Drago’ grabbed everyone’s cash back and tossed it onto the table the way you do when you’re putting an end to a card game, and then he froze in place with a twenty-euro bill held up in midair. He looked like a poker player ready to lay down a winning ace.
“What is this fucking silence?”
They all looked up, to get a whiff of that exact silence. Nicolas was the first to leave the lair, followed by all the others. Biscottino tried pointing out that in the movies, he’d seen it one time, before an atomic bomb goes off, there’s always that same silence, after which, BOOOOM, ashes, but they were already out on the street, all lined up to watch Forcella get ready to take a break. Certainly, the background noise never ceased, and in fact it was nothing but a nuance, a slight variation, but it was enough.
The traffic at the fork in the road that marked the quarter had come to a halt, an old moving van with a faded name on the side had stopped at an angle and the back door was wide open. From the windows of the surrounding buildings, from the sidewalks, from inside cars with the engine turned off came offers of help, though uttered without conviction, just to curry favor, because those responsible for the work had already been identified. The paranza of the Capelloni. They were shuttling back and forth between the truck and the front door of the apartment house, the one where the single road turns into two, the place of honor. Old furniture, dating back at least a couple of generations, extremely heavy but untouched by the passage of the years, as if it had been stored under plastic slipcovers for decades. Three Capelloni were sweating under the weight of a statue of the Madonna of Pompeii that stood at least six feet tall. Two others were carrying a St. Dominic and a St. Catherine of Siena by their feet, while a third carried a Madonna with a halo. They were huffing and puffing, sweating and swearing in the presence of all that holiness. Alongside, like a sheepherder, White was shouting at them, telling them what to do.
“If we knock over the Madonna, the Madonna will knock us over.”
And then there were crystal chandeliers, a sofa upholstered in a thick, Pompeiian red fabric adorned by golden outlines of leaves, chairs with towering backrests, practically a set of thrones, armchairs, cardboard cartons stacked high with porcelain dinner services. All the things you’d need to set up housekeeping in high style.
If Maraja’s paranza, standing with their backs to the walls of the apartment building across the way, had bothered to look up from that show and stare at a window thirty feet up or so, they would have seen the new mistress of the house leaning out of it: Maddalena, aka La Culona. She was offended by her husband, Crescenzio, aka Roipnol, because she so badly wanted to go downstairs with him, take a stroll through the quarter, get acclimated, in other words. But her husband had been adamant, refusing to budge, and in that still bare-walled apartment he tried his best to explain to her that he couldn’t go out with her, it wasn’t safe, but she was welcome to go, no one was keeping her. He’d done his twenty years behind bars, a little more time shut in behind the door of that apartment wouldn’t really make any difference to him. Crescenzio tried to calm his wife, but the echoing sounds in that empty space and that kid, Pisciazziello, who wouldn’t stop asking “You like the way we painted it?” rendered his efforts pointless.
Thirty feet below, on the street, the Capelloni were vanishing into the atrium and then reemerging empty-handed, ready for another load. Only White was doing nothing, except smoking one joint after another and gesticulating like the conductor of a symphony orchestra.
Nicolas and his paranzini hadn’t dared to take so much as a step. They just couldn’t move, they stood there openmouthed, continuing to stare like little old men watching ditches being excavated for new pipes. That wasn’t someone moving house, that was the arrival of a king with his court.
Biscottino was the first to speak: “Nico’, who is it?”
The whole paranza turned to look at Nicolas, who took a step forward, to the edge of the sidewalk, and in a cold voice that made chills run down their spines, said: “You see, Biscotti’, it’s rewarding to carry heavy furniture.”
“But for who?”
“Sacc’i’,” he said—I know who it is—and then he took a few more steps to break away from the paranza and walk over to White, whisper something into his ear as the man lit himself another joint, raised it to his mouth, and with his other hand squeezed the samurai ponytail that he’d grown—a stump of greasy hair. The two of them walked off together and entered the back room. The usual customers were out on the street, spectators like the rest of them. White lay down on the pool table, one arm behind his head, propping it up. Nicolas instead stood there, braced on both legs, motionless, his fists clenched, arms pressed close to his body. He was sweating with rage, but he didn’t want to mop his brow, didn’t want to show any sign of weakness in front of White. In the three minutes it had taken them to reach the back room, White, without much beating around the bush, had told Nicolas that from that moment on, the quarter belonged to Crescenzio Roipnol. That had been the decision. So he and his guagliuncelli had better just fall into line.
None of them had ever laid eyes on Crescenzio Roipnol, but they all knew who he was and why he’d wound up behind bars at Poggioreale twenty years ago, when Don Feliciano and his men were far away, in Rome, Madrid, Los Angeles, convinced that they’d established a power that no one else could crack. Still, Don Feliciano’s brother, Viceré, couldn’t contain those who wanted to take over Forcella and take advantage of the power vacuum. Ernesto Boa—one of Mangiafuoco’s men, from the Sanità quarter—had set up housekeeping in Forcella. In order to seize control. To subjugate it to Sanità. The Faellas had come to Viceré’s aid, their boss Sabbatino Faella, Micione’s father, had arrived. And his armed right-hand man had arrived as well: Crescenzio Ferrara Roipnol. It was he who eliminated Boa, and did it one Sunday, at Mass, in front of everyone, as a proclamation that Don Feliciano’s power remained intact only thanks to Sabbatino Faella. The never-ending struggle between the monarchies of Forcella and Sanità had once again been frozen, ensuring that the heart of Naples remained divided between two sovereigns, as the families from outside the city had always insisted.
He was an old-school junkie, Crescenzio was, and the only reason he’d been able to survive in prison was his father-in-law, La Culona’s dad, who managed to get him a steady supply of Rohypnol behind bars. The tablets helped to quiet his tremors, to keep him from losing his mind after the umpteenth bout of cold turkey, but on the downside they’d slowed his reflexes a little—sometimes he seemed to be in a narcotic trance. Not enough to be a major problem, though, seeing that he’d been named district underboss.
Nicolas looked at the smile spreading across White’s face, his brown teeth jutting out. That asshole, he thought to himself, had no idea what a slave he was.
“So you like to take it in the ass?” Nicolas began.
White stretched out even more on the pool table, putting both hands behind his head, as if he were lying in a field basking in the sunshine.
“You like to take it in the ass?” Nicolas said again, but White kept ignoring him, maybe he hadn’t even heard those words. Just like he didn’t feel the ashes from the joint as they dropped onto his neck.
“So is that the way you like it, ’o White? With or without a gob of spit?”
White sat up with a jerk, in an off-kilter yoga position. He took a greedy drag on the joint, as if to suck a mouthful of courage from it. And maybe to lessen his shame.
“Lemme get this straight,” said Maraja. “’O Micione fucks Copacabana in the ass. Then Copacabana fucks Roipnol in the ass. And Roipnol fucks you in the ass! Do I have that right?”
White undid his ponytail and his hair tumbled down in a messy clump. “We take turns,” he said, and stretched out on the pool table again.
Nicolas was furious, he felt like murdering White right then and there, bare-handed; felt like grabbing him by the throat until he turned blue, actually; he’d have liked to climb up to the fifth floor of t
he apartment house where Roipnol was now living and kill him and his wife, take over Forcella, take for himself what Copacabana had let him get a whiff of. But this wasn’t the time for that. He left the back room and strode briskly back to his paranza, which hadn’t budged a foot from where he’d left them. The Capelloni were moving an antique chest that was never going to fit through the main ground-floor entrance. Nicolas took up his place among his men, as if he were the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle, the piece that finally composes the complete figure. Biscottino, without turning to look at his boss, asked again: “But who are they delivering the furniture for?”
“They’re delivering the furniture for the person sent here to make sure we become ants for ’o Micione.”
“Maraja,” said Tucano, “what are you talking about? We need to go see Copacabana right away.”
“Let’s go tell him that we understood the message.”
The sound of shuffling feet, hands jammed down into trouser pockets, sniffing. The paranza had lost its contemplative calm.
“What do you mean?” said Tucano.
“I mean that Copacabana fucked us. He took away our keys to Forcella.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Now we revolt.”
* * *
Nicolas had summoned them all for a meeting at the New Maharaja. That very evening. He’d had nine little settees brought into the private room for his paranzini, while for himself he’d selected a red velvet throne that Oscar generally used for eighteenth-birthday parties. He’d ensconced himself on that throne and waited for them there. He was wearing a dark gray pinstripe suit that he’d bought a few hours earlier, following the conversation with White. He’d picked up Letizia and they’d walked into the finest store in the city center. And then he’d bought a pair of studded Philipp Plein shoes and a broad-brimmed Armani hat. Taken together, the effect clashed terribly, but Nicolas didn’t care. He liked the way the light at the New Maharaja glinted off those five-hundred-euro shoes. For the occasion, he also decided to get his beard trimmed. He wanted to be perfect.
He was drumming his fingers on the brass armrests as he watched his army guzzle Moët & Chandon. Drago’ had asked him what they had to celebrate, seeing that now they were going to have to report up to Roipnol, but Nicolas hadn’t so much as bothered to reply, simply pointing him to the trays of pastry and the flutes of champagne. From the club, a rhythm came pounding out at 120 b.p.m., probably some boring birthday party that would go on for a while. Good, thought Nicolas when they were all there, and he asked his men to take a seat in the armchairs. He had them all before him, his apostles. A hemicycle in which all eyes were obliged to focus exclusively upon him. He turned his gaze from right to left, and then again from left to right. Drago’ must have gone to the barber’s, because the tangled shadow that he wore on his face that morning had now been neatened into a perfectly stenciled stripe of whiskers. Briato’ had chosen a navy-blue shirt, buttoned up to the throat, while Drone had opted for a snug-fitting T-shirt. He’d just started going to the gym and he was working hard on his pectorals. Pesce Moscio, too, was dressed to the nines, for once he’d abandoned his oversized trousers for a pair of North Sails trousers with a slightly low-slung waist, hemmed high to show off his loafers.
They’re all beautiful, Nicolas mused, as he gazed first at Tucano, then at Lollipop, Stavodicendo, and finally Dentino. And that thought, which if he’d expressed it out loud would have triggered a stream of mockery for the rest of the evening, passed without shame. Even Biscottino was beautiful, with that face of a child that hadn’t yet lost the rotundity of youth.
“What’s there to celebrate? That we’re supposed to report up to Roipnol now?” Drago’ asked again. Now Nicolas would be forced to answer, and Maraja was tempted to reply that they might already know why they were there drinking a toast, since they’d shown up dressed to the nines, as if they’d already sensed that this wasn’t a day of defeat.
“The paranza never submits to anyone,” said Nicolas.
“I get that, Nico’, but now this guy’s here, and the reason he’s here is because that’s the way ’o Micione wants it.”
“And we’ll take over the markets. We’ll take them all.”
There was no need to learn the mechanism. Nor was any explanation required. They’d grown up on it. That system of “franchising” was as old as the world, it had always worked and it always would. The proprietors of the piazzas were faces that they could clearly identify among a thousand others, sole directors of the merchandise who had only one responsibility: to pay, every week, the established quota to the clan that controlled that district. Where did they procure their merchandise? Did they have just one supplier or more than one? Were they members of the clan? Questions that only someone who hadn’t grown up there would even think of asking. A form of soulless capitalism, which allows the proper degree of detachment, so that business can proceed without problems. And then, if the proprietors skimmed a little off the top, the clan could tolerate that, it was just a productivity bonus. Isn’t that the way all corporations operate?
Taking over the piazzas meant taking over the quarter, taking charge of the territory. Systematic taxation and the monthly kickback from street vendors don’t give you roots. They give you money, but they don’t really change the way things stand. Nicolas could see it all laid out in front of him. Marijuana, hashish, kobret, cocaine, heroin. They’d do it all in the proper sequence, the right move at the right time and at the exact right place. Nicolas knew that there were certain things you couldn’t avoid, but you could speed them up, and most important, you could leave your imprint on them, or better still, the imprint of your paranza.
There was no laughter. There weren’t even crossed legs or the sound of fabric being dragged across the upholstery of the armchairs. For the second time that day, the paranza had become petrified. This was the dream that had finally found the path of words. Everything they’d done till that day had been a feverish gallop toward the goal that Nicolas had finally worked up the nerve to call by its name. The piazzas—the drug markets.
Nicolas stood up and put the palm of his hand on Drago’s hair.
“Drago’,” he said, “you take Via Vicaria Vecchia.” And he lifted his fingers all of a sudden, as if he’d just cast a spell.
Drago’ got up from the chair and raised his hands, palms turned toward the ceiling, pumping his arms up and down, as if lifting an invisible weight. Raise the roof.
The others applauded, and there were even a few shrill whistles. “Go, Drago’…”
“Briato’, you’re in charge of Via delle Zite,” Nicolas proclaimed, and laid his hands on his hair.
“Briato’,” said Biscottino, “if you want to be in charge, though, you need to do some push-ups every morning…”
Briato’ pretended to punch him in the nose, and then kneeled in front of Nicolas, bowing his head.
“Drone, my friend,” Maraja continued, “for you we have Vico Sant’Agostino alla Zecca.”
“Fuck,” said Briato’, who had gone back for another glass of champagne. “That way, now you can use your little drone machines for our own good.”
“Briato’, just get the hell out of here, go on.”
“Lollipop, you get Piazza San Giorgio.”
Progressively, as Nicolas assigned the piazzas for the various markets, the chairs emptied out, and each one who had received his own zone—his own piazza!—would exchange compliments with the one appointed before him, wrapping him in a hug, taking his face in his hands and staring deep into his eyes, like a couple of warriors about to take the field of battle.
Stavodicendo got Piazza Bellini and Pesce Moscio got one that was between Via Tribunali and Via San Biagio dei Librai. “Stavodice’, you’re moving up in the world!”
“Denti’,” said Maraja, “what do you think about Piazza Principe Umberto?”
“What do I think about it, Maraja? Amm’ ’a scassà i ciessi! We need to bust everyone else’s chops
.”
Nicolas turned around and went to pour some champagne. “We’re done, right? Let’s take charge!”
“What about you, Maraja?” asked Dentino.
“I’ll take the delivery service, the floating market.”
Biscottino, who was sitting in the armchair in the middle of the room, had watched Nicolas walk past him at least four times. He felt like a benchwarming athlete being ignored by his coach. Biscottino’s lower lip was starting to quaver, he’d stabbed his fingernails into the armrests, he was trying to focus his eyes on some random point to keep from meeting the rowdy laughter of his friends, who had just raised a toast to the guagliuncello who’d been left with nothing to eat.
Nicolas threw back his glass of champagne in a single gulp and then told Biscottino to stand up. Shamefully he approached his boss, who laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You shat your pants, didn’t you? Are your undies still dry?”
More laughter and more clinking champagne glasses.
Then Nicolas gave Biscottino a gentle slap in the face and assigned him a market. A market all his own. A piazza.
A piazzetta. ’Na piazzulella.
Now the party could really begin.
AMM’ ’A SCASSÀ I CIESSI
There’d been a terrorist bombing. They were all standing around Drone’s laptop looking at the screen, where footage of the explosion alternated with photographs of the bombers.
“Look at the fucking beards those guys are wearing,” said Tucano.
“Ua’, they’re almost like the ones we wear,” said Pesce Moscio.
“These guys have got balls on them, guagliu’,” said Nicolas.
“As far as I’m concerned, they’re just a bunch of bastards. They’ll kill anyone. They killed a kid,” said Dentino.
“Did they kill a kid of yours?”
“No.”
“Then what the fuck do you care?”
“But I could have been there!”
“Were you?” And then he waited long enough to get a no in response and concluded: “They’ve got balls on them.”
The Piranhas, The Boy Bosses of Naples Page 28