The guy tried to accelerate, but the two of them were on him in a flash, and Drago’ repeated his demand, whereupon the guy nodded his head. “Queer,” Drago’ commented.
At last they laid eyes on a perfect car. A Mercedes SLC the driver was parking, using the stick shift. They shut off the street, Nicolas hopped off the scooter, shattered the driver’s window with a quick blow from the butt of his pistol, yanked open the door, and hauled the unfortunate man out onto the pavement.
As soon as Nicolas started up, he acquitted himself admirably. The car shook a bit and touched the curbs from time to time, but he drove along reasonably well. Drago’ rode along next to him and gave him instructions through the broken window—“Shift, brake, downshift”—but he couldn’t keep Nicolas from taking a turn too tightly and scraping the side of the Mercedes and, more important, wedging it irremediably in the narrow alleys, or vicoli. They just dumped the car there: Nicolas climbed out and got behind Drago’ on his scooter; he stopped a short while later.
They chose another car stuck in traffic, a Fiat Panda, easier to handle. They shattered the driver’s window, hauled the owner out, thoroughly terrorizing her, and off they went again, back to driving school. Nicolas ground the gears as he shifted from second to third, and lurched forward a bit, but for a brand-new driver he wasn’t doing badly at all. Drago’ hit the horn a couple of times to celebrate his pupil’s progress, and Nicolas responded by banging his fist on the roof of the car. The vicolo widened slightly, allowing Drago’ to rev the TMAX and ride along on the driver’s side. From there he’d enjoy a better view of Nicolas at work.
Something wasn’t quite right. The engine was revving too high, it should have been in third gear by now, but Nicolas had his eyes glued to his rearview mirror. Drago’ turned to look behind him and he saw what Nicolas had seen: motorcycles belonging to the Falchi squad of the police. We need to do something, thought Drago’, and Nicolas must have been thinking the same thing, because he’d drawn his pistol. Drago’ kicked the door of the Fiat Panda: “Nico’, let me take care of this. You get out of these vicoli and out into traffic.” The Panda accelerated and Drago’ fired four shots into the air so the Falchi came after him. There was a fork in the narrow lane, and Nicolas veered to the left, while Drago’ turned right, leading the police.
If I can only get to Piazza Mercato, then from there I can cut over to the station, and I’m safe, thought Drago’. He’d aim at pedestrians and veer away only at the last second, forcing them to leap out into the street and hoping that would slow down his pursuers. In the meantime, Nicolas was driving through the vicoli, trying to find his way to Via Nuova Marina, and as he drove he typed into the paranza’s chat:
Maraja
Cop emergency. Come on your bikes.
Kids come too, come on, guagliunciell!
And he sent the Google Map coordinates.
Here’s the marina, and there’s my scooter, Nicolas thought to himself. He jumped out of the Fiat Panda without even bothering to switch off the engine, leaped onto the TMAX, and took off in the direction of Corso Garibaldi. Knowing Drago’, he would have veered into the messy labyrinth of the neighborhood around the station to elude his pursuers. He just had to stay out of their reach long enough for the paranza’s network of protection to leap into action. It was a strategy they’d been employing as long as they’d been alive: bewilder, confuse, and make as much ruckus and turmoil as possible.
Drago’ had practically reached the station. As he roared through Piazza del Mercato, he realized that the motorcycles chasing him had gone from two to, now, three. He was racing as fast as he could, leaning into the curves at angles approaching forty-five degrees, and in the end he’d emerged onto the last stretch of Corso Garibaldi. The Falchi were still right on his ass. In his pocket, his cell phone was sizzling on his thigh, buzzing with the growing stack of text messages and notifications.
Drago’ stood up on the scooter’s deck to get a glimpse of the road ahead, beyond the cars: at the far end of the piazza there were two squad cars full of state police, and from the right, over near the station, a car full of city traffic cops was arriving. He was surrounded. Drago’ considered whether to just dump the scooter and continue his flight on foot. There was a small knot of Africans who were bivouacking next to the monument; with a bit of luck maybe he’d be able to use them as human shields. He released the throttle, determined to make that last desperate attempt, but he saw a 50 cc scooter coming in the opposite direction, pulling a wheelie as it arrived. Driving it was Susamiello. Yes, none other than Susamiello, and right behind him was another scooter, driven by one of the youngsters, one of the other two guagliuncielli, he couldn’t even remember his name. They darted suddenly to one side, in an incursion into the lane that Drago’ was occupying, roaring straight at the car full of city traffic cops as if challenging them to a reckless duel.
The anti-police had arrived. And the more Drago’ looked around, the more scooters he saw appearing; in fact, there was even a young kid riding a BMX who veered over close to one of the squad cars and with a well-aimed kick shattered one of its brake lights. Drago’ felt as if he’d fallen into one of those old Westerns that his father could never get enough of: the police were the regular army, organized, methodical, predictable; the guaglioni of Naples were the Indians, courageous, skillful in exploiting the territory, deeply anarchistic. Here was mayhem, here was salvation. Drago’ sped up and shot past the two squad cars that were now busy trying to thread their way through the buzzing swarm of scooters, and left the piazza, free at last.
* * *
That evening, at the New Maharaja, they celebrated their exploit. Drago’ had sidled over next to Nicolas, whispering: “Congratulations on your new driver’s license,” and they’d clinked their flutes of Moët & Chandon together, sloshing at least half of the bubbly onto the floor of the private room. Just a short time before that, Drago’ had awarded Susamiello and his comrades their prize. He’d stepped out of the club and found them waiting there, as usual in single file, facing off with the unruffled and unrufflable bouncer. Drago’ had wrapped his arm around the human refrigerator’s shoulder and then pointed at those three, who burst out in exultation when they saw the gesture, only to turn and relay the same signal to a small group of young girls waiting behind them. The bouncer waved in the three youngsters with their chosen damsels, and they vanished into the long night of the New Maharaja.
Nicolas, too, had a gift for Drago’: he handed him a set of keys.
“The car comes from our dealership,” said Nicolas. “They weren’t fast enough to deliver it, these jackoffs.” Drago’ looked down at the set of keys in his hand: a Maserati SUV.
“Since when did you buy a dealership?” Drago’ asked. Nicolas had locked arms with him and led him to the parking lot. Day was dawning.
“Ever since we started offering him protection, the owner keeps giving us cars. He says that if we drive them, then everyone is going to want to buy one, that same model. Can you believe it, we set the fashion.” Nicolas was talking with his eyes narrowed to slits. Too much Moët, too much cocaine, too much New Maharaja.
“Everyone wants to be like you,” said Drago’. “Nico’,” he went on, “I have something I need to tell you,” and he started relating his tale, beginning with Viola’s incursion. “If it had been up to me, I’d have laid her out dead outside my front door, but she’s still blood of my father.”
“Drago’, these guys are getting scared, don’t you get that? They want an armistice. We’re succeeding! We’ve busted the toilets!”
They slapped each other five, then Drago’ told him about that morning with Micione, starting with Genghis Khan and showing Nicolas his selfies in the cage.
“He has a real lion?” asked Maraja.
“Real as can be.”
“Fuck me, after the Dogo Argentino, what I need now is a tiger, adda murì mammà,” and the idea made them all laugh.
Drago’ described the repeated attempts by Viola and her husband
to bring him into their family: “‘You’ve been here before,’ ‘We’re all one family,’ ‘All the good your grandfather did in his life can’t be wiped out by just one turncoat,’ all that kind of bullshit, Nico’.”
He spoke and gesticulated, a whirling of hands as if to sum up the idea that the encounter had been an overwhelming meat grinder, but that he’d been capable of emerging from it intact.
“And then he told me that I needed to take over the paranza.” He said it with the sense of immediacy with which Micione had said it to him. At the home of the Faellas, he had reacted by contesting each point: But how would Nicolas react?
“And what did you tell him?” asked Nicolas, never taking his eyes off his face.
“I told him that the paranza belongs to all of us, that we’re brothers, that we own the paranza, and that we’re all bros.”
“And what did he tell you?” The confession had turned into an interrogation, but Drago’ sensed in Nicolas’s question curiosity more than concern, as if Nicolas wished he could have been in his shoes, gaining access to the headquarters of the Faella clan.
“He told me that now everyone in the city wants to work under us, and that I have the blood to command, not like Copacabana, not like ’o White.” Drago’ paused: “Not like you,” he said, and he stopped before adding that the way Micione saw it, he was nothing more than Maraja’s houseboy.
“Not like me,” said Nicolas, with a hint of a smile, and he thought to himself that that was exactly his strength: he never laid claim to his realm on account of any rights of birth, he conquered it through his own merits. “These guys really are old. They’re still worrying about blood. Fucking nobility, my ass.”
“Maraja,” said Drago’, his gaze level, “my blood is the blood of my brothers.”
“I know that, Drago’, I know it,” Nicolas replied. He’d learned that whatever happened, more than an interpretation, what was needed was a reaction. You always had to respond. He said: “One of these days, let’s take a ride up to Rome and visit your cousin.”
* * *
Drago’ returned home the morning of the following day. Nicolas had decided that they’d leave the New Maharaja only once they’d emptied all the fridges. Once he arrived on Via Nuova Marina, he veered sharply toward the Inner Port, roared past a couple of shipyards, and stopped at a wharf.
“Filthy water,” he said loudly, and shoved the scooter into the waves.
TOURISTS IN ROME
Tucano was practically in tears when he told Nicolas that he couldn’t go to Rome with him and the others because he had to take care of his six-year-old sister and feed her.
“She comes home from the parish church summer day camp and she eats like Pesce Moscio.” Tucano excused himself in the face of the round of mockery from the members of the paranza, who only doubled down on their ridicule when they heard that statement. At last, Tucano told them exactly what had happened. His father had lost his temper with his mother for her latest acquisition: a six-hundred-euro smart TV. “You’re eating me out of house and home,” Tucano’s father had said, “it’s just my bad luck! What did I ever do to deserve this family?” Whereupon his wife had stood up to him defiantly: “And to think that if we have a paid-off mortgage and a roof over our heads it’s certainly no thanks to you.” And the veins in his neck had bulged and swollen: “I won’t allow you to say these things in the presence of our children,” and so on and so forth. In the end, his father had taken a swing at his mother, and she had retaliated with a good hard punch, and Tucano had stepped into the middle of it, he’d gotten shoved back and forth, but it hadn’t moved him a quarter-inch from where he stood, because his father still thought of him as a child, but with his legs solidly planted, he was unmovable. Tucano had gone to his bedroom and come back out with the Colt Trooper revolver from his bedside dresser and had aimed it directly at his parents’ faces: “Now pack your bags and get out of here, the two of you. From now on, I’m in charge around here, I’m the head of household, I’m the one who brings in the money.” And he’d looked at his father. “Now get out and never set foot in here again! You no longer live here, you’ve busted my chops once and for all!”
Obviously, they hadn’t believed him and they’d waited for him downstairs, but he’d put his hand on the Colt Trooper’s bulge on his hip, and they’d moved along, meekly and obediently.
“So now you have to be a babysitter?” Lollipop asked.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Tucano replied.
None of them had ever been to Rome, and Nicolas’s idea had been welcomed with enthusiastic cheers: “Take us to Rome / Maraja, take us to Rome,” along with further mockery directed at Tucano: “Ua’, don’t forget about the evening feeding, Tuca’!”
Drago’ and Briato’ would take care of the means of transport. Nicolas would occupy the front passenger seat of Drago’s SUV, with the duties of navigator, while all the others rode in Briato’s Cayenne. There would be no problem with parking in the center of Rome; after all, the cars were registered in the names of strangers. Drone, happy to finally be part of an away mission, had laid out a tourist itinerary custom tailored for the paranza. Even Biscottino had willingly agreed to come along; his mother was looking for a job out of town and had less time to worry about where he might be, and was less of a helicopter parent these days.
In the neighborhood around the Termini station, they halted for the day’s first purchase. And it was Nicolas who insisted on paying. Seven pairs of light-up devil horns and seven pairs of eyeglasses with blinking LEDs at a Chinese gift and novelty shop. Then he also purchased a centurion’s short sword, but he kept it for himself, promising that he’d award it to his most loyal soldier. They trooped along in a herd, like tourists eager to consume whatever Rome had to offer, little did it matter whether that might be the Trevi Fountain—into which Lollipop went ahead and tossed a fifty-euro bill—or all those shops they’d never dream of setting foot in back in their native city: but here everything was picturesque, everything was “romano.”
Drone made them wander down Via del Corso and Via Condotti, where, with an oversized shopping bag each, they looted Valentino and Armani. And also Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and Chanel, but also the market stands selling tripe, white pizza, and pangiall’oro cakes. Gobble everything and then discard the leavings: the paranza had always lived according to that simple rule of capitalism.
The tour ended with the Colosseum. They convinced one of the gladiators standing around outside the monument to let all seven of them hold him up in the air, and they managed to mix in with a guided tour. After they abandoned the group of Japanese tourists, Nicolas pulled out the short sword and waved it in front of his men, who broke into a rhythmic cheer, their hands cupped over their faces—“Spaniard! Spaniard! Spaniard!”—reenacting their favorite scene from Gladiator.
“What’s Viola’s shop called, Drago’?” asked Drone, tapping on his iPad.
“Celeste. You know, sky blue. Like her eyes and her father’s eyes.”
“But why is the shop named after another color if she’s called Viola?” asked Pesce Moscio.
“Because Viola has blue eyes, no?”
“What are you talking about? Viola has pale blue eyes, not sky-blue eyes,” said Lollipop.
“Yeah, but there’s no difference. Sky blue … pale blue … it’s all the same.”
“What do you mean? Pale blue is the Napoli jersey, while the Lazio jersey is sky blue, can’t you see that it’s a more faded color?”
Viola’s shop, Celeste, was 4,000 feet from their current position, according to Google Maps, a good fifteen minutes on foot, hordes of tourists allowing. The paranza had all the time they needed to duck in somewhere, get a bite to eat, and review their plan. They chose a tiny local trattoria (“Dal Principe, Prince’s, it only seems right,” Nicolas had commented), as small on the outside as it was narrow and cramped on the inside, and in fact the paranza filled the entire restaurant after forcing a German couple to get out: Bria
to’ planted himself, legs akimbo, and stared at them, impassive in the face of their “gibt es ein Problem?” until the two of them got up and went to the cash register to pay for their meal and leave.
They would use Drago’s car to shatter the plate-glass display window of Viola’s shop. “But why my car in particular, it’s brand new!” he’d complained the whole way, but that’s what Maraja had decreed: “That’s only fair, Drago’, this is the only way we can do this incursion,” he’d said, and Drago’ had gone into a funk, sulking miserably. Drone had already taken care of the shop’s alarm and the video cameras in the neighborhood, operating remotely. That night, neither alarm nor cameras would be in operation. There was just one detail still to be taken care of, which Lollipop identified after pulling aside the checkered curtains in Dal Principe. An Indian vendor was patiently and methodically arranging the flowers that were on display in the rear of his Fiat Scudo van. At first, Pesce Moscio tried to buy the vehicle off him, but no deal: it wasn’t for sale. Then it was Lollipop’s turn to try, and then Drone’s, but the Indian continued shaking his head. At that point, Briato’ glanced at Nicolas, reaching for the waistband of his trousers, but Nicolas shook his head; shooting the man just wasn’t in the cards that evening. Before Lollipop and Drone finally gave up, Drago’ rushed outside and started bidding against them, as if they were in the middle of an auction of a storage unit in Las Vegas and the Indian was the auctioneer.
“Two thousand,” offered Drago’.
“Three thousand, you miserable wretch,” retorted Lollipop, who had immediately picked up on the idea: there wasn’t a member of the paranza who didn’t watch Storage Hunters.
“Four thousand,” shouted Drone, curling his forefinger into a comma.
The Indian listened to each successive bid with his hand in his hair. Those guys kept touching his things, his flowers, as if they were for sale, so he did everything he could to reiterate his ownership of each item. But in the end he gave up, the numbers they were offering him amounted to more than he could make in a year. He took the keys out of the ignition and handed them over to Lollipop, joining his hands in a gesture of respect.
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