responsibility given him provided an indication, clear as mountain water, that he was now the favourite of Mario Ruggerio – not Carmine, who was an arrogant idiot, not Tano, who was a toad and blown out with self-importance. He believed that more responsibility would be given him until he stood at the right shoulder of Mario Ruggerio, undisputed as the consigliere to Mario Ruggerio. The radio stayed silent. No military road blocks on the approach to the apartment block and no tail. The bastards would be relying on the surveillance teams on the street and the remote cameras. He drove along the street, and when he started to change down through his gears he nudged Mario Ruggerio, respectfully, and pointed to the ashtray.
The humble and elderly priest stubbed out a cigarillo, coughed hard, spat into a handkerchief. He pulled up smoothly in front of the main entrance to the apartment block, where the street lights were brightest. When he was out of the car, when he would be seen by the surveillance men and by the cameras, Franco seemed to examine a scrap of paper, as if directions had been written on it, as if he were a stranger to the city, as if he merely brought a humble and elderly priest from a village in the country.
Two young men stood in the shadow near to the door, and there would have been two more across the street, and two more down the street, and they would have cameras.
The priest walked with the help of a hospital stick, one that had a reinforcing clamp for the upper arm, and Franco walked with him as if ready to take his other arm should the priest stumble. The priest murmured a greeting, perhaps a blessing, to the policemen as he passed them, and they ignored him. The priest walked hesitantly over the marble floor of the hallway to the block as if such luxury were not a part of his life in the village. They took the elevator. The face of Mario Ruggerio was impassive. Franco could not read his thoughts. The man was magnificent. The man had such authority.
Small, old, and such presence. The empire of the man extended across the width of the island, the length of Europe, the ocean, and Franco was his favourite. It was typical of the magnificence of the man that he came to the front door of the apartment and rang the bell for admittance to the home of a slaughtered rival.
The door was opened.
Franco carried a pistol strapped to his shin. He felt a winnowing of fear.
The apartment was crowded with the supporters of the dead rival and the family. A moment's gesture, Mario Ruggerio's hand on franco's arm, a grip that was steel-hard, the order that he should stay back, and he was passed the hospital stick. Mario Ruggerio, murderer, now capo di tutti capi because a rival had been removed, went forward and the supporters and rivals backed off and made an aisle for him. Franco saw that none dared catch his eye, none had the courage or the stupidity to denounce him.
Franco followed, into the living room, and he waited by the door as Mario Ruggerio approached the widow, black-clothed, sitting, eyes reddened. The widow rose to greet him. He took the widow's hands and held them in his own. He spoke the words of sincere sympathy. He brought respect. He declined the offer of alcohol from the son of the dead man, a juice would be most welcome. He gave dignity. Gravely, Mario Ruggerio, watched by Franco, thanked the son of the dead man for the juice. His presence was accepted because he brought respect, gave dignity, to a dead man. Franco understood. The power of Mario Ruggerio, dressed as a humble and elderly priest, over La Cosa Nostra was absolute.
For more than an hour Mario Ruggerio talked with the widow and the widow's son and the widow's family. When he left, he hobbled on his hospital stick past the policemen on surveillance duty, past the cameras.
With two cars in front and one behind, Franco, who was swollen with pride, drove him back to Palermo through the night's darkness.
She looked the prisoner straight in the eye, and when he dropped his head, she reached forward and lifted his chin so that he must look at her.
She was the daughter of the capo of the Kalsa district of the city. Her brothers followed in the footsteps of her father.
Across the table, in a low voice so that she would not be heard by the guards and by the other prisoners and their families, she spat at him her message.
'I will tell my children, not your children, my children, that they no longer have a father. I will tell them that they should forget their father. To me, to my children, you are dead. You listened to your mother, always to your mother, so now your mother can wipe your arse for you, but not me and not my children. If I am offered protection, then I will refuse it. What you intend will bring shame on you and on me and on your children. It now disgusts me that I lay with you and made children for you. You swore the same oath as my father, the same oath as my brothers, and you betray the oath. I tell you your future, from the time that I leave here, from the time that I meet with my father and my brothers. Wherever they put you, look to see if anyone is behind you when you stand on steep steps. When you approach any group, consider which man carries the knife. When you lie at night and hear a footstep, consider whether the rope is brought for your throat. When you eat, consider whether the poison is in your food. That is your future. Not my future, not the future of my children, who have no father. To me, to them, you do not exist, never existed.'
She let his chin fall. The tears flowed on his cheeks. With poise, without looking back, she walked to the door.
'What I am saying, Bill – you secure at your end?'
'Secure. Go.'
'I'm saying there is regular shit stirring at this end.'
'Am I dumb, Ray? What's your end to do with it?'
'This show, Codename Helen, the baggage your guy came for.'
'That's our problem.'
'My problem too. I got mugged by one of the local people here. Quote, 'Taken it upon yourselves, you arrogant bloody people, to pressurize and then send a small-town girl to Palermo for some bloody operation you've dreamed up. Who've you cleared it with?', end quote. Bill, that's why it's my problem.'
'Where's that going to lead?'
'Why I'm sweating on it, don't know. I've been in this city, Bill, three years. In three years you get to know the way people work. Here they work devious. The old lion is losing his sight, got flea scrapes, yellow teeth, but he still thinks he hunts with the best of the pride. I'm accused of getting hold of his tail and twisting it. He's angry, and he's quiet, which means he's thinking devious.'
'You're away ahead of me, Ray.'
'I thought you should know, they may try to fuck us about.'
'Aren't we all going in the same direction?'
'Wouldn't that be nice? What I'm getting to, it would raise a powerful shit-smell if anything happened, unpleasant, to Codename I lelen, to your bit of baggage, like I might be run out of town, like it would go all the way to the top floor. I'll stay close.
Goodnight, Bill. I just have a bad feeling.'
He put down the telephone. He switched off the scrambler, then dialled again. He told his wife that he was about through for the evening, and he gave her the name and address of the restaurant in the Fulham Road where he'd meet her. He was clearing his desk when he realized that Dwight Smythe was still at his desk outside, and it was always necessary, when the secure scrambler was used, to speak that bit louder.
'Did you hear that, Dwight?'
'Sorry, but it would have been difficult not to.'
'What are you thinking?'
'Same as I told you first time, same as you ignored. The plan was crazy. When a crazy plan gets disseminated, goes to the top, when the big guys have to guarantee a crazy plan, they run for cover. You're out on your own, Ray, but I expect you thought of that.'
She lay on her bed and she turned the pages of her book.
'If that's everything, Angela, I'll get on with the children's baths,' Charley had said. 'I think you've done wonders.'
'Thank you for your help,' Angela had said.
And Charley had gone into the living room, where Peppino, home an hour before and jacket off and whisky in his hand and tie loosened, sat and where the children played with the presents that had been brought them. There was a battery-powered car that piccolo Mario raced across the tiled floor, and a doll that Francesca had stripped and then dressed again. For Angela there was a silk headscarf, and for Charley there was a box of lace
