Antonio de Luise saw them coming. Police say the 20-year-old was a vedetta, or drug pusher’s lookout, someone on the lowest rung of the ladder of organised crime in Naples. In panic, he turned into the nearest shop, a delicatessen hung with hams and salamis.
But the two men followed him in and shot him several times in front of staff and customers. One of the bullets lodged in De Luise’s skull. He died in the ambulance on the way to hospital as a police helicopter swept low overhead searching for the killers. Witnesses said they escaped on a motorbike.
One of the bloodiest gang wars in the city’s modern history is being played out in tower blocks strung with fairy lights and along high streets dotted with chuckling, mechanical Santas. Since the start of November, 28 people have died in killings linked to the Camorra, the Naples equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia.
Most were victims of a ”civil war” tearing apart the gang or clan headed by the Di Lauros. The murders are almost always on Saturdays and Sundays. Last weekend was the worst so far — five people killed or fatally wounded, including Antonio de Luise.
At stake is the cream of the city’s narcotics business. The easiest way to buy drugs is to go to Scampia, a desolate area of tower blocks on the fringes of the city where they are sold as openly as the fruit and vegetables on roadside stalls.
Look closely at the blocks of flats and you will see large metal gates on some of the walkways and stairs. They have been put there, not by the council, but by the Camorra, so they can be locked by drug pushers as they flee the police.
”We have a bit of everything here,” said Pasquale Errico, Scampia’s new police chief. ”There are lots of entirely respectable people and others who are deeply enmeshed with organised crime.”
In 1982, the area fell under the sway of Paolo di Lauro and his associates following the murder of his predecessor as neighbourhood boss of the Camorra, but court papers seen by The Guardian newspaper show police first detected signs of tension within the clan before the summer.
Informants told them that efforts were being made to impose a new business model on the drug trade in Scampia. The Di Lauro business had always operated on a franchise basis. Each sales point was administered by a capopiazza who was free to do as he pleased so long as he paid the bosses an agreed sum for his ”licence”.
The informants said an attempt was being made to replace this system with another in which the drugs all had to be bought directly from the Di Lauro family.
Paolo (51) disappeared from Naples two years ago. His place is thought to have been taken by the eldest of his 11 children, Vincenzo. But he was arrested in late 2003, and the leadership is believed then to have passed to his younger brother, Cosimo (31). Police suspect Cosimo provoked the crisis.
Earlier this year, a senior clan lieutenant, named in the documents as Raffaele Amato, fled to Spain after refusing to work by the new rules. There, he is thought to have begun recruiting supporters for a revolt. In Scampia, they are known as the Spaniards.
Errico was put in last month to try to stop the killing. Gang wars are his speciality: as the police chief of Ercolano, just outside Naples, the bustling, genial detective choked off an earlier bout of murderous Camorra rivalry.
There are two reasons the authorities worry about mobsters killing each other. One is that innocent people get caught up in their disputes, and die — sometimes horribly.
Gelsomina Verde was the 22 year-old girlfriend of one of the ”Spaniards”. She was kidnapped by Di Lauro loyalists who tried to beat her into telling them where her boyfriend was hiding. It seems it didn’t work. So they shot her in the head. Her body was found by police in a burning car.
The other reason for concern is that Camorra conflicts tend to spread.
”Often the warring parties look for allies in other clans and so it can happen that a ‘war’ born in Scampia can have effects in other areas of the city,” said Errico.
There have been several killings outside Scampia. Hit men walked into a restaurant at Bacoli, a coastal town near Naples, and shot dead the owner as he sat at the cash desk. By the time the police arrived, everyone had disappeared, leaving behind their half-eaten meals. Police said the owner was suspected of aligning a local gang with the ”Spaniards”.
For Errico, there is only one way to tackle the problem.
”You try to cut off the flow of cash. The idea is you give them another problem to worry about.”
Since his arrival, he has harassed the two factions day and night. Patrol cars that cruised past known drug-peddling sites now remain for hours on end. Errico’s men have gone with the fire brigade into the tower blocks to take oxyacetylene torches to the metal grilles and rip out the television cameras the Camorra uses to warn its members of the approach of the police.
The bus that brings out-of-town addicts up from the railway station is now routinely stopped and searched. Suspected addicts are sent back. A list of arms seized in raids since Errico’s arrival offers evidence of the level of police activity and the degree of Scampia’s militarisation: ”Twenty automatic pistols, three revolvers, two submachine pistols, six rifles, one hand grenade, three letter bombs and 1 200 rounds of ammunition.”
At the same time, Errico has stepped up investigations into the Di Lauro family’s investments with a view to having its property in the area confiscated.
”But the Camorra is sly,” he said. ”The family’s property will not be in the name of Di Lauro himself or even his son, but in that of someone with an entirely clean record who acts as a front man.”
Finding the evidence to prove beneficial ownership can be a painstaking business, involving listening to hours of telephone conversations.
How long did it take him to stamp out the last gang war, in Ercolano?
Errico held up three fingers.
”Three months?”
He smiled.
”No”, he said. ”Three years.” — Guardian Unlimited Â