Two prison guards took custody of the North Africans and hustled them off to the infirmary. Erik, the Nigerian, and the Professor were taken to solitary confinement as they awaited further disciplinary actions.

Six guards under the command of Mauro Marini, the senior officer, were doing their best to restore calm among the other convicts. A convict on the other side of the courtyard, far from the brawl, was still lying on the ground, near the door that led to Wing 3. Officer Marini approached him. “Hey! On your feet!”

The convict didn’t move. Marini kneeled down to turn him over. “Hey! You getting up?” He gave him a shake as he turned him. The man had both eyes open, pupils rolled up out of sight, mouth wide-open, a streamer of drool hanging from his lips.

“Oh, fuck . . .” Marini murmured, looking around as he tried to catch a colleague’s eye.

“What’s going on?” Daniele Abela, a new recruit, on staff for just a few months, shouted at him.

“Hurry, for fuck’s sake!” Marini replied, placing two fingers on the neck of the man stretched out on the pavement. Abela and Tolotta, the gigantic guard from Wing 3, joined him.

“This guy’s dead!” Marini opined.

“Oh, fuck . . . call the warden!”

ROCCO HAD ALREADY GULPED DOWN FOUR TRAMEZZINI AND two espressos. The afternoon was advancing solemnly, and the light was starting to shift from yellow to orange. He kept an eye on the street and the narrow lanes around Biga’s apartment house. Brizio, continually distracted by the women passing in front of him, couldn’t seem to concentrate.

“I’m starting to get sick and tired of waiting, Brizio. When is that asshole Biga going to get home?”

“Beats me . . . but I was just thinking something,” said his friend. “If it really was him, then we’re not likely to find him around. He shot Adele instead of you, and if I were him, I’d dive down some hole and pull it in after me.”

“Who can say? Antonio is a member of the old guard.”

Brizio nodded. They knew that the Roman underworld had always had this shortcoming: its arrogance. Roman wiseguys keep their chins up and proudly strut when the smart thing would be to duck and cover, but then they scurry into hiding the one day they could go around boasting of their exploits. Biga had to have reached age seventy by now, and after all the years he’d spent in the shadows, he felt protected and untouchable. At least in Rome.