fast, gesturing with open hands, glancing at me several times.
'He says that we must leave Vito Genovese alone,' Nick said. 'Don Calo instructed Gaetano to bring Vito to him if he found him here. Vito is an honored member of the society, and he must not be turned over to the authorities. If we find him, we are to let him go. Gaetano is instructed to make Don Calo's apology, but that is the way it must be.'
'Or else?'
Nick consulted with Gaetano.
'Don Calo considers this part of his agreement with you. If you break it, it will be on your head.'
'We're only talking about Vito?'
'Yes. Joey Laspada is not an honored member of the society here.'
'Do we have any choice?' I asked Nick.
'Don Calo is used to getting his way. If he doesn't, he'll back out of the deal.'
Let Vito go? I knew I would find him sniffing around the two million in occupation scrip, and I hated the idea of watching him go free. But maybe he wouldn't be so free if Don Calo was angry with him. Especially since I had told Don Calo there was three million involved, not two.
Maybe. Maybe not. We didn't have a choice, so what did it matter?
'OK,' I said, nodding to Gaetano. I got into the car.
'What's going on?' Harry asked from the backseat.
'Sciafani's coming with us,' I said, knowing that's wasn't what he meant.
'I can see that, he's bloody well sitting next to me. I mean all that with Gaetano. You two don't look happy.'
I started the car, wondering how to tell Harry that the guy responsible for Banville's death, among others, was going to walk. Yet I had no real evidence against Vito to bring to the army. I realized that I hadn't been thinking about evidence, I'd been thinking about vengeance. Finding Vito, shooting him. Another Villard, my own retribution for a killer the law couldn't, or wouldn't, touch.
I backed the car into the street and put it into gear. I felt the tension in my gut ease as I understood that, for whatever reason, the responsibility for bringing Vito Genovese to justice, for his punishment, now lay with others. The army or Don Calo. Not me. I still had Legs to worry about, but Vito was off the books.
'I am happy,' I said. 'I don't have to dig two graves.'
Nick explained what Gaetano had said and gave directions to the road south. Harry fumed, swearing a blue streak. Sciafani looked out the window, a smile turning up his lips, watching the landscape of his home disappear. I drove and whistled a happy tune. About ten minutes later, I laughed out loud.
'What's so funny?' Nick asked.
'Never mind. Too hard to explain.'
It was. I'd been thinking about my father's advice about Al.
Remember who you are.
I'd thought about that a dozen times in the last few days without realizing that was exactly, literally, what I needed to do. Whatever I had done about Villard, it didn't mean I had to keep going down that path. Right or wrong, that had had to be done. It was personal. But it didn't define who I was. I did that. It was the very thing I had been worried about when I'd awakened with my memory gone. Was I a killer? An assassin?
The answer was no. All I had to do was remember. Remember who I was, even if I didn't recall everything that had happened to me.
But now I did remember everything, including who I was. I knew which of the three kinds of people in the world I was. I knew the world could throw a mean curve ball at me and at the ones I loved, but that wouldn't change me unless I let it.
Thanks, Dad, I whispered to myself, as I put the rising sun to my left and headed back to our lines.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
'How's the leg?' I asked Harry, glancing into the rearview mirror.
'It hurts. Maybe your doctor friend should look at it,' Harry said in a low angry voice. He hadn't spoken a word since we'd left Cammarata, unhappy with the Mafia edict that left Vito Genovese safe beyond our reach.
'I would be glad to,' said Sciafani.
'Bugger off,' Harry said. 'I've had enough of you Mafia bastards. Your pals kill my first mate, and now we can't touch Genovese because he's such an honored man on this bloody island. Get me back to civilization.'
'I am not mafiusu, and they are not my friends,' Sciafani said, holding a hand over his heart as if he were swearing a holy oath.
'Who the bloody hell are you then?' Harry demanded, echoing my own thoughts. 'Don Calo killed your father, you killed his man, he protects the killer of my friend, and you embrace like blood brothers. Who are you people anyway?'
'It is complicated to be Sicilian,' Sciafani said, his hand dropping to his lap. 'Let me know if you wish me to look at your wound, but I cannot answer your questions.' He turned to stare out the window again, his eyes focusing on distant hills.
Silence filled the car as dust, hot air, and recriminations swirled between us. Time passed, and we descended through dry fields of harvested wheat, the yellowing stalks arrayed like soldiers cut down in ranks. Switchbacks snaked up and down the mountain roads that slowly took us south toward the American lines. Toward Vito and Legs, Charlotte, and all their plots and schemes. I had to protect the promise I'd gotten from Don Calo to intervene with the Sicilian troops, and at the same time do what I could to obtain justice for Roberto, Banville, and even Rocko. Glancing again at Harry, still grim faced, I made a note to keep him away from Vito Genovese. I couldn't let him take his own private revenge.
Damn, I sounded like Harding: complete the mission, and the hell with your personal feelings. I was sure Harding had them, but they weren't on display for all to see. I considered myself his complete opposite, but now I was thinking like him. I couldn't help it. I'd lost myself in Sicily, and as I discovered my own identity the grit and heat and passion of the island had worked their way under my skin. God help me, but I understood Sciafani and Don Calo, their brutal and honorable ways. Sometimes you had to stand and fight, bloody your knuckles, take a life. And sometimes you had to make peace with the past, even when harm had been done. I understood Don Calo, turning the brutal events of his earlier life into a romantic tale of bandits in the hills, Robin Hood reluctantly taking the life of his great rival, sending away his child and then waiting a generation for his return, to remind him of the man he had once been.
And Sciafani? What did he take from the embrace? If his father was defined in death by his enemy, then Sciafani would be forever defined by the man who had let him live. His father gave him life, but so did Don Calo. The old man with blood on his hands had washed a bit of it away. It must have made the old man feel good, but what about Sciafani?
Vito, he was easy to understand. The Mob was all about money and power, and Vito generated enough of both. Don Calo wanted to protect his cut, so Vito was safe. I didn't like it, but at least it made sense. No different than an insurance company or a car dealer rewarding their top salesmen. In the same way, giving up Legs was no different than laying off your most unproductive man. Good business.
I didn't necessarily like understanding this, but there you were. A cop gets pretty close to the criminal, close enough that the lines can get blurred. Like with me and Al. Trick was to remember who you were while understanding who the other guy was. I figured that would have been the next lesson from Dad if the war hadn't interrupted things. I wished I hadn't had to learn that one the hard way.
'Look,' Nick said, pointing ahead.
'What?' asked Harry, craning his head forward.
'Town up ahead,' I said. 'Looks like a bunker covering the road.'
'They wouldn't shoot at a car, would they?' Harry asked.
'Only if they're trigger-happy or Germans or Fascist militia,' I said, considering the possibilities.
I decided the best thing to do was keep going. The town was gathered under a church steeple on the highest
