Mafia Princess (9 page)

One night after we got back from visiting Dad I saw the other side of Bruno, the brutal
Mafiosi
part of him. We’d gone to our regular disco in Milan with Magda and her mates. As I was standing at the side of the dance floor, a lad came up and asked me where the toilets were. I pointed to them but before he could move, Uncle Guglielmo, who I hadn’t known
was there, appeared, mad-eyed with cocaine. He hammered the lad in the face, battering him with punch after punch until the guy’s nose was spread across his face and blood was pouring from his mouth. When he fell to the ground my uncle started kicking him while everyone watched.

Bruno appeared and joined in, kicking the guy even when he was out of it, out cold. They kicked him so hard they both bust their shoes. I’d never seen anything like it. They thought he was chatting me up – ‘Hi, gorgeous’, that sort of line – and they’d all but killed him for it.

When I told them what the lad had really said, Uncle Guglielmo grunted, ‘He shouldn’t have spoken to you.’

Back at the apartment, still upset about what I had seen, I asked about it again. Uncle Guglielmo was more reasonable without the cocaine and he put his arms around me and said, ‘Marisa, all you need to know is your family will always protect you. Nobody fucks with us. That’s all you need to know.’

In the circumstances, I shut up and concentrated on having a good time with Bruno. He took me shopping and out for lunch. We drove to Lake Como and went to Rome to see all the sights, the ancient Roman history, and it was romantic. And innocent. I realised loads of girls fancied him but he wanted to spend time with me, and that made me feel special.

But I had to return to Mum. He drove me to the airport and before I went through passport control he kissed me on the lips. Our first kiss. It was only a peck but it felt amazing. He put his arms around me and said,
‘Ciao, bella.’

I cried my heart out all the way back to Manchester. I was so distressed the stewardess sat next to me to make sure I was OK, and that I wasn’t going to jump out at 35,000 feet.

When I got home I walked straight past Mum and started writing Bruno a letter.

I was shaky. I felt my life depended on knowing when I was going to see him again. I don’t know if I was seduced by Bruno or by a combination of Bruno and my whole life experience in Italy. My mind, like my genes, was divided. I had a weird choice between gloom and doom. In my heart, inside me, I knew Bruno could and would protect me from anything. And I wanted a strong man to care for me.

But Bruno needed looking after too. A drug exchange in Milan had gone wrong and Bruno had to get out of town until the cops could be straightened.

Uncle Guglielmo told him: ‘Go, lose yourself.’

So a month after I’d left Italy he rang me from Manchester Airport asking for directions to Blackpool. I was ecstatic. He’d just got on a plane, along with his mate Coby, the sixteen-year-old son of Uncle Guglielmo’s girlfriend. Coby had brought loads of cash, more than £1,000, and his girlfriend Sarah. Bruno had bags and bags of marijuana. He’d thought nothing of bringing it through customs. That was what he did for a living, smuggled dope.

They hired a car and after Bruno figured out driving – at high speed – on the left-hand side of the road, they arrived on my doorstep. We took two rooms at a bed and breakfast
in Blackpool. I forgot all about college classes and going home to Mum.

Mum wasn’t very happy. I was. This was the excitement I’d been craving, with no boring spreadsheets and business charts and graphs. This was real life, another taste of the pace, intrigue and excitement of Milan. It was also sex, drugs and Duran Duran. Bruno and Coby used the marijuana as though they were sending smoke signals. They were puffing constantly. As we walked along Blackpool Pier or on the pleasure beach. They didn’t care.

At first I only smoked joints with them in our rooms so as not to look like some innocent kid, but soon I got into enjoying it. It was relaxing and, along with the booze we were putting away, let my troubles drift away.

Driving around with Bruno made me feel all grown up, part of a team. We were a partnership. I liked that. And Bruno was cute and gentle when he did silly things. It made him more lovable. He wanted to be this macho man who could handle anything.

Especially cars. We stopped on the Fleetwood road to get some petrol and he filled up with diesel. We’d only gone a few hundred yards when we conked out. A white-haired driver stopped to help and worked it out immediately: ‘You’ve put in the wrong stuff, mate!’

Bruno was aghast. He went bright red. He was so embarrassed. I gave him a huge hug and a kiss.

From then on he drove like a maniac, trying to show he was king of the road. Bruno loved cars and so did I. I knew
all about them because I’d grown up around men who drove the best. I loved the speed and wind in your hair, the thrill of it. But speeding about is not a good idea around Blackpool with its irritating thirty-mile-an-hour limits everywhere, and we were stopped. Luckily we weren’t hurtling around the place, but Bruno was pushing his luck. The copper was good about it. He studied Bruno’s Italian licence, asked how long he was staying and then looked straight at me. Did he know Bruno was wanted in Milan? That was silly – how could he? But what was it?

It turned out he was Blackpool’s laughing policeman: ‘Tell your man this is not Monza.’

We were on our way with a ticking off. Bruno shrugged it off. I was relieved, and I’d liked the sound of ‘your man’.

One morning at the B&B I woke up and saw a huge concrete flower tub in the room that should have been at the front of the building. Bruno had gone out drinking with a male friend of Dawn’s and they’d got back drunk and brought it upstairs. They thought it was hilarious. The landlady didn’t.

We moved out and into a flat, and I slept with Bruno the first night there. I bled a little and he went ‘Ooh’, thinking he’d taken my virginity. He seemed pleased so I just went along with it. I never told him he wasn’t actually the first. It was my first serious lovemaking and he was not a wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am merchant. He took care, and time.

Which I wasn’t doing with Mum. She was going ballistic. I went home every couple of days or so to try and keep the
peace and do some washing and collect clothes. I told her I was seeing people on holiday from Italy and, my mistake, said one of them was a friend of Dad’s.

She asked more and I explained I’d met Bruno on my trip, he’d been the driver. She couldn’t tolerate that. She was straight on the phone to Italy to Uncle Guglielmo. Who was this lad?

He said Bruno was a good guy, a safe guy. He was honest and told her that Bruno was avoiding the police and that he didn’t know where he was and – no mobile phones – couldn’t contact him.

Mum could. She found a note with the B&B name in some jeans I’d left for the wash. She screamed round to the place. We’d moved by then and she was greeted by our TV sitcom Blackpool landlady. They were two very unhappy and pissed-off ladies. We hadn’t exactly been staying at the Ritz.

‘Disgusting kids! They’ve gone, and they’ve left a right mess. There was even a pregnancy test in the bin.’

Pregnancy! Marisa! Italian boy! That was a hat-trick of horror for Mum.
Déjà vu.
A disaster.

When she confronted me I tried to explain. ‘That pregnancy test wasn’t mine. It was that girl Sarah’s, who is with the other lad. Honestly, it wasn’t mine. Mum, it’s not mine.’

But she was back on the phone to Milan. By now that side of the family were in a rage at Bruno. And at me. They hadn’t known where he was but they certainly hadn’t expected him to be pleasuring himself – and me – in Blackpool.
Dad was told, he had to be, and was furious. He wanted Bruno back in Italy, and by then Bruno had no choice.

The money had gone.

And so was he after I kissed him goodbye at Manchester Airport. I wasn’t too upset. It was only a few weeks until the summer break and my annual trip to Milan. I said as much to Mum. She put me straight. In fact, she read the riot act.

‘You vanished with this guy for nearly three weeks. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care about anybody else? What has got into you? Everybody is angry, really angry. Forget about going, they won’t let you back after this.’

I told her not to be silly. Nan loved me. Dad loved me.

It was a few days later when Uncle Guglielmo telephoned with some devastating news. Dad was ferociously upset about Bruno and me. He didn’t want to see me.

Ever again.

My whole world fell apart.

‘Tempt not a desperate man.’

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
,

ROMEO AND JULIET

When he returned to the Piazza Prealpi, Bruno walked into slaps across the face from Uncle Guglielmo. The blows were physical and verbal and all stung.

‘See Marisa, I’ll rip your head off.

‘See Marisa, Emilio will cut your balls off.

‘See Marisa, you are a dead man.

‘Get it? Understand?’

Bruno did, but if I needed any proof about how much he cared for me I got it when I returned to Milan that summer of 1987. I owed it all to Auntie Rita, who once again offered me a bed, somewhere to stay. She was erratic, and her amphetamine intake was frightening. There was no telling what she would do, how she would react. Yet she was my saviour.

There were some terrible scenes with Mum when I told her that I was going to Milan.

‘You’ll see that lad again and there’ll be trouble. You wait and see. Just wait.’

But I was miserable living in Blackpool. I wasn’t a child and I was so determined, so sure, that I had to go.

Uncle Guglielmo was waiting for me when I got to Auntie Rita’s. He ignored any formalities and ranted at me. It went
on for several minutes and the message was very loud and very clear: ‘Stay away from Bruno.’

I asked how my dad was but he said not to bother asking as he was furious with me: ‘Your father doesn’t want you to be with this guy. He wants you to settle down, meet a lawyer, a doctor, someone else. Not Bruno.’

Although Bruno was a friend of the family and of my uncle, Dad didn’t want me to be with him because he was who he was. The family had sorted out the prosecutors and Bruno was free to move around the city, as long as he stayed clear of me. It was a similar deal for me.

I cried myself to sleep at Auntie Rita’s. I couldn’t see the two most important men in my life. Bruno was forbidden. Dad had disowned me.

Despite the distress, I knew for sure that Bruno was my man. He said he’d rather be dead than not see me. That was over-the-top romantic but obviously there had to be some caution.

Auntie Rita suggested to Uncle Guglielmo that she and I needed a bit of space. Angela and the other girls could come around and she told her brother she would speak to me about Bruno and sort that out. Guglielmo agreed because he was run off his feet following Dad’s instructions and watching his own back. Family informants had warned him he was under twenty-four-hour police watch.

With Uncle Guglielmo off the scene, Bruno became part of it again. He’d got himself a red Alfa Romeo Spider Series III and we’d howl off to Lake Como to a special spot we’d
found and make love in the open air. Bruno was as crazy about me as I was about him. But I wanted to be with him all the time, not just for an hour here and there. I had to come to terms with the competing demands of business and the peccadilloes of the Milan man. Which Bruno followed to the letter. He would spend the day with me but on the stroke of 6 p.m. he was off drinking and gambling with his mates. Or going to San Siro to watch AC Milan – they were all football fanatics. I was jealous of him being away and especially being away and doing things I knew nothing about.

Auntie Rita, who eased her own concerns with her daily dose of amphetamines, read me some of the rule book: ‘Get over it, honey. That’s our life. Don’t ask, for you don’t need to know.’

But I did. At that time Bruno was on cocaine constantly. His parents had bought a brand new bakery van on the back of a state school contract. The day they got it Bruno got totally out of his head and took it for a drive with twenty of his mates on board. Twenty! He didn’t get very far before he’d smashed it around a lamppost, mangled it into scrap. A couple of the guys had to go to hospital but Bruno jumped out and limped off.

His mum and dad, who never knew that he had nicked it, reported it as stolen. These people grafted; every penny they earned, they worked hard for by baking during the night. Bruno was mortified and never told them he’d nicked the van.

He was reckless, and had no respect for his family and how hard they worked, but I was blind to it. I was in love
with him. He could do no wrong in my eyes. I felt he was just a bit wild. The kind of guy who likes a drink, who I knew was taking drugs and who would get into fights.

Yet before long I witnessed two displays of incredible violence, both teetering on the edge of murder. And I was the reason, possibly the excuse.

Rita suggested that Bruno and I come to a seaside caravan park on the outskirts of Rimini for a couple of days, along with her and her fourteen-year-old son Massimo. I thought it would be a chance for us to spend some proper time together away from
his
friends and possible trouble from
my
family, so we agreed.

As soon as we were settled in the caravan park, we went to the local fairground. We were having a great time on the rides when some guy came up to me and asked for a light for his cigarette. I said I couldn’t help and he lost it: ‘OK, then why don’t you go and fuck off.’

Massimo stepped in, shouting, ‘Why are you talking to her like that? Say sorry.’

The guy just laughed at Massimo, who was only a little lad, and walked away.

‘I’m going to go and get Bruno,’ shouted Massimo.

‘No, please don’t do that,’ I begged. ‘Bruno will go mad and we’ll have to leave. Just don’t say anything. It’s not a big deal.’

I went to the toilets. Massimo looked like an ordinary kid but he was a tough little bugger and was already dealing drugs on the family’s piazza. He wasn’t going to let it go. He
went to Bruno. When I reappeared a huge crowd had gathered by some steps. At the top was Bruno. He was bouncing this guy’s head off the metal posts fixed to each of the stairs and shouting, ‘Motherfucker. Motherfucker.’

The boy was screaming for him to stop but all he got in return was: ‘Motherfucker, fucking motherfucker!’ And his skull was bounced off another railing. Another, and another. I heard the thuds.

I thought Bruno was going to kill him.

Bruno thought he had killed him.

He was dead-eyed. I’d never seen that zoned-out look before. He’d blocked out the crowd around him and was hammering this guy again and again and again.

His victim finally blacked out and crumpled into a pool of blood.

Bruno ran out of the park, with Massimo and me chasing after him.

I screamed: ‘You might have killed that guy!’

‘I know. That’s why we have to go. Now! We have to get out of here.’

When we got back to the caravan Bruno told Rita we had to get going. Rita, at thirty years of age, was a veteran of disorder and didn’t need to ask why. We heard the screeching of the police and ambulance sirens but we drove off before we saw their flashing blue lights.

I should have been scared. I should have been terrified. I wasn’t. The guy had been rude to me, and although he didn’t deserve to get beaten up so badly I was proud Bruno wanted
to defend me. I felt that with Bruno by my side no one could hurt me. I fell into his arms and went to sleep as we drove back to Milan. Where more trouble was waiting.

It was hot and humid that August and, as usual in that month, the streets were deserted. A couple of weeks later, Aunt Angela and I were on our way back from the Piazza Prealpi to Auntie Rita’s. It was after 11 p.m. and the tram wasn’t running. It’s about a twenty-minute walk, no hassle on a warm night.

We got to within a few hundred yards of Auntie Rita’s house when I was grabbed from behind. I thought it was my cousin Massimo fooling around – he was always trying to scare me.

‘Get off her! Get off her,’ I heard Angela screaming, and I turned. There was a ghostly man dressed in all white, white linen top and pants. He had this brown bag, like a satchel.

I shouted, ‘Get off, you idiot. What are you doing?’ I still didn’t think it was anything to be too worried about. I thought the guy was stupid, not a killer.

A moment later I knew he was a lunatic. He thrust a long-bladed knife between my legs and growled, ‘If you move, I’m going to cut you. I’ll put this knife inside you. And cut you.’

He wasn’t a particularly strong-looking guy but the knife was terrifying. I thought, ‘My God, if he stabs that in down there I’ll never have babies.’

But I had to keep calm. It happened in seconds, and Angela was rigid on the spot. It was all in freeze-frame.

The man in white pulled the knife to my neck. He got his cock out and started touching himself, demanding,
‘Sega, sega
[Wank me off].’

I looked at him and asked, ‘Do you know who I am?’

His eyes were gone. He was on something. We were caught at a blind spot on the road, nobody could see us. He could have done anything. He started looking around him.

Again, I asked, ‘Do you know who I am?’

At that moment he let go and I yanked my arm back and ran out on to the road and legged it towards Auntie Rita’s.

But Angela had already got there and Rita was on her way to help. She ran in the opposite direction with a giant carving knife, completely off her head on speed. If she had caught the man in white she would have stabbed him to death and probably not known anything about it.

By this time I was shaking and crying. I hadn’t been like that in front of him because I knew I had to keep it together. The guy had taken off by the time Rita got to the spot.

But what did the dumb divvy do? He walked down to the Piazza Prealpi and bothered another girl on the way. There were some lads near her and the guy backed off. He got paranoid and went into the Motta Bar, across from my Nan’s. These lads started ganging up outside. Then word got to them that I’d been attacked. They heard a description of the guy and knew it was him. They were all outside and wanting to kick his head in. They didn’t go inside, though, out of respect for the bar owner, a woman who’s a friend of my family. They didn’t want to smash it up.

Uncle Filippo arrived and went straight in: ‘What’s going on, mate? What’s happening?’

The bloke said: ‘Don’t know what’s going on out there. I’ve done nothing wrong, but I daren’t go out.’

‘It’s all right. Come out, come out, I’ll help you. I’ll sort it out, don’t worry.’

Outside the bar, just as they were passing through the tables and chairs, Uncle Filippo started battering him.

‘That was my niece you pulled the knife on. You want fun, do you?’

He kept hitting, a torrent of punches. The other lads piled in with the tables and chairs, smashing them into the guy and stabbing him with broken bottles. It went on for a long time. Blood was pouring from him, his white outfit soaked with red, when Bruno arrived.

Auntie Rita, racing around with carving knife in hand, had bumped into Bruno and told him what had happened. Someone else told him where to go. He looked at this guy who was already half dead, maybe three-quarters. He was certainly in some sort of coma, out cold.

Bruno stamped on his head. Then he rested his foot on this pervert’s head and said: ‘You’re lucky. I’d have killed you.’

He spat in the guy’s face and walked off.

Nobody had called the police. My family were the police. But the crowds and the noise invited them anyway. Nobody got done for the pervert’s beating. What was the guy supposed to say? There were people in the bar but they ‘didn’t see anything’.

Horrible as it was, my attacker’s battering gave me some sort of comfort. It was like having security. I felt nobody could get to me, could harm me. I was unbreakable. I was untouchable. I was my father’s daughter and this was my family. And this is how they dealt with anyone who invaded their space or their people. They would go as far as was needed to protect you. I was part of that now, part of the Mafia.

No longer was I just thinking in Italian; I was thinking like an Italian
Mafiosi.
It’s not indoctrination but day-to-day life that gives you a set of values that you soon find normal. It’s like reciting the alphabet: after a time you don’t have to think about it. You just
know
it.

I thought it was the pervert’s bad luck that he went to the Piazza Prealpi. He probably didn’t realise he was lucky to be alive. He was all broken apart but he was breathing. If my dad had got hold of him – my god!

Most girls would have been terrified, gone blank, not been able to say anything if they were grabbed in the street like that. Just done what he said. His eyes were glazed. He looked as if he’d escaped from a mental hospital.

He got his justice, though. Imagine if you did that to every pervert? They’d think again before abusing kids, abusing young girls. I wish it could be like that. My family could have got done for it, as could all the rest of the lads around the area, but that didn’t stop them for a split second. That guy had invaded our restricted world.

But as far as Mum was concerned I’d overstayed my welcome in it. I was meant to be back at college in September
but I was still in Milan and she was screaming down the phone: ‘You’re not eighteen yet. If you don’t come now, I’ll get you done.’

She was within her rights, and the Italian authorities would have backed her all the way. Of course, I now believed I was above all that. I was part of the clandestine clan. Untouchable. But I got an urgent lesson about that. We were not immune from the cops.

Rita had two children, Massimo and a daughter Elena. She had separated from their father and by September 1987 she had married Salvatore Morabito and they’d had a baby son Michael. Salvatore was from Calabria. One of Dad’s cousins had told him to look us up in Milan, where he soon became part of the organisation and a regular courier to New York. He looked the part – respectable, no criminal record, a regular guy and a perfect heroin mule. Rita, sometimes with Nan, would collect him when he arrived back at Milan airport. They clicked after the third trip and became partners in life and drug dealing.

One night I was at their place watching television with Elena, in between playing on the couch with the baby, when there was a rap on the front door of the apartment. Auntie Rita came in from the bedroom and put her finger to her lips. She peered through the spyhole in the door and saw Salvatore almost filling the doorway. Then she saw the cops beside and behind him.