the gift packs are trainloads of beautiful girls from eastern Europe tall blond leggy six foot tall girls from Poland Romania Albania from all the countries where the clan is investing money they are brought here and dumped for use first for their clan chiefs’ own enjoyment and then everyone else in the clan gets a shot at them but in order of rank that is the first ones to have their way with them are the capos then one after another the girls are handed all the way down the hierarchy to the muschilli after that the girls who have been good are set to work they set up in the bar of a made man or a friend and all the other girls are sent to work as streetwalkers in Naples since every two or three months a new trainload of girls arrives to take their places so that in a small town like ours a town with a population of fifteen thousand there might be twelve bars and in each of those bars at least two or three of these girls are working after being passed around by everyone in the clan and then they set them to work give them a place to live and in any case they are always at the clan’s disposal for the clan’s amusement so that if you have a buddy who’s a clan member or a sympathizer or someone who has any ties with those people you might find yourself in bed with one of these girls one evening your friend takes you to her house they give her a little coke and then you get to fuck her you and three or four others

XII THE AFRICANS

one day a boss from Villa Literno a very small fish in that pond by the way he decided that it was necessary to expel from the area all the African immigrants and in order to bring this about instead of doing it directly himself and getting his hands dirty with the Africans with the negroes as he calls them and therefore maybe killing one or two himself instead he preferred to call on the landlords renting to them he goes to all of them and intimidates them clearly conveying the idea that they have to get rid of these negroes they are renting rooms to he doesn’t want to see them around anymore doesn’t want to have to look at them you have to understand that all of this is linked to the clan’s determination to preserve law and order so to speak in their own territory so the issue of immigration had become a real and fairly serious problem in this region where most of the economic activity has to do with farming here over the course of the past few years a growing number of African immigrants especially from countries such as Nigeria Ghana thousands of Africans had come to Italy especially in the summer for the tomato harvest