“Can you give me five doses … for allergy testing?”
They talk again a bit later:
“Did you try the machine?”
“Yes …”
They clearly mean the testing.
“Yes, mamma mia, troppo bello, we’re number one, my friend, the others will be out of business.”
They rejoice, glad the guinea pigs didn’t die; on the contrary, they really enjoyed it. A good cut doubles sales, and if it’s really high quality, it’ll soon be in demand nationally, trouncing the competition.
Only after I read this telephone exchange did I understand a scene I’d witnessed a while earlier. I could not believe my eyes. I was in Miano, not far from Scampia, in a clearing near some storage hangars, where a dozen or so Visitors had been rounded up. I hadn’t ended up there by chance; I believe that the way to truly understand, to get to the bottom of things, is to smell the hot breath of reality, to touch the nitty-gritty. I’m not convinced it’s necessary to be there, to observe in order to know things, but being there is absolutely essential for things to know you. A well-dressed fellow—white suit, navy blue shirt, brand-new running shoes—unfolded a chamois cloth with a few syringes in it on the hood of the car. The Visitors elbowed their way forward; it looked like one of those scenes they show on the news when a truck full of flour arrives in Africa. Identical, always the same, year after year. But then a Visitor started yelling:
“No, I won’t take it, not even if you give it to me … you want to kill us …”
All it took was one suspicious person and the others withdrew immediately. The fellow just waited; he didn’t seem particularly eager to convince anyone. The air was full of dust from the Visitors’ trampling around, and every now and then he’d spit out the grit that settled on his teeth. Two of the Visitors finally went up to him, a couple actually. They were trembling, really on the edge, in withdrawal. The veins in the guy’s arms were shot, so he took off his shoes, but even the soles of his feet were ruined. The girl picked up a syringe and held it between her teeth as she slowly opened his shirt, as if it had a hundred buttons, then jabbed him in the throat. The syringe contained coke. Once it’s in the bloodstream it becomes clear pretty quickly if the cut is good or if it’s off, too heavy, or poor quality. After a bit he started to sway, frothing lightly at the corners of his mouth. He fell to the ground, jerked around and then stretched out flat, closed his eyes, and went stiff. The man in the white suit started calling on his cell.
“He looks dead to me … Okay, okay, I’ll try giving him a massage …”
He began pounding the Visitor’s chest with his boot: a violent cardiac massage. Next to him the girl was blithering something, the words hanging on her lips: “You’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong. You’re hurting him …” With all the strength of a wet noodle she tried to push him away from her boyfriend’s body. But the man was disgusted, almost frightened by her and the Visitors in general:
“Don’t touch me … you’re disgusting … don’t you dare come near me … don’t touch me or I’ll shoot!”
He went on kicking the guy’s chest, and then, resting his foot on his sternum, he made another call:
“He’s a goner … Oh yeah, the Kleenex … hang on, let me see …”
He took a Kleenex out of his pocket, moistened it, and spread it over the guy’s lips. Even the faintest breath would make a hole, indicating that he was still alive. A precaution to keep from touching the body. He phoned one last time:
“He’s dead. We have to make it lighter.”
The man got back in his car. The driver, meanwhile, had been bouncing up and down the whole time, dancing in his seat to some silent music; I couldn’t hear a sound even though he acted as if it were playing full blast. Within a few minutes everyone moved away and started wandering around in that patch of dust. The guy was still stretched out on the ground, his girlfriend whimpering beside him. Even her crying stuck to her lips, as if the only form of vocal expression the heroin allowed was a hoarse moan.
I couldn’t understand why, but the girl got up, dropped her pants, squatted right over his face, and pissed. The Kleenex stuck to his mouth and nose. After a bit he regained his senses, and wiped his face with his hands, like when you come up from underwater. This Lazarus of Miano, resurrected by who knows what substances in her urine, slowly got up. I swear that if I hadn’t been so stunned, I would have cried out, “Miracle!” Instead I paced back and forth, which is what I always do when I don’t understand or don’t know what to do. I nervously occupy space. My moving around must have attracted attention, since the Visitors came nearer and started yelling at me. They thought I was connected to the guy with the syringes. They kept shouting, “You … you … you wanted to kill him.”
They hovered around me, but scattered as soon as I quickened my pace. They followed me though, hurling disgusting objects they’d picked up from the ground. I hadn’t done anything, but if you’re not an addict, you must be a pusher. Suddenly a truck appeared. Dozens of them had been pulling out of the warehouses all morning. It stopped near me and a voice called my name. It was Pasquale. He opened the door and had me jump in. Not a guardian angel who saves his favorite charge—more like two rats running in the same sewer, pulling each other by the tail.
Pasquale looked at me with the severity of a father who’d foreseen everything. That sarcastic smile said it all; no need to waste time scolding me. I stared at his hands instead. Even redder, more chapped, knuckles cracked, palms anemic. Fingers accustomed to silk and velvet have trouble adjusting to ten hours at the steering wheel. Pasquale was talking, but I couldn’t get the Visitors out of my head. Monkeys. Less than monkeys. Guinea pigs, testing the cut of a drug that will be distributed all over Europe—the clans can’t take the chance it might kill someone. Human guinea pigs, so that people in Rome, Naples, Abruzzo, Lucania, and Bologna won’t end up dead, blood dripping from their nose and foaming at the mouth. A dead Visitor in Secondigliano is only one more wretch whose demise will go uninvestigated. It’s already a lot if he’s picked up off the ground, his face wiped clean of vomit and piss, and buried. Elsewhere there’d be an autopsy, an investigation, conjectures about his death. Here there’s just one word: overdose.
Pasquale took the road that links the northern suburbs of Naples. Sheds, warehouses, rubbish dumps, rusting junk strewn around, trash tossed everywhere. No industrial complexes here. There’s the stink of factory smoke but no factories. Houses scattered along streets, piazzas defined by the presence of a bar. A confused and complicated desert. Pasquale realized I wasn’t listening so he braked suddenly. Without coming to a full stop, just a little whiplash—just enough to shake me up. Then he looked at me and said, “Things are going to get rough in Secondigliano … ‘a vicchiarella is in Spain with everybody’s money. You’ve got to quit coming around here. I can feel the tension everywhere. Even the asphalt would peel off the ground if it could get out of here.”
I decided to follow what was going to happen in Secondigliano. The more Pasquale insisted it would be dangerous, the more I became convinced that it was impossible not to try to understand the elements of the disaster. And understanding meant being part of it somehow. I had no choice; as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way to understand things. Neutrality and objective distance are places I’ve never been able to find. Raffaele Amato—‘a vicchiarella, the old woman—a second-tier clan executive in charge of the Spanish drug markets, had fled to Barcelona with the Di Lauro cash box. At least that’s what was being said. In truth he had failed to turn his quota over to the clan, a way of demonstrating that he no longer felt the least obligation to the people who wanted to keep him on a salary. The schism was official. For the moment it involved only Spain, which had always been controlled by the clans: Andalusia by the Casalesi of Caserta, the islands by the Nuvolettas of Marano, and Barcelona by the “secessionists.” That’s the name the first crime reporters on the story gave to the Di Lauro men who broke away. But everyone
in Secondigliano calls them the Spaniards. With their leader in Spain, they took the lead not only in peddling but in narcotraffic as well, Madrid being a crucial junction for cocaine coming from Colombia and Peru. According to investigations, Amato’s men had long employed a brilliant stratagem for moving huge amounts of drugs: garbage trucks. Trash on the top, drugs underneath. An infallible method for escaping controls. No one would stop a garbage truck in the middle of the night.
According to the inquiries, Cosimo Di Lauro sensed that his managers were turning less and less capital over to the clan. Profit was supposed to be reinvested in wagers, the investments that managers make when purchasing drug lots with Di Lauro capital. Wager: the term comes from the irregular, hyperliberal cocaine and pill trade, in which there is no measure or certainty. So one bets, like in Russian roulette. If you wager 100,000 euros and things go well, two weeks later you’ve got 300,000. Whenever I come across such exponential figures, I remember what Giovanni Falcone told a group of students: “In order to understand how prosperous the drug trade is, consider that a thousand lire invested in drugs on the first of September become a hundred million by the first of August of the following year.” His example was recorded in hundreds of school notebooks.
The sums Di Lauro’s managers turned over were still astronomical, but getting progressively smaller. Over the long term this sort of practice would strengthen some and weaken others, and eventually—as soon as a group gathered enough organizational and military force—they’d give Paolo Di Lauro the shove. Not just some stiff competition, but the big shove, the one you don’t get up from, a shove with lead in it. So Cosimo ordered everyone be put on salary. He wanted them all to depend on him. The decision ran counter to his father’s ways, but it was necessary to protect his business, his authority, his family. No more loose ties, with everyone free to decide how much to invest, what type and quality of drugs to put on the market. No more liberty and autonomy within a multilevel corporation. Salaried employees. Some were saying 50,000 euros a month. An extraordinary amount, but a salary nevertheless. A subordinate role. The end of the entrepreneurial dream, replaced by a manager’s job. And the administrative revolution didn’t end there. Informants testify that Cosimo also imposed a generational turnover. Immediate rejuvenation of the top management, so no executives over thirty. The market doesn’t make concessions for the appreciation of human assets. It doesn’t make concessions for anything. You have to hustle to win. Every bond, be it affection, law, rights, love, emotion, or religion, is a concession to the competition, a stumbling block to success. There’s room for all that, but economic victory and control come first. Old bosses used to be listened to out of respect, even when they proposed outdated ideas or gave ineffective orders; their decisions counted precisely because of their age. And age was what posed the biggest threat to the leadership of Paolo Di Lauro’s offspring.
So now they were all on the same level; no appealing to a mythical past, previous experience, or respect owed. Everyone had to get by on the strength of his proposals, management abilities, or charisma. The Secondigliano commandos began unleashing their force before the secession occurred. But it was already brewing. One of their first objectives was Ferdinando Bizzarro, also known as bacchetella or Uncle Fester, after the bald, slippery little character on The Addams Family. Bizzarro was the ras of Melito. Ras is a term for someone of authority but who is still subject to the higher power of the boss. Bizzarro was no longer performing diligently as a Di Lauro area capo. He wanted to manage his own money, to make pivotal, and not merely administrative, decisions. This wasn’t a classic revolt; he merely wanted to be promoted, to become an autonomous partner. But he promoted himself. The Melito clans are ferocious; they run underground factories that make high-quality shoes for half the world and generate cash for loan-sharking. Underground factory owners almost always support the politician who will guarantee the least amount of business regulation, or the regional capo who gets him elected. The Secondigliano clans have never been slaves to politicians and have never wanted to establish programmatic pacts, but in this region it’s essential to have friends.
The very person who had been Bizzarro’s political point man became his angel of death. The clan asked Alfredo Cicala, a former mayor of Melito and local leader of the center-left political party La Margherita, for help with Bizzarro. According to the Naples DDA investigations, Cicala provided precise information about Bizzarro’s whereabouts. If one reads the wiretaps, it doesn’t seem as if they were plotting a murder, but simply rotating leaders. In the end, it’s really the same thing. Business has to go on, and Bizzarro’s decision to be autonomous threatened to cause problems. It had to be done, by whatever means. When Bizzarro’s mother died, Di Lauro’s affiliates considered going to the funeral and shooting at everyone and everything. Taking out Bizzarro, his son, his cousins. Everyone. They were ready. But Bizzarro and his son didn’t show. Detailed plans for an ambush continued, however. The clan even faxed information and orders to its affiliates:
“There’s no one left from Secondigliano, he’s sent them all away … he only goes out on Tuesday and Saturday, with four cars … you’re not to move for any reason. Uncle Fester sent a message saying that for Easter he wants 250 euros a store and isn’t afraid of anyone. They’re going to torture Siviero this week.”
A strategy orchestrated by fax. An appointment to torture marked on the calendar, just like an invoice, an order, or an airplane reservation. As are the reports on the traitor’s activities: Bizzarro has four escort cars and is extorting 250 euros a month. Siviero, Bizzarro’s faithful driver, is to be tortured, perhaps so he’ll spill the routes his boss is planning to take in the future. But the catalog of plots against Bizzarro doesn’t end here. They consider going to his son’s house, where they “won’t spare anyone.” And then a phone call: a killer heard that Bizzarro had stuck his nose out, had appeared in public to demonstrate his power and safety. The killer moans about losing such a perfect opportunity:
“Damn it, Madonna, we’re missing out here, he’s been in the piazza all morning.”
Nothing is hidden. Everything seems clear, obvious, woven into the fabric of the everyday. But the former mayor of Melito divulges the name of the hotel where Bizzarro holes up with his lover, where he goes to release tension and sperm. You can get used to everything: to living with the lights off so no one knows you’re home, to being escorted by four cars, to not making or receiving phone calls, to skipping your own mother’s funeral. But not to be able to see your lover—no. That would feel like a mockery, the end of all your power.
On April 26, 2004, Bizzarro is at the Hotel Villa Giulia, on the fourth floor. In bed with his lover. The commandos arrive wearing police bibs. The concierge doesn’t even ask the supposed officers to show their badges before giving them the magnetic key. They pound on the door. Bizzarro is still in his underwear. They hear him approach and start shooting. Two bursts of fire penetrate the door and his body. Lead and splinters hammer into his flesh. More shots demolish the door, and they finish him off with a bullet to the head. It’s clear now how the slaughter will unfold. Bizzarro was the first. Or one of the first. Or at least the first test of the Di Lauro clan’s strength, of their ability to attack whoever dares break the alliance or violate the business agreement. The secessionists’ strategy hasn’t completely taken shape yet, it’s not immediately comprehensible. You can breathe the tension in the air, but it’s as if they’re still waiting for something. Clarity—a declaration of war—comes on October 20, 2004, a few months after Bizzarro’s murder: Fulvio Montanino and Claudio Salerno are killed, shot fourteen times. According to investigations, they operated open-air drug markets and were extremely loyal to Cosimo. Since the idea of ensnaring and eliminating Cosimo and his father came to nothing, their killing marks the beginning of hostilities. The conflict is unleashed. Faced with dead bodies, there’s nothing else to do but fight. All the leaders decide to rebel against Di Lauro’s sons: Rosario Pariante, Raffaele Ab
binante, as well as the new managers Raffaele Amato, Gennaro Marino McKay, Arcangelo Abate, and Giacomo Migliaccio. The De Lucias, Giovanni Cortese, Enrico D’Avanzo, and a large—very large—group of supporters remain loyal to Di Lauro. Young men who are promised promotions, booty, and economic and social advancement within the clan. Paolo Di Lauro’s sons Cosimo, Marco, and Ciro assume the leadership. It’s highly likely that Cosimo realized he was risking imprisonment or his life. Arrests and economic crises. But you have to choose: either wait to be slowly defeated by the rival clan growing in your own bosom, or try to save your business—or at least your hide. Economic defeat means immediate physical defeat as well.
This is war. No one knows how it will be fought, but everyone knows for sure it will be long and terrible. The most ruthless war that southern Italy has seen in the last ten years. The Di Lauros have fewer men, are much weaker, and far less organized. They had always reacted forcefully to the internal schisms arising from their liberalist management style, which some people misunderstood as autonomy, as permission to set up their own business. But in the Di Lauro clan, freedom is given; you cannot presume to own it. In 1992 the old rulers resolved the schism sparked by Antonio Rocco, head of Mugnano, by entering the Fulmine bar armed with submachine guns and hand grenades. They killed five people. Rocco turned government witness to save his skin, and based on the information he provided, the state placed nearly two hundred of Di Lauro’s targets under protection. But it didn’t make any difference; the association’s management was untarnished by Rocco’s testimony.