Prisca's Miseries

Chapter 1

Marino Municipality

Winter

25 January 1981

11.07 pm

Marino, during winter, smells of nothing but the peaceful serendipity of the olive, the ambience created by the tenement buildings and the clean streets earlier worked on by volunteer cleaners. The moon shone on the buildings, leaving trails of an invisible shadow.

Patino’s drunken eyes hardly opened as he lay on the street, struggling to drag his body away from approaching steps of a figure he had yet to see. Regrettably, there was nobody in sight he could scream to for help. Transfixed, he watched as the hooded shadow stood, mindlessly fondling with a rifle long enough to draw a line on the slippery street in his sturdy hands, jaw dropped. He wasn’t fazed. Instead, he looked jaded and worn out by the clumsiness of the atmosphere. His tanned torso failed to hide his beating heart as he aimed the gun at him, lying helplessly on the street.

“Feels good to see you again, Patino,” the voice said.

Patino’s mouth made way for some sticky spit, leaving his protruding tummy jiggling with strenuous pace. With his back on the floor, he jerked back a little and stared wide-eyed at the gun.

“I thought you were in Moscow last night. What brought you back to Marino?” the voice asked.

Silence so deafening could be felt lumbering down the street. Patino just had one thing running through his mind: his own death, the death he brought upon himself the day he chose this way.

The voice spoke again.

“Thank you for sparing me a few words before your last breath.”

The owner of the voice was now visible to Patino. This time around, he could muster a few words and was gesticulating to him, asking him to spare his life.

“Ahem,” he said, clearing his throat. “Maldini, remember where we both came from. I’ll make it up to you if you spare my life.”

Not long after, Maldini disentangled his left leg from his target’s arm briskly and stole away through the darkest path of the street. Patino’s body lay lifeless on the street of Marino. The deed had been done, and it was not his alone. Four other men were assassinated that moment, in the most tragic way ever imagined.

***

When San Tata first heard the tragic news of the death of five retired customs officers in Marino, he was devastated. A week earlier, he had been in a meeting with them, and he waking up to this spelled suspicion. And his suspicion would soon be confirmed when, during his conversation with Roz on the phone, the latter was cautious in his approach to the question asked – he didn’t want to admit being responsible for their death and didn’t sound defensive when asked about it. He could not bring himself to admit it: that he hated his guts, not only for this, but also for the way he treated him before he left to stand on his own. He stared blankly, tapping his phone on his leg as he was sitting in the back of his Mercedes Benz. He was reeling from how things turned out, still insulated in layers of his own self-pity, particularly after Roz usurped him in the business and took what really mattered to him: wealth and fame.

The first time they met, he had been dumbfounded by how Roz’s demeanour aligned the words coming out of his mouth. Here was a young man eloquent with words, courteous and calm. For him, he was the right fit for the job. He sprang up, holding firmly the bottle of cognac he was sipping, high-spirited and ebullient.

“You look too calm for a young man like you, I must admit. How can I repay you for your calmness?” San Tata said, grunting as the guests sitting with him laughed, two guffawing, knowing men.

“It’ll be my pleasure to host you again, at your earliest convenience.”

Subsequent meetings would lead to San Tata convincing Roz to join his trusted men, men who understood what the business was about. Men who could lay down their lives for him. He had them at his beck and call, and he could do whatever he wanted with them. But Roz was different, for he took to him like a father to his son, showing him the ropes in no small time. Almost everything about him and the business was not alien to Roz, and he was equally protective of him, much to the chagrin of his biological children. It surprised his goons how fast this had taken, and soon graduated to extreme envy among them.

With the help of his links in Ukraine, Roz diverted proceeds from the business, started dealings with the men directly involved in the business with San Tata and sidelined his boss. He never thought it would be this quick, but his opportunist self was always prepared for this eventuality. His progress in the business was swift and obvious. Roz’s ship, San Tata would later learn, had sailed. His was a story of trust betrayed. His fame gone, his wealth gone. All he had left were relics of the past, all on the pages of old newspapers which he always read whenever he wanted to feel the pang of the cruelty that suddenly crushed him.

Reminiscing how down that decision, the decision to trust, brought him to his knees, he gritted his teeth in agony, leaning out over the railings with another glass of cognac clutched in his hand. Nothing would stop him from getting all he had lost back from the rascal.

“It’s such a pleasant experience hosting Mr Roz in the studio this evening,” the voice from the speaker in his partly opened room blared.

Angered, he smashed the glass on the wall and stormed out of the balcony, crashing the door shut behind him. He wished he saw him at that moment. Perhaps he would have a better opportunity to vent his spleen on him. Or worse still, have his pound of flesh, what he had always looked forward to doing.