Suburra

by Giancarlo De Cataldo

  “What’s so damn special about this rod?” Botola muttered. They’d laid their hands on a treasure, and this guy was fixating on a pistol that must have been a hundred years old.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Samurai replied flatly.

  Botola didn’t insist. He’d been out on the street for twenty years now, and if there was one thing he’d figured out, it was never to get between a man and his obsessions. If that’s what got Samurai excited, it was none of his business.

  Samurai pocketed the gun and the bullets, then he focused on the small canvas hanging above a long white sofa.

  “That belonged to Dandi,” Botola hastened to explain. “He paid a hundred million lire for it at an auction.”

  “It’s a copy,” Samurai whispered.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? There’s even a signature! Look, it says De Chierico.”

  “De Chirico.”

  “So? I don’t know if you remember, but Dandi wasn’t the kind of guy to take it up the ass from the first forger to come along.”

  “I didn’t say it was a fake. I said copy. That’s quite a different matter. The artist paints an original, then he circulates other copies of the same painting, or else he authorizes another painter to do the same thing . . . In any case, it’s not worth that much.”

  “Okay, you’re probably right. And anyway, these two mopes hugging never really convinced me anyway.”

  “Hector and Andromache,” Samurai corrected him.

  Botola had had enough. Okay, Samurai was losing his mind, but what was he thinking? Hard to say. Maybe it was just the adrenaline that was having its effects on him. Botola went into the kitchen, popped the cork on the champagne that he’d carefully iced, and poured a little for himself alone, seeing that the other guy was in such a strange mood. Then he went back to the living room, determined to avoid wasting any more time.

  Samurai had gotten comfortable in the middle of the sofa and was fooling around with the pistol and the cartridges.

  “Samurai, if it’s not a bother, I think we ought to talk about our projects.”

  Samurai waved his hand in a vague gesture for Botola to go on.

  Botola grabbed a chair with an unappealing shape (another one of Dandi’s investments, God rest his soul, and unbelievably uncomfortable) and sat down across from him.

  “Well, I’d say that with what we’ve got, there’s only one path for us to follow.”

  “Which would be?”

  “We take back Rome.”

  “Oh, really? Go on.”

  “We’ve got money, clean fresh cash, and lots of it. That is, clean for us because it’s dirty for them, I don’t know if you follow me.”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Okay. We’ve got the papers. Which tell us what becomes of all the money that these distinguished public servants have stolen over the last few years. Practically speaking, we’ve got them by the balls. Which makes us untouchable, and so . . . ”

  “And so?”

  “And so, if you’re in on it, the two of us, you and me, from this moment on, we’re Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus.”

  Botola laughed at his own joke. It took him back to the days of Libano, the founder of the gang. A guy who, speaking of obsessions, had a veritable mania for ancient Rome. And maybe he hadn’t been all wrong, after all.

  “Well? What do you say, eh, Samurai? Is it something we can do?”

  Samurai nodded and started loading the pistol. While he was inserting the stripper clip into the aperture in the barrel, he explained the salient steps in the process to the awestruck Botola.

  “This is a Mannlicher, manufactured in 1901 in Austria. Unlike your usual semiautomatic pistol, the way it works isn’t powered by the recoil of the bolt, but by the barrel sliding forward. The bolt is, as they say, an integral part of the framework: as you can see, the clip with the ammunition is inserted from the top, not from the bottom. This weapon was adopted by the Austrian army, which used it during the First World War. Later, after falling out of use in Europe, it enjoyed renewed popularity in Argentina. And in fact, the cartridges that you see here are made by Borghi, and were manufactured in Buenos Aires in 1947. When you fire the gun, the barrel, partly contained in this cylindrical guiderail, shoves forward, dragged by the friction of the bullet, and by pushing a specially designed recovery spring, it ejects the shell.”

  Samurai heaved a deep sigh, aimed the Mannlicher directly at Botola’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

  Samurai hibernated for the rest of the summer.

  Infuriated by the publicity engendered by such a masterly knockover, the men in uniform sent their very best investigators to Rome. The inside guy was nailed almost immediately and he sang like a canary, giving up the Carabinieri, who in their turn handed over Lothar, Mandrake, and Botola: traitors once, traitors every time. That’s what Samurai had expected. And so he had been forced to rub out three very good wiseguys, however reluctantly, three guys who knew how life was lived on the street. To snap the thread that would lead to him. Which is why, around mid-September, while the cops were knocking themselves silly to try to put a name to the mastermind behind the robbery, he went and dug up the loot and showed up punctual as ever for the monthly meeting at Il Bagatto.

  Officially registered as a “recreational club,” Il Bagatto was the closest thing there was to a left-wing centro sociale that the right-wing extremists of Rome had been able to put together. But if the organizational model was copied from the left, the stage setting and the interior decoration, from the pennants with the Fascist lictor’s staff to the murals featuring Gandalf and Frodo, from the swastika-emblazoned ashtrays to the iron-core billy clubs that were sold under the counter at improvised booths—all this was unequivocally Fascist in style and intent. Equally Fascist were the young hearts of the kids who, at first in dribs and drabs but then increasingly numerous, were gathering on the creaking benches of the cellar room in the Monte Sacro quarter, eager to listen—in religious silence—to the oracular words of their spiritual leader.

  That evening there were at least forty of them, nearly all of them young. Sons of le curve at Stadio Olimpico, divided by the teams they rooted for but united—at least, that’s what Samurai made them believe—by a shared faith.

  Le curve. The North and South ends of the stadium united. The future of Rome.

  Samurai placed great hopes in his boys. Uneasy people, people with nothing to lose, people who were champing at the bit, eager to take everything they could get their hands on.

  He’d baited the hook with ideology, but the project went well beyond any long-obsolete utopia. He was determined to create a finely woven net. They needed to be strong, determined, and ruthless as ancient warriors, but also clever as foxes and, when necessary, as malleable and venomous as jellyfish. Each of them needed to be used according to his particular gifts: stray dogs and double-breasted professionals. And all of them, every last one, would be loyal.

  Samurai started to speak. His voice was low and pleasant, but it lit up with sudden surges of energy that electrified the mind and warmed the heart. He spoke of the close, indissoluble bond that linked the Revolution, which they all dreamed of, with life on the street. He explained that what constituted a crime for the bourgeois, can be, under certain conditions, a perfect act for the warrior who can tolerate neither the grimy whining of the weakling nor the acrid censure of an inept justice system. Because the act contains within itself its own ethical, esthetic, and religious justification, and more you need not ask.

  He talked and talked, enriching his oration with exemplary parables, until he was absolutely certain that he had them in the palm of his hand, as always. And then, suddenly, just when they expected the definitive revelation, he fell silent and, with a half smile, dismissed them all.

  “You can go now. And I want each of you to meditate on the things you’ve he
ard. We’ll see you again next month.”

  The young men swarmed off, exchanging enthusiastic comments in low voices, careful not to disturb Samurai’s concentration; in fact, he sat with his eyes closed, massaging his temples, as if prostrate from his oratorical efforts.

  “Maestro? May I have a word?”

  Samurai opened his eyes with a sigh.

  And found himself inches from the barrel of a semiautomatic.

  He focused on a frank, open face, a pair of deep, glowering eyes, a grimace of tension, and a light tremor that the other man was struggling to control.

  Marco Malatesta. Eighteen years old. A hoodlum from Talenti with plenty of heart, plenty of guts, and, most of all, plenty of brains. One of his favorites. A potential designated heir.

  “If you were hoping to astonish me, Marco, you did it. Now, if you’d be so good as to explain . . . ”

  “You’re no maestro. You’re nothing but a bastard!”

  “Watch it, Marco. You’re thinking like a petty bourgeois.”

  “Fuck you and your bullshit, Samurai. This is what you are!”

  The young man rummaged in the pockets of his jacket and threw a handful of multicolored pills at him.

  “Those are worth a lot of money,” Samurai commented, by no means perturbed. “You’d better pick them up.”

  “Ah, you recognize them, don’t you? Of course you do! You’re the one who’s peddling ecstasy on the curva, you’re the one who’s poisoning us all. You’re a pusher, Samurai. No, not just a pusher, the boss of all the pushers. You sent us around to crack the skulls of all the pushers. And you called that a ‘revolutionary act.’ But what was it really, eh? Free-market competition?”

  “My boy, if you’re planning to shoot someone, first you should make sure the safety’s off.”

  Marco looked down instinctively.

  Samurai smiled, then acted with lightning speed. In an instant, he had the pistol in his hands.

  Marco lunged at him, eyes bloodshot with fury. Samurai deftly stepped aside, feinting Marco’s assault, and then, with the butt of the gun, landed a sharp blow to the back of his skull. The young man dropped, moaning. Samurai swung around and bent over Marco, rolled him over, climbed over him and squatted down, aiming the gun at the middle of his forehead.

  “I ought to pay you back in the same coin, Marco Malatesta. And it wouldn’t do you any good to beg for pity.”

  “I’m not asking for pity from some piece of shit! I believed in you, Samurai, I believed in the things you said. Change this city, change this filthy rotten world, a new morality. You’re fine with this filthy rotten world, you wallow in it like a pig, you’re the traitor!”

  “I’m not a traitor. If anything, I might be a bad teacher. I haven’t been able to teach you a thing. In that way, I’m far guiltier than you’ll ever be. And my punishment is to leave you alive.”

  Samurai pocketed the gun. Then he got to his feet and gestured for Marco to do the same thing. The young man struggled to stand upright; his vision was blurred, his head was pulsating, each heartbeat intolerably painful. Samurai supported him, his right hand brushed Marco’s face, as if in a caress of peace. Marco felt a sharp sting of pain, raised his hand to his forehead and pulled it away, smeared with blood.

  “It’s just a small mark,” Samurai explained, folding up a short blade. “You’ll have it with you for the rest of your life. It will remind you of who you are, where you come from, and what you’ve done.”

  Two weeks later, after the wound had scarred over, Marco Malatesta went to the Carabinieri’s Pisacane Barracks and asked to speak to the officer on duty.

  ROME, THE PRESENT DAY

  I

  Looking out the French windows of the Anna Magnani Suite, on the fifth floor of La Chiocciola—a hotel described in handsomely printed brochures as a “charming and secluded little hideaway just minutes from Campo de’ Fiori,” but popularly known as an expensive sex pad for the capital’s elite—the Honorable Pericle Malgradi, MP, a paladin of Roman Catholic values, opened his black silk dressing gown emblazoned with a picture of the snow-covered peaks of Mt. Fujiyama (it’s a kimono, they call it a kimono, Samurai had explained patiently, but that guy was obsessed, and everybody knew it), extracted a substantial apparatus whose legendary erections were the pride and joy of the Eternal City, and readied himself to bless, with his stream of murky yellow water, the roofs and pedestrians of the immortal eternal city.

  “Sabrina!” he barked, without even bothering to turn to look at his favorite, who had just keeled over in exhaustion and was now lying sprawled on the king-size bed next to the other girl, this one a Lithuanian. “Sabrina, you were born here in Rome, you know that poem, it’s by Belli, your great Roman poet . . . how’s it go? I’m the king of the world . . . I’m me and the rest of you aren’t shit . . . ”

  Ah, urination, the sublime postcoital urination, what a delight, what pure pleasure! You could direct your spray, weaving and lashing it like a garden hose, a fountain, with recurrent, multiple jets, or straight down like a plumb line, or else you could restrict it drip-drip-drip, or unleash a sudden, foaming waterfall onto the heads of those poor suckers working the night shift.

  “Look at that, Sabrina! I got one guy right on his bald dome! That’s right, handsome, look up, look up at the sky, and blame the seagulls and the crows . . . I’m up here and you’re down there . . . you get it, the way life works? Sabri’? Sabrina-a-a . . . Get out of bed and come watch, why don’t you, Jesus Christ on a goddamned crooked crutch, with the money I pay you and that Slavic whore, can’t you give me this little bit of satisfaction?”

  No response. This shift of hookers seemed to be out like a light. As was understandable. He’d ridden them hard, the two of them. Serious business: we’re talking about Pericle Malgradi! He’d see to giving them a wake-up call, the two “professionals.”

  The Honorable Malgradi stuck his hand into the capacious pocket of his kimono and pulled out his Patek Philippe Annual Calendar 4937G, tenderly planted a kiss of justifiable fatherly pride on the tiny picture of his daughters he’d had inlaid on the dial, clicked the mechanism—you go find someone else like me, who can afford a fifty-thousand-euro timepiece to use as a pillbox—and grabbed a couple of Listra tablets.

  “Listra, Sabri’, you understand, not that crap that the working poor take, Cialis, Viagra . . . stuff that sets your brain on fire and twists your guts in a knot. This stuff is special, baby girl, top quality stuff, made by the loving hands of my brother Temistocle. One of these days I’ll have to introduce you girls to him, you know, because he’s hung like a racehorse too, just like me . . . It’s in the DNA, girls . . . the Malgradi brothers, good blood don’t lie . . . Oh, Sabri’, you and that other girl, the Slav, what’s her name . . . you want to get your asses up off that bed, bitches?”

  Nothing. Not a peep. Goddamn it! Now Sabrina was taking things too far. What, did she think she had the only pussy in Rome? In Rome, a city that was literally swimming in peachfuzz! Next time, a couple of black women. No, better yet: a couple of black women and a transsexual. Just for fun, and a little company. Minimum wage, really, after a whole lifetime spent in the service of his community. But let it be clear with the transsexual, though: you can catch, bwana, but you can’t pitch. He wasn’t some faggot, after all!

  The Honorable Malgradi put the watch back in his kimono pocket, extracted a hefty line of coke from an aluminum foil packet, and crushed the tablets into the cocaine; then he laid it all out on the counter and took a powerful snort.

  “Sabrina! Slavic girl! Look, there’s plenty left for the two of you.”

  More silence. Enough is enough! A violent sense of vertigo made him stagger. He grabbed the railing. The shit was going to his head. And from his head, before long, it would descend to his junk. Meanwhile, the erectile cocktail was starting to have its effect, a giddy sense of invincibility swept through him. Ev
eryone kept telling him to take it easy, everyone said that they were dancing on the rim of a volcano, everyone was afraid that things could change any second. Everyone kept yammering on about yield spreads, spending reviews, morality . . . what the fuck! Italy will never change. We’ll always be on top, and the pathetic losers will always be down below.

  “Help!”

  Oh, at last, signs of life.

  “Put in your brillantino, here comes Uncle Pericle.”

  Ah, the brillantino. This was the novelty that had finally convinced him that Sabrina stood head and shoulders above the rest of Roman hookerdom. A small piece of diamond-encrusted jewelry plugging up her hole, the hole in her rear. That way, said hole was always distended and, how to put it, ready for use. Malgradi liked to extract the brillantino with his tongue. That kind of foreplay was worthy of a sultan! Just one downside: the risk of swallowing the dingus by accident. But there was no way that such a piece of dumb bad luck would befall Pericle Malgradi, Il Numero Uno himself.

  Malgradi turned around.

  Sabrina was staring at him, looking anxious and pale.

  “Now what the fuck’s the matter?”

  “Vicky’s definitely not well.”

  It started to dawn on Malgradi that he might have a problem on his hands.

  “E ora cchi vòli chista? Now what’s she want?”

  “She’s dying, you idiot.”

  What the hell had come over Sabrina? And why was she screaming like this?

  “Muta, sangu ’i cristu, staju pinsannu. Fucking Christ, just shut up and let me think.”

  Sabrina snorted with fury. Malgradi sized up the situation. Madonna santa! The Slavic girl had turned green, bright green like a late-season artichoke. She was gasping like a fish out of water, flat on her back on the black satin sheets, and an unhealthy background noise kept emerging from deep in her lungs every time her chest heaved and sank as she labored to breathe.

  “Madonna mia! She’s dying on me! She’s dying on me! This bitch is dying on me!”