"Courier. Mid-level. Works the Forcella-to-Secondigliano run for the Ferrantes. We picked him up outside a bar on Via Tribunali three hours ago. One of my team recognized his face from the port surveillance footage. He was at the docks the night of the Mergellina hit. Not one of the shooters. Logistics. He was driving the van they used to haul our product."
I pull a chair to the table. Sit across from the man. He watches me with his one functional eye, the pupil dilated, the white shot through with burst capillaries. He knows who I am. They always know.
"What's your name?" I ask.
He says nothing.
"I'm not going to repeat questions," I say. "The first time I ask, you answer. The second time, Enzo asks. You don't want Enzo to ask."
He looks at Enzo. Enzo doesn't look back. Enzo is looking at his notebook as if reviewing a grocery list. The indifference is more frightening than any threat. I know because I designed it that way.
"Gennaro," the man says. "Gennaro Esposito."
"Gennaro. You work for the Ferrante family."
Not a question. He nods anyway.
"You were at the Mergellina dock the night my shipment was intercepted."
Another nod. His good eye is fixed on my face, reading me the way a trapped animal reads the thing between it and the exit.
"The Ferrantes have been operating on intelligence they shouldn't have," I say. "Timing. Locations. Security details. Information that could only come from inside my organization or from someone with access to people inside my organization."
I pause. Let the silence work. Silence is the cheapest tool in interrogation. It costs nothing and it produces more than force because the human mind, left in silence, generates its own pressure. The imagination fills the void with consequences the interrogator never has to specify.
"Who feeds you the intelligence?" I say.
Gennaro's jaw works. The split lip bleeds faster. He's calculating. Not whether to talk. That calculation ended whenEnzo's men broke his nose. He's calculating whether the name he gives will buy him survival or accelerate his death.
"I don't know the source," he says. "I'm a driver. I pick up. I deliver. I don't ask where it comes from."
"But you know the chain."
Silence.
"Gennaro."
"There's a drop point," he says. "A bar in Forcella. Via Vicaria Vecchia. The information arrives in envelopes. No names. No return address. The barman holds them behind the counter. A pickup man collects twice a week. I've driven the pickup man three times."
"Who's the pickup man?"
"I don't know his real name. They call him Occhi. Thin. Grey hair. Walks with a limp."
"Where does Occhi take the envelopes?"
"I don't know. I drop him at different locations. He walks the last stretchalone."
I lean back. Study him. His story has the texture of truth. The limited scope. The specific details surrounded by genuine ignorance. He's low enough in the chain that his knowledge has boundaries. The boundaries themselves are credible.
"The envelopes," I say. "What's in them?"
"I told you, I don't—"
"You've carried them. You've handled them. You've sat in a car with them. Men who handle envelopes get curious. Especially men who drive getaway vans for dock raids. You opened one. Maybe more than one. You read what was inside because you wanted to know what you were carrying. Tell me what you read."
His good eye drops. The floor. The zip ties. His own shoes, one untied.
"Schedules," he says. "Shipping routes. Names of contacts. Payment amounts. Meeting locations." He pauses. "Confessions."
