of any of the others would have meant to share in the scandalized indignation at the murder of one of them. He might well have been a traitor, a Higuain, but he was still Biscottino.

  “That’s enough,” said Drago’, but he didn’t take a step toward that diminutive body, now motionless.

  Nicolas relaxed the straining tension in the cord. His fingers were starting to hurt. He ran a hand over his sweat-drenched forehead, then he reached that same hand out to close the eyelids of the one who had always been the puppy of the paranza. For a moment it seemed as if the boy were still breathing. He knelt down and stroked the dead boy’s hair.

  It’s over, he thought, it’s over. When he stood up from Biscottino’s body, there was no one else in the room but Tucano.

  “Now what, Maraja?” he asked.

  “Now let’s light a bonfire.”

  They went down into the street, where Biscottino’s mini-quad was parked between their scooters. Nicolas grabbed it by the handles and Tucano by the rear faring. More than a hundred pounds, carried by two guys up three flights of stairs.

  They overturned the mini-quad in the middle of the room and unfastened the cap on the gas tank. A dense wave of nearly transparent gasoline spread across the floor, licking at the sofa, the cabinet holding the 3D TV, the coffee table. Licking at Biscottino.

  Then Nicolas jumped over the puddle of fuel and went into the bedroom. It had to be in there somewhere, maybe over the bed, no, next to the armoire, there it was, right next to the big mirror. A framed photograph. The paranza, all of them together, at someone’s birthday party. Every last one of them. Even Dentino. And Biscottino. They all had their arms over one another’s shoulders, just as they had been a short while ago, there, in the lair. Nicolas shattered the glass against the corner of the bed, pulled out the picture, and rolled it up. He went back to Tucano, who was waiting for him, his Zippo open and lit. He held the picture, as if it were a wick, over the lighter’s flame and waited for it to catch.

  “Now it really is over,” he said, and tossed the photo into the gas.

  FRIENDS

  What he needed to do first and foremost was reassure the piazza bosses, make it clear to them that there would be no more highs and lows in the supply chain. From now on, the shit would come in steady, with outstanding quality and punctual deliveries. He decided to summon them all to the New Maharaja, and he asked Oscar to prepare the club as if he were holding a convention. The pushers arrived one by one or in small groups. The woman who worked in Vicaria Vecchia showed up, dressed to the nines, as if she were going to a ball after all these years; another pusher, who ran Piazza Cavour, came with his children; the guy who ran Piazza San Giorgio walked in, arms crossed over his chest, perplexed, and preferred to remain standing the whole time. Outside, Drone videotaped it all from above with a Yuneec Tornado, making sure there would be no unwelcome surprises. That little jewel of a drone had given him nothing but satisfaction, and he also used it to keep an eye on the comings and goings in the various piazzas.

  Once they were all there, the lights dimmed and the UEFA Champions League theme song started up, which in its turn triggered the smoke machine. The man from Piazza San Giorgio raised both arms over his head and shouted: “What did I tell you?! ’O Maraja is poisoning us, this is a gas chamber!”

  A surging wave of people moved toward the door, but as soon as they saw the lasers, they understood that it was all part of the theatrics and they relaxed.

  “Friends,” Nicolas began, emerging from behind a curtain in his elegantly cut suit. Friends? he thought to himself in a fleeting split second. He’d only even laid eyes on most of them a couple of times, at best, and from the paranza, there were only Tucano, Drone, and Pesce Moscio, and then there was ’o White and Carlito’s Way. Fuck, Nicolas said to himself, where’s everyone else?

  None of the piazza bosses had ventured to take a seat, as if gluing your ass to one of those plastic chairs might somehow mean giving your implicit consent. Certainly, that boy had shown that he knew what he was doing, and they’d all made money, but he still wasn’t fully reliable. Just as his people weren’t fully reliable.

  It had happened a week ago. Pesce Moscio had passed through Piazza Bellini and he hadn’t been happy, not one little bit, with what he’d seen: three kids, maybe twelve years old, peddling drugs in broad daylight. The piazza that had once belonged to Stavodicendo and now belonged to Pesce Moscio simply wasn’t getting adequate supplies, there had been a general shortage of drugs for a while now, and the piazza boss expected Micione to take back control soon. In the meantime, Piazza Bellini had become prime territory for self-made drug dealers to infiltrate. So Pesce Moscio came back carrying a Kalashnikov and with a chattering sweep of automatic fire, he’d laid them all low, piazza boss included. But that was strictly a temporary solution. Pesce Moscio knew that, and so did Nicolas, who was now going to explain why it would no longer be necessary to fall back on such extreme measures.

  “Friends,” Nicolas said again.

  A man stood up, about sixty years old. Since he was twenty, he’d been working at Piazza Bellini.

  “Before we start, Maraja,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you, in the name of us all.”

  Nicolas was annoyed by the informal tu the man had used.

  “We’re coming here,” the man continued, “and we’re coming at our own risk. You’ve supplied us with product and it’s always been first-rate shit. We started selling it, and with the money we made, we were able to pay a tax to Micione. Then we stopped paying that tax. But after that, your product stopped arriving, and now we’re going back to selling Micione’s product. We don’t want to get shot, either by you or by Micione.”

  There was an approving round of applause. Nicolas let it die down and then went on: “Friends, the rules are the same as always. They’re the same rules that applied before I was born, before my father was born. You’re the piazza bosses, you know how this works. Either you sell the product of the clan that commands your piazza or else you pay tribute to the clan and you sell product that you buy from whoever the fuck you please. But now the paranza is establishing another rule: in our piazzas, you can sell any drugs that you want. After all, we have the best product at the lowest price.”

  One of the bosses stood up: “So are you saying that I can sell someone else’s shit and you won’t shoot me?”

  “No, I won’t shoot you. Because if you’re selling someone else’s shit, it just means you’re a fool.” Nicolas stared at the heads of each and every one of them to see if they nodded, and focused on the heads of the ones who hadn’t nodded promptly, gazing hard at them. It was a liberation for those who worked on the piazzas.

  “If you sell good pr
oduct, you’re not afraid of the competition. Now that’s enough, we’ve talked too much.”

  Then came champagne, lots and lots of champagne.

  “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom for everyone!”

  “Long live the paranza!”

  They’d just made the best deal of their lives. As long as the paranza survived, they’d be free to sell whatever and as much as they pleased, and whenever they liked. For each and every piazza boss, the dream of becoming a small businessman had suddenly come within reach.

  One by one, the piazza bosses shook his hand. ’O Maraja clasped back with vigor. This seemed like the end of everything, the moment when you exchange compliments for the outstanding results achieved—but actually, it was the beginning. Now they had to organize the transport of the product, carefully and efficiently, from the first shipment, which would soon come into the port of Salerno, distribute the narcotics to the piazzas, arm and supply ’o White and his paranza, who had been peppering him with texts and phone calls since the day of their confederation: he could smell the money waiting to be made, and he wanted to make up for lost time.

  “Thank you, friends,” Nicolas was saying, but where were Drago’, Lollipop, and Briato’? Where were his friends, his brothers? Were they at home, now that the lair no longer existed? Nicolas finished the last handshake and decided to go home himself, where a female friend was waiting for him, a friend he knew would never betray him.

  DOGFIGHT

  Nicolas dropped to his knees to pet Skunk. The bitch kept eating up the miles on her treadmill, and she arched her back slightly, as if to return the caress. Under his fingertips he could feel the bands of muscle moving in time to the galloping pace. Skunk could have taken his hand off in a single bite without warning, but she never would, no, Nicolas was sure of that, because the day he’d presented her to the paranza with that name, the name of the female marijuana plant, the fertile plant that gave birth to others, the bitch had clenched her jaw. He’d seen it. She was his.