Marcantonio left his apartment. He was on his way to collect the first instalment of a pizzo, and was confident that what he could extract from the sister and brother at the pizzeria would soon escalate. It was acknowledged in Reggio, Catanzaro and Cosenza that the families knew more about the profit possibilities of a business than its owners. He would advise them, convince them that he was not an enemy – he might even gain their gratitude: a saviour who had, at small cost, kept their premises safe.
He had on a new shirt, not his most recent purchase but from the summer, and his windcheater was hooked on his shoulder. His partner of the night had left already. A pinch of her cheek as she slept, then a smack on her buttocks, and she had got dressed up. None of his women were allowed to stay in the apartment after he had gone out, and none had her own key. A Bulgarian woman came in to clean, but only when he was there and the contents had been sanitised: papers and property brochures were locked in a floor safe.
His boys were waiting with the car. He liked to think of them as his ‘boys’, though both were older than Marcantonio, because they were more distant than he was from the heart of the family. Their fathers would not have considered making an important decision without referring first to a padrino. Nothing would be decided – in Milan, Germany, some Canadian cities or Australia – without sanction from the towns on the Ionian coast or the communities high in the Aspromonte. His boys drove him, watched over him, pimped for him and bolstered his ego.
It might be amusing, a diversion from the tedium of life in the German capital, and a decent parting gift before he flew south that evening. The girl had been feisty and spirited, although the man had been weak.
He expected her to be calm now and rational, and her brother to co-operate. Not immediately, but quickly – it might be necessary to show them the plastic milk bottle, with urine coloured contents and the rag in its neck, and to produce the claw hammer that could splinter the pizzeria’s windows. But they wouldn’t offer serious opposition. He thought that when he came back to Berlin he would seek out more Italian businesses that didn’t yet pay for protection and begin to build a small client list. The car was open-topped. He vaulted into the passenger seat.
One boy drove. The other sat awkwardly behind Marcantonio in the bucket seat. He anticipated feigned anger, then compliance. Who would stand up to Marcantonio? Very few. The car accelerated and the wind whipped his spiked hair and riffled the front of his new shirt. The chain of gold links jumped over the hairs on his chest – so few.
They wove among cars and taxis – a bus had to brake sharply to give them room. Nobody confronted him. Nobody gave him serious aggravation, nor ever had. He was the grandson of the padrino. He had pedigree and authority. At the age of twelve, his grandfather had given him a Kalashnikov assault rifle to hold, then shown him how a magazine was locked on, and pointed down the hill to the village on the last day of the year. His celebration of the end of 2007, and the imminent start of 2008, was to walk through the village at dusk, loosing off shots of high-velocity bullets at chimney stacks, roof tiles and the wheels of the car that belonged to the school teacher who had once tried to detain him for additional study.
There had been no telephone calls to the carabinieri, no anonymous complaints posted to their nearest barracks. No one had come up the track to his father’s home, or his grandfather’s, and denounced him in person. He had understood, with the thudding of the weapon in his shoulder, the power born into him through blood.
And girls. The first – not at the brothel in Locri, an older, experienced woman – had been halfway through his fourteenth year. There had been three more before his fourteenth birthday. He had taken them into the woods in the summer and to goatherds’ huts in winter, all willing because of his status in their community. No parent had complained and he could have had as many as he wanted.
Soon after his fifteenth birthday he had been called upon to help his grandfather end a man’s life, by manual strangulation, and had not been found wanting. He had seen the approval – near pride – in the old eyes. No patrol car of the polizia had come, and no wagon from the carabinieri. When his father and uncle had been taken, Marcantonio had been ignored.
He was intoccabile, untouchable.
Tomorrow he would bask in the approval of his family, tell stories of deals successfully concluded, and see their love. Of course, there, he would be discreet. There was not here.
There was pizzo money to be had. He shouldn’t have touched such a trivial matter in Berlin, where the business of the families was high finance, but he was addicted to his old life.
He was driven towards the square where the cash would be waiting for him. There was a crisp early-morning chill in the air and the wind blew into their faces. The three voices joined in a song from the Aspromonte they had learned at their mothers’ knees.
They hit the square. Marcantonio flipped his legs over the car door and headed for the pizzeria.