Bruno did, but more than Dad imagined or wanted.
I found myself warming to Bruno more and more. He was a good-looking, big strong guy with nice brown eyes. He was four years older than me and wore decent clothes, designer jeans and shirts, sharp suits and cap-toed leather brogues. He looked good, he looked successful and he was trusted by my dad. What wasn’t there to like?
He was also fun. In the car he would do silly things, pull faces or tell me jokes and make me laugh. I was young and giggly and he was confident and he knew how to press the right buttons to amuse and impress a seventeen-year-old girl. The problem – there’s always one – was that he was impressing lots and lots of girls. All the girls who used to come and go from the apartment fancied him. He had an on-off relationship with my cousin Magda, who was my Auntie Santina’s daughter from a previous marriage. I say on-off but for Bruno it was basically off except that Magda did everything for him. She would run around asking him if he wanted anything to eat and do his washing and he mostly ignored her. She was totally smitten but I thought he was a jerk the way he treated her.
Bruno’s parents owned a bakery in Milan which supplied food on contract to schools. It was a steady and financially rewarding business. His folks wanted him to work with them but Bruno was too independent in his attitude. He liked life working for Dad. Which gave him every opportunity for drinking with my uncles and indulging in the free-flowing cocaine always on call.
He spent more time at the apartment than at his parents’. We girls would sit around in the evening watching videos when most of the men were out on the town. Bruno stayed with us one night and we all watched Scarface. Bruno started imitating Al Pacino as the cocaine-crazy Tony Montana waving his machine gun, ‘my little friend’, in the air. I thought he was being really stupid, but Magda and the other girls were in hysterics.
Suddenly Bruno called out to me: ‘Hey, Marisa! This guy is just like your daddy.’
He was pointing at Al Pacino blasting people to bits on the screen. I must have looked puzzled for he quickly said, ‘No, no, beautiful. I’m only joking.’
Bruno realised I didn’t know as much as he’d thought about Dad’s empire. Before visiting Dad the next day he took me for a spin on his Vespa. We sped around the streets and he was joking with people we passed.
‘You’ve dropped some money back there,’ he yelled, and they’d walk half a mile back to look for this imaginary money. It was silly things like that as a seventeen-year-old I thought were hilarious. He was always laughing and fun. He was a nice guy. And he was good-looking. I found myself looking him up and down.
Dad instantly saw there was a spark between me and Bruno and didn’t waste his breath. ‘Bruno, if you’ve been playing around with my princess I’ll cut your cock off.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Bruno nearly fell off his chair.
‘Emilio! You’ve got it all wrong. You think I would be that stupid?’
Bruno was that stupid. And I loved him for it. But there would be no romance for a while. He was a close friend of my Uncle Guglielmo and together they were running the family business on the outside. Huge drug shipments were arriving at Gioia Tauro and being trucked to Milan, where they had to be processed. Organising the distribution involved team work and the family had a workforce numbering sixty – guys of Bruno’s age who had earned Nan and Dad’s trust and who had been vouched for by them.
Blood family and non-kin membership of the ’Ndrangheta overlap. Marriages like Nan and Grandpa Rosario’s help smooth relations within each ’ndrina and expand membership. At the bottom of the chain of command are the picciotti d’onore [soldiers], who are expected to perform tasks with blind obedience until they are promoted to the next level of cammorista. That’s when they’re given command over their own soldiers. The secret of the power and success of the ’Ndrangheta is that only an inner circle of relatives and trusted commanders have the core knowledge of all the operations of the family.
Bruno, at only twenty-one years old, was a cammorista. He was one of the few of their operators Uncle Guglielmo and Dad trusted to listen and understand what had to be done in the drug trafficking and make sure people did it. He’d be told precisely when and where shipments were coming in, the amount and where it needed to go. And Bruno only needed to be told once. Dad never liked to say anything twice.
But Dad didn’t mind doubling up with girls, especially when they were as stunning as Mara and Marina. The twins. They were identical. Even in their heroin habits. They were both in Parma Hospital’s drug rehabilitation centre. They had blonde hair, blue eyes and were slim, very sunny-looking and attractive women. They wore funky clothes and were spoiled rotten by their parents, who had plenty of money, a very rich Parma family. Their parents would have paid anything to get them clean.
Dad’s interest in the twins wasn’t purely for pleasure. He knew he couldn’t stay in the hospital for ever. He knew he had to go back inside at some point. He had to make other arrangements. He hooked up with Marina, who was a bit of a devil. He told her that if her parents invested some money, they could open a bakery partnership. He told her to tell her father it would be good rehab therapy. It worked, and when Dad went back to prison he started working in the bakery on day release and going back to his luxury cell at night.
It was his own business, but it was in the twins’ name. He needed to keep them sweet. But they fell out because Dad started liking the other twin, Mara. The ménage à trois didn’t quite work. The bakery did, though, allowing Dad all the freedom and time he needed.
I was due back at college. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay, with Dad, with Bruno. Mum was going crazy back in England. She was on the phone all the time demanding to know what plane I’d be on. I avoided the question, stuck my head in the sand about all of that. Bruno was foremost in my mind almost all the time.
One night after we got back from visiting Dad I saw the other side of Bruno, the brutal Mafiosi part of him. We’d gone to our regular disco in Milan with Magda and her mates. As I was standing at the side of the dance floor, a lad came up and asked me where the toilets were. I pointed to them but before he could move, Uncle Guglielmo, who I hadn’t known was there, appeared, mad-eyed with cocaine. He hammered the lad in the face, battering him with punch after punch until the guy’s nose was spread across his face and blood was pouring from his mouth. When he fell to the ground my uncle started kicking him while everyone watched.
Bruno appeared and joined in, kicking the guy even when he was out of it, out cold. They kicked him so hard they both bust their shoes. I’d never seen anything like it. They thought he was chatting me up – ‘Hi, gorgeous’, that sort of line – and they’d all but killed him for it.
When I told them what the lad had really said, Uncle Guglielmo grunted, ‘He shouldn’t have spoken to you.’
Back at the apartment, still upset about what I had seen, I asked about it again. Uncle Guglielmo was more reasonable without the cocaine and he put his arms around me and said, ‘Marisa, all you need to know is your family will always protect you. Nobody fucks with us. That’s all you need to know.’
In the circumstances, I shut up and concentrated on having a good time with Bruno. He took me shopping and out for lunch. We drove to Lake Como and went to Rome to see all the sights, the ancient Roman history, and it was romantic. And innocent. I realised loads of girls fancied him but he wanted to spend time with me, and that made me feel special.
But I had to return to Mum. He drove me to the airport and before I went through passport control he kissed me on the lips. Our first kiss. It was only a peck but it felt amazing. He put his arms around me and said, ‘Ciao, bella.’
I cried my heart out all the way back to Manchester. I was so distressed the stewardess sat next to me to make sure I was OK, and that I wasn’t going to jump out at 35,000 feet.
When I got home I walked straight past Mum and started writing Bruno a letter.
I was shaky. I f
elt my life depended on knowing when I was going to see him again. I don’t know if I was seduced by Bruno or by a combination of Bruno and my whole life experience in Italy. My mind, like my genes, was divided. I had a weird choice between gloom and doom. In my heart, inside me, I knew Bruno could and would protect me from anything. And I wanted a strong man to care for me.
But Bruno needed looking after too. A drug exchange in Milan had gone wrong and Bruno had to get out of town until the cops could be straightened.
Uncle Guglielmo told him: ‘Go, lose yourself.’
So a month after I’d left Italy he rang me from Manchester Airport asking for directions to Blackpool. I was ecstatic. He’d just got on a plane, along with his mate Coby, the sixteen-year-old son of Uncle Guglielmo’s girlfriend. Coby had brought loads of cash, more than £1,000, and his girlfriend Sarah. Bruno had bags and bags of marijuana. He’d thought nothing of bringing it through customs. That was what he did for a living, smuggled dope.
They hired a car and after Bruno figured out driving – at high speed – on the left-hand side of the road, they arrived on my doorstep. We took two rooms at a bed and breakfast in Blackpool. I forgot all about college classes and going home to Mum.
Mum wasn’t very happy. I was. This was the excitement I’d been craving, with no boring spreadsheets and business charts and graphs. This was real life, another taste of the pace, intrigue and excitement of Milan. It was also sex, drugs and Duran Duran. Bruno and Coby used the marijuana as though they were sending smoke signals. They were puffing constantly. As we walked along Blackpool Pier or on the pleasure beach. They didn’t care.
At first I only smoked joints with them in our rooms so as not to look like some innocent kid, but soon I got into enjoying it. It was relaxing and, along with the booze we were putting away, let my troubles drift away.
Driving around with Bruno made me feel all grown up, part of a team. We were a partnership. I liked that. And Bruno was cute and gentle when he did silly things. It made him more lovable. He wanted to be this macho man who could handle anything.
Especially cars. We stopped on the Fleetwood road to get some petrol and he filled up with diesel. We’d only gone a few hundred yards when we conked out. A white-haired driver stopped to help and worked it out immediately: ‘You’ve put in the wrong stuff, mate!’
Bruno was aghast. He went bright red. He was so embarrassed. I gave him a huge hug and a kiss.
From then on he drove like a maniac, trying to show he was king of the road. Bruno loved cars and so did I. I knew all about them because I’d grown up around men who drove the best. I loved the speed and wind in your hair, the thrill of it. But speeding about is not a good idea around Blackpool with its irritating thirty-mile-an-hour limits everywhere, and we were stopped. Luckily we weren’t hurtling around the place, but Bruno was pushing his luck. The copper was good about it. He studied Bruno’s Italian licence, asked how long he was staying and then looked straight at me. Did he know Bruno was wanted in Milan? That was silly – how could he? But what was it?
It turned out he was Blackpool’s laughing policeman: ‘Tell your man this is not Monza.’
We were on our way with a ticking off. Bruno shrugged it off. I was relieved, and I’d liked the sound of ‘your man’.
One morning at the B&B I woke up and saw a huge concrete flower tub in the room that should have been at the front of the building. Bruno had gone out drinking with a male friend of Dawn’s and they’d got back drunk and brought it upstairs. They thought it was hilarious. The landlady didn’t.
We moved out and into a flat, and I slept with Bruno the first night there. I bled a little and he went ‘Ooh’, thinking he’d taken my virginity. He seemed pleased so I just went along with it. I never told him he wasn’t actually the first. It was my first serious lovemaking and he was not a wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am merchant. He took care, and time.
Which I wasn’t doing with Mum. She was going ballistic. I went home every couple of days or so to try and keep the peace and do some washing and collect clothes. I told her I was seeing people on holiday from Italy and, my mistake, said one of them was a friend of Dad’s.
She asked more and I explained I’d met Bruno on my trip, he’d been the driver. She couldn’t tolerate that. She was straight on the phone to Italy to Uncle Guglielmo. Who was this lad?
He said Bruno was a good guy, a safe guy. He was honest and told her that Bruno was avoiding the police and that he didn’t know where he was and – no mobile phones – couldn’t contact him.
Mum could. She found a note with the B&B name in some jeans I’d left for the wash. She screamed round to the place. We’d moved by then and she was greeted by our TV sitcom Blackpool landlady. They were two very unhappy and pissed-off ladies. We hadn’t exactly been staying at the Ritz.
‘Disgusting kids! They’ve gone, and they’ve left a right mess. There was even a pregnancy test in the bin.’
Pregnancy! Marisa! Italian boy! That was a hat-trick of horror for Mum. Déjà vu. A disaster.
When she confronted me I tried to explain. ‘That pregnancy test wasn’t mine. It was that girl Sarah’s, who is with the other lad. Honestly, it wasn’t mine. Mum, it’s not mine.’
But she was back on the phone to Milan. By now that side of the family were in a rage at Bruno. And at me. They hadn’t known where he was but they certainly hadn’t expected him to be pleasuring himself – and me – in Blackpool. Dad was told, he had to be, and was furious. He wanted Bruno back in Italy, and by then Bruno had no choice.
The money had gone.
And so was he after I kissed him goodbye at Manchester Airport. I wasn’t too upset. It was only a few weeks until the summer break and my annual trip to Milan. I said as much to Mum. She put me straight. In fact, she read the riot act.
‘You vanished with this guy for nearly three weeks. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care about anybody else? What has got into you? Everybody is angry, really angry. Forget about going, they won’t let you back after this.’
I told her not to be silly. Nan loved me. Dad loved me.
It was a few days later when Uncle Guglielmo telephoned with some devastating news. Dad was ferociously upset about Bruno and me. He didn’t want to see me.
Ever again.
My whole world fell apart.
CHAPTER NINE
STREET JUSTICE
‘Tempt not a desperate man.’
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
ROMEO AND JULIET
When he returned to the Piazza Prealpi, Bruno walked into slaps across the face from Uncle Guglielmo. The blows were physical and verbal and all stung.
‘See Marisa, I’ll rip your head off.
‘See Marisa, Emilio will cut your balls off.
‘See Marisa, you are a dead man.
‘Get it? Understand?’
Bruno did, but if I needed any proof about how much he cared for me I got it when I returned to Milan that summer of 1987. I owed it all to Auntie Rita, who once again offered me a bed, somewhere to stay. She was erratic, and her amphetamine intake was frightening. There was no telling what she would do, how she would react. Yet she was my saviour.
There were some terrible scenes with Mum when I told her that I was going to Milan.
‘You’ll see that lad again and there’ll be trouble. You wait and see. Just wait.’
But I was miserable living in Blackpool. I wasn’t a child and I was so determined, so sure, that I had to go.
Uncle Guglielmo was waiting for me when I got to Auntie Rita’s. He ignored any formalities and ranted at me. It went on for several minutes and the message was very loud and very clear: ‘Stay away from Bruno.’
I asked how my dad was but he said not to bother asking as he was furious with me: ‘Your father doesn’t want you to be with this guy. He wants you to settle down, meet a lawyer, a doctor, someone else. Not Bruno.’
Although Bruno was a friend of the family and of my uncle, Dad didn’t want me to be with him be
cause he was who he was. The family had sorted out the prosecutors and Bruno was free to move around the city, as long as he stayed clear of me. It was a similar deal for me.
I cried myself to sleep at Auntie Rita’s. I couldn’t see the two most important men in my life. Bruno was forbidden. Dad had disowned me.
Despite the distress, I knew for sure that Bruno was my man. He said he’d rather be dead than not see me. That was over-the-top romantic but obviously there had to be some caution.
Auntie Rita suggested to Uncle Guglielmo that she and I needed a bit of space. Angela and the other girls could come around and she told her brother she would speak to me about Bruno and sort that out. Guglielmo agreed because he was run off his feet following Dad’s instructions and watching his own back. Family informants had warned him he was under twenty-four-hour police watch.
With Uncle Guglielmo off the scene, Bruno became part of it again. He’d got himself a red Alfa Romeo Spider Series III and we’d howl off to Lake Como to a special spot we’d found and make love in the open air. Bruno was as crazy about me as I was about him. But I wanted to be with him all the time, not just for an hour here and there. I had to come to terms with the competing demands of business and the peccadilloes of the Milan man. Which Bruno followed to the letter. He would spend the day with me but on the stroke of 6 p.m. he was off drinking and gambling with his mates. Or going to San Siro to watch AC Milan – they were all football fanatics. I was jealous of him being away and especially being away and doing things I knew nothing about.
Auntie Rita, who eased her own concerns with her daily dose of amphetamines, read me some of the rule book: ‘Get over it, honey. That’s our life. Don’t ask, for you don’t need to know.’
But I did. At that time Bruno was on cocaine constantly. His parents had bought a brand new bakery van on the back of a state school contract. The day they got it Bruno got totally out of his head and took it for a drive with twenty of his mates on board. Twenty! He didn’t get very far before he’d smashed it around a lamppost, mangled it into scrap. A couple of the guys had to go to hospital but Bruno jumped out and limped off.
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