The only thing they knew about the journalist who was going to be interviewing them was that she was a woman and that she worked for a local news program.
“What do you think she’ll be like? Hot, do you think?” asked Briato’.
“Hell, these women on TV, you never know if you’re looking at the front of them or the back, they’re so damn skinny,” said Pesce Moscio in disgust, and as usual the response was a wave of mockery about the fat girls that he always seemed to pick. After the fire, they’d seen one another again at the New Maharaja or in the alleys, but never all together. Nicolas knew that this was finally the right occasion to bring the paranza back together: for the first time, they’d tell the world that they existed, they’d make their voices heard. And one way or another, they’d honor Biscottino’s memory. But they needed to remain focused, measure their words. “We need to speak without saying.” The clubhouse would serve as the set for the interview, and, for the occasion, they’d had the foosball tables and the slot machines moved. Even the poster of Stoya had been carefully folded up and stowed safely. Nothing but white, anonymous walls to make the place unrecognizable. And to make themselves unrecognizable, too, Drone had procured a set of Mephisto ski masks.
“Ua’, that’s too cool,” said Tucano, snapping a selfie, and then he turned to Lollipop: “You’re still a dickhead, it’s not like if you cover up a dick you can’t tell it’s still a dick.”
“Guagliu’, I want to go on TV, too,” said ’o White, but Nicolas shook his head no. “Maraja,” he insisted, “now we’re just one paranza, I have the right.” Whereupon Nicolas practically spat in his face that this was an old story, and they, the Children, were the ones to put it to rest. “It’s our fucking problem, ’o White,” he said, and ’o White swallowed his pride and gave up his claim, rather than blow up the confederation over an appearance on TV.
When Risvoltino saw the journalist arrive with a cameraman following behind, he launched a signal to Nicolas: the paranza, in its entirety, lined up against the wall, faces covered with black ski masks that left only eyes and mouth visible, Maraja at the center, and Drago’ and Lollipop, the two tallest, on either end. In front of the wall’s flaking plaster, the row of masked youngsters might just as easily have been seen on the outskirts of any of the world’s big cities. That was the first thought that occurred to the woman as she entered the room and found them waiting, and if she was surprised or frightened, she certainly gave no sign. She extended her hand toward the masked figure who was staring at her with a magnetic gaze, a pair of dark eyes that would pierce the television screen exactly as desired. Excellent, she decided. While her cameraman set up the tripod, she explained how she planned to conduct the interview. “Feel free to talk, and to use curse words now and then, if you like. The more at ease you seem, the better. I understand your situation, for real, I’ve been working on this topic for a long time, and this is finally an opportunity to shed a little light on the blighted outskirts of our country’s cities…”
“Signuri’,” Drago’ interrupted her, “actually, we’re here in the center of the city.”
“Yes, of course, but it’s your social setting that marginalizes you, casts you aside…”
“Like fuck, signuri’,” said Nicolas, his eyes turning flinty. “Forcella is our home, and we’re the ones who give the orders here.”
The journalist instinctively took a step backward. Her body had sensed the danger even before she realized what was happening, a few seconds later, that these weren’t the usual “disadvantaged youth” that she was accustomed to interviewing. She recomposed her face into a steady, professional smile, but maintained the distance she had established, then turned to her cameraman and told him that the interview could begin.
“Are you the boss here?” she asked Nicolas.
“Yes,” Nicolas promptly replied. He was about to add something, but then his gaze buried itself deep in the black rectangle of the video camera, and it dawned on him that that answer hadn’t been right. “No,” he tried to correct himself, “siamo brò, we’re brothers. No one’s superior to anyone else here…” And here he took a pause to search for the right word. “This is a democracy.”
The journalist nodded and extended the microphone under the nose of another ski mask.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I’m already grown up,” Tucano replied.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And what do you do for a living?”
“We’re businessmen,” Briato’ replied.
“Ah, and what kind of business are you involved in, specifically?”
“Things…”
“Could I ask you to be just a bit more detailed?”
“Logistics and large-scale distribution,” came Drone’s voice, promptly.
“What do you all want to do when you grow up?”
“What we’re doing now,” Drone replied again.
“And when you’re older?”
“I don’t want to get old,” said Lollipop. “That’s gross!”
The journalist sat there nonplussed for a few seconds, then used that answer to plunge to the heart of the interview: “So you’re not afraid of the violence on these streets?”
“We’re not afraid of anything,” Lollipop confirmed, and all those ski-masked heads nodded in unison. “Adda murì mammà.” Pesce Moscio put the seal of approval on it.
“I understand…” she said, and turned to look at the cameraman. Only a quarter turn. That was the signal for him to tighten the frame; she was about to ask the key question.
“Do you deal narcotics?”
Smiles and eyes turning in all directions. One of them said something incomprehensible and the smiles turned into a collective burst of laughter.
“We aren’t dirt farmers,” Nicolas said after a short pause, pulling the reins back into his own hands. “Signori’, we don’t have jobs. If there had been any jobs for us…”
“True,” said Drago’, “they’ve abandoned us…”
“Everyone’s moving out of the center…”
“Weapons. Do you have any weapons on you?” the journalist asked, ignoring their round of complaints.
“Signori’, these are things we don’t talk about…”
“Do you consider yourselves vicious?”
“Not vicious, we just take what we want.”
“And do you take these things that you want illegally, at times?”
“Dottore’,” said Nicolas, “legal, illegal … I mean, come on, it’s as old as the Cippus of Forcella. Legal is if you can afford it, and illegal is if you can’t. You’re illegal until you can pay to make it legal.”
The whole crew burst out laughing and cried, “Wow, that’s huge, brother!”
“The drive-bys, the firefights, the murders,” the journalist went on. “We read all about it in the newspapers, and they say that this neighborhood has turned into a war zone. What do you think?”
“Eh, those are things that happen…”
“So does that mean that you’re responsible for all the murders that take place in Naples?”
The ski masks all turned toward the young man who had retracted his leadership. Nicolas knew that this answer could be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it would attract the investigators of the district attorney’s office, and on the other it would make it clear to anyone else who was watching that they decided the good and bad weather in that city.
“What can I tell you? If you set foot on our streets, you’ll always find us,” said Nicolas.
“Excuse me, how do you mean?” the journalist asked.
“We’re here. If you set foot on our streets, you’ll always find us.”
The cameraman narrowed the shot until those dark eyes filled the frame. The interview was over.
The journalist had left just a few minutes earlier when Drone, still wearing his Mephisto ski mask, went over to Nicolas.
“Nico’,” he said in a worried tone, “you wait and see, now everyone’s going to come after us.”
“Guagliu’,” Drago’ weighed in. “We need to put our gats somewhere else, at home, anywhere else, so we don’t get caught with them.”
Nicolas hoped for an incursion and search. It would be a reaction, proof that everyone was afraid of the paranza. He was sick and tired of seeing the old myth live on in the minds of judges, policemen, carabinieri, and financial police, the legend that children can’t command the underworld, that that kind of power is vested exclusively in the old bosses, mature men. Maturity, Nicolas decided, leads to fear, and fear leads to death. They were the Piranhas, the only ones capable of managing power in their own time, here, immediately, without a thought for tomorrow.
That very same night, all the members of the paranza received house calls from the police.
“Please, come right in,” said Nicolas’s mother. “And all this uproar is for what? For a boy?”
“Mamma mia, what is all this? Are you busting into the house of an ISIS terrorist?” asked Drone’s father.
Pesce Moscio’s father, on the other hand, rushed right over to his son and slapped him in the face. “What have you done now?”
“Me? Nothing!” his son retorted.
In response to those questions, the police offered the same weary formulation: “We’re just doing our job. Sit down and we’ll leave as soon as we’re done.”
The officers turned the place upside down. They searched under the beds, in the clothes closets, in the dresser drawers, inside the household appliances. They found nothing, not even a chunk of hash, and they left with a handful of paper, their short after-action reports.
The Italian police left those homes amid a hail of insults from the families of the members of the paranza, and climbed into their squad cars, passing bike racks and flowerpots just a few dozen yards from the apartment buildings. Bike racks and flowerpots where the Piranhas had hidden their everyday weapons.