and so after four years the bloody and implacable war of succession that had sowed death and destruction came to an end Sandokan by now held unrivaled power he was the head of the organization and because Sandokan was from Casale di Principe it was from there that he now controlled all the territory extending from lower Lazio to the entire Caserta area and to the edges of the Sannio and the foothills of Irpinia he controlled a vast number of enterprises ranging from contracts for high speed train systems to the third lane of the Naples Rome superhighway and even the immense project for the reclamation of the Regi Lagni the drainage canals dating back to the reign of the Bourbon dynasty a project financed by the CIPE the Comitato Interministeriale per la Programmazione Economica or Inter Ministerial Committee for Economic Planning to the tune of six hundred billion lire six hundred million dollars and never built all the way down to the farming cooperatives that collected and destroyed surplus farm products allowing the clans to set up the colossal fraud of the AIMA every single scam and traffic ran through his territory it was all business controlled by Sandokan and there were millions and millions in bribes paid to the clan even though his economic empire no longer had the international scope of the golden age under Antonio Bardellino it still represented one of the largest operating criminal concentrations

XVI THE MORGUE

it was the twelfth of July I had left my home town some time ago and moved to Northern Italy where I got a job and was living on my own minding my own business one morning they call me to the front desk because there is a phone call for me it’s a girl calling and they’re all making fun of me saying that I shouldn’t let my girlfriend call me at work but when I pick up the receiver it’s my sister Caterina and she’s sobbing she tells me that they killed Peppinotto in our town nearly all the nicknames end in –otto Peppinotto Cicciotto Raffaellotto and so on Peppinotto is the blood cousin of the husband of my sister Tiziana and he couldn’t have been any older than thirty-one or so he had just got married and he had a newborn son a couple of months old not long before that maybe a month or two before they had killed one of the Coachman’s relatives and in reprisal two kids from the rival gang to the gang that Peppinotto was affiliated with came and killed Peppinotto because even now when the war is winding down at least the big war among the various clans now that the warlords have all murdered one another and Sandokan and the Coachman are the only bosses left standing there are still a few survivors those who have managed to stay alive and they are continuing to wage a war without pity