In a dream I saw my screaming death tattooed on the wall. I awoke and ran to Mexico and heard the devil call – Jimi Hendrix
FOR some reason known only to Al Guglameno, Gorgeous George Marcus had been persuaded to return to Sicily with little Boy Bobby Aspanu and his two silent bodyguards.
Gorgeous George was over the moon at the prospect of meeting the great Don Hector Aspanu, not to mention carrying out yet another secret agent assignment for his friend and protector Guglameno. George had even invited his latest girlfriend along, a blonde stripper named Jasmyn. When George wanted to butter people up he knew there was no greater butter than an extra-friendly young lady.
The flight from Melbourne to Rome was not without comedy. The yummy Jasmyn got swept off her feet in first class by a Maltese kickboxer and on landing in Rome was not only a member of the mile high club several times over but deeply in love. Gorgeous George was shattered, but he swallowed his pride while Jasmyn swallowed something else. Maltese Dave was in the heavyweight division and George was no fighter. Worse was to come. The meeting with the Great Don Hector was a disaster for George.
“Who’s this stupid bastardo?” asked Don Hector.
“He’s a friend of Guglameno,” said Bobby.
“Oh, I see,” said Don Hector, “the fuck-up Calabrian sends me a Greek messenger. So, Greek messenger, what the fuck happened to Peter Delia Torre, not that I give a shit, but he was a Sicilian.”
“Well,” said George, “it was all a bit odd. He woke up at three o’clock in the morning to hear a cat meowing.”
“What?” said Don Hector.
“You know,” said George “Meow, meow, meow.”
“Yeah, yeah” said Don Hector. “Meow, meow. I understand. Then what?”
“Well,” said George. “Peter gets up and goes outside and he finds a cat in a birdcage in his driveway.”
“A what?” grated Don Hector.
“A cat in a birdcage, grandfather,” said Bobby.
“I heard him,” snapped Don Hector. “A cat in a bird cage. Then what?”
“Well,” said George. “He picked the cage up — then, bang, and Peter’s head is lying on the front lawn. Double barrel shotgun.”
“Jesus,” said Don Hector, puzzled but slightly amused. “A cat in a bird cage. Couldn’t they afford a horse’s head? Ha ha.”
“Maybe it was the Albanians,” said Little Boy Bobby.
“Pig’s arse,” said Don Hector who, for some bizarre reason talked a bit like John Elliott with an Italian accent. “Ya can’t blame them for everything. Anyhow, they would eat the bird and fuck the cat. Ha ha ha.” A great one to laugh at his own jokes, the old Don.
“Nah,” he concluded. “The only people whose tactics defy human logic is the fucking mad Irish. What the hell did Delia Torre do to upset those mental cases?”
Everyone looked at each other and shrugged.
“Cats in bird cages,” said Don Hector. “Jesus Christ! Is the whole world on medication? And what about the fuck-up hit on Joey? I guess you’re gonna tell me the fuckin’ cat did that as well before he hopped up in the bird cage. And don’t blame the fuckin’ Albanians for that. Or the stupid Irish. That, my dear grandson, was your fuck-up friends the Calabrians, hey Bobby?”
It’s what you call a loaded question. Loaded with buckshot, and Bobby knew it. As Don Hector spoke his bodyguards moved in. Benny Benozzo grabbed Little Boy Bobby and swung an ice pick with fearful force with a right hand blow into the left ear.
Franco Di Tommaso and Luigi Monza froze in horror. As the loyal bodyguards of the suddenly dead Bobby Aspanu their own lives were in question, but a look from the old man told them to relax. He knew they were only soldiers — and soldiers, however loyal to their capo, owed their final loyalty to the boss, the old general of the clan, Don Hector himself.
Gorgeous George, however, was not so confident or continent just at this moment. He pissed his pants and froze in blind terror as Bobby’s body hit to the floor. Don Hector turned to him.
“Tell Guglameno just to make money and not to involve himself in Sicilian family politics. Joey Gravano is my most loyal nephew. Bobby was my most treacherous grandchild. I’m a man with many grandchildren — all Hollywood Sicilian yuppies who try to impersonate Al Pacino. Joey’s not too bright, but he is loyal to his uncle and his Godfather.
“My sons and their sons spend all their time counting my money and plotting against me before I’m even in the grave. So, Greek messenger, you go back and tell Guglameno he must thank me for every heartbeat, because he won’t ever get a second chance. Now, go home, and let an old man cry for the death of his grandson.
As George Marcus left, Don Hector spoke in Sicilian to Di Tommaso and Monza.
“Why would that Calabrian send me a Greek messenger?” he spat. “You know the old Sicilian proverb?”
Di Tommaso replied, “Never trust a Greek or a priest.”
“Yes,” said Don Hector. “For Guglameno to trust a Greek we must now ask ourselves about Guglameno. We still have an informer in the camp.
“Who set Delia Torre up? And this strange visit from this nothing Greek on an invitation from Guglameno? Joey killed his own baby brother because we thought he was the informer. Maybe Bobby was the informer. Who knows? But this visit for no reason from this shifty Greek makes me wonder is the Greek the dog? And if he is, then what of his Calabrian master?”
Luigi Monza spoke. “How do we know the truth, Don Aspanu?”
The old man smiled an evil smile. “We let it be known that if the informer isn’t found and killed within 30 days then the relatives of every Calabrian in control in Carlton still living in Italy will all die. Men, women and children.”
Bobby Benozzo spoke. “That could mean a hundred people, Don Hector.”
“So what,” said the old man. A hundred Calabrians mean nothing. If Guglameno is the informer, as Joey secretly thinks he is, then he will kill his Greek messenger and blame him.”
“Then what?” asked Di Tommaso. “We kill Guglameno?”
“No,” said the Don. “Once we know the game we can control the moves. Guglameno can die tomorrow or in ten years time.”
*
A FUNNY thing happened. Exactly 30 days after George Marcus flew out of Palermo he was found shot dead in a quiet street in North Box Hill in Melbourne, outside the address of one of his many girlfriends.
Guglameno had despatched Mario Dellacroce to do the job for $14,000. Dellacroce paid a lot more than that to young Victor Masolino and ordered him to do it. Masolino, having accepted the money, promptly lost his guts and subcontracted the job out to his girlfriend’s uncle, an old Aussie gunnie and alcoholic, fallen on hard times. So, for the princely sum of $7000, old Kevin Thackery ended up actually pulling the trigger.
Dellacroce had lost big money to save face. Masolino made money to save face, and poor old Thackery got robbed. As often happens when a job is too hard for the criminal yuppies, they dust the cobwebs of some old Aussie gunman who still thinks a $7000 hit is a good earn.
Guglameno would have used the Albanians for three or four thousand and for that money got a crew of six with a chain saw, but George had served him well and in keeping with his Hollywood gangster image deserved to die like one. The good thing was, Marcus owed money all over Melbourne and had made serious enemies. His love life was enough to get twenty men shot and it would take the police several years just to question the list of suspects.
As for Guglameno, he would henceforth maintain his secret contacts with the NCA, the DEA and Federal Police through a Jewish lawyer, a lovely lady indeed. And while all this was going on old Poppa Di Inzabella was watching Big Al from a distance with an evil eye, and he let Don Hector Aspanu know that the grave had already been dug for Guglameno. In one year or ten years, it didn’t matter. Meanwhile, Guglameno was a money mover at a street level and as long as he ran his end of things at a profit for all, he lived.
*
MELBOURNE, 1994. When a smart Sicilian wants to kill an Albanian in secret, he will hire a Russian, and the Russian will then make a financial arrangement with a Lithuanian. So it was that Vlad Alayla, a Russian marriage broker, money lender and immigration adviser, stood at the bar of the Bavarian Club in West Melbourne with Big Viko Radavic, a half-crazy Lithuanian standover man, talking business of a violent nature.
And so it came to pass that Emma Russell, a 12-year-old school girl, was quietly strolling to school in West Brunswick when she came across the half-dead body of Fracoz Lepetikha. Emma went over to have a look, because she didn’t get to see too many dead people as a rule, certainly not on a school day.
She gave the body a little kick and jumped back when Fracoz gave a moan and rolled over on his back. It wasn’t a good look. Someone had bashed his face in with a blunt instrument. His top and bottom lips and all his teeth seemed to be missing, one of his eyes had been torn out, and there wasn’t much left of his nose. He had holes in his chest as if someone had repeatedly hit him with a hammer.
“Doctor,” groaned Fracoz.
“You okay?” said Emma. “Ya don’t look too good to me, mate.”
“Doctor,” came the voice from the grave, again.
“Do I look like a bloody doctor?” said Emma. She stared at the horrific pulp that was once a face and said, “you don’t come from around these parts, do ya mate?”
Fracoz tried to raise his arm and got a bloody hand print on Emma’s right shoe.
“Get ya fucking hand off me shoe,” she yelped, and gave him a swift kick.
“Ahhhh!” screamed Fracoz.
Young Emma looked around. She was late for school and didn’t really have time for this Florence Nightingale stuff. She said, “My dad told me that if ya nurse a mug he’ll die in ya arms. I’m sorry, mate. I’m late for bloody school and ya not dying in my arms.” And with that she marched off to school.
The ghosts of Gravano’s mother and sister had returned to claim the life of Fracoz Leptikha.
Two nights later Joey Gravano sat quietly with Tina in the lounge bar of Squizzy Taylor’s hotel.
Mad Cassandra and her empty bird cage had not reappeared since the night the shots were fired at him and Joey knew that she and her dubious relatives in Collingwood had some role to play in the death of Peter Delia Torre. Joey was no genius, but he could conclude that the coincidence was too much to dismiss. But who put the Aussies up to it? Who stood to gain? Then he thought of George Marcus and Guglameno.
“Snap out of it,” said Tina. “You’re day dreaming.”
Joey came back to life.
“Where’s Cassie?” he asked suddenly.
“Oh, she got a job as a table dancer in Tasmania,” said Tina.
“You’re joking” said Joey.
“No,” said Tina. “She couldn’t get out of Melbourne quick enough. She’s in Hobart now, works at some dance club in Liverpool Street. She’s flashing the map of Tassie down in Tassie.”
Joey laughed, then shook his head and muttered, “I wonder if she took her bird cage.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tina.
“Private joke,” said Joey. “Private joke.”
*
OUTSIDE the hotel Mark Dardo, Niko Ceka and Abdul Kravaritis sat in a 1978 Valiant Regal.
“Okay,” said Mark, “we just give Gravano the best kicking he’s ever had.”
“Let’s kill him,” said Niko.
“No, no,” said Mark. “We can’t prove he was behind Fracoz getting it.”
“Same fucking dog, different haircut,” said Abdul.
“Like the coppers say,” said Niko, “if he isn’t guilty then he’ll do till we find out who is.”
“No,” said Mark. “Tonight we just kick the living guts out of the Sicilian snake.”
Niko and Abdul nodded in silence. Mark was the head of the crew and the brains and he had to have a tactical reason for wanting a simple bashing instead of a killing.
They got out of the car and walked to the pub.
Joey Gravano was still sitting at the table with Tina in a world of his own. That’s because Tina had her hand under the table, gently caressing his trousers. Joey sat still with his left arm around Tina and a glass of whisky in his right hand. Tina had a gin and tonic in her left hand and a Sicilian trouser snake in her right. The lounge bar was nearly empty.
Something exploded against Joey’s head. It felt like a sledge hammer behind the right ear. He heard Tina scream as blows rained on him. He fell backwards in his chair, and then the kicking started.
He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. He tried to force himself up but the kicking was too heavy and too fast. He felt his top teeth being shattered as a boot crashed into his open mouth. He tried to breathe but choked as a boot hit him in the neck and caught his wind pipe. All he could hear was Tina crying and screaming. Then it all faded to black, with the sound of Gene Chandler singing Duke of Earl lingering in his head.
Joey spent three weeks in hospital in a coma. When he recovered he remembered nothing, but when told of the night’s events he concluded that to avenge himself on the Albanians would prove only that he was the guilty party behind the murder of Fracoz. Besides, a good bashing now and again is simply the tax all men in any criminal culture pay. It can sometimes be classified under the heading of friendly fire. Anything that involves a nice warm hospital bed afterwards and regular injections of Pethidine once every four hours can hardly be considered serious violence.
Joey was, however, a bit pissed off at having his front top teeth kicked down his neck, but Tina didn’t care. To her, Joey was a hero and in the privacy of his hospital room she proceeded to kiss the only part of him the Albanians hadn’t kicked in.
When Joey got to the gooey bit he cried out “marry me baby, marry me!” Tina thought to herself that being offered marriage with her smackers around her loved one’s knackers is hardly Romeo and Juliet, but she was in love and full of the joys of spring and all. After a moment to regain her composure she said “Joey, are you really serious?”
“Yeah,” said Joey. “Dead set serious.”
“Ya could have proposed marriage to me after I’d finished, Joe” she said, pouting a little.
“I’m sorry, Princess. Please baby, will ya marry me?”
Tina smiled. “Yeah, Joey of course. I will, but on one condition.”
“Anything,” said Joey. “Just name it.”
“Get out of the bricklaying business, Joey. It’s too bloody dangerous.”
Joey nodded solemnly.
“I swear on my mother’s grave, honey, I’ll never lay another brick.” And that, he thought, was one promise he knew he could keep.
*
THE wedding of Joey Gravano and Tina Torre was, at Don Hector Aspanu’s insistence, to be held at the Church of the Fisherman on the Palermo waterfront. It was nicknamed the Church of St Juiliano after the great Sicilian hero bandit and legend Salvatore Juiliano.
To get his way, Don Hector claimed ill health and heart trouble. Most who knew him knew the only heart trouble he had was that he didn’t have a heart at all. But, anyway, the Aspanu company paid for Tina’s whole family to be flown from Melbourne to Sicily first class and accommodated, all expenses paid. Friends and relations from various corners of the world were ordered to attend, including a gaggle of razzle dazzle boys from New York, who thought they were tough guys back home but felt like boy scouts at a bum bandits’ picnic when they got off the plane in Sicily.
Conversations with the American connections had to be in English as their Italian was hopeless. They had lost any idea of the various Sicilian dialects and Scarchi was a word they had only heard their grandfathers mention in whispers. In true American fashion they talked loud, splashed plenty of money, produced lavish wedding gifts and offered everyone the benefit of their advice. This was pretty funny, because it led to mob guys talking about junk bonds and computer fraud with Sicilians who were still killing each other over being short-changed on the sale of a truckload of fish.
For the Americans, it was a step back a hundred years. They were looking at where they had all come from and it secretly frightened and embarrassed them.
They didn’t know what to make of strange Sicilian finger signs that had died out everywhere else but were still being used in the old country. The American Italians were shocked to learn that their much-loved term “Goombata” — meaning “my friend” — was also a Scarchi term used by homosexuals when talking about a favourite bum boy. In Sicily, a Goombata was a young friend who was so friendly he would cop it up the clacker. This had some comic results when the yankee mob guys greeted their Sicilian brothers with “hey Goombata”. Guns and knives were drawn and one American wedding guest was shot and two stabbed before Don Hector could call for order and explain the verbal misunderstanding. Most amusing.
*
SALVATORE “Fat Sally” Gigante wanted to talk with his Uncle Hector. Thinking he was some sort of cousin of Joey’s, Fat Sally felt Don Hector was his uncle. Don Hector, on the other hand, while politely calling Gigante his nephew, could only recall a Sicilian whore named Gina Gigante that his grandfather and half the village use to screw before they cut her pimp’s head off and Gina and her three bastard sons, one of them the sly product of his grandfather, ran away to America.
Fat Sally sat down. They were at a table outside Lorenzo’s Cafe on the Palermo waterfront. While the Aspanu clan controlled Sicily with sheer bloodshed, it had little direct influence in America. However, it had life or death influence over the Sicilian crime families, which in turn did have powerful influence with the New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago mafia crime families. And it had its own interests all over the world.
In America, Miami was the only city where the Aspanu clan had any direct business. This was because Don Hector had predicted the Cuban trouble in the early 1950s and had made arrangements with contacts in half a dozen South American countries to use Naples as a clearing house to wash cash all through Europe. The Aspanus also controlled heroin and cocaine distribution in France, Spain, and Amsterdam and had even backed Afghanistan with money against its various enemies.
“I have a message from our friends in New York,” said Fat Sally.
Don Hector was slightly insulted, but didn’t show it. It couldn’t be a very important message if they send a Goombata like this to deliver it, he was thinking. He made a mental note to get Joey to kill this fat faggot when he could find the time. But there was no great hurry.
“What message?” said Don Hector with a thin smile. “Are our friends in New York so fond of copping nigger dick they no longer want us to export Sicilian salami sausage. Ha ha ha.”
Fat Sally was shocked at this remark but took it as some strange Sicilian comedy, not understanding that the old Don was quite serious.
Franco Di Tommaso and Luigi Monza sat at the next table. They burst out laughing. Bobby and Benny Benozzo were standing six feet away and also joined in the comedy. Sally Gigante thought it polite to also laugh at the old Don’s jest.
“So what is your message, Miko mio?”
“My friends want to borrow from you some helpers,” said Sally. “Little Juilianos.”
“So tell me, little fat boy,” said Don Aspanu, “what is a bambino Juiliano?”
“A little killer,” said Gigante.
“And in return for the lend of my Bambino Juilianos I get what?”, asked the Don.
Gigante puffed himself up.
“Don Hector Aspanu gets the love, respect and undying friendship of my friends.”
Don Hector nodded then smiled.
“If my name was Marlon Brando I’d be very pleased but this request indicates you can’t trust your own people, so a little money as well as the love, respect and undying friendship would be nice, if your friends don’t mind.”
“I will speak to them, Don Hector. How much money?” asked Fat Sally.
Don Hector looked bored. “Ten per cent of your friends’ net operation for as long as they want my friendship.” Gigante was dumbstruck. This was a fortune.
“I tell you a story,” said Don Hector. “Many years ago I visit America. I had a friend, a Jew called Meyer Lansky, and another friend, Frank Costello. Lansky, he died of the old age in Miami. Costello, he dead too. But they really give me wonderful time. I fell in love with America, with Hollywood. They introduce me to the only woman I ever loved, a real Hollywood movie star actress. Her name not important, you too young to remember, anyway. My old friend Frank Costello, some fat former heavyweight dago boxer wanting to climb the ladder took a few shots at Frank, but Frankie lived. The bum who pulled the trigger was named Vincent, Vinnie the Chin, you remember that name, hey?”
Gigante went pale.
“Now,” said Don Hector, “I hear that the bum who tried to kill my old friend is now a big boss in New York — God only knows how that happened — and he walks around in his dressing gown pretending to be a mad man. Stupido. Tell me, little fat boy, what is his last name?”
Sally choked. The Don continued calmly.
“Because if the Chin is one of these New York friends, then you can’t ask me for help.”
“No,” said Sally, “he isn’t.” He was praying the Don wouldn’t request Vincent “The Chin” Gigante’s last name again.
“Okay,” said Don Hector, slapping his knee, “tell your friends we can do the business. But remember, ten percent or I’ll get your friends whacked just for wasting my morning. And their fucking children.”
“Tell me, Don Hector, if I may ask,” said Sally. “Who was the Hollywood movie actress?”
“Ah,” said Hector, “just a beautiful woman I lost my head over, then my heart broke and, as fate would have it, she lost her own head. Anyway young Sally, enough is enough. This is a wedding, a celebration. No more business.”
As Sally walked away Don Hector said to Di Tommaso in Sicilian: “Get our friends in Miami to check out our New York friends because they are either fools, desperate or they are trying to play the trick on me. By the way, your English is improving.” He was referring to Di Tommaso’s laughter at the nigger gag.
“Bobby and Benny are teaching me,” said Di Tommaso.
“Ah,” said the Don with a sharp look at his two bodyguards. “School masters as well as bodyguards. Hector Aspanu is indeed a fortunate man to have such clever helpers.”
Somehow, they didn’t think he meant it.
*
ITALY, 1949. Young Hector Aspanu, Pietro Baldassare and Filippo Delia Torre crossed the Strait of Messina from Sicily to the mainland and made their way north to the “second Sicily”, as they called Naples. The Sicilian Mafia nicknamed the Naples gangsters “little brothers” or the “little cousins” as, next to the gunmen of Sicily, the gangsters of Naples were the only men the Sicilians trusted as men of honour.
Another reason they liked Naples was that the whores there were famous. Prostitution was the backbone of the Naples underworld, but there were plenty of sidelines to go with it. Gambling, blackmail, extortion, robbery, murder, the black market in American cigarettes, whisky, or anything else that could be stolen and trafficked. They dealt in drugs to a small degree, as well as medical supplies, weapons, pornography, kidnapping, opium and hashish. They trafficked in teenage boys and girls to the brothels of Morocco, Tunisia, Arabia and North Africa.
But business being as competitive as it is, gangs from Rome and Calabria had moved in and a war had erupted for control of the Naples brothels. Which is why the Naples gangsters called for some young unknown guns to come up from Sicily to help in the battle for Naples.
Those who’d made the call were Carlo Fontana and Danilo Domenico, heads of the La Santa Casa gang. La Santa Casa meant “the Holy House”, and Fontana and Domenico had been Jesuit Priests, defrocked and ex-communicated by the Church for crimes the details of which were never revealed. The fact was they were both psychopathic killers whose reputation for violence and sexual excess was legend.
The two former priests turned gang leaders were disappointed that their call for help resulted in three Sicilian gunmen and not thirty, but they welcomed Aspanu, Baldassare and Delia Torre with open arms.
It was said that the woman who slept in Mussolini’s bed, his mistress Clara Petacci, was once a whore from the Naples brothels, and it was her who encouraged Mussolini to execute the bosses of all the Camorra gangs as a payback for the Camorra killing her grandfather and four uncles.
It was also said that when Mussolini and Petacci were murdered and strung up by the heels in Milan it was done in Camorra revenge style. Fact or fiction, it all strengthened the legend about the shadowy organisation that controlled the third largest city in Italy, meaning Naples.
To the young guns fresh from the hills of Sicily, Naples was mind blowing. It meant taking money with both hands and an endless supply of women. For the three young Sicilians it was a glittering, city of laughter, sex and sin.
It was in reality a filthy, poverty-stricken slum that no self-respecting dog would die in. But compared to the peasant poverty of Sicily it seemed like New York.
It seemed to the Sicilians that they couldn’t walk more than ten feet down any narrow street without seeing a whore on her knees or some gangster sticking a knife into the neck of another. The whole city was corrupt and violent. The men robbed and killed. The women whored and robbed and killed. And there was a Camorra war for control of the city. It all needed some Sicilian-style discipline, and so it was that that the three Sicilians sat down with Carlo Fontana and Danilo Domenico in a small brothel and gambling den called the Santa Lucia club.
“The whole fucking town is bleeding to death in its own vomit,” said Fontana.
“Yes,” said Domenico. “They kill us, we kill them. Bang, bang, bang every night but no-one wins, no-one loses. We rob them, they rob us. We steal their whores, they steal ours. The whole city has become a dog eat dog affair.”
Hector Aspanu spoke. “But I thought the old men of the Camorra controlled the gangs.”
“What old men?” said Fontana. “The Germans killed the ones Mussolini didn’t. Now it’s just the young bloods all fighting each other for their own slice of this maggoty pie. You can buy a twelve-year-old boy and his thirteen-year-old sister in the Capri Club for five American dollars each for the whole night and the pimp will, I promise you, turn out to be either the mother or the father. The whole city needs burning in the fires of hell.”
Hector Aspanu spat on the floor. He was trying to follow the conversation but on the other side of the club was the most beautiful girl he had seen, a classic Naples princess. Big seductive eyes, a Roman nose, the full lips of an Arabian harem teaser, a slender neck, black silky hair tied up in a bun and held in place with a Spanish comb. She wore a plain white cotton dress full and long, tied at her narrow waist with a white belt to reveal a cleavage you could holster a .38 in.
As she walked from table to table selling flowers, her hips swung in time with the music. She was no more than 15, maybe 16 years old. She had a teenage face, but the eyes of a knowing woman years older. She was a girl who had seen things during the war that children shouldn’t see.
Men bought flowers from her and she seemed to tolerate their hands running up under her long white frock to caress the back of her smooth legs. Hector noticed she allowed the American sailors, for a tip, to fondle her firm ripe round arse. But she had rage in her eyes at odds with her smile.
When the girl approached Hector’s table Fontana ordered her away.
“Fucking street rats. I told you before, we don’t need fucking flower sellers. Put your arse on the street. You come in here teasing with your flowers, fucking virgin slut. We all know your mother would sell you tomorrow but for your attitude. Get out, whore.”
“I’m not a whore,” spat the young girl.
“Ah, yes” replied Domenico. “But you will be, I promise you. Your mother is coming to see me in a week’s time. If she hasn’t got the money your family borrowed by then, she has promised us that she does have a daughter.”
The young girl started to shake with anger and tears welled up in her eyes.
“My mother wouldn’t sell me. You’re lying, you pig.”
She ran from the club, crying. At this point Hector Aspanu looked at Baldassare and Delia Torre and in Sicilian Scarchi slang said one word. All three men knew that along with the French dog, the Spanish rat, the Roman pig and the Calabrian snake that these two priests were now also dead men.
*
TWO days later the head of the French gang leader, Pepe Leon, was found on the steps of the St Januarius Cathedral. The following day the head of the Spanish rats, Torres Garcia, was on the steps. The morning after that the Roman Johnny Mastrioianni met the same fate, and the day after that the Calabrian Lorenzitti the Gypsy had his head placed on the church steps.
Such public and swift action was a classic mafia trademark, and got a reaction. It was public and violent, quick and simple. Naples went into a state of silent shock and horror. Within days the under bosses and bosses of every street gang in Napoli were calling on the two priests, Carlo Fontana and Danilo Domenico, with gifts of respect. Suddenly the Camorra was coming together, so it would seem, under the leadership of one controlling force, the La Santa Casa gang. However, neither Fontana or Domenico had seen the three Sicilians since the night of the flower girl.
Then, one night, a small time Naples gang leader came to visit the priests at the Santa Lucia club. He was Aniello Sanicola, nicknamed “The Face” as a result of once having a German rifle butt smashed into his face, making him possibly the most ugly man in Naples.
Fontana and Domenico didn’t expect a visit from such a small-time fish, even though he was probably the most frightening and evil little monster in Naples. He simply didn’t have the manpower or the guns behind him to claim any true control of anything, but the priests were polite. After all, they were now Dons in their own right. The three Sicilians had seen to that, God bless them.
“I come with the deepest respect, Don Carlo, Don Danilo,” said Sanicola.
They were surprised at being addressed in such a grand and respectful fashion, and sat back and smiled at the little monster with the horror movie head.
“No, no” said Fontana, “It is we who are honoured that you should call on us. Please sit down.”
“With respect, Don Carlo, I would prefer to stand. I have two messages of some formal importance to give you and it would be rude to deliver such messages while seated.”
The priests sat up.
“Go on, Sanicola,” said Fontana. “This is most interesting.”
The club was full of whores and Camorra gangsters. The music had stopped and all was very quiet. All ears strained to hear this conversation.
“First of all,” said Sanicola as he reached into his pocket with his left hand and threw down three hundred American dollars. “Here is the money the little flower girl owes you, plus the six months interest.”
Domenico and Fontana looked at each other in surprise, then back at Sanicola.
“You come here to pay the debt of some whore of a flower girl. Debt paid or not, she belongs to us” said Domenico.
“I don’t think so, Don Danilo” said Sanicola. “Little Sophia is under the protection of the Aspanu clan. This message is also from Hector Aspanu.”
The club went deathly quiet. Camorra gunmen in the club who had secretly drawn their weapons in case of a threat to Fontana and Domenico quietly replaced them again. A blind man could see what was coming next, but the two priests were both more than blind, they were arrogant.
“Ha, ha” Fontana laughed, “the little Scicoloni slut is under the protection of that Sicilian dwarf Aspanu. What? And we are meant to be afraid? These fucking Sicilians come up here and cut off a few heads and now we are all meant to be afraid.”
Fontana didn’t see the Sanicola’s right hand come out from under his coat. It was holding a 9mm Luger automatic. Fontana didn’t hear the shot that killed him but Domenico did, as Fontana fell backwards with a hole in his forehead.
Domenico looked at Sanicola, then dropped to his knees and started to blubber. “No, no, no, in the name of God no, no, Holy Mother Mary, please no, Santa Maria, please.”
Sanicola pulled the trigger again and the slug caught the priest in the throat and Domenico gasped and choked and grabbed his neck with both hands, bleeding. As he fell Hector Aspanu, Pietro Baldassare and Filippo Delia Torre walked into the club with Sanicola’s gang, all carrying machine guns. Hector was holding the hand of the beautiful flower girl, Sophia Scicoloni.
*
THE next day Hector Aspanu, Pietro Baldassare and Filippo Delia Torre sailed out of Naples across the bay. Aniello Sanicola and his gang ruled the Camorra gangs, and Hector Aspanu had left Sanicola with the duty to watch over the health, wealth, wellbeing and future of the flower girl. On his knees before Hector Aspanu, Sanicola swore that only his death would stand in the way of his duty of care.
“Sophia Scicoloni“, thought Hector as he sailed away. “I wonder what will become of her, my little flower girl.”