Chapter Text
It was a clear day in Naples and the sun beat down appallingly. Goncharov was of course already aware that Italy, with its Mediterranean climate, insisted on remaining frustratingly warm even into late September. Still, the reminder of this fact he faced as he stepped out of the train station was less than welcome. He shifted in his long black wool coat, unseasonably thick for this climate. Eager to look preoccupied and innocuous he headed across the square full of people streaming in and out of the station and down a busy street lined with businesses.
Goncharov slows for a moment. Sleek Italian suits proclaim themselves in a shop front window. A gust of cool air escapes as a customer exits. For a moment Goncharov toys with the idea of going into that store, buying one of those suits. He would look like a native, too, and the heat would not feel so oppressive then. But he knows he will not. He doesn't have the money for purchases like that himself. The Boss could in theory give him the money later, but of course that was only for necessities and this is not that. After all, he wouldn’t be here for very long. He's hardly a tourist. There's no time to collect souvenirs.
Returning to business, Goncherov retrieved the neatly folded directions he had carried in his front pocket for days and thousands of miles of travel. It might have seemed cryptic or unassuming to an uninitiated viewer but to a seasoned fixer for the Russian mafia, it was perfectly clear.
After briefly consulting the map he bought from an overpriced newsstand in the train station. He turns down a side-street and heads toward a different part of town.
The bakery at the end of the street looked quite ordinary, if a bit rundown. The blue paint on the door was starting to peel, revealing the color underneath, a rather sickening yellow color. And the awning out front was fading horribly. It might have been striped once but now seemed to have mostly given up the ghost. Nothing about it indicated that it was a front for organized crime. Though, Goncharov presumed, that was probably the whole point. The bell above the door rang out half-heatedly as he entered. The shop assistant, a girl with lopsided bangs who can’t have been older than twenty, looked at him with little interest. At least she seemed to listen to him when he spoke.
“I would like to talk with Morelli”
“What for?” the girl said flatly.
“Tell him that I am the friend he invited from Moscow” He almost rolls his eyes at the line. He hadn't even done any work in Moscow for years now. But the girl's eyes widened. She nodded and jumped from her stool, slipping into the door to the back, leaving Goncharov momentarily alone in the store. A second later Joseph Morreli, better known as “Ice Pick Joe” stepped through that very door and gestured him to the back.