Chapter Text
“How long do I have?”
“One month.”
Prosciutto lifts the blazing cigarette to his lips and nods. Smoke fills the cavities of his lungs and pockets in his mouth. It permeates through the room. Flipping the filter in his grasp, he offers the cigarette to Risotto. Contemplation flashes across his red eyes, yet he does not take it. Prosciutto knows better than to press the matter.
Instead, Risotto thumbs through the dossier atop the desk. Reports and photographs adorn the pages, crudely stamped into place by wired paperclips and transparent tape. “You’re going to Calabria,” the silver-haired man states. “They bled Volpe dry before they fled. But they were sloppy and got caught selling the Boss’s own product outside of his territory.”
They – the targets: Caponata and Tortano.
“They left a trail,” Prosciutto comments, bleakly.
“Indeed, and it turned cold in Calabria two months ago – Tropea, specifically. But we know that they’re still there. Passione has no reach in Vibo Valentia: that territory still belongs to one of the remaining families from La ‘Ndrangheta. There’s a man who owns a restaurant in Tropea. His name is Ditalini Mina. He orchestrates a narcotics ring there, and he pays Passione directly for protection.”
Prosciutto stubs his spent cigarette against the crystalline ashtray. “And?”
“Caponata came to Ditalini,” Risotto says. “And Ditalini sold him out – but he doesn’t know this. You need to get to Ditalini, though he won’t speak to you; it won’t matter to him whether you are from Passione or not. Know this: the Boss has specified that the restaurant owner should not to be harmed. Unless, of course, you find out that he has been in fact aided Caponata.”
“You want me to kill him if he betrayed the Boss,” Prosciutto repeats. “I’m assuming I won’t be compensated any more for this. Why bother?”
Risotto says nothing of the backhanded comment. He points to the roster of Ditalini’s employees. A stack of photograph makes for supplementary viewing. “I recommend that you acquaint yourself with one of his staff – find out what they know before taking matters into your own hands. It might help you to avoid unneeded attention, should you find that the man is working for Caponata.”
The photographs shift as Prosciutto lays them out before him. He notes that only two women work for the man: Farinata Pavone and [Y/N] Una. Either of them will suffice. In his experience, he has found that the lips of a target are easily loosened by expensive gifts or sex. It is a horrible thing to do, using someone like that, and one that he reserves as a last-resort option.
“Ditalini frequents Di Maccu several times a week. But he never goes alone. Perhaps you should start there.”
With a sharp nod, Prosciutto closes the dossier and tucks it betwixt his arm and torso. His evening will be spent pouring over its contents, committing every face and every name to memory. “When do I leave?” he finally asks.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Prosciutto sighs. He cares little for unnecessarily arduous contracts, and this is no exception – he is paid to take lives, not to play detective. Yet, he is grateful for the work.
“I suppose I better start packing then,” he concludes with a sigh. After all, this job has never been easy.
The air within Di Maccu smells faintly of cinnamon and bergamot, courtesy of the incense burning atop the mantle of the sealed fireplace. An English song echoes through the speakers. The words are foreign to many of the bar’s occupants; yet this has never stopped the younger crowds from swaying in their seats as they upheld conversations amongst each other.
For un mercoledì sera, the bar is considerably full. The table nearest to the front door is occupied by three employees from the restaurant Il Basilico Sospeso: Farinata, a waitress and woman of twenty-six with a deep affinity for clubbing; Pandoro, a line cook who had first been hired as a young boy assigned to washing dishes; and the owner Ditalini Mina, an older man who colors the silver steaks in his greying hair with gawdy black dye like epoxy paint.
As she lowers the martini, Farinata’s voice slips from her mouth in chorus to the young pop-star’s ballad. In the waitress’s state of unassuming lucidity, she effortlessly slips into the foreign language of the singer and hums along.
Ditalini smirks over the rim of his frosted pint glass. Pandoro releases a cloud of white smoke into the air before offering his cigarette to the singing woman. She plucks it from his fingers with greed. Her red lipstick stains the wax paper. Ditalini taps the face of his studded watch. “What’s taking her so long?” he asks, his speech cutting above the music.
Farinata shrugs and flicks ashes away from the smoldering cigarette. “Maybe she died,” she says in a tone that might suggest that she is only joking. “I’ll text her.”
Pandoro leans back in his chair and points towards the window that hangs above their table. “No need,” he insists. “Here she comes now.”
The door opens, sending a ring through the cramped bar as the bell above the arch jingles. Several patrons turn to observe you – the new customer – but mostly everyone else remains focused on their own drinks. Hair sticks to your face, plastered by a light sheen of sweat. You slump down in the unoccupied chair across from Ditalini. Your coworkers gawk at you with grins. You wonder if Pandoro knows that his bottom row of teeth is filled with rot.
“Took you long enough!” Farinata berates. She holds the cigarette out to you, which you promptly refuse and instead move to fix your own hair via the guidance of your reflection in the window.
“Sorry I’m late,” you huff, digging through your purse for your money and photo identification card. “Trish needed help with her book report.”
“A book report?” Pandoro snorts. “This late in the evening?”
“Did I mention how it’s due tomorrow morning and she waited until tonight to start it?”
Ditalini brushes away fallen cigarette ashes with the back of his hand. “Well, you sister set you an hour back,” he chortles. “You have a lot of catching up to do – go on, get your drink. We’re not going anywhere.”
You do not need to be told twice. The sound of your kitten heels clacking off the brick floors is lost to the thrum of laughter and music. The line at the end of the bar is wrapped all the way back to the jukebox. The only empty barstool is the second one from the rightmost end, nearest the line, and is sandwiched between two men. The first man strikes up a conversation with the woman to his left – who, you think, is admittedly too pretty for him. The second man stares at the bottles of fruit-flavored rums straight ahead of him. You cannot help but to notice his peculiarly styled hair, held in place by four vertically braided buns at the back of his blonde head.
You weigh your options and decide that you do not have the patience (for it never has been a virtue of yours) to stand in the line. So, you settle for the barstool. It creaks beneath your weight and scuttles against the floor. The bartender – aptly Maccu himself – takes your awaiting identification card. His trained eyes scan over the finest details of lamination and creasing. Satisfied that you are of the legal drinking age, he returns the card and places a cork coaster before you.
“What can I get for you?” he asks.
“A vodka cranberry, per favore.”
“Lime?”
“Sì, grazie.”
“Any preference for your vodka?”
You clutch the wad of cash in your hand. “Whatever’s cheapest,” you specify.
“Make it a Grey Goose.” Maccu’s head snaps in the direction of the raspy tone belonging to the blonde man seated next to you; the man’s interjection has surprised you both. “Put it on my tab.”
With a quick smile, the bartender reaches for the top-self liquors. “Thank you,” you tell the man beside you. “But you didn’t need to do that.”
"Forgive my intrusion. It’s just that you look like someone who’s had a difficult day,” he nonchalantly insists, as if it is his custom to buy expensive drinks for strangers. You take note of your appearance in the wall mirror; its honesty is frightening compared to the sight that greeted you in the window. You swipe the back of your hand across your puffed, swollen eyes – you have bled your makeup dry. “None of that cheap American shit is going to make you feel any better. In fact, I would hardly call it vodka.”
You humor him: “That’s an astute observation. My mother isn’t doing well – that’s all.”
He hums to himself and returns to the bourbon that has been watered down by the melting block of ice. Despite his initial cordiality, he has made it painfully obvious that he does not genuinely wish to hold a conversation with you. Perhaps it is because of the bombshell you have only just dropped – perhaps you have killed the mood.
You were not late this evening because of Trish’s procrastination over a school assignment; in truth, there is no book report either. Your tardiness could only be blamed by an urgent phone call from your mother’s doctor. It is a challenge in and of itself to face your coworkers (whom you do not entirely care for) when you have just been told that your mother is dying.
Maccu places your purple drink atop the coaster. You thank him and squeeze the lime into the glass. Loosened seeds filter past the floating ice cubes and settle at the bottom of the glass like sediment. Your mother may be close to death’s door, but you deserve a night out nonetheless; Trish herself had insisted it.
You turn to the blonde man. “My name’s [Y/N], by the way.”
He looks up from his drink and offers his name with a faint smirk: “Prosciutto.”
You take a sip of your beverage and wince at the chill that bites at your teeth. Though your coworkers are waiting for your return, you refuse to go back. Considering your circumstances, it is not the best night to put up with Farinata’s drunken clinginess or Pandoro’s eccentricities, or to mask your annoyances with geniality.
This goes without saying that Ditalini brings about an entirely new level of discomfort for you; he unnerves you to your very core. You have worked for him for months now, and still that feeling of anxiousness gnaws at you every time you see him. In the beginning, it had been the intimidation – that he is your boss and you a new employee with limited work experience. He never hesitated to reprimand you in front of the others whenever you over-poured liquor or lost track of the rotation. But you were quick to learn. You had to be.
Ditalini has high expectations, and waitstaff is expendable.
You remember the night of the incident too clearly. You were leaving for the evening, and you used the backdoor that lead to the parking lot to exit the restaurant. And there, just before the dumpsters, stood your boss and a customer. You recognized the latter as one of your own patrons, and he had left you a sizeable tip. He held an oddly shaped parcel in his hands. Ditalini paged through a booklet of money. You had not meant for them to see you.
Ditalini’s reaction to your unwarranted intrusion had consisted only of a simple wave and a toothy grin. Among many things, you like to think that you are not a terribly ignorant person. It is not exactly a secret to the locals of Tropea that Ditalini had come from old mafia family roots, or that he used Il Basilico Sospeso as his own money-laundering scapegoat. The restaurant simply could not get by on selling underpriced beers and antipasto platters alone. You often wonder whether cocaine sales are tax deductible or not.
The very next day, Ditalini had pulled you into his office and ushered you to sit in the armchair across from his oak desk. The leather crinkled upon contact, contorting like the skin of a spoiled plum. You felt as if you were in a doctor’s office, under the scrutiny of a specialist; your boss certainly watched you the same way as your former family practitioner. You were prepared to be fired or shot in the head. Instead, Ditalini merely requested that you accompany him and the others on their weekly sojourns to Di Maccu.
You were quick to suspect the man’s ulterior motives: he sought to placate your silence with a false sense of comradery.
Downing the rest of your drink, you glance over at the table. Ditalini peers at you and rolls his emptied glass in the air as if he is contemplating another round. You turn away with a shudder. Regret is a familiar friend – you chastise yourself for finally caving into his request. You set your finished glass on the coaster. The man, Prosciutto has downed his bourbon as well. He places a hand inside his dark blue suit jacket; the sleeve shimmies up his arm just enough to reveal a silver-plated wristwatch. The corner of an MS cigarette carton pokes through his inner jacket pocket.
“Do you smoke?” he suddenly asks you.
Your eyes meet his steel-blue gaze. You think, as you take in his composed appearance, that he looks out of place in this bar. An expertly tailored suit and a large gold pendant hanging from his neck – not to mention his wristwatch – are not part of the typical uniform of the usual crowd. Di Maccu is certainly not the glitzy cocktail bar that would otherwise compliment Prosciutto’s fashion choices. He cocks a blonde eyebrow at you; you realize that your hesitation to respond has irked him.
“No, I don’t,” you tell him. Even his cigarettes are expensive.
He nods before resting his coaster on top of his bourbon glass. His form disappears as he slips through the backdoor and into the parking lot. Before he slipped away, you noticed a silver-plated lighter in his hand. It matches his wristwatch.
There is no policy that prohibits smoking inside of Maccu’s bar. Farinata and Pandoro have already demonstrated that. And yet, the handsome blonde stranger dubbed Prosciutto took himself outside to do it. Perhaps his decision was made of respect – otherwise, it came from an unspoken desire to escape from the noise confined within the bar’s walls.
Maccu comes by to collect your empty glass. “How much was my drink?” you ask him.
“13,000 lire.”
You count the proper amount and tuck it beneath Prosciutto’s cup. While you appreciate his gesture of goodwill, you cannot allow him to pay for your drink. You know well enough that a stranger in a bar would only do such a thing if he was looking for a quickie in the bathroom. Tonight is not the night for that.
Your purse begins to vibrate. You sort through discarded gum wrappers and dried mascara cartilages to find your cell phone. The bright green light of its face glares up at you
Trish – 2 New Messages:
| can u come home
| please i dont want 2 b alone
Ditalini stops you at the door. His hand rests on your bare shoulder, his skin calloused like sandpaper. You tug away from him, cautious not to draw attention from your other coworkers. “Is everything alright, bella?” he questions; the slur of his speech implies his intoxication, as if you could not already detect it on his breath.
You nod fervently and clutch your purse. “Trish needs my help again, that’s all,” you tell him. You feign disappointment. This seems to please him. “So, I’m heading home.”
“Would you like me to drive you? It’s late, you know.”
“No, grazie però.” You reply too hastily, but he does not notice the inflection. “I don’t live too far from here.”
And you are gone before he can protest.