In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

SIXTEEN

THEY MET IN the salon and I sat in a wicker chair on the terrace behind a vine-covered trellis, Marco at my shoulder, and watched.

I had a perfect view and the acoustics were excellent. There were eight of them, including my grandfather, and in appearance they were a pretty assorted bunch. Three of them were real old-style capos, carefully dressed in deliberately shabby clothes. A fourth had taken off his coat, exposing cheap and gaudy braces. The others were all wearing expensive lightweight suits, although no one could approach my grandfather’s magnificence, sitting there at the head of the table in the cream lightweight suit he had worn on that first evening.

Hoffer wore dark glasses, presumably an affectation, and nodded soberly at what was said to him by the man on his right. He looked composed enough and I wondered what was going on in his mind.

My grandfather lifted a small silver bell and at its ring the low buzz of conversation was instantly stilled. Every head turned towards him and he let the silence hang for a moment before saying, “Karl Hoffer asked for this meeting specially. I don’t know what he’s going to say any more than you do, but I guess we all know what it’s about, so let’s listen.”

Hoffer didn’t get up. He seemed calm, but when he removed his dark glasses for a moment he looked tired, and when he started to talk the voice was grave and subdued. Altogether a most convincing performance.

“When I faced the Council some months back in order to explain my conduct in certain unfortunate business transactions, I promised to repay the Society every penny of the money lost owing to my imprudence. I asked for six months, time enough for me to realise certain assets in the States left to me by my late wife. I know some of you here thought I was still buying time, that the Society would never see its money. Others, thank God, were willing to trust me.”

That remark, on any other occasion, would have been enough to make me laugh out loud. There wasn’t a man at that table who would have trusted his neighbour for more than five minutes at any one time outside the rigid framework of Mafia law.

They knew it and Hoffer knew it, unless – and this seemed incredible – he really was so stupid as to think them a bunch of unwashed Sicilian peasants he could walk over whenever he pleased.

“Have you come to tell us you can’t pay, Karl?”

There was an edge of malice in my grandfather’s voice and he spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. Even Hoffer’s performance paled by comparison with this one.

“Why no, Vito.” Hoffer turned to him, the dark glasses back in place again. “I’ll be in a position to settle within the period granted, or so my American lawyers tell me. As it happens, owing to an…” He hesitated, then continued with obvious difficulty “… to an unfortunate, and for me personally, most tragic happening, I am now in a position to be able to assure the Council that replacing the Society’s money lost through my negligence is now the least of my troubles.”

He certainly got a reaction from most of them. There was a stir, a murmur of voices and then my grandfather raised his hand. “Maybe you’d better explain, Karl.”

Hoffer nodded. “It’s simple enough. As you all know, my dear wife died in a car crash in France a little while back. Quite naturally, she left the very considerable fortune inherited from her first husband in trust for her daughter. Joanna. Under the terms of that trust, I was to inherit if the girl failed to reach her majority.” He clasped his hands together, knuckles showing white, looked down at the table. “Even now I find it hard to believe, but I have it on the most reliable authority that my stepdaughter met her death in the area of Monte Cammarata this morning under the most tragic circumstances.”

If there is one thing a Sicilian loves it is a good story, and by this time Hoffer had them by the throat.

“My stepdaughter was kidnapped some weeks ago by a bandit many of you know only too well – Serafino Lentini.”

The man in the braces spat on the floor at the name and there was a general stir.

“I didn’t come to the Council with my troubles because I knew it couldn’t help. As we all know, Serafino Lentini was no friend to the Society, even though he’s been used as a sicario on one or two occasions.”

“You speak of him in the past tense, Karl,” my grandfather remarked. “May we take it that is where he now belongs?”

“The only good news I bring the Council tonight,” Hoffer said. “The police, as we all know, are helpless in these affairs, so when Lentini sent a message demanding ransom, I scraped the necessary amount together, met him myself as stipulated on the Bellona road. He took the money and laughed in my face when I asked for my stepdaughter. He had decided to keep her for himself.”

“Strange,” my grandfather cut in smoothly. “I had always understood that Serafino lacked some of the essential equipment necessary to a Don Juan.”

Hoffer paused, glancing at him sharply, and countered with exactly the right remark. “It was not me he was attacking in behaving in this way. He was showing his contempt for the Society – for all of us.” He shrugged and spread his arms wide. “I couldn’t sit back and do nothing while the wretched girl suffered untold indignities at the hands of his men. In the past I have had the occasion to use the services of an Irish soldier of fortune, a Colonel Burke, well known for his exploits as a mercenary in the Congo. It seemed to me that a man of his stamp might be able to do what no one else could – penetrate the fastnesses of the Cammarata and bring my stepdaughter to safety. I flew to Crete where I met Burke, who agreed to take on this hazardous undertaking with the assistance of three men who had served under him in the Congo.”

He’d even got me interested now and the silence in the salon wouldn’t have been out of place in a cathedral cloister.

“It was when Colonel Burke and his men arrived that I discovered an amazing thing. One of them was the capo’s grandson, a young man named Wyatt.”

The ball was well into Barbaccia’s court. He caught it neatly; had, I suspected, been waiting for it.

He coughed and managed to look serious. “You all know my daughter and her son came to live with me after her American husband was killed in Korea. She died as the direct result of the action of some filthy assassin who had intended to end my days. Unfortunately my grandson blamed me in part for what had happened to his mother.” It was obviously the night for the baring of souls. “We became estranged and the boy, then aged nineteen, ran away. I lost sight of him for some time, then learned he was serving in the Congo as a mercenary. He came to see me the other night with this man Burke and told me why they were in Sicily. I was astonished at his story because I couldn’t understand why Karl had not come to me for help, but I presumed he had his reasons.”

“Help?” Hoffer spread his arms again, appealing to the assembled Council. “How could anyone help? My only hope lay in Burke and his men.” And then, as if it had only just occurred to him, he turned rather uncertainly to Barbaccia. “I had nothing to hide. It seemed to me, under the circumstances, that the fewer who knew about the affair, the better for the girl’s sake.”

“No question of that.” My grandfather nodded. “After all, my grandson gave me a full account of what they intended to do. Parachute into the Cammarata – a daring conception.”

By now, of course, the atmosphere had changed and there was not a man there who didn’t realise that beneath the surface something special was going on between Hoffer and my grandfather.

“I’m sorry the girl was killed,” Barbaccia said. “I know she was close to you, Karl. To lose a daughter gives more than pain. I know.”

“Capo!” Hoffer’s voice was hoarse. “God knows how, but I must tell you. In the fight – the gunfight between Colonel Burke’s party and Serafino’s men – your grandson also met his end, dying I understand in a vain attempt to save my stepdaughter’s life.”

I saw it all then, the reason for Hoffer’s performance, his detailed account of the whole affair leading up to this final, devastating blow delivered in public before everyone who counted.

My grandfather shrivelled, dropped his stick, became an old man in an instant. “Stacey?” he said hoarsely. “Stacey is dead?”

Hoffer didn’t actually smile in triumph, but even he couldn’t control the tiniest quiver at the corner of his mouth. My grandfather chose that precise moment to descend. He produced a fresh cigar and struck a match, his old self again.

“Very good, Karl, excellent. You could have gone a long way in the Society if only you hadn’t been so stupid.”

Marco tapped me on the shoulder, but I was already on my feet and moving into the salon. There was no thunderclap as Jove descended from heaven, but the result was about the same.

Hoffer had gone very pale, mostly from shock, but also, I suppose, at the instant realisation that his goose was cooked. To the other I was simply an intruder and the fattest, most harmless looking man there produced a Mannlicher automatic with all the speed of a real pro.

My grandfather waved him down. “My grandson, Stacey Wyatt, gentlemen, who, according to our friend here, died gallantly on Cammarata this morning in a vain attempt to save the life of Joanna Truscott. As a matter of interest, that young lady is under medical care in another part of the villa at this very moment.”

Hoffer’s hand dropped to his pocket and death stared out at him from the Smith and Wesson in my left hand.

“No, Stacey! Not here. Here he is inviolate,” my grandfather called. “It is the law.”

The gentleman in the flashy braces relieved Hoffer of a Walther and I pushed the Smith and Wesson back into its holster.

“And now the truth, my friends.” Barbaccia snapped a finger and Marco, who had moved in behind me, took a grey document from an envelope, unfolded it and laid it on the table.

“A photostat of the will Hoffer referred to which only came into my hands this afternoon.” I wondered how many of them believed that. “It is in English, but there are enough of you here who understand that language to satisfy the Council that Hoffer lied. That his wife left him nothing. That there were no business assets in America that he could realise to fulfil his debt to us.” He looked at Hoffer. “Would you deny this?”

“Go to hell!” Hoffer told him.

My grandfather continued, “His one hope was to murder the girl but Lentini double-crossed him. So he tried this man Burke but they needed someone who knew the country and spoke the language, and Burke produced my grandson. My grandson, who believed until the very moment that he was shot down in cold blood together with Serafino and the girl: believed, as I did until I read this will and heard his story, that he was on the mountain to save the girl. By the grace of God and the incompetence of this man Burke, he survived and managed to get the girl to Bellona.”

There was nothing Hoffer could say, nothing that would do him the slightest good with the hard-faced gentry standing around that table. He answered in the only way his animal nature would allow, striking to hurt.

“All right, Barbaccia, you win. But I put the bomb in your car that killed your daughter. With my own hands.”

He spat in my grandfather’s face. Marco took a quick step forward, my grandfather’s hands flattened against his chest. “No, Marco, leave it. He is a dead man walking.” He wiped his face with a handkerchief and dropped it on the floor. “The man, Burke. He is at your villa?”

Hoffer, blaming Burke, I suspect, more than himself for his downfall, nodded.

“Good. Now get out! Outside the gate you are on your own.”

Hoffer turned and lurched towards the French windows. He was crossing the terrace when I caught up with him, but as I swung him around, Marco already had me by the arm, my grandfather just behind, moving with amazing speed for a man of his age.

“No, Stacey, not here. Here at the Council meeting he is inviolate. It is the law. Break it and you die too.”

“To hell with your bloody laws,” I said and he slapped me across the face.

I staggered back and Hoffer laughed shrilly. “That’s good – I like that. That’s what I gave Rosa Solazzo last night, Wyatt, only more. She wanted to warn you, you didn’t know that, did you? I don’t know what you did to her, but that stupid bitch must have liked it.”

I tried to get at him and Marco and two of the others held me back. “Want to know what I did with her?” He laughed again. “I gave her to Ciccio. He always panted for her. The original bull that one. He’ll have tried every variation known to man by now and a few of his own thrown in for fun.”

He wanted to hurt and he succeeded. I called him every dirty name I’d ever known and they held me there as he went through the garden to his Mercedes parked outside the gate. It was only when he started up and drove away that my grandfather ordered them to release me. I turned and pushed my way through the group and went back to my room.

I stood there in the darkness, my shoulder throbbing, sweat soaking the nylon shirt and thought of Rosa. Poor Rosa. So, she’d decided to stop being afraid after all and had left it too late. I remembered what Hoffer had said about Ciccio and at the thought of that animal sweating over her, I cracked completely. The only decent thing in this whole stinking business as far as I was concerned had been that girl’s futile gesture in trying to save me. I went out through the French windows on the run and moved through the gardens to the courtyard at the rear.

There was a choice of three cars in the garage, but I took Marco’s red Alfa mainly because it had automatic gears and would be easier to manage with one hand. The fact that he’d left his keys on show also helped.

They must have heard me go the moment I rounded the house, but the gatekeeper was standing in the door of the lodge and recognised me as I arrived. The gates opened a split second later, too late for Marco who came down the drive on the run and still had ten yards to go as I took the Alfa into the night with a surge of power.

About three miles outside Palermo, I saw flames in the night and several cars blocking the road. I braked and pulled in behind a slow-moving line of vehicles that was being waved on by a policeman on the wrong side.

Petrol spilled across the road, buring fitfully and beyond, where it had crashed head-on into the concrete retaining wall, a Mercedes saloon blazed fiercely.

I leaned out of the window as I approached the policeman. “What happened to the driver?”

“What do you think?”

He waved me on and I moved into the night. So that was Mafia justice? Swift and certain and my grandfather had had his revenge. But the rest was mine – the rest was my vendetta. No one on earth was going to cheat me of that.