I Capelloni, the Longhairs, were in the clubhouse, the lair used by ’o White’s men—one-third tobacconist, one-third bar, one-third Punto Sisal, or lottery window. There was the usual back-and-forth, comings and goings, the shouts of the bettors and the cries of those ordering an amaro at the bar’s greasy, wood-faced counter, and there was also ’o White himself, wireless earbuds in his ears, jerking his head to some unknown beat. Rap or heroin? his men asked themselves, but they didn’t dare step close to him: under that apparent normality they could sense a tension pushing to the surface that had never subsided since Roipnol’s death. Nothing had happened since then—no warning shots, not even a muttered word—and that was what they found unsettling, more than anything else. The samurai knot that ’o White wore at the back of his side-shaven skull stopped without warning, in full silence. Mauriziuccio ’o Pagliaccio had entered the room, and the sheer weight of his importance had sucked all the bedlam out of the room. ’O Pagliaccio rapped his knuckles twice on the pool table, but ’o White had resumed his stationary dance, eyes still shut.
“’O White!” said ’o Pagliaccio.
“Oh, Mauriziu’. What are you doing here?” he asked, slowly removing his earbuds.
“I came by to see how the face on top of your dickhead neck was wearing over time. And it’s pretty worn out!” He burst into a thunderous laugh. ’O Pagliaccio had two dense shrubs of reddish curls, one on either side of his skull, and on the top of his head glittered the reflection of the room’s overhead fluorescent lights. A third shoal of tangled curls clung stubbornly to his forehead. He was the spitting image of Krusty the Clown, and since the day someone had pointed out the resemblance, Maurizio Viscardi had become Mauriziuccio ’o Pagliaccio.
“You need to come to San Giovanni.”
“Wait, you want me to come to—”
“No. You all need to come. Your whole paranza. To Micione’s house. Tomorrow morning.”
“I got it,” said ’o White. “But has something happened?”
’O Pagliaccio ignored the question. “All right, then, around ten in the morning. Because after that Micione has things to do. Take care of yourself, guagliu’.”
As soon as ’o Pagliaccio was out of the room, the place emerged from its hibernation and began jumping again. Orso Ted and ’o Selvaggio were churning around ’o White.
“Oh, the fact that he came all the way out here … that’s definitely not a good sign. But, ’o White, tomorrow it’s not like ’o Pagliaccio is going to sentence us all to death, is it?” asked Orso Ted.
“Or else do you think they finally made you king of Forcella and tomorrow they’re going to hold your coronation?” said ’o Selvaggio.
“Oh. Enough with these stupid questions,”’o White snapped. “You’ve busted my balls. No doubt, whatever it is, it’s serious, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent ’o Pagliaccio, they’d have sent a kid. ’Nu guaglione. ’Nu muschillo…”
“Then why did they send him especially?” asked Orso Ted.
“Because you can’t say no to ’o Pagliaccio,” replied ’o White.
“I’d never met this guy ’o Pagliaccio,” Orso Ted went on, “but the minute he set foot in here, I got scared!”
“Uaaa’. You really are a lightweight,” said ’o White, brash and bold, “if ’o Pagliaccio scares you!”
“He scares me, too,” said Chicchirichì.
“He doesn’t scare me in the fucking slightest!” said ’o Selvaggio. “But he does look like a professional killer, I’ll say that.”
“That’s some bullshit. Now you can glance at a guy and say he looks like a professional killer! If someone looked like a professional killer, then everyone would be able to tell you were a professional killer first thing, and you wouldn’t be good for a single job,”’o White snapped. Could he be outdone in ferocity by someone who looked like Krusty the Clown?
“No, no,” said Chicchirichì, “he definitely has the face of a professional killer. And after all, what does that have to do with it, ’o White. If a guy has the face of a professional killer, then everyone’s just going to respect him.”
“So you know what that professional killer does for a living now? He’s cornered the market on Japanese motorcycles in Italy. He’s the biggest dealership. And I’m not saying the biggest in Naples. In all of Italy!”
“But I thought he was the guy who carried out Micione’s executions?” Chicchirichì asked.
“Sure, he killed people, alongside ’o Tigrotto,” said ’o Selvaggio. He’d walked into the center of the cluster of Longhairs, he had something important to say: “And nobody suspected him. That means he had a pair of balls on him. If all you do is sell motorcycles, then you’re a businessman. If all you do is kill people, then you’re a professional killer. If you do both, then you know how to be a boss.”
“So what are we doing now, reciting ’o Pagliaccio’s biography? Come on, let’s start a Wikipedia page for him…”’o White interrupted him. The discussion had gone on too long now. The king of Forcella had summoned them, that alone was enough to set his imagination aflame. “It’s about time they gave me Furcella, I mean what the fuck! After Don Feliciano turned state’s witness, and Copacabana’s behind bars, and now they’ve rubbed out Roipnol…”
“’O White, the tournament of Furcella is something you have to win, no one’s going to give it to you—” said ’o Selvaggio. ’O White’s hands seized ’o Selvaggio’s throat and squeezed tight.
“No one ever gave me a thing in my life!” hissed ’o White. “When you speak my name, you need to gargle first with Tantum Verde mouthwash, you filthy lòuta!” He loosened his grip just enough to allow ’o Selvaggio to get a word out.
“’O White, no one in our paranza has a piazza. We’re all on salaries. All we do is protect the piazzas, and do whatever Micione tells us. In the meantime, the Piranhas are supplying the whole city with shit.”
“Bullshit. They give them a handful of fleas.”
“Eh, like hell, a handful of fleas!” snarled ’o Selvaggio.
’O White met the gaze of all his other men.
Orso Ted said: “’O White, don’t get mad. But the piazzas are all selling the Piranhas’ shit.”
“Okay, it’s true,” said ’o White, “so we’ll settle the matter, at Micione’s place.”
“You see? We always have to go talk to someone to settle a matter.”
“Shut your mouth.” And he lifted his finger to the tip of his nose, to impose silence.
Via Sorrento in San Giovanni a Teduccio is a strip of asphalt lined with big apartment buildings, warehouses, and a mini-soccer field where the grass no longer grows. Micione lived there, on the top floor of an apartment house, and from there, from one of the countless outlying districts of Naples, he controlled the city’s historical center. The road that runs from Forcella up to San Giovanni a Teduccio runs straight almost the whole way. You keep the sea on your right and in fifteen minutes, if there’s no traffic, you’re there. From the palazzi of the seventeenth century to big blocky apartment buildings in just minutes.
The Longhairs had crowded into ’o White’s VW Golf, and the minute it crossed the boundary into San Giovanni he switched the engine off. He had no other instructions and he was in foreign territory. He hadn’t ventured out of the historic center of Naples in more than a year: walking away from business for even just a handful of days is a dangerous thing, it means becoming a target.
Three scooters pulled up next to the car, surrounding it. A glance inside, another at the license plate, and finally a pair of knuckles knocking on the hood. “Stop when you get to the elementary school,” said one of the guys on a scooter, and then roared off with the others.
Outside the elementary school a guy wearing jeans and denim a jacket waved him over. “Turn in here,” he said to ’o White, opening the car door. “From here on I’ll be driving.”
The VW Golf pulled a U-turn and accelerated in the direction the Longhairs had come from.
“Oh, wait, now we’re going back?”
“That’s how it works … There are only four people who can approach the Faellas’ house with a car. I’m one of the four.”
“Well, what about if Amazon wants to deliver a package…?”
“Ah, go blow yourself, you and Amazòn.”
In the murky seabed of San Giovanni, the only security system was to allow access only to certain motorists, who, like maritime pilots, knew the low tides, the shoals, the reefs.
They arrived in a small open space surrounded by a horseshoe of public housing structures. The top floor of the three apartment buildings sutured together belonged to the Faellas, thousands of square feet of floor space that, viewed from the sidewalk, seemed like nothing more than depressingly normal apartments.
The Longhairs were ushered out of the car and lined up against the building’s wall.
“Guagliu’, undress,” said the man who had conducted them there. ’O White set a good example for his men and dropped a Beretta M9, his personal favorite, onto the reddish tile pavement. The others followed suit, all except for Orso Ted, who declared he wasn’t carrying. The driver ordered them to take their shoes off, too; if they went up to see Micione with even a razor blade hidden in a sock, then he’d be a dead man. But they were all fine, they could go in. They caught a freight elevator that opened out onto a hallway that seemed to stretch out endlessly. The white walls were decked with antique view paintings of Naples in a faint sepia tone and, at regular intervals, a series of modern ottomans, these too sepia-hued. It looked like a waiting room, or the aisle of a church, so great was the solemnity it emanated. A narrow-plank parquet floor extended down the hallway, only to come to a sudden stop: beyond that point, you continued walking on a sort of plexiglass catwalk, but the LED can lighting overhead reflected a glare off the surface, producing a sort of fata morgana to the eyes of the Longhairs.
“Hold it right there,” said Micione’s man, and with long strides he walked away, vanishing into the distance.
“’O White,” said Chicchirichì, “is it true that Micione looks like the Cheshire Cat?”
“Like who?”’O White had raised his hands to his forehead to ward off the glare of the spotlights, and in the meantime he ventured a few steps to get past the parquet.
“The Cheshire Cat!”
“What the fuck is that?”
“The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland…” And then, seeing ’o White’s baffled expression, he specified: “The cartoon.”
“Ah, go fuck yourself…” But he never finished the phrase, because the sight of what lay beneath his feet had silenced him. A stream of rushing water flowed past under the transparent floor. It felt as if he was in one of those paintings of the miracles of Jesus; his grandmother had a holy image identical to this on her nightstand. Only here the sea was real, tropical, with seaweed, rocks, garishly colored fish, even a stingray that was swimming along with its belly glued to the thin transparent barrier separating it from ’o White’s appalled face. “Oh, there’s real water under here, and no kidding!” he said, and was immediately joined by the others, who got down on all fours, their heads swiveling to follow the clownfish and surgeonfish. Jaws hanging open, like four children visiting the Genoa aquarium.
“Look out, if you fall in it’ll eat your face off…” The Longhairs hadn’t noticed that Micione had come out a door and was enjoying the amusing sight of all of them, heads down, faces on the ground, and asses in the air.
“Why, are there piranhas in there, too?”’o White promptly asked.
“Exactly. Do you know much about fish?” asked Micione. Then he shook hands with ’o White, ostentatiously ignoring the others. The Faella boss had shown up barefoot, jeans ending just below the knee and a white Ralph Lauren shirt, untucked. “This way, boys,” he said, and the Longhairs followed the master of the house, suspended above that stretch of Caribbean seascape in the heart of San Giovanni a Teduccio.
“I’m still trying to make up my mind whether I should fill a bathtub with acid and dissolve you in it one by one, or if there’s anything about the bunch of you worth saving.” Micione told them to sit down on a swaybacked sofa without a backrest. It was the only piece of ramshackle furniture in a living room that was crammed with mirrors and statues, candelabra and credenzas, all of it in a profusion of gold leaf and silver intarsia.
’O White tried to keep his back straight, but he felt as if they’d extracted his spinal cord all at once when ’o Pagliaccio’s voice broke in: “What is it, have they made you whiter than white?”
“Crescenzio Roipnol has been shot,” Micione went on, “’a Culona, his wife, has been shot. And you and your paranza were supposed to protect them. In Forcella, you and your paranza are me. I pay your salaries. I pay your bonuses. I pay for your tickets to the stadium. So? Who have you sold out to?”
“To no one, Micio’,” murmured ’o White. Micione’s eyes turned to the others, and like a chorus of soldiers, they all cried: “To no one!”
“Why are you talking about selling out?”’o White continued, working up a little bit of nerve.
“Well, wasn’t Carlito’s Way in your paranza? Wasn’t he supposed to stand guard outside the door? He was the one who sold out,” said ’o Pagliaccio.
“No, what do you mean? They’re writing all over Facebook that he had nothing to do with it…”
“That’s true!” said ’o Selvaggio. He tried to stand up and pull his iPhone out of his back pocket, but ’o Pagliaccio shoved him back down with a hand to his chest. “All the lawyers that we have here, eh…” he said, and easily slid his phone out and took it, handing it over to Micione.
Carlito’s Way had created lots of different profiles on social media, and for each and every one of them, he’d selected the same picture of Al Pacino in Scarface. “For informers all I have are the jaws of the wolf,” Micione declaimed, scrolling with his thumb. “If someone talks dirty about the others with you, then he talks dirty about you with the others…”
“Quite the poet,” said ’o Pagliaccio.
“‘Death to informers. Anyone who accuses me of being a traitor and a fake is a traitor himself. My bros have to defend my innocence.’ Well, well, well, he’s turned into a writer to save his ass. That doesn’t mean he didn’t sell out. So? Where is he? What the fuck has become of him? ’O Pagliaccio has been looking for him for months and hasn’t found him…”
“We’ll find him for you,” said ’o White. He’d braced himself, pushing his fists into the fabric.
“So who shot Roipnol? Was it you?” Micione stepped rapidly close to ’o White and hit him with an elbow, knocking him off-balance again. “Did you shoot him? Who gave you the money? Was it Mangiafuoco from Sanità, who was trying to defend himself? Was it L’Arcangelo? Was it those Grimaldi bastards? The people from Secondigliano? Who have you sold out to?”
“To no one!”’o White reiterated.
“Bring me this fucking Carlito’s Way.”
“He’s shitting his pants, he’s terrified we’re going to shoot him.”
“And right he is!”
“People say he shipped out with his father. He’s a sailor now,” put in Orso Ted.
“Then get a boat and sail out and get him. Or maybe you could just dive in and swim out and get him. I really don’t give a fuck either way. Do you know why I haven’t dissolved you in acid, one by one, so that there’s nothing left of you but your teeth, bobbing on the surface? Because I have to bring proof that my men, my arms, are clean, that I’m not letting myself be fucked in the ass by these gnats—sti muschilli.”
“Oh, but by which muschilli?” asked ’o White.
“Ah, because you’re not a muschillo, eh?” said ’o Pagliaccio. “So what are you? You a boss? You a zone chief? I throw a bone for you, and you’re supposed to bring it back to me. And you don’t even know how to do that.”
’O White bit his lip, and struggled not to respond.
“I need you to bring me Carlito’s Way,” Micione went on. “I can’t fight a war against everyone. You’re too damned ignorant, all you know how to do is shoot. The more you shoot, the less you command. I have the police after me, the newspaper after me, I’m constantly leading the news roundup on regional TV. They say I’m hurting this city. But in fact, if there’s anyone who’s helping this city, it’s me. I bring jobs to this place where no one else can give you a job. We need to organize business here, not just spend our days being bandits like you guys … bunch of ignorant louts…”
“I’m not afraid to shoot,” said ’o White. He’d surrendered. Surrendered to the sweat, to the uncomfortable position, to the disappointment of not having been summoned there to be appointed to a new post. And now he could talk about it freely.
“But is he talking or is he shitting?”’o Micione asked, with a glance at ’o Pagliaccio.
“No, if you ask me, he just belched.”
“If you ask me, it was a fart.”
“Me, afraid? I just fuck fear!” said ’o White. ’O Selvaggio tried to hold him back by tugging on his T-shirt from behind, but by now there was no stopping him. “Fear can blow me! What the fuck do I care about fear? I care about making money. ’O Micio’, if you don’t mind my saying, you should have given the scepter of Forcella to someone like me, not to people from outside…”
“Ah, so you wanted to be the prince of Forcella? ’O White the First, king of Forcella…”
“The first asshole!” said ’o Pagliaccio. “You didn’t even know how to protect your own boss!”
“But he wasn’t my boss,” shouted ’o White.
“Then it was you who killed him. In that case, you need to die!”’O Micione seized him by the throat, and ’o White started spewing incomprehensible phrases. Everyone else on the sofa bowed their heads, silent and motionless. Micione clutched even tighter, his fingers twisting the muscles of ’o White’s throat. “So who’s your boss?”
“You are,”’o White finally managed to gasp out, and Micione released his grip.
“What do you want to become? If you want to be a boss, you have to have a pair of balls on you that when you walk down the street, the street itself bows down before you. Bring me Carlito’s Way, ja’! Save his life for him.”