I mean how would you feel receiving a severed goat’s head via Fedex! And how would dear Ginerva feel about her little “currykins” (my nickname) being threatened by her Daddy! We both were all shook up. Ginerva requested we not talk about it until our Saturday “Discover New York Day”. She had a few calls to make and set somebody straight. And when Ginerva is mad, as I saw with her knife fight with the Puerto Ricans in Harlem, you don’t want to mess with my little plum who is transformed into a tigress!
Well Saturday came and I met Ginerva at our usual bench at the lagoon on a sweltering hot day. I stopped in at Whole Foods at Columbus Circle and picked up some organic pear juice and two carrot muffins for our breakfast prior to meeting up with her.
Ginerva told me a bit about her Daddy, Don Lupara, with a warning that if I ever repeated what she was about to say she could not guarantee my safety. Daddy was a huge cocaine and heroin importer bringing in hundreds of kilos of cocaine from El Salvador and heroin from Afghanistan for distribution in the Scampia district of Naples. Daddy controlled the retail network operating like a fine-tuned machine. In fact he had so many people working for him (267) they were referred to as the Cattivo Family and he was the don (boss) of that family. His nickname was the Fat Fox. In addition to his illegal activities he owned real estate, restaurants and a cheese factory selling to all the restaurants in Scampia and in Sorrento. Of course, in addition to restaurants in Scampia and Sorrento paying protection money to the Fat Fox they were “persuaded” to buy all their cheeses from the Fat Fox. Don Lupara was not fat but the enormous amount of money he generated made his pockets “fat”. And he required a constant flow of money to pay his family and their funeral costs. Family members rarely lived a full life. Ginerva remembered with dread the “wars” between rival families that Don Lupara survived unlike many other Naples family bosses.
Ginerva let Daddy have it between the eyes threatening never to talk to him again and should she have children that he would never see them. After all she was a grown woman and Daddy must not interfere with her life. And while she had Daddy whimpering like a naughty puppy she told him she and I were engaged! I could have blown up and walked back to Fifth Avenue and out of her life but I liked the idea. Oh those piercing green eyes set in that beautiful face had me saying yes when she asked if that was OK before slipping a ring on my finger.
There was only one little problem. We needed to visit Naples, introduce myself and then I had to ask the Fat Fox for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
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