He came, he was sagging, he was spent.
She crawled off him. He tried to kiss her, to hug her, to hold her, but she pushed him back and down onto the bed. She took the rubber off him. She walked, cruel and vicious bitch, from the bedroom to the bathroom and she flushed the rubber down the lavatory.
She sat on the seat. She wondered where he was and whether he had watched her. Her fingers rested on the nakedness of her arm, on the coldness of the watch on her wrist.
She came back into the room. He lay on the bed and his arm was across his face so that he should not see her.
Charley started to dress.
'Who killed your father?'
'My father is mine. He is not your business.'
She was dressing fast, snatching at the crumpled heap of clothes. 'Is it good to be so ineffective that one is unnoticed? Who killed him?'
'When a man from Catania is to be killed they bring in an assassin from Trapani, when a man from Agrigento is to be killed they find a man in Palermo.' He hissed the explanation. 'It is an exchange of favours, a barter of services. When a man from Cinisi is to be killed-'
'They bring a killer from Prizzi? Is it good to be only an irritation and ignored?'
'What is it to you?' His arm was off his face. He pushed himself up on the bed. She thought he had a fear of her.
'I'll take the bus back,' Charley said. 'I'll go on the bus because your mother won't have had time to dry your washing and iron it. You're safe from Mario Ruggerio, Benny, because he won't even have noticed you.'
Carmine brought the minister to the apartment.
The apartment was at Cefalu and the business of the minister was at Milazzo, which was nearly 150 kilometres to the east.
Carmine had been given, by Mario Ruggerio, responsibility for bringing the politician from the oil refinery at Milazzo to the holiday apartment at Cefalu. It was a serious and important responsibility. The minister was now in charge of the budget for Industry, but Mario Ruggerio had told Carmine that the minister was a rising star and eyed Finance. A half-year before the minister had sent a signal; in a speech in Florence he had spoken of the glory of a united
Italy and the duty of all Italians to support their fellow citizens of Sicily. Mario Ruggerio had read the code of the signal: government funds should continue, as before, to cascade onto the island, and the supply of government money, trillions of lire, were the lifeblood of La Cosa Nostra. A month before, the minister had sent a second signal; on a late-night television programme broadcast by a private channel, he had warned of the excesses of the judiciary in Palermo in their use of pentiti as trial witnesses. Two signals, two coded messages that the minister was ready to do business with Mario Ruggerio. A contact through an intermediary at a Masonic meeting in Rome, and now Carmine had the responsibility of bringing the minister in secrecy from Milazzo to Cefalu. Not simple, not for an arrogant shit like Tano, not for a fool who had air in his brain like Franco, to bring a minister from Milazzo to Cefalu. The responsibility was entrusted to Carmine because he had the intelligence to arrange the security necessary for the meeting. The minister had toured the oil refinery with his guides and his guards, had worn the hard hat, had walked alongside the kilometres of pipelines, had stood in the control areas with the technical directors and his guards, and had pleaded a headache from the fumes of the refinery. The minister had taken refuge in his hotel room. The guards of the minister of Industry, not a prime target, were relaxed. They had been called, at Carmine's direction, to the end of the hotel corridor for refreshment. In the few moments when the distraction of the guards was total, the minister had been brought from his room, through the door on which the 'Non Disturbare' sign hung, and out onto the fire escape.
Carmine drove the car from Milazzo to Cefalu. He had given the minister a flat cap to wear, and the minister had a scarf half across his mouth. The beauty of Carmine's plan, the guards in the hotel would never admit to loss of control of their subject, they would never confess that the minister had been given an opportunity to leave his hotel room unseen.
He took the car into the parking area under the apartment block. He parked beside the Citroen BX, the only other car there. The tourists, they would be Germans, had not yet come to Cefalu to scorch themselves on the beach and to wander in the Piazza del Duomo.
The minister, at the base of the concrete steps, hesitated, but Carmine smiled reassurance. The stupid bastard was already hooked, the stupid bastard had nowhere to go but up the concrete steps. He led. They climbed. The minister panted. Three raps at the door of the second-floor apartment.
The door was opened. The damp of the winter had been at the wood of the door, warped it, and it whined as it was opened.
The small body of Mario Ruggerio was framed in the door, and his head ducked as if in respect to the minister's rank, and the smile on his face was of gratitude that a man of such importance had made the journey to visit him. He wore baggy trousers that were hoisted with a peasant's braces to the fullness of his stomach, and the old grey jacket that was his favourite, and he took the minister's hands and held them in welcome. And the old worn face of the peasant brushed a kiss to each side of the minister's cheeks. He gestured with his hand, humbly, that the minister should come into the apartment.
Carmine was not a party to the meeting. He closed the door.
Carmine waited.
He assumed that by the next morning a bank draft for, perhaps, a million American dollars would have been transferred to an account in Vienna or in Panama or to the Caymans or to Gibraltar. Mario Ruggerio said, always said, that there was a price for every man, and perhaps the price for a minister of the state was a million American dollars. And Mario Ruggerio would know because he had already found out the price for judges and for policemen and for a cardinal and for… It was the power of Mario Ruggerio, Carmine was under the protection of that power, that he could own those at the very heart of the state. There was so much that could be bought with a million American dollars – the blocking of investigations, the opening of contract opportunities, recommendations and introductions abroad. He stood outside I he door and basked in the glory of the power of Mario Ruggerio. One day, at some time, when Mario Ruggerio tired of the glory of power, stepped aside, then it would be Carmine who replaced him…
An hour later Carmine led the minister back down the concrete steps. Three hours later, when refreshments were again offered to the guards, the minister climbed the fire escape of the hotel in Milazzo. Four hours later, the minister appeared at his door and called to his guards that the headache from the oil refinery fumes was gone.
The telephone rang.
It shrilled through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen the ragazzi of the magistrate had their own telephone and their radio. They pretended an indifference each time the telephone rang, talked louder among themselves, took a greater interest in their card game. They pretended they did not listen, after the telephone call, for the quiet scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen. Pasquale felt the new mood of the protection team. The joke, sad, sick, had been against him, but he recognized now that the joke affected all of them. He had been the sole target of the joke – 'Why a jeweller's shop?' – but it claimed them all. Less talk, raucous, of the last two days of overtime and screwing women and holidays. More talk, sombre, of the last two days of greater speed in the cars, less predictable routes, more weapons training.
Each time the telephone rang they waited for the scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen, stiffened, pretended, listened. Pasquale suffered each night the dream of a parked car or a parked van or a parked motorcycle exploding in fire as they passed, and he knew the bomb would be reinforced with ballbearings and detonated via the link between a mobile phone and a telephone pager. He knew it, they all knew it, because the maresciallo had told them what he had heard from Forensics. He knew, they all knew, and the maresciallo did not need to tell them, that there was no protection against the bomb in the parked car or van or on the pannier of a motorcycle. They waited, they listened, as they did each time the telephone rang in the apartment.
He came, scraping his feet, to the kitchen door. There was a greyness to the colour of his cheeks, his fingers moved, fidgeting in a clasp across his stomach. With his eyes he apologized.
'I have to go out.'
The maresciallo said breezily, 'Of course, dottore – the Palazzo, the Palace of Poison?'
'There is a church beside the prison…'
