in the streets that link the various towns and villages of our area it happened that in certain periods checkpoints and roadblocks sprang up with carabinieri and local policemen stopping cars to see who was around and who wasn’t and what they might be transporting sometimes they were isolated checkpoints sometimes if there had been a major killing or attack or if there was a sweep or roundup planned the roadblocks proliferated but then in fact you couldn’t help but notice that most of the time if it was you driving by in your little beat up worn out car they would stop you maybe three or four times in a single trip and while you’re sitting there showing them your driver’s license and registration and explaining who you are and what you do and where you’re going wasting a lot of time to no good purpose you’re sitting there watching Mercedes Benzes zipping by driven by and carrying muschilli and clan members of all sorts relaxed and smiling and they were absolutely never stopped or pulled over by the carabinieri who would pretend they couldn’t see them while they were racing past right under their noses

only in the past few years due to the efforts of certain judges in Naples has there been an investigation into corruption in law enforcement and as a result of that investigation many carabinieri in our areas have been arrested and indicted for taking money from the organization some of them had salaries of as much as ten million lire per month about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year and one of these carabinieri in exchange for the services that he was performing for the organization demanded that they kill the man who had taken his wife away from him I was an eyewitness to this story because the guy who was supposed to be killed was a sort of healer who worked in a center for social assistance that was called the Centro Esopo literally the Aesop Center one of those traveling community centers that reach out to help at risk teenagers women and people like that but that also had a permanent headquarters a big building in the middle of the countryside near Castel-volturno where they were engaged in various activities and providing services and in this center for social work I had also worked as a volunteer in my spare time

and this healer happened to meet the wife of the carabiniere warrant officer of Casale di Principe and she fell head over heels in love with him and left her husband this carabiniere warrant officer was in the pay of the organization and so in addition to the regular salary he was pulling in the warrant officer asked the organization to cleanse his personal honor of the shame of his wife’s betrayal and to arrange the murder of the healer who had taken his wife and so the son of one of my father’s friends was sent to perform this mission my father’s friend is a truck driver whose nickname is il Bestione the Beast just like in the movie with Giancarlo Giannini of that name in which he becomes a godfather too and even though his son grew up in a fairly well to do family he’d decided to join the organization and so he was sent to do this murder but the kid was actually just an asshole who was more interested in showing off in town acting the part of the clan member the made man than anything else so when he goes to kill the healer he fucks up he doesn’t kill him he only wounds him in the leg and the healer recognizes him and now the little asshole has been sitting in prison for four years and nobody can even guess when he’ll get out