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By Root 703 0

belonging to a man local gossip portrays as a usurer, have been deliberately given names that suggest the romantic violence of bandits and cowboys. An artisan remarked that it was as though the proprietor were announcing outright, "I'm an underworld character and I'm not hiding it." In reality these names are allusive, not referential, and the very deniability of their implied menace lends them even more sinister force, especially in a city where such a deliberate provocation is seen as Sicilian rather than Roman. (The Roman underworld style is instead for a local crime boss to make quiet phone calls in the night, suggesting to others that they should stir up trouble.) There was certainly nothing reticent about the restaurateur's tactics. The signboard for one of his establishments, for example, is clearly an imitation of the lettering of a Wild West sheriff's poster, but the (English-language) name is actually quite ambiguous and the Italian translation conjures up only its more innocuous meaning. Threat? What threat? One of this man's most regular customers was adamant that the criticisms were merely envious talk, and that all the restaurants in the area bore names that suggested the tough Roman underclass-"all the names are a bit in street-punk style" (tutt'i nomi un po' da coatti).;0

All one can say with certainty is that these names are perceived as threatening by many residents, who experienced them as a demand for craven respect demanding "self-abasement on the part of the people"-an entirely plausible interpretation for local critics, yet entirely beyond the possibility of legal proof. The owner's personal demeanor reinforces the same message; he makes a point of smoking where it is forbidden, and, if asked to desist, walks away briefly and without speaking before quickly returning with his cigarette still lit. When a foreign woman demanded a receipt for a pizza for which she had been charged double the regular price, he simply walked past her car and then slammed his hands down on the bonnet in what she interpreted as a threatening gesture. She did not dare to complain.

Public opinion actually validates this kind of daring abuse; the more people talk about it, the more entrenched it becomes. One of the few local artisans who dared to criticize the owner despondently remarked of this public response, "They talk about it, but it becomes a way of exalting his acts." Sheer effrontery is a potent weapon: the longer the establishments in question continue to flout the law against occupying public space, posing risks to local traffic and causing environmental hazards, the more effectively their continuing presence creates the impression of invincibility and reinforces a despairing lack of faith in the law to do anything about it. This sad cynicism loses nothing through the rumors that the restaurateur is actually a police informer, nor is it diminished by such unrelated events as the physical drubbing a young policeman received, allegedly for daring to expose drug deals struck in the main square. Frequent media coverage of the state's inefficiency and of the slow pace of legal action further reinforces the message, which draws on a long-potent vocabulary of menace.

The law, moreover, is as complicated and apparently self-contradictory as the social codes that it regulates. A judge recently ruled that calling someone a "nobody" was an offense because it deprived that individual of a constitutionally sanctioned right to personhood; but the use of scatological epithets is simply an act of rudeness, socially acceptable in the code of Italian masculinity and legally protected because it does not demonstrably constitute an act of intentional menace.31 A similar logic makes it illegal to "sequester" persons-so much so, that a householder who catches burglars red-handed and locks them in until the police can arrive may well be charged with sequestration, a charge originally devised as a sanction against kidnappers.

Such ironies, which frustrate the efforts of the most honest and wellintentioned of the police, simultaneously