The clerk who normally tended to the shop was nowhere in sight. From the certainty of their movements, they seemed sure that the victim was inside. They pulled up fast on a motor scooter, both in full-face helmets with the visors down. He sat on a stool to gamble.Ī street camera caught the killers’ arrival. The gambling shop was narrow and had space for only six machines against one wall. As a cautionary measure he had placed three guards outside, one of whom was burly, but none of whom was armed. Surveillance cameras there captured his demise. As was his habit, he had come to a small street-front gambling shop to play a bit of one-armed bandit.

He was in his mid-30s and beginning to bald. The victim was a mid-ranking member of one of its clans involved in a typically convoluted struggle, and not known to the police before. It has evolved into one of Europe’s largest open-air drug markets and a working-class stronghold for the Camorra. Secondigliano is an old farming town that has been swallowed by the city. Recently, in a northern district called Secondigliano, it was obvious that the victim knew his fate for about seven seconds before he died. There may be a moment of recognition at the end, but by then the man can no longer stay alive.

His experience until now has been that murder happens only to others. He deals there in extortion, protection, narcotics, and counterfeit goods. But the neighborhood has been home for generations to everyone he knows who counts. If he suspected his fate, he might at least kiss his wife good-bye. He shaves carefully, dresses in his beloved clothes, slips on an expensive watch, and maybe squeezes his wife before heading out to meet with his friends. Even in Naples, where the criminal clans known collectively as the Camorra are again struggling violently for control of the streets, no victim wakes up expecting on that given day to die. The thing about being murdered, it usually comes as a surprise.

Mobster streets of rogue