“We need to be done with this idea that we’re the last link in the European chain!” “Naples is a great tourist city,” “Naples, jewel of the Mediterranean” … The voices echoing inside reached all the way out onto the little balcony of the New Maharaja to which he and he alone had access. A privé within the privé, a private room within the private room. You got to it through an emergency exit that Oscar had had installed to win him the favor of the project inspector. In reality, it wasn’t a way to anywhere, just a semicircular balcony that overlooked a sheer plunge down to the waters of the bay. Nicolas hadn’t brought anyone out there but Letizia; once they’d even had sex on that balcony, tangled against the wrought iron railing. All that fit in that cramped space was a lounge chair and a minibar powered by a cable that ran under the door.
It was his haven on the few occasions when the New Maharaja was in use for some party, such as this evening. The lawyer Caiazzo—who had helped Nicolas and his crew get suspended sentences when they were convicted of dealing narcotics—had organized a reception for a few government bigwigs. His whole law firm was there, along with an assorted handful of local politicians and bureaucrats. It was the lawyer himself who’d written to him, a message that Nicolas had only half read, bored with the flattery that oozed out of every word. “I’d love to exchange a few words with the new prince of the city…” and so on and so forth. He hadn’t bothered to reply, but the lawyer just went on calling him. Nicolas turned off his phone. “Tonight I’m on vacation.”
He’d failed with L’Arcangelo, but there had to be some way of getting his hands on the contact. “And if there is, I’ll find it, for sure.” He needed to recover, he needed to get back on top.
He walked over to the parapet and stood with his back to the sea. He looked up and his legs began to shake. The looming wall of the sky was giving him that sense of vertigo. A weakness that had more to do with attraction than fear, a weakness he enjoyed inducing from time to time, as if to remind himself that he was still the master of his emotions.
In the private room it was a continuous coming and going. Pesce Moscio had requisitioned all the bottles of Moët & Chandon because he had got it into his head to replicate a champagne pyramid he’d once seen in a commercial. He pushed his way through the guests at that party, announcing that on the other side of the club they were going without champagne for their toasts; after all, he said, the penguin should be along soon with more moetta. And sure enough, the waiter arrived, only to notice soon enough that that bottle, too, had vanished.
Drago’ and Lollipop were standing in the doorway of the private room. They’d laid out three lines of cocaine on a little hand mirror they kept passing back and forth, ignoring the people going by right in front of them.
“Mariposa cocaine makes you fly,” said Lollipop, and he snorted a whole line in a single snort, the way you fill your lungs with oxygen after being underwater for too long. Drago’, on the other hand, preferred a different technique, short, sharp snorts of coke in succession, fast, instantaneous. They were both fascinated to watch Briato’. He was wearing a pair of torn and tattered jeans, which he’d accompanied with a pair of loafers, worn without socks, and a purple dress shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. His look was completed by a walking stick with the pommel shaped like a silver skull. He brought it out only on special occasions, to give himself the tone of a British lord who could afford such an eccentricity.
“Ua’, look who’s here, Count Dickhead!” exclaimed Lollipop, but Briato’ ignored him, running his hand over the head of hair he was letting grow out that he kept in order with gallons of hair product. He was buzzing around a young woman. Tightly bundled into a gray skirt suit, she seemed to have just stepped out of a business meeting.
“Ua’, did someone lick your head?” asked Drago’.
“What are you talking about,” said Drone’s girlfriend, who had watched the whole scene out of the corner of her eyes, “he’s the spitting image of Johnny Depp!”
His confidence restored, Briato’ puffed up his chest and headed toward Drago’ and Lollipop, walking as if he owned the ground he walked on. He stopped between the two of them, his eyes laser-pointed on the mysterious young woman.
“Thirty years old?” he asked.
“Who knows,” said Drago’.
“For sure she’s graduated from university,” Briato’ said.
“How can you tell?”
“The glass. She holds it from the top. Another girl would hold it from the bottom.”
“Sure,” Lollipop broke in. “Now you need a college degree to wear a pair of slut stiletto heels.”
“Too gorgeous! Too gorgeous! I’m going in!” said Briato’, and he headed forward at the top speed his leg allowed him.
“Oh, did you hurt yourself?” he asked the young blonde, overacting his concern.
“Excuse me, what do you mean?” she replied, furrowing her brow in puzzlement.
“No, I just want to know if I should call an ambulance.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked, increasingly on the defensive.
“Did you hurt yourself, shining star, when you fell to earth from heaven?”
She smiled, a white flash of teeth, then took half a step backward. Still, that simpleminded, overbearing charm amused her and flattered her at the same time.
“My name is Valentina,” she said, and curtseyed by bending one leg, resting it on the calf of the other leg. She perched, balanced on that single narrow heel, as elegant as a flamingo. An irresistible pink flamingo. She looked like his twin soul, both of them perched on a single leg, so much so that for a fleeting instant, he himself felt light and elegant.
“No one knows my real name,” Briato’ replied, “but I can tell you: Fabio.”
She laughed again, this time more openly, so hard that she came close to spilling her mojito. Briato’ grabbed her wrist and placed his other hand on her hip. She didn’t pull away, but put both her heels flat on the floor, breaking the momentary enchantment. She asked him how old he was; she seemed curious.
“Twenty-eight,” Briato’ ventured—he’d been about to say eighteen, but he just kept the eight and went for broke.
“Oh, really? You look much younger. You’re lucky, you know?”
“It’s just that you make me feel so much younger, Valentina.”
Briato’ had let himself go, and now Valentina was shortening the distance between them. Solid marble, these tits, he thought to himself when he saw them up close.
“And just what is it that you do for a living?” she asked, harpooning him with those intelligent eyes, from which ran a few lovely wrinkles.
She had to be thirty years old, maybe a little younger. “I’m in business,” he replied.
“In what area?
“Flour, chocolate, taxes…”
“What?”
Briato’ took her by the hand. He led her to the bar and slammed a fist on the counter to draw the barman’s attention. “Friend, pack up the whole bar for the signorina here.” Then he turned to Valentina, who had in the meantime taken up a perch on a tall bar stool.
“Do you want to go on vacation with me, Valentina?”
“I don’t even know you!” she replied after a moment’s hesitation.
Briato’ smiled. “What do you mean we don’t know each other, Valentina? I’ve seen you every time I lifted my eyes to heaven.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
Briato’ pouted for a few seconds too long.
“Is everything all right, Valentina?” asked a man in a suit and tie, a colleague who had immediately laid his hand on her shoulder.
“The signorina is doing just fine. Do you have a problem?” Briato’ retorted. He’d replaced his playboy expression with one straight off the street; all it required was for him to squint slightly and harden the features of his face. And Valentina didn’t miss that transformation. Her colleague ignored Briato’ and addressed her once again. “Is everything okay?”
Briato’ pinched the man’s chin with two fingers. Delicately, just to turn the other man’s eyes to look into his. “You’re putting your hand on a high-tension wire,” he said. “Don’t you know you should always read labels carefully?” he continued. A new tattoo, still gleaming, covered the upper portion of his abdominals. A skull over the classic double crossbones and the words “Danger of Death.”
Her colleague raised both hands in a gesture of surrender and apologized, everything was fine, he just wanted to steal Valentina away for a second because he needed to tell her something about work. “Of course,” said Briato’, running his arm around Valentina’s waist, “work is work.” He drew her close and whispered in her ear: “Thirty seconds, little one, then I’ll come get you.”
No, Valentina decided, he wasn’t pulling her leg. The guy was just the way he seemed, he wanted her, and that was that.
She and the man walked a few yards away, close to the bathroom door where the stream of passersby would cover what they said.
“Valentina, have you lost your mind? That guy’s in the Piranhas!” her colleague urgently told her.
“Oh, really?” Valentina replied. Then she recovered from her surprise: “Well, so what? He’s just a kid and we’re just having a drink. What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that!” he echoed her. “Every once in a while, why don’t you take a little spin on the Web and find out what’s happening in Naples!” But Valentina had already stopped listening to him. Their boss had been trying to get in touch with Maraja for days now, and that was exactly why he’d held the party here of all places, to flush him out into the open.
“Listen,” she started saying, but she was interrupted by Briato’, who appeared beside her: “No, but for real, do you like this queer?”
Valentina burst out laughing and locked arms with Briato’, striding away from her colleague, who watched them go, open-mouthed.
“You see?” Briato’ said to her. “I’m made of iron and you’re my magnet.”
“Where did you say you wanted to take me on vacation?” she shot back.
“I’ll buy you the island of Capri, we’ll clear out all the people, and we’ll just be there alone, you and me,” and as he talked he was leading her toward the little sofas of the private room.
“So you’re a member of the Piranhas?” Valentina asked as she ran her eyes over his tattooed abdomen.
Upon hearing that question, Briato’ stopped smiling, even though he felt a burst of pride deep down. “Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, beautiful,” he replied, and then he reached out a hand to straighten a lock of her hair, tucking it behind her ear.
Valentina turned serious and grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Wait,” she said, “first I need to speak with Maraja.”
“Who, Nicolas? My brother? I’m much better-looking than he is.”
She nodded her head, and Briato’ decided to attribute her assent to the second part of what he’d said. He could feel the excitement swelling within him.
“But then if I tell you…”
“Then?”
“Then I’ll have to kill you,” and they both broke into laughter.
Nicolas’s cell phone was still turned off, so Briato’ ran to the little balcony and pushed open the emergency door—after all, he knew that Nicolas would ignore any knocking, no matter how loud. Nicolas was standing at the parapet, looking down at the rocks and the waves breaking against them, and he greeted Briato’ with a terse “Leave me alone.”
“There’s a super-hot babe here who wants to get to know Maraja” was all Briato’ said. He put all his chips on personal vanity: by now, they were VIPs in that city. And then he added: “But she’s totally ready to fuck me!”
In the meantime, Valentina was sending the lawyer a text. She immediately recognized Nicolas, even if she’d never seen his face before. As he walked through the crowd, everyone made way for him, keeping their eyes glued to him the way you do with a famous actor.
“Ciao, Nicolas,” she said as she approached him. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Valentina Improta,” she went on, squeezing his hand. “I’m one of Counselor Caiazzo’s assistants. You know, the lawyer. He’s on his way here, and he wants to say hello to you.”
Nicolas understood now, glaring daggers at Briato’. “Fuck, you led me right into the trap,” he whispered to him under his breath, the minute Valentina turned her back on them to wave to the lawyer.
“All right, so let’s meet him,” said Nicolas. “That way we can have him stand in as best man for the wedding.”
“Ah, you’re getting married?” asked Valentina.
“Your wedding: yours and Briato’s.”
Valentina turned around and looked at the young man who until then she had called Fabio and saw him blush.
“Here’s Maraja! Here’s the king himself!”
The lawyer Caiazzo’s deep voice drowned out “Toca Toca,” which the DJ had sworn to the crowd would get everybody dancing.
“Today, here and now, Naples becomes the capital of Europe again! Do you know that the first railroad line in the world was built here? The Naples–Portici line!”
While Caiazzo talked, Nicolas studied Valentina’s thighs. He was sure she went to the gym, and in fact, maybe she was also a runner, but she wasn’t skinny, she was solid, and he’d happily let himself be squeezed by those legs. He wondered if that old sardine of a lawyer was screwing her, that beautiful horn of plenty.
“The railroads here are going to be the hub for the whole Mediterranean basin…”
“Uànema,” Nicolas said to Briato’, and whirled his hand in the air like a rotor, as if to say that when all was said and done, it had been worth it.
“Maraja,” said Caiazzo, “is there a quiet corner somewhere that we can talk?”
This was overtime for Nicolas, but he could hardly say no …
Now the private room was empty; the members of the paranza were on the dance floor, too.
“Maraja, only you can solve this problem for me,” Caiazzo began, sitting in the damask egg-shaped armchair. “Have you seen that the CEO is here? Engineer D’Elia, you know the one I mean? He’s on TV all the time.”
“Wait, what, the one who runs the trains, who one day he’s running the airplanes, the next he’s at the soccer championship? What the fuck, is he the stationmaster now?”
“Ah, Nicolas, so you do watch the evening news, after all. That’s right, he’s the one, he’s in charge of everything. Have you seen the work he’s done on high-speed trains? When I was your age, to go to Rome took four hours. Now you don’t even have time to take a piss, and you’re there already. These are sectors that bring good things to our homeland. Have you noticed how many tourists get off those trains every day? It’s an invasion. But have you ever noticed just how beautiful those trains are?”
“Counselor, what the fuck does that matter to me, are you asking me to become a conductor?”
“What are you talking about, conductor? I came here to ask you a favor, and after all, as you know, I always find a way to repay my debts.”
At last, the conversation was starting to make sense. Nicolas got a little more comfortable on the sofa across from the lawyer; he extended his legs and prepared to listen.
“Maraja,” Caiazzo went on, “these fucking Gypsies are going to derail the whole line! They’re stealing copper on the Milan–Rome line, on the Milan–Bologna, and the Milan–Florence line. In Naples, Salerno. Everywhere, round-trip. They steal everything, morning, afternoon, evening, and night. And without copper, how is Engineer D’Elia going to power his trains? The guy’s career is being ruined by this problem!”
Nicolas barely nodded, waiting for the ask.
“Maraja, you need to get this fucking gang off my back and get back whatever amount of copper is still in the storeroom before they ship it off to China.” The lawyer looked around for a moment, then moved out to the edge of the armchair to lean closer to Nicolas and, in spite of the music playing in the club, lowered his voice: “It’s the Gianturco gang, Maraja. They’re Mojo’s Gypsies.”
So Mojo was back again. Nicolas had some unsettled matters with him, and he hadn’t forgotten that.
Nicolas got up from the sofa, looked out the door of the private room, and shouted to a passing waiter to bring him more Moët & Chandon: “Altra moetta, presto!”
“You need to eliminate them for me,” the lawyer went on in the same tone of voice, after finishing his second glass of champagne. “And everything they’ve taken from me, you need to get back for me.”
“But why are you asking us?” Nicolas asked the question even as, deep inside, he was connecting the dots: at last his brain had started working the way it used to, and he was beginning to conceive a plan that smacked of comeback, that smacked of the future.
“If I go to the police it’ll take me ten years before it’s taken care of. The paranza can turn it around in ten minutes.”
Selfies, notoriety, handshakes. For the members of the paranza, it meant they’d attained their goal, that they really had become VIPs. These were good things. But what the lawyer was talking about was something completely different. This meant official sanction of the fact that for those who mattered in the city, the paranza was an efficient organization. Suitable to entrust with special missions. And an efficient organization can claim the chairman’s seat at the negotiation table.
“I get it, but why should the paranza do you this favor?”
Nicolas had intentionally chosen to use that word, favor, because the lawyer himself had uttered it.
“Tell me how much you want, and we’ll gladly pay.”
Without answering, Nicolas grabbed a stack of paper napkins off the table and started balling them up. He made clumps of paper and stuffed them into his mouth, pushing them to the back with his thumb. The lawyer stared at him like he was a lunatic. What was Nicolas trying to do? Make a jury-rigged mouthguard and then start a boxing match?
Instead, Nicolas, unruffled, crossed his legs and started talking in a hoarse voice and a Sicilian accent: “But now you come to me and say, Don Corleone, you must give me justice. And you don’t ask in respect or friendship.” He’d always wanted to act out this scene, such a pity that no one was filming it, there would have been a lot of shares and likes with a video like that! “And you don’t think to call me Godfather; instead you come to my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do murder … for money?”
“Maraja, I don’t understand, if I’ve said anything to offend you…”
Nicolas had always had a weak spot for Don Vito Corleone. He felt just like him: courage above everything else. But that ignoramus of a lawyer was having trouble even registering his Brando impression …
Caiazzo, even more confused now, attempted his usual exit strategy: abandon the negotiation by taking it for granted that they’d come to an understanding.
“All right, then, so it’s settled? Are we all good? Let me go talk to the engineer and give him the good news. I’m indebted to you, Maraja.” He was already on his feet when Nicolas spat the balls of paper onto the floor, where they lay, wads sodden with saliva.
“Hold on there, Counselor. Have you taken me for a houseboy at the service of Engineer D’Elia?”
“What houseboy, I’m asking you for a favor and I’m ready and willing to pay…” said the lawyer. He’d sat back down on the armchair, slightly pale and more confused than before.
“No disrespect meant, Counselor, but the money you’re thinking of paying us? We can make that in two hours.”
At last, the veil that had been dimming Caiazzo’s vision was torn away: these were no longer the children he’d defended in court, these were no longer the same kids he’d kept from having to serve time in reform school.
“And?” he shot back.
“I’d make a fair-trade exchange, sustainable and transparent.” He smiled and mentally drew a line between two dots that were very far apart. “You need to tell me where ’o Tigrotto lives.”
“Who?” He really wasn’t expecting this, and it took him a moment to grasp the point.
“’O Tigrotto, Counselor, the Faellas’ man. The one who killed Gabriele Grimaldi, Don Vittorio’s son.”
“’O Tigrotto, yes, I understand, but he’s not one of my clients,” Caiazzo said, already composing himself. He was a lawyer, he thought to himself, assuming a rather more formal tone of voice, he knew how to face up to certain situations. “It’s not one of my trials, I wouldn’t know where to begin. That’s in Masturzo’s portfolio … and it’s confidential information, Maraja, you’d have to speak with him.”
“I think it’s confidential to go shoot a bunch of Gypsies. Here everything we’re talking about is confidential, Counselor.”
“But I wouldn’t even know. I’m not on such close terms with Masturzo, how would I ask him such a thing in the first place?” He was grasping for words, while the firmness he’d so painstakingly constructed vanished into thin air.
Nicolas smiled: now it was his turn to walk away from the conversation.
“Counselor, all of you down at the courthouse swap wives, you certainly won’t have any real problem asking him where I could find ’o Tigrotto, no? For the rest of it, you and your friend the engineer can rest easy, you’re in the hands of professionals!”