The Piranhas, The Boy Bosses of Naples

by Roberto Saviano

  In a vicolo that Nicolas didn’t recognize because by this time he was driving blind, just trying desperately to keep his eyes on the fugitive’s brake light, Aucelluzzo rode into a puddle that was at least a foot and a half deep. His wheels vanished, almost entirely submerged, and Nicolas immediately anticipated that now the dealer had fucked up good and his engine was about to stall. Instead, though, Aucelluzzo just revved the motor and the Vespa responded, kicking bucketfuls of filthy water into the air behind it. Nicolas was lurching forward, slowing down whenever he sensed that his rear tire was failing to stick to the pavement, and more than once he actually slammed into the bumper of the car ahead of him. He cursed, he threatened anyone who asked him to pull over and display his identification. He navigated around the sinkholes and potholes that open up every time the city floods. By now he could no longer even feel his hands, which had merged with the handlebars of the Beverly. He had to make sure he didn’t lose his grip on the throttle or lose his line of sight on the Vespa, which was roaring along in what seemed to be its natural element. It was even zipping along on the deserted sidewalks because now the tropical downpour, if anything, had gotten even worse, intensifying and even starting to hail and sleet. Aucelluzzo took the sleet on his hoodie and just kept going. Nicolas continued to curse, but he couldn’t give up, because when would he ever lay hands on him again?

  The hail stopped all at once, as if someone high above had stuck a cork in it, but the street was a white expanse, it looked like snow. The Vespa left grooves that Nicolas followed with extreme precision to avoid skidding and hitting the pavement, but then the landscape altered again because the rain had slackened and people were pouring back out into the street. Aucelluzzo was still riding along. If he could create confusion by taking advantage of the blackish ooze created by the pooling rain, he’d do it. So Nicolas had to slalom between furious people who weren’t fast enough to take it out properly on that devil who was fleeing for his life, just quick enough to lash out at the guy who was chasing him.

  But the smell of brakes and the white-hot muffler were starting to ring alarm bells that he was going to have to pay attention to. By the time the burning smell reached Maraja, a gap had finally opened up in the clouds, but he didn’t notice because he’d decided to put an end to that pursuit. Aucelluzzo must have been tired, too, and he didn’t notice that Nicolas had vanished from his side mirrors. The dope dealer from Conocal was squeezing every last bit of power out of his Vespa as he passed in front of the University of Naples Federico II. Then it dawned on him that Nicolas had gone the other way around, just as he emerged from Vico Sant’Aniello a Caponapoli. For a moment, Aucelluzzo regretted not having brought a weapon, but then he surrendered. When he saw that Nicolas continued to keep both hands on the handlebars of his scooter, he started to hope: he knew that if Nicolas had been packing a pistol, he’d already have fired, at the very least.

  Maraja didn’t try get to the point by assembling an argument filled with insinuations and unstated subjects. He went straight to the point: “Aucellu’, I need to talk to Don Vittorio L’Arcangelo.”

  Aucelluzzo was uneasy hearing that name uttered in the middle of the street and in front of him. He turned red in the face: out of shame, not anger.

  “I need to talk with L’Arcangelo,” Nicolas went on. All around them, foreign tourists armed with umbrellas and K-Way jackets were heading to the National Archaeological Museum, completely indifferent to the two of them as they stood talking in the middle of the street. “You need to tell him loud and clear that: first, if you’re still alive you owe that to me; second, by now you’re all just dying under the rule of ’o Micione. They’re gnawing at your faces. That your guaglioni aren’t worth a shit, they just sit and stare at their PlayStations, all the time, twenty-four seven. No one’s working anymore.”

  “But I never see Don Vittorio.”

  “Sure, but you’re the one who brings flowers to his son’s grave, and if he chose you for that errand, it means he trusts you, he knows you.”

  “But I never see him,” said Aucelluzzo, “I don’t get in touch with him, I’m out on the street.”

  “Then find a way to see him. Right now, you know, I could easily slice you open, shoot you in the face. Text somebody to come up behind you and put you down. You’re alive because I decide to let you live.”

  “What is it you want to talk to him about?” Aucelluzzo managed to get out the words. His cheeks were no longer red, but his eyes were downcast. Humiliated.

  “Don’t you worry about that. Tell him that there’s a guaglione from the Forcella System who wants to speak with him. That ought to be plenty enough.”

  “What are you talking about, plenty enough!”

  “Make it do, make it plenty. Aucellu’, if you can’t get me this meeting, wherever you are, you might as well stay there: I’ll come and track you down. But if you can do this for me, I’ll tell ’o White that you’re kicking in a percentage. That you’re giving us half of what you sell, but you don’t have to give me anything. I’ll cover for you. You decide. Either you do what I tell you to do and you stay alive and you eat regularly, or else you do what you’re saying and you’ll die sooner of hunger, because I’ll make sure you can’t work here anymore, and then you’ll come to a miserable end. You decide and let me know.”

  Aucelluzzo turned his Vespa around in the opposite direction and roared off without so much as a goodbye, without saying yes, without giving him his phone number. He went back to Ponticelli, he went back to the hut made of cement and tar that he and his family had been condemned to live in. A cell open to the sky, some people called it. Guantánamo, others had nicknamed it. And inmate number one lived a peaceful life in solitary confinement because barring the way to anyone who wasn’t entirely welcome was Cicognone, cook, assistant, and lady-in-waiting to Don Vittorio L’Arcangelo.

  EVERYTHING’S TAKEN CARE OF

  Everyone knew where L’Arcangelo lived, but no one knew how to get to him. Cicognone sorted through the various requests, cooked Don Vittorio’s favorite dish—a simple pasta with tomato sauce, sprinkled with chili peppers and basil—and kept him apprised of news and rumors, in real time. His nickname had been the invention of none other than Don Vittorio himself, twenty years back or so, when Cicognone was just a teenager incapable of controlling a body that had shot up too fast and straight toward the sky. He bumped his head against ceiling lamps and knocked against cabinets, he seemed like a stork in a cage. An animal, a bird, it had occurred to Don Vittorio, who’d entirely forgotten the idea of freedom inside that off-kilter body.

  Cicognone was draining Don Vittorio’s pasta when he got a text from Aucelluzzo. “Cicogno’, we’ve got to meet now, it’s urgent!!!!!!!” This was the fifth text of the morning, and with each new text that ballbuster Aucelluzzo added another exclamation mark. Cicognone didn’t let the text knock him off task. He emptied the pasta from the colander into the bowl and slid the parboiled tomato over it, without tossing. Then he carried the bowl wafting its delicious aroma to Don Vittorio, who thanked him, barely pursing his lips. That was the signal that Cicognone could withdraw. Only then did he write a text in response to Aucelluzzo. He’d meet him downstairs, he’d bestow this privilege upon him—he actually wrote those words—if he then agreed to stop pestering him.

  Aucelluzzo showed up on time and had the wit not to brake screeching to a halt right there, downstairs from Don Vittorio’s apartment. That would have been enough to attract notice and ruin his chances.

  “Cicogno’, you know what happened on Piazza Calenda, don’t you?” he began without even dismounting from his Vespa. His eyes were downcast, because that tall, skinny man had always intimidated him. He reminded him of undertakers in the movies, the kind that are already measuring you with their eyes for a casket before you’re even dead.

  “Eh, that the Capelloni were about to skin you alive,” Cicognone replied. Everyone knew that, and Cicognone knew it better than anybody else.

  “Yes and
, adda murì mammà, Nicolas saved my life, that kid from Forcella.”

  “I know it, but if we have to give him something, we’re going to have to look around, because we’re dying of hunger here.”

  “No, no, he asked me something.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that he asked if he could talk to Don Vittorio.”

  “Which is to say, he wants to talk with Don Vittorio? That’s not even thinkable. That is, Don Vittorio won’t even talk with people who are doing everything they can to get in touch, and you think he’s going to talk to this little muccusiello?” He paused, and then upbraided his interlocutor. “Aucellu’, have you completely lost your mind? What the fuck, you call me urgently for this bullshit?” He came close to spitting in his face, in fact he would gladly have spit once for each of the seven exclamation marks he’d used in his latest text. Instead he ignored him, turned on his heel—just like a gravedigger—and, bowing his head, walked back into the apartment house’s atrium.

  * * *

  Aucelluzzo needed to come up with something fast. But he’d always been a man of action, like Wolverine—he’d had the superhero’s claws tattooed on his forearms, the blades that protruded from each of Wolverine’s knuckles on both hands—the kind of guy who dodges bullets: he’d never put too much reliance on his intelligence. He buzzed around on his Vespa, riding back and forth, up and down the streets of Ponticelli, his head empty no matter how hard he might try to fill it up with increasingly fanciful plans of action. Then he thought back to what Nicolas had done the day before yesterday: he’d thrown himself into the fray, he’d thrown the whole deck of cards into the air; in other words, he’d unleashed chaos to take advantage of the reactions he prompted in others. Aucelluzzo decided to kick up a ruckus.

  His first stop was the florist’s. He asked the owner to give him some advice, and he left the shop with a bundle of pink and white stalks of orchids, but he couldn’t help himself and cadged a little angel to hang on it for good measure. Then he revved his motor scooter, zooming straight out to Poggioreale Cemetery—“In Poggioreale you die in life, at Poggioreale you die in death,” L’Arcangelo liked to say, referring to the fact that there was both a cemetery and a prison at Poggioreale—clamping the flowers tight between his legs, but not so tight that he ruined them, and then he bent over the grave of Gabriele Grimaldi. He discarded the bouquet of chrysanthemums that someone had recently deposited there, and did his best to give some shape to his orchids. He snapped a couple of photographs with his smartphone, taking them from different angles, then he hopped back on his Vespa and headed home. He posted the picture of Gabriele’s grave on a fan forum for S.S.C. Napoli. And he waited.

  The comments came flocking, and he replied: “Honor to a great soccer fan.” And then he waited. Until a comment came in that was exactly what he’d been waiting for. “Honor to who? To a turncoat bastard who never did a bit of good to anyone in the quarter! Who colluded with Gypsies from Eastern Europe. Who lived half the time with his ass nice and warm in Montenegro. No honor. Honor to whoever got rid of him.” There he was. Svizzerino85.

  There could only be one Svizzerino85. A fan of S.S. San Giovanni, born in Switzerland, whose family had moved to Naples. And in fact, the name Svizzerino—little Swiss boy—was quite apt, especially when he went around wearing a Kubilay Türkyilmaz T-shirt (even though he rooted for S.S.C. Napoli), claiming that the Swiss footballer of Turkish descent had given it to him in person. Everyone mocked him, but still he wore it proudly, even though it hung practically down to his knees. Aucelluzzo took a screenshot of the page and sent it to Cicognone with a text: “This is the shit they heap on Gabriele. Let me take care of it.” Cicognone wasn’t sure whether to show it to Don Vittorio. In the end he decided to bide his time: he wanted to see what the little jerk was capable of doing.

  And so that Sunday Aucelluzzo went to the stadium. Everyone was going to be there, as usual, and he certainly wasn’t going to have to go into the bleachers to know it. By now he didn’t even really need to think about the upcoming moves, he’d entrusted himself entirely to the forces of chaos—as one of his beloved superheroes might have put it, while he just used the simpler Neapolitan term for uproar and disarray: burdello. He’d brought two of his men, Manuele Bust’ ’e Latte and Alfredo Scala 40, along with him, and he’d instructed them in what to do with a few terse phrases. He needed to have it out with Svizzerino, but he couldn’t face off with him in the stands, that would be too risky, and what if the cops showed up? The restroom was the right place, and that’s where they would wait for the end of the first half, when everyone went to take a quick piss. At that point Bust’ ’e Latte and Scala 40 were assigned to blockade the restroom, cross a couple of push brooms in front of the doors. Out of order. Toilets closed to the public. No pissing today. The revolt would be automatic, and in the mayhem that ensued, Aucelluzzo hoped to identify Svizzerino’s freckled face. Bust’ ’e Latte and Scala 40 were perfect for that little assignment. Bust’ ’e Latte was a first-class idiot who didn’t know enough to be afraid of anything, not even a furious mob of soccer fans with their bladders bursting, while Scala 40, who’d done twenty-three years behind bars, was a man you could respect. He’d been sentenced for murder, but everyone knew that he’d killed at least ten men. Popular legend, moreover, kicked out numbers like a bingo caller: thirty murders, fifty murders … As far as the justice system was concerned, he’d only committed one. As for the other charges, based on accusations lodged by state’s witnesses and confidential informants, he’d always been acquitted. It was the mystery of the rumors that gave him that aura, even though he didn’t have a penny to his name and was on the brink of utter poverty.

  Aucelluzzo was sitting on a toilet seat putting two-euro coins on each knuckle, then wrapping his hands tight with the same gauze strips boxers use. And then finishing off with three rounds of tape. In the distance he could hear Bust’ ’e Latte and Scala 40 doing their best to block the doors, and even farther off—muffled but still easily distinguishable to someone like him who sang them out full throated—the soccer chants. “It’s for you, it’s for you, that I’m singing for you.” “In my mind I have an ideal, and in my heart, Napoli.” “We’re still here, we’ll never stop.” He sang them under his breath, Aucelluzzo did, and in the meantime he pressed down on the knuckles of each hand to make the tape stick good and hard. He sang the chants for forty-five minutes plus stoppage time, and then the referee’s double whistle sent everyone to the showers. He heard those two whistles very distinctly. Had he dreamed them? He looked up for the first time since he’d come in and heard the crowd stomping down the tiers. They were on their way. Now the trouble was about to begin. And trouble it most certainly was. Cursing, shoving, brawling that was put to a halt instantly. Aucelluzzo looked out at the throng of people that first had been flowing like a river, and then had turned into a teeming clot. And he, head down, and flanked on either side by his men, walked into it. It was as if he were groping through the dark, taking shoulders and fists, but he kept going until the blue and the red of Svizzerino’s T-shirt were just a few yards away. That’s when Aucelluzzo charged like a bull. He was cursing as he yelled: “Piece of shit, how dare you, what were you thinking when you slung shit on Gabriele’s memory!” Svizzerino took the first two punches without blinking an eye. He was small, though he could take some punishment, but it was only when the third round of punches hit him that he realized that his post on the fan forum was what this was about, and then he fought back with a head butt that smashed into Aucelluzzo’s eyebrow.

  Aucelluzzo kept swinging, throwing punches with enthusiasm but no tactical direction, sort of at random, and if it hadn’t been for his buddies he probably would have gotten the worst of it. But it was Scala 40 wading into the fray who made the real difference. He knocked down three guys with backhanded smacks, and when he came face-to-face with Svizzerino, whose nose was completely plastered to one side, shifted onto his left cheekbone, he bellowed into his
face with such fury that the other man froze to the spot. And the way it goes in any brawl that goes on for too long—when even people that have nothing to do with it start plunging in and the violence degenerates into a general melee—you see the signs that soon everything is going to flicker and die out. A few yards of reinforced concrete higher up, the referee whistled for play to resume and the cluster of people turned into a river, but now flowing in the opposite direction. Standing in the now-empty space in front of the toilet were Aucelluzzo, his two buddies, and a wide-eyed vendor with his tray hanging around his neck, piled high with bags of potato chips and soft drinks. The only thought that Aucelluzzo was able to formulate was: “Are fifteen minutes already up?”

  Scala 40 dragged Aucelluzzo and Bust’ ’e Latte outside, loaded them into a car, and took them straight over to Conocal, after which he vanished. They looked like two kids who’d gotten into a fight at school, only to be grabbed by the ears and marched straight to their parents for a scolding. Bust’ ’e Latte had taken a boot to the face that had busted his lip, and Aucelluzzo could feel his face throbbing. He tried his best to open his right eye, but it remained glued shut. He’d really fucked up, violated the rules. He’d acted without authorization and now he was going to be punished. His plan had worked. He’d worked his way to where he’d wanted to get, and now he was going to have to play his last cards skillfully.

  Cicognone, alerted by Scala 40, was waiting for them in the same location where he’d spoken to Aucelluzzo earlier. He wasn’t wearing the angry expression, or swinging the leather belt that you’d see in the hands of a father or older brother outraged by a brawl. Instead, he was waving a loaded pistol, and he leveled it at their faces. “Ma che cazzo stai cumbinanno? Che stai facenno? Stai facenno cose che non si’ autorizzato,” he blurted out in dialect. “What the fuck are you doing? What are you up to? The things you’re doing aren’t authorized.” Aucelluzzo was swaying as he stared down the barrel of that revolver. This was the delicate part. “Ma che cazzo stai cumbinanno?” Cicognone kept saying, and with every repetition of the same question, his voice kept getting louder. That auciello—that dirty bird—really had busted his balls for the last time. And Cicognone kept asking the same question, kept swinging the handgun back and forth, from Aucelluzzo to Bust’ ’e Latte, and he failed to hear the metallic clacking that came from a few yards overhead. Don Vittorio had come out onto the balcony and now he was rapping loudly with his wedding ring on the railing. Cicognone continued asking: “Che stai facenno?” but now the other two, instead of looking at him or the pistol barrel, kept their eyes peeled upward. Don Vittorio was forced to add a loud “Oh! Oh!” before Cicognone realized. As he recognized the timbre of L’Arcangelo’s voice, he holstered his pistol and went back inside, muttering a “Neither of you move” to the two men, out of the side of his mouth. But that was the last thing on either of their minds, as they stood there with their noses in the air like the shepherd children glimpsing the Madonna at Fatima.