di Giustizia.
He thought the letter, perhaps, had been written by the prisoner's mother. Men died, some quietly through strangulation, some noisily through poisoning, some messily through bludgeon blows, in Ucciardione Prison when they sought to collaborate. It was of critical importance, at this moment, that it should not be known among the prison staff that a man had asked to see the magistrate who was known to have dedicated his life to the capture of Mario Ruggerio. When the prison staff who escorted the prisoner to the surgery had been dismissed and the prisoner signed for, he had been taken by two of the magistrate's own security detail, his head covered by a blanket that he should not be recognized by watchers peering from the cell windows high above, across the yard and to the room made available for the magistrate.
Tardelli thought him pathetic.
The cigarette that the prisoner smoked was nearly finished and already the man looked longingly at the packet on the table. Tardelli did not smoke but he always carried a nearly full packet in his pocket when he came to Ucciardione. He pushed the packet towards the prisoner and smiled his invitation that the man should help himself again. A new cigarette was lit from an old cigarette and the hands of the prisoner shook.
Tardelli thought him wretched.
They sat in a bare room, on either side of a bare table, they were enclosed by bare walls. There was no window and the light came from a single fluorescent strip on the ceiling, around which wafted the spurted smoke from the prisoner's cigarette. Since the message had come from his office at the Palazzo di Giustizia, the report of a letter without signature to request the interview, the message that had interrupted the celebration of orange juice and chocolate cake, Tardelli had spent the major part of two days studying the file of the prisoner. It was his way always to be meticulously prepared before he faced a prisoner.
The prisoner spoke the name of Mario Ruggerio.
He detested personal publicity, he left it to the more ambitious and the more scheming to give media interviews, but it was inevitable that Rocco Tardelli should be known as the magistrate who hunted Mario Ruggerio. Half a dozen times a year he was told that a prisoner had requested, in conditions of secrecy, to meet with him. Half a dozen times a year a prisoner grovelled for the freedom of the pentito programme, for the opportunity to trade information for liberty. Once a year, if he was lucky, Tardelli would hear information that carried forward his investigation, drew him closer to the man he hunted. They came and they squirmed and they crossed the Rubicon. They condemned themselves to death if they were identified, if they were located, when they broke the God- given law of Sicily, the law of omerta, which was the code of silence.
The pentito Contorno had broken the law of omerta and thirty of his relations by blood and by marriage had been butchered in a proxy attempt to halt the information flow he dribbled. There was a saying of the peasants on the island: 'A man who is really a man never reveals anything even when he is being stabbed.' The pentito Buscetta had turned away from the code of silence and thirty-seven of his relations had been murdered. Another saying of the peasants on the island: 'A man who is deaf and blind and silent lives a hundred years in peace.' The pentito Mannoia was now a terrified man, existing on Valium tablets, in crisis. He had heard a woman refer to her pentito brother as 'a relative of my father'. It was an earthquake in their lives when they gave up the silence. Each year one of the prisoners who sat at the bare table in the bare room, hemmed in by the bare walls of the bunker, was useful to the magistrate. Five a year were rubbish wretches.
It was a sparring game for Tardelli and the prisoner.
'Why do you wish to take advantage of the Award Legislation under the conditions of the Special Protection Programme?'
The eyes of the prisoner were on the choked ashtray. He stammered, 'I have decided to collaborate because La Cosa Nostra is only a gang of cowards and assassins.'
He could be cruel. Rocco Tardelli, mild-mannered and roundshouldered, could be vicious.
'I believe it more probable that you seek to 'collaborate' because you face the sentence of ergastolo. You face the rest of your life in prison, here, in Ucciardione.'
'I have rejected La Cosa Nostra.'
'Perhaps you have only rejected the sentence of life in Ucciardione.'
'I have information…'
'What is the information?'
'I have information on the location where Mario Ruggerio lives.'
'Where does he live?'
The prisoner snorted, the furtive eyes lanced upwards towards the magistrate. 'When I have the guarantee of the Special Protection.. .'
'Then you go back to your cell, and you consider. You do not seek to bargain with me.
Back and consider.'
'I can tell you where is Mario Ruggerio.'
'When you have told me, then we think on the Protection Programme. Then I evaluate and make my recommendation to the Committee. You talk, or you go back to your cell. It is not for you to make conditions.'
It was important for the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, to set the rules from the first interview. A thousand men had been received into the Protection Programme. The budget was exhausted, safe houses were filled, carabineri and military barracks bulged with the pentiti and their families. Most were useless. Most bartered long sentences of imprisonment for stale information. To a dedicated investigator, as was Rocco Tardelli, it was distasteful to exchange freedom for tired news.
'But I have come to you…'
'And told me nothing. Consider your position.'
Tardelli stood. The interview was concluded. Most of those he met, the true leaders of La Cosa Nostra, were men he treated with due respect. It puzzled him, frequently, that such gifted men should require criminality to buttress their yearning for dignity.
Because they had lost their dignity, it was hard for him to offer a pentito due respect.
The prisoner, the blanket again over his head, was escorted back to the medical area.
The doctor would call for prison staff to return him to the shared cell on the third floor of the block. The magistrate gathered up his briefcase from the floor, his cigarette packet from the table, his coat from the hook on the door. With his guards, he hurried down the corridor.
The sunshine hit their faces.
'You see, my young friend, Pasquale, maker of babies, I have to make him suffer. He has made the first move, but he will have thought he can control me. I have to show him that he does not. He will have thought he can offer me information, step by step, a little at a time, as he demands further privileges. That is not acceptable. I have to be able to judge that he will tell me everything that he knows. I have to be patient…'
They paused at the car, the armoured Alfa. The lights were flashed at the gate sentries. The engines roared. The gates swung open. The sidearms and the machine-pistols were cocked.
'Is he a jewel, Pasquale, or is he false gold?'
'Please don't talk to me, not when we are moving, please.'
He tucked down into the darkened interior of the car. The young man, Pasquale, was in front of him, the maresciallo drove.
He leaned forward, he caught the back of the young man's seat. It was a compulsion for him, to share and to talk. There was no one for him to talk with but the ragazzi. He despised himself, but to talk at times was the craving of an addict.
'You know, if I was afraid, if I could not tolerate the fear any longer, I could send a signal. There are routes by which a signal could be sent. Certain people, in the Palace of Poison or in the Questura, even in the barracks of the carabineri, would send a signal, pass a message. I have only to say, in confidence, that a prisoner asked for me. In confidence, I would give that prisoner's name. In confidence, binding such a person to secrecy, I could say that I have rejected the offer of information from that prisoner. It would be a signal that I was now afraid. The message would be passed on, it would be heard. It would be understood that I was no longer a threat. If, in confidence, I sent that signal, then I could again go to a restaurant, go to the cinema, go to the opera at the Politeama, go to the hairdresser…'
The young man, Pasquale, sat rigid in front of him.
The magistrate said sadly, 'I have to believe that I can live with the fear.'
