The Prince (65 page)

Naturally, the Americans' search, led by the vile character who was hiding in the jeep, did not go unnoticed by the ever-watchful eyes of Don Calò's men. The old Mafia boss was informed of what was happening at the Caprile farm.

“Find out who that bastard is,” z
u
Calò ordered.

Later on Jano returned home. As soon as he saw Mena, he realized that she could have been the one who warned Saro about the trap. Without even asking for an explanation, he slapped her. Nennella ran to protect her, as she always did when the two argued and Jano raised his hands to his wife. “Stop! Don't you touch her!”

“Nennella, don't butt in!” Jano yelled angrily, his breath jagged. “She has to learn to keep her mouth shut.” Jano then turned on Mena, who sought cover in the arms of her faithful housekeeper. “You were the one who warned your lover, weren't you?” he roared.

“She has no lover! You have a hole in your head, that's what!” Mena thought how incredible it was that how Nennella could stand up to him, undaunted by his violence.

Their little son appeared in the doorway of the room in tears, frightened by his father's shouting. Mena broke away from Nennella's embrace and rushed to reassure the child.

“Rosario, you mustn't cry. Come, my love.” She picked him up. “You see? Everything is all right.”

She carried him over to her husband. “There now, Daddy will let you ride piggyback . . . Take him, Jano.”

Jano was forced to take the boy and swing him up to sit on his shoulders. The child's tears turned to smiles. Mena clapped her hands to hide the anguish in her heart.

Sergeant Dickey, with an arrest warrant for Saro Ragusa, went to pick him up at the Salemi field camp where an OSS detachment was stationed. But in response to the arrest order, Saro showed him a series of merit certificates and a special clearance from the United States Army Command officially endorsing him to the other Allied commands and bureaus of the Allied Military Government in Sicily. Dickey, despite insistent appeals to high-ranking military offices that he take Saro into custody, nonetheless had no concrete evidence that the man had been involved in anything illegal. The only charge against him was arranging for a shipment of empty drums to be delivered to a farm where twenty or so trucks had been set on fire. But that didn't prove anything.

Wartime requirements necessitated the services of that individual who on more than one occasion had demonstrated that he was invaluable to the war effort. In the end, Dickey was once again forced to give up.

Meanwhile, after a contentious debate, the New York district attorney's office had informally agreed to hand over Prince Ferdinando Licata, despite the fact that several judges had opposed Dickey's request. They felt it was inappropriate, at a time like this, with war operations still ongoing in central Italy, to rake up events from more than twenty years ago. America shouldn't get mixed up in those “family quarrels,” as the judges put it. But in the end, they all agreed that it was better not to wrestle with the FBI. Sergeant Dickey would conduct his investigation, and afterward, they would decide what should be done.

The only direct testimony pointing to Ferdinando Licata as the hand behind the Bellarato homicide was the account that had been given by Prospero Abbate before prosecutor Tommaso Amato of Marsala back in 1939.

Jano had very cleverly sent the sergeant off on the track that he himself had laid out years ago. Fortunately, both Abbate and the prosecutor were still alive. Amato had retired to devote himself to his cherished botanical studies, while Abbate, like his Black Shirt comrades, had managed to go into hiding at the opportune moment to avoid serving in the Social Republic, the puppet state of Nazi Germany during the latter part of the war.

The former prosecutor admitted truthfully to Sergeant Dickey that Prospero Abbate's confession had seemed false at the time. Dickey thanked him for his candor and asked to see the confession transcript, which he studied carefully, word for word. Attorney Amato was right: it seemed like a little speech that had been memorized.

He decided to close the case. Even for a bulldog like him, the matter went too far back. He would find it hard to uncover any credible evidence after so much time had passed. Moreover, he told Jano, he hadn't kept his word, either. He was supposed to hand him Saro on a silver platter, but he had tricked them both.

Jano, nonetheless, had an ace up his sleeve: an eyewitness who had never wanted to appear but whom he would now convince to testify. Dickey gave him one last chance.

After Mena's explanation, Saro still couldn't understand how she could so easily have given in to that despicable man. He knew the strong sense of honor that was in the girl's blood. It could be traced back to her father's dignity and her mother's sense of modesty. The last time they'd seen each other, she had implored him not to bring shame on her—“you at least,” she'd said to him despairingly. He couldn't help thinking of her. He found the most trivial excuses to end up wandering near her house. One afternoon he saw her return home with two large bags of vegetables and the child toddling after her, clinging to her skirt. The boy stumbled over a pothole, fell, and began to cry.

“Saruzzo, will you watch where you're going?” she scolded him. She put one of the bags down on the ground and picked him up. “There now, don't cry. Look, here's Nennella.” The nanny took him from her arms, and the boy calmed down immediately. “Rosariuzzo,” she said, “Nennella made you a
cassata
that will make you lick your chops!” The woman beamed, and the boy smiled with her.

Meanwhile, Mena picked up the second bag and with a brief run caught up with Nennella and the child. Together they disappeared through the door of the house.

Saro entered the tavern and asked with feigned indifference, “What's the name of Mena's son?”

“Rosario Saruzzo,” the few customers frequenting the inn at that hour chorused in reply.

His heart skipped a beat. A flash went off in his head. Mena hadn't lied! It was true: he was the only one she'd loved! She had loved him so much that she'd bamboozled Jano by naming her son not after his grandfather, as it might seem, but after her first love, him!

To lend a semblance of legality to the testimonies and at the same time authenticate the documents by the presence of bona fide military judges, Dickey obtained the collaboration of two American magistrates. He had a couple of teacher's desks from the local elementary school brought into the large town hall chamber, where films were once screened, and had the judges sit there.

He demanded that the citizens of Salemi be present at the interrogation. If anyone recalled any piece of information about that long ago murder, he was to speak up and report it.

The witness, a surprise arranged by Jano, was Nunzio, the son of one of Rosario Losurdo's foremost campieri, Manfredi.

Nunzio had been twenty years old at the time of the events. He had never wanted to talk, so as not to get involved in that ugly affair. But now, given that they wanted to shed some light on Marquis Bellarato's murder, he'd decided to come forward. That was the version Jano told the audience. In actuality, Nunzio was doing Jano a personal favor, and no one could say no to Jano.

When he entered the chamber, a few voices from the back shouted “Fascist!” To make the testimony seem even more solemn, Dickey had the witness swear on the Bible, which everyone viewed as an eccentricity on the part of the investigator. Nunzio stood in the center of the hall, in front of the two officers, with his back to the audience, and began answering the sergeant's questions.

Briefly, he stated that on the day Marquis Pietro Bellarato was killed, he was in the vicinity of the palazzo. All of a sudden, he saw Rosario Losurdo run out the back door. He noticed him because the man appeared distraught, and his clothes and hands were smeared with blood. He acted like someone who had just committed a murder. He saw him take off in a hurry, and a few minutes later the fire broke out. He didn't remember anything else.

Prospero Abbate's testimony was also heard, as he repeated the account he'd given four years earlier to the prosecutor from Marsala. His deposition electrified the spectators, who murmured animatedly as he described the marquis's murder in abundant detail. He spoke of Losurdo trying to persuade the marquis to withdraw the option on the land, and then told of Losurdo grabbing the poker and striking Bellarato repeatedly on the head. Abbate was extremely meticulous, describing the blood that splattered the killer, who then wiped his face and hands on his clothes as best he could. Finally, he told of Losurdo's making his escape after setting fire to the draperies and furnishings. He, Abbate, was hiding behind a curtain, terrified. At the time, he was only eleven. He waited for Losurdo to run out, and then he got out of there too.

But a second corpse was found, Dickey pointed out. “Did you see a second person in the palazzo?” the sergeant asked him.

Abbate shook his head. He had always believed that Nicola Geraci, the other corpse, had been carried into the burning palazzo later by Prince Licata—because Geraci was an enemy of the prince, who had himself been involved in the deal to purchase the former Baucina estate.

The sergeant was satisfied with the witnesses' statements. The two military judges exchanged looks as if to say that the case was all too clear.

Also in attendance in the chamber were Monsignor Albamonte and the parish priest Don Mario; Ninì Trovato and his wife, Tina; Curzio Turrisi with his wife, Vincenza, and his son, Biagio; plus Jano, Nunzio, and the entire combat league group that, just prior to the Allied landing, had managed to renounce fascism and blend in with the town's antifascists. The only one missing was Ginetto. Someone had shot him in the back right before the Americans arrived. Also present were Mena and Nennella, who hugged Rosario as if he were her own son. In the back of the hall sat Saro. All in all, the majority of Salemi's population was there—or what was left of it.

The sergeant turned to the public and declared gravely, “On the basis of these testimonies, I hereby charge Prince Ferdinando Licata, soon to be extradited from the United States, with the murders of Marquis Pietro Bellarato and Nicola Geraci, which took place in 1920. If there is anyone in the audience who wishes to add further information, he is asked to please step forward.”

An unreal silence descended over the room. No one dared breathe for fear of shattering the tense mood that hung in the air. Then someone from the back rows raised his hand. Everyone turned around and saw Tosco, Marquis Bellarato's servant, get to his feet. The man walked to the center of the room and stopped in front of the two desks. The sergeant stood beside the military judges, waiting for him.

“You are?” Dickey asked.

He stated his name with great dignity: “My name is Tosco Bellarato.”

One of the two judges wrote the name on a sheet of paper.

“Are you a relative of the marquis?” the sergeant inquired.

“I'm his half brother. His father was my natural father.” He glanced at the two judges, who were impassively taking notes.

Seeing Tosco walk toward the center of the room, one individual in the audience had a start: Nunzio.

“Did you live with your half brother?” Dickey continued.

“I was his servant and his laughingstock.”

The Americans didn't understand what he was referring to, whereas the whole town did.

“Explain what you mean,” Dickey persisted.

“He had his way with me. I was also his lover, just to be clear.” The words fell on the foreigners' heads like a guillotine blade. Then he continued: “A pack of lies was told today. Someone said he saw Losurdo run from the palazzo, covered with blood. It's not true.”

“Tosco, you should be ashamed! Go home!”

All eyes turned to Nunzio, who had bellowed those words, beside himself. But Tosco went on, undeterred: “I'm not the one who should be ashamed. Nature made me this way. Someone else should now be ashamed!” He pointed a finger at Nunzio. “He's a perjurer. He couldn't have seen Losurdo escape, because he was in bed with me on the day of the fire.”

Those words had the impact of a bomb. Everyone in the room began shouting, arguing with one another, some hurling insults at Nunzio and some at Tosco. Nunzio tried to make it to the door, but following the sergeant's abrupt orders, the two military police got to him first and stopped him.

In a flash, the sergeant and Jano saw their theory fall apart. When calm was restored in the chamber, the sergeant asked Tosco if from his room it was possible to hear what was happening in the drawing room where the marquis had been when he was killed. Tosco stated that it wasn't possible to hear anything.

Then the sergeant turned to Nunzio: “Do you deny knowing this man, let's say, intimately?”

Nunzio ducked his head between his shoulders.

Jano couldn't believe what he was hearing. “A fairy,” he murmured.

Meanwhile, another hand went up from the center of the audience. Once again all eyes turned toward the new witness.

A name echoed through the hall to everyone's astonishment:
U pisci
. Ciccio Vinciguerra, the quiet, bearded man who had showed up in Salemi about ten years ago from God knows where, made his way through the people who crowded on either side of him.

“The man who killed Marquis Bellarato was Salvatore Turrisi,” said the man, whose rumbling voice few in the room could say they'd ever heard.

“That's a serious accusation you're making,” Dickey told him. “Who is this Turrisi?”

This time it was Curzio Turrisi who stood up. “I am Salvatore's older brother. My name is Curzio Turrisi. Salvatore disappeared at the time of the murder, and no one has seen him again since then. We all thought he immigrated to America.”

The sergeant turned back to Ciccio Vinciguerra. “Why are you so certain it was Salvatore Turrisi who killed the marquis and Nicola Geraci?”