Page 54 of Mafia King
“Get the flies out of your mouth!” I said.
“Nazario said it.Corona Ferrea. He said it was so close he could smell it. And he had his hands out like this.” Dami put his palms up and out. “He said it was warm, and when he walked away, I did this too and the airwaswarmer.”
“Your hands are just cold from the water.”
“Go.” He bends his entire body to get the shoulder bag off then drops it over me. I almost fall under the weight of it. “Aisle 445. They’re all there. Come on! You’ll see.”
I wanted to see, because it couldn’t be true. Anyone who possessed a single piece of that crown would have more power than anyone could ever imagine. And Altieri had died. If he’d had the Iron Crown, he would have been protected.
But I had to see for myself.
So with the sack of water bottles banging on my hip, I followed Dami to Aisle 445, leaping over pallets, under forklifts, pushing past the bodies that had gravitated to that corner of the building and were standing still for the first time in two days. My friend was too big to quickly get through the tightly packed men, but I barely had to slow down on my way to the front, where a circle had formed around a wooden box. Emilio and Camilla were murmuring to each other. The lawyer, Nazario, held a crowbar.
The guy above me, an old-timer who kept making the sign of the cross like a fuckingnonna,said to the young guy next to him, “They need to bring in a priest.”
Younger muttered agreement.
I put out my hands.
The air was not warmer from that direction. It was more active. More alive. Hot like water running out of an electrical socket.
Emilio snatched the crowbar from Nazario. Next to me, the old-timer gasped. Camilla issued a few words I couldn’t make out, but together with her sharp stare, they sounded like a warning.
Nodding to her, Emilio pried open the top of the box with a crack and flipped it off. The sides of the box collapsed as if held together by the lid, revealing a metal box covered in an ancient green-and-brown patina. When Emilio opened it, the creak was so loud, I thought the windows would shatter. The hinges stopped moving halfway.
Nazario stepped back while Emilio put his shoulder into it, and though I realized I was holding my breath, I didn’t exhale. Not when the top flipped open. Not when Emilio smiled and clapped his hands before clenching them into fists. Not when he reached inside.
Only when he held up his hands, cradling just a glint of metal, did I breathe, because my legs bent under me as if knocked out by an unseen force. I kneeled, bowing my head like every other man in the vast warehouse.
When I dared to glance up, even Emilio was on his knees with his hands raised and fingers obscuring the artifact. Only Camilla was already standing.
* * *
“That’s it?”Violetta asks, many years later and many miles away.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’? That’s everything.Tutto. It’s the lost pieces of the Iron Crown of Lombardy.”
“And you all kneeling proves what?”
How can she not understand? I’ve painted a perfect picture.
“I felt it. I had to kneel in its presence. I had no choice. None of us did.” My voice gets thin with a sort of desperation I don’t recognize. I have to make her understand. “Nails from the One True Cross are melted in it. The Holy Blood.”
“You were exhausted and dehydrated. You were open to suggestion. That’s Psych 101.”
I’m the older of us. The more experienced. I am a man of the world, willing to teach her the things she needs to know to survive, but she’s looking at me as if I’m some kind ofcretinowho has never opened a book in his life.
I’ve opened a few. Very few, and not since I was thirteen and my literature teacher took me aside to give me extra assignments in epic poems that I resented, but did anyway. Nothing I can quote fromThe Iliadwill prove my point to Violetta though. TheInfernohad something about powerful things inspiring fear, but I’m flailing in a soup of quotes I can’t put together, feeling stupider and more confused with every second I don’t respond.
“These men?” I finally say in frustration. “Dozens of us in that one room? Saints. Soldiers. Men and boys. We do not drop to our knees like whores like that—all at once—unless compelled by God.”
“Have you ever heard of mass hysteria?” She’s trying to be kind with her tone, but that makes it worse.
That night in the warehouse wasn’tisteria collettiva. There was no madness. No violence. We knelt in peace before the glory of heaven.
Unless I don’t know what the term really means, which I can’t say or she’ll know I’m an idiot. She’ll never believe what I know is true.
“It was the crown,” I insist. “I was there.”
