Viper

71

Centro citta, Napoli Romano Ivetta and Alberto Donatello had been drinking all night. They started at Bar Luca and, after Valsi disappeared with some unfortunate woman, they spent an hour at a casino before ending up in a two-bit club not far from the prison they'd recently called home.

'You sure we're doing the right thing. Absolutely sure?' asked Donatello, easily the more drunk of the two of them.

'Second thoughts, Alberto?' Ivetta picked peanuts from a bowl on the small high table they were at. He didn't want them but took them anyway. That was his nature.

'I don't think so. But maybe last-minute nerves.' Donatello clinked his bottle against his friend's. 'Guess it's natural?'

'It's natural,' Ivetta reassured him.

The booze helped fog Donatello's worries. Small of stature and poor of pocket he'd had to use his fists, and sometimes a knife, for most of his life. Bully or be bullied, that was the choice you were forced to make on the streets of Naples. But he'd never fired a gun and had never been shot at. Just the thought of it turned his bowels to water. 'You think maybe this can be settled without a firefight?'

'No.' Ivetta smiled and signalled to the barman to bring more beers. Everyone else got served at the counter but he'd been coming here since he was too young to drink and his Camorra connections meant he got special treatment, including never paying. 'Alberto, grow some balls. There's going to be bloodshed. Be brave or be blown away.' He pinched his small friend's shoulder with his giant fingers. 'We have the advantage, my friend. We will strike first. First and fast. It is always the best way.'

The beers came and went. So did Donatello's fears. An hour later the two men slapped backs on the pavement outside, then went their separate ways in the cold drizzle of the early hours.

By the time Alberto Donatello got back to his rented studio apartment in the Spanish Quarter he'd grown the balls that Ivetta had demanded of him. He would do his bit. He would not be found wanting. He was so drunk he struggled to put his key into the lock of the front door. Fuck, he was pissed.

Really pissed. Finally the key slid into the lock. He'd made it. Home sweet home.

He didn't see the figure in the shadows by the basement steps.

Didn't hear the steely swish of the metal chain.

Didn't feel much at all, as Sal the Snake slowly strangled the life out of him.