C14 Chapter 13 - Matteo

Matteo

Palermo, Sicily, Italy 2019/2020 – winter

Waking up on Christmas Eve in Palermo always makes Matteo feel nostalgic. The smell of cheesecake coming from downstairs mixed with the cigar smoke coming out of his father’s lounge as he has guests over, his mother cooking downstairs while also trying to teach Aurora something, and the never-ending Christmas lights flashing outside his window. That’s how he’s been waking up every December 24th since he was born.

When he was younger, he would go outside and play with Marco until it was time for dinner before they got into bed and slept thinking of Santa. As he got older, he started going out with his friends and coming back after curfew just to fall right asleep. And for the past couple of years, he would spend some time talking to his father about the past year in their business before going out and coming back whenever he felt like it. As long as he would be up for dinner with the whole extended family in the restaurant, nobody had anything to say about it.

The landline in his room starts ringing, which can only mean that it’s his father. He groans and gets out of bed to grab the phone of the wall.

“Yes.”

“Can you come in the lounge please?”

“Do I really have to?”

The silence on the other line makes him want to scream, but instead he hangs up and carries himself to the bathroom.

His father is in the lounge with a man Matteo hasn’t seen before. They’re smoking cigars and drinking coffee, which means everyone’s in a good mood today.

“Francesco has a problem with his store.” His father goes on, urging Francesco to continue.

“Uuh yes, there are two men who have been coming in for weeks now, asking me to give them a spot on the loading docks. When I refused, they threatened to come in today and take it by force.”

“Do you know these people?” Matteo asks.

Francesco shakes his head. “They’re not from around here.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have accents.”

“What kind of accents?”

“Eastern European. Polish, maybe?”

Matteo looks at his father, as if asking why he’s here in the first place.

“Paulo needs someone to watch over Francesco and drive into town so he can talk to those men.” His father clarifies.

Paulo is a tall, muscly guy with tattoos who could intimidate anyone he wanted. Matteo was never intimidated per se, mainly because for the first sixteen years of his life, Paulo was Uncle Paulo - Vinnie’s dad. He was also his father’s best friend since the two of them were kids growing up in Palermo. Sometimes they would tell stories about how their fathers (Matteo and Vinnie’s grandfathers) also grew up together and started the whole business.

As Matteo and Vinnie both came to realize, “the business” wasn’t just sanitation, insurance and real estate, it was also organized crime. And it’s been going on for decades.

“Why can’t Vinnie do it?” Matteo asks, even though he knows the answer. He’s just tired and watching a shakedown of some European wannabe-gangsters isn’t one of the things he’d like to do on Christmas Eve. That’s where it all goes downhill. He likes taking care of the club and taking a cut, under the radar. But he also knows that his father would never put him in harm’s way. He trusts him that much.

“He’s in Taormina.” his father answers, calm and collected. “Put some pants on and then go start the car. I have someone already waiting for me in the guest room.”

Matteo looks down at his sweatpants.

“Thank you, Señor Giudice.” Francesco says, standing up and shaking his hand. “Thank you.”

His father waves him off as if it’s no big deal, shoots Matteo a look that says “behave”, and then walks through the double doors into the main hallway to get to the guest room.

Matteo doesn’t change his pants and waits in the car for five minutes before Paulo and Francesco finally climb into the car. Paulo tells him the address and then goes to light a cigarette.

“I’m not a taxi driver.” Matteo says and then takes out his phone to put the address on Waze. “Twenty-five minutes.” He reads and then puts the car into drive. “Let’s see if we can make it twenty.”

***

Francesco’s bait shop which also doubles as the loading dock’s headquarters is a small, one story shop located right by the pier. Matteo parks the car a couple of meters away and watches the two of them enter the shop. Now he waits.

Matteo: wyd

Vinnie: sleeping

Matteo: I’m driving your dad around

Vinnie: exciting ☺))

Matteo rolls his eyes and looks back towards the store. There’s literally no one here.

Matteo: not really

Vinnie: what happened?

Matteo: this guy needs protection from some polish gangsters

Vinnie: figures

Matteo taps his phone against his chin, eyes wandering to the pier. He can see past the loading docks, further away into the shoreline where people have parked their boats and yachts.

Matteo: let’s rent a yacht this summer

Vinnie: okay

He tries calling Isabella on video, and her face appears on the screen two seconds later. “Yes.” She answers, clearly annoyed that Matteo woke her up.

“What are you doing?”

She looks at the screen annoyed. “Clearly sleeping. Ugh. You?”

“I’m helping my father out with something. You coming tomorrow?”

Matteo knows that Isabella’s parents have been having problems so asking whether they’ll attend the annual Christmas dinner is a legit question.

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t elaborate, nor does she ask why he’s asking. They can talk without talking.

“What are we doing for New Year’s?” Isabella continues, turning on the other side of her bed.

Matteo shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably a house party here or in Taormina.” “I’m going to invite Valentina.”

“Isn’t she in Moscow?”

“Yeah, but it’s worth a try. I don’t want to be the only girl there.”

“You know you won’t.” Matteo starts, but Isabella is already rolling her eyes. “Besides Allison or Sophia or any other girls that are there because you’re you.”

The mention of Allison’s name makes Matteo tense up. It’s a sensible subject for him and Isabella, mainly because Allison made him lie to her on a couple of occasions.

“She’s matured, you know.”

“That seems irrelevant to me.”

Matteo sighs. “I saw her over the past few weeks and she’s chill. I think she worked on some stuff.”

“I trust and respect your instincts, but I also trust mine. And mine say not to trust her.” “But you’ll be there, right? Even if Valentina doesn’t come.”

Isabella flips him off. “Of course I will.”

Matteo looks back up towards the store just in time to see two men go inside. He zones out what Isabella is telling him about what outfit she’s going to wear tomorrow, as if he could hear through the walls.

“Are you even listening to me?” she asks.

Before Matteo can reply, there’s a couple of loud gunshots coming from inside the store which startles them both.

“I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.”

He hangs up on her without offering explanations or wondering whether she’d heard anything before he gets out of the car and runs towards the store.

“What happened?” Matteo asks, eyes falling on one of the two men he saw coming in now laying on the floor with a red hole in his head. “Did you kill him?”

Paulo looks at Francesco, who’s hiding away in a corner looking absolutely mortified.

“He shot at us first.” Francesco tells Matteo while Paulo lifts the other unconscious guy up from the floor.

“Help me carry him to his car, then call your father and tell him to send the sanitation department.” Paulo says, and for a moment, Matteo doesn’t get it.

And then he does. It suddenly starts to make even more sense; how his father would sometimes pick up the phone during dinners and then excuse himself because the sanitation department has encountered a problem. Matteo doesn’t remember exactly what little white lie his father would give them (a pipe burst in the city, there’s a problem with the trash pickup on this street, that house needs new recycling bins), but he would always mention the sanitation department of his business.

Matteo’s hands are shaking as he searches for his father’s number in his phone. He watches Paulo and Francesco stuff the guy who’s not dead yet in the trunk of the car.

“Matteo? Is everything alright?”

“We have uh…” he doesn’t even know what to say because this side of his father’s business has never occurred to him before. It has, but not in practice. It’s all very new to Matteo. “The sanitation department needs to come to Francesco’s shop.”

Silence.

“Okay. I’ll call them.” Then the line goes dead.

Apparently it’s all too familiar for his father.

“I will stay here and wait for the crew. You go drive Francesco home.” Matteo looks at Paulo bewildered. “What about that man in the trunk?!”

Paulo waves it off. “Drive straight to your house after and put the car into the back garage. Your father will take care of the rest.”

Of course.

For the next hour, which is spent driving Francesco home to his house near the shop on the outskirts of the city and then back to his house, all Matteo can do is think about the unconscious man he in the back of the car he’s driving.

There’s a thousand ways this could go wrong, and most of them begin with the police stopping him.

And to his luck, just as he’s about to turn right off the main road and onto the street where he lives, a police car waves him down to pull over. Every single amount of stress he’s ever carried in his body is now rushing through him, sending shivers down his spine.

“License and registration?”

“Is there a problem?” Matteo asks as he looks through the glovebox on the passenger’s side for the registration and insurance.

“Is this your car?” the policeman asks.

Matteo hands over his license and the papers.

“It’s my father’s.”

The officer reads the top of the paper then double checks the license.

“You were speeding up the hill.” The policeman says before handing the papers back to him. “Have a good day.”

And just like that, Matteo watches the guy get into his car and leave. It takes him a couple of minutes to come back down from the adrenaline, and then drives the past few hundred meters into his driveway.

The door of the garage in the back is already open and his father is waiting inside, pressing the button to close the garage as soon as Matteo’s inside.

“What happened?” his father asks, stepping aside and revealing Romeo behind him.

“His partner started shooting so Paulo killed him.” Matteo says. It comes out colder, like a matter of fact, like he’s telling his father about what he did in school today, not how his “uncle” just shot a guy dead and then beat another one unconscious.

“Did anyone see you?”

Matteo shakes his head. “But a policeman stopped me on the way here.” “That’s Russo. He’s keeping an eye out for who might come to our house.” “But he’s police.” Matteo says, confused.

“He’s a friend who’s in the police.” His father corrects him, before pointing to the trunk and looking at Romeo. “Let’s take care of this.”

While Romeo struggles to get the guy out of the trunk and carry him into a room just off the garage, Matteo’s father places a hand on his shoulder.

“Make sure any evidence that you were there is gone.”

It’s too much for Matteo’s head. “What evidence?”

“Anything that could link you to that location at that time.”

“Okay?”

There’s so many questions Matteo wants to ask but doesn’t want the answer to, so for now he decides to just go along with what his father says.

He finds himself alone in the garage a few minutes later, going over everything he’s done since he woke up today. Then he takes out his phone and opens his conversation with Vinnie.

Matteo: delete the whole conversation

Matteo: now