In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

TWELVE

THE M.I..30 calibre is the semi-automatic rifle that got most American infantrymen through the Second World War, which meant that the one which was about to blow a hole in me now had been around for quite a while. On the other hand, it had obviously been cared for like a lover. The stock was polished, the gunmetal shone with oil and the whole thing looked as lethal as anyone could wish, just like the man who was holding it, Serafino Lentini.

“Serafino, stop!” the girl shouted in Italian. “You mustn’t shoot him – you mustn’t!”

He was wearing an old corduroy suit, leather leggings to his knees and the face beneath the cloth cap was recklessly handsome in spite of the week-old stubble of beard and the dirty black patch over the right eye. A gay lad, this, a bravo straight out of the sixteenth century. I could almost see him in doublet and hose. A kiss for a woman, a blow for a man. I smiled, remembering the old joke. Very funny, except that with this boy you’d probably get a knife in the gut if you got in his way.

The two men behind him were just a blur, it was his face that loomed large for me in all the world at that moment. He grinned wolfishly and pushed off the safety.

“Careful,” I said. “Cursed is the man who spills the blood of his own.”

The old Sicilian proverb had about the same effect as a good stiff hook to the chin. His eye, that one good eye of his, seemed to widen, but most important of all, the barrel of the M.I. was removed from my neck.

“Quick,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Barbaccia’s grandson. We’re kin through my grandmother’s family.”

“Mother of God, but I remember you as a boy.” The safety catch clicked on again, the most reassuring thing to happen for some time. “Once when I was fourteen, my old man went to see the capo on family business. I had to wait at the gate. I saw you walking in the garden playing with a dog. All white with black spots. I forget what they call them.”

“Dalmatians,” I said and remembered old Trudi for the first time in years.

“The capo’s American grandson in his pretty clothes. God, how I hated you that day. I wanted to rub mud in your hair.” He produced a stub of cigar from one pocket, lit it and squatted in front of me. “I heard you and the capo didn’t get on after they got your mother that way.” He spat. “Mafia pigs. Still, from what I hear, he’s almost swept the board clean.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but the occasion didn’t seem appropriate. He reached over and fingered my jump suit.

“What’s all this? When I first saw you through the trees I thought they’d brought the troops in again.”

By now I had everything in focus including the girl and the two specimens who were examining the assault rifle with interest. They were in the same unshaven condition as Serafino, the same ragged state. Each of them had a shotgun slung from the shoulder.

I sat up wearily. “I can’t go through all that again. Ask her.”

He didn’t argue, simply turned and went to Joanna Truscott. They moved away a little, talking in low tones, and I got my cigarettes out. As I lit one, the man who was taking a sight along the barrel of the A.K. lowered it and snapped a finger.

I tossed the packet across. There was a definite physical resemblance between them and I said, “You’re the Vivaldi boys, I suppose.”

The one with the rifle nodded. “That’s right. I’m August – he’s Pietro. Don’t expect much from him, though.” He tapped his head. “He has his difficulties and he can’t speak.”

Pietro did a semblance of a jig and his mouth opened, exposing half a dozen black stubs and nothing else. He had a great foolish grin that reminded me strongly of the Cheshire cat. I suppose he had exactly the same smile on his face as he blew someone’s head off.

In fact the head might very well be mine, which was a cheering thought and then Serafino came back and I could tell from the look on his face that everything was going to be all right.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “When I remember how often old Barbaccia has tried to have me put down. But then, we are not of the blood.”

A nice distinction, but sufficient.

“Can I have my weapons back?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that, we could do with them ourselves.” He was obviously unwilling, but decided to make a gesture. “Give him the pop-gun back. Hang on to the others.”

August handed me the Smith and Wesson, looking more than happy, and I pushed it into the spring holster. Had they only known it, at that range I could have given each of them a bullet in the head within the second.

We went down through the trees in a line, Serafino and I together at the rear. Apparently he still had Hoffer’s twenty-five thousand buried in an old biscuit tin somewhere in the area. He thought the whole thing very funny and laughed frequently in the telling.

“So, I’ve killed a few people in my time. That’s life.” He scratched his face vigorously. “I did a couple of jobs for Hoffer when he was having trouble with construction workers on the new road through the mountains. Leaned on one or two and then we dumped some trade unionist down a crevasse. And then he gets in touch with me through a friend and lays out this job concerning the girl.”

“Did you know who she was?”

“Not a hint. He told me she was a blackmailer – that she could ruin him unless she had her mouth closed for keeps. I’d insisted on payment in advance so I had the cash anyway and when I saw her, I liked her.” He grinned ruefully. “Not that I’m half the man I used to be so she’d nothing to worry about there.”

“Yes, I heard about that.”

He laughed uproariously. “Life, it’s a bastard, eh? No, I liked her for the way she stuck out her chin and stood up straight when she thought I was going to shoot her. It put me off, her standing there like some princess from Rome. Then it struck me as how funny it might be to put one over on Hoffer, seeing I already had the cash. He’s a rat and anyway I don’t like Mafia.”

He spat again, I stumbled, put off my stroke to such an extent that I almost lost my balance. I grabbed him by the arm. “Hoffer is Mafia?”

“Didn’t you know? One of those American syndicate boys the Yanks deported during the last few years.”

And my grandfather hadn’t said a word. “Does the girl know?”

“Not really.” He shook his head. “Oh, she thinks he’s a swine all right, but this is only her second visit to Sicily. To her, Mafia is the two lines in the tourist handbook that says it’s a romantic memory.”

Which was reasonable enough. What would she know, spending the greater part of the year at some fancy English boarding school and most of the rest following the social round in France, Switzerland and the usual places. We had something in common there.

“So Hoffer is working for the Society over here?”

“Do me a favour.” Serafino seemed surprised. “You know the rule. Once in, never out. He’s the last of half a dozen similar.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Two pressed the starters in their Alfas and went straight to hell. The rest were ventilated in one way or another as I remember. They had the knife out for Barbaccia, but they made a big mistake. The old wolf was a match for all of them.”

“The attempt on his life,” I said. “The bomb which killed my mother, who was responsible for that?”

“Who knows?” He shrugged. “Any one of them. Does it matter? Barbaccia will have had all of them before he is through.”

My flesh crawled at the enormity of it. Vito Barbaccia, Lord of Life and Death. He was well named. I shuddered and went after Serafino who was striding ahead, whistling cheerfully.

The shepherd’s hut looked as if it had been there since time began. It was constructed of rocks and boulders of various sizes, the gaps in between filled with dried mud and the low roof consisted of sods on top of oak branches.

At that point the stream had turned into a brawling torrent, descending rapidly through several deep pools, disappearing over an apron of stone about fifty yards below.

The hut was built into a sloping bank in a clearing beside the stream and looked remarkably homely. A couple of donkeys grazed nearby with three goats and half a dozen chickens moved in and out of the undergrowth, pecking vigorously at the soil.

A boy of eighteen or nineteen, presumably the Joe Ricco Cerda had mentioned, crouched over a small fire, feeding the flames beneath a cooking pot with sticks. Except for his youth and red Norman hair, he was depressingly similar in appearance to the rest of them. The same cloth cap, patched suit and leather leggings, the same sullen, brutalised features. He got up, staring at me curiously, and the Vivaldi brothers joined him, crouching to help themselves with a dirty and chipped enamel mug to what vaguely smelled like coffee.

Serafino and Joanna Truscott sat on a log by the stream and he produced from somewhere another piece of cigar and lit it. He looked up into the grey morning. “Still it doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head. “I’d give a lot to know what Hoffer is playing at.”

“Perhaps the whole thing is simpler than we think,” Joanna said. “Maybe he assumed you would do anything for money.”

“He could be right there,” I agreed, but somehow it didn’t sound too funny because it sent me off on another train of thought, one I wanted to avoid, but Serafino wouldn’t let it alone.

“These friends of yours, you can trust them? They’re not making a monkey out of you?”

I thought about it hard and tried to sound confident. “Anything is possible in this life, but I don’t think so. There’s one way to find out, of course.”

“And what is that?”

“I’ll go and see them.”

He nodded, biting on his cigar, a frown on his face. Joanna Truscott said, “You could make them an offer on my behalf if you like. It would be nice to turn the tables on my stepfather for once.” She picked up a stick, snapped it between her hands. “He married my mother for money, did you know that? When she wouldn’t give him any more, he got rid of her.”

“Are you certain of that?”

She nodded. “Not that I could prove it. He thought he’d get everything because he knew she loved him – loved him to distraction – but he made a mistake. She left me everything, and now he’s in trouble – bad trouble.”

“What kind?”

“He needs money – a great deal of money. He’s frightened, too.”

So Mafia was in this after all?

“All right, wait for me here.” I looked at my watch, saw that it was an hour since I had left Burke and the others which meant they would already be on their way down. “I’ll be about half an hour.”

I thought they might stop me from going, but nobody moved. When I looked back from the edge of the trees, Joanna Truscott had taken off her red scarf and the blonde hair gleamed as the first rays of the early morning sun broke through the clouds.

I ploughed up the steep slope, pushing through the undergrowth and the going was so hard that I had little time to concentrate on anything else except making progress. But I wasn’t happy. The trouble was that, in my heart, I’d never believed Hoffer’s story for a moment. Certain aspects of it were always manifestly impossible and if I’d seen the flaws, why hadn’t Burke?

But then I couldn’t believe the second possibility. He’d done many things in his time – aided and abetted by me on occasion. Killed ruthlessly and often without compassion, but as a soldier. It was inconceivable that he would have agreed to murder a young girl for money. In any case, it would not have been possible with the rest of us there.

So deep in thought was I that it was with a sense of surprise that I found myself at the spot by the stream where I had met the Honourable Joanna earlier. I paused to catch my breath and a stick cracked behind me.

“Hold it right there.” Piet Jaeger stepped from behind a tree, his assault rifle levelled at my belt.

“Stacey, what happened? We were getting worried.”

Burke moved out of the trees with Legrande and Piet Jaeger went to stand point at the edge of the little clearing automatically. He was a good soldier, always had been, I’ll say that for him.

“Well, what happened?” Burke said again. “Did you have any luck?” He frowned suddenly. “Where’s your rifle?”

“In custody,” I said. “One of Serafino’s boys took a fancy to it.”

He went very still. “You’d better explain.”

I moved to the side of the stream away from Jaeger and Legrande and sat on a boulder. Burke lit a cigarette and squatted before me, his rifle across his knees.

“Okay, what happened? You were supposed to scout, not make contact.”

“I found the girl up here on her own having a swim. No guards, no restraint. When I told her who I was from, she expected me to kill her.”

“She what?” A look of astonishment appeared on his face.

“As for Serafino and his boys,” I went on. “They aren’t sweating over her fair white body in turn as Hoffer implied. They’re working for her. By staying up here, she stays alive. It’s as simple as that.”

I gave him the whole story in detail, even the girl’s suspicions about her mother’s death and I watched him closely all the time. When I was finished, he got to his feet and stood there, staring down into the water, jiggling a handful of pebbles.

“At least it explains a few things. Hoffer had a word with me just before we left. He said he was worried because the girl had a history of what amounted to a kind of mental instability. That she’d had treatment a couple of times without success. He said she was sex mad and probably enjoying every moment of her experience. He seemed to think she might kick up a fuss about coming with us. He said she very easily became hysterical and was capable of making the wildest accusations.” He turned. “You’re sure she isn’t…?”

I shook my head. “I’ve spoken to Serafino. He told me he was hired to kill the girl and changed his mind because he wanted to do Hoffer down. He doesn’t like him.”

“The bastard.” Burke threw threw the pebbles he was holding into the water viciously. “Neither do I.”

The main thing which had worried me was now explained and I was conscious of a definite easing of tension and a sudden rush of affection for Burke, coupled with a kind of guilt because I had even admitted the possibility that he was capable of such an act.

He produced his packet of cigarettes for the second time. It was empty and he threw it into the stream. I gave him one of mine and when he lit it, I saw that his hands were shaking. He stared out across the water.

“God, what a fool I’ve been. I knew there was something phoney about the whole thing. From the beginning I knew that, and yet I still let it all happen.”

“Why, Sean?” I asked.

“Oh, the money was good and it was the only offer I was likely to get.” He shrugged. “You change when you get old, you’ll find that out. You grab at straws, take the wrong chances, look the other way when you shouldn’t, because all of a sudden, the years are rolling by and you’ve had it.”

He choked suddenly on a mouthful of smoke and doubled over, struggling for breath. While it lasted, it was anything but pleasant. I got an arm around him and he leaned hard on me as he coughed up half his lungs.

After a while, he managed to get his breath and smiled wanly. “Okay now.” He slapped his chest. “I’m afraid the old lungs aren’t what they used to be.”

And in that, there was the answer to many things.

“How bad is it?”

He tried to smile and failed. “Bad enough.”

And then he told me. Not, as I was beginning to believe, cancer, but something as bad. Some rare disease in which a fungus-like growth spreads like a poisonous weed to choke him. There was no cure and drugs could only halt what was an inevitable decline.

To say that I felt guilty at the general way in which I had misjudged him would be an understatement. I was sick to my stomach. There was no excuse. I should have realised from my knowledge of the man that there had to be some logical explanation for his unlikely behaviour.

I came up with the most banal sentence in the world. “I’m sorry, Sean.”

He smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. “Never mind that now, Stacey boy. What’s to be done, that’s the thing.”

I told him about Joanna Truscott’s offer. “I don’t know what she has in mind, but nobody would lose by it, and I’d like to put one over on Hoffer.”

So would I, he said with some passion. “I’ll put it to Piet and Legrande.”

They tood together in a huddle, talking, and I realised again how tired Legrande looked as they moved to join me. “That’s it then,” Burke said. “We’ve got half our money in advance anyway. Now we’ll see if we can make the bastard sweat a little.”

He seemed to swallow suddenly and stopped dead so that, for a moment, I thought he was having another attack, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

“My God,” he said. “We’re all forgetting something – something absolutely bloody perfect. Hoffer will be waiting with our transport on the Bellona road from noon on.”

“You think we could give him a nasty surprise?”

He smiled slightly, that smile of his that was not really a smile at all, looking completely his old self again, a thoroughly dangerous man.

“We can have a damn good try, but we’re wasting time talking. We’d better join up with the others as quickly as we can and sort out some sort of plan.”

We moved out fast in single file with me in the lead. I felt full of energy, strong enough to take on anything, a weight lifted from my body and brain. As for Burke, however unfortunate his condition, there was relief in it for me as an explanation of the inexplicable change in conduct I had found in him.

I paused on the edge of the clearing, perhaps thirty yards away from the hut. Our approach had obviously been noted and there was no one in sight. I waited for the others to join me and told Burke I would go down alone to pave the way. The brothers Vivaldi and Joe Ricco had looked capable of anything and I didn’t want any unfortunate misunderstandings at this stage.

I called out to Serafino as I ploughed down the slope through the undergrowth, hands above my head. When I was half-way across the clearing, the door opened and he peered out cautiously, holding my assault rifle ready.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Everything is fine.”

Joanna Truscott appeared at his shoulder, her face uncertain. “You’ve managed to persuade them?”

“Better than that. Hoffer’s going to show up himself this afternoon on the Bellona road to pick us up. Could be he’ll get one hell of a surprise.”

I’d spoken in Italian and Serafino’s face lit up. “Heh, I like that. I could cut the bastard’s throat personally. Okay, Stacey Wyatt, call your friends down.”

He whistled sharply and the Vivaldi brothers and Joe Ricco appeared from different places on the edge of the clearing. Serafino grinned apologetically. “I never like to take chances.”

I waved Burke and the other two down and the girl moved to my side. “You’re certain my stepfather will be there himself?”

“That’s what the man said.” Burke was half-way down to the clearing now, the others just behind him and I grinned and gave Joanna Truscott a little push towards him. “Well, here she is, Sean. The purpose of the exercise.”

And in a single, terrible moment I recognised the expression on his face, had seen it too many times before, but by then it was too late. The rifle snapped to his shoulder and he shot her through the head.