What he needed to do first and foremost was reassure the piazza bosses, make it clear to them that there would be no more highs and lows in the supply chain. From now on, the shit would come in steady, with outstanding quality and punctual deliveries. He decided to summon them all to the New Maharaja, and he asked Oscar to prepare the club as if he were holding a convention. The pushers arrived one by one or in small groups. The woman who worked in Vicaria Vecchia showed up, dressed to the nines, as if she were going to a ball after all these years; another pusher, who ran Piazza Cavour, came with his children; the guy who ran Piazza San Giorgio walked in, arms crossed over his chest, perplexed, and preferred to remain standing the whole time. Outside, Drone videotaped it all from above with a Yuneec Tornado, making sure there would be no unwelcome surprises. That little jewel of a drone had given him nothing but satisfaction, and he also used it to keep an eye on the comings and goings in the various piazzas.
Once they were all there, the lights dimmed and the UEFA Champions League theme song started up, which in its turn triggered the smoke machine. The man from Piazza San Giorgio raised both arms over his head and shouted: “What did I tell you?! ’O Maraja is poisoning us, this is a gas chamber!”
A surging wave of people moved toward the door, but as soon as they saw the lasers, they understood that it was all part of the theatrics and they relaxed.
“Friends,” Nicolas began, emerging from behind a curtain in his elegantly cut suit. Friends? he thought to himself in a fleeting split second. He’d only even laid eyes on most of them a couple of times, at best, and from the paranza, there were only Tucano, Drone, and Pesce Moscio, and then there was ’o White and Carlito’s Way. Fuck, Nicolas said to himself, where’s everyone else?
None of the piazza bosses had ventured to take a seat, as if gluing your ass to one of those plastic chairs might somehow mean giving your implicit consent. Certainly, that boy had shown that he knew what he was doing, and they’d all made money, but he still wasn’t fully reliable. Just as his people weren’t fully reliable.
It had happened a week ago. Pesce Moscio had passed through Piazza Bellini and he hadn’t been happy, not one little bit, with what he’d seen: three kids, maybe twelve years old, peddling drugs in broad daylight. The piazza that had once belonged to Stavodicendo and now belonged to Pesce Moscio simply wasn’t getting adequate supplies, there had been a general shortage of drugs for a while now, and the piazza boss expected Micione to take back control soon. In the meantime, Piazza Bellini had become prime territory for self-made drug dealers to infiltrate. So Pesce Moscio came back carrying a Kalashnikov and with a chattering sweep of automatic fire, he’d laid them all low, piazza boss included. But that was strictly a temporary solution. Pesce Moscio knew that, and so did Nicolas, who was now going to explain why it would no longer be necessary to fall back on such extreme measures.
“Friends,” Nicolas said again.
A man stood up, about sixty years old. Since he was twenty, he’d been working at Piazza Bellini.
“Before we start, Maraja,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you, in the name of us all.”
Nicolas was annoyed by the informal tu the man had used.
“We’re coming here,” the man continued, “and we’re coming at our own risk. You’ve supplied us with product and it’s always been first-rate shit. We started selling it, and with the money we made, we were able to pay a tax to Micione. Then we stopped paying that tax. But after that, your product stopped arriving, and now we’re going back to selling Micione’s product. We don’t want to get shot, either by you or by Micione.”
There was an approving round of applause. Nicolas let it die down and then went on: “Friends, the rules are the same as always. They’re the same rules that applied before I was born, before my father was born. You’re the piazza bosses, you know how this works. Either you sell the product of the clan that commands your piazza or else you pay tribute to the clan and you sell product that you buy from whoever the fuck you please. But now the paranza is establishing another rule: in our piazzas, you can sell any drugs that you want. After all, we have the best product at the lowest price.”
One of the bosses stood up: “So are you saying that I can sell someone else’s shit and you won’t shoot me?”
“No, I won’t shoot you. Because if you’re selling someone else’s shit, it just means you’re a fool.” Nicolas stared at the heads of each and every one of them to see if they nodded, and focused on the heads of the ones who hadn’t nodded promptly, gazing hard at them. It was a liberation for those who worked on the piazzas.
“If you sell good product, you’re not afraid of the competition. Now that’s enough, we’ve talked too much.”
Then came champagne, lots and lots of champagne.
“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom for everyone!”
“Long live the paranza!”
They’d just made the best deal of their lives. As long as the paranza survived, they’d be free to sell whatever and as much as they pleased, and whenever they liked. For each and every piazza boss, the dream of becoming a small businessman had suddenly come within reach.
One by one, the piazza bosses shook his hand. ’O Maraja clasped back with vigor. This seemed like the end of everything, the moment when you exchange compliments for the outstanding results achieved—but actually, it was the beginning. Now they had to organize the transport of the product, carefully and efficiently, from the first shipment, which would soon come into the port of Salerno, distribute the narcotics to the piazzas, arm and supply ’o White and his paranza, who had been peppering him with texts and phone calls since the day of their confederation: he could smell the money waiting to be made, and he wanted to make up for lost time.
“Thank you, friends,” Nicolas was saying, but where were Drago’, Lollipop, and Briato’? Where were his friends, his brothers? Were they at home, now that the lair no longer existed? Nicolas finished the last handshake and decided to go home himself, where a female friend was waiting for him, a friend he knew would never betray him.