Who Is Lou Sciortino?: A Novel About Murder, the Movies, and Mafia Family Values

by Ottavio Cappellani, Howard Curtis (Translator)

Overview

Ottavio Cappellani's wildly entertaining Mafia comedy takes us into the unhinged world of a family that makes the Sopranos look like the Waltons. As blood-red as a good bottle of Sicilian wine, Who Is Lou Sciortino? is an exhilarating debut from one of Italy's brightest young talents.

Growing up on the streets of New York, young Lou Sciortino learned many lessons from his grandfather, Don Lou: that whiners are fools; that in order to get respect from other people, you sometimes have to whack a guy; and that the movie business is a perfect place to make dirty money clean. So when young Lou is set up as the head of Starship Pictures, everybody's happy. That is, until the day a rival Mafia family plants a bomb in their offices. Nobody's happy after that, especially not Don Lou, who decides to send his grandson to Sicily to stay out of danger; after all, a really nice, decent person like Lou just doesn't take part in Mafia warfare.

Not long after young Lou goes to work for Uncle Sal Scali—a hapless Mafia boss from Catania who can't even keep the peace in his own neighborhood—a cop is killed during a routine robbery and young Lou is chosen to bring the situation under control. But there's someone else Sal has to reckon with: Lou's grandfather. Don Lou doesn't like the way things are shaping up in Sicily, and decides it's time he paid one last visit to the old country. That's when the bullets really start to fly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466890770
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	02/03/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	324 KB

About the Author

Ottavio Cappellani is a journalist with a daily column in La Sicilia. He lives in Catania, Sicily, where he writes for several other Italian newspapers, fronts a post-punk band, and cultivates carob trees and olives. Who Is Lou Sciortino? is his first novel.

Read an Excerpt

Who is Lou Sciortino?

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By Ottavio Cappellani, Howard Curtis

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright © 2004 Neri Pozza Editore, Vicenza
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9077-0

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CHAPTER 1

NICK IS ON HIS WAY HOME

Nick is on his way home. His face and jacket are stained with blood, he walks quickly but cautiously, his pants falling down over his hips, the hem caught under the heels of his moccasins.

He's carrying a guitar case. He feels cold, and he's just reached the street where he lives: a street of identical little villas off a busy highway. Across the highway, vacant lots, clumps of grass yellowed by the sun between dark masses of volcanic rock.

The neighborhood isn't downtown, it isn't a residential area, and it isn't a suburb: it's all of these things, depending on how the street is lit. Right now there's not much light, but there's a huge billboard advertising a company that makes wedding dresses, and his neighbor Tony's garden is all lit up for a party ...

Nick picks up speed. He's limping. He must have sprained his ankle somewhere. He hopes nobody sees him. He walks even faster.

Tony, who's holding a huge steak impaled on a carving fork, sees him, and his face lights up. "Nick!" he shouts. "Nick! The barbecue!"

Fucking barbecue!

* * *

Tony's face is as smooth and shiny as a baby's ("It's a gift from the Lord," he tells his customers. "It's a curse," says Uncle Sal, who thinks "a man should have a man's face"). One day he started wearing silk shirts with huge collars, soft matching scarves, and pants too narrow even for somebody with a face like his. After a while, the reason became clear: he'd opened a hairdressing salon in the neighborhood, called Tony's, a kind of catacomb furnished like an old-style bordello. ("It ought to be in San Berillo, with the hookers," Uncle Sal remarked.) When he isn't doing the neighborhood ladies' hair, he's throwing barbecues in his garden, weather permitting. Even in October, when the weather isn't too good: he's got at least four months of abstinence ahead of him and, minchia, he might as well put the garden to good use while he can.

Tony liked Nick from the start.

A few months earlier, he'd been worried about the house next door. It had stood vacant ever since the previous occupant, Signor Pulvirenti, left after the last of many arguments over the barbecues. Tony didn't want to find himself with a new Signor Pulvirenti as a neighbor.

The whole thing had come to a head one evening when, after the umpteenth disagreement, Signor Pulvirenti had taken aim with his garden hose and given the barbecue guests a shower. What Signor Pulvirenti didn't know was that one of the guests was Uncle Sal, who that evening was wearing a bespoke suit with a thin light-blue pinstripe he'd just had delivered from Pavone, the Neapolitan he's been using for years.

* * *

Uncle Sal likes to indulge a few "weaknesses," as he says to his friends: made-to-measure suits, strange ideas ("brainwaves," he calls them), and his niece Valentina, who's at training college, or professional something-or-other institute like they call it these days, studying to be a designer. When the spray from Signor Pulvirenti's hose scrambled the pinstripes on Uncle Sal's new suit, the barbecue plunged into a somber silence.

On the other side of the hedge, oblivious to everything, Signor Pulvirenti had continued shouting.

Dripping wet, Uncle Sal had merely opened his arms wide and smiled, like a Pope saying, No, I won't absolve you this time, God's will be done.

Articulating his words clearly, he'd said, "Wet new clothes, lucky new clothes," and left the barbecue. Out on the sidewalk, his driver, head carefully bowed, had opened the door of the black Mercedes.

The following day Uncle Sal had paid a visit to the party in question, and that very afternoon the party in question had moved out. When Tony discovered that the house had a new tenant, he decided to be a good neighbor and make the first overtures.

He found out that the newcomer hailed from Porto Empedocle, that he was studying at the Faculty of Agriculture, and that his name was Nick. One evening he knocked at his door and asked him The Big Question: "Nick, do you have anything against ... barbecues? You know ... the smoke, the smell ... Do they—what's the word kids use these days?—you know, do they bug you?"

Nick stared at Tony's yellow shirt, orange scarf, and baby face. "Not at all."

When Tony got back home, he said to his wife, "He's a good kid, polite ... and real good-looking!"

That was the evening Valentina, who'd come to see her cousin Tony, started to take an interest in Nick, an interest she'd never taken in anyone before.

It was also the evening Nick became a regular guest at Tony's barbecues.

* * *

"Nick, Nick!" Tony shouts again. "Come on over!"

Nick hopes the guests won't notice anything. He turns his head, counting on the fact that the lighting is in his favor, and says, walking faster, "Is that a barbecue? Gosh, I can't, Tony ... I have to run home and make a call."

Tony stands there, with the carving fork in his hand, disappointed.

Disappointed and worried.

This is the first time Nick has turned down his invitation.

Really, the first time.

It's not like him.

Uncle Sal looks at Nick, looks at Tony, and nods with a serious expression.

When Uncle Sal nods, it's obvious he isn't thinking nice thoughts.

"That kid's too polite ... I told you" (though he never had). Then he delivers his verdict. "He's a snob."

Meaningless words, a simple opinion, almost a cliché between relatives. But to Uncle Sal, snob has a particular meaning. Snob means lack of respect, contempt for tradition ... a brazen, conscious arrogance, a sin of pride that nobody, not even the Agnus Dei, can take away from the world. To Uncle Sal, snob means the Opposite: the Opposite of everything that's worth living and dying for. In other words, the Opposite of the Family.

Valentina turns pale, and Tony stammers something incomprehensible.

For a brief moment, Uncle Sal hesitates, like there's a small doubt eating away at the edifice of his thoughts; then the anger returns, more concentrated than ever.

"A SNOB," he says again.

* * *

Nick reaches his front door.

"Fuck," he says, "fuckfuckfuck." Getting his keys out is a problem, it's not easy to slip his hands in the pockets of his pants, because his hands are also covered with blood. Then he says, "Fuck," again, takes the plunge, and slips his dirty hands in his pockets.

The lock yields abruptly.

Nick hurls himself inside and slams the door behind him. Without even turning on the light, he starts to undress, hopping with one leg still in his pants, gets to the washing machine, and throws everything in.

Then he frantically turns the temperature control.

* * *

Via Etnea cuts the city like a whiplash, leading straight up to the volcano. On the right as you climb, about halfway up, there's a dark back alley that links Via Etnea with Piazza Carlo Alberto. In the morning, the piazza is lively, full of merchants with their stalls. In the evening, though, it's empty and deserted, lit only by a pink, ghostly light. A few hundred yards farther down, there are pubs, nightlife, but it doesn't reach this far. A few students going home drunk, now and then. A few sudden shouts that echo and immediately die, nothing more. In the alley, the electric lights shine back from the wet sidewalks and the rivulets left by the October storm. It's the time of year when people are happy to start wearing wool sweaters in the evening.

One bar is still open. Inside, four men are sitting around a plastic table, hanging on Uncle Mimmo's every word.

Uncle Mimmo owns a general store in the neighborhood. He's always been called Uncle Mimmo, no one remembers why.

* * *

"Fuuuuuuck," Nuccio says, stifling a laugh. "I've seen some dead people, let me tell you, but that's the deadest motherfucker I ever saw."

Tuccio is at the wheel of the beat-up Mercedes. He's driving at high speed. "What the fuck you laughing about?" he says to Nuccio.

"Who? Me? I wasn't laughing," Nuccio replies indignantly. "But fuck, did you see the way his head exploded? How the fuck did he get a head like that? It burst like a balloon!" And he laughs.

Tuccio looks at him.

Tuccio isn't laughing.

* * *

In the bar, after so much has already been said, and everybody's waiting for Cosimo to say, "Closing time," Uncle Mimmo says point-blank, "If I'd told him about the crossbow, the sergeant might still be alive right now." He says it like he's expressing something that's been burning him up inside and won't give him any peace.

"A crossbow?" one of the men asks, surprised.

"What crossbow?" another of the men asks.

The conversation revives.

* * *

In his general store, Uncle Mimmo sells bars of soap, toothpaste, brooms, dusters, shoe polish, sponges, shaving foam, razor blades, bleach, and toilet fresheners, as well as every detergent on the market. He also sells a few different kinds of eau de cologne and aftershave and, of course, DDT and Flit.

Cosimo's barman Turi says the flies in Uncle Mimmo's store are such survivors because growing up with all these chemical products has made them immortal.

The store is a little less than six feet wide and a little more than six feet long. Because of the metal shelving, two customers can't be in there at the same time, one of them's got to stand aside, and the merchandise is always falling on the floor. To avoid getting up every time to put things back, if there's somebody in the store and a second customer arrives, Uncle Mimmo says, "Please wait outside, I'll serve you next."

The flies live in the section where the fabric softeners are. They form a tight black cluster that sticks to the bar holding up the metal shelf. They're all over each other, one on top of the other. Eleven and a half inches of flies, as thick as paste, but living and moving. When Uncle Mimmo gets up to check, they scatter in an instant as if they never existed. If a customer passes, though, they keep still and merge into the darkness.

No customer has ever noticed them.

They wait until there's nobody in the store; then they take off like squadrons, even though they give the impression of only ever being one fly, the same fly. If Uncle Mimmo kills one of them with his newspaper, another comes out of the corner and takes the place of its fallen comrade, perfectly imitating its flight and buzz.

In order not to fall for their tricks, Uncle Mimmo has to keep count of the corpses.

* * *

"If I'd told the sergeant about the crossbow," Uncle Mimmo goes on, "then the robber would have seen the sergeant talking to me at the cash desk and might not even have come in. There was a crossbow under the counter."

"There was a crossbow under the counter?" a third man asks.

Uncle Mimmo looks up, slowly. "Every afternoon after lunch," he says, "I clear the table. After I clear the table, I sit in the armchair, in front of the TV, to get a couple hours' sleep. I always do that, you know: sit in the armchair in the afternoon, with a blanket over my knees if I'm cold, turn on the TV, and fall asleep."

The listeners nod, but they're getting impatient.

"So I can get to sleep easier, you know," Uncle Mimmo goes on, "I put on the afternoon show on Antenna Sicilia, the one with Salvo La Rosa. Sometimes they have that comedian on, you know, the funny one, but this afternoon he wasn't on, Commander Fragalà was on."

"The one who owns the gun shop?"

"The one who sings?"

"That's the one. First he sang an aria from L'Elisir d'amore, then Salvo La Rosa sat him down on the guest couch and interviewed him about the new pump-action rifles, the ones he just got in. The Commander said things are great in America, you can go into a shop, take a look at what's on the shelves and in the windows, then go to the salesclerk and say, 'Wrap up this pump-action rifle for me, please,' and he wraps it up."

"It's true," Pietro, who's retired, says. "I saw it in a movie."

Uncle Mimmo makes a gesture with his hand like he's saying, What did I tell you? Then he nods thoughtfully. "The Commander complained to Salvo La Rosa that things in Italy aren't so easy."

"Of course they're not easy," Cosimo says, "but here we have people you can go to who'll sell you anything, even a submachine gun. The one with the Russian name."

"Oh, sure," Uncle Mimmo says. "But who the fuck goes to those people?"

They all make resigned expressions, one with his hands, one with his face, one with his legs.

"I've been thinking about that," Tano says. He's also retired, but helps out in the bar from time to time. "In my opinion, the reason they don't come to you and ask you to pay protection is because you've been in the neighborhood all your life and everyone knows you. Maybe they like you and think they'd be showing a lack of respect if they came and asked you to pay protection."

"Yes," Cosimo says, "they think they're doing us a favor. But look how things end up."

"Precisely," Uncle Mimmo says. "So then you gotta think about self-defense. But whaddaya do with no permit to carry a gun?"

"Exactly," Cosimo says indignantly.

"Anyhow, I was thinking about these things this afternoon, and I decided I had to get hold of something, anything ... I don't know, a knife, a hammer ... whatever, because you never know during a robbery ... Of course, I'm not saying somebody comes in with a submachine gun, you're going to pick up a hammer, because then the guy just starts laughing, but let's say he's distracted ... right? ... let's say he's distracted ... How can you know what might happen during a robbery, maybe one of these things will turn out useful ... you never know."

"It's getting cool," Tano says. "Want me to lower the shutter?" Without waiting for a reply, he stands up.

He walks unsteadily, crookedly, on the sawdust that Turi, the barman, has strewn on the ground—it's more useful than a doormat because the customers never wipe their feet when they come in, and more convenient, because when it stops raining he sweeps up and everything's clean the way it was.

The noise of the shutter being lowered echoes through the whole neighborhood.

* * *

"Fuuuuuck," Nuccio says again.

The lights of evening race faster across the windshield.

Tuccio drives in silence, looking in the rearview mirror every now and then and nodding to himself.

* * *

Tano wipes his hands on his frayed pants, rolled at the waist to reveal the white lining all yellowed. He walks behind the bar, takes a bottle of Punt & Mes from the shelf, and slowly returns to the table.

"So I decided to go to the Commander's shop to see if there was anything you could get without a permit," Uncle Mimmo resumes, once Tano is back in his chair. "When I got to the shop, I went to the salesgirl and explained my situation. She took out a drawer and set it on the counter with a smile, and you know what was inside? A dummy!" he says, disgusted.

"So now you're supposed to chase away magpies or what?" Cosimo says, just as disgusted.

"Just like I said! And they make dummies with this red thing around the end of the barrel so you can't hit anyone anymore."

"They do it because of the law," Tano says. "So you can't do a robbery with a fake gun."

"Yes," Cosimo says, "some fucking law. So now robbers only use real guns."

"Precisely," Uncle Mimmo replies. "Anyhow, I had to explain it all to her from the beginning. I needed something that wasn't a real weapon but close enough, that hurt but not too much, in other words a weapon that didn't need a permit. And then she took out another drawer and set it on the counter and inside there were new guns, all kinds of guns, and so I said, 'Minchia, signorina, what are these, more dummies?' She explained they were air guns. Minchia, you know, air guns, right?"

"What are you, a kid on Halloween, that we gotta give you an air gun now?" Cosimo says.

"That's exactly what I said. So then she explained these guns don't shoot those little red rubber things. Now they shoot these really hard little bullets and they're perfect replicas of guns on the market. If you want, you can buy the bullets with a metal core, but they cost more. At thirty feet, she says they make a bruise like this. So I asked her, 'And what if I buy them with the metal core?' Just then, the Commander, who'd just finished serving somebody else, came up to us and said, 'Then the bruise lasts longer. But what the fuck are you buying, Uncle Mimmo?'"

"He's used to handling real guns, not shit," Cosimo says.

"Precisely. So then I explained my situation again to the Commander, and he nodded, being an expert in these things. Then he told me I was right, and he'd find something to take care of my problem."

"That guy knows what he's talking about," Cosimo says.

"So he thought about it awhile, and he looked around, and said what I needed was a nice sling. They make them now with this thing you put around the handle to give it more explosive power, and they shoot these colored glass pellets that are very, very accurate, and at thirty feet the bruise they give you is something else."

"Minchia," Tano says.

"Wait. As the Commander was turning around to get the sling off the sling shelf, I saw a cardboard box with a colored drawing of a rat with these enormous fangs and a smile on its face. So I asked him, 'What's in there?' And the Commander smiled and said, 'Minchia, Uncle Mimmo, why didn't I think of that before?'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Who is Lou Sciortino? by Ottavio Cappellani, Howard Curtis. Copyright © 2004 Neri Pozza Editore, Vicenza. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Prologue,
Nick is on his way Home,
"Where'd you get this meat, Tony?",
Meanwhile in New York,
It's Eleven O'Clock when Nick gets up with a start,
"Mister Ceccaroli for you",
"Uncle Sal came to see you?!",
Frank Twiddles his thumbs and looks at them,
Scali's Amaretti,
Jasmine just spent half an hour in the red room,
Lou is on Via Pacini,
In the lobby of the hotel, Don Giorgino is slurping an Orzata,
Lou Sciortino Senior lived in Brooklyn until not so long ago,
Nunzio and Agatino are deep in thought,
Uncle Sal would really like to see you,
On the plane, Chaz is fixing a couple of Martinis,
"Excuse me, you must be Nicky, am I right?",
In Rome, Ceccaroli has done his job well,
On the beach at Marzamemi two tourists are reading,
Giorgino Favarotta's older Brother, Leoluca Favarotta,
At Scali's Amaretti, Signorina Niscemi is talking on the phone,
This Morning Cettina woke with a start,
Uncle Sal has arrived at the Eden pool hall,
Today Frank was horrified to realize,
Don Lou's Jaguar moves silently,
Uncle Sal and Don Giorgino are sitting in the backseat of the Mercedes,
The Telephone rings in Tony's House,
Sciacca and Longo never catch a break,
To find a Nero d'Avola,
The room is Dimly Lit,
Tony phoned the Chinese Restaurant on Via Pacini,
Don Giorgino's Orzata is a ritual, a way of showing off,
"Cettina, you're a disgrace to both Houses!",
At Marzamemi, the sea today is like a sheet of glass,
Epilogue,
Acknowledgments,
Copyright,