From a story in Three Men, by Massimo Scognamiglio
I have everything. I had everything.
Logline
The editor of Italy’s most powerful newspaper goes to Puglia to bury one of his young reporters. A brotherhood welcomes him, drugs him and buys him. It offers him everything a man could want, except the truth.
The story
Michele Palmisano wrote about stolen Rolexes for twenty-five euros a piece. He is found dead in Cerignola. A week later the fence who had sued the paper dies in a car crash. The editor flies down for the funeral, and a general strike traps him in a town with every shutter down.
An envelope with a wax seal. A blue Maserati. A country estate, music loud enough to rattle the windows, thirty men dressed in white: “Welcome, Director.” He wakes up wearing a watch that isn’t his, next to a video that calls him brother. From then on every favour has a price: an investigation to keep in the drawer, a partner reporting from a war zone to be followed.
Notes
The story is built as a countdown: each chapter is one of the days left before the end. It is set between Rome and the province of Foggia, and is part of the book Three Men. Together with The Bastard and The Clerk it can also become a three-episode miniseries.