The stadium was one of Micione’s piazzas. It always had been. He managed to get his hands on everything. Contracts, subcontracts. Officially or unofficially, Micione was everywhere. And the more the team won, the more money he made. But he made money even when the team lost; the important thing was to make sure that the soccer match went off with good security and no surprises. To undercut Micione’s legal revenue stream would amount to inflicting a deep and lasting wound, because commercial licenses are far more reliable than the unsteady proceeds of the narcotics business. The stadium and its cash flow were the economic foundation upon which the Faella clan could rely for further investment.
Nicolas had been thinking about it for a while now, ever since they’d stolen credit for the murder of Roipnol. And now that everything was going great guns—narcotics, the piazzas, their confederation with the Longhairs, who now no longer had a leader of their own, the old clans clearly struggling—the time had come. They were taking control, which was why Micione had come after them: he was trying to win back his old power by undermining their shakedowns, by killing the paranza’s men. No, it wasn’t enough that they had killed Genghis. We’ve torn Micione’s heart from his chest, but now, thought Nicolas, we need to rip his money out of his wallet, and the money he’ll miss most is his legal money. It’s time to go after his safe.
S.S.C. Napoli was hosting A.S. Roma. This certainly wasn’t anything on the order of the Champions League finals, but any match against Roma smacked a bit of the game of the century.
The paranza, every last man, including the Longhairs, gathered outside the hotel that was hosting the Roma players. They’d filled their pockets with billiard balls from the clubhouse, and, when the team bus arrived with the players aboard, they started hurling the heavy balls. The vehicle lurched under that hail of blows, and, inside the bus, the team members were seeking shelter by crouching between the seats. The police who were escorting the tour bus weighed in immediately with tear gas, but before the clouds of red smoke could fill the air, the paranza had already made its escape.
The second part of the plan would unfold at Fuorigrotta.
The police had implemented a “channeling” tactic to separate the fans of the opposing sides to as great an extent as possible. They’d even ordered an assortment of tour buses to take the Roma fans to San Paolo Stadium. There wasn’t going to be a huge crowd of fans decked out in the iconic Roma colors of yellow and red, but all Nicolas needed was a group, even a small one, to start a brawl.
“We’re going to fuck Micione in the ass,” Lollipop kept saying. He’d arranged to procure the ski masks and bomber jackets they were wearing. In that getup they looked exactly like a gang of Black Bloc anarchists ready to attack. Anonymity and terror, that’s what Nicolas had prescribed.
“That’s right,” Nicolas said, “we’re going to fuck Micione right in the ass, good and hard,” and he went running straight toward a crowd of fifty or so Roma fans. They must just have arrived, their banners still rolled up on their staffs and their faces beaming with the expression of soccer ultras at an away game. Severely outnumbered, but with the element of surprise in their favor, the members of the paranza started lashing out at the fans of the opposing team, delivering slashing blows in all directions. Once their charge had lost its initial brute force, the Roma fans, the romanisti, regrouped and started fighting back, and now the battle shattered into small splinter clashes, as fans faced off. Nicolas tried to bring the paranza back into a tight formation, but most of his men had been cut off in the surging fray. Pesce Moscio and Briato’ were surrounded by ten Roma fans, a solid wall of flesh that was slowly tightening around them, until Carlito’s Way broke the tension by tossing a trash can he’d ripped off its pole into the middle of the group. Thinking it might be a cluster bomb, the fans surged back. Tucano grabbed a Roma banner that someone had abandoned in the confusion and started swinging it through the air like a pennant at the Palio of Siena. Then he launched it, like a javelin, but it didn’t go far, hitting the ground without causing injury. The paranza managed to form ranks and push a few yards forward. Pesce Moscio, Briato’, and Nicolas savagely attacked three other romanisti who’d been left behind by their retreating compadres.
There it was, the brawl Nicolas had been waiting for. Fists, feet, elbows, head butts. Nasal septa shattered, cheekbones exploding in fountains of blood. In the distance, the riot police in full gear were deploying to put down the unrest. The group of romanisti split into two phalanxes, with the forward half doing its best to pin down the members of the paranza, while the rearguard retreated, seeking shelter behind the tour bus. Nicolas had knocked two of them to the ground and he’d taken a punch to his right brow. Nothing much, just a constant throbbing and a stream of blood that was sopping into his ski mask. The others had taken some injuries, too. Briato’, in spite of his leg, was fighting like a bull and had put five of their opponents out of commission, indifferent to the cut on his shoulder.
The blows of the riot sticks that the police were smashing against their shields were coming closer and closer and picking up their pace. Nicolas gave the signal: “Penalty kick! Get yourself a penalty kick!”
Drone slumped down as if struck by a lightning bolt and the paranza surrounded him, in a tortoise formation, turning their backs to their enemies. Nicolas yanked off his ski mask, and Lollipop and Orso Ted followed suit. Drone, too, on the ground, yanked off his and waited for the three above him to paint him with the blood from their injuries.
“You don’t have AIDS, do you?” Drone muttered through clenched teeth.
“Shut up!” said Nicolas, snapping a photo of him. “Right now, you need to be dead!” And then, turning again toward the Roma fans: “He’s dead! He’s dead!”
The fans reversed course, retreating, while others started running in the opposite direction, finding their way blocked by the police. The word dead had lit the fuse to a panic, as if the mere fact of being anywhere around a dead body somehow brought with it an element of guilt.
In the meantime, Lollipop had grabbed Drone by the arms and was dragging him away, still surrounded by the members of the paranza, who were shouting, “Murderers! He’s dead! They killed him!”
“Deader, look deader,” Lollipop was telling Drone, “relax your thighs! Your head, let your head loll to one side!”
As the police sensed the shift in the wind, they started halting Roma fans to search them.
Drone rose from the dead behind another tour bus, but by then the mayhem was so all-encompassing that even a group of snickering kids with bruised and swollen faces could pass unnoticed.
“I saw him! He’s dead! He’s dead!” Nicolas was pushing his way through the Naples fans clustered on the curve, brandishing his smartphone as he moved forward. He held the phone high, like mothers at the funerals of their kamikaze children, suicide bombers who’d immolated themselves for the glory of Allah, and at first his audience would take a quick glance, and then lock ranks until they finally recognized Maraja and let him through. The match had started only a few minutes earlier. Nicolas followed the route that the fans, as they stepped aside, involuntarily blazed for him toward the leader of the ultras, the Naples hooligans: ’o Mammuth. Six foot seven, two hundred sixty-five pounds, covered with a dense coat of fur that only opened out into clearings where there was a tattoo—such as the acronym that he’d had inked onto his youthful back: ACAB. All Cops Are Bastards. Whenever he was on the curve, rain or shine, ’o Mammuth never wore a T-shirt, and anyone who wanted to talk to him had to do so in the unblinking presence of those unfettered double-D cups. He’d become the chief due to valor on the field of battle, and he commanded the curve by virtue of a pair of arms the size of tree trunks. Tattooed on his right arm was the word good and on the left arm was bad, and he used them on the basis of what instinct and experience had taught him.
“He’s dead, he’s dead! The romanisti killed him,” Nicolas went on repeating.
’O Mammuth waited for him at the mouth of the tunnel to ask him one simple question: “Who killed him, the cops or the romanisti?”
“The ultras! The ultras! I saw it with my own eyes. Look! They killed him!”
’O Mammuth held the smartphone up close to his face. He carefully studied the photo of Drone covered with blood, and then he gave Nicolas back his phone. He crossed his arms over his head. He’d made up his mind: the match had to be canceled.
On the pitch, the teams had stopped play because from outside word was arriving, in muddled form, of clashes between militant groups of fans, and there was even talk of a death. ’O Mammuth went over to the edge of the bleachers to repeat that signal, arms crossed over his head. In the meantime, a delegation from the home team had broken away from the knot of people at the center of the field and was heading toward the bleachers where the ultras were concentrated. Escorted by the police, the captain of Napoli went over to ’o Mammuth.
“If there’s been a death, we’d be the first to stop play,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, betraying his underlying concern.
“There’s been one,” said ’o Mammuth. “We can’t continue.”
The captain clasped his hands together: “Trust me, there hasn’t been a death. The situation is well under control.”
’O Mammuth looked at Maraja, and Maraja leveled a pointed finger at the soccer player: “We’ll let you play out the match, but if things aren’t the way you claim, I’ll come and get you.”
The captain pretended to be pleased, thanked Maraja and ’o Mammuth, and headed back to the pitch at a run. The match could resume.
Napoli won a narrow victory, thanks in part to the ultras in the curve who loudly rooted for their team, singing fight songs without a break for the whole ninety minutes plus injury time. A victory like any other, nothing special, and yet that didn’t keep the fans from swarming onto the field to celebrate and perhaps also to work off the adrenaline they’d accumulated in that tense and frenzied pregame buildup. And while the players surrendered their sweaty jerseys to the feverish fans, the police took advantage of the opportunity to burst into the bleachers. Weapons, narcotics, dozens of illegal skyrockets: it had been some time since there’d been such a radical law enforcement operation in the curve of the stadium, where the hard-core fans congregated.
“Ua’, we fucked him good,” shouted the members of the paranza, leaping up and down on the soccer field where Micione would soon lose his contracts and subcontracts. “We scalped him.”
It was a night straight out of the Champions League, with fireworks and processions of cars in the street, a carnival feeding on its own bonfire of euphoria, and when everyone went to bed, wrecked, overjoyed, pumped up with a lust for life, there was only one man weeping, and it wasn’t for joy. One of the team officials had barricaded himself in his office, and seemed unable to do anything but repeat, over and over, “What fucking idiots we look like now.” He’d tried to turn on the radio but the voices of the fans just made him want to throw up.
It had been a disaster. The police, the fighting, the confiscations, the conversation between the team captain and that oversized gorilla ’o Mammuth broadcast on a national network. Heads were going to roll, that much was certain, and most likely his would be one of them. But first he was going to make sure that one in particular fell, if he had to saw it off himself.
For the sports team executive, the itinerary that led to the penthouse apartment in San Giovanni a Teduccio was no mystery, and in fact he was one of the privileged few who could ring that doorbell unannounced. After all, he was one of Diego Faella’s most important business partners. The neighborhood that morning was virtually wallpapered with death announcements. It was with regret and grief that the untimely death of their trusted, courageous, caring friend Genghis Khan was announced: the whole family was shaken by this loss. The man entered the elevator in a raging fury; he felt betrayed, defrauded of the trust that he’d placed in that fat tub of lard, and now he was screwed because the man hadn’t been able to hold at bay a handful of snot-nosed kids.
He found Micione in the kitchen. Perched precariously on a stool, he was picking at cold french fries out of McDonald’s cardboard packaging. It was clear that he’d just stopped crying, and he was doing nothing to conceal the fact.
“All hell has broken loose!” the executive began. He heard Viola and the Filipina housekeeper go by in the hallway. The mistress of the house was giving the woman instructions, but in an undertone. The situation must be pretty serious, thought the executive.
“Yeah, I saw,” Micione replied. “What are you thinking of taking away from me?” And he grabbed a handful of french fries.
“I’m probably about to get fired. Now you need to pay me. I’ve got a mortgage on my apartment in Posillipo, an ex-wife, alimony to take care of. This year we can get the Champions League.”
Micione crushed the ketchup packets that he’d set aside because the sickly sweet chemical concoction turned his stomach. Under his powerful fist, a bloodred lake began to spread. “Enough with this orchestra of yacking. I’m not in the mood for it: just tell me what you’re planning to take away from me!”
“All right,” said the executive, “grounds maintenance, parking facilities, bars and cafés, jerseys and T-shirts.”
“Fuck me, everything,” said Micione. He tried to wipe off his hand with one of the McDonald’s paper napkins, but with that flimsy piece of paper it would take him a lifetime, so he just forgot about it.
“You can just thank me if we’re taking away those contracts to punish you, because you failed to ensure security and safety in the curves. I’m just taking away the things that aren’t under my control. The parallel market, you can keep handling that on your own,” the executive said, in a gesture of generosity.
Micione got off the stool and went over to the sink. He let the water run for a while, and then he washed his face.
“So now you’ve taken these things away from me,” he said, turning around. He looked horrible, having spent a sleepless night and cried himself sick, and now his grief and misery were visibly veering toward rage. “So now what if I decide to take something away from you?”
“There’s a good chance I’m about to be ruined,” said the executive, but the arrogance he’d displayed a few minutes earlier had disappeared, and now he was modulating his voice in an attempt to stir pity in the other man. “The carabinieri are going to come to my house. I’m responsible for team logistics, I vouched for you with the ownership. I’d guaranteed that you were a reliable person…”
“If anything, it strikes me that you need to thank me”—and now Micione was looming dangerously close—“because what you’ve done up till now, you did because I was letting you. I let you skim off the top on every contract. So now if I get a wild urge, I’ll just take something away from you,” he said again.
The other man worked up the courage to ask: “Like what?”
“What do you mean, like what? Like your life. Do I still need to explain to you that if you’re still breathing today, it’s thanks to me? Every contract that you’ve won, if I hadn’t been there as the subcontractor, you never would have been able to handle it.”
The executive walked backward until he bumped against the kitchen door; he was shaking his head, as if to say no, there was no reason to go that far, and anyway, things were okay now. At last, before stepping out into the hallway and turning to go, he added: “And anyway, it’s just a temporary thing…”
While the executive and Micione had been discussing the fate of San Paolo Stadium, Nicolas and ’o Mammuth were sitting at plastic tables next to one of the bosses of San Giovanni’s food trucks right outside the stadium. They were staring in silence at the detritus of bottles, glasses, cans, and garbage of all kinds, as well as clothing, shoes, backpacks, the occasional condom, banners, hats, and even a doll.
Since the sun had risen, an hour before, they’d downed three beers, all without speaking a word. At last, ’o Mammuth spoke: “How are we going to handle things with Micione? Do you think that all this is going to bounce him out of there?”
If there was one thing Maraja had been waiting for, it was to be able to make his proposal.
“I don’t know, but I’ll give you the shit. Ten percent.”
“But they’ll shoot me.”
“Twenty percent.”
“But they’ll shoot me.”
“Thirty percent.”
“But they’ll shoot me.”
“Forty percent.”
Silence.
“If those guys decide to shoot me, will you protect me?”
Nicolas nodded. “The paranza will defend every one of your piazzas to the death. I’ll bring you the narcotics, no matter where, even to away games. We need to sell to all the friendly curves there are.”
Still more silence. Then ’o Mammuth went over to the food truck fridge. They needed more beer to toast their agreement.