Chapter 53
Niccolo
My brothers and I had killed my treacherous Uncle Fausto in Rome over a month ago.
Now it felt like he was laughing at me from beyond the grave.
I stared at the ancient flip phone in my hand, which had belonged to my uncle. I remembered seeing it occasionally during my apprenticeship as a consigliere.
Dante, the capo who handled Fausto’s old territory, had pulled it off my uncle’s corpse shortly before burying his body out in the wilds of Tuscany.
Dante had retrieved a smartphone, too. We’d paid a professional to crack it, but all it held were phone numbers I’d expected to find.
His son Aurelio…
My wife Sofia when she served as Fausto’s consigliere…
Various foot soldiers…
And phone numbers for all of the Cosa Nostra families throughout Italy.
The flip phone was different.
It held the numbers for all his spies – the ones only Fausto knew about.
Police in other mafia dons’ territories…
Politicians in his pocket…
And, most tantalizingly, moles inside other organized crime families.
Besides Fausto’s laptop, which contained purely financial and banking information, the flip phone was the single greatest treasure trove my uncle had left behind –
And it was completely impenetrable.
Not because of a password, though.
Oh, no.
My uncle had been something of a Luddite. He hated the relentless march of technology. As a result, he had refused to upgrade the flip phone as the years passed, repeatedly claiming that ‘it meets my needs as is.’
The truth was, Fausto had a paranoid streak – which is an excellent quality in a consigliere. The more complicated technology became, the quicker Fausto was to assume someone else could hack it and spy on him.
For instance, he had refused to put up surveillance cameras on the estate while my father was still alive, claiming that they could be used against us.
Now that I knew what he’d done behind our backs, he probably just wanted to make sure no one could film his clandestine activities and accidentally discover his treachery against our family.
Refusing to upgrade his phone wasn’t quite as unreasonable as it sounds. After all, nuclear missile silos in the United States reportedly still run on technology from the 1970s to guard against internet hackers. Ancientness can be its own sort of defense.
Fausto had bought the flip phone years before they required passwords, so that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that all the names in the phones were cryptic jumbles of letters and numbers.
M C N 15
T
MS //
My uncle was known for his near-photographic memory. I’m sure he remembered the meaning of every entry – but if there was a code behind the names and numbers, it was indecipherable to me.
I scoured the text messages for identifying clues, but aside from the dates they were sent, there was very little information. Everything was so vague that it was meaningless without knowing the context.
The package will be there at 7.
Next Monday at noon.
Tick tock, tick tock.
The only other clue was a printout from our contact in the Florence police department. I had given him all the numbers on the flip phone to find out who owned them.
Unfortunately, 99% of the phone numbers were listed as ‘Fausto Rosolini,’ which told me they were burner phones he had bought and handed out.
The cities where the phones were primarily used were scattered throughout Italy: Florence, Rome, Venice, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Bologna, and dozens of smaller towns.
There was no rhyme or reason, and no way to determine who was on the other end.
I mean, I could have called or texted –
But what was I going to say?
Old phone, new owner. Who dis?
I supposed I could contact them and say I was doing it on Fausto’s behalf –
But how was I going to tease out of them who they were?
They would expect me to already know. If it became clear that I didn’t, they would ditch their phones and eliminate any chance I had of finding out.
Until it was absolutely necessary, I wanted to investigate every possible lead before resorting to a strategy that would render most of the information useless.
I sighed in frustration as I looked through the police readout –
When someone knocked.
“Come in,” I said.
The door opened, and in strode Sofia.
“They’re here,” she announced.
Dario, Adriano, and Giorgio quickly followed her.
I locked eyes with our foot soldier and said facetiously, “Ah, our inter-city diplomat.”
Giorgio looked nervous. “I thought I had clearance – ”
“You did,” Adriano said as he glared at me. Fuck you – quit messing with the kid!
“It’s fine, I’m joking,” I said. “I just wanted you here to corroborate anything if our friends in Milan question it.”
Giorgio glanced nervously at Dario.
“The Don is here in case things become testy,” I explained. “Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble.”
“You actually did us a great favor,” Dario said as he sat down. Sofia, Adriano, and Giorgio all followed suit.
“Really?” Giorgio asked in relief.
“The last time someone from another family trespassed in our territory, Lars took care of it for me. I appreciate you handling it this time.”
He was talking about when Lars killed Umberto Fumagalli –
The same night that Dario had brought Alessandra to our estate.
“Just tell me exactly what happened,” I said to Giorgio.
He recounted the events from the previous evening. I asked him a few questions about the exact injuries this Maurizio fellow had sustained and made sure he was still alive when Giorgio left him.
“Alright, let’s begin,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone. I glanced over at Sofia to let her know that what I was about to say was important. “I’m contacting Gilberto Reano, the consigliere for Don Camerota of Milan.”
“Gilberto Reano, consigliere to Don Camerota of Milan,” Sofia repeated. “Got it.”
“What’s that?” Adriano asked as he gestured at Fausto’s flip phone on the coffee table.
“Ancient history,” I replied.
I put my cell on speakerphone and placed it on the coffee table.
After several rings, Reano’s raspy voice answered. “Ciao.”
“Ciao, Gilberto. This is Niccolo Rosolini with my brothers Don Rosolini and Adriano, our man in Florence. I would like to request Don Camerota’s presence on the call.”
“What is this regarding?”
“The matter I contacted you about yesterday. Whether you had any employees in our territory.”
“I told you we didn’t,” Reano said testily.
“And yet one of our men says that you did.”
“He’s mistaken.”
“Good! Although when your boy Maurizio shows up with five broken fingers and numerous broken ribs, you might want to ask him where he got them.”
Gilberto hesitated. My dropping one of his foot soldiers’ names had given him pause.
“…hold on,” Reano said, and put us on mute.
I put a finger to my lips to signal the others to be quiet.
Thirty seconds later, another voice came on the phone.
“Niccolo – so good to hear from you,” said Don Camerota in an unctuous voice. “And you as well, Don Rosolini.”
“Don Camerota,” Dario said coolly.
“What’s this I hear about one of my employees?”
“Apparently, a little lost lamb named Maurizio wandered all the way from Milan to Florence,” I said. “We just wanted to let you know we did the courtesy of sending him back – albeit with a spanking to remind him not to return uninvited.”
“Is that so.”
“It is.”
“You could have just called Gilberto, told him the name, and we would have taken care of it.”
“Gilberto assured me that all your little lambs were accounted for, so I didn’t see the point.”
“…I see,” Don Camerota said, obviously not happy with his consigliere. I was sure he was giving Gilberto the evil eye for making him look foolish.
“Plus, it all happened a little too quickly to hash it out over a phone call.”
“So your man took it upon himself to resolve the matter.”
“Well, like I said, Gilberto said you didn’t have anyone here in Tuscany, so – ”
“How do you know he was one of ours, then?”
“It seems Maurizio was stalking a girl in Milan who fled here to get away from him. She identified him to our fellow, and when he confronted him, Maurizio didn’t deny it. Nor did he apologize. Quite the opposite… hence the spanking.”
Don Camerota was quiet for a second.
I knew he was irritated – but he also knew that his man was completely in the wrong, and that he was lucky Giorgio hadn’t executed him.
“I can assure you, we did not send him,” Don Camerota finally said.
“I never thought you did,” I said cheerfully. “I knew you would have let us know if any visitors were coming – just as I did every time someone visited my brother.”
San Vittore, the prison where Dario had spent five years, was located in Milan – Don Camerota’s territory.
During Dario’s internment, I had scrupulously followed protocol and alerted the Camerotas whenever one of us visited – including the day Dario entered prison to begin his sentence, and the day Lars and my other brothers brought him back home.
“Yes,” Don Camerota said coolly. “I remember.”
“In the spirit of continued good relations, I would like to let you know we consider the matter a one-off, and that it is completely resolved.”
“Wonderful,” Don Camerota said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Well, then, if there’s nothing else – ”
“I’ll see you in the future,” Don Camerota interrupted, his tone turning snarky. “Although I doubt it will be in Rome.”
I raised my eyebrows.
He was referring to how we had run afoul of the mafia don who ran Rome.
During a meeting of the Council of Cosa Nostra families, my brothers and I had ignored Don Severino’s injunctions against violence in his city.
Instead, we used the opportunity to outwit and kill Uncle Fausto.
It apparently didn’t matter that Fausto was a consigliere who had murdered his own mafia don, which is virtually unheard of in the Cosa Nostra.
Nor did it matter that his victim was also his brother – and our father.
Nor did Don Severino care that Fausto was plotting to kill us. He failed only because Sofia – his erstwhile consigliere – had fallen in love with me and switched sides.