The Night of the Panthers by Piergiorgio Pulixi

Author:Piergiorgio Pulixi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2015-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

When the tension had dropped, Carmine moved aside and sent Biagio a text telling him that the meeting had gone badly.

Just as I imagined. Tell Oscar and Giorgio I want to see them for lunch, Biagio replied. Carmine wondered what the hell Biagio had in mind, and why he had asked him to hold this pointless meeting in the first place.

Someone knocked at the door. Claudetti told Paja to shut himself in his room.

Paja held his breath.

Claudetti heard a woman’s voice. He smiled and opened the door, admitting a tall, slim, beautiful young woman, smartly dressed, with long chestnut hair and gray eyes. He winked and led her to Paja’s room.

“Hey,” the Albanian said. “You brought me a hooker. Thanks, it was a nice thought.” He went up to her. “What’s your name?” he asked, stroking her silky hair.

She kneed him in the balls and shoved him to the floor.

“Boran, let me introduce Inspector Ariana Manisci from the Organized Crime division.”

“Bitch,” Paja gasped, from the floor.

Ariana responded with a kick to the stomach. “Shut up, worm,” she said in Albanian.

“Ariana is of Albanian origin, as you just heard. She has two degrees, and works in liaison with Europol. I imagine that, unlike you, she can write. She’s a trusted officer and is giving me a hand with the interrogations of your men, those who can’t speak Italian.”

“And why the fuck have you brought her here?”

“Don’t you get it yet?” Claudetti said with a smile, pulling him up and straightening his crumpled clothes.

“No.”

“If I’m going to nail Mazzeo and his Narcotics squad for criminal association, I need the cooperation of colleagues who deal with organized crime. To be specific, you’re helping them and Deputy Prosecutor Tortora to break up the Albanian Mafia in this city, and they’re helping me to put Mazzeo and his squad behind bars. I know the Narcotics division is in cahoots with Albanian criminals, and you’re one of the biggest. Criminal association and links with foreign criminal organizations: those are the kind of charges that give the judges a hard-on, and I want them to come in their underpants.”

“Have you gone crazy? That wasn’t the agreement!”

“The agreement has changed. If you want to be in the Witness Protection Program, that’s what you have to give us. Unless you want to give up the idea, but then you’d have to face a trial for murder, drug trafficking, and slavery, or alternatively . . . ”

“What?”

“. . . Mazzeo and his men.”

“You’re crazy if you really think—”

“Seems to me he doesn’t want to understand,” Claudetti said to Ariana.

With feline speed, Ariana twisted Paja’s right arm behind his back and pushed him out of the room.

“Open the door!” she ordered the plain-clothes officer on guard, who hastened to obey.

She shoved Paja outside, making him fall on the sidewalk. He stared at her, disoriented, as he got back on his feet.

“There. You’re free. Now go deal with Mazzeo and your family. I e-mailed them your request to enter the Witness Protection Program, with your signature at the bottom.

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