Savage Kiss

by Roberto Saviano

  Stavodicendo nodded, taking a long drag on his joint. In those past few weeks, he’d done nothing but brood over the money he’d lost, every blessed day, and every blessed night he went to bed with the unwavering conviction that, come sunrise, he’d get out of bed, hammer that fucking bicycle into junk metal, and head for the station to catch the first train home. But he lacked the strength to do it, and when morning came, instead of wrecking the bike, he stood up on the pedals and started churning out the miles, delivering hot meals for the miserable pittance they paid him. But now he felt safe, at least, no gunfire, no blood feuds. Now that the mountain had come to Muhammad—as his grandfather always liked to say—the paranza had finally given him the courage to dump it. “What are we supposed to do?” he asked, therefore, though speaking to no one in particular.

  “’O Tigrotto,” said Nicolas. “We need to pay a call on him.”

  Stavodicendo nodded. “Why do we need him?”

  “For a trade. When the Striano-Grimaldi feud was going on, the deal was: L’Arcangelo in a cage and ’o Tigrotto in exile.”

  “Nico’,” Tucano broke in. “Tell him where ’o Tigrotto is.”

  “He’s become a German, too, ’o Tigrotto. That bastard lives in Rho.”

  “What the fuck kind of name for a town is Rho?”

  “Rho’s like, I don’t know, say, Cardito, or Cicciano.”

  “No, but those are names, at least. What the fuck kind of name is Rho?”

  * * *

  They budgeted four days for their stakeouts. They’d take turns, setting out in pairs from Stavodicendo’s apartment early in the morning, riding the metro out to the Rho Fiera stop, and returning in the late afternoon to report in. They’d evicted the roommate, forcing him to move back in with his parents. On the evening of the fourth day they all met up in the bachelor-sized living room, eating takeout sushi that Stavodicendo, on the verge of quitting his job anyway, hadn’t bothered to deliver. They analyzed the situation. ’O Tigrotto was confined to a wheelchair, and left the apartment twice a day, in the morning and at four in the afternoon, and when he did, his wheelchair was invariably pushed by a tall blonde with the broad shoulders of a swimmer, no doubt from Eastern Europe. He always followed the same route. Newsstand—a café called Al Posto Giusto—glass of white wine—home again. The caregiver accompanied him up to the fourth-floor apartment, then went home for lunch. “She lives with a Milanese guy thirty years older than she is,” Lollipop had discovered. “She resumes her duties at ’o Tigrotto’s place at two on the dot. She’s like a stopwatch.”

  “’O Tigrotto has turned into a little old man,” Briato’ commented. Of the firm, impassive man, the man of steel, whom he’d once admired at the trial, all that remained was the sheer bulk, crammed into that half-rusted-out wheelchair. He pinched his numb leg and decided that, sooner than wind up like him, he’d make sure he shot himself.

  “What the hell,” said Nicolas, “that guy’s not just on the run. That guy’s terrified, he has the ghost of the Grimaldi clan riding on his back.”

  Catching him out in the street would be impossible. He was always surrounded by other people, and they weren’t operating in paranza territory, they couldn’t count on lookouts or allies. They had no structure up here. To keep on staking out ’o Tigrotto in the hope of finding a breach in his daily routine would be nothing but a waste of time. And for Nicolas it was always a matter of time.

  “The apartment building,” Nicolas asked, “what’s the apartment building like?”

  Tucano had sneaked in and roamed every floor. Eight stories, four staircases, two apartments on each landing, eight apartments per floor.

  “And who lives there?”

  Tucano shook his head. “They come and go and never speak to each other. No one talks here, Maraja. These Milanese have constipated mouths.”

  “Guagliu’, there’s a narrow elevator. ’O Tigrotto’s wheelchair and the slut can both barely fit in it.”

  There were no alternatives. They’d catch him at home, when the caregiver was with her man. All they needed was some bait on the hook, someone who could go upstairs to ’o Tigrotto’s apartment, undisturbed, ring his doorbell, lure him to the peephole, and get him to open the armor-plated door.

  “Stavodice’, be ready to make your last delivery,” said Nicolas, putting on the table the pink food carrier that Stavodicendo was already dreaming of tossing into a dumpster.

  Stavodicendo wasn’t ready.

  “But … I was just saying, what am I supposed to do? I was just saying…”

  “Nothing,” said Nicolas, “nothing you haven’t done before.”

  “Yeah, but, I was just saying…”

  “You were just saying that you really are just an ‘I-was-just-saying.’ A Stavodicendo. Give me five, come on,” Pesce Moscio broke in.

  Stavodicendo seemed to calm down and offered the rest of the paranza a joint.

  “Just taste what the weed is like in Milan.”

  “But that weed is good because it comes from Naples. Obviously. Everything good comes from Naples.”

  Stavodicendo had already established a reputation as the one who was always running away from his responsibilities; now it was up to him, and he was going to prove that he was up to the challenges of returning to the gang. He shoved the pistols into his cube and set off, boarding the metro with his bicycle at the Lambrate station, fifteen minutes before the rest of the paranza. The same way they had done with the girls, the others would follow him a couple of trains back.

  Stavodicendo could feel the eyes of the other passengers focusing on him. Why had that female college student who’d sat down next to him suddenly stood up and moved to another seat? What about that gentleman with the newspaper who was pretending to read but actually kept peeking over at him?

  As soon as he got out at the Rho metro station, he started Google Maps and put in ’o Tigrotto’s address. Stavodicendo was the only one who hadn’t gone out on any of the stakeouts, to keep his face from getting a little too familiar in that neighborhood. With the cube on his back, he walked the 495 yards indicated by the map to reach his selected destination. He walked slowly, as he’d been told to do, a little bit to flesh out the image of the delivery boy who didn’t know how to find his way around the outskirts of town, and a little bit to give the paranza time to catch up with him. They took delivery of the guns a couple of blocks before he reached his destination, leaving two handguns inside the cube for safety’s sake. Stavodicendo, on the other hand, was supposed to continue to his destination unarmed, to avoid arousing suspicion; after all, they’d be right behind him and they’d have his back.

  An elderly lady was just coming out the front door of ’o Tigrotto’s building, and Stavodicendo lengthened his stride to hold the door and ask if she minded letting him go in, because he had a delivery for Signor Onorato. “He’s such a wonderful person, you know that? It really is a shame that he’s in a wheelchair, but thank God, he has Svetlana.” The slut, Stavodicendo thought to himself. “She takes care of everything, and she always has a smile on her face.” Stavodicendo nodded with great conviction, even though he hadn’t been able to make head nor tail of that last phrase. Every so often, the old people spoke a language that belonged to them alone, and when they died, that language would go extinct. He thanked the old woman, waited for her to round the corner, then left the door half open for the paranza and started up the stairs.

  When he reached the appropriate floor, he took a minute to catch his breath and then he rang the doorbell.

  “Who is it?” came a voice. It arrived together with the sound of creaking metal and had the mocking tone that you’d expect from someone like him, not an ancient relic in a wheelchair.

  “A delivery for you, sir.” Stavodicendo forced himself to imitate that ex-roommate of his, to give his accent the most neutral cadence possible.

  “I didn’t order anything.”

  “I see the name Svetlana written on this order. Doesn’t she live here
?”

  Silence. Then: “No, she doesn’t live here. She’s my housekeeper.”

  “I was just saying that on the order it’s also written that it’s a special delivery: Svetlana ordered you a bowl of pasta with sardines.”

  Nicolas had told him that he knew ’o Tigrotto’s weak spot, namely, food, and food from back home, down south, must surely be something he missed sorely, living around all those polenta eaters, as the southern slur for northern Italians went.

  Stavodicendo heard a sound of keys falling on the floor, then the metallic creaking of the lock—Nicolas’s information had proved accurate, that big cat hadn’t been able to resist the siren song of the southern seas in his food bowl. After four turns of the key in the tumblers, the door swung slowly open and ’o Tigrotto appeared, in his usual wheelchair. Didn’t he ever break character with that pantomime? Stavodicendo took a step forward to fill the doorway and keep the door from being shut. And as he bent over to take the food carrier off his back, Nicolas appeared behind him. And so did the other five. That was when ’o Tigrotto, as if he’d heard the question that Stavodicendo had framed only in his mind, leaped to his feet like a spry young stripling. His face was pale, so that he himself looked like one of those ghosts that had occupied his body.

  “San Gennaro has performed a miracle, he’s up and walking!” cried Nicolas, raising both arms, and thus placing the pistol in a clear line of sight. He lowered the gun immediately, leveling it straight at him.

  ’O Tigrotto’s hands darted to his shorts. Conditioned reflex had led him to reach for his pistol where he’d worn it all his life, but Nicolas immediately smashed his head into the man’s face. ’O Tigrotto lurched back into his wheelchair, hands cradling his face, while his eyebrow, cut by the head butt, gushed blood.

  “You’ve gotten rusty, Tigro’,” said Drago’, entering the apartment with the others and shutting the door behind him.

  “Wait, what are you doing? Who sent you here?”’o Tigrotto said again and again, groggy and bewildered. Lollipop on one side and Tucano on the other pinned him down to the armrests. Drago’ and Stavodicendo got behind him and grabbed the handles. They took him to the kitchen, while ’o Tigrotto kept begging them, between spurts of blood: “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!”

  “He’s like a little kid who’s afraid of getting a shot,” said Briato’. “Let’s get this done!” Then, turning to ’o Tigrotto as if to console him, but actually to twist the knife: “Don’t worry, you won’t even feel it.”

  As he heard those words, Nicolas put his gun away, stuck his right hand into his jeans pocket, and pulled out the knife. “Hold him still, ja’, I just had an idea.”

  THE SOCIAL WORKER

  While the members of the paranza were aboard the train taking them back home, and Stavodicendo was speculating about the effect that his surprise return would have on his parents, Biscottino was behind the basso with Pisciazziello.

  In that courtyard they’d spent days at a time making two-pronged attacks, running in parallel and passing the ball, tighter and tighter and faster and faster, lofting it back and forth through the air until one of them launched a thunderous shot into the goal and the other swerved to embrace his teammate. The goalpost twins. Biscottino was a player who never hogged the ball: he was always willing to pass to a teammate. When they played on the mini-field, or when they played in the classroom, balling up sheets of copy paper and Scotch-taping them into rudimentary soccer balls, kicking penalty shots between the desks, and even when they played in the piazza in front of the sanctuary of Loreto Mare. He lived for the assist. His greatest joy came when he was able to outrun and outfox both opposing defenders and goalie and then lightly loft the ball to the striker, but only when he was in perfect position, right in the goalmouth.

  But today the ball seemed to be glued to Biscottino’s foot. He caressed the ball with the sole of his shoe, and then with a light touch lofted it into the air, cushioning its fall with his instep.

  Pisciazziello started waving his arms, as if he were defending at the San Paolo stadium, but Biscottino didn’t even deign to glance at him.

  “What’s the matter, Biscotti’, aren’t we friends anymore?” asked Pisciazziello. He felt guilty because he’d let slip the story of Roipnol to his mother and from that point on, things had started moving so fast that it wasn’t clear anymore just where they’d wind up. He knew that Biscottino was trying to keep Signora Greta calm by staying home, good and obedient, and having as little as possible to do with the Piranhas: he felt hemmed in. But what Pisciazziello didn’t know was that earlier that morning, awakening, his friend had been confronted with another surprise.

  Since the day he’d murdered, he’d never again used it, his Desert Eagle, he hadn’t once taken it out of his bedroom. He’d emptied his Pokemon card holder and hidden his gun between the album’s rigid covers. Then he’d stuffed it under his bed, just far enough out of sight to escape notice, but still well within reach, close enough to feel it there, as he sat on his sheets; he only needed to swing his heel and he could tell that his weapon was there, available. But that morning, the swinging heel had encountered no resistance. Biscottino had dropped down, belly flat on the floor. There was nothing under the bed but dust. At that point, he’d walked over to where his mother was sleeping with his two younger siblings on the sofa bed, and he’d listened to the deep breathing of the three, only then beginning his silent search. He’d looked everywhere, even rummaging through his mother’s underwear drawer. He’d pushed away the wave of shame as he’d lifted and peered at bras and panties, and when he’d stumbled upon his father’s old shirts in the same drawer, shirts that Greta still held on to, he’d felt a lump in his throat. Then he’d searched in the bathroom. Nothing. The pistol was nowhere to be found. Biscottino had gone back to his bedroom and found his mother there, waiting for him. She hadn’t even let him open his mouth. “Now is the time to swear an oath,” Greta had told him. “What oath?” Biscottino had asked her. He was standing there in underpants and undershirt, his arms held before him, like a soccer player facing a penalty kick. Greta had stood up and pushed his arms aside to hug him tight, and then she’d forced him to swear: he would never fire a gun again in his life, not even straight up into the air. Biscottino had nodded, what else could he do?

  Pisciazziello asked again: “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

  “You could have kept your mouth shut, Pisciazzie’.” That was the response, and Biscottino’s voice was so faint and hard-edged it practically drew blood.

  “What could I do? They did crazy things to my brother, you know that…”

  “And now you can see all the comings and goings at home.” He lofted the ball back into the air and started dribbling the ball all on his own. Foot, thigh, head, juggling it and never letting it hit the ground. And never passing it.

  “The social worker again?” he asked. For the past week, or nearly, that woman had been showing up every day at Biscottino’s basso, and a couple of times Pisciazziello, too, had crossed paths with her. She showed up every now and then at Pisciazziello’s house, too. A big tanned woman who accompanied every single phrase she said with a smile that smacked of mockery, and on the occasions when she had spoken to the two of them, explaining that she needed to speak to “Mammà” about “important matters” and “all alone,” she had uttered the words clearly and loudly. “We’re not babies,” Pisciazziello had told her, and in response she had given him a smile.

  “Yeah, her again, I’m afraid,” Biscottino replied. “I’m starting to get scared, Pisciazzie’. What if now my mother tries to send me to boarding school? In that case, I’d rather wind up behind bars, adda murì mammà. And what the hell does this woman have to say? Every time she comes they talk for two or three hours. It’s a good thing she brings us food.”

  “Ua’,” said Pisciazziello, “it’s not like she brings us free food.”

  “Eh, maybe that’s why your mother’s here, too, talking with her, maybe she wants to get
some free food.”

  Foot, thigh, head. The ball still hadn’t hit the ground.

  “I’m starting to get scared, too,” said Pisciazziello. He’d stepped closer to Biscottino to steal the ball, but the other boy slid it around to his side and defended it with his body. “For the next six months, my brother’s going to be living on nothing but smoothies, you realize? He’s always on edge, and not just because of the beating he took. He’s in and out of the house every hour of the day and night, and Mammà is out and about a lot more, and she’s always talking with your mamma, too.”

  He stuck out his left leg to put Biscottino off-balance and then surprise him on the right, and so the other boy used his elbow to ward him off. Stalling for time.

  “You didn’t say a thing to your brother, right?” asked Biscottino. He’d already asked Pisciazziello that question a thousand times, and every time Pisciazziello had answered in the exact same words: “Adda murì mammà, not a single word, and not even that!”

  They battled for control of the ball for a while, until Pisciazziello suddenly retreated, but Biscottino remained planted on the spot, well balanced, and started juggling the ball again. “But are you sure,” he asked him again, for the second time since that whole thing with their mothers had started, “that Carlito’s Way doesn’t know anything? Look, it’s not in your interest for your brother to know, because he’ll put the blame on you, too, if he finds out I killed Roipnol. Your mamma knows that, right?”

  “Don’t worry. Mammà understands that this is a huge problem for everyone. We’re not crazy, you know.” Pisciazziello swung his foot at a bowl full of cat food. “Biscotti’, in this whole mess, if there’s one person who can feel good about things, it’s you, because at least you had the balls to kill a boss. Even though I actually loved Roipnol and ’a Culona. They’d let me play on the computer, they’d take me out to go shopping.” He slid into thick dialect: “But now I’m friends with a guy who’s got a huge pair of balls.”