The Prince (60 page)

“Sounds like a very complex scheme.”

“Yes. It's a brilliant scheme. But I haven't told you everything yet. I have great plans for you. The landing will play in our favor. You will manage the subsequent normalization period. You and Don Calò will put friends of friends in strategic posts essential to our future dealings, and you will be their boss. I'll remain in New York and see to maintaining a direct line with you. You and I will control the Cosa Nostra's main areas of trade. Do you realize what that means?”

Saro was struck by Licata's words. Then he embraced him, as he had never done with anyone. And for the first time in his life, he murmured, “Papa.”

J
ack Mastrangelo hadn't heard any word about his niece for several weeks now.

Bontade had told him not to worry. As long as he was alive, the girl had nothing to fear.

Mastrangelo's investigations had petered out. He didn't believe Bontade; on the contrary, he was afraid his niece may have already been killed, and the thought of it drove him mad.

But Aurora wasn't dead. Indeed, the enforced wait, the fear of those men who took turns around her, the violent acts of one who, unseen by the others, stroked her private parts, awakening unfamiliar sensations—all these things had dispelled the constant fog that clouded her brain.

With each passing day, images and people popped up in her mind, impressions that her psyche had hidden away in a corner so as not to upset her. She saw and recognized the face of her mother. She remembered her name, Elena. She remembered her screaming desperately. And she remembered those big hands around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, until the woman fell on top of her.

Her thoughts were distinct, and the scene, which she went over every day in her mind, invariably made her cry. But it was the kind of crying that made her feel better.

She remembered the faces of the ladies dressed in black, their heads wrapped in white cloth strips. She could remember some kind ones among them and some less so.

Aurora also remembered the little garden behind the house. One day it occurred to her that if she could remember, she could also speak like she had at one time. She tried to say “Hello, Aurora.” But only an incoherent croak came from her mouth. She had to exercise her vocal cords. She was sure she would be able to talk. She looked around. She spent the hours of the day waiting for meals, admiring the objects that had been stored up in that room, unable to imagine what fate had in store for her.

By mutual accord, Licata and Mastrangelo decided it was time to take action.

Every year in late spring, Bontade's Beechhurst estate had its final cord of firewood delivered. The pickup truck stopped on the side of the main building. Besides Aldo Martini, Bontade had insisted on having three trusted bodyguards with him: Vincenzo Sanfilippo, Antonio Vella, and Peter Alaimo, illegal immigrants who had recently arrived from Italy and had been given to him by a cousin in Sicily.

Vincenzo and Peter thoroughly checked both the truck and the two men who had brought the load. Everything seemed okay, so they ordered the two men to unload the wood and stack it in a corner of the garden.

The bodyguards kept an eye on them until the pickup disappeared down the road.

A few days later, in the early morning, Antonio Vella went to get an armload of wood for the fireplace in the living room, where Bontade had lately started having his breakfast. As he lit the wood, Antonio Vella had no idea that the last load had been sprayed with a deadly, highly toxic substance. Prolonged exposure to fumes resulting from the burning of the toxin would, in the long run, fatally poison anyone who inhaled the vapors.

Tom Bontade came down early that morning and asked for the newspaper. He had insisted on maintaining his usual routines, even after the incendiary article in the
Sun
.

Bontade ate his anise biscotti with his favorite apple jam. He sweetened his cup of milk with honey. He read the news of the day. As fate would have it, just that day there was a strong wind that kept the fireplace from drawing properly. A bit of smoke seeped into the room.

Vella, crouched beside the fireplace, trying to keep the smoke from drifting back, was the first to fall to the floor, foaming at the mouth. Then Peter Alaimo; he too afflicted by pulmonary spasms. He doubled over, gasping in pain, and spat out a strange bluish froth, then lay still.

Bontade was alarmed. He called Aldo Martini. At that instant the phone rang, and in a flash he remembered what had been written in the fabricated article in the
Sun
: the corpse had been found answering the phone. Terror took hold of each and every cell in his body. He approached the telephone that kept ringing insistently. Then he grabbed the receiver.

“Hello, you bastard. How does it feel to have death breathing over you?” The voice was Prince Licata's. “There's someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Bontade's lungs struggled to take in oxygen. He could barely breathe. The voices came to him confused. His brain was less and less oxygenated, and he had to sit on the floor, his legs no longer supported him.

Now Mastrangelo was on the phone: “You have a few minutes to surrender your soul to the devil. If you tell me where Aurora is, I'll let you have the antidote to the poison. There's a doctor outside your gate. If you talk, you can still save your hide. As soon as you tell me where she is, I'll give him the order to inject the drip. It's up to you, make up your mind.”

Bontade was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. His mouth was filled with thick saliva. “She's right here. Hurry. . . hurry. . . I'm dying.” He struggled to get those few words out.

There was no doctor outside Bontade's house. The old mafioso collapsed on the floor with the phone still in his hands. He tried desperately to suck in a breath of air. But the inability to breathe was now irreversible. The spasms were horrific as he clung to the still remaining thread of life with every ounce of strength he had.

Mastrangelo cursed himself for having ruled out from the start the possibility that Aurora might be in the most obvious place, Bontade's “bunker.” He started speeding toward Queens—to hell with the traffic lights. In his heart, he was terrified of getting there too late to save his niece. He didn't understand how the toxin could have acted so quickly and with such virulence. The chemist they'd recruited had promised it would be diluted enough to cause extreme illness and death only after several hours of exposure.

Mastrangelo arrived at the house. There was no one to stop him. He put on his gas mask and entered from the back. On the hallway floor, he saw Aldo Martini, whose eyes were glassy. He then ran to the living room and saw Bontade, still clutching the phone. The fire was burning and kept giving off poisonous toxins. He raced through every room of the house. Instinctively, he called the girl's name at the top of his lungs. He didn't find her in any of the rooms. Bontade couldn't have been lying when he was at death's door.

Suddenly he heard a voice: “Here! I'm down here.” He had never heard Aurora speak; it couldn't be her.

The voice was coming from the basement. The door leading down to the cellar was unlocked. Mastrangelo ran down the steps and, in the center of the room, surrounded by stacks of objects, he saw Aurora.

“Here, over here.”

She was speaking! So she could speak! Mastrangelo bent over her. She was lying on a kind of mattress set on the rough cement floor.

“Aurora, I'm your Uncle Jack—your mother's brother. Do you understand my words?”

“Yes, Uncle Jack.” The girl was having trouble breathing. Painfully she opened her eyes and raised a hand to stroke her uncle's cheek.

“If only your mother were here.” Mastrangelo kissed the hand she'd reached out to him. “Come on, let's get out of here.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away the saliva that flowed abundantly down her chin. He put his mask on her. But Aurora's breathing was now a rattle.

He mustn't lose another minute. He took her in his arms, she smiled at him, and then she closed her eyes, overcome by the spasms crushing her chest. Mastrangelo held her tightly and headed for the stairs. For a moment, he staggered and had to pause to catch his breath. Now he too felt intense pain in his chest and struggled to breathe. Summoning all his strength, he took the steps one by one. The door was at the top of the stairs, but it seemed like it was at the end of a tunnel. The dazzling light blinded him. He steadied himself against the wall and went on climbing. Just a little more effort, and he would make it. All of a sudden Aurora's body went limp in his arms, its weight doubling. He knew the girl was dead, but irrationally pushed away the thought. He mustn't give up. He'd never in his life been a quitter, and he wasn't about to start now when he had to save his niece's life.

At last, he reached the door. Now they had to get out of the house in a hurry. He rushed down the corridor, but his chest heaved, and a fitful cough made him expel a clot of blood that stained the garment of the young woman whose head now dangled lifelessly. Jack Mastrangelo fell to his knees, spent by the effort he'd made thus far. Tenderly, he laid Aurora's body on the floor. He unbuttoned his shirt and tried to breathe, but the jagged ache in his chest pierced him like a sword. He tried to contain the sharp blade with his hands, but the stabbing pain spread through his body. He fell back. He turned and looked at Aurora. Her mouth seemed to form a smile. He reached out to her, and even that simple act was an effort. He felt like crying or shouting in despair over such a rotten fate, but he couldn't do either. His hand reached the girl's hand and he placed it over hers, as if to keep the promise he'd made so long ago to his beloved sister. Then he opened his mouth gasping for one last breath of air, but it was no use.

The phony news story about Tom Bontade's death, so minutely described in the
Sun
, had made the rounds of the city at the time and had led to much teasing by the other bosses, not only in New York but also in Las Vegas and Chicago. The paper had issued an apology, and the reporter had been fired. But when the event reported back then became a real news item, an icy chill descended on all the Mafia families in the various districts. Such a thing had never happened. Everyone knew who was behind it, but they were careful not to let on. Ferdinando Licata had won everyone's respect—even those who hated him for his rapid rise.

When Roy Boccia, in his basement cell at naval intelligence, found out from one of the guards about what had happened, he was seized by panic. Terror became his daily bread. He finally decided to cooperate with the cops, realizing that as soon as he stuck his nose out of prison, Licata would have him killed.

He asked for a meeting with the district attorney. He wanted to make a confession. When the prosecutor called him in, he said he was ready to testify in court against Saro Ragusa. He admitted that he had seen him assault Vito Pizzuto in a warehouse at the port, chaining him up and torturing him to death.

In exchange for his testimony, however, he demanded that he be given a new identity and passport so he could build a fresh life in another part of the world, far from New York.

Based on the allegations of that eyewitness, public prosecutor William Brey issued an arrest warrant for Saro Ragusa. He was unaware, however, that Saro had meanwhile been enlisted by the OSS—Office of Strategic Services—for Operation Husky.

I
n strictest secrecy, Saro Ragusa was picked up one day in midspring by two soldiers in civilian clothes and escorted to a military base near Washington.

There, along with a dozen other young men of Sicilian origin, he was given intensive training in how to use automatic pistols and submachine guns, how to assemble a bomb and recognize detonators and explosive powders, and how to use a radio for communications, as well as the basics of karate. Lastly, he made three parachute jumps, one by day and two others at night. The instructors informed the Sicilian-American operatives that they would parachute onto the Sicilian coast under cover of darkness.

The group was part of the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence services division established during that period by a volcanic Irish attorney in Washington named William “Wild Bill” Donovan.

The OSS was divided into several sections. Secret Intelligence, dedicated to operations in occupied nations; Secret Operations, the liaison for operations to be carried out with resistance forces in countries occupied by the Germans; Morale Operations, the section for psychological warfare; the X-2, devoted to counterintelligence; and Research and Analysis, the investigation unit charged with providing political, social, and economic data about the countries in which they operated.

Within the Secret Intelligence branch, there was a subdivision called the Italian Section, created by a certain Earl Brennan. The key figures were Vincent Scamporino, charged with leading the section, attorney Victor Anfuso, and Max Corvo, barely twenty years old.

The section had been formed to organize a group made up essentially of native Sicilians, who were to initiate the task of infiltration aimed at supporting the upcoming Allied invasion. To obtain information about Italy, the team drew on a pool of six million Italian-Americans. They sought collaborators among Sicilians who had been forced to emigrate not only because the fascists had never cared about their region but also because the regime had treated them as criminals, sending soldiers and carabinieri to oppress the population.

When Prince Licata asked Haffenden about the possibility of recruiting Saro Ragusa for the Italian Section, the leaders were happy to enlist him in the unit.

Max Corvo's men covertly infiltrated every area of the island, looking for minefields, military facilities, command centers, airstrips, antifascists—in short, any information that might prove useful to the forces that were preparing for the invasion. In particular, they had to convince the Italian soldiers to lay down their arms, since fascism had been defeated, and each man had to think about his own future: one that would be shared not with the Germans but with the Americans and the British.