Naples, Italy— After lunch, Mario must leave us and we four are left to stumble through the dangerous quarter accompanied only by pidgin. Officer DC leads us deep into mafia headquarters, where families fight families and the Camorra rules. He points out the most life-threatening piazzas and says the gangs have their own areas and specialties: drugs, prostitution, stealing, counterfeiting.

Bob pauses to film a picaresque street; one of many that seem straight out of a black and white movie.

“Bob—” DC starts.

“Oh—I’ll put it away,” Bob apologizes.

“No. Bob.” DC pulls up his shirt and reveals his police belt and guns. “With me, you do anything. You are safe!”

Since our near-mugging here in 1994, we’ve been fascinated by this designated danger zone. Our motorcycle tour three years ago only increased the allure. Yet, we’ve ventured only a few blocks in at most, each time getting the shivers as spotters’ whistles echo off the high walls and Vespa-mounted muggers circle us like sharks around a bleeding seal. We’ve tried it carrying nothing, no jewelry, watches, cameras, or bags, only to chicken out with memories of three men on a silent scooter grabbing us from behind, and a hundred first-person reports of watch- and bag-thefts.

Today we’re not scared. We swing our arms carelessly. Walk without looking behind us. Leisurely pause to examine fresh produce, a wall plaque, fanciful architecture.

We’re going to see the biggest Rolex thief, DC tells us, and the number one drug dealer. It isn’t clear if this is one person or two, but it doesn’t matter. We turn down a street of blinding sun light and deep shadow, narrow, like an alley, like all the streets in this Italian barrio. It would look like a slum if it weren’t so full of Hollywood character. The female coterie in plastic chairs, the don seated suitably apart flanked by a pair of young men and a pair of mean dogs. The only thing wrong with the picture? AS seems too young to rule a family. I can easier picture him dancing in a gay bar, with his tight jeans and red t-shirt stretched over buff biceps. But what do I know about mafiawear? What I do know is that this is one tough thug, gracious in polite company, but very likely soon off to the clink like his homeboys.

This is part 5 of 5. — Part 1

Naples, Italy—Mario is not only intelligently fluent in English and Italian–he is interested in the conversation. He excavates the essence when Officer DC expounds on the legality of the pacco biz. Apparently, the victim has to “denounce,” or make a complaint against, the seller, but the victim can be denounced, too, for buying from a thief. And in the end, the judge will toss it out because he has many bigger crimes to deal with. But wait—that’s another story.

I mention that we had seen Luciano and his brother Angelo working the trams in the morning. DC sort of snorts. Simple pickpockets. Too small fish for him to be concerned with.

No wonder the thieves are thick in Naples.

We are lucky that DC is at our disposal today. He has just returned from a three-month course in Rome where he qualified as a machine gun instructor. He and his girlfriend were nearby when we called his cell phone. They hurried over to meet us. On a small player, we showed him some of last year’s video of local thieves, including Nuncio, the white-haired “businessman” from whom Bob lifted a tie.

“White hair means experience,” DC said.

Strange then, that he didn’t recognize this experienced Napolitano pickpocket.

DC will be 33 in October. He and his girlfriend plan to go to Las Vegas then to get married. First, he laughs, he will study English. Like most Napolitanos, they know little.

“You still haven’t told me how they steal the watch off your right wrist when you’re driving,” DC says.

Since he’d dropped it, I hadn’t realized that he actually had an answer.

“When you put your left hand out to fix the mirror, they burn it with a cigarette,” he said.

This is part 4 of 5.  — Part 5  — Part 1

Naples, Italy— For most of this day, we’ve been accompanied by Mario, a friend and fabulous translator. Born in Italy, educated in Australia, now settled in Las Vegas, Mario grew up speaking textbook Italian at home while secretly imitating his parents’ Napolitano dialect, which he wasn’t allowed to use.

“No way!” Mario had said earlier, as Officer DC explained why the pacco men are allowed to continue their bait-and-switch scam year after year. They were now offering Bob a cell phone as we traversed their territory, not noticing our plainclothes police pal. When they recognized DC, they flocked around him like awestruck fans. DC eventually pushed through the gangster gauntlet, complaining that we’d never get to lunch if we stopped to talk with every crook. [More on bait-and-switch, eventually.]

We turn into the Quartieri Spagnoli telling Mario how it’s not just your ordinary neighborhood. We pass the spot where Bob had been pinned from behind so long ago, a two-handed Rolex-robbery attempted on his old model by three of AS’s butterfingered predecessors. DC selects an empty trattoria. He orders “a mixture” for all of us, and a feast arrives, plate by small plate. Crisp-fried sardines, miniature arugula, zucchini flowers, and the tenderest calamari we’ve ever eaten.

“Watch your bag,” DC cautions Bob, who sits closest to the open door. DC, of course, has his back to the wall. “Do you know how they steal a watch when you’re driving a car?

“Yes,” I say. “When you’re stuck in traffic, they squeeze between cars on their scooters and fold your side mirror to get by. You reach out to fix the mirror and the next scooter-rider grabs it.”

DC seems disappointed that I know.

“How would they do it if you wear your watch on your right wrist?”

I say I don’t know.

“They make you shake hands, for some reason,” Bob suggests. DC doesn’t say.

This is part 3 of 5.  Part 4  Part 1

Naples, Italy— We’re introduced to AS, tattooed and be-dogged, in front of his female family members. Women of several generations sit in plastic chairs in the shady alley—shady as in dim and dubious—surrounded by lots of girls, one with an arm in a cast. The men, presumably, are mostly in prison. The boys, presumably, are out on scooters, scippatori-in-training. Two little boys, six or seven years old, buzz by on the cutest little scooter, a perfect replica with authentic speed and a full-size spine-chilling whine. If you’ve ever been the victim of scippatori, scooter-riding bandits, as we sort-of were in 1994, the beginning of our street-crime research, you never forget the sound.

When we first met DC three years ago, he and a colleague gave Bob and me a tour of this hillside hood on the backs of their souped-up motorcycles. He introduced us to AT, another of the top three Rolex thieves, who is now taking a five-year chill. When we asked, AT had copped to stealing about ten Rolexes a week. And that was in the presence of a police officer. But AT was skittish about the video camera we held in plain sight. He wasn’t worried about being identified; he said he didn’t want to show a bad image of Naples.

Like AT three years ago, AS speaks in front of Officer DC as if he were a collaborator, not a cop. At Bob’s request, he shows some methods of stealing Rolexes. One style is to grab the face and twist it. But it depends on the age of the watch. The old ones could be swiped by a single person. New ones take two. AS snaps a Rolex on Bob, who sports plastic today, and demonstrates a two-handed rip-off. I ask if I can videotape the demo from behind and AS allows it.

This is part 2 of 5.  Part 3  Part 1.

Rolex theft

Naples, Italy— Here’s something you didn’t know about Rolex theft. It takes two men to steal a new model Rolex, while the older ones can be snatched by a single person. That’s the sort of gem our research nets, if we don’t piss off the mafiosi by pointing a camera into their faces (while they’re looking). Their rottweilers look like overstuffed pups, but you know there’s a reason the dogs are kept close, and you know the animals’ allegiance is backed by ferocious power, flesh-shredding choppers, and bone-crunching jaws.

I wonder if Rolex is aware that it doubled labor requirements in the hostile acquisitions market? Still, everyone wears a Rolex in this neighborhood. The children of thieves wear them. “They don’t have one euro in their pocket,” we’re told, “but they wear a Rolex.”

The manpower numbers come straight from an expert: one of the three major Rolex thieves in the capital city of Rolex theft. “AS” [can’t use real names, sorry], our source today, is currently at large; but his two buddies are in jail, arrested by our guide and host, Officer DC, of Naples’ Falchi Squad, the tough undercover cops who fight power with power.

So it’s a strange sort of respect and cooperation and turning a blind eye when DC knocks on the big steel door in the heart of Quartieri Spagnoli, Naples’ no-go zone if you’re not mafia (or police). A peek-a-boo slot opens and words are exchanged. “No video,” Officer DC says to me, drawing a big square around his face. I take it to mean that I can film, but not faces.

This is part 1 of 5.  Part 2