The Prince (48 page)

“He saved you from the brig? Can it be you're always in trouble?”

Saro smiled, and she planted a kiss on his mouth.

The atmosphere of the feast, the excited shouts of the crowd, the sweet sounds of the Sicilian dialect, brought back memories of his Salemi during the feast days of Saint Faustina:
tombola
in the piazza, the procession, the fireworks. The smiling faces of Stellina, Ester, and his beloved parents, Annachiara and Peppino, paraded before his eyes. And Mena. He missed them all and felt sad because he hadn't heard from them in quite some time.

Meanwhile, Ferdinando Licata and his grandniece were moving closer to the saint's shrine. There were still two more people in front of them.

Tom Bontade turned around and glanced at the fire escape again. The timing was right.

Vito Pizzuto's military field glasses were trained on Bontade. The boss couldn't see him, but he knew Pizzuto was watching him. A little farther down, Pizzuto spotted the unmistakable figure of Licata.

He murmured to the former sniper, “Do you have him?”

“He's mine,” was the terse reply.

Vito Pizzuto focused the binoculars on Tom Bontade again, who had turned back to the statue. Next to his boss he also saw the unsuspecting Carmelo Vanni. No one except for him, Bontade, and Roy Boccia knew what was about to happen.

Boccia was the best in the business, both as an explosives expert and as a sniper. Placing the detonator in the saint's hollow head and the stick of dynamite in the statue had been a breeze. No one would ever have imagined an attack on Saint Ciro's statue.

Tom Bontade turned back to Pizzuto and nodded his head imperceptibly. It was the agreed-upon signal.

Bontade had withheld his decision of whether or not to make the strike until the last moment. In the end, he decided to go ahead with it.

By now there was only one person ahead of Licata and Ginevra. The prince picked up the child so she could reach the statue more easily. Their one-hundred-dollar bill had to be exposed, according to the rules, so Ginevra had to try to pin it to some surface that was still free.

Finally, it was their turn. Licata held the little girl out toward the silver statue. Betty and Nico were watching the scene from several yards back. The people nearest to them saw the denomination of the bill and started clapping, followed by the hearty applause of everyone in the square. Cries of “
Evviva San Ciro!”—
“Long live Saint Ciro!” —rose again. Someone else shouted, “Long live the Father!” when suddenly the saint's head was struck a clean blow, and an instant later, an explosion ripped the statue's silver plating in two.

A burst of flame struck the people standing in front of the effigy. Ferdinando Licata, with Ginevra in his arms, was hurled a dozen yards back by the explosion's shock wave. Millions of splinters poured down like a rain of lacerating needles on those pressed around the statue. Screams and moans rose up to heaven, like a tragic Greek chorus. The crowd reeled, panic-stricken. After the first few moments of confusion, everyone started calling the names of their loved ones and running in all directions, trampling children and old people who had been knocked to the ground by the blast. Nico had instinctively thrown his arms around Betty to protect her, but then his mind flashed an image of his daughter leaning out toward the statue.

Many people were on the ground, their faces bloody. Recovered from the shock, Betty looked toward the altar and the saint's shrine: the place where she had last seen her daughter. But there was nothing there anymore except demolished platforms and some bills still fluttering through the air. The statue was now a shapeless lump of silver. When Betty began to realize what had happened, she screamed her daughter's name with every ounce of strength she had in her.

She raced to look for her among the weeping, suffering crowd.

Saro, who with Agnes had been a distance from the explosion, didn't run away like most people did, but ran toward the altar. Agnes huddled beside the tree and burst into tears, like many of those who had escaped injury. Reacting instinctively, Saro headed for the spot where he had last seen Isabel.

“Isabel! Isabel!” His cries joined those of other people wandering around frantically in search of relatives and friends.

He recognized the green dress. She was on the ground, still as a mannequin. He bent over her and lifted her up. Cradling her head gently in his arm, he brushed aside her thick red hair, charred by fire. To his horror, he saw that Isabel had been struck full-on by the flames and shards of silver. Her face was reduced to a pulp, oozing blood everywhere. She had been wounded in the chest as well.

Saro looked around desperately for someone who could lend a hand.

“Help! Help me!” he yelled to draw someone's attention. A man with his clothes in shreds heard him. He left a woman who was moaning a few feet away and came over.

“I'm a doctor,” he said. Seeing Isabel's condition and not having his instruments with him, he placed his fingers on the artery of her neck. Then he shook his head and walked away to aid the other wounded.

Saro cried out, anguished. He pressed her tightly to his chest. “Isabel! My love . . . Isabel, don't die on me!”

Close by, Agnes heard Saro and went on crying, not only because of the tragic incident but because she knew she had lost the man she loved. Dazed and in shock, she wandered off.

Another cry rose from the center of the square. Betty had managed to recognize Ferdinando and the remains of little Ginevra. From a distance, Nico saw his wife throw herself on the ground, hysterically pounding her fists on the pavement. Frantic, he ran to her. He didn't dare look at the amorphous mass of blood, flesh, and shreds of clothing beside her, which must be what was left of his poor baby girl. He bent over Betty and hugged her, covering her with his body, as if to protect her from that horror.

Tom Bontade drifted through the square, offering comfort to those pleading for help. He tried to be seen by as many people as possible, hoping he would be remembered as the first to go to the aid of the injured.

Up above, on the fire escape of the building facing the statue, Roy Boccia disassembled the rifle and put it back in its case. Beside him, Vito Pizzuto took the time to observe the results of their plan, pleased with how things had gone.

Ferdinando Licata was lying on his back, his face mangled and bloody. His hands gripped tatters of the child's torn-off garment, while the rest of her little dress was impressed on Ginevra's charred skin, racked by the blaze and peppered with silver shards.

Betty frantically shook off her husband. She didn't know how to pick up the child, afraid to hurt her.

But Ginevra could no longer feel any pain.

A few minutes later, the first fire trucks arrived along with ambulances from nearby hospitals. The paramedics and physicians attended to the survivors first and then saw to the dead.

Caring hands removed Isabel's corpse from Saro's arms. They placed the young woman on a stretcher and then slid it into the morgue's black van.

Saro rose like an automaton, feeling drained of all volition. Not far away, he recognized Prince Ferdinando Licata from the bits and pieces of his clothing, and went over to him.

Two paramedics had laid a stretcher on the ground beside the prince. A fireman, with all the sensitivity required by the situation, tried to force Betty to move away from her child to allow the paramedics to see to her. But Betty struggled as hard as she could to stay where she was, becoming hysterical. One of the male nurses had to inject her with a sedative. In the meantime, his colleague gently gathered up the little bloody bundle of flesh and bones and placed it on the stretcher. He called a policeman over to help him, and together they carried the remains of the tiny body to the grim black van.

Only after they'd taken away the little girl did Saro realize that Ferdinando Licata was still alive, his eyes showing signs of movement. The prince seemed to want to speak to him. His state was appalling. The nose was gone, his mouth had become a hole, his skin was completely scorched. Saro bent down to him. Their eyes met and for a few seconds seemed to communicate intense emotion.

Pulling himself together, Saro shouted, “He's alive! Over here, quick! Doctor! He's alive!”

Two physicians were attending to an elderly lady. One of them left the woman, picked up the first aid kit from the ground, and ran over to him. He bent over Licata and immediately saw that there was no time to spare. “Quick, a stretcher! A stretcher and an ambulance!”

Two nurses came running from an ambulance with a stretcher. They laid him on it and brought him to the ambulance, which set off, siren screeching, for Columbus Hospital, on Thirty-Fourth Street.

Tom Bontade, the engineer of the slaughter, had been comforting a distraught woman in the center of the square when he saw Ferdinando Licata being loaded into an ambulance, not the morgue van, and realized in terror that the prince had not died in the explosion.

T
he attack made a huge splash all across America. The Italian community was outraged that such a sacrilege had been committed. There could be no forgiveness for whoever had brought about such carnage. City authorities interpreted the act as a renewal of warfare among New York's Mafia families, and citizens clamored for an iron fist against the perpetrators.

Ten days after the attack, Ferdinando Licata was declared out of danger and transported to Bellevue Hospital. The explosion had completely destroyed his face, and he was bandaged up like a mummy. The only openings were holes for the eyes and a slit for his mouth, which he couldn't move.

In addition to his bandaged face, Ferdinando Licata's torso was in a cast due to the blow he'd received from the shock wave, which had hurled him onto the pavement. Ginevra's little body, absorbing the brunt of the explosion's force, had saved his life. The prince had sustained no internal injuries.

Four weeks later, he was able to speak and was permitted to receive visitors. One of the first to go and see him was Nico, Betty's husband. With a heavy heart, he told him about Ginevra. The little girl had been killed instantly, and the coroner, perhaps to lessen the pain of Nico's grief, had told him that she could not have been aware of anything. Ferdinando asked about Betty. Nico bowed his head. He found it difficult to speak. He told him at once that physically she was all right, she had not been injured. Her wounds lay elsewhere; the child's violent death had shattered her.

Ferdinando turned his head toward the window, so Nico couldn't see him. He knew his niece and her strong-willed nature. Betty didn't want to see her uncle. He had carried a curse from Sicily, an infection that doesn't spare anyone and mows down women, children, husbands, brothers, and fathers alike.

In the days following the attack, Jack Mastrangelo, acting on Licata's behalf, began moving into what had been the Stokers' territory, enlisting several Sicilians of proven loyalty. The prince had wanted them preferably from the Salemi area.

Mastrangelo spoke to the police commissioner conducting the investigation and got him to agree to place Ferdinando Licata under protection, since those who had planned the attack would surely try again to kill him. To reassure the public, the commissioner agreed to have Licata's hospital room placed under armed guard. Four policemen were assigned to protect the prince's life, each working six-hour shifts.

Ferdinando Licata's renown as a just and generous man skyrocketed. The tragedy that had struck his family earned him the compassion of the entire population of Little Italy and that of all Sicilians in America.

As soon as the prince was able to speak, Jack Mastrangelo went to Bellevue Hospital almost every day for new instructions from
u patri
. One afternoon, he was pleased to be able to bring the prince some good news.

Mastrangelo sat down beside the bed. “I carried out all of your orders,
Patri
. We're in command of the territory. No one put up the slightest resistance. The guys are on the ball and happy to work for you. They're impatient for some action.”

“Well done, Jack, you did a good job.” Ferdinando Licata spoke slowly to make himself understood, since his jaw was still partially obstructed by the bandage.

“Think about getting better,
patri
. Everything is under control out there.”

Licata moved his hand on the sheet and touched Mastrangelo's arm.

“I want Saro. It's time to talk to him.”

“Okay. I'll bring him here as soon as possible.”

In the weeks following the attack, the New York police department called all its available police officers back to duty. Leaves, vacations, medical visits, and business travel were suspended indefinitely. Surveillance in the district doubled, and numerous monitoring operations and searches were set in motion. There were weeks of intensive activity, with a constant flow of cars and vans carrying suspects and dubious characters to various police stations. But despite the extraordinary deployment of police officers, investigators were unable to identify the perpetrators and masterminds responsible for the Saint Ciro massacre.

The intense police activity was paralyzing the economic dealings of New York's crime families. Each day that passed meant countless dollars of lost revenue, while expenses continued to mount. Sante Genovese was furious with Tom Bontade. “Without saying a word to me, he goes and plans that fucking screwup!” he raged to anyone who went to see him. “If it weren't for my uncle who protects him, I would already have had him bumped off,” he kept ranting. “An idiot like that will ruin us!”

Sante Genovese was afraid war would break out again between the old and new families, as it had in the twenties. Lucky Luciano's orders had been unconditional: any conflict between the families had to be evaluated and ruled upon by the top-ranking Cosa Nostra bosses; solutions adopted unilaterally were prohibited.