Suburra Read online

  ALSO BY

  GIANCARLO DE CATALDO

  The Father and the Foreigner

  Romanzo Criminale

  Europa Editions

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino

  First publication 2017 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Antony Shugaar

  Original Title: Suburra

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover photo © THEPALMER/iStock

  ISBN 9781609454081

  Carlo Bonini & Giancarlo De Cataldo

  SUBURRA

  Translated from the Italian

  by Antony Shugaar

  For Severino.

  And he knows why.

  INDEX OF CHARACTERS

  The Carabinieri:

  Lieutenant Colonel Marco Malatesta

  Captain Alba Bruni

  General Thierry de Roche

  Marshal Carmine Terenzi

  Private Giordano Brandolin

  General Rapisarda

  The Prosecutors:

  Michelangelo de Candia, prosecuting magistrate

  Manlio Setola, prosecuting magistrate

  Samurai, former fascist terrorist and gang leader

  The Anacleti family:

  Rocco Anacleti, head of the Anacleti gang

  Silvio Anacleti, nephew of Rocco

  Marco Summa AKA Spadino, one of Rocco’s men

  Max AKA Nicce, one of Rocco’s men

  Paja and Fieno, Rocco’s men

  The Adami family:

  Cesare Adami, AKA Number Eight, head of Ostia’s Adami gang

  Antonio Adama AKA Uncle Nino, former head of the Adami’s, now in prison

  Denis Sales, adopted son of Uncle Nino

  Morgana, Number Eight’s girlfriend

  Robertino, one of Number Eight’s men

  The Three Little Pigs:

  Scipione Scacchia, loan shark

  Dante Pietranera, loan shark

  Amedeo Cerruti, loan shark

  Manfredi Scacchia, Scipione’s son

  The Laurenti family:

  Luigi Laurenti, head of a development company

  Sebastiano Laurenti, his son

  The Malgradi family:

  Pericle Malgradi, member of the Italian parliament

  Temistocle Malgradi, Pericle’s brother, director of the Villa Marianna clinic

  The Church:

  Bishop Mariano Tempesta

  Benedetto Umiltà, his assistant

  Alice Savelli, creator of the blog www.thetruthaboutrome.it

  Abbas, a carpenter

  Farideh, his daughter

  Spartaco Liberati, “The Voice of Rome,” radio personality

  Sabrina, an escort also known as Lara or Justine

  Eugenio Brown, film producer

  Tito Maggio, owner of La Paranza restaurant

  Kerion Kemani, concierge at the Hotel La Chiocciola

  Shalva, a Georgian smuggler

  Ciro Viglione, head of the Neapolitan crime syndicate in Rome, under arrest at the Villa Marianna clinic

  Rocco Perri, representative of the ’ndrangeta syndicate in Rome

  SUBURRA

  PROLOGUE

  Rome, July 1993

  In the muggy darkness of a summer night, three men were waiting aboard a Fiat Ducato belonging to the Carabinieri, parked on the riverfront road by the Tiber. They were wearing Carabinieri uniforms, but they were criminals. On the wrong side of Rome, they were known by their monikers, Botola, Lothar, and Mandrake. Botola got out of the van and looked out over the river. He pulled a Gentilini breakfast cookie out of his pocket, crumbled it up, and dropped it on the parapet. He took a few steps back and stood there, watching a seagull as it pecked away at the cookie crumbs.

  “I love seagulls.”

  He got back into the van. The guy they called Lothar lit yet another cigarette and heaved a sigh.

  “I’m fucking bored. What are we waiting for?”

  “I’m with you!” said Mandrake firmly.

  Botola shook his head, inflexible.

  “Samurai said two o’clock, exactly. Not a minute before, not a minute after. It’s not time yet.”

  The other two started complaining. What are we talking about here? Just ten minutes early? What difference could that make? And after all, going by the evidence, they were the ones out on the street, not Samurai. And what, did Samurai have eyes everywhere? Who did he think he was, God Almighty, able to check on everything they did every second of the day?

  “Well, maybe not God Almighty,” Botola conceded with a sigh. “But if you talk to me about the devil, you’re not far off.”

  “Oh, sure, the devil!” Mandrake said sarcastically. “He’s just a human being like us! And anyway, I’m sick of it: Samurai this, Samurai that . . . To tell you the truth, I’ve never seen him get his hands dirty, this Samurai . . . He’s good at talking, no two ways about it . . . but it’s easy, when other people are running the risks for you.”

  Botola looked them up and down, with a half-smile of commiseration.

  They really didn’t have the slightest idea, poor jerks!

  “Do any of you remember Pigna?”

  That name meant nothing to either Lothar or Mandrake.

  Botola told a story.

  So there’s this boxer from Mandrione, his name is Sauro but he goes by the nickname of Pigna—Pinecone—on account of his murderous left straight. Big as a refrigerator, with arms as strong as his brains are scanty, poor old Pigna. If he’d been just a tiny bit smarter, he wouldn’t have gone head-to-head with Samurai over a disagreement about a drug deal. That’s right, because at a certain point, after a couple of thrown bouts, the Federation revokes his boxing license, and Pigna starts pushing drugs on Samurai’s behalf. The thing, though, is that Pigna thinks he’s a smart boy. First he starts skimming off the top, then, when he’s feeling more confident, he grabs a major shipment, sells it, pockets the proceeds, and disappears. He stays in hiding for three or four months, and then one fine day he resurfaces. He’s used the money he stole off Samurai to buy a gym, he’s recruited a few big bruisers from the outskirts of town, and he’s started dealing on his own. Samurai tries to bring him back into the fold with kindness and goes down to the gym to pay him a visit. He offers him a reasonable deal: fifty-percent ownership of the gym and his dealing operation in exchange for peace. Pigna doesn’t want to be reasonable. He calls his bruisers and charges in, head down. Five against one, so Samurai puts up the defense he can muster; still, when it’s all said and done, he gets beat up pretty bad. They dump him, half-dead, in an alley, and it takes a good long while for Samurai to get back on his feet. One evening a guy no one’s ever seen before comes in to the gym. He starts a membership, he lifts some weights, he starts shooting the breeze with the boss’s four bruisers. When closing time rolls around, and Pigna is all alone with his inner crew, the guy no one’s seen before whips out a Škorpion machine pistol, the kind the terrorists used to use, and he lines them up against the wall. Five minutes go by. Pigna and his men do everything they can to get a word out of the guy, but he says nothing. At last, the door s
wings open and in he comes. Samurai. Under his duster, he’s wearing a kimono and he’s carrying a katana, the curved, razor-sharp Japanese sword. He heads straight for Pigna and delivers a little sermon: he could have overlooked the money, but not the humiliation. And so, my dear Pigna, he tells him, now you’re going to take this sword and slice open your belly, and I’m going to watch you die. In exchange I won’t touch a hair on the heads of your hitters here. Pigna starts whining. He begs Samurai’s forgiveness. He acknowledges that he was wrong. He’ll hand over the gym, all the drugs he has left, his list of customers and suppliers. Samurai heaves a sigh, lifts his sword, and with a single blow, lops the head off of one of his boys. Pigna bursts into tears. The bruisers burst into tears. One of them steps forward and offers his services to Samurai as Pigna’s executioner. Samurai gives him a level look and decapitates him. You see, Pigna, you don’t know how to choose your men, he sighs, they aren’t loyal to you . . . At this point, all three of them, Pigna and the two survivors, made a desperate, last-ditch attack.

  “Why am I even bothering telling you about it?” Botola concluded. “Samurai ripped them to shreds. His friend never even fired a shot. Then they shoveled the remains into trash bags and dropped them into the Tiber.”

  Lothar and Mandrake stared at the narrator, disconcerted.

  “That sounds like pure bullshit to me,” Mandrake ventured.

  “It’s time,” Botola cut him off. “Let’s get busy.”

  They drove to Piazzale Clodio. The Fiat Ducato flashed its brights three times in the direction of the front gate of the Hall of Justice, which after a few seconds slowly started to swing open. The soldier in the guard booth walked unhurriedly over to the driver’s side. He recognized Botola and with a wave of his hand invited the van to move on through. At walking speed, the van proceeded up the reinforced concrete ramp that led to the parking area of Building C, where a system of armor-plated doors protected the vault of Branch Office 91 of the Bank of Rome.

  The inner doorway of the courthouse.

  The coffer that contained the wealth and the secrets of magistrates, lawyers, notaries, and cops.

  The false bottom of what they call Justice, but what is really just Power.

  Botola pulled the list of the nine hundred safe deposit boxes in the bank out of the van’s door pocket. Samurai had circled one hundred ninety-seven of them. They, and they alone, were to be opened. Lothar grabbed two big burlap sacks. Mandrake checked the tool bags and the ring of fifty keys that made him the only serious safecracker in Rome. All three of them put on tight-fitting black leather gloves.

  The Carabinieri that were waiting for them had done their job right. The armor-plated doors that led into the vault stood open, the alarms and the closed-circuit video system were turned off. Botola met the gazes of the soldiers with a sneer of contempt. The two of them reeked of fear and dishonor. The smell that cops give off when they’re crooked. And then he dismissed the younger of the two with a pat on the cheek.

  They’d memorized the vault. In the last two months, Botola, Lothar, and Mandrake had been down there at least a dozen or so times, accompanied by one of the tellers from the branch office. A guy in his early fifties with a weakness for cocaine and women. He’d rolled over like a puppy dog. He’d given them the names of the owners of each safe deposit box, allowing Samurai to cherrypick the plumpest targets. He’d provided them with floor plans and updated lists of customer visits. He’d allowed them to make molds of the keys that opened the inner doors to the heart of the bank. All told, what remained was the easy part. Laying their hands on all that cake.

  “I’m going to take this uniform off,” Mandrake ventured. “It’s just that I never could see myself as a cop.”

  “You’re telling me, brother!” Lothar chimed in.

  Botola authorized the change in attire. As long as they got busy: good luck wouldn’t be on their side forever, and even the best laid plans can run aground on the odd twist of fate.

  They decided to work in the dark. With nothing but the light of two large marine flashlights. Mandrake moved fast. As he could and as he should. And the first one hundred seventy-four safe deposit boxes opened up like chocolate boxes.

  There was a burlap bag they threw all the cash into, ten billion lire, along with a mountain of jewelry and watches.

  Lothar grabbed them with a vulgar explosion of greed. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth, as if in the throes of some uncontainable sexual excitement.

  Botola devoted himself to the rest. Because in those safe deposit boxes there was something far more valuable than those tidy strapped bundles of fifty thousand and hundred thousand lire banknotes. He discovered with some surprise that a prosecuting magistrate with powdery nostrils was keeping several spare ounces of coke between his grandfather’s pocketwatch and his wife’s string of pearls. A flashlight beam lit up the account statements from the Swiss banks where lawyers, judges, Carabinieri officers, cops, and treasury police had deposited the money with which the gang had bought them off over the years.

  Samurai had been right. There was no Epiphany in there. More like some new Roman Christmas.

  In the last safe deposit box they found a handgun.

  Botola had never seen anything like it. And he knew a thing or two about guns, after all his years out on the street. But that pistol . . . a throwback to days gone by: long barrel, with something incomprehensible engraved on it, in German by the look of it. He checked the list, supposing there had been some mistake. There was no mistake. Samurai had actually circled that safe deposit box twice. But what was someone like him going to do with that old piece of junk? Anyway, he grabbed the gun and a couple of boxes of ammunition and stuck them in the bag.

  Four in the morning. Mandrake was cursing over a couple of locks that were putting up unexpected resistance.

  “That’s it, boys, it’s getting late.”

  They went back to the van, while the Carabinieri closed the gates and armor-plated doors behind them. The Fiat Ducato made a three-point turn and descended the entrance ramp at walking speed, returning the way it had come. The gate swung open once again. Botola leaned out his window toward the Carabiniere in the guard booth.

  “It’s been a pleasure, asshole.”

  The vulgar laughter of Lothar and Mandrake drowned out the clashing of the gears as the van shifted into first.

  They took the Fiat Ducato to the woods on Monte Antenne, where they’d previously stashed Botola’s clean Saab. They unloaded the bags and buried them, along with the uniforms. Lothar and Mandrake doused the van with gasoline.

  “Give me a light, Botola!” Lothar joked.

  The bullet caught him right between the eyes. He fell without a whimper.

  Mandrake whirled around at the sound of the shot. In horror, he stared at Botola, who held the 7.65 mm Parabellum in his left fist, the barrel still smoking.

  “What the—”

  “You know that guy in the gym, the one who was there with Samurai? That was me, Mandrake,” said Botola. Then he pulled the trigger.

  The sun was already high in the sky when Botola returned to his large apartment near the Pantheon. Lothar and Mandrake were just scraps of charred flesh among the sheet metal. He was sorry about them, a little, but you didn’t argue with Samurai’s orders. The swag was safe and sound, where it would remain until the hurricane, which was sure to come, blew over. Botola put a couple of bottles of millésimé champagne on ice and looked out over the sleepy piazza. Time was, that apartment had belonged to Dandi. The last leader of the gang had been killed a few years ago at the hands of a crew of old colleagues: lead from the hands of his own men, according to some. An act of rough justice that had freed the territory of the worst glutton around, according to most. Botola had no opinion on the subject. He considered the untimely departure of Dandi, to whom he had also been quite close, as something of a mixture of unlucky chance and sheer
necessity. If Dandi hadn’t gotten a big head, he would have remained number one for a good long while. But if Dandi hadn’t gotten a big head, he wouldn’t have been Dandi, either. And so . . .

  For a while, that 3,200-square-foot apartment with a spacious terrace overlooking the center of the capital had been occupied by Patrizia, Dandi’s widow. Then Patrizia had hooked up with a cop, and things had ended badly for her. Botola, after serving an acceptable sentence, had bought the place, lock, stock, and barrel, furniture included, for a laughable price. And it was from there, from that place that had once reminded them all of who they were, where they had come from and how high they had climbed, it was from there that they were going to have to start out again.

  Like things used to be. Better than things used to be.

  Samurai deigned to put in an appearance around noon. He was very tall, and he wore a Korean shirt without the faintest halo of sweat, a pair of dark glasses, and close-fitting jeans. He announced himself with a sort of weary sneer, dismissed the champagne, and barely nodded when Botola started to sing the praises of their exploit in the vault.

  “I know that everything went according to plan. They were talking about it on the radio.”

  Botola’s feelings were hurt. Sure, he knew that Samurai wasn’t a guy who talked much, you could even say he seemed practically mute, and he didn’t necessarily expect glee, but a minimum of demonstrable satisfaction, for fuck’s sake!

  “Did you bring what I asked?”

  Resentfully, Botola handed him the handgun and the bullets.

  Samurai took it all with the devotion proper to a holy relic, removed his Ray-Ban sunglasses, caressed the weapon with a gaze of tenderness, and smiled at last.