Who is Lou Sciortino? (18 page)

So Greta glances away from Frank's profile and looks back only when he turns to face her. But damn, there's still something wrong with this picture. Frank's left hand is on his forehead.

Then Greta says the kind of things you say when you don't know what to say: “It's wonderful, Frank!” or “Nice!” or some other crap like that.

Frank puts his hand on her right breast and squeezes it, then clutches her bra, whispers, “Oh, my God!” and kneels, right there in public! Greta thinks,
Oh, my God, what's he doing? Right here, in front of everybody!
Then she hasn't got time to think anything anymore, because she's falling, slowly, dragged down by Frank's fingers clutching the whalebone of her bra. There's something coming out of Frank's forehead, something spurting, like a cuckoo out of a cuckoo clock, but more like a fountain.

Greta wants to go
aaahh
with her mouth, puts her hand on her hair, feels something brush against her nose, turns and sees Chaz, his face completely covered in blood, also falling slowly.

Greta's on the ground now. Just before she faints, she realizes that Chaz has only one eye.

*   *   *

Nuccio laughs, rolling up the car window. The rifle is between his legs, still smoking. Bruno Parrinello is also laughing as he starts the beat-up Mercedes that's been in an accident, and with a squeal of tires drives up the hill toward Via Garibaldi. In less than a minute they're on Piazza di San Cristoforo. Taking a tight bend into a dark, open garage, they scrape the other side of the car (the one that has been intact). The garage door shuts behind them. Nuccio and Bruno get out through one door and they and two other men climb into a dirty white van full of vegetables. The van sets off, its engine sputtering. It stops in front of a parked truck selling hot dogs and french fries. The driver holds out his hand.

The guy in the truck passes him a couple of hot dogs and cans of beer.

DON LOU'S JAGUAR MOVES SILENTLY

Don Lou's Jaguar moves silently along the cobbled streets of the historic center of Catania through crowds of noisy young people. The car turns into a narrow street and all at once the young people disappear. On a corner, set in the stone, a few yards from the ground, a little shrine with a photo and fresh flowers and the words
FRANCESCO SPAMPINATO
1967–1985. The name of the neighborhood is San Berillo.

There are many little shrines here, between Via Pistone, Via delle Finanze, and Piazza delle Belle. Showdowns between pimps, there's no escaping it. The windows of the Jaguar are closed, and the air-conditioning and the air freshener keep out the all-pervasive stench of piss. The hookers work in little rooms connecting directly with the street, without running water, and all liquids are thrown out into the street in buckets. Two black girls with big asses, wearing just bras and panties, sway on their heels, leaning forward like they've got backaches. They've got scarred faces: tribal scars or acid, there's no escaping it.

They turn a corner and … fuck, look how many there are!

Hookers in every doorway on a street a couple hundred yards long. A Moroccan in a caftan is pushing a supermarket cart loaded with beer and coffee thermoses, a cassette vendor is standing on a corner with watchful eyes and his foot up against the wall.

A black hooker (who must weigh a good two hundred and twenty pounds and has black moles as big as flies all over her face) runs back into her room and shuts herself in, closing the door with a triple lock, safety chains clanging. She must be late with her payments if she's got to lock herself in as soon as a car appears.

The only whore with white skin is sitting in a red nylon slip on a wooden chair reading an out-of-date romance magazine. Next to her dirty feet in a pair of worn slippers is a plastic tray with the remains of a chicken. The hooker is cleaning her teeth with the little finger of her right hand. She watches the Jaguar drive by, with an air of defiance.

Pippino slowly turns left, crosses Via San Giuliano, carries on along Via Casa del Mutilato, and comes out onto Piazza Teatro Massimo, with the opera house on his right. He draws up in front of the Palace of Finance, a monument of fascist architecture in stark contrast to the baroque opera house on the other side of the square.

*   *   *

Pippino quickly gets out of the car, buttons up his jacket, then goes around the car and opens the door for grandfather and grandson. They start walking, Pippino in his brown suit, Don Lou and Lou in dark gray. Pippino walks in front, head bowed.

The door is open. Pippino goes in.

The
picciotti
are sitting around on chairs on the second-floor landing. They're wearing dark suits because it's Sunday, and also because they've been waiting for the
americani.

For quite a while now, the
picciotti
have been bringing their cards to the landing and playing
briscola.
In the old days there was a constant stream of
picciotti
on mopeds, going back and forth between here and San Berillo, collecting the cash from the hookers' rooms.

But one day Sonnino, after slapping around a hooker who was wearing a Padre Pio medallion between her tits, suddenly smelled the same scent of violets he used to smell in his mother's room, his mother being a woman who was very devoted to the same saint and miraculously escaped death after a serious illness. Since that day, things have changed. His hookers stopped working as hookers. Now they're usherettes in movie theaters, or waitresses in discos and pubs. And all the
picciotti
have to do now is listen to complaints. Dozens of hookers from all over the province come here to complain. They were all planning to put a little something aside so they could buy an apartment in their home village, open a bank account, and find a husband. Now, suddenly, they find themselves in ordinary jobs. Having to deal with the savings and loan. “What the fuck's a savings and loan?” “They ask here for ‘place of residence,' what the fuck should I write?”

Not to mention the ones who want a Mercedes.

For the hookers from the villages, this thing with the Mercedes is a real obsession.

“Why the fuck am I turning tricks if I can't drive a Mercedes?” “But you're not turning tricks anymore,” the
picciotti
try to explain, “you're a regular worker now.” “What the fuck do I care? Everyone in my village knows I'm in the life, and at weekends I show up driving a Panda? Who's going to find me a husband—you?”

Sonnino tried to keep them happy. He'd thought it'd be easy for reformed hookers with steady jobs to find husbands. It turned out that in this city of deadbeats, husbands liked their wives rich, and didn't mind if they were whores.

So, to get them out of the fuckup, Sonnino became a Mercedes dealer. At least it was useful for laundering cash. But in return, they've got to behave like decent women.

And that's the only other job the
picciotti
still have.

If it's discovered the women are trying to turn tricks in the movie theaters, discos, or pubs, they get beaten up, just like in the old days. Even worse, in fact. “Tear 'em to shreds,” Sonnino says to his
picciotti.
“Now you've got morality on your side.”

The
picciotti
leap to their feet when they see Pippino arrive followed by the
americani.
Bowing and apologizing profusely, they frisk them, then open the door. “Please go in, Signor Sonnino's waiting for you. Please, please, this way.”

Sonnino's office is like an upmarket car dealership: lots of chrome, leather armchairs. On the table, a switched-on computer, bills, printed forms, a paperweight in the shape of a model Mercedes.

The walls are covered with photographs. One shows Sonnino, obviously drunk, surrounded by girls in bikinis like Hefner or whatever the fuck's his name. In the photo Sonnino is wearing a loud suit and an orange tie. His right hand is over the shoulder of a topless girl, and there's a piece of metal across four of his fingers, full of blue and red stones that shine in the light from the flash. Lou recognizes it for what it is: brass knuckles, a real collector's item.

In another photo, Sonnino is in his underwear, which is wet and transparent, by the side of a swimming pool. He's holding somebody underwater with his right hand and laughing. With his left hand, he's smoking a cigarette. A man's hand is holding out a drink to him.

Sonnino in the flesh is very different, his face a lot more sunken, its creases set off by his gray stubble. His round red sunglasses seem set into his eye sockets. He sits at his desk with the receiver stuck to his ear, not moving a muscle. He's wearing a black dust coat over a black T-shirt; the dust coat looks like one of those stupid designer items that go for a thousand euros. The desk is too small for someone his height: from beneath it, his frayed jeans are sticking out above silver-studded boots. He looks like a maniac who's occupied a nursery, negotiating the release of the little hostages from a school desk.

The
picciotto
who showed them in dusts down the leather armchairs with a handkerchief before letting the
americani
sit in them. Don Lou and Lou look at each other. Pippino has his usual expression, like everything's completely normal.

“No!” Sonnino says into the receiver. Then he moves it away from his face and gives it a long, puzzled look, like he's never seen anything like it in his life. He slams it down in disgust, crosses his hands on the desk, and regards his guests.

Then he stands up slowly, with difficulty, and bows. “Don Lou, it is an honor for me to meet you. You must forgive me, I was on the phone, and I couldn't let you wait outside. Francesco's making coffee.”

“I've heard a lot of good things about you,” Don Lou says, looking around.

Sonnino nods. “And this is the famous Pippino the Oleander, right?”

Pippino looks at him like he's already got his death sentence in his pocket.

“
Minchia,
just the way they described him. You know something, Don Lou? When I was still young and handsome, like in these photos, I got sent a gift from Ucciardone, a pit bull puppy that the first thing he did when he was four months old was to bite Maria Annunziata Conception Marletta, a real ballbreaker from Calascibetta, who wanted to leave San Berillo and work the houses along the coast, not realizing her ass was totally fucked. The bitch needed thirty-eight stitches in her calf. And you got to believe this, you know what I called that puppy? I called him Pippino, because the things the Oleander did for you in America were just as famous here in Catania.”

Pippino's expression hasn't changed.

“And this,” Sonnino continues, indicating Lou, “is your honored grandson. I've heard a lot about him. And I'm really honored that a Hollywood producer trusts me enough to come to my office. I've been hearing a lot of things, and I thought it was really strange that somebody like Lou Sciortino Junior should start work as a
picciotto
for Sal Scali.”

“That's precisely why we're here,” Don Lou says.

“I know, I know, Don Lou. And I'm at your service. Though I still need to clear this thing up. There's a split-up happening, and all of us are trying to figure out what's going on. What we gotta figure out here is who's still with Virtude, and who's just a fake boss who'd turn his own grandmother. But till the split-up goes down, till they've fucked up, we gotta sit and wait. This is a big organization, and we gotta think about public opinion. These people keep moving the goalposts. Things aren't the way they used to be, it's not black and white anymore. We're with Virtude. We can't stoop to their level. I don't know what the fuck it is, maybe it's the Internet that drives them crazy, maybe it's the modern world, maybe they were born dickheads and we just never noticed before. Oh, yes, I think about all these things, determinism, relativity, social theory, numbers, cardinal numbers, prime numbers, because even mathematics can help Virtude. You ever hear of Hobbes? He was a philosopher. He said,
Homo homini lupus.
In other words, if we can't get along, we cut each other's throats! You see, Don Lou, I think before I act. I also think a lot about Sal Scali, and that asshole Giorgino Favarotta. But they think a lot about me, too. I can kill them, and they can kill me. We have an understanding: I don't bust your balls, you don't bust mine. But now they're going too far. And I don't know how much longer this understanding is going to last. Now I got Don Lou in person here in my office, and I know Sal Scali's been busting your grandson's balls, and I know they're planning a split-up. And I can't find no peace. Peace, you understand me, Don Lou?”

Sonnino looks up and sighs.

*   *   *

“You just keep quiet and let me talk,” Tuccio is saying to Nunzio Aliotro. Only Nunzio Aliotro isn't with him. “Where the fuck is he?”

Nunzio Aliotro is standing transfixed by the Jaguar parked in front of the steps of the Palace of Finance on Piazza Teatro Massimo.

“
Minchia,
what an idiot!” Tuccio says, turning back. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Will you hurry up?”

“Huh?”

Tuccio looks at Nunzio's reflection in the window of the Jaguar. With his face magnified by the reflection, Nunzio Aliotro looks stupider than ever.

*   *   *

Francesco arrives with the tray of coffee. He places it on the desk, looking curiously at the
americani.
“Sugar?” he asks.

“Don't worry, Francesco. I'll serve the gentlemen.”

Francesco bows to Sonnino and the
americani,
and withdraws without turning his back on them.

“Something's gotta give, Don Lou,” Sonnino says. “We just need faith. In the meantime, let's have coffee.”