I remember one scene I was working at the Bar Nazionale I saw outside the bar in the street this son of Caricalieggio with that Michelino I met once in Florence when we were both in the army and one other guy who’s a distant relative of mine nicknamed Fagiolone or Big Bean all three of them were standing outside this bar chatting about nothing in particular when the Coachman’s car comes screeching to a halt right in front of them and a burst of Kalashnikov fire misses them by inches right over their heads and then while the three of them are falling all over themselves trying to find cover the Coachman tosses the assault rifle onto the driver’s seat and gets out of the car and starts punching them and slapping all three of them around shouting boys this time it ends here but the next time I swear I’ll leave you dead on the cement so don’t get out of line don’t bust my balls and this was because the Coachman knew that the three of them had decided to ally themselves with Sandokan because Sandokan was expected to emerge victorious from the clan wars as the future capo because he was the most violent the most ferocious but it was their bad luck to run up against the Coachman as a power in our town who that evening had made it clear to them that the only reason he hadn’t murdered them then and there was that he chose not to but that if he chose to he could kill them at any moment

the war between the clans was bloody and relentless the internal war in our area was far more violent than the fight against the outside enemies had been when the clan seized power in defiance of the domination of the Cutolo clan because the clash now was between numerous well trained well armed killers who feared nothing and had no qualms about murdering anyone in any fashion and so in this new war lots of people died who were totally extraneous among them for example a young man who had married the daughter of one of the De Falcos the daughter of Enzo the Fugitive the boy was called Liliano I knew him he was the brother of a friend of mine the poor kid got married to Enzo the Fugitive’s daughter but he was a normal kid a quiet kid he wouldn’t hurt a fly the only work that his father in law had ever asked him to do was to take messages to someone or maybe some money but nothing special

in these internal wars what happens is the same thing that happens in Sicily with Mafia wars when someone can’t find a way to strike directly at the enemy then they try to hit the enemy indirectly and so at a certain point the members of Sandokan’s clan since they couldn’t lay their hands on Enzo the Fugitive decided to hit him through the person of his son in law Liliano the husband of Enzo’s daughter and they caught him in an ambush at Casale di Principe and they slaughtered him they shot him twenty times and by an odd coincidence that very same day I had gone by the newsstand that my friend Liliano’s brother ran and across from the newsstand was a big poster like the ones they post for people’s birthdays with Liliano’s smiling face and over it the phrase wanted dead or alive and I said to this friend of mine who is that because I hadn’t recognized Liliano and he said that’s my brother it’s his birthday today and then later that very same day we all found out that Liliano had been shot down on the street