Blood Alone (24 page)
THE DAYS OF ROUGH travel had caught up with me. My legs felt like jelly, each step up the stairs winding me as I pulled myself along by the banister. I washed, cleaning the crusty lump on my head as best I could. I got rid of the bandage. I slept some more in my room behind barred windows. Later, I told Nick and Harry about what had happened, but I didn’t feel like hashing it over. I wanted to get it done, and sleep some more. They asked me if Don Calo had decided to tell the Sicilian soldiers to desert, and I replied that I thought so. We ate, and I went into the courtyard and sat in the late afternoon sun, waiting. Nick and Harry followed, and Sciafani joined us.
Cars and a truck pulled up outside the gate, the sound of slamming doors and creaking rusty iron signaling the arrival of our convoy to Cammarata. Half a dozen men in white shirts with sleeves rolled up, black vests, and
lupare
slung over their shoulders, sauntered in. They were young and smooth skinned, thick dark hair curling from underneath their cloth caps. They watched us out of the corners of their eyes, two of them slowly walking around to where we sat, shotguns cradled in their arms. They stood behind Sciafani. Another guy, this one in a suit, about a decade older than the sawed-off gang, came through the gate. He didn’t look at us as he hustled into the house, buttoning his jacket against his thick waist and pushing his slick hair back with his hands.
“Che c’è?”
Nick asked, the Italian equivalent of asking what’s up.
No reply. I threw Sciafani a look. It seemed like bad news had strolled in, and the worst news I could think of would come from Agrigento. He gave a nervous shrug, and grimaced. Not very Sicilian. More like Scollay Square after midnight, when a guy stops and asks you in a gruff voice for a light.
Footsteps pounded toward us from the house as we were each prodded to our feet by the hard end of a double-barrel. No one argued. Don Calo advanced on us, followed by the guy in the suit, whose lips were pinched tight into a thin line of anger. Don Calo clutched something in his hands, and the bottom fell out when I saw what it was. A burlap bag. The bag I’d left stuck under the seat of the car that brought us here.
Most people slow down as they get close to another person. Don Calo didn’t. His rapid pace brought him right up to Sciafani as he drew the sacristan’s big revolver from the bag and slammed it into the side of Sciafani’s face, sending him crashing to the ground. Don Calo’s momentum carried him right over Sciafani, so that he stood astride him as he lay on his side, holding both hands to his face. Blood leaked from between Sciafani’s fingers.
“Why did you do it?” Don Calo demanded, his voice booming with violence. “Why?”
Sciafani, pulling one hand away, stared at his blood.
Don Calo kicked him, a vicious blow to the ribs. “Tell me!”
Sciafani opened his mouth, unable to take in enough air to breathe, much less speak. Don Calo brought his foot back again, but Sciafani rolled over, holding up one hand.
“I did it to hurt you, to take something away from you,” he said between gasps. “I was going to kill you too, for my father. After all the death I have seen, I thought I could do it. But killing that man sickened me. I am a coward.” Tears flowed from his eyes, mixing with his blood.
“My
caporegime
is dead, all because you wanted to try your hand at killing?”
Don Calo clenched his fists, fury knitting his brow. Sciafani’s admission enraged him, and I could see him performing a cold, hard calculation, finding no solution that would make sense of his man’s death. It was alien to him, and perhaps he saw Tommy the C’s death as a waste, having come at the hands of a novice who found he didn’t have the calling.
Don Calo raised the revolver and cocked the hammer. He aimed directly at Sciafani’s head. Sciafani covered his eyes with blood-streaked hands, turning away from the sight of the barrel pointing at him. He offered no resistance. Don Calo’s face was grim, and I saw the muscles tense in his forearm. He pulled the trigger.
The explosion in the enclosed courtyard rang from the walls. Birds rose up in flight from the roof. Don Calo stepped back, the revolver hanging limply from his hand. Sciafani looked up in shock and surprise. One of the
lupara
boys laughed and Don Calo silenced him with a look that could have cut glass. Sciafani got up, staring at the wisp of smoke curling up from a hole in the hard ground, next to where his head had been.
The guy in the suit snapped his fingers, and the others followed him out, casting backward glances at the man Don Calo hadn’t killed.
“Come, sit, Enrico,” Don Calo said, his voice calm and gentle.
Setting the pistol on the table, he guided Sciafani to a seat, taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to Sciafani’s cheek, guiding his hand to hold it there. Don Calo sat down heavily, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, a streak of Sciafani’s blood leaving a thin trail over his eyes.
“They said I should have killed you years ago,”Don Calo said. “But that was one death I could not cause either.”
“
Perché?”
Sciafani said, one palm outstretched. Why? Why not then, why not now?
“I have done things that the law, and your American friend Billy, would call wrong. I call them natural to a man of our honored society. I have no regrets. But I do regret leaving you, a child, without parents. And some days, I regret the absence of men like your father, men who did not fear me. I am not a monster, and I could not solve the problem you presented by killing you, then or now. But, as of today, we are even. I regret the death of Tommaso, but it allows me to give you your life. I had to strike you, for the sake of appearances, you understand?”
“
Sì
.”
“Good,” Don Calo said, standing and holding Sciafani by the shoulders. “Now go with these men tonight, and never return. If you do, I will kill you.”
Sciafani stood, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t give the bastard who killed his father a double-cheek kiss, and if that Sicilian crime boss who promised to kill him if he ever saw him again didn’t clasp him by the shoulders as he did.
Don Calo hollered into the house, and two old ladies came out to lead Sciafani away, dabbing at his cut cheek like cleaning up blood was a regular afternoon chore. I was speechless, and for me to admit that is saying something.
“There are weapons for you in the truck,” Don Calo said, strictly business. “You are free to go.”
“Are you with us then, Don Calo?” Harry asked, a little nervously, I thought.
“No, my English friend,” he said, with a wink in my direction. “You are with me.”
Don Calo led us to the gate. The little Fiat Balilla was there, with the older guy wearing the tight suit in the passenger’s seat.
“This is Gaetano Fiore,” Don Calo said, gesturing to him. He nodded to me as Don Calo spoke to him in Italian. All I heard was my name, but it sounded like it was said in a nice way. Bill-lee, just like Roberto had said it, stretching out those two syllables into something more Italian. Gaetano had a pencil-thin mustache surrounded by pudgy cheeks and a double chin. A British Sten gun rested on his lap, and it looked completely natural in his meaty hands.
“Gaetano,” I said, sticking my hand out to shake his. I wanted to get some sense of the man before we roared off into the dark with him.
“Bill-lee,” he said back, grinning as he shook my hand in a grip that could crush walnuts. “
Ci diverticemo
.”
“He says this will be fun,” Don Calo translated. “He never liked Laspada.”
“A man of good taste. Thank you, Don Calo, for everything.” I offered my hand but he ignored it, instead giving me a pair of kisses, just like the ones he’d traded with Sciafani. I was honored, since he hadn’t even killed anyone in my immediate family.
The
lupara
boys cheered and Gaetano shouted my name. I mumbled my thanks again and tried to look as heroic as the situation called for. I climbed into the back of the truck with the others as the ancient engine rumbled into life, and after one of the
mafiusu
opened a crate of Sten guns and handed them around, off we went. Through the open canvas back I saw Don Calo waving, like a friendly relation after you’ve paid a visit and stayed a day too long.
It was after dark when we stopped. The drivers killed their engines at the same moment. A profound silence draped itself around us, broken too soon by the sound of men walking on gravel, the crunching of stones beneath booted feet ominously mixed with metallic echoes of bolts snapping back and driving home the first bullet into the chamber. Gaetano signaled us to stay quiet and stay put. One finger to the lips, then down to the ground, then two fingers to the eyes. No sounds, wait here, let your eyes grow accustomed to the dark.
I watched details emerge from the pitch-black night, hills and trees taking shape and showing detail beneath the cloud-darkened sky. A half moon glowed behind a break in the clouds, a sliver of silver light cascading over us. Breezes gusted and swayed the trees, leaves rustling and branches creaking, the perfect cover for approaching Cammarata; sounds and shadows we could get lost in as we descended on the village like ghosts with steel in our hands.
Gaetano nodded. We left the road and scrambled up a rocky hill, each man staying close to the one in front of him so we’d know who was who when the time came for it to matter. Sciafani stayed with the vehicles that had been pulled off the road in a grove of orange trees. I could tell he had no desire to kill again, to take part in this. The journey of revenge had broken him, uncovering his strength and his weakness, leaving him stranded in that second grave. For the rest of his life, the death of the sacristan would haunt him, a mortal sin he could never absolve himself of.
As I gripped the hard, cold metal of the Sten gun, the leather strap biting into my shoulder, I saw Villard, eyes wide open, mouth formed to ask a question I never heard. Why hadn’t his death broken me? Was I too far gone for guilt and atonement? I envied Sciafani in a way. He’d gone as far as he dared, and now he knew he’d never go a step farther. And here I was, creeping through the night with an intent to leave men bleeding or dead. Out there, ahead of Gaetano, someone didn’t yet know he had seen the sun for the last time. He might be an evil man, cruel to his wife and children. Or maybe he loved them and kissed his children on the forehead before he went out with his shotgun. Either way, they would never see him again.
I wondered if Dad had ever thought about Basher like that. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts Uncle Dan hadn’t, and that Dad had never told him about digging two graves. But he’d told me, and right now I wished he hadn’t.
A hand went up in front of me, and I froze. We were near the top of a ridge, the outline of shrubs about chest-high. Gaetano moved back, signaling Nick and me to move up, low, with him. We crawled through the undergrowth until the glow of lights appeared below us. Cammarata wasn’t much of a surprise. Church tower on a hill, big wall around it, houses tumbling down the slope. The ridge we were on faced the church, and the houses were below us on the opposite hill. The main road cut through the valley beyond the church. No vehicles or people were moving.
“Guarda,”
Gaetano said in a whisper, pointing to a house at the end of a side road.
I tried to see what he was pointing at. Soft light, probably from candles, spilled from small, square windows in the gray stone house. Next to the door, the glow of a cigarette burned bright, showing a guard seated on a bench, shotgun across his legs. Opposite him in the street I could barely make out a dark mass that seemed to absorb the little light seeping out of the windows.
“What is that?” I asked Nick.
“Le donne,”
Gaetano said with a grin.
“Women?” Nick said, squinting his eyes and crawling closer.
The clouds broke and a half moon lit the scene below, reflecting off the light gray stonework. I could make out a dozen women standing in a semicircle in front of the guard, who ground out his cigarette with his toe. Their long black dresses, black shawls, and black head scarves drew the night around them as they stood unmoving, silent, rooted to the road, watching the house where their men were imprisoned. The only contrast was a wisp of white hair poking out from under a scarf or two. The guard lit another cigarette. He seemed nervous, one hand on the shotgun, the other tapping ashes. I didn’t blame him.
Gaetano whispered for Carlo, the youngest of his
lupara
boys. Carlo crawled forward and after rapid-fire orders, gave Gaetano his shotgun and took off his vest and cap. Gaetano gave him a small Beretta and a bottle half full of grappa. Carlo scurried off as Nick and Gaetano spoke, the rest of the gang leaning in to listen. I looked at Harry and shrugged. It was a good Sicilian shrug. I was getting the hang of this.
“OK,”Nick said. “Here’s the deal: Carlo will come staggering down the street in five minutes, pretending to be drunk. If he can get close enough to use his knife, he’ll take out the guard with it. If not, with the Beretta. Then I go in the front door with Carlo and Gaetano; the rest of you go around the back. Billy and Harry, you two stay outside to cover the front in case they have reinforcements. Gaetano doesn’t want you inside since you won’t understand him if he gives an order.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Can Carlo pull it off?”
“Carlo’s good with his knife, don’t let that baby face fool you. He already is a man of honor.”
It wasn’t the time to debate the definition of honor, so I nodded and followed Gaetano and Nick down a gully that gave us cover as we moved up to the rear of the house across the street from our target. We hunkered down behind it and waited. Two minutes passed like twenty. Finally I could make out Carlo, singing off-key and calling for Carmela. Taking advantage of the diversion, we ran to a wall that bordered the road and contained a small garden on the side of the house. Peering over the top, I could see the guard looking down the road toward Carlo. The women didn’t move.
“Dov’è Carmela?”
Carlo implored the women to help him find Carmela, going from one to the other, taking their hands and kissing one or two on the cheek. They ignored him and he turned to the guard, offering his bottle.