The Prince (15 page)

A thrill of pride made Losurdo smile. “Voscenza is always generous with your praise.”

“Unfortunately, Rosario, I'm not here just to pay compliments.”

The prince's grave tone dampened Rosario's smile. “I know what you want to talk to me about, Prince, but Don Mario spoke too boldly against us men of honor on Sunday. I'll tell you right now that it was an impulse I couldn't resist. You could say that the shotgun almost fired itself. However, it won't happen again.”

“Good, Rosario. You know how much I value the monsignor. And his friends must be our friends. Even if they sometimes speak out of line. The matter is closed.”

But Losurdo too had an issue to settle with the prince and took advantage of the rare opportunity to mention it. “
Patri
, there has always been the utmost sincerity between us,” the gabellotto said. “There's something I'd like to clear up.”

“What is it?”

“It's about Manfredi and his son Nunzio,” Losurdo continued.

“Nunzio is a bad apple,” the prince remarked bitterly.

“He's likely to poison the whole bushel. We need to take a firm stand against that family,” the gabellotto insisted.

“Do you know that Manfredi asked me if he could buy a small plot of land in the Madonnuzza?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that too. I remind you that Madonnuzza borders my Giovinazzo property. You can't let him have it. Forgive me for being blunt.”

“Are you concerned about Nunzio or the adjacent lands?” the prince asked seriously.

“Manfredi is my best campiere. When I was in jail, he helped my family. For this I will always be grateful to him. And I also know how important it is to him to become the owner of a piece of land. But I can't allow a member of his family to behave that way with us.”

“You're putting me in a difficult position, because I've already given my word. I can't go back on my decision. I've never in my life done that.” Prince Licata was truly very sorry.

“I already told Manfredi to keep his son in line,” Losurdo went on. “But now that damn kid is out of his control. He blindly obeys that crackpot Jano.”

“Jano isn't a crackpot. He's angry at the entire world, and I can't say I blame him,” Prince Licata replied, shaking his head.

“For some time, he's been hanging around my house, and I don't like it,” Losurdo told him.

“There's a beehive here, my dear Rosario. And flies buzz around wherever there's honey,” Licata said, smiling. “Nevertheless, you don't have to worry. It seems to me that Mena is a young girl with a head on her shoulders.”

“But she doesn't have an easy disposition. She wants to do things her own way, that's the truth. She'll make her mother die of a heart attack,” Losurdo concluded with a sad smile.

– 1921 –

I
n spring the valleys of Salemi, thanks to the brilliant colors of the patchwork of fields, shone like a fistful of diamonds. One morning this peaceful landscape was disturbed when a flock of doves suddenly rose in flight from the trees, frightened by the roar of engines. A convoy of gray-green trucks and jeeps appeared around a curve and climbed up the road leading to the town. In the lead jeep, seated beside the driver and protected by dark, antidust goggles, was Lorenzo Costa himself, captain of the Royal Guard.

After the Italian occupation of the Croatian city of Rijeka following World War I and the uprisings that in those years had devastated many Italian cities in the North, Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti had decided to strengthen the nation's police forces by giving them actual military power: and so the Royal Guard were formed.

Lorenzo Costa, a native of Genoa, had been transferred from the Royal Guard headquarters in Rome to Palermo in order to counter the riots that in recent months had flared up in some Sicilian provinces. It was thought that an outsider could handle the command in a more impartial way, without being influenced by precarious local interests.

Captain Lorenzo Costa had been given specific orders from Rome: he was to get to the bottom of the murder of Marquis Bellarato and find out who his killer was, whether there were others behind it, and why the brutal castration. It was essential that a determined resolve to punish the guilty parties, whoever they were, be demonstrated to the population. The captain was also responsible for investigating the disappearance of Nicola Geraci, the attorney for the socialist or “red” leagues of Petralia Sottana. The state had to present a show of force and the Royal Guard were just the solution, since they were composed of ex-soldiers who, discharged and unable to find work after returning from the Great War, had settled for joining a paramilitary body.

The battlefield of the Royal Guard turned out to be the streets and piazzas of the cities, and their enemies, the citizens. Before long their uniform was loathed by any political group that hoped to organize demonstrations or public gatherings. The Royal Guard were particularly determined and vicious in their interventions, so that often their appearance in the piazzas was enough to turn even the most diehard demonstrators into docile lambs.

The convoy entered a deserted Salemi and headed for the piazza of the Convento di San Francesco, a massive red brick building surmounted by a tall crenellated tower. One wing of the convent had been assigned to the forty men who were under the command of Captain Costa.

As soon as Lorenzo Costa stepped out of the jeep, Chief Brigadier Montalto went to meet him as though he were an old friend and gave him a military salute. “Captain, did you have a good trip?”

Costa snapped rigidly to attention and did not reply to the courteous question. “I wish to set up our headquarters immediately.”

“But don't you want to rest a little, freshen up? Shall I have them bring you some lemonade?” the chief brigadier continued amiably.

“I don't have time for all that. I'm afraid there's a lot to do before we can return home. So let's get a move on.”

Montalto filled him in on the facts concerning the investigation of Marquis Bellarato's death. Lorenzo Costa insisted on making an immediate inspection of the palazzo that had been destroyed by fire. He brought along half of his men, who poked around through the rubble searching for clues. However, they had no idea what to look for, since they weren't investigators but ex-soldiers who had experienced the horrors of trench warfare.

The work done by Montalto and his team had been more than satisfactory. The only clue that might identify the second body, the probable murderer, was a medal that had been spared by the fire, stuck between the remains of the victim's clothing and his skin. The chief brigadier opened a locker and removed the medal from a small envelope.

“Here it is,” he said, handing it to Costa, who examined it closely. It was one of those aluminum medals that are given out in school to children who distinguish themselves for the best essay or the best performance in gymnastics. One side portrayed Saint Christopher crossing a river carrying the child Jesus on his shoulders, while the other side displayed the symbol of a winged victory.

“I know for certain who owned this medal. It meant more to him than anything else,” Montalto explained. “He had won it in a cross-country race during the feast of Saint Christopher.”

“His name?” the captain asked curtly.

“Salvatore Turrisi.” Montalto opened a register that listed everyone who had a police record. He leafed through its pages until he found the name. “Here it is: he was born in 1895.”

“Barely twenty-six years old,” Captain Lorenzo Costa thought.

“Turrisi also had a motive to kill Bellarato,” the chief continued. “The marquis had accused him of having sexual relations with a shepherd and then killing the boy. He went into hiding and became an outlaw because of that accusation. He was a member of Gaetano Vassallo's band.”

“Vassallo's gang will be wiped out; that's what we're here for. And we won't make any allowances,” Lorenzo Costa decreed. “This time they really went too far.

“Was the fire started by them?”

“I think it broke out accidentally,” Montalto told him. “Bellarato may have tried to defend himself with a burning log from the fireplace, where, we've established, a fire was lit . . . In short, I believe Turrisi got trapped in the flames.”

Afterward, the captain wanted to hear about all the notable events that had occurred in Salemi over the past six months, so the meeting with the chief brigadier went on for another two hours at least. By the end of the lengthy conversation, the captain had formed a very clear idea of the social dynamics that characterized the most recent period in that Sicilian town.

His first order was to have the Turrisi family's house placed under secret watch. He had two of his men stationed in a dwelling that had been abandoned years earlier by a family of emigrants, located opposite the entrance to Salvatore Turrisi's brother Curzio's house. Curzio too was in hiding with the outlaw Vassallo. Costa knew that bandits periodically returned to their families, for one thing, to see their children again and embrace their wives, and also to replenish their supplies.

The trap snapped shut on Curzio one night in late spring. The Royal Guard were kind enough to wait for him to perform his conjugal duties before violently taking action. After the lights in the house went out, they waited one more hour. Then Captain Costa gave a signal, and about a dozen men moved in; the other twenty or so remained outside the house to close off any escape route. The Royal Guard broke down the door and rushed into the house in pairs.

Biagio, Curzio's six-year-old son, woke up with a start and began to cry. One of the guards grabbed him and covered his mouth. Meanwhile, the others climbed to the second floor of the dwelling, where they burst into the bedroom, surprising Curzio without his underwear and Vincenza, his wife, with her long white petticoat pulled up to her belly. Curzio just had time to get off his wife when two guards pinned him down, pressing him into the floor. The woman straightened her clothes with unexpected composure. Thinking immediately of her son, she shouted, “Biagio!” Then she was about to leap out of bed, but she too was immobilized by two other Royal Guard.

Shortly thereafter Captain Costa appeared at the door. With a look, he signaled to the two soldiers holding the woman to let her go. As soon as they released their prey, she raced out of the room and down the stairs to her son, violently yanking away the soldier who was clutching him. She hugged the child, and the boy was able to breathe again as he wept.

Captain Costa approached Curzio, though with his head pressed against the floor, the man couldn't see him. “Curzio Turrisi, the day of judgment has arrived for you too. Let's go have a little chat.” From that day on, throughout the entire territory of Salemi, the words “Let's go have a little chat” became synonymous with trials and tribulations for the poor devils to whom they were directed.

The captain had set up a kind of interrogation room in one of the cellars of the convent where the Royal Guard was quartered, and in the months to come, the people of Salemi would describe it as “the slaughterhouse,” for those walls witnessed atrocities that would shame the human race.

The room was furnished only with a dark wooden chair, its two arms equipped with sturdy leather straps, a plank-bed secured to the wall by two clamps, and, in the center, a zinc tub filled with water. Nothing more.

The Royal Guard had bound Curzio's wrists with the two straps. Little more than thirty, the poor farmer had not been born to lead the life of a bandit. For him, the family was the center of the universe, but he had been forced to go into hiding and increase the ranks of Vassallo's band because of a dispute he'd had with his master, Baron Adragna.

Now imprisoned in the chair, Curzio raised his head and saw Captain Lorenzo Costa, in his impeccable blue uniform, approaching with a blackened medal resting in his palm.

“Do you recognize it?” the captain asked, turning the medal over so that Curzio could see both sides. Since Curzio seemed to be ignoring him, he repeated more vehemently, “Do you recognize it?”

Curzio looked at the medal, and then looked up and nodded.

“Whom did it belong to?” Captain Costa pressed.

“You know who, Captain. My brother, Salvatore,” Curzio replied, his eyes growing moist.

“You know what happened to your brother, don't you?”

He shook his head “no” and lied, because word that Salvatore had died in the blaze at Marquis Bellarato's palazzo had spread not only through the valleys of Salemi but also even beyond the Madonie Mountains.

“Your brother first emasculated Marquis Bellarato, then murdered him like a dog,” the captain summarized. “Too bad he too was killed by an unforeseen event: the fire that the marquis himself may have started when trying to defend himself. But these are things that everyone knows by now.” Costa moved close to Curzio's ear and whispered, “What I want from you is information that few, except those directly involved, know.” Those words made Curzio, who was not a lionhearted soul, shiver. “Both of you were members of Gaetano Vassallo's gang. It's clear that someone first ordered Vassallo to make the socialist politician Nicola Geraci disappear, and then, just to confuse the investigators, sent your brother to kill Marquis Bellarato, since Salvatore had a score to settle with him.”

“Vassallo has nothing to do with these events,” Curzio mumbled, though not very convincingly.

“So tell me: Were you present when Gaetano Vassallo met with Rosario Losurdo?” the captain asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“And by chance, isn't Losurdo Prince Ferdinando Licata's gabellotto?” Costa persisted.

“I'm not saying another word. You're trying to set me up; you want to put words in my mouth that I don't want to say. I don't know anything about this.” And he shut his mouth defiantly.