Authors: Roberto Saviano
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 Abbinante, 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.
But this time Cosimo Di Lauro’s men start getting worried, as the December 7, 2004, provisional confinement order issued by the Court of Naples reveals. Two affiliates, Luigi Petrone and Salvatore Tamburino, talk on the phone about the declaration of war that came in the form of Montanino’s and Salerno’s murders.
Petrone: “They killed Fulvio.”
Tamburino: “Ah …”
Petrone: “You understand?”
The battle strategy, which Tamburino claims is dictated by Cosimo Di Lauro, begins to take shape. Take them out one by one, kill them, even if you have to use bombs.
Tamburino: “Even bombs, you hear? Cosimino said so, he said, ‘Now I’m going to take them out one by one … I’m going to kill them … real nasty, he said … all of them …”
Petrone: “The important thing is that the people are behind it, that they ‘work’ …”
Tamburino: “Gino, there’s millions of ‘em here. They’re kids, all of them … kids … now I’ll show you what he’s up to, that one …”
It’s a new strategy. Bring in the kids, promote them to the rank of soldier, transform the well-oiled operation of drug dealing, investments, and territorial control into a fighting machine. Boys who work in delicatessens and butcher’s shops, mechanics, waiters, and unemployed youth are to become the clan’s new and unforeseen power. Montanino’s death sets off a long and bloody attack and counterattack, deaths on top of deaths, one, two ambushes a day, clan supporters first, then relatives, houses burned, people beaten, suspicions flying.
Tamburino: “Cosimino’s very cool, ‘Eat, drink, and fuck’ is what he said. What can we do … it happened, we have to move on.”
Petrone: “But I don’t feel like eating any more. I eat just to put something in my stomach …”
The order to fight mustn’t seem desperate, though. It’s essential to look like winners, for a business just as for an army. Whoever lets it be seen that he’s in trouble, whoever escapes, disappears, or retreats, has already lost. Eat, drink, fuck. As if nothing had happened, as if nothing were happening. But Petrone and Tamburino are really scared; they don’t know how many affiliates have gone over to the Spaniards and how many have remained on their side.
Tamburino: “And how do we know how many of them have thrown in their lot with the others … we don’t know!”
Petrone: “Ah! How many of them have gone over? A whole bunch of them have stayed, Totore! I don’t understand … these ones here … don’t they like the Di Lauros?”
Tamburino: “If I were Cosimino, you know what I’d do? I’d start killing them all. If I had any doubts … all of them. I’d start taking them out … you understand!”
Kill them all. Every one of them. Even if you have doubts. Even if you don’t know which side they’re on, or if they’re even involved. Shoot! They’re slime, nothing but slime. In the face of war, danger, and defeat, allies and enemies are interchangeable. They’re no longer individuals, but elements for testing and expressing your strength. Groups, alliances, and enemies will take shape afterward. But first the shooting has to start.
On October 30, 2004, Di Lauro’s men show up at the home of Salvatore de Magistris: a man in his sixties married to the mother of Biagio Esposito, one of the secessionists. They want to know where Esposito’s hiding. The Di Lauros have to get them all, before they organize, before they realize they’re in the majority. They break de Magistris’s arms and legs with a club and crush his nose. With each blow
they ask for information on his wife’s son. He doesn’t answer, and every refusal provokes another blow. They kick him relentlessly. He has to confess. But he doesn’t. Or maybe he really doesn’t know where Esposito is hiding. He dies after a month of agony.
On November 2, Massimo Galdiero is killed in a parking lot. They were supposed to hit his brother Gennaro, allegedly a friend of Raffaele Amato’s. On November 6, Antonio Landieri is killed on Via Labriola; to get him they fire on the whole group he’s with, seriously wounding five others who were dealing in cocaine, apparently for Gennaro McKay. The Spaniards answer back. On November 9 they evade a series of roadblocks and leave a white Fiat Punto in Via Cupa Perrillo. It’s the middle of the afternoon when the police find three bodies. Stefano Maisto, Mario Maisto, and Stefano Mauriello. One in the front, one in the back, one in the trunk: wherever they look they find a body. On November 20, Di Lauro’s men slay Biagio Migliaccio. They go to the car dealership where he works. “This is a holdup,” they say, then fire at his chest. His uncle Giacomo was the target. The Spaniards respond on the same day, killing Gennaro Emolo, father of one of Di Lauro’s most loyal men, accused of being part of the military arm of the organization. Domenico Riccio and Salvatore Gagliardi, both close to Raffaele Abbinante, are in a tobacco shop on November 21 when the Di Lauros take them out. An hour later Francesco Tortora is slain. The killers travel by car instead of motorcycle. They drive up, shoot, pick up his body like a sack, and take it to the outskirts of Casavatore, where they set car and body on fire, solving two problems at once. At midnight on the twenty-second the carabinieri find a burned-out car. Another one.