Empire of Light (27 page)

I dive to the ground!

It’s only after a few awkward seconds that I realize I was ducking a sound effect.

Goddamn video game.

One of the characters had been smoked by a 9mm, his head blown apart in glorious HD. The entire room erupts in a thrilled groan.

“OOOHHH!”

A kid, wearing his powder blue SSC Napoli soccer jersey, tosses his controller onto the coffee table in disgust, the obvious victim. He stands up and flips off the on-screen character that killed him. “
Vaffanculooo
!”

I look around the room and recognize almost all the members of the crew that jacked me in the alley.

They kick back in recliners and second hand sofas, snacking on junk food, smoking fat blunts and drinking bottles of those way-too-sweet alcohol-pops, probably all paid for with my credit card.

Before I could snag a cold bottle and join the little bastards, I’m startled by another jarring sound effect from the game.

SMACK!

I’m quickly corrected regarding the origin of this sound as well, as the Young Capo, the leader from the alley, flails into the room and hits the ground with a dull thud. Somebody just bitch slapped that fool so hard that it sounded as if it had been broadcasted over 5.1 surround sound.

Karma can be so damn cool it’s shocking.

A huge fat man wearing a Puma tracksuit follows him into the room, patiently emerging from the hallway like a vengeful angel on the hunt. The crew goes as silent as lambs, with only the hip-hop music of the video game cutting through the awkward silence.

“
Aspetta!” 
yells the Courier, the kid who brought me here, as he holds up the roll of cash he almost lost.

I can only imagine that the Young Capo was beaten because he couldn’t deliver a pay-off on time.

Track Suit aims his pudgy finger in the direction of a dark corner.

The Courier warily walks to the corner and holds out the cash to seemingly nobody. It’s an empty damn corner. He’s offering money to a shadow.

Then slowly, the shadow in the corner stirs, and I realize that somebody is indeed there. He was using the darkness to pull his version of the Klingon invisibility cloak.

The figure dons a black on black business suit that almost perfectly blends with the inky shadow. It’s only when he begins to move that the subtle differences in shading reveal themselves and the illusion is broken.

The man refuses to fully reveal himself, opting for only his hand to be exposed to the light. The Courier cautiously drops the roll of cash into the open palm and then withdraws his own hand quickly, as if his fingers were in danger of being snapped off at the joints.

However, the kid isn’t out of danger yet, as evidence by how he’s suddenly snatched up off the ground and thrown against the bar by the Young Capo.

“
Stupido!” 
the Young Capo yells, enraged and spitting blood. He pins the terrified Courier atop the bar as he brutally screams at him, in Italian, with every obscenity in the book. I don’t waste energy trying to understand what he’s screeching. He’s talking fast and in Neapolitan dialect. But even a class-A moron can see what’s going down without knowing a lick of the language.

The young crew had a job to do for the Don. The chore was simple; make sure the money from some clandestine transaction gets from point A to Point B, promptly. The courier ran a bit late. The Shadow Don became annoyed by the delay and exacted punishment.

And that’s where I walked in.

The Young Capo finally notices me witnessing all this bullshit.

“
Ciao?”
I sheepishly greet the angry jerk.

While still pinning the Courier on the bar, the Capo’s neck goes beet red with anger. The animal doesn’t even bother screaming actual words. He shrieks at me. Seriously, how the hell did I get here? Am I really standing in a gang’s HQ in Napoli being shrieked at? Really?

The Courier, seeing how I’m about to have my life ended, nervously begins to tell the room our story. He tells how he dropped the money (he’s very sorry about that) and how I chased him down to give it back. When he gets to the returning-the-cash part, the entire room turns to gaze upon me. You’d think the kid said I threw a box full of puppies into traffic.

“
E siamo qui,
” the Courier finishes.
And here we are.

The Capo pushes the Courier to the ground and rolls up on me. “I told you what I’d do if ever saw you again.”

I’m yanked almost off my feet by a half dozen hands, dragged out through the back door and thrown down to the ground. Towering above me are three hardcore thugs, shaved heads and barely old enough to drive. They talk to each other in dialect, and I can’t understand a word, but I can tell it’s light conversation. Last nights soccer game, an up coming date, maybe one was telling a joke. It’s the mindless conversation of three teenagers working an after school job. If it weren’t for the fact that one of them was waving a .38 Special around, the scene would almost be banal.

The guy aims the gun at me as the others taunt me. I ask them to leave me alone and they just laugh.

This just may be it. Jesus Christ. Not like this.

BANG!

A kid, no older than ten I guess, suddenly bursts through the back door making all of us jump, even the bastard holding the gun.

The kid says something to the three thugs and they shrug, as if to say,
Here we go again
.

The gun totin’ punk gives me a relatively light kick in the face, hitting me right in the nose.

ACHOO!

By the way, I’m one of those people who sneezes whenever I bump my nose. A half dozen hands yank me off the ground and drag me back into the building, me sneezing all the way.

ACHOO!

ACHOO!

ACHOO!

They throw me down in a chair next to a table full of empty soda and liquor bottles. The Shadow Don stands in front of me.

AAAACHOO!

“
Salute,” 
he says as he tosses me his black silk handkerchief. He’s about forty-plus and has jet-black curly hair, a tightly clipped goatee, and angry eyes. And I’m pretty sure that his black suit cost more than my entire trip to Europe and then some. I finish wiping my nose and try to give the silk hanky back to him. He looks at me like I’m some kind of nut.

“Help me to understand this,” the Don says in perfect English. “This crew stole your wallet, beat you and left you penniless and alone on foreign soil, far from home. Then this kid runs past you and drops five thousand dollars in untraceable euro on the ground.”

Was it that much? What the hell was I thinking? Jesus! No wonder these people are looking at me like I’m an asshole. I
am
an asshole!

“You picked up this roll of free money, and instead of keeping it, you chose to chase him down to return it?”

“Yes, sir,” I say almost embarrassed.

“Why?” he asks with genuine curiosity, crossing his arm as he waits for my explanation.

“Well, first of all, there was no way that kind of cash belonged to that kid. He was holding for somebody. I guess I figured I couldn’t enjoy my pizza knowing that some poor guy was someplace getting his brains pushed out of his skull with a baseball bat.”

“I don’t know. The pizza here is very good,” says the Don.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, it’s the best in the world. You’d be surprised at what a good pizza would help you forget.”

I don’t like where this conversation is going. I think I’m going to change channels.

“The real reason I came here was because I was hoping that somebody here might be able to help me to get my camera back,” I say.

“Your camera?”

“It was stolen by a couple of guys on a Vespa, right outside the train station.”

“This camera must be very important to you.”

“Yeah. Very. It’s a vintage Brownie.”

CRASH!

The Don suddenly clears the table with a violent sweep of his arm, flinging the empty glass bottles smashing onto the concrete floor. The immense racket puts everybody in the room on edge again.

He calmly sits down.

“
Due cafè,”
he says to one of the boys.

“
Subito,
” the kid responds before dashing to the bar.

“You’re a photographer?”

“A cinematographer. A wannabe.”

“Wannabe?” he asks, gently waving his hand in the air as if to say,
what does this mean?

“I aspire to be one.”

“A cinematographer? Well, you must know the work of the great Vittorio Storaro.”

Are you kidding me? Really? This is perfect!

But, I can’t overplay this opening.

Easy, now.

Just two guys in a room, having a conversation.

“He’s the best. I love his work, especially
Il Conformista.
” I try to speak casually.

“Yes!” exclaims the Don enthusiastically as he slams his hand on the table, causing my heart to just about jump out of my chest.

“You like this film?” he asks, as he points an accusatory finger at me.

“Like it? I wish I could turn it into a woman, get it drunk and screw it.”

The Don laughs. Cool!

“In fact,” I continue, “I just met Vittorio Storaro in Rome yesterday.”

“No!” he says as if gossiping with the neighbor. “What’s he like?”

“The guy literally made light come alive for me. We only talked for a few minutes, but I’ll never forget it.”

“
Che bello
. I bet you wouldn’t. However, as much as
Il Conformista
pleases me, I have to say that I enjoyed
Last Tango in Paris
much more.”

This Storaro thing seems to have diverted him from the daily grind of having people killed. He embraces the conversation, and soon we’re just a couple of film geeks killing time over coffee. The tension dissipates and the room slowly reverts back to chatter and video game noise as we talk film. After twenty minutes we’ve covered everything from the Soviet Montage to
Star Wars
.

“So, what brings you to Napoli?” he asks as he takes a sip of his coffee.

“I’m in Europe tracking down my favorite Caravaggio paintings.”

I see a glint in the Don’s eye. “I adore Caravaggio,” he says excitedly.

Me and this guy really are kindred spirits, except for the gangland shit, that is.

“Of course, you can’t love Storaro and not love Caravaggio,” the Don states with absolute conviction.

“You can’t,” I agree.

“You can’t! It’s like fucking Beyoncè and hating the blacks. It’s an hypocrisy.”

“Okay. Well. Um. I guess it would be difficult to hate black people after sleeping with Beyoncè. In fact, I’d have a hard time hating anybody after sleeping with Beyoncè. So. Yes. I have to agree with you on this point. Well played,” I state, toasting the Don with my coffee.

The Don then leans in close to me as he explains the history of Caravaggio. I know all this shit already, but I figure maybe he’ll be even less likely to give me the
Luca Brasi
treatment (strangling me from behind with piano wire) if he thinks of me as a mentee. I let him babble on.

“So how has your journey gone so far?”

“You mean up until I got to Naples? Fantastic.”

“Ah, the camera,” he says, bringing us back to where we started.

“I documented every painting I found with that camera. Is there anyway you could help me find it?”

“How about if I could just get you the film back?”

“Well, the film is experimental. If somebody tries to remove it, it might be destroyed,” I say.

He sits back and thinks for a moment.

“When I was a boy I used to paint all the time. My art teacher was so impressed with my sketches that he met with my parents and told them that I was a diamond in the rough, and that my artistry should be nurtured. However, my parents…They were far too practical to even consider such a vocation. I often think about how quickly my parents would’ve sent me to art school if they had foreseen what I would eventually become.”

“Your parents and Hitler’s, right?” I say with a laugh.

Now, what exactly made me say something so stupid is beyond me. I guess I got a bit too comfortable. I don’t truly realize the magnitude of my faux pas until I gaze over to the Young Capo and Track Suit, both rolling their eyes, seemingly annoyed that they are going to have go through the trouble of disposing my body, after all.