their names were already beginning to circulate I remember clearly that whenever anyone talked about them and they were twenty years old at the time or perhaps a little older they would always say the same thing they are figli di nessuno which is to say penniless subproletarians people talked about them with scorn and not because of the things they did but really because of their origins though later once the group started to amass power the attitude changed quickly and people started to consider them with a growing respect for instance in the area where I live this is the makeup of the community families of farmers like mine a few families of shopkeepers a few office workers and clerks and in a neighboring street a doctor who would later become the chief administrative officer of our local public health provider this doctor was a member of the so called respectable class the family was wealthy his wife was a teacher they had two daughters who rode to school with me aboard the notorious school bus and when those girls talked about the muschilli they referred to them as bumpkins animals wild beasts the scum of society but fate would have it that ten years later none other than their father wound up under investigation for corrupt dealings with the clan and because he would steal expensive prosthetic devices and sell them to private clinics instead of giving them to patients who needed them

so in practical terms they had no choice but to make the great leap forward and they decided to do it with a military operation that would be spectacular and unforgettable and the place they selected for the attack was the heart of the enemy’s territory the sacred precinct of the Cutolo clan the Circolo dei Cacciatori the hunters’ club located in the very center of Cutolo’s home town the place where the clan’s most prominent made men gather every Sunday morning after mass and where no one would ever expect people from another town would set foot the attack was devised by Antonio Bardellino and planned out in painstaking detail a small bus had been rented the weapons had been stockpiled and a picnic lunch of panini had been made as if they were going on a Sunday outing of the utmost banality ten or so of them boarded the bus Antonio Bardellino and his brother Salvatore not Ernesto the one who later became mayor because he was shitting his pants in fear then there was Mario Iovine not his brother Mimmo who was also shitting his pants and then professional killers like Sandokan il Cocchiere the Coachman il Fuggiasco the fugitive and il Bassotto Shorty who was a relative of the Bardellinos that is everyone who later formed part of the leadership of the new clan

so they pull into town and park the bus in an unassuming manner they all get out of the bus carrying bags as if they were on a tourist excursion they walk into the main town piazza right across from the Circolo dei Cacciatori where a crowd of people is sitting in the sun at café tables like in any town or village square in southern Italy on a Sunday morning they all climb out of this bus and walk up and stop and then all at once they pull out their Kalashnikovs their submachine guns their pistols and start shooting furiously indiscriminately riddling everyone sitting there with bullets Cutolo clan members and ordinary citizens that have nothing to do with the clan it’s a massacre a slaughter a bloodbath they kill fourteen or fifteen people dozens are injured and they keep shooting their enemies don’t even have time to react and then nonchalantly amidst the screaming and confusion they calmly and confidently walk back to the bus climb aboard and drive off as if it were the most natural thing