I mean how would you feel receiving a severed goat’s head via Fedex! Ginevra and I 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 Central Park 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, Lupara Cattivo, with a warning that if I ever repeated to anyone what she was about to say she could not guarantee my safety. Daddy was a huge cocaine and heroin importer and “distributor” shipping 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. 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. Synthetic mozzarella was a big seller! 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 members” and their funeral costs. Family members rarely lived a full life. Ginerva recounted 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. After awhile she had Daddy whimpering on the phone like a naughty puppy she told him she and I were engaged! When did that happen? 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 a visit required to Naples, introduce myself and then I had to ask the Fat Fox for his daughter’s hand in marriage. God help me!
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