Page 52 of Marcello

Instead, he turned left into the alleyway with the dumpsters.

I knew there was nothing back there –

Or maybe there was.

Maybe he’s going in the apartment building through a back door.

I have to see!

I speed-walked as fast as I could to the corner, peeked around it –

And found myself staring straight down the barrel of a gun.

18

“Freeze, motherfucker.”

I froze.

Partly because I didn’t want to get shot in the face –

But also because time slowed down.

It felt like I was back in a movie –

The scene where the hero has to face down a bad guy with a gun.

The thug in the mustard track suit wasn’t holding the pistol, though. Track Suit guy was standing ten feet away, watching.

No – the guy pointing a gun at me was someone I’d never seen before.

He was about my age, clean-shaven, with a close-cropped buzzcut rather than a fully shaved head.

He wore jeans, Doc Martens, a wifebeater, and a battered, black leather biker jacket.

He was muscular, but more like a heavyweight boxer than a weightlifter.

There were tattoos all over his neck and chest – spiderwebs and words in Gothic fonts – but the designs were ugly and amateurish, like he’d gotten them from a shitty tattoo parlor.

He was also six inches shorter than me, so he was pointing his pistol up at my head.

Buzzcut glared at me as he spoke to Track Suit in Neapolitan. “Is this the fuckin’ – ”

And he said something I didn’t understand.

’O cantante?

It meant ‘singer’ in Italian, and I was guessing it was the same in Neapolitan –

But it made no sense.

“That’s him,” Track Suit confirmed.

My train of thought moved at the speed of light.

Singer –

Somebody who sings –