The Night of Rome
ALSO BY
CARLO BONINI & GIANCARLO DE CATALDO
Suburra
GIANCARLO DE CATALDO
The Father and the Foreigner
Romanzo Criminale
Europa Editions
214 West 29th St.
New York NY 10001
info@europaeditions.com
www.europaeditions.com
Copyright © 2015 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino
First publication 2018 by Europa Editions UK
This edition, 2019 by Europa Editions US
Translation by Antony Shugaar
Original Title: La notte di Roma
Translation copyright © 2018 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art and Illustration by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609455279
This book is a work of fiction.Names, characters, companies, organizations, place, events, and situations, where they are not the product of the authors’ imagination, are used strictly for narrative purposes. Any similarity to real people, living or dead, or to real events or settings, should be considered purely coincidental.
Carlo Bonini & Giancarlo De Cataldo
THE NIGHT OF ROME
Translated from the Italian
by Antony Shugaar
THE NIGHT OF ROME
To Tiziana and Giulia, who never led us astray.
To Massimo, who explained two or three things
about politics that we still didn’t know.
PROLOGUE
APRIL 8TH, 2015
Sebastiano Laurenti was contemplating the spectacle of chaos from behind the tinted windows of the black Audi A6.
Rome was burning.
For five days now the city had been on its knees. Immobilized by a wildcat public transportation strike. Submerged by the total cessation of garbage collections. Suffocating from the stench of the bonfires that the enraged citizens were setting on street corners.
It had all begun when a young girl in Tor Sapienza filed a criminal complaint, stating that she’d been attacked by two negroes. The outlying areas had immediately burst into open revolt.
Rome was burning.
The revolt had exploded against the welcome centers for immigrants. In the grim subdivisions known as borgate, gypsies became the targets of vigilante squads. Young Roma children stopped attending schools. There were checkpoints established around the gypsy camps. There was a smell of pogrom in the air.
Press from around the world descended on Rome. In the dispatches they filed, a nine-column nightmare. A criminal blockbuster that filled prime-time television screens. The memory of Naples buried in garbage during that city’s recent strikes paled in comparison. In his Easter homily, Pope Francis had issued a heartfelt appeal to mankind’s sense of mercy. And even more than that, an appeal to its sense of humanity, if such a thing still stirred. The prime minister had formed a standing crisis unit at the Palazzo del Viminale, headquarters of Italy’s Ministry of the Interior and therefore of its national law enforcement agencies. The unit included representatives from emergency management, police, firefighters, and the armed forces.
But there wasn’t a bulldozer, garrison, armored van, or street patrol capable of reversing or even halting the collapse.
It was as if the city had decided to curl up and shut itself off, swallowing everyone and everything up in a subterranean miasma of resentment, hatred, and misery.
Gangs of ultras put aside their mutual hatreds and set out to wreak systematic devastation on Italy’s capital. The metro station of Vigna Clara had blown up, a strategic location for the imminent inauguration of the jubilee of mercy, proclaimed just the month before by Pope Francis.
Anarchist graffiti appeared, taking credit for the explosion.
Nobody believed them.
The authorities, with the mayor out front, wandered listlessly from one garrison to another. The authorities spoke optimistically, reassured the populace, and made promises they would never keep. The authorities didn’t understand. What was happening in Rome eluded any logic.
And he had been the engine driving all of this. Sebastiano.
A tall, restrained, sober young man. Destroying Rome hadn’t been his purpose, it had only been a means to an end.
Deep down, he just hoped it would all be resolved to everyone’s best interests.
The bonfires, glowing dirty red in the sunset, gave him no pleasure, no pride. If anything, a faint, unpleasant annoyance.
Sebastiano didn’t love war.
Sebastiano was a builder of peace.
He dialed a phone number in London.
He’d been little more than a child when he’d had his life stolen from him. He’d learned early that there was only one way to take back possession of his life.
Violence.
On the fourth ring, a woman’s voice answered. Alex.
The accounts had all been transferred to the new branches of various banks on the Turks and Caicos Islands. No snafus or problems. The woman from Rome had phoned Alex. She was upset about the sudden, tragic death of Frodo.
“So what did you say?”
“I told her that you were very angry at her, Sebastiano.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
“Seba . . . ”
“Yes?”
“Don’t hurt her, okay? Not unless it’s strictly necessary, I mean.”
Sebastiano said nothing. That’s not the point, Alex.
The point is how badly she hurt me.
ONE MONTH EARLIER
I.
THURSDAY, MARCH 12TH, 2015
Saint’s Day: Pope St. Gregory I
VIA SANNIO. ST. JOHN’S BASILICA. SIX IN THE MORNING.
The sign stated: “Public Works Contract for Station, Rome Metro Company. Contracted Company, Mariani Construction s.p.a., Member of the Metro C Consortium. Project for the Construction of the C Line. T3 Lot. Line Running from Piazza San Giovanni to the Imperial Forums.”
The man pulled the woolen watch cap down over his ears, shivered slightly in his gleaming black bomber jacket, and impatiently scanned the flashing stoplights that illuminated the deserted expanse of Piazza San Giovanni. At his side, his buddy, a mountain of muscles with a neck set deep between his broad shoulders, shook his head. He pulled his smartphone from his jacket pocket and checked the time. Six AM. Not so much as a whiff of this asshole’s stench. At least it had stopped raining.
The arrival of the red Fiat Panda compact driven by the construction supervisor Lucio Manetti was blanketed by the screeching passage of an empty trolley. Manetti parked in the usual place. And then, as he did every morning, he hovered for a moment inside the car, performing his odd, neurotic ritual dance around the car. Doors locked, check. Headlights off, yes. Running lights, likewise. Then, with a light tap of his forefinger, he shoved the heavy frame of his Coke-bottle eyeglasses back onto the bridge of his nose, patted his leather portfolio binder, and adjusted the long, pointy umbrella that hung over his forearm. He was late. He didn’t need to glance at his watch to know that. It was enough to see the first slanting shafts of daylight over St. John’s basilica and the accompanying view, which he’d grown to detest in all those years of construction. The view of the cathedral’s dome was blocked by the gigantic support structure for the mole, the tunnel boring machine that rested a hundred feet below ground, where it had sat idle for God knows how long. Months? No, years. He’d lost track. First they’d hit the ruins of a Roman villa. Then pools of water, so that you’d have thought they were digging in the Kar
st region, with its porous limestone subsoil. Then the protracted holdup with the money. The bulldozers had stopped working. The Calabrian and Neapolitan construction workers hired by the subcontractors had vanished. The only one left watching over the Big Hole now was him. He was the supervisor of a ghost construction site. If for no other reason than that—he thought—he might as well get himself a nice hot espresso before starting his long day of doing nothing. To hell with the schedule. What could five minutes change in the face of that eternally unfinished project?
He walked into the café.
Five minutes later the two men—leaning idly against the rolling shutter gate of the construction site—finally saw him reappear.
“We’re in no hurry, you piece of shit, after all, where do you think you’re going to go?”
The construction supervisor crossed the street with a brisk step, one hand rummaging in the pocket of his raincoat for the keys to the construction site. The morning ahead was packed with things to get done. First off, make a call to the Prefecture. He needed to get new anti-Mafia certificates for two companies being added to the list of subcontractors. Dottor Danilo Mariani had insisted on bringing them into the earthmoving team. Right, of course, anti-Mafia certificates. That was a mouthful, considering. Those guys practically had “Camorra” stamped on their foreheads. Still, the “dottore,” as he insisted on being called, didn’t want to hear any objections. In fact, he’d been pretty brusque.
“Just mind your own fucking business, supervisor. I pay you to do what I tell you. I’m the head of this company. And if you don’t like it, I’ve got lines of construction supervisors out the door who’d be glad to take your job. So pick up your phone, call the Prefecture, and ask for Signora Giada. She’s already been briefed.”
He opened the gate to the construction site. He didn’t even have a chance to hear the two men come up behind him.
They were already lunging at him with all the fury of two rabid dogs.
The first blow hit him on the temple and made his eyeglasses fly off.
The second one shattered his incisors, flooding his mouth with blood.
The third one smashed straight into his left eyeball, practically making it explode.
The pain was so sharp and intense that he was unable even to scream. The two men lifted him up bodily and dragged him toward the large yellow bulldozer at the center of the construction site.
They tied him to the scoop of that monster machine, like a Christ on the cross. That’s when the supervisor Manetti, with his lone right eye, managed to make out the silhouettes of his attackers. They were scrabbling around, retrieving something from the ground.
Sweet Jesus . . . No, not me. Why? Why?
The more heavily built of the two had picked up a bundle of iron rebar. He clutched the sheaf of rods in his right hand as if he were waving a pack of spaghetti. He was laughing. And getting closer. Closer and closer. Until the supervisor was able to catch a whiff of the man’s pestilential breath, which reeked of nicotine and words that betrayed a faint Slavic accent.
“All right, then, Dottore . . . Don’t you have anything for us? Because you know, you filthy faggot, that the money belongs to us, don’t you?”
Spitting blood, he managed to mumble out something that resembled a last plea, as desperate as it was useless.
“Please . . . I’m begging you . . . The cashbox . . . It’s in the office booth . . . But there isn’t much money in it . . . ”
The ogre clutched the iron rebar with both hands and raised it level with his nose.
It was only then that the supervisor Manetti noticed the faded blue tattoos that marked those hands. One letter for each of his ten fingers.
F-R-I-E-N-D-L-E-S-S.
He tilted his head back and looked up. His only remaining eye focused on the mole.
The merciful dome of the basilica.
The gray glow of dawn.
The blow slammed home with all the violence in the world.
He could no longer feel his legs. But he still managed to understand the animal’s words.
“With Fabio’s best regards.”
ROME, VIA LUDOVISI. OFFICES OF FUTURE CONSULTING S.R.L.
NINE TO TEN IN THE MORNING.
Sebastiano was feeling nauseated. The real estate developer couldn’t stop sniffling and he was dripping sweat onto the rainbow onyx surface of his conference table. That’s an ugly beast, cocaine. That shit’ll fuck you up. Sebastiano threw open the large window that gave onto the terrace looking out over the elegant neighborhood, the Rione Ludovisi. Clinging to the white gazebo was a blaze of climbing mimosa in spectacular bloom. With studied leisure, Sebastiano went over and sat down on the far side of the large oval table. And then he started staring hard at Danilo Mariani. The man’s hands wandered from the espresso demitasse to his iPhone. The uneasy redness coloring his cheeks contrasted with the more general unhealthy yellowish hue of his face. The merino wool suit could scarcely contain a body mass rendered flaccid by years of abuse. The puffy face was framed by a head of precociously gray hair which, in spite of the fact that the man was in his early forties, aged him by a good ten years. There he sat, heir to one of the most venerable dynasties of Roman builders. Completely debauched. Someone, just three hours ago, had beaten the man’s construction site supervisor to a bloody pulp, in Piazza San Giovanni.
Sebastiano wanted to understand why.
“Sebastia’, I . . . ”
He’d made him wait long enough. With a weary gesture, Sebastiano authorized him to tell all.
“It’s all that son of a bitch the German’s fault . . . ”
Young Mariani was a member of the consortium of companies that, in 2006, had won the three-billion-euro contract to build the C line of the Rome metro. The biggest infrastructure project of the third millennium. “General contractor,” is what the so-called “Objective Law” had called him. Legally required to deliver a “turnkey project,” finished and ready to run. The kind of horseshit that was perfect for suckers willing to guzzle it down. In nine years, the project had wasted away, shrinking from forty stations to twenty, while the costs, of course, had skyrocketed into orbit. From three billion euros to the universe, and beyond. Just like in those movies about toys that come to life. And after all, what was the metro, if not a great big toy? Everyone knew how these things worked. The fact that his name was Mariani wasn’t just an accident, you know. You win the contract without so much as a penny set aside for prefinancing to get construction started. And the day after winning the job, you already start bitching and moaning and demanding arbitration. You upbraid and dress down those idiots at City Hall, insisting that the public works contract stipulated entirely different conditions. That you haven’t even started and there are already unlooked-for variants. That the dirt under this blessed Rome is an unbroken field of ancient crockery and who knows what other fucking archeological finds they’ll come up with. So you just make it clear to them they’re going to have to pull out their checkbooks. And you ask and ask and ask. Ask, and you will be given. And if you’re not given, then you don’t work. The Romans will curse and the Big Hole will never get filled back up.
It had always worked before. Until that demented mayor had showed up. Martin Giardino, known as “Er Tedesco,” or the German.
“I don’t accept extortion,” he’d proclaimed.
Just for starters, he’d blocked all payments for “construction progress benchmarks.” And so they’d come, with clenched teeth, to a final and definitive agreement. In practical terms, he’d liquidated them with pennies to the euro. Even so, damn him, the German wasn’t paying.
“The German doesn’t have anything to do with it anymore. The matter is in the government’s hands now.”
“Oh well, that doesn’t make any difference. The point is I’m out of pocket.”
“By how much?”
“Not mu
ch. Five hundred or so,” Mariani exhaled.
Sebastiano turned icy cold. Then he said, deliberately:
“Five. Hundred. Thousand. Euros. Clever!”
Danilo abandoned himself to a rushing river of justifications. Half-finished phrases, streamers of drool hanging off the corner of his mouth, drenched with sweat, self-pity by the bucketful.
“The payroll for the subcontracting firms. The workers’ salaries, the suppliers’ bills, damn them, and the increase in VAT that’s just killing us . . . I’ve had a liquidity crisis, the cash flow went to hell, you understand, things that happen . . . ”
“I’d say that calling it a respiratory crisis would be more accurate,” Sebastiano whispered, icily. And he sniffed loudly and mockingly.
Mariani threw his arms wide, helplessly.
“Oh, all right, you know how it is, every so often I snort some of the shit, how bad could it be, everyone does it, Sebastia’, don’t tell me that you don’t . . . ”
“No. I don’t, Danilo. I don’t.”
Ah, good old coke! The Queen of the Night, with its entourage of pussy! The eternal Petronian bacchanal of the unredeemable Suburra. The Capitoline Triad: coke-pussy-gambling . . . pa-pa-rah-pa, sound a fanfare . . . you could write a ditty about it, the anthem of Rome, the Eternal Capital . . . Everything’s so obvious, it’s all so predictable. When he’d chosen Sebastiano over all the others who gathered, tails wagging, around him, Samurai had been categorical: vices are for other people, what we have is control. Vices make you lose that control, and if there was ever any meaning to the distinction between man and superman, well, vices mark that boundary line. There’d been no reason to insist on the point, anyway. Sebastiano carried an innate sense of restraint within him, and always had. It was his father who’d inculcated it in him. His poor, honest father, who died of honesty.