In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

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.”