Suburra

by Giancarlo De Cataldo

  And after all, it wasn’t as if he’d started this war. Who had authorized Spadino to take something he should never even have touched? Who was supposed to keep that vicious rabid dog on a leash? Him, or Rocco Anacleti? What, it wasn’t like he’d picked up the phone and called Malgradi, was it? Or hadn’t it actually been the Honorable who had begged and pleaded? He didn’t see a lot of alternatives. To persuade Anacleti to put an end to it, to let it drop, they were going to have to whack another one of his men. Paja. Or maybe that asshole friend of his. Fieno. But this time, right in his backyard. In Cinecittà.

  He froze the DVD on a scene of a threesome. Yeah. It had to be something spectacular, a tarantella that would make people talk about it for weeks. And too bad if it meant they’d have every cop in Rome on top of them. Weren’t they after them already? In Ostia, Morgana had told him, after the mess at Piazza Gasparri, the place had been full of those cockroaches. Plainclothes and in uniform. All of them wandering around questioning everyone, even the kids at stoplights. As if they didn’t know that in Ostia people mind their own business. And that means, no evidence, no-damned-ev-i-dence! For that matter, what did one more or one less squad car change? The important thing was that he had to stay holed up for another little while. Until he had his normal face back and his ear was working right. The others were going to have to take care of business.

  Denis made his way through the stacked Corona beer cartons. He’d taken the guns back to the Off-Shore after the search. Because you never know. He’d kept them hidden in a false wall in the beverage warehouse. Number Eight had insisted on having nothing but the finest. Clean and top quality. Four Remington pump rifles, two Franchi SPAS-15 combat shotguns, a Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun, three Uzi machine pistols, four Kalashnikovs; two 7.65 mm and four 6.35 mm Beretta pistols, a VZOR 70 7.65 pistol, and five Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolvers. And something like two thousand rounds of ammunition. An oversized arsenal. The toyshop of that idiot, Number Eight. The way that guy acted as if he was the boss of all Ostia. It’s true that they’d become a heavy crew, but they still remained in the shadow of Uncle Nino. Number Eight raved and fantasized in his deliriums of grandeur, but the minute he lost his uncle’s protection, they’d sweep him away. Denis had tried talking sense to him, but the guy just turned a deaf ear. As he was distributing weapons to Robertino and Morgana, Denis asked himself for what must have been the thousandth time whether he wasn’t committing a grave error. But the two of them stared at him, full of hope, already intoxicated with the prospect of action. After all, it might just be the right thing. After all, the power relations might easily shift. After all, you only live once.

  “We can get it done in an hour. We go and we come back. We’ll take them out in front of their bar on Piazza Cinecittà.”

  “The Ferro de Cavallo?” asked Morgana.

  “That’s right.”

  “But that place is crawling with cops. Half the Ministry of the Interior is right around the corner.”

  “Exactly: an open insult. We’ll do it late tonight. Paja and Fieno are always hanging around there. And today there’s a match on Sky, too. Which means that sure as shooting we’ll get them.”

  “But what if we don’t find them?” Robertino ventured.

  “I tell you they’ll be there.”

  Morgana smiled. And she shouldn’t have. Robertino was a rat but he was a perceptive one. Everything he found out he told Number Eight. Everything. Even what he’d had for lunch that day. And like all rats, he was constantly there, sniffing and nuzzling, looking with those small beady eyes, darting from one side to the other. Denis had warned Morgana about it the first time he’d taken her to bed. It had been at her place. One autumn evening. She’d called him with some excuse and when he got there, he’d found her naked and stoned out of her mind on the bed. Where she’d driven him crazy with desire and pleasure.

  “No one can know. No one can figure it out. Not even by accident!” he had told her, as he said goodbye just before dawn. And she had laughed, miming the routine of the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, running her tongue over her parted lips.

  But Denis should have known. With a girl like that, things were by their nature bound to run out of control. They fucked like animals. At any time of the day or night. As soon as they could, and wherever they could.

  One time, together, they’d taken the sucker she was cheating on to Levante to collect the vig from a guy they were shylocking. Morgana had given him a blowjob as he sat at the steering wheel.

  He thought back to that one all the time. Him with both hands on the wheel and his eyes wide open, staring toward the front door that Number Eight had walked through. Morgana bent over his crotch, one hand grabbing the automatic gearshift of his black Porsche Cayenne.

  That girl was one hell of a problem. He was going to have to solve it. But not that night.

  Denis slipped a Smith & Wesson under the belt behind his back. Morgana zipped a Beretta 7.65 into her pink Mandarina Duck fanny pack. Robertino, after hefting them for a good long while as he made up his mind, chose an Uzi and the VZOR-70. As Denis was distributing the clips, Morgana laid out three lines of coke.

  “What, you want to go to work on an empty stomach?”

  They got in the Porsche Cayenne and drove to Infernetto. Without uttering a word. And for that matter, it would have been impossible, considering how high Denis had pumped the volume on Velociraptor! by Kasabian. They stopped just short of Casalpalocco proper. Not far from La Caverna, the club where Rocco Anacleti and old man Adami, a few years ago, had decided that there was plenty of room in Rome for everyone. Where they had signed a peace treaty, splitting up control of the clubs and bars. Back then, there were a dozen or so. Now there were four times as many. Denis pulled over under the pine trees and parked, making sure that he wasn’t in a no parking zone.

  How he missed Uncle Nino. He was more than a father to him. The last time he’d gone to see him in prison, he’d recognized all Nino’s bitterness and regret for a love that he couldn’t express the way he would have liked.

  During their conversation, Nino had leaned closer, lowering his voice.

  “You just have to be patient, Denis. Though I know it’s not really your nature. Never has been, ever since you were a little kid. But from here I can’t make a decision that, in reality, I’d already made the day you came into my home, to live under my roof. It’s not your turn yet. Cesare is my nephew. You understand this, don’t you?”

  Denis had looked down.

  “Believe me, I know he’s an asshole. That it’s not for him. But he’s blood of my brother. That cannot be undone. At least not as long as I’m in this prison. To me you’re like a son. Remember that.”

  They got out of the Cayenne and Robertino grabbed the bag in which he’d stashed the Uzi and a handful of clips. They looked around. They decided to steal a Mercedes-Benz B-Class parked about a hundred yards away. That was the right car to get them out to Cinecittà and back. They burned up the fifteen or so miles on the beltway in fifteen minutes. Just enough time for Denis to satisfy a curiosity. Asking about it point-blank, about what until then he’d preferred to push away into a shadowy corner of his mind.

  “Morgana, tell me something. Have you ever whacked anyone?”

  “What the fuck is it to you.”

  “Just something I want to know. It’s important.”

  “Do you think I don’t have the balls?”

  “I’m just thanking God that you don’t, but you do have a beautiful ass.”

  Robertino burst out laughing. Which Morgana didn’t like.

  “What the fuck are you laughing about, you miserable encephalitic.”

  Denis cooled her down.

  “Oh, oh. Come on now. We’re just kidding around. Why are you being so touchy?”

  “I’ve fired a gun, if that’s what you want to know.”


  “At a man?”

  “I’ve fired a gun.”

  “Okay, I understand. Let it go. Let’s do this. If things go sideways, just don’t get in front of me.”

  They’d reached the off ramp for Via Tuscolana. They pulled off heading for Rome and only slowed down when, as they pulled onto Piazza di Cinecittà, they saw the signs for the Subaugusta metro stop, reflected in the huge neon sign of the Ferro di Cavallo. The stolen Mercedes rolled at walking speed past the bar’s plate glass windows and Robertino got a chance to take a good clear look around the interior. There were just four losers sitting in front of the big-screen TV broadcasting the Sky network’s post-game coverage.

  “Paja and Fieno aren’t there. No one’s there. Just a few zammammeri.”

  The Mercedes went past the bar but, not two hundred yards down the street, it pulled a U-turn. Denis reversed until he came even with the Ferro di Cavallo and pulled over on the opposite side of Via Tuscolana.

  “The two of you wait for me here.”

  He wanted to check in person.

  Robertino grabbed him by the arm while he was opening the car door.

  “What if we just toss a couple of molotovs?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Denis barely made it onto the sidewalk that ran past the bar’s plate glass windows when he sensed a presence behind him. Morgana.

  “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “I didn’t come all this way just to be a babysitter.”

  Denis took a few more steps toward the entrance of the Ferro di Cavallo. Just as the four men in front of the big screen TV were leaving the bar, completely bored. He turned and spoke to Morgana, looking at his watch, which now read almost midnight.

  “Robertino is right. Paja and Fieno aren’t here. And I’m definitely not waiting for them to show up. We’ll come back tomorrow. Come on, let’s go.”

  Morgana didn’t move. Three of the four young Moroccan men they’d seen inside the bar emerged, chatting in Arabic, visibly revved up, high. One of them was holding a pack of MS cigarettes in one hand and came to a stop in front of her, gumming his cigarette. After a slight bow, he mimed the image of a lighter, and Denis pushed him away with a good hard shove.

  “Get the fuck out of my face.”

  Then he turned back to Morgana.

  “Well? What are we going to do? Do we want to spend the night here with this garbage?”

  Morgana was still standing there motionless. As if in a cataleptic trance.

  “You don’t think you might have overdone it today with the coke? Okay, I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  Denis turned to leave and started back across Via Tuscolana.

  The last of the four Moroccans came staggering out of the Ferro di Cavallo and practically ran right into Morgana.

  “Ciao, pretty princess.”

  He never got a chance to let the smile fade from his face. The 7.65 mm bullet caught him square in the mouth, rocketing through his cranium just above the back of his neck. A spray of cerebral material splattered against the bar’s plate glass window, while Morgana, her arm still extended, emptied her entire clip in the direction of the entrance with short sharp movements of her wrist.

  Denis shouted. He grabbed the Smith & Wesson that was jammed down the back of his trousers and, with the adrenaline practically making his temples explode, ran headlong toward Morgana. He grabbed her and dragged her toward the car, hurling her into the back seat while Robertino was struggling with the Uzi.

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  The Mercedes ran all the red lights until the beltway. And from there to Infernetto no one spoke a word. Once they got to where they’d left the Cayenne, they split up. Denis ordered Robertino to get rid of the Mercedes.

  “Take it to the Magliana wrecking yard.” He grabbed his bag full of weapons and dismissed him. “I’ll tell Number Eight about what happened. You mind your own fucking business.”

  Morgana got into the Porsche with him. Denis lit a Marlboro, slowly tooling down the last stretch of Via Cristoforo Colombo. He was waiting for just a single word to come out of Morgana’s mouth, a sound that might help him make some sense, however partial, of what had happened. That execution, random and brutal, which not only did nothing to put an end to the war with the Anacleti clan, but actually turned their mess into a savage brawl among wild beasts that didn’t bode well for anyone. Just more bullshit days and blood ahead of them. So he finally decided to make the first move himself.

  “Tell me why. Just tell me, and I swear it’ll remain between us. I’ll tell Number Eight that it was me. That that nigger was working for the Anacletis and that that’s why I whacked him. It was supposed to be a vendetta and a vendetta is what it was. That’s what I’ll tell him. But you, as the Virgin Mary is my witness, you’d better talk!”

  Morgana looked at him with a distracted smirk. As if that question had nothing to do with her.

  “Don’t tell bullshit to Number Eight, that rat Robertino’ll tell him everything anyway.”

  “Then try telling me what you’re going to have to tell him. Why?”

  “What did you ask me in the car when we were going to Rome?”

  “I wanted to know if you’d ever killed a human being.”

  “No, that’s not what you wanted to know. You wanted to know if I had the balls to do it. Well, I did it. And now you know that I’ve got the balls.”

  Denis fell silent. They’d reached Morgana’s place. A garret apartment on Piazza Lorenzo Gasparri, in one of those modular structures made of flaking reinforced concrete that surrounded the piazza, pockmarked with dozens of satellite dishes and colored by patches of hanging laundry.

  “Ostia is nice, but sometimes it makes me feel like I’m in Tirana,” he told her.

  Morgana opened her door.

  “Are you about done talking?”

  He followed her inside. They fucked till dawn.

  XVIII

  Three days after the events at the Arcobaleno, Alice phoned Marco Malatesta.

  “Abbas expects us at six.”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’ll swing by and pick you up, so we can go over together.”

  She gave him the address of a gym over near Villa Gordiani.

  “Pilates?” he guessed, tossing out the first in a series of ill-chosen comments.

  “I box, Colonel.”

  Marco showed up a few minutes early. Alice, under the stern gaze of a boxing federation instructor, was trading punches with a black woman twice her height and weight.

  He tucked himself discreetly into a corner, to watch.

  Wearing headgear, the two young women alternated elegant movements, practically dance steps, with furious hails of punches. It wasn’t clear why they still avoided hitting each other in the face: whether it was to preserve the purity of their features, out of some kind of understanding, or a lack of technical expertise. In any case, that belligerent agitation of sweaty bodies had something both powerful and erotic about it.

  But Marco decided to keep that thought to himself.

  At the end of the third round, the instructor separated the two young women, distributed criticisms and compliments, then sent them both to the showers.

  Marco left the gym. Three Camel Lights later, he saw Alice coming toward him.

  She was wearing a red blouse and a long, close-fitting skirt of the same color. As he was handing her the spare helmet, Marco was struck by the aroma of citrus fruit that was emanating from her freshly shampooed hair.

  The Triumph Bonneville ate up the empty summer roads, and the familiar sensation of a woman’s body pressing against his back was a pleasurable curse. Marco told himself that he needed to take things slowly. One wrong word and the delicate web he had set out to weave would be inexorably torn apart.

  Abbas occupied one of the two beds in a dec
orous little room in the Sandro Pertini hospital. Sitting next to him was Farideh. Alice made the introductions. The young woman explained that her father was scheduled to have another operation on his hands the next day.

  “But now a little I can talk,” the man mumbled, flashing a gentle smile that struck Marco to the heart.

  The colonel decided to lay out his cards.

  “I checked into it. At the barracks they say no complaint was filed.”

  “Farideh and I went in together!” snapped Alice. “We went to the commandant’s office together.”

  “I believe you,” Marco cut her off. “That’s why I’m here.”

  And he showed Abbas the pictures of Paja and Fieno. Abbas shook his head.

  “Their faces were covered, I don’t . . . maybe the eyes, yes, certainly, the eyes . . . mean eyes.”

  “All right, Signor Abbas, thank you. I just needed to check.”

  “But there was another one,” Abbas added, “one who was different. He threw himself against the one who was bigger of the other two. It seems to me that . . . he didn’t agree . . . he wanted to help me . . . ”

  There were three of them, then. Alice hadn’t mentioned that fact at the Arcobaleno center. Three, and not two. And there was one who seemed different from the others. Paja, Fieno, and what was the name of the other one? Ah, Nicce, like the philosopher. The overall picture of the situation seemed pretty clear. Just to make sure, he asked the old man if the one who was playing the part of the good guy had a mask over his face too.