Page 101 of Marcello

Ciccio had never said anything like that before. The pain and despair in his voice was undeniable –

And it distracted me just long enough for Cesare to round the corner of the alleyway and disappear.

Once he was out of sight, the feeling passed. Especially when I remembered my family.

“…yeah… me, too,” I wearily told Cicciobello.

Then we disposed of the body.

We put on latex gloves to be careful not to leave any DNA. Then I pulled the kid’s arms over his head and seized his wrists while Cicciobello grabbed his ankles. We lifted him off the ground and swung him back and forth until we got up enough momentum to toss him five feet up into the open dumpster.

Then I rearranged some garbage over his body and closed the dumpster lid.

The Camorra equivalent of a shallow grave.

Somebody would find him in the next 24 hours. By then, we’d be long gone.

The cops would be called… a file would be opened… but the case would never be solved.

Unfortunately, murdered teenage drug dealers were depressingly common in Naples.

I knew that because I’d covered up enough of their deaths.

As we peeled off the latex gloves and stuffed them into a plastic bag to be disposed of later, Cicciobello asked me, “Wanna get a drink?”

All the alcohol in the world wouldn’t have been enough.

“…yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”

We were already near the harbor, so we headed down to a marina down by Castel dell’Ovo.

Naples is known as ‘the city of seven castles’ – fortresses erected by the various kingdoms that had conquered it throughout history.

Castel dell’Ovo was the oldest, and also the strangest. The name meant ‘Castle of the Egg’ and referred to an odd legend.

Back in the first century BC, the Roman poet Virgil had supposedly hidden an enchanted egg in the foundations of a rich Roman general’s villa. The legend said that it acted as a talisman. As long as the egg remained intact, Naples would never be destroyed.

The Normans built the castle in the 1200s on top of the ruins of the general’s villa, but supposedly the egg was still down in the foundation somewhere, safeguarding Naples.

Fuckin’ Neapolitans. Red cornicellos, enchanted eggs… there was no end to the superstitions, and not a goddamn bit of it worked for me. I was a thousand times worse off than the day I’d first stepped foot in the city.

Maybe it was because I was from Florence.

Or maybe it was because I didn’t believe.

I remembered what Federica had told me:

Non è vero, ma ci credo.

It’s not true, but I believe it.

I didn’t know what I believed, but I knew one thing:

I was in hell.

And there was no exit in sight.

Ciccio and I went down to the marina and got an outside table at one of the restaurants on the water.