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: Briato’ 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.
The paranza had just paid ten thousand euros for a delivery van that might be worth half that, optimistically, but an extra five thousand euros was a tip they could easily afford. Briato’ took the wheel, while the others handed out roses and tulips to the girls they met on the street: “You’re a flower among flowers,” “A rose for a rose.”
Viola’s shop had three plate-glass windows on a corner: Drago’s SUV would shatter the display window with a swerving side impact and then it would be able to continue on its way. The job would be simpler that way, and they wouldn’t have to clean out the car to loot the shop. Drago’ shook his head: “Destroying my brand-new Maserati is one fucked-up idea.”
“Just the tip of the car’s hood, Drago’.”
“Fuck off, Nico’. Let’s just use the delivery truck, no?” Drago’ tried again.
“So how are we going to take the stuff away from here?”
“There’s always Briato’s Cayenne.”
“No, it rides too low. We need your car. Adda murì mammà, you’ve busted my balls once and for all, Drago’, I’ll buy it off you,” Nicolas snapped, and Drago’ realized he had no choice but to give in.
The “Celeste” sign was purple. A clash of colors that was annoying, but apparently the owner of the shop had decided to claim it openly and with determination, considering that in one corner she’d placed her initials with flourishes and curlicues: VSF, Viola Striano Faella.
Lollipop went to get the SUV; he was going to drive it as a battering ram. Drago’ would drive the Fiat Scudo. Now they just had to wait for Rome to empty out a little bit, so there was less traffic, fewer people.
Around midnight the noise in the streets subsided and, like in a fairy tale, the city seemed to put on its slippers.
“Out in sixty seconds, are we ready, guagliu’?” Nicolas asked, but it wasn’t a question.
None of them tried to conceal their presence: they just stood there, some smoking cigarettes, others with their arms crossed as if waiting for a bus, as untroubled as professional safecrackers. The SUV with Lollipop at the wheel appeared, moving slowly—if it rammed the shop window of Celeste at 60 m.p.h., there was a good chance the driver would spin out of control and smash into the building across the way. Instead, the plan was to limit the sharp, fast acceleration to a final sprint of the last few yards. Lollipop rolled to a distance of about a hundred and fifty feet from the expanse of glass and shifted into first gear. The grinding manual transmission echoed in the Roman night.
First came the noise, like a waterfall crashing down onto boulders. It was almost a peaceful sound, reassuring, and in the end the shattering glass built up incrementally into a terrifying roar. Drone filmed the whole scene with his high-definition smartphone: the powerful silhouette of the SUV shunting through the havoc of breaking glass and screeching metal, and all around, a hail of crystal shards. He ended the video with a wheeling panoramic shot, to record for posterity the lights switching on in the apartments and the shutters timidly swinging open.
Ten seconds or so after ramming through the front window, Lollipop stepped out of the Maserati unhurt and triumphant, twerking the way he’d seen Jamaican girls do on YouTube. In the meantime, the others had darted into the store, while from the same street the SUV had come down, Drago’ was approaching at the wheel of the Fiat Scudo, with the side doors already open.
“Fifty seconds,” said Nicolas.
The paranza grabbed everything they could lay their hands on. Shoes, boots, handbags, but the paintings on the walls too, the carpets, the armchairs.
“Thirty seconds.”
Viola was going to have to answer “Everything” when the carabinieri asked: “What did they take, signora?”
“Ten seconds: get out of here!”
The paranza piled into the Cayenne, while Nicolas leaped first onto the hood and then the roof of the Fiat Scudo. He pulled out the knife that L’Arcangelo had given him and, next to the logo, complete with fluttering curlicues that Viola had placed under the name of the shop—VSF—he carved the letter and numbers F12. He jumped down and got behind the wheel of the Scudo, which placidly puttered out of Italy’s capital. In the seat next to him. Drago’ gazed out the window, sunken in the springs and upholstery, his eyes on the abandoned Maserati.
The paranza was celebrating its knockover at the Casilina Ovest roadside diner when Viola woke up Micione, shaking him by the arm.
“They robbed me, Diego! Those traitors! Those snot-nosed kids! Doesn’t family count for anything anymore, Diego? Answer me! Do something!”
Micione sat up and tried to focus on his wife, who was already fully dressed and made up. What time is it? he wondered, but what he said was: “What’s happened, my love?”
“It’s the Piranhas. They destroyed Celeste. They took everything. We’ve got to do something, Diego!”
“Are you sure it was them, my love?”
“Those pieces of shit basically signed their work.”
Micione sat back down, propping the cushion comfortably behind his back. Those kids were overdoing it now. First the piazzas and now his legal businesses. What were they driving at? Then he, too, stood up and went over to hug her. Viola is right, Micione thought, I have to do something.
While Nicolas and his men were playing at being tourists, Stavodicendo was lying on his bed, repeating the mantra that he had used as a child to make the time go by: “Garella, Bruscolotti, Ferrara, Bagni, Ferrario, Renica, Caffarelli, De Napoli, Giordano, Maradona, Carnevale, Romano, Marino, Volpecina, Sola, Muro, Bigliardi, Di Fusco. Coach: Ottavio Bianchi.”
That handler of wanted men on the run, whom Nicolas had hired to pass meals for him through a hole in the wall, along with scraps of information, had also brought him a tray of cookies as an extra treat. He knew that that night the paranza was going to ram its way into Viola’s shop, and that then they’d give the authentic handbags to the vendors along with the counterfeits. To insult her. To mortify her. The plan amused him and he was happy that the paranza had sent those crunchy pastries as a way of drawing him into the celebration, but having a valid excuse not to take part in the operation also relaxed him. No one was going to look to Stavodicendo to display the courage that he often lacked: all things considered, being on the lam had its advantages.
He was so sick of being on the run that that squalid little apartment had struck him, after just a few days, as a cozy and welcoming nest. When he’d been in Milan, it had taken him a while to stop jerking in fear at every small sound, at every insistent glance, but here, where not even daylight could penetrate, he felt protected. The fears that he’d expressed to Nicolas had evaporated, because now he understood that it was just a matter of being patient.
To kill some time, he thought about soccer: he’d been thinking about it, truth be told, but in here it was a passion he could easily cultivate. He’d asked the hands that provided him with food to bring him a championship calendar and from then on he’d obsessively studied it for days at a time. He was anxiously awaiting the Naples-Juventus game. It wouldn’t be long now. From the walled-in neighborhood, the echo of the city reached him, muffled, and it seemed to him that it wouldn’t be too very dangerous to sneak out for the ninety minutes of the match. He’d studied the door that sealed him in for quite some time now and he’d noticed that the bricks weren’t solidly connected, they looked like stacks of Lego piled up by an apathetic child. If he gave it a hard shove, he could knock it down. Or at least he’d give it a try; it would be worth it. In the meantime, he waited for the day and ate his pastries.
The next day, Micione summoned ’o Pagliaccio and ’o Gialluto and started questioning them.
“All right, how many shops and cafés pay monthly protection to the paranza?”
“How do I know?”’o Gialluto replied.
“Pagliaccio, which ones?”
“How do I know?”’o Pagliaccio replied, following suit.
Micione blew up: “You never know a fucking thing, how can it be? How much do you make a year, you? Two million euros. And you? Four million. And that’s not counting the shops, the business, everything you do. You exist because I exist. And you don’t know a fucking thing.”
“Give me my orders, and I’ll execute them.”
The historic center filled up with new faces, as if a foreign army had marched out of San Giovanni a Teduccio to sow terror. A man walked into Zi’ Pe’s delicatessen and fired a shot into the counter—the bullet came to rest in a mortadella. “Next time, that bullet will wind up in the middle of your forehead, if you keep paying off the Piranhas.” Another man from the Faellas’ gang fired a burst of bullets from an AK-47 into the clothing store, and before turning to go, shouted that they must never again pay so much as a penny to Maraja. They stuck knives into the tires of a delivery van that was unloading merchandise and warned the driver that from that day forward, this territory was off limits to him, if he dared to go on paying the Piranhas.
The terrified shopkeepers complied, some of them felt relieved, as if they’d been liberated from a tax. “So now who do we pay?” they asked, but received no answer, because Micione had issued no instructions on that point. ’O Pagliaccio and ’o Gialluto coordinated their soldiers, scolding them good-naturedly when they overdid it a little, and in the end they, too, went into a pastry shop, ordering pastries in abundance, but when the time came to pay, drawing their handguns: “If you continue to pay the Piranhas, this is the money you’ll be paid in, pure lead.”
When they told Micione about it, he paid them no mind. He’d been exposed; now he’d publicly acknowledged the power of the Piranhas, who had been able to buy the shops that he had just ripped out of their grips. What could I do? he justified himself. When they lay hands on your wife, there’s no such thing as strategy, you just have to lash out blindly.
It was Drone who informed Nicolas, who already knew everything.
“No one’s paying us anymore, they’re taking our shops away. Even the restaurants we’re protecting have gone back to the shitty old online reviews.”
“Well, that must mean that the restaurants we’re protecting serve bad food,” Nicolas replied sarcastically. He’d already worked out his anger by destroying a few of the tables in their private room.
“What are you talking about, Nico’?” asked Drago’. “When on earth? It seems as if you’re living on another planet—here they’re taking everything away from us. If you don’t know how to protect, you’re not protected. And you know that very well.”
“And where the fuck were you all? When you want to piss and moan, you all come here,” said Nicolas. He could sense the violence from before starting to surge up inside him again, and he kicked them all out, all except Tucano.
“We need to impose our will,” he said, “we need to send a signal, we need to show our strength. Go challenge ’o Gialluto’s dog.”
“But Skunk isn’t ready,” said Nicolas.
“But ’o Gialluto’s dog is a piece of shit, he’s an all-black German shepherd, they just make sure he wins because he’s ’o Gialluto’s.”
Nicolas nodded his head, unconvinced and worried about Skunk. But she was a member of the paranza, too. A female soldier of the paranza.
’O Pagliaccio’s men were working full-time. They entered and left Forcella, making it clear that the Piranhas were no longer in command, and then they started hunting down Stavodicendo. Micione had made it very clear. He wanted the head of Vincenzo Esposito, aka Stavodicendo, he wanted to get his hands on that kid who had made him look like a fool in the newspapers, by adding ’o Tigrotto’s death to Roipnol’s murder.
’O Pagliaccio was heading out to an ARCI organization restaurant and club in Forcella. But first he was going to see the Naples-Juventus game, and then he’d play his usual game with the proprietor. Maraja was done. The Piranhas were done.
And that’s where he saw him.
Alone, sitting at a table, with a Red Bull in his hand. On the television set hanging in a corner, the game was under way. He couldn’t believe that he’d just stumbled upon him, that he had him at his mercy, here and now. ’O Pagliaccio walked in, indifferent to the few witnesses; this was an opportunity he couldn’t overlook. He stepped a little closer and fired.
The bullet entered Stavodicendo’s cranium and exited on the other side, lodging in the wall. A perfect hole, cauterized instantly. Only then did the heads of the other customers swivel in that direction, but ’o Pagliaccio had already taken to his heels.