I’ve never used cocaine. If you wanted to be a boss in our group you couldn’t use drugs. Even the Casalesi clan hold to it. To check if someone was using coke we didn’t do testing or anything. We picked the guys up at night when they went home and took them to Paolo Di Lauro, then we put a plate of pasta in front of them and said ‘eat’. When you snort, you have no appetite. When they didn’t eat or you could tell they were forcing themselves, they were no longer trusted and were demoted. A good killer can’t be a cokehead, otherwise he’ll mess up. And he has to go kill on an empty stomach, for many reasons. The first is that he has to be on edge, no nodding off, and he can’t afford to get the runs. The second is that if you get shot in the belly and you’ve eaten, you’re fucked pronto. If your stomach is empty, you stand a chance of being saved.

THE LEDGER

The anti-mafia unit has seized dozens of ledgers. Notebooks in which the daily receipts and expenditures of the various drug outlets of the drug-trafficking network are recorded. Logs where associates enter a list of purchases each day. Like a butcher does when he opens his account book and records the names of the customers who owe him money, noting the debits and credits, that’s what Prestieri’s men do. In those hundreds of pages there are some disturbing entries. What throws you off is the absolute normality of it. There are figures that represent payment for utility bills, car expenses, cleaning costs for the hideouts and the houses. And then there are entries for ‘Whacks’, which are shootings, for ‘Federico’s Funeral’, for the funerals of slain associates, and comments on ‘crooked mechanics’. There’s spending for coveralls: when a killer kills, he has to ditch his clothes. Many entries refer to ‘conferences’, that is, money that the clan must pay to associates’ families to have them go and visit their relative in prison. Then there are entries for ‘flowers for wives’: even bouquets sent to wives on their birthday by incarcerated husbands, wives who are the responsibility of the clan. The amounts listed for the kilos of hashish and cocaine transacted are numerous, as are the areas from which the money comes: ZP stands for ‘zona puffi’, ZA for ‘zona arco’, ZM for ‘zona monterosa’, the various drug-dealing markets. There is no lack of strange acronyms, such as ME or LO, which stand for Merda or Lota, shit or grease, the money to be shelled out to the police monthly to avoid inspections or arrests. And a number of lawyers are listed as ‘salaried attorney’: they’re on the clan’s payroll.

CARNAGE