Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
It was late morning by the time Valerio sobered up.
The hours after the shooting had been grim and horrifying.
His mind, dulled and disrupted by the alcohol, had been unable to think logically, and reality collapsed into a dark dream state, a jolting slurred mess of blood and guilt.
Immediately after the shooting, he’d called for backup and rushed to the boy, but there was nothing left to save.
Gaetano’s young body was decimated—chewed up by machine-gun fire.
Arriving on the scene, the ambulance workers seemed relieved that there was nothing for them to do; it was a dangerous business to save someone il Sistema had appointed to die.
Valerio had insisted on staying with the responding investigators.
Only now could he comprehend that his drunken attempts to assist must have been thoroughly obnoxious, because at some point, his partner, Maurizio, showed up and took him home.
There, Maurizio had pressed him to drink water, received his rambling sobs, and dragged him, stumbling, to the toilet to puke. Eventually, Valerio passed out.
He woke to sunlight through his open window and street sounds below. His mouth tasted foul, tongue swollen and sandpaper-dry, head throbbing. For one blissful moment the pain was only physical. Then the nightmare reasserted itself and, empty though he was, he wanted to throw up again.
—
Maurizio was in the living room, the fabric pattern from the sofa imprinted on his cheek.
Valerio collapsed into a chair, pressing palms against aching eyes.
“Did you know?” Maurizio asked.
Valerio shook his head. “Fuck no. I should have known. I should have…”
Words failed him.
He and Maurizio had both experienced plenty of violence. They’d seen murders and waded into the aftermath. This was different.
“He was only eighteen,” said Maurizio. “I helped you.”
Valerio thought of Davide. Thirteen years old.
“It was a fucking trap,” said Valerio. “I walked right in. Like an idiot. I should have seen. I thought…fuck, I don’t know what I thought.”
“How did this get so fucked?” asked Maurizio. “Who did this? What did you do for them?”
Valerio felt like shit. His head hurt. His muscles and joints felt like they’d been pulled apart, and his neck…God, his neck!
He deserved it all—every dose of this pain. He clung to it as he told Maurizio everything.
“You’re right,” said Maurizio when he was finished. “You are a fucking idiot. You gave Errichiello your balls on a silver platter.”
“I’ll turn myself in,” said Valerio. “Report everything, and take the consequences.”
“That really would be idiotic,” said Maurizio. “You know what your problem is? You see things so black-and-white. Right and wrong.”
“This is black-and-white. That boy is dead!”
“And nothing you do now will bring him back,” Maurizio said.
Valerio scrubbed a hand over his head. “I’ll tell the truth. When I helped the kid, I didn’t know what Errichiello had planned.”
He thought about that benign and forgettable face, that beige hat.
Errichiello had handled Valerio with the disinterested skill of a professional, only once displaying emotion—irritation—with his white-haired security chief.
Wrapped around his own fear and anger, Valerio had unintentionally leaned into Luca’s calm demeanor and the reasonable logic of his request.
“Nobody’s interested in the truth,” Maurizio sighed.
“It’s a political game—and you’re shit at it.
Let’s say you march up to il Dirigente today and confess everything.
Do you think he wants to hear it? Fuck, no.
He’s new. He doesn’t know you—and he certainly doesn’t give a shit about you.
All he cares about are the numbers that make him look good.
Until now, you’ve caught the baddies, and that makes him look good.
If you fuck up his statistics, he’ll throw you out on your ass.
My advice? Don’t tell him about Errichiello. ”
“But I’m a liability,” said Valerio. “Luca Errichiello can draw a line between me and Gaetano’s murder anytime he wants.”
“Do you think you’re the only one they’ve gotten to?
” Maurizio laughed bitterly. “Of course not. If we kicked out all the crooked cops, everyone with friends and family tied up in the system, the building would be empty. It’s the price of doing business.
Look at my wife’s brother—he’s neck-deep.
Always asking us for favors. One day, this is gonna bite me, and I’ll be in the same situation as you. ”
Valerio leaned over and rested his face in his hands. He took a deep breath. Maurizio slapped his back.
“Get some coffee and head to the station. They’ll need your statement. Then take a few days off. Get your head back in the game.”
—
Maurizio left. Valerio took a shower, dressed, and walked outside. Squinting into the cool sunlight, he felt raw. Exposed.
He was hungry and nauseated, but didn’t feel like eating. He took coffee at the corner café. Far from helping, the espresso seemed to set the pain in his head ringing.
The world was duller than it had been yesterday, as though he was seeing it through dirty glass. Something inside said, Hadn’t you noticed? It was always like this.
—
At the station, he gave his statement to the investigating officers.
Against Maurizio’s advice, he directed them towards Errichiello—stopping short of confessing that his work to help Gaetano had been at Luca’s request.
Afterwards, he sat at his desk and tried to work. He couldn’t seem to think at all. After a few hours, he was about to give up, when he was called into the director’s office.
—
Valerio had only ever spoken to Dirigente Cristiano Bonetti once—a few weeks ago, during the director’s first days on the job. Originally from Acerra, Bonetti had spent the past twenty years at the police headquarters in Trapani, Sicily.
Appointed as director only two months ago, he was already established in the office at the end of the corridor as though he’d spent his career here.
Unlike the other offices, crammed with as many desks as could fit, and a jumble of excess and expired equipment and ugly metal lockers, his office was spacious and orderly, the polished wood desk organized—from the stack of active files to a neatly penned to-do list, and a row of Post-it notes in pastel shades.
A bookshelf covering one wall was filled with judicial and policing review books—all alphabetized.
Bonetti gestured Valerio in with a curt nod, before returning to his computer and typing for several more minutes. At last, he pressed the Enter key with a little flourish, said, “There!” and turned clever, watchful eyes on him.
“It was not my intention to neglect you, Capo Alfieri,” he said.
Valerio nodded.
Bonetti was a handsome man in a well-tailored blue suit and silk tie, black hair beginning to grey.
“Terrible business with this Mancusi kid,” he said. “It’s one of my priorities to begin to address these gangs of baby criminals—young Camorra boys acting like guerrillas, committing serious crimes, but spontaneously, without any real planning.”
“Gaetano Mancusi was the victim of a targeted killing, not the criminal,” Valerio said. “We can’t know whether he was one of these baby criminals you’re talking about.”
“Ah, but he was in Poggioreale for a reason!” Bonetti exclaimed.
“He was only eighteen years old,” Valerio said. “And he hadn’t gone to trial. As far as I’m concerned, we should consider him an innocent.”
“Hmmm…” Bonetti gave Valerio an appraising look. “That’s a strange reasoning. He was arrested for drugs—and was clearly dealing for one of the clans. In a war, foot soldiers are never innocent. I understand you requested his release?”
It was no good denying it. Valerio nodded. “On humanitarian grounds. His mother is dying of cancer.”
“I see.”
Bonetti tapped his pen on the desk as if writing a message in Morse code.
“Our police and judicial actions are working,” he said.
“This creates a vacuum in criminal organizations. Young boys are trying to fill that void. They’re drawn to crime.
They inherit it. In these families, crime isn’t seen as deviance; it’s following the path of their father.
When kids go to prison, there’s no criticism from the parents—just acceptance.
We need to change this, Alfieri. We’ve been too soft. We need to make crime unacceptable.”
Valerio, not knowing what to say, nodded.
“I understand you witnessed the shooting?” Bonetti continued.
“Sì,” Valerio agreed, and told the director the same thing he’d told the investigators. “I got a phone call last night—about the release. I took a taxi from my house…. I’d been drinking.”
“You weren’t warned that Mancusi would be killed?”
Valerio returned his stare. “No. But as I told the investigating officers, Gaetano’s mother worked as a housekeeper for Luca Errichiello. They should explore the connection there.”
Bonetti tapped his pen again.
“Yes,” he said. “They told me about your suspicions. Do you have evidence that Errichiello was actually involved in Mancusi’s death?”
“No,” Valerio admitted. “But we know what Errichiello does; his name has come up in a dozen human-trafficking cases.”
“Nothing that was ever proven!” Bonetti said. “As far as this office is concerned, Luca Errichiello is a law-abiding citizen.”
“Tell that to the women and girls he’s trafficked,” said Valerio, who’d seen some of those cases firsthand.
Bonetti sniffed. “Have any come forward? Any willing to testify against him?”
“The ones who tried ended up dead,” Valerio said.