Justice?

J. D. Henington

Description

What is justice?
Is it the conviction of fairness, of moral righteousness?
If so, by whose standard of fairness?
If so, by whose standard of morality?
Or is it the administration of justifiable punishment?
To be administered by whom?
This novel cuts apart and scrutinizes the shadowy lives, the scandalous history and innermost emotions of two post World War II Italian families coincidentally seeking asylum in Australia’s South Coast village of Cringila.
The Panzarroti and Garibaldi families’ cross paths after a local steelworker is murdered at Port Kembla Iron and Steel Works in an identical style to a Camorra execution which occurred almost forty years ago in Naples.
The two family’s secret feud is exacerbated by the inheritance of one family’s fortune over the other, obstructed and dishonourably administered with prejudice by the Capo of the Giordano Clan, one of Naples’ most notorious Camorra Clans.
Is Justice simply based on the principle that a person receives that which he or she deserves?
Or is Justice nothing more than a misshapen word conveniently used by anybody to validate their actions?

Sujets

• Historical
• Suspenso
• Suspense
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 04 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669831204
• Langue: English

Extrait

JUSTICE?
 
 
 
 
 
 
J. D. Henington
 
 
Copyright © 2022 by J. D. Henington.
 

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022915186
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3122-8

Softcover
978-1-6698-3121-1

eBook
978-1-6698-3120-4
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 09/07/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
844196
CONTENTS
Justice?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Justice?
What is justice? Is it the conviction of fairness, of moral righteousness? If so, by whose standard of fairness? If so, by whose standard of morality? Or is it the administration of justifiable punishment? To be administered by whom?
This novel cuts apart and scrutinizes the shadowy lives, the scandalous history, and the innermost emotions of two post–World War II Italian families coincidentally seeking asylum in Australia’s South Coast village of Cringila.
The Panzarroti and Garibaldi family’s cross paths after a local steelworker is murdered at Port Kembla Iron and Steel Works identical to a Camorra execution which occurred almost forty years ago in Naples.
The two families’ secret feud is exacerbated by the inheritance of one family’s fortune over the other, obstructed and dishonourably administered with prejudice by the capo of the Giordano clan, one of Naples’ most notorious Camorra clans.
Is Justice simply based on the principle that a person receives that which he or she deserves?
Or is Justice nothing more than a misshapen word conveniently used by anybody to validate their actions?
CHAPTER
1
Tommaso Panzarroti migrated to Australia from Naples in 1948. Post–World War II Italian life was depressing for Tommaso. As a 26-year-old young man, he had survived Mussolini’s fascist regime, the Nazis, and 200 Allied air raids between 1940 and 1943, their primary targets being the critical facilities of Naples Port. The city’s restoration process was hard and arduous. The post-war period in Naples was miserable. Naples had been razed to the ground, levelled to a mass of rubble, first by the invading Germans and then by the Allied Air Force’s carpet bombing of the entire city, both antagonists recognizing the critical importance of occupying this grand old Mediterranean port city. Almost 30,000 Neapolitan citizens were estimated to be killed during this period.
Tommaso was a heartbroken man. His young wife, Maria, was killed on 29 September 1943 during the popular ad hoc uprising known as Le Quattro Giornate di Napoli (the Four Days of Naples), by the Neapolitan resistance engaged in battle against the occupying German forces. This brave, short action by the local Neapolitan citizens successfully thwarted Nazi plans to execute or deport the Neapolitan population en masse and then to completely destroy Naples to prevent Allied Forces from occupying Naples and thereby gaining a strategic foothold on the Italian peninsula. The city of Naples was subsequently awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, celebrated annually during the month of September.
Maria, her parents, and Tommaso’s parents all died bravely during the uprising, leaving Alessandro, their 3-month-old baby son, with Tommaso to bring up alone. With the help of neighbours, Tommaso committed himself to rebuilding his life and that of his baby son.
Tommaso lived and worked all his life in the Mercato (the ‘market’), the south-eastern neighbourhood part of the city bounded by the industrial port on the south of Naples.
Years of demanding physical work while deprived of decent, healthy food hardens a man’s soul as well as his body. And so, it was with Tommaso Panzarroti. He rarely displayed emotion and had no compassion for other citizens, only malevolence; his sole motivation in life was survival for himself and his baby boy. During those war years, young Tommaso had developed into a hard man, both physically and mentally.
For all intents and purposes, Tommaso Panzarroti was just another average citizen. Physically, he was a medium-sized man of average height, but a deceiving appearance concealed the strength of a lion and the speed of a striking viper.
Tommaso often recounted the joy in Naples when the city was liberated by the Americans, followed by the heartbreak of life thereafter. ‘When the Germans occupied Naples, we ate perhaps once per day. After the Americans rescued us, we might eat once per week,’ he often lamented.
With the onset of winter, the citizens of Naples were degraded to looting and petty crime, driven by a lack of housing, food, and basic living essentials. Tommaso barely managed to make ends meet by collecting scrap telephone cable left behind by the fleeing Germans and then selling it through the black market to the occupying Americans. This activity was illegal; the official position spread by the occupying Americans was that telephone cable and all supplies and equipment abandoned by the fleeing Germans were legally now the property of the American military. The Martial courts upheld that opinion. However, the philosophical motivator of practical reasoning by the US military effectively legitimized the black-market activity, guaranteeing recovery of all supplies and equipment, albeit paying excessive black-market prices. Money was not a problem for the American government.
Very rarely did the US military attempt to prosecute the black-market system, but when it did, it did so with no serious conviction. The US military acquisition branch considered it better to work with the system, notwithstanding paying a premium for supplies and equipment, than attempt to buck the system. The Neapolitan Camorra clans, which originated in the region of Campania and its capital city, Naples, were swift to control the movement of supplies within the Naples black market. The Camorra is one of the oldest and largest criminal organisations in Italy dating back to the seventeenth century, far longer than even the fragile construct called Italy has existed. Unlike the pyramidal structure of the Sicilian Mafia , which is quite defined and can be separated from society or disciplined in court action, the Camorra is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands comprising many autonomous groups divided into individual groups known as clans. Each clan has its own organizational structure, in which there may be as many as a hundred affiliates, depending on the clan’s power and structure. Each clan, often family organized and operated, has its head capo, its boss. The Camorra is said to be an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It is also not unusual for Camorra clans to infiltrate into the politics of their respective areas. Consequently, because the Camorra clans act independently, they are more prone to feuding amongst themselves. Such feuds often erupt into violent wars.
During this post-war period in Naples, the loyalty of the collectors of supplies and equipment was not always paramount, and buyers attempted to outbid one another for scarce resources. The time was now for the Camorra family clan capos to specialize and exert their authority and power.
Occasionally, an American military pleb who stupidly attempted to enter the market and work with a local to ‘score some of the action’ was either found beaten close to death or had ‘deserted, absent without leave’, while the local accomplice had simply ‘disappeared’. On one such occasion, late one afternoon while Tommaso was privately fossicking through the rubble at Mercato, an American soldier approached him and in a threatening tone demanded that Tommaso hand over his rather substantial pickings. While Tommaso didn’t understand English very well, he certainly did not understand the thick American’s accent littered with foul language, but he definitely understood his attitude and body language. Tommaso simply stood his ground and shook his head, replying, ‘No!’
The soldier approached Tommaso to within a short arm’s distance, opening a flick knife he had up to this point concealed in his jacket. Once again, he demanded that Tommaso hand over his stash, brandishing his weapon in Tommaso’s face. Before the soldier knew what was happening to him, Tommaso had broken his assailant’s arm and stabbed him with his own knife into his hear