so they managed to track him down as the source of that fake ID card he was arrested and convicted and served a three month sentence along with the guy who had provided him with the details to put on the identity document along with the photograph of Antonio Bardellino this experience of course helped to sober him up plus a short while later after one of his all night bouts of gambling and playing cards while he was on his way home he fell asleep at the wheel and drove off the road right into a luminaria those poles by the side of the road where they hang the luminarie during the town festivals or at Christmas the signs saying happy holidays the pole crashed down onto the car and Piscitelli was trapped there all night long unconscious in the car and he spent five or six months in the hospital in a complete body cast arms broken ribs shattered the accident seemed to bring him to his senses he tried to give up cards or at least he didn’t gamble with the same degree of recklessness and so when Antonio Bardellino’s nephew came to ask him if he would do the same favor for him that he had done for his uncle the only answer he could give him was no

because he said to him look I’ve spent three months in prison for you all right you gave me money in exchange but now I’m really not up to repeating the experience I’m a normal person I have an honest job I have a family I want to just mind my own fucking business and be left alone but his refusal was a big problem for Antonio Salzillo who needed this counterfeit document so he could escape so he could save his life and avoid Mario Iovine’s vendetta and he perceived this refusal as an offense that he could not forgive he was a hothead this was not the sort of thing he could forget about and a few days later Gaetano Piscitelli was taken as he left work at the town hall he was put into a car and that was the last anyone knew about him he vanished and some time later I was hanging out with his son and Gianni the son of the lawyer with clan ties asked him where his father was the son answered that his father had left home because of the constant fighting with his mother over his damned gambling addiction but then after the son of Gaetano Piscitelli left Gianni turned to me and said that he had been murdered and sealed into a concrete pylon on a highway overpass and he said it with a cool matter of fact tone that took my breath away