Savage Kiss

by Roberto Saviano

  Briato’ pinched the man’s chin with two fingers. Delicately, just to turn the other man’s eyes to look into his. “You’re putting your hand on a high-tension wire,” he said. “Don’t you know you should always read labels carefully?” he continued. A new tattoo, still gleaming, covered the upper portion of his abdominals. A skull over the classic double crossbones and the words “Danger of Death.”

  Her colleague raised both hands in a gesture of surrender and apologized, everything was fine, he just wanted to steal Valentina away for a second because he needed to tell her something about work. “Of course,” said Briato’, running his arm around Valentina’s waist, “work is work.” He drew her close and whispered in her ear: “Thirty seconds, little one, then I’ll come get you.”

  No, Valentina decided, he wasn’t pulling her leg. The guy was just the way he seemed, he wanted her, and that was that.

  She and the man walked a few yards away, close to the bathroom door where the stream of passersby would cover what they said.

  “Valentina, have you lost your mind? That guy’s in the Piranhas!” her colleague urgently told her.

  “Oh, really?” Valentina replied. Then she recovered from her surprise: “Well, so what? He’s just a kid and we’re just having a drink. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with that!” he echoed her. “Every once in a while, why don’t you take a little spin on the Web and find out what’s happening in Naples!” But Valentina had already stopped listening to him. Their boss had been trying to get in touch with Maraja for days now, and that was exactly why he’d held the party here of all places, to flush him out into the open.

  “Listen,” she started saying, but she was interrupted by Briato’, who appeared beside her: “No, but for real, do you like this queer?”

  Valentina burst out laughing and locked arms with Briato’, striding away from her colleague, who watched them go, open-mouthed.

  “You see?” Briato’ said to her. “I’m made of iron and you’re my magnet.”

  “Where did you say you wanted to take me on vacation?” she shot back.

  “I’ll buy you the island of Capri, we’ll clear out all the people, and we’ll just be there alone, you and me,” and as he talked he was leading her toward the little sofas of the private room.

  “So you’re a member of the Piranhas?” Valentina asked as she ran her eyes over his tattooed abdomen.

  Upon hearing that question, Briato’ stopped smiling, even though he felt a burst of pride deep down. “Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, beautiful,” he replied, and then he reached out a hand to straighten a lock of her hair, tucking it behind her ear.

  Valentina turned serious and grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Wait,” she said, “first I need to speak with Maraja.”

  “Who, Nicolas? My brother? I’m much better-looking than he is.”

  She nodded her head, and Briato’ decided to attribute her assent to the second part of what he’d said. He could feel the excitement swelling within him.

  “But then if I tell you…”

  “Then?”

  “Then I’ll have to kill you,” and they both broke into laughter.

  * * *

  Nicolas’s cell phone was still turned off, so Briato’ ran to the little balcony and pushed open the emergency door—after all, he knew that Nicolas would ignore any knocking, no matter how loud. Nicolas was standing at the parapet, looking down at the rocks and the waves breaking against them, and he greeted Briato’ with a terse “Leave me alone.”

  “There’s a super-hot babe here who wants to get to know Maraja” was all Briato’ said. He put all his chips on personal vanity: by now, they were VIPs in that city. And then he added: “But she’s totally ready to fuck me!”

  In the meantime, Valentina was sending the lawyer a text. She immediately recognized Nicolas, even if she’d never seen his face before. As he walked through the crowd, everyone made way for him, keeping their eyes glued to him the way you do with a famous actor.

  “Ciao, Nicolas,” she said as she approached him. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Valentina Improta,” she went on, squeezing his hand. “I’m one of Counselor Caiazzo’s assistants. You know, the lawyer. He’s on his way here, and he wants to say hello to you.”

  Nicolas understood now, glaring daggers at Briato’. “Fuck, you led me right into the trap,” he whispered to him under his breath, the minute Valentina turned her back on them to wave to the lawyer.

  “All right, so let’s meet him,” said Nicolas. “That way we can have him stand in as best man for the wedding.”

  “Ah, you’re getting married?” asked Valentina.

  “Your wedding: yours and Briato’s.”

  Valentina turned around and looked at the young man who until then she had called Fabio and saw him blush.

  “Here’s Maraja! Here’s the king himself!”

  The lawyer Caiazzo’s deep voice drowned out “Toca Toca,” which the DJ had sworn to the crowd would get everybody dancing.

  “Today, here and now, Naples becomes the capital of Europe again! Do you know that the first railroad line in the world was built here? The Naples–Portici line!”

  While Caiazzo talked, Nicolas studied Valentina’s thighs. He was sure she went to the gym, and in fact, maybe she was also a runner, but she wasn’t skinny, she was solid, and he’d happily let himself be squeezed by those legs. He wondered if that old sardine of a lawyer was screwing her, that beautiful horn of plenty.

  “The railroads here are going to be the hub for the whole Mediterranean basin…”

  “Uànema,” Nicolas said to Briato’, and whirled his hand in the air like a rotor, as if to say that when all was said and done, it had been worth it.

  “Maraja,” said Caiazzo, “is there a quiet corner somewhere that we can talk?”

  This was overtime for Nicolas, but he could hardly say no …

  Now the private room was empty; the members of the paranza were on the dance floor, too.

  “Maraja, only you can solve this problem for me,” Caiazzo began, sitting in the damask egg-shaped armchair. “Have you seen that the CEO is here? Engineer D’Elia, you know the one I mean? He’s on TV all the time.”

  “Wait, what, the one who runs the trains, who one day he’s running the airplanes, the next he’s at the soccer championship? What the fuck, is he the stationmaster now?”

  “Ah, Nicolas, so you do watch the evening news, after all. That’s right, he’s the one, he’s in charge of everything. Have you seen the work he’s done on high-speed trains? When I was your age, to go to Rome took four hours. Now you don’t even have time to take a piss, and you’re there already. These are sectors that bring good things to our homeland. Have you noticed how many tourists get off those trains every day? It’s an invasion. But have you ever noticed just how beautiful those trains are?”

  “Counselor, what the fuck does that matter to me, are you asking me to become a conductor?”

  “What are you talking about, conductor? I came here to ask you a favor, and after all, as you know, I always find a way to repay my debts.”

  At last, the conversation was starting to make sense. Nicolas got a little more comfortable on the sofa across from the lawyer; he extended his legs and prepared to listen.

  “Maraja,” Caiazzo went on, “these fucking Gypsies are going to derail the whole line! They’re stealing copper on the Milan–Rome line, on the Milan–Bologna, and the Milan–Florence line. In Naples, Salerno. Everywhere, round-trip. They steal everything, morning, afternoon, evening, and night. And without copper, how is Engineer D’Elia going to power his trains? The guy’s career is being ruined by this problem!”

  Nicolas barely nodded, waiting for the ask.

  “Maraja, you need to get this fucking gang off my back and get back whatever amount of copper is still in the storeroom before they ship it off to China.” The lawyer looked around for a moment, then moved out to the edge of the ar
mchair to lean closer to Nicolas and, in spite of the music playing in the club, lowered his voice: “It’s the Gianturco gang, Maraja. They’re Mojo’s Gypsies.”

  So Mojo was back again. Nicolas had some unsettled matters with him, and he hadn’t forgotten that.

  Nicolas got up from the sofa, looked out the door of the private room, and shouted to a passing waiter to bring him more Moët & Chandon: “Altra moetta, presto!”

  “You need to eliminate them for me,” the lawyer went on in the same tone of voice, after finishing his second glass of champagne. “And everything they’ve taken from me, you need to get back for me.”

  “But why are you asking us?” Nicolas asked the question even as, deep inside, he was connecting the dots: at last his brain had started working the way it used to, and he was beginning to conceive a plan that smacked of comeback, that smacked of the future.

  “If I go to the police it’ll take me ten years before it’s taken care of. The paranza can turn it around in ten minutes.”

  Selfies, notoriety, handshakes. For the members of the paranza, it meant they’d attained their goal, that they really had become VIPs. These were good things. But what the lawyer was talking about was something completely different. This meant official sanction of the fact that for those who mattered in the city, the paranza was an efficient organization. Suitable to entrust with special missions. And an efficient organization can claim the chairman’s seat at the negotiation table.

  “I get it, but why should the paranza do you this favor?”

  Nicolas had intentionally chosen to use that word, favor, because the lawyer himself had uttered it.

  “Tell me how much you want, and we’ll gladly pay.”

  Without answering, Nicolas grabbed a stack of paper napkins off the table and started balling them up. He made clumps of paper and stuffed them into his mouth, pushing them to the back with his thumb. The lawyer stared at him like he was a lunatic. What was Nicolas trying to do? Make a jury-rigged mouthguard and then start a boxing match?

  Instead, Nicolas, unruffled, crossed his legs and started talking in a hoarse voice and a Sicilian accent: “But now you come to me and say, Don Corleone, you must give me justice. And you don’t ask in respect or friendship.” He’d always wanted to act out this scene, such a pity that no one was filming it, there would have been a lot of shares and likes with a video like that! “And you don’t think to call me Godfather; instead you come to my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do murder … for money?”

  “Maraja, I don’t understand, if I’ve said anything to offend you…”

  Nicolas had always had a weak spot for Don Vito Corleone. He felt just like him: courage above everything else. But that ignoramus of a lawyer was having trouble even registering his Brando impression …

  Caiazzo, even more confused now, attempted his usual exit strategy: abandon the negotiation by taking it for granted that they’d come to an understanding.

  “All right, then, so it’s settled? Are we all good? Let me go talk to the engineer and give him the good news. I’m indebted to you, Maraja.” He was already on his feet when Nicolas spat the balls of paper onto the floor, where they lay, wads sodden with saliva.

  “Hold on there, Counselor. Have you taken me for a houseboy at the service of Engineer D’Elia?”

  “What houseboy, I’m asking you for a favor and I’m ready and willing to pay…” said the lawyer. He’d sat back down on the armchair, slightly pale and more confused than before.

  “No disrespect meant, Counselor, but the money you’re thinking of paying us? We can make that in two hours.”

  At last, the veil that had been dimming Caiazzo’s vision was torn away: these were no longer the children he’d defended in court, these were no longer the same kids he’d kept from having to serve time in reform school.

  “And?” he shot back.

  “I’d make a fair-trade exchange, sustainable and transparent.” He smiled and mentally drew a line between two dots that were very far apart. “You need to tell me where ’o Tigrotto lives.”

  “Who?” He really wasn’t expecting this, and it took him a moment to grasp the point.

  “’O Tigrotto, Counselor, the Faellas’ man. The one who killed Gabriele Grimaldi, Don Vittorio’s son.”

  “’O Tigrotto, yes, I understand, but he’s not one of my clients,” Caiazzo said, already composing himself. He was a lawyer, he thought to himself, assuming a rather more formal tone of voice, he knew how to face up to certain situations. “It’s not one of my trials, I wouldn’t know where to begin. That’s in Masturzo’s portfolio … and it’s confidential information, Maraja, you’d have to speak with him.”

  “I think it’s confidential to go shoot a bunch of Gypsies. Here everything we’re talking about is confidential, Counselor.”

  “But I wouldn’t even know. I’m not on such close terms with Masturzo, how would I ask him such a thing in the first place?” He was grasping for words, while the firmness he’d so painstakingly constructed vanished into thin air.

  Nicolas smiled: now it was his turn to walk away from the conversation.

  “Counselor, all of you down at the courthouse swap wives, you certainly won’t have any real problem asking him where I could find ’o Tigrotto, no? For the rest of it, you and your friend the engineer can rest easy, you’re in the hands of professionals!”

  SUNDAY

  The florist had come to Letizia’s house on Saturday. He’d rung the doorbell, and her mother had leaned out the window.

  “Are you delivering a bouquet of flowers?”

  “No, signo’.”

  “Then why did you ring?”

  “Because I’ve brought you the whole vanload.”

  Nicolas was certain that this would mend the quarrel of a few days earlier, and in fact, when he woke up on Sunday, what he found on WhatsApp was a photograph of Letizia wearing the fuchsia panties that drove him crazy, her hair unbound over her breasts to conceal them, but only a little, and the Hello Kitty oven mitt. Along with the photo, an invitation surrounded by hearts: “Sunday lunch with your kitty cat?”

  The fall through the trapdoor still smarted, and going to lick his wounds in Letizia’s arms was a comforting prospect. But since what hurt worst, more than the fall in and of itself, was the insult that Don Vittorio had leveled against his neighborhood, his rione, he brought a can of black spray paint and, along the way, revving the engine of his TMAX, grabbed the spray can and left a fast, flowing message on the asphalt, his signature, a love note: “F12.” Where the F in Fiorillo was also the F in Forcella, and it fused together, in the same destiny, his own name and the streets he commanded. The 12 represented the position of N in the Italian alphabet, and what’s more, it stood both for ’o surdate, the soldier in the Neapolitan card game of smorfia, and for the twelve apostles. A proper self-respecting signature, he thought, and nodded with satisfaction. Then, as long as he was at it, he shook the can again and added, beside it: I love you, Lety.

  * * *

  Tucano, rolled up in his sheets, opened a single eye, the other one still glued shut by sleep dust. Someone was twisting his big toe. It was Sunday, what the hell was happening?

  “Piece of shit,” his father shouted, smacking his foot, “you got a D-minus in math, and a D-plus in Italian. Are you seriously going to make me work as hard as I do for no good reason! And what the hell is this new tattoo on your forearm?”

  “It’s Michael Jordan,” Tucano mumbled.

  “Who? It looks to me like a triangle with a dot.” Fucked-up Sunday, Tucano thought to himself.

  Tucano had decided that he wouldn’t quit school, for one simple reason: it was a good way to rest up from the effort of running a piazza and a good cover ever since he’d been a member of the paranza. But it also meant he had to put up with the furious outbursts of his father, a violent man who was fixated on academic achievement. He was a mailman, but he wanted more out of life, so he tried to redeem himself
through his son’s education. And Tucano let him.

  * * *

  Fucked-up Sunday, thought Lollipop. He’d woken up with a hunger in him that he would have had to go to a wedding banquet to satiate, but on the kitchen table all he’d found was a pitcher full of some greenish liquid and a few flat buckwheat cakes. His mother was on a diet again and the beverage was her celery-ginger-orange centrifuged drink. His whole family was there, father, mother, and two sisters, and the conversation was revolving around the same topic: the gym they all ran together. Nothing much, a room with treadmills and exercise bikes, another room for running, and the third room crowded with barbells and weights and a couple of full-body training machines. Then there were the showers, a mini-sauna that could hold two people at the most, and the locker rooms. It had been an old investment of his father’s with the unexpected money from an inheritance, and now that gym was struggling to stay afloat, just to make ends meet.

  “What time did you get home, Vince’?” his mother asked. She was wearing an Adidas tracksuit that highlighted her butt, rock-solid from hours of pilates. Everyone else in the family was in Adidas, too: his father called it their family uniform.

  “Ma, please,” said Lollipop.

  “Vince’, you know that Ciro Somma got Fabrizio Corona to come to his gym?”

  “I know that, Pa,” Lollipop replied, grateful to his male parent for sparing him the umpteenth sermon from his mother. “Corona goes there because Somma paid him!”

  His father was fixated on the idea that to make the great leap forward, what he needed was to attract a VIP clientele, ideally soccer players.

  “The reason those guys don’t come is that they have gyms of their own. And after all, you have to pay them three times as much. The price to get them to come and also the price for the competition you represent for their own gyms. They’re filthy pigs.”