Anthony DePaul Copyright  2005 by Anthony DePaul

Chapter One

Georgio sported the same bushy mustache as his great grandfather in testimony to the man’s courage and heroism. Now it was his time to bring honor to his family even if it meant his death.

He unlocked his office door and entered the noisy outer office full of detectives, suspects, lawyers and secretaries. The staff seemed alien, unfriendly as though he were the Roman poet Ovid left stranded in a foreign land for telling the truth. PC monitors stared like so many spies. He tapped his knuckles on the desk of his secretary Enza Strollo, a busty, middle-aged Neapolitan woman, pretty under her wire- rimmed glasses. Her graceful hands glided across the keyboard as though it was a piano.

“Io departe,” he said to her. She too had grown distant though he’d often played with her as a child in the alley behind their tenements.

“Quando ritorne?” she asked without looking up.

He shrugged his massive shoulder, unwilling to engage her. “Forse domani. Forse une settemana. Telefono mio moglie e dice Io portare uno pizza margherita da Seppi’s per cine. Ciao!”

She nodded. “Si,” and continued typing.

He strode away unaware that Enza dialed the cell phone of Antonio Talarico, great grandson of the assassin. “Spaventia departe. Dopo egli andare la pizza negozione da Seppi” she said and hung up.

Georgio scurried down the rear stairs of the Police Station, a brown brick building nicknamed, “castello d’mattone,”- brick castle. He scanned the street as he emerged from the heavy metal door into the glare of a brilliant January late afternoon sun. Car horns honked as they squeezed through the narrow streets lined with pushcarts and produce stands. The old city was dubbed the place of Chaos, an allusion to a view of hell in Dante’s “Inferno”. He loved the smell of the city, a virulent blend of fresh fruit and decay and danger and fresh made pizza and the occasional call of a tourist shouting that her purse had been snatched from her arm or her necklace ripped from her throat. He headed to Garibaldi Square and the Internet café at the Hotel Terminus.
Antonio Talarico figured Spaventa would leave from the rear door so he lounged by a fruit stand and pared the skin from an apple with the fish knife his father had given him on the day that he’d entered the service of La Camorra. The ceremony was a simple toast of warm Chianti drunk in one draught along a hillside in Ischia, an island across the bay from Naples. Ischia was his family’s ancestral refuge from the elder Spaventa and the other Garabaldiste who had hounded his great, great grandfather from the back streets of Naples. But the hunter was now the hunted. He’d follow Spaventa until the right moment when he left the pizza shop with his arms occupied carrying his last meal. Dark haired, his five foot ten trim, copper wire strong body honed from years of self taught military regimen, he’d blend into the crowd of young Neapolitans that crowded the dirty, dense streets. He trailed Spaventa at a distance of half a block as the officer crossed into the Piazza Garibaldi under the faded bronze statue of Italy’s most famous lawman and politician pre Mussolini. Talarico covered one side of his mouth and spit on the statue.

“May the pigeons shit on you forever,” he said in English.

Antonio wanted to stick an ice pick into Spaventa’s heart so his blood would drench the piazza wine red. But there were too many witnesses including two armed Carbinieri officers guarding the entrance to the Hotel Terminus.

Antonio lit an American cigarette and walked around the glass-enclosed lobby of the hotel s Georgio worked at a computer terminal in the Internet café. Antonio liked to blend in a crowd feared he stood out too much amid the well-dressed businessmen but the Il Segreto had ordered him to report any strange movements. Georgio finished his work on the Internet PC and pocketed a CD. The Il Segreto would want the CD even if is soaked in blood. One of the Carbinieri approached him so Antonio stubbed out his cigarette.

“Aspetta,” said the policeman.

Antonio stopped in his tracks and smiled. “Si Signore. Qui fa?”

The policeman towered over Antonio. “Non vorrei ladro in albergo!”

Antonio did not want to argue that he was not a thief so he obligingly nodded. “Io departe.”

The officer eyed him down a nose shaped like a ski slope.

“Non ritorno, malandrino,” said the policeman.

Antonio put up his hands and backed away saying, “Ciao Signore!”

At that moment, Georgio rushed past him. Antonio took a few steps away from Spaventa and then turned and followed his prey.

He quickened his pace through the darkening streets of the old city. The street vendors were busy haggling with men and women buying fresh vegetables and tomatoes and apples for tonight’s supper. He bought an apple and munched as he strode along. Apples clean the teeth and the palate.

He brushed into two men arguing with a tourist. They were about to pickpocket the young man dressed in loose fitting jeans, a bag pack slung over his thin shoulder.

“Partiri ladri,” Georgio said.

The thieves squared themselves as if ready to fight him but a young man with lilac eyes pushed them away.
“Andiamo la casa,” said Antonio. The men cowered and retreated into a side street.

“Grazie!” said Georgio. The young man looked familiar but he was not sure where he’d seen those eyes before.

“No problema, Signore Spaventa.”

Georgio rubbed his five o clock shadow. “Tui cognoscere mio?”

The young man waved his arm in a wide arc. “Si! Tutti Napoli cognoscere Spaventa. Ciao, Signore!” he said with a broad smile and skipped away.

Georgio reached for the man’s arm but he was too quick.

Twenty minutes later, Georgio left Seppi’s pizza. He balanced the box with one hand while he chomped on an especially thick slice that Seppi gave him for free. Cheap mulct. The rush hour foot traffic swirled around him as though he was caught in a whirlpool of chatter and shouts and grunting humanity. He slipped into the same alley the thieves had scuttled into. Why were they more afraid of the smaller young man than they were of him? Why was he so respected? And those eyes! They were like two flowers. Talarico had lilac eyes. He was a master of disguise, a chameleon. He was an old man one day and a young one the next. Fear edged along his neckline. He stopped to listen but there was no sound. The alley was empty except for laundry hung from overhead balconies. He threw away the piece of pizza and reached for his berretta. A rat the size of a small dog scampered from a sewer and snatched the pizza crust and then raced back to the safety of the sewer just before a large brown cat armed with wiry whiskers and razor sharp claws pounced from the alley wall. The cat sniffed the sewer grate but turned away, its back humped in anger. Georgio shrugged. Even the rats have a right to live.

Suddenly a man wrapped in a bed sheet plunged from a balcony and landed full force on his shoulders. The impact drove him to the concrete so hard that he dropped the pizza and his gun. A sharp pain pierced his back. The second jab of the fish knife slashed his carotid artery. His eyes rolled back in his head as he heard the final word, “Morte da figlio di Talarico.”

Antonio shed the bloody bedspread. He rifled Georgio’s pockets taking all of his money and tossed the empty wallet aside to make the assassination look like one more random murder. He snatched the CD. The Il Segreto would be happy. He lifted the pizza box and strolled down the alley whistling the old Neapolitan melody, “Finiculi, Finiula” as though he were a working man bringing dinner home to his family.

Antonio plopped the pizza on the kitchen table of his condo overlooking the bay of Naples. A mist covered Capri and the cliffs of the Ana Capri. The stucco homes and flat, pastel roofs of Sorrento lay hidden behind a soft gray blanket but the water shimmered icy blue like a tourist’s postcard. A hydrofoil bursting with workers and tourists splashed through the clear water. He’d come to Napoli on such a boat six months after his birth on November twenty-second, nineteen sixty-three, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. His family settled in a cramped, two-room, third story flat in the slums beneath the shadow of Vesuvius. His mother had hung laundry from a precarious balcony much like the one he’d just leaped from to kill the polizie. The stench of the over flowing sewers still haunted his memory. His father caught rheumatic fever in his early twenties. The proud man withered into a scarecrow. His gaunt, bony body finally collapsed and he died in the streets coughing. The police left him on the sidewalk. No ambulance arrived so for a half hour he lay in a fetal position, spittle drooling from his lifeless mouth. No priest would pray over him. Antonio and a friend loaded the old man onto a rickety food cart and carried him to their home. The neighbors had left stale bread, fruit and homemade wine at their door. He learned early the shame of poverty. But the Il Segreto changed all of that. Il Segreto gave him education and money and a destiny. No one ever had a better benefactor.

He munched on Spaventa’s pizza while he poured a glass of Chianti. He ate the whole pie and washed it down with a third glass of wine. Full, he sat on the balcony and fed the CD into his laptop. After he read the file, he dialed the secure cell phone of the Il Segreto in Philadelphia.

“Hello, Antonio,” said the Il Segreto. “How was your day?”

“Io mangia pizza Margherita di Spaventa. E molto bene!”

“I spent five thousand dollars to teach you English. Speak it. Tell me every detail. Leave nothing out.”

Antonio did not like to displease Il Segreto though no other human being dared talk to him in such a demeaning manner. He obeyed and fed Il Segreto each detail of the killing. At the end, Il Segreto let out a sigh.

“So he emailed the file to Dorian Wilde. That was clever but dangerous to our cause. Wilde is the best mind in this city, except for me. Get a plane to Philadelphia as soon as you can. I will have the condo at the Radisson Warwick Hotel ready for you. I may also have another job for you. Change your appearance to an older man. Use the passport for David Evans.”

“What job?”

“You may have to eat Wilde’s pizza.”

Antonio’s blood rose in his temples. “Why is he a danger?”

“Dorian Wilde is an ex-policeman. He is a master spy and a wizard with electronics, surveillance systems and computers. He is living with the city’s top Assistant District Attorney. I will see him at the midnight party for our new mayor. I may have to dispose of the Mayor sooner than I planned. And now I must make plans to deal with Dorian. I must run or I will be late for the reception. We will have to tell the whole City what a wonderful man is Lincoln Miles. He will be an unwilling martyr to our cause. Good night, Antonio.”

Antonio hung up. Damn Americans rush everything. He wanted to celebrate his revenge, not run off to another job. He wanted a woman and a day in Ischia. He swallowed a half glass of Chianti. His head spun but he could not afford to get drunk. No one disappoints the Il Segreto. He turned on the television and watched with glee as Naples mourned the untimely death of Georgio Spaventa. He laughed as the City’s Press Liaison lamented that “none of us is safe from the witless criminals who run the streets of Naples.” The man was first cousin of Spaventa’s secretary, Enza and a life long member of Camorra.

What is the weather like in Philadelphia in January? The Summer he’d visited the city was as steamy as the oceanside in the south of Italy. He’d killed then and he’d kill again if Il Segreto commanded him.

Chapter Two

Dorian Wilde shed his raincoat at the front door of the penthouse he shared with his lover, Assistant District Attorney Alice Rowe. The storm lashed the East side of the twenty-story high penthouse condo so hard that the windows seemed to bend in the middle. Dorian pulled the drapes closed and was about to call for Alice but the CD player was “off”, meaning that Alice was either working late or she was hung up at Devin’s cocktail hour holding court with her legion of horny admirers. Either way, he was spared the somber strains of Beethoven or Mozart or Bach. He flipped a Dave Brubeck CD in place and snapped his fingers to “Take Five” as he opened the wet bar along the West side. The custom built white marble bar, surrounded by six stools, shone brightly under the strobe lights. The back bar was a hand carved oak replica of the old bar at Harry’s American bar in Florence. A VO Manhattan relaxed his tired, six-foot athletic body from his handsome head to his kneecaps. Below, the rush hour traffic inched along I-95. He stripped off his tie and dress shirt. He shed his shoes and his feet sunk into the thick pile carpet. He wanted to go to the new mayor’s Inauguration Ball tonight as much as he wanted to grow a third ear. The Press dubbed the midnight party “the Cinderella ball”.

Mayor Lincoln Miles insisted that his miraculous win was the work of magical forces. “I won at the midnight hour, and I will celebrate at the midnight hour and all of us will dance to the song Midnight Hour,” Lincoln proclaimed to his City. In the final days of the election campaign, Lincoln trailed Jewish businessman, Hal Klein by eleven points. But black leaders rallied behind him despite the fact that Linc was married to Estelle Betts, a wealthy, blonde blue-eyed white woman. And his questionable real estate deals at Penn’s Landing. On his own dime, Dorian had investigated the development of fifty-two luxury townhouses. Three years ago, as President of City Council, Miles used his influence to steer the project to Nate Stern, a prominent businessman and the new Managing Director of the City. Dorian suspected that the kickback found its way into generous campaign donations from two local banks. Proving the wrongdoing was difficult. Linc won by eight hundred votes. Dorian did not like the possible corruption. He absolutely abhorred Linc’s sanctimonious acceptance speech that his election “was a living testimony that the City was truly a City of Brotherly Love.” Lincoln had lived the charmed life of a poor kid who made a life for himself by playing basketball for John Chaney at Temple and four years on the Sixers. He’d mixed with the politicos who loved his square shouldered, straight shooter appearance marked by fiery, black eyes that could melt metal.

The front door swung open and Alice swept across the living room. Her auburn hair glowed like a halo around her alabaster face punctuated by a smile as wide as Broad Street.

“Hi Hon!” she said. A dry cleaning bag draped over the shoulder of her grey business suit. She parked her briefcase at the door and carefully spread the clothes over the arm of the sofa. Dorian winced at the sight of his tuxedo.

“Kisses,” she said. Her mint flavored kiss barely concealed the odor of scotch.

“Want a drink?” he asked. After two passionate years, her touch still aroused him as though he was a schoolboy yearning for his first taste of sex.

“Absolutely! Drinks and kisses and you!”

He pulled her close. “Let’s reverse the order.”

She patted his cheeks. “We’d never make it to the banquet. Estelle Miles would hate me forever and my boss would fire me for missing her speech.”

Dorian nuzzled the top of her head and squeezed her waist. “At least we’d miss Lincoln’s hypocritical bull shit,” he said.

Alice pecked his chin and eased away. “He is the duly elected Mayor whether you like him or not and I have to work with him and his new Police Commissioner ML McClain so you be a good guy and be civil and I will reward you. Sexual bribery is my forte.”

Dorian threw up his hands in mock surrender. “That is one crime I will be an accomplice to. I’ll get you a drink.”

“Johnny Walker Black please, while I change.”

Dorian drained his Manhattan. “I’ll switch off the Mannies and join your scotch-soaked jag.”

Alice raised her little finger and put on her best British accent. “I am charmed! See you on the veranda my darling panda. We’ll do a duet of ‘Singing in the Rain’. I am prettier than Debbie Reynolds, aren’t I?”

“Can it! You’re prettier than everybody. Besides, Debbie Reynolds is older than the rain.”

She winked and blew a kiss. “Ta ta! I must change!” she said.

Dorian filled two ice-filled tumblers of scotch. The steel gray sky cast a sinister shadow over the Penn campus and the flat roofs of the grimy, brick West Philadelphia. The packed to the gills Market Street El split the city in two. To the right, two SEPTA trains full of white-collar workers roared toward the suburbs. Work and run home.

Drink in hand, he sat at his PC and called up his emails. He had not had a decent case in a month. The message from Spaventa was marked in red. As laid back as the Neapolitan sun, Georgio never marked a message as “urgent.”

“What’s up?” asked Alice, leaning on his shoulder. Her perfume mixed sweetly with the musky aroma of Johnny Walker Black.

“Georgio Spaventa sent me an email from Naples.”

“Oh that lovely Italian man you talk about. Open it. I’ll read along with you,” she said.

Buono notte my dear friend. I hope you are well and you are still sharing your bed with bella donna Alice. My fear is that by the time you read this message, I will be dead. So too your new Mayor may be dead for you see, I have reason to believe that the Camorra has linked to other societies to form a triangle of corruption within your fair city. Long ago in the days of your Benjamin Franklin, a man named Felipe Buonarotti espoused a philosophy that secret societies should link to overthrow the established governments. He believed that the American Revolution was a cabal of Masons and other groups. At the time of the French Revolution, Buonarotti created the Philadelphes in Franklin’s honor. The Philadelphes governed three secret societies. They called such governance Triangulation. The leader was called Il Segreto, the Secret One. Each society maintained its own identity but the heads were united under Il Segreto. The Philadelphes supposedly disappeared after a failed attempt to overthrow Napoleon and seize control of France. Such was their hubris. Mama mia!!

But one dark night a month ago, I was walking through the Old City, and I happened to witness a man suffer an infarction or heart attack as you Americans call it. As he lay in my arms, he confessed as though I was a priest. He confessed to be a Camorristi assassin. He’d killed four men. All the killings were made to look like random murders or accidents. He wanted forgiveness and pleaded that if he saved one life that would be enough to save his soul. He told me that Camorra had invested four decades to infiltrate and take over under the governance of The Philadelphes operating in your city. They felt that it was truly a matter of fate that the Philadelphes should target your city. Their plan is to assassinate your mayor so the successor closest to him can take over. The dying man’s name was Pietro Talarico. I traced his criminal history through the Carbinieri. His family goes back to the first days of the Camorra. He worked in the Finance Department collecting taxes on all businesses in the Old City. Beware too of Pietro’s younger cousin Antonio Talarico. He is a wily assassin who is capable of disguising himself in broad daylight. My Great Grandfather forced his Great Grandfather to flee Naples in the days of Garibaldi. In Italy, vendettas are as eternal as Rome itself. Trust no one and tell no one about the Philadelphes. Not even the police. They are likely to be a part of the Triangle. If they discover that you are on to them, they will make you a crime statistic. Stop them before they destroy your city from within as they still suck the blood from my beloved Naples. I must go now. I wish you and your lovely lady health. My bride awaits and she must have her pizza. Remember my friend, the Neapolitans made the first pizza. You Americans owe us a tribute, a mulct!!. C’ent anni! Georgio.

Dorian muttered “C’ent anni une.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

Dorian stared at the monitor. His senses had cleared as surely as if an ice storm had rained on him. “I answered Georgio’s toast of one hundred years with a toast of one hundred and one. It is an old Italian tradition.”

Alice sipped the scotch. “What are you going to do? Or should I ask, do you believe Georgio got it right?”

The sun sunk lower in the western sky as though a shade was drawn over the city. Wind suddenly whipped at the window. Dorian stifled a chill with a gulp of scotch. He reached for his cell phone and dialed Georgio’s home. The phone rang a dozen times but there was no answer. He called the Naples police station number.

“Pronto!” said the officer.

Dorian’s Italian was rusty but he knew better than to even try to talk in English. “Per favore, vorrei dice Georgio Spaventa a presto.”

“Non possible. Spaventa e morte.”

The news of Spaventa’s death slashed his gut. “Madre mia! Come?”

“Assassinati per ladri. Cotello Georgio come a cane.”

They’d cut him like he was a dog. “Quando?”

“Ieri notte. Il quale?”

He held a hand over the phone. “Alice, they knifed him in the street yesterday.”

She slapped the monitor. A name blinked at her. “Ask if it was Talarico,” she said.

Dorian paused than a better idea “Io Antonio Talarico, Cougeno da Spaventa.”

The officer gasped then railed in rapid Italian, “Assinassinati! Tiu deridere une morte uomo. Potere Dio battere tui morte.”

Dorian had his answer. “Ciao,” said Dorian.

Alice shook his shoulder. “What was all that about?”

Dorian ran a hand across his eyes. His insides roiled like a blender mixing pina coladas. “Spaventa was murdered yesterday. I told the officer I was Antonio Talarico. He reacted in a way that tells me that they suspect Camorra killed Georgio and made it look like robbery.”

He slapped the table hard. “Christ almighty! The bastards cut him down in the street like he was an animal They’ll kill Lincoln too.”

She kneaded his shoulder. “I’ll alert my staff.”

“No! Georgio advised to trust no one. Lincoln Miles won’t officially become our Mayor until midnight. All the top dogs will be there. We’ll go and watch all those close to him. By the way, if Lincoln is killed, who becomes Mayor?”

Alice’s eyes rolled. “That obnoxious bitch, Grace Lord, President of City Council. God help us!”

“God has nothing to do with it. I need to do some research. Please make coffee and something to eat. I’ll need a clear head tonight.”

“So will I,” she said.

Alice poured another cocktail. She reached for her cell phone to call her new boss District Attorney Marian Hallberg. She let the phone ring once then hit the off button. Marian and Grace were classmates at Penn Law School. Dorian would not be the only one going to the party sober.

Dorian launched a worldwide Internet search on his twin servers ironically named Ben and Franklin. The dual processors were housed in the secure, well-hidden site he called “the pillbox” situated one floor beneath his office on Broad Street. He fired up his proprietary search tool he nicknamed ”ferret”. The engine scanned worldwide databases randomly. The key words he selected were “Camorra”, “Philadelphes” and “Talarico”.

Ten minutes later, over a hundred files packed his servers. He read a half a dozen files. Camorra existed. The Philadelphes were a historical fact. The assassin Talarico showed up on databases on Interpol and the Italian Police equivalent to CODIS. Convinced that Spaventa was right, he stored the rest of the data and let the search continue. He wheeled away from the PC. He stood at the window on the east side of the condo. The city lay quiet like a child hiding beneath blankets. Spaventa’s words echoed in his mind. Dorian vowed that the man had not died in vain. “I’ll take you on as my client, Georgio.”

Dorian went looking for Alice. He had a plan to stoke a fire tonight and see if someone took the heat.

Dorian and Alice sat at the bar as he spelled out his plan. “We have to test the validity of Spaventa’s story. If an assassination is imminent, we have no time to waste with a formal inquiry. Besides, whom can we trust? We’ll set off a bomb on all the people close to Lincoln Miles. Let’s see who reacts.”

“I am game,” she said. “But if we set off false alarms, it will make us look foolish.”

Dorian sipped his last drops of scotch. “We’ll look like accomplices if we do not pursue the lead. We can always blame it on the scotch.”

Alice hesitated as though she wanted to say something.

“What is it?” asked Dorian.

She put her drink down and patted the back of his hand. “It’s nothing, Darling. Let’s go to Lincoln’s party and have a good time.”

“Sure,” he said, positive that something worrisome was on her very bright mind.
The electronic sensor trapped the call from Dorian to Spaventa’s office and transmitted the caller ID information to Il Segreto’s PC. The screen flashed, “ALERT.”

Il Segreto read the message. “Ah Dorian! I regret that I may have to kill you. But the work we do demands sacrifices and no one can stop us, not even you. See you tonight, my friend.”

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