In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

SEVEN

MONTI PELIEGRINO, WHICH is about three miles to the north of Palermo, towers into the sky at the western end of the Conco d’Oro. It’s an interesting place, soaked in blood and history like the rest of Sicily. During the Punic Wars, Hamilcar Barca held it against the Romans for three years, but in more modern times it became famous mainly because of the cult of Santa Rosalia after whom my mother had been named. My grandfather’s villa was at the foot of the mountain just outside the village of Valdesi.

I suppose, when you thought about it, he’d come a long way. He was born in Velba, a village in Western Sicily which was depressingly typical of the region, a dung heap where most children died in their first year and life was roughly equivalent to what it had been in England in mediaeval times.

His father was a share-cropper and the living that gave was of a kind that barely maintained life. Of his early years I knew little for certain, but by the time he was twenty-three he was a gabellotto, a mixture of tax collector and land agent whose function was to screw the share-croppers down and keep them that way.

Only a mafioso could have the job so he was on the way up at an early age. God knows what had happened in between – a killing or two – perhaps more, which was the usual method for any youngster to make his way in the Honoured Society.

He might even have spent some time as a sicario, a hired killer, but I doubted that. It didn’t fit into the code – his own very individual conception of what was honourable and what was not. The idea of making money out of prostitution, for example, filled him with horror because he believed in the sanctity of the family and gave to the Church. On the other hand, the organisation he served had killed so many of its opponents over the years that in many towns murder was a commonplace.

The lights of the car picked out a couple of old women trudging towards us festooned with baskets.

“What in the hell was that supposed to be?” Burke demanded.

“They’re coming in for tomorrow’s market.”

“At this time of night?”

“The only way they can secure a good pitch.”

He shook his head. “What a bloody country.”

I looked into the night at the lights of the city. “That’s one Sicily, but out there in the darkness is another. A charnel house for generations. The bread-basket of the Roman Empire based completely on slave labour. Ever since then the people have been exploited by someone or other.”

“I didn’t really take it all in,” he said. “This Mafia stuff. I thought it was all in the past.”

“I can think of one place that’s had better than a hundred and fifty killings in four years – a town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants. You won’t find me a place in the world of comparable size that can match that.”

“But why?” he said. “I just don’t get it.”

“People play games of one sort or another all the time, haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“I don’t follow you.”

I could have told him that he’d been playing soldiers all his life – even in the Congo – but there would have been no point. He wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about and I’d have offended him needlessly.

“Let me put it this way. In the suburbs of Los Angeles or London, the struggle to keep abreast of the next man, the cut and thrust of business, or even an affair with someone else’s wife, adds that little touch of drama to life that everyone needs.”

“And what does that prove?”

“Nothing in particular. In Sicily, it’s an older game, that’s all, and rather more savage. The ritual of vendetta – an eye for an eye, neither more nor less. And the rules may seem a little barbaric to outsiders. We kiss the wounds of our dead, touch our lips to the blood and say: In this way may I drink the blood of the one who killed you.”

Even thinking of it touched something inside me – a coldness like a snake uncoiling.

“You said we,” Burke observed. “You include yourself in?”

I stared out into the distance where an early cruise ship passed beyond the headland, a blaze of lights, a world of its own. I thought of school in London at St. Paul ’s of Wyatt’s Landing, of Harvard and laughed.

“In any village in Sicily if I spoke my grandfather’s name and declared my relationship, there would be men who would kiss my hand. You’re in another world here, Sean. Try to get that into your head.”

But I don’t think he believed me – not then. It all seemed too improbable. Belief would come later.

There was no resemblance at all between the Barbaccia villa and Hoffer’s place. To start with the walls were at least two thousand years older, for like most country houses it had been built on the Roman site. They were about fifteen feet high and the villa itself was of Moorish origin and stood in the centre of a couple of acres of semi-tropical garden. Ciccio braked to a halt and sounded his horn.

The gatekeeper wasn’t armed, but then he didn’t need to be. A man appeared from the lodge behind him wrestling with two bull mastiffs of a breed common to the island since Norman times and another came out of the bushes holding a machine pistol.

The gatekeeper wore a neat khaki uniform and looked more like an insurance clerk with his moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a kind of impasse while he and his friends stared at us and the dogs didn’t bark, which was somehow even more sinister.

I opened the door, got out and approached. “I’m expected,” I said. “You must have been told.”

“One man, signor, not three. No car passes through these gates except the capo’s. A rule of the house.”

I produced the Walther very carefully from my pocket and there was a hollow click as the gentleman with the machine pistol cocked it. I passed the Walther through the bars, butt first.

“My calling card. Send it to Marco – Marco Gagini. He’ll tell you who I am.”

He shrugged. “All right, you can come in, but the others stay outside with the car.”

Marco came round the bend of the drive on the run and slowed to a halt. He stared past me at the Mercedes, at Burke and Ciccio, then nodded. “Open the gates – let them in.”

The gatekeeper started to protest. “You know the rule – only house cars allowed inside.”

Marco shook him by the lapel. “Fool, does a man kill his own grandfather? Get out of the way.”

He wrenched the Walther from the gatekeeper’s hand, dropped it into his pocket and pushed him towards the lodge. The gates, it seemed, were electronically controlled. They swung back with a slight whisper and Marco joined us.

“I’ll ride up to the house with you.”

We got into the rear beside Burke and Ciccio drove on slowly. “Things have changed,” I said to Marco. “Getting into Fort Knox would be easier.”

“An electronic device runs round the top of the walls,” he told me seriously. “So no one can get in that way. Usually, as you just heard, cars other than our own aren’t allowed through. We discovered an explosive device in one a few years back when the capo was giving a party. If it had gone off it would have taken the villa with it.”

“A nice way to live.”

Perhaps the irony in my voice escaped him or else he chose to ignore it. “There have been eight attempts on the capo’s life in the last few years. We have to be very careful. Who is this man you have brought with you?” he added in exactly the same tone.

“A friend of mine – Colonel Burke. He thought I might need some help.”

“I can feel the gun in his pocket. Most uncomfortable. Tell him it will not be needed.”

“I know enough Italian to understand that much,” Burke said and transferred his Browning to the other pocket.

The Mercedes halted at the bottom of a broad flight of steps that lifted to a great oaken door banded with iron which I’d always understood had had an arrow or two in it in its day.

I think that until that moment nothing had possessed any reality for me. I was home again, which was what it came down to, and it was as if some part of me – some essential part – simply didn’t want to know.

Burke followed me out and Marco told Ciccio to take the Mercedes round to the courtyard at the rear. It moved away smoothly. I turned and found my grandfather standing at the top of the steps.

He was as large as Burke and looked smaller only because his shoulders were stooped a little with age. At that time he must have been sixty-seven or eight and yet there was still colour in the long hair and carefully trimmed beard.

If I say he had the look of a Roman Emperor, I would be referring to the period when it was possible for a restless adventurer with no scruples to rise from the ranks.

It was a remarkable face. There was ruthlessness there, and arrogance, but also pride and a blazing intelligence. And he was as elegant as ever. Many of the old time capo mafias chose to look as slovenly and as unkempt as possible in society as if to emphasise their power and importance, but not Vito Barbaccia. The share-cropper’s son had left his rags behind him long ago.

He wore a cream lightweight suit that had London stamped all over it, a pink shirt and dark blue silk tie. The cigar was as large as ever and the ebony walking stick I remembered well, because if it was the same one, it housed a couple of feet of razor-sharp steel.

He didn’t speak as I went slowly up the steps to meet him. I paused a little below his level and he gazed down at me, still without a word and then his arms opened.

The strength was still there. He held me close for a long moment, then gave me the ritual kiss on each cheek and pushed me to arm’s length.

“You’ve grown, Stacey – you’ve grown, boy.”

I motioned to Burke who came up the steps and I introduced them. My voice seemed to belong to a stranger, to come from far away under water and my eyes were hot. He sensed my distress, squeezed my arm and tucked it into his own.

“Come, we’ll go in and Marco will give you a drink, colonel, while I have a word or two with this grandson of mine.”

My throat was dry as we moved through the great door. Strange how you can never stop loving those who are really important to you, in spite of what they may have done.

It was like stepping back into the past when I went into the study. It was as impressive as ever, the walls lined with books, most of which he had read. A log fire crackled cheerfully, loud in the silence, and my mother gazed down at me from the oil painting above that he’d commissioned from some English artist one year, I think when I was fourteen. And I was there, too, in framed photos that documented every stage of growth.

The piano was in the same place by the window, the Bechstein concert grand he’d imported especially from Germany. Only the best. I stood looking down at the keyboard and picked out a note or two.

The door clicked open behind and closed again. When I turned he was watching me. We stood there looking at each other across the room and I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single thing to say.

And again, with that enormous perception of his, he knew and smiled. “Play something, Stacey, it’s in tune. I have a man out from Palermo regularly.”

“A long time,” I said. “The places I’ve been didn’t have pianos like this.”

He stayed where he was, waiting, and I sat down, paused for a moment and started to play. Ravel – Pavane on the death of an Infanta. I only realised what it was half-way through, by some trick of memory or association, the last piece I had played in this house on the night before my mother’s funeral – her special favourite.

I faltered and his voice broke in harshly, “Go on – go on!”

The music took possession of me then as real music always did, flowing like water over stones, never-ending. I forgot where I was, forgot everything but the music, and carried straight on into a Schubert impromptu.

I finished, the last note died and when I looked up, he was standing looking up at the portrait. He turned and nodded gravely. “It’s still there, Stacey, after all this time. She would have been pleased.”

“I’d never have made the concert platform, you know that,” I said. “I think you always knew, but she didn’t.”

“Is it so bad for a mother to have hopes for her son?” He smiled up at the portrait again. “She used to say everybody had a talent for something.”

“What was yours?”

The words were out before I could bite them back and instantly regretted. His head swung sharply, the chin tilted, but there was no eruption. He took a fresh cigar from a silver box and sank into a wing back chair beside the fire.

“A brandy, Stacey, for both of us. You look like a man who drinks now. Then we talk.”

I moved to the cabinet on the other side of the room where the crystal goblets and decanter stood on a silver tray.

“I read about you, boy, a couple of years back.”

“Oh yes.” I was surprised, but tried not to show it.

“A French magazine – Paris Match. They did a feature on mercenaries in the Congo – mainly about your friend, but you were there standing just behind him. It said you were a captain.”

“That’s right.”

I carefully poured the brandy and he went on. “Then there was a report in one of the Rome newspapers about how you were all chased out with your tails between your legs.”

I refused to be drawn. “That would be about two years ago now.”

“What have you been up to since?”

“This and that.” I went towards him, a goblet in each hand. “As a matter of fact I’m just out of prison. The Egyptian variety. Nothing like as pleasant as the Ucciardone in Palermo or doesn’t the Mafia control it any more?”

The ebony stick stabbed out, sweeping back my coat, exposing the Smith and Wesson in its holster. “So, Marco was right and I wouldn’t believe him. This is what you have become, eh? Sicario – hired killer. My grandson.”

Strange the anger in his voice, the disgust, but then no real mafioso ever thought of himself as a criminal. Everything was for the cause, for the Society.

I handed him his brandy. “Am I worse than you? In any way am I worse than you?”

“When I kill, it is in hot blood,” he said. “A man dies because he is against me – against Mafia.”

“And you think that sufficient reason?”

He shrugged. “I believe it to be so. It has always been so.” The stick came up and touched my chest. “But you, Stacey, what do you kill for? Money?”

“Not just money,” I said. “Lots of money.”

Which wasn’t true. I knew it and I think he did also.

“I can give you money. All you need.”

“That’s just what you did for a great many years.”

“And you left.”

“And I left.”

He nodded gravely. “I had a letter from some lawyers in the States just over a year ago. They were trying to trace you. Your grandfather – old Wyatt – had second thoughts on his death bed. There is provision for you in the will – a large sum.”

I wasn’t even angry. “They can give it back to the Indians.”

“You won’t touch it?”

“Would I walk on my mother’s grave?” I was getting more like a Sicilian every minute.

He seemed well pleased. “I am glad to see you have some honour left in you. Now you will tell me why you are here. I do not flatter myself that you returned to Sicily to see me.”

I crossed the room and poured another brandy. “Bread and butter work – nothing to interest you.”

The stick hammered on the floor. “I asked you a question, boy, you will answer.”

“All right. If it will make you feel any better. Burke and I have been hired by a man named Hoffer.”

“Karl Hoffer?” He frowned slightly.

“That’s the man. Austrian, but speaks English like an American. Has interests in the oilfield at Gela.”

“I know what his interests are. What does he want you to do?”

“I thought Mafia knew everything,” I said. “His stepdaughter was kidnapped some weeks ago by a bandit called Serafino Lentini. He’s holding her in the Cammarata and won’t send her back in spite of the fact that Hoffer paid up like a soldier.”

“And you are going to get her back, is that it? You and your friend think you can go into the Cammarata and bring her out with you again?” He laughed, that strange, harsh laugh, head thrown back. “Stacey – Stacey. And I thought you’d grown up.”

I very carefully smashed my crystal goblet into the fire, and started for the door. His voice, when he called my name, had all the iron of hell in it. I turned, a twelve-year-old schoolboy again caught in the orange grove before harvest. “That was seventeenth-century Florentine. Does it make you feel any better?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

There was nothing more I could say. Unexpectedly he smiled. “This Serafino Lentini – you are kin on your grandmother’s side. Third cousins.”

“You know him then?”

“I haven’t seen him for many years. A wild boy – he shot a policeman when he was eighteen and took to the maquis. When they caught him, they gave him a hard time. You’ve heard of the cassetta?”

In the good old days under Mussolini it had been frequently employed by the police when extorting confessions from the more difficult prisoners. A kind of wooden box, a frame to which a man could be strapped and worked on at leisure. It was supposed to be forbidden now, but whether it was or not was anyone’s guess.

“What did they do to him?”

“The usual things – the hot iron, which left him blind in one eye and they crushed his testicles – took away his manhood.”

Burke should be listening to this. “Does nothing change?” I said.

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “And watch Hoffer. He is a hard man.”

“Millionaires usually are. That’s how they get there.” I buttoned my jacket. “It’s time I was going. A long day tomorrow.”

“You are going to the Cammarata?”

I nodded. “With Burke. Just for a drive. Tourists having a look round. I want to see the lie of the land. I thought we’d try Bellona.”

“The man who owns the wineshop is the mayor. His name is Cerda – Danielo Cerda.” He took his blue silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out. “Show him this and tell him you are from me. He will help you in any way he can. He is one of my people.”

I folded the handkerchief and put it in my pocket. “I thought Serafino didn’t like Mafia?”

“He doesn’t,” he said tranquilly, reached for my hand and pulled himself up. “Now we shall join the others. I must talk with this Colonel Burke of yours. He interests me.”

Burke and Marco were sitting together in the salon, an exquisite room which my grandfather had kept to the original Moorish design. The floor was of black and white ceramic tiles and the ceiling was blue, vivid against stark white walls. Beyond a wonderful carved screen, another relic of Saracen days, was the terrace and the gardens.

I could hear water gurgling in the old conduits, splashing from the numerous fountains. In other days it had been said that whoever held the meagre water supplies of the island held Sicily and Mafia had done just that.

They were talking behind me and I heard Burke say in his terrible Italian, “You must be very proud of your garden, Signor Barbaccia.”

“The best in Sicily,” my grandfather told him. “Come, I will show you.”

Marco stayed to finish his drink and I followed them out on to the terrace. The sky was clear again, each star a jewel and the lush, semi-tropical vegetation pressed in on the house.

I could smell the orange grove although I couldn’t see it, the almond trees. Palms swayed gently in the slight breeze, their branches dark feathers against the stars. And everywhere the gurgle of water. My grandfather pointed out the papyrus by the pool, another Arab innovation, and suggested a short walk before we left.

He moved towards the steps leading down to the garden. Burke paused to light a cigarette and then everything happened at once.

Some instinct, product perhaps of the years of hard living, sent a wave of coldness through me and I froze, ready to jump like some jungle animal sensing an unseen presence.

Below the steps five yards on the other side of the gravel path, the leaves trembled and a gun barrel poked through. My grandfather was already on his way down. I sent him sprawling with a stiff left arm, drew and fired three times. A machine pistol jumped into the air, there was a kind of choking cough and a man fell out of the bushes and rolled on to his back.

I dropped to one knee beside my grandfather. “Are you all right?”

“There will be another,” he said calmly.

“Hear that, Sean?” I called.

“I’ll cover you,” came the reply in a voice like ice-water. “Roust him out.”

Marco came through the French windows in a hurry, the Walther in his hand and a shotgun blasted from the bushes over to my right, too far away to do any damage. You have to be close with those things. Marco dropped from view and I took a running jump into the greenery.

I landed badly, rolled over twice and came up about six feet away from number two. He was clutching a sawn-off shotgun in both hands, the lupara, traditional weapon used in a Mafia ritual killing.

I took one hell of a chance, simply because it seemed like a good idea to keep him in one piece to talk, and fired as I came up, catching him in the left arm. He screamed and dropped the lupara. Not that it did much good. As he straightened and backed away, Burke shot him between the eyes from the terrace.

He looked about seventeen, a boy trying to make a name for himself, to gain respect – the kind Mafia often used for this kind of work. The other was a different breed, a real pro from the look of him, with hard, bitter eyes fixed in death.

My grandfather pushed the jacket aside with his stick and said to Marco. “You told me he could use a gun. Look at that.”

I’d shot him three times in the heart, the holes covering no more than the width of two fingers between them. There was very little blood. I could hear the mastiffs barking and the guards arrived as I reloaded and slipped the Smith and Wesson back into its holster.

“How did they get in?”

The old man frowned and turned to Marco. “How about that? You told me this place was impregnable.”

Marco motioned to the guards without a word and they went off in a hurry, dogs and all. I stirred the man on the ground with my foot.

“So, they’re still trying?”

“Not for much longer,” he said grimly. “I can assure you. All bills will be paid. I owe it to your mother.”

I was shaken, but I turned to Burke. “That’s Mafia for you. Just one big happy family. Will there be any trouble over these two?”

My grandfather shook his head. “I’ll have the police come and take them away.”

“As simple as that?”

“But of course. It would, however, be wiser if you were to leave before they get here.”

He called to Marco, who was rooting around out there in the garden somewhere, to send the Mercedes round, then took me by the arm and walked a little way off.

“If you could play the piano like you can shoot, Stacey…”

“A shame, isn’t it?” I said. “But my mother was right about one thing. We all have a talent for something.”

He sighed. “Go with God, boy. Come and see me when you get back from the Cammarata, eh?”

“I’ll do that.”

“I’ll expect you.” He turned and held out his hand. “Colonel, my thanks.”

Later, after we had passed through the gates, Burke lit another cigarette and when the match flared I saw sweat on his face. I wondered if he had been afraid, but that didn’t seem possible.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

At first I thought I wasn’t going to get a reply and then it came, delivered with some bitterness. “Christ knows what they did to you in that place you were in, but it must have been bad.”

He was at last facing the fact that I had changed – really changed, which suited me perfectly. I sat there looking out to sea, thinking, not of what had just happened at the villa, but of Karl Hoffer and the Honourable Joanna and Serafino Lentini, the great lover who desired her so much that he insisted on keeping her just for himself. Serafino, who had lost his manhood, according to my grandfather, under police torture was incapable of the physical act of love.

Now why had Vito Barbaccia, capo mafia, arch schemer, gone out of his way to tell me that?