The paranza made its customary entrance, a tornado that filled up all the space available. Stavodicendo had grabbed Biscottino, pinning both his arms behind his back as he kneed him repeatedly in the ass, bumping him forward as Biscottino pretended to struggle, throwing his head back, hitting Stavodicendo with head jabs, but never much higher than the solar plexus. They both tumbled onto the sofa, quickly followed by all the others. The mountain of human flesh was something Biscottino had basically asked for, because as he was arriving at the lair he’d complained loudly that Nicolas’s text had interrupted him just as he was about to get down to business with a terrifying hot piece of pussy he’d met on the Internet. None of the others had believed a word, and when he’d added that this girl was even attending university they’d all burst out laughing.
Nicolas immediately started talking as if he were addressing a well-behaved, orderly audience. And as he spoke, he commanded silence.
“Amm’ ’a fà i soldi,” he said. We need to make money. Drone was about to retort that that’s what they were already doing: making money, and lots of it. Just with what they took in from the parking attendants at the San Paolo stadium, he’d already bought a two-thousand-euro Piaggio Typhoon.
“We’ll go and get the money when we want it,” Nicolas continued. He’d climbed down from the television set and sat on the glass coffee table, that way he could look all his paranzini in the eye and make it clear to them that money means protection, and protection means respect. Making money, and lots of it, is the way to conquer territory, and the time had come to pull off a major job.
“Amm’ ’a fà quintali di lattuga. We need to make tons of lettuce. Only we’re not just going to hand out C-notes to the others, on the outside,” Nicolas said again, but without giving the others enough time to complete Lefty’s observation, because he added: “We need to knock over a gas station.”
The whole paranza was sitting on the sofa now, with Briato’ and Lollipop at the two far ends, serving as bookends for all the others, who were packed into the middle.
It was Dentino, half-concealed by Stavodicendo, who was sitting on top of him, who broke the silence: “Who told you?”
“Mammeta,” Nicolas thundered. Your mama.
In other words, mind your own fucking business. Nicolas felt anxious, constantly in a hurry. There was never enough money. The others had a different conception of time, they were all lulled by the idea that things were spinning along nicely, in spite of the fact that there were still markets they hadn’t taken over, but Nicolas had no time to waste. He was starting to think that he’d never have enough time. Even when he was playing soccer, he was always battling against time. He didn’t know how to dribble, and he never even tried to send a teammate deep into the field, but he had adroit timing, he was one of those players that might have once been called an opportunist. He managed to be right where he needed to be, to punch a hole in the net. Simple and effective.
“We’re going to rob the gas station attendant? Pistols in his face and he’ll hand over all the money he’s made in the day,” said Drago’.
“That guy only takes credit cards,” said Nicolas. “What we’re going to take is the tanker truck, which means we’ll take the truck and the fuel, both. There’s forty thousand euros of fuel in that thing.”
The paranza didn’t understand. What were they going to do with all that gasoline? Fill up their motor scooters and their friend’s scooters, too, for the next two years? Even Drago’, who usually picked up on Nicolas’s ideas on the fly, in full confirmation of the blue blood that flowed in his veins, seemed perplexed and had started scratching his head. No one breathed, there was just a rustling of asses in search of a patch of fabric on which to sit more comfortably.
“Sacc’i’ chi se la piglia,” said Nicolas. I know who’ll buy it.
Another rustling of asses on fabric, and a few sniffs here and there because it was clear that their boss was savoring the moment and that silence needed to be filled in with at least some sound.
“The Casalesi.”
No more rustling or sniffing, no more lolling heads or elbows planted in one’s neighbor’s ribs. The paranza had fallen silent. Even the sounds from the street and the rest of the apartment house seemed to have vanished, as if that word, Casalesi, had deleted the presence of the entire city, inside and outside the room.
Casalesi was a word that, until that moment, none of them had ever heard uttered in front of the others. It was a single word that contained so many others, a word that took you around the world, a word that invoked men who had been elevated into the empyrean of the paranza. It made no sense even to refer to the Casalesi, because that would have meant alluding to ambitions impossible to satisfy. But now Nicolas had not only spoken the magic word, he’d even insinuated that they were about to do business with them. They wanted to ask him if he was pulling their leg, whether he’d ever even met them and how he’d obtained the contact, but they remained in complete silence because this was just too big of a thing, and Nicolas, who had in the meantime drawn closer, his knees practically touching Drone’s, had started to explain.
The gas station stood along the state road that ran through Portici, Herculaneum, Torre del Greco, and continued south from there, all the way into Calabria, a road that cut each town in two and offered various escape routes. A Total gas station, exactly like so many others. The following Friday was when the new supply of gasoline would be delivered, and their job was to hijack the tanker truck and hide it in a garage not far away. At that point, they’d be contacted by two men from the Casalesi gang, who would pay them fifteen thousand euros. “Which will be ours to devour,” Nicolas concluded.
With fifteen thousand euros, that would be a lot of devouring, and Nicolas already had a few ideas, but first he needed to designate which of his men were going to carry out the mission. He’d also thought about the fee attaching to the job. Two thousand euros apiece.
Pesce Moscio, Briato’, and Stavodicendo freed themselves from the vise grip of the sofa and got to their feet. They wanted in. Nicolas said nothing, he didn’t mention the two thousand euros—it was too late by now—and it was clear that those three were putting themselves forward to prove they had the balls, which isn’t always a guarantee of success. In any case, the decision had been made, and Pesce Moscio, Briato’, and Stavodicendo were going to hijack the tanker truck.
* * *
Before the fateful Friday they’d gone to scope out the route, just to make sure they didn’t wind up driving down a blind alley with a forty-ton tanker truck. And they’d practiced on GTA—Grand Theft Auto. They’d equipped the bedroom in the lair with an Xbox One S and a 55-inch 4K television set. This was a mission that seemed to have been written specifically with them in mind, and it had become clear that driving a tanker truck at top speed down a highway was anything but a walk in the park. They kept crashing into things and catching fire, and even when things went well, they dropped the tanker trailer along the way. Stavodicendo started raising doubts about the feasibility of the operation, but Briato’ silenced him immediately: “It’s not like we’re playing GTA, you know, this ain’t Tierra Robada, this is Campania State Route Eighteen!”
All three of them pulled up at the gas station on Briato’s scooter, and waited for the tanker truck to arrive on the opposite side of the road, their backs pressed against a low wall that marked the boundary between the asphalt and a field of wheat. They sat there, smoking one joint after another, talking nonstop, their veins flooded with the adrenaline that, luckily for them, the cannabis helped keep under control. Every time they heard the sound of a heavy truck braking, they stuck their heads up over the low wall to see if it was their target. When the white tanker truck with the Total logo on its side finally arrived, Stavodicendo was repeating for the fourth time a line from the movie Il Camorrista and almost failed to notice that Pesce Moscio had pulled a knife out of his pocket and had proceeded to punch two holes in his T-shirt. Then he did the same thing to his
and Briato’s T-shirts, and then they all pulled their T-shirts up over their heads. This was the quickest way to always have a ski mask on hand: two holes for the eyes in a T-shirt, and then you pull it up, uncovering your belly, your chest, and even a section of your back, but completely concealing your face. With these T-shirts perfectly adhering to their skulls, they looked like Spider-Men with torn suits. A quick glance to the right and to the left to check on the traffic they’d have to deal with and then, hands jammed down pants and guns now in hands, three MP-446 Viking 9mm pistols were now aimed at ten thousand gallons of gasoline. Pesce Moscio was the first one to reach the driver. He leaped up onto the running board and jammed the Viking under the man’s nose.
“Statte fermo. Te sparo ’mmocca.” Hold still. I’ll shoot you in the mouth.
Briato’ took care of the gas station attendant, who had seen them coming with guns leveled and already had both hands in the air. He stuck the Viking into the back of his neck so hard that the attendant lost his balance and fell flat on the ground, both hands still raised.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Shut your fucking piehole, or it’s over for you right now, right here, got that?” said Briato’.
“Get out,” Pesce Moscio ordered the driver, but the man didn’t seem frightened, quite the opposite. He hadn’t taken his hands off the wheel, as if he were ready to drive away any minute now. All he said was: “Appartenimmo, guagliu’.” Literally, we belong. We’re affiliated. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? They’ll come and get you.” All he said was what needs saying in these situations, in other words, that they were already protected by some family or some other person. They’d heard these words many times, from many others, the paranzini had.
“You belong?” asked Briato’, who now had the Viking aimed directly at the gas station attendant’s forehead. “Then that means you belong to somebody who ain’t worth shit.” While Briato’ was teaching him his lesson, Stavodicendo had walked around the tanker truck, yanked open the door, and was now trying to drag the driver out by the arm. The driver was struggling, head-butting, and finally hauled off and gave a tremendous kick that caught Stavodicendo in the belly. The only reason he didn’t tumble out backward onto the asphalt was at the last minute he caught hold of the handle; after that, he hurtled into the cockpit of the truck.
“Stavodice’, what the fuck are you doing?” Pesce Moscio shouted at him. He kept the pistol trained on the driver, but he was petrified, a victim of the situation. Briato’ stepped back toward the tanker truck, keeping the gas station attendant in his sights the whole time, and when he came even with the two others, caught up in a furious struggle, he fired a shot into the driver’s shoulder.
“’A bucchin’ ’e mammeta!” Pesce Moscio shouted. Your mother’s a cocksucker! The driver’s rolls of fat were bouncing up and down in time to the terror that Briato’ had stirred in him with that shot. “What if you’d hit me?”
“Don’t sweat it, everything’s under control,” Briato’ replied. Stavodicendo, who would have had more of a right to be pissed off at Briato’, seeing that he was the one who’d been in the truck, was dragging the driver down.
In the meantime, while they were fighting, the gas station attendant had got to his feet and went running off down the center of the road. Briato’ took a couple of potshots at him, but the man was already gone. All three of them climbed into the truck, and Briato’ slid behind the wheel. Getting the engine started and steering the tanker truck out onto the road was no problem, Briato’ knew it very well from the online reading he’d done, on a few truck drivers’ forums. He just hoped that the tanker was good and full, because otherwise the sloshing of the gasoline could all too easily make the truck swerve and fishtail and even go off the road. There were no sirens, so he opted for a cruising speed of twenty-five miles per hour. He could feel it, that roaring monster under his ass, and he had to be careful not to run over a compact car and do his best to attract as little attention as possible.
“Ua’, it’s too much fun driving this tanker truck!”
Nicolas had told them where they were supposed to take it. Just a short distance, a mile and a half, then turn right—a turn that Briato’ slowed down to take at barely ten miles per hour, to keep from tipping over—and then another half a mile to a parking lot that looked pretty much abandoned. In the distance, close to the ramshackle enclosure wall, they’d find a two-bay garage—four simple walls of reinforced concrete and a slab of sheet metal for a roof—and there they were to park and wait for the Casalesi.
They climbed down from the tanker truck but stayed inside the garage, because those were their orders. The sun was setting and the sheet-metal roof was blasting a wave of heat down at the three of them that made the T-shirts with eyeholes cut in them cling to their chests. Later, when they told Nicolas the story, they couldn’t say how long they’d had to wait in that blast furnace. Certainly, when they finally heard the roar of the motorcycle and hands banging on the metal strips of the garage doors, the light outside was a dot in the distance that backlit the silhouettes of the two Casalesi as they got off the bike. The paranzini didn’t really know what to expect and their imagination had galloped away with them over the past few days, but still they were disappointed when they saw two unshaven, beer-bellied, short little men wearing stupid Hawaiian shirts and capri pants. They looked like they’d just disembarked from a discount cruise ship.
“Fuck, then, it really is true that you’re kids! Muccusielle siete,” said one of the two Casalesi, calling them a bunch of snotnoses.
Briato’ and Pesce Moscio stared at them without speaking.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” asked Briato’. The adrenaline from the day was still pumping and his survival instincts had been somewhat dulled.
“You don’t like?”
“Nzu,” he replied, with a rising n, his tongue clicking between his two front teeth while his lips closed almost as if to give a kiss, and the sound came out of his nose more than his mouth.
“Strange, because your mother sees to my wardrobe,” and he waved his hand in his partner’s direction. “Give them these five thousand euros and then you get the hell out of here. Go on. Jatevenne.”
“What did you say?” cried Pesce Moscio and Stavodicendo in unison.
“Why, doesn’t that suit you, moccusi’? Already it’s disgusting that I negotiated with ’o Maraja and he’s not here, so just thank the Virgin Mary—’a Maronna—that we’re giving you any money at all.”
“Right here you’ve got forty thousand euros in gasoline,” said Pesce Moscio. He needed to redeem himself and he didn’t retreat when the Casalese stepped toward him.
“We’re not giving you anything.”
The other man, who’d remained silent till then, said: “Wait, do you know where we come from?”
“I know,” he answered. “From Casal di Principe.”
“Exactly. A voi piccirilli ve magnammo e poi ve cacammo.” We’ll eat you small fry whole, and then we’ll shit you out.
Briato’ chambered a round in the pistol and said: “I couldn’t give a fuck where you two come from. You just need to give us the money, the money, and that’s that.” And he pressed the Viking’s barrel against the fuel tank on the trailer, the way he had with the gas station attendant’s forehead. “If you don’t set that cash down now, on the ground, I’ll shoot into this fuel tank and we’ll all go up in flames. You, us, and the whole garage.”
“Put down the pistol, dummy. Come on, I’ll give you eight thousand euros, you beggars.”
“Fifteen thousand. And I’m giving you a hell of a bargain, omm’ ’e merda. You piece of shit.”
“Nun ’e ttenimmo, nun ’e ttenimmo.” We don’t have it, the Casalese who had spoken first repeated as he backed away toward the motorbike.
“Hey, Hawaiian boy, look for the money, I bet you’ve got it,” said Pesce Moscio.
“He said we don’t have it. Take the eight thousand and t
ry to avoid getting hurt.”
Pesce Moscio pulled out his Viking, yanked back on the slide, and pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening, and Stavodicendo had the time to think that a tanker truck exploding, though, really ought to have been even louder. Then he realized that Pesce Moscio had aimed at one of the front tires. The two Casalesi had hurled themselves to the pavement with their hands over their heads, as if that was going to protect them in any way from ten thousand gallons of blazing gasoline. As soon as they realized that it had only been a warning shot, they got to their feet, brushed off their shirts, lifted the saddle of their motorbike, and pulled out the stack of cash they kept there.
“You see?” said Briato’. “All you needed to do was look, you had your ATM right there, under your seat, the whole time.”
* * *
The fifteen thousand euros that Nicolas had taken off them, he had then proceeded to divide up into ten stacks after he’d handed five to the ship captain.
“We’ll just set an all-in price, how’s that sound? Facciamo ’o forfait,” the captain had said. And ’o forfait included the exclusive use of a boat normally meant for parties, weddings, and cruises around the Bay of Naples. The boat could carry almost two hundred people, and Nicolas wanted it all for just his paranza and their girlfriends. They’d set sail in two hours, just before sunset, and they’d sail around Ischia, swinging close by Capri and Sorrento. The agency wouldn’t be able to take down the decorations from last night’s wedding in time, but they’d throw in aperitivi and dinner, complete with two waiters. Nicolas said he’d take it, wedding decorations and all. In fact, so much the better, he thought to himself. He’d taken care of personally selecting the sound track for their cruise around the bay. Pop music, strictly in Italian. Tiziano Ferro. Eros Ramazzotti. Vasco Rossi. Laura Pausini. They were going to dance all night, clinging tight, and they’d remember it as the most wonderful evening of their lives.
The Piranhas, The Boy Bosses of Naples Page 31