'What the hell are you doing here?' demanded Sabatino.
'You're not the only ones who have friends all over town/ Dario responded, holding up his hands. 'Let me introduce you. This is Iolanda 'And I'm Libera/ said the brunette. 'So pleased to meet you. We've just arrived in Naples and we're just desperate to find work.'
'We'll do anything rather than have to go back to Albania/ wailed Iolanda. 'Anything!'
'These two know all sorts of people/ De Spino put in.
'Right, lads? I'm sure they'd be only too happy to give you a leg up on the situation, so to speak.'
But Gesualdo and Sabatino had not seemed at all happy.
On the contrary, they had been brusque to the point of rudeness, and immediately retreated upstairs again after making it very clear that they wanted nothing whatever to do with the tenants of the lower flat or their problems.
'I've got quite enough on my plate as it is!' said Gesualdo when De Spino came to plead for his charges. 'It may be difficult for you to appreciate, Dario, but some of us have work to do. On top of which, as I thought I made clear to you in the car, I'm feeling emotionally shattered at the moment.'
'Besides/ said Sabatino, 'how would it look for us to get hooked up with a couple of single women, however innocently, on the very day our 'nnammurate left town?'
In vain Dario De Spino had tried to persuade them that their scruples were ridiculous in the new Italy of the nineties, when the tired old ideas of life as a perpetual guerilla war between the sexes were at last being broken down.
'Why don't you take them under your wing?' Gesualdo had retorted. 'You know as many people as we do, and your reputation certainly can't suffer from hanging out with a couple of illegal immigrants with legs up to here.'
As a matter of fact, Dario had already decided that he was going to do just that, but in his own good time. First he wanted to collect the commission which the Squillace family were offering if he managed to get Gesualdo and Sabatino off their backs, which in turn involved getting Libera and Iolanda on to theirs. The question was how.
'They're so cold!' complained Libera, producing a cigarette from her bag and looking around helplessly. The young man she had been eyeing earlier immediately sprinted over with an outstretched lighter. He seemed inclined to linger, but De Spino gave him a look which soon sent him back to his companions.
'The other Italian boys we've met have been all over us/ Iolanda commented. 'But those two…'
A light suddenly appeared in Libera's eyes.
'They're not… how do you say?…faggots, are they?'
'They're as normal as you or 1/ Dario assured them blandly. 'They're just distracted by their personal and professional responsibilities. The problem is how to get their attention.'
Iolanda finished her coffee and set the cup down with a bang.
'I think we should try killing ourselves/ she said.
XVI
In retrospect, there were plenty of clues to what was about to happen, but, as so often, Zen did not spot them until it was too late.
To avoid awakening the suspicions of Pasquale — who knew him as Alfonso Zembla, a humble employee of the port authority — he had asked to be dropped outside the Central Post Office and then walked around the corner into Piazza Matteoti. Like so many streets and squares in Naples, this piazza has been renamed more than once, most recently to celebrate the most famous victim of the Fascist era. In this case the renaming also constituted a symbolic act of restitution, for the square in question is the one which Matteoti's opponents had chosen as the heart of their administration, and is lined with monumental buildings erected to serve the needs and proclaim the might of the new Italy.
Similar structures are to be found all over the South, even in quite small and seemingly insignificant towns. Elsewhere, Mussolini appeared above all a dramatically unique figure, unlike anyone who had preceded him on the political stage. Whether you supported or opposed him, his novelty was undeniable. But to Southerners he was a familiar figure, a capo who ran the toughest mob in town and ruthlessly disposed of anyone who got in his way; a man who demanded and commanded respect, fear and grudging admiration. Those who supported him would be protected, those who did not would be destroyed.
This was a code all Southerners had imprinted in their genes, and after decades of fine talk and patronizing neglect from the proponents of liberal democracy, it was a relief to have someone finally cut through all the bullshit and tell it the way it was, the way they knew it always had been and always would be. And they were rewarded, for the Duce kept his side of the bargain. In return for the overwhelming support they received south of Rome, the black shirts extirpated every other species of banditry which had plagued the area for centuries, capital investment flowed south, jobs were created, and the secular temples of the new regime began to rise. Police stations received particular attention. The Polizia dello Stato was the creation of Mussolini, who was always suspicious of the loyalty of the Carabinieri with their royalist, elitist traditions.
When it came to constructing a suitable headquarters for the Fascist police chief, named after the ancient Roman quaestor, no expense had been spared. In Naples, the result was a building resembling a monstrous enlargement of one of the granite blocks from some aqueduct or amphitheatre.
This trick of perspective may have been partly responsible for Zen's failure to spot the clues until it was too late.
Riveted by this spectacle of petrified power, he failed to take proper notice of various persons in his immediate vicinity. The beggar, for example, his left arm picturesquely drooping inside his shirt, his haggard and unshaven face piteously appealing to the Christian instincts of the passers-by Or the street kids, the scugnizze, swarming all over the wide pavement in a continually shifting envelope of ordered chaos. And to one side, at the street corner, a skinny male in his late teens revving the motor of a scooter and scanning the scene with apparent idleness, as though awaiting the arrival of a friend or lover.
Such were the individual elements, but it was only in retrospect that Zen was able to describe the way in which they meshed together, and to identify the purpose of the machinery or the signal which set it in motion.
Everything happened very quickly. First a sudden manoeuvre of the scugnizzi blocked his path with their boisterous, high-spirited chase game. While he waited for them to disperse, the beggar closed in, beseeching charity with some long incoherent narrative. Zen had barely started to reach for his wallet when both he and the beggar were surrounded anew by the street kids, none of them more than twelve years old, settling around them like a flock of starlings, uttering weird high-pitched yelps. Something flew over Zen's head, away towards the man seated on the scooter, and at the same moment a grip like pliers closed on his rump in an agonizing pinch.
He whirled around indignantly, but the offender had already melded back into the juvenile collective, which was on the move again, streaking away across the piazza into the ambient bassi, there to dissolve without trace in the porous tenements and alleyways. With a shrug of resignation, Zen turned back to settle accounts with the beggar, but he too had vanished. He was about to continue on his way when the noise of a revving engine attracted his attention, and there was the beggar, inexplicably clinging to the pillion of the scooter with both hands as the machine roared off around the corner and disappeared. It was only then that Zen realized that something else had gone — his wallet.
The uniformed policeman cradling a machine-gun outside the Questura denied having seen anything with a massive shrug which suggested that such incidents were very common, principally the fault of the victim, and in any case too trivial to warrant his attention. Zen proceeded to pull rank, thus at least giving himself the satisfaction of seeing the man cringe, only to realize that one of the items in the missing wallet was his police identification card.
More serious consequences of this loss soon became apparent. Without any tangible proof that Zen was who he said he was, the guard on duty at the rear of the entrance hall refused to admit him to the upper reaches of the building, which were strictly reserved for high-ranking servants of the Italian public and hence off bounds to the
