The Cosenza drug dealers’ organization included within itself a sort of Czecha group tasked with identifying anyone who dared to buy drugs out of the “System”. It is the so-called under the table, a real bogeyman for bosses and drug traffickers who, not surprisingly, showed themselves implacable towards anyone caught practicing it. To play this role investigative, it was the group from Piazza Valdesi, the one directed by Celestino Abbruzzese alias “Micetto” and his wife Anna Palmieri. It was the latter who told facts and anecdotes connected to the hunt for underbankers, with several previously unpublished background stories.
That task, she claims, was assigned to them by her husband’s brothers, the so-called “Banana”. «They didn’t bother. We were the ones who had to rack our brains, also because we knew all the street leaders.” Violations of the rules were more than recurrent and tracking down unfaithful drug dealers was not so simple, «because they still bought the drugs from the system, but then they also took them elsewhere. They mixed it up and they earned three times as much».
We are talking about heroin, which on the official market, at the time of their diarchy, was sold for 40 euros a piece. The one put into circulation by the gypsies of Cosenza, however, was not of excellent quality. From Naples, a much better one could have come. «And then it happens that, among the addicts, the rumor goes around: “Oh, are you going to pay 40 euros there, that’s rubbish? Come and I’ll make you take it at 30″. And we saw it, because the stuff from Naples isn’t like the rubbish that’s here. So you can feel the decline. You feel it in the historic center, you feel it in Viale della Repubblica.”
It’s the first alarm bell: regular customers disappearing, sales decreasing and one plus one equals two: someone in the city is doing business under the table. To solve the problem, her husband Celestino had identified a universal remedy. A simple but effective technique. She would go looking for a consumer, one of those who had been visiting for the longest time, and after finding him she would address him like this: “Oh, I haven’t seen you in three days.”
According to Anna Palmieri, they all responded in the same way: «Un mi minà, un mi minà, I’ll tell you what to do». The prosecutor Giuseppe Cozzolino appears intrigued: “Ah, is that how they do it?”. The repentant woman confirms and repeats: “Yes, they sing it immediately.” The Celestine method it provided a reward for the informer – «Come to Giuvanni, tell him I sent you and get a piece» – and immediately afterwards the hunt for the underbanker began. This, however, is another story, which Anna Palmieri always tells.
