In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

have the girl killed, urged you to prevent it, I would have been guilty of breaking one of the oldest of Mafia laws.”

“Death at last for Vito Barbaccia, is that what you are saying?”

“Death?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “You think that frightens me? But I thought I had made it clear to you? The rules are there for all to obey, even the capo. Without them we are nothing. They are the strength of the Society, the reason we have survived. Oh no, Stacey, he who breaks the rules deserves to die – must die.”

It occurred to me for the briefest of moments that I might be going out of my head. I was moving into an unknown country now with attitudes and rules of behaviour as archaic and formalised as a Court of Chivalry in the Middle Ages.

Thinking was an effort, but I managed to say, “It still doesn’t hang together. I didn’t know Hoffer was Mafia, but he knew I was your grandson and I made it clear to Burke that I had discussed our mission with you.”

“But why should that worry him? The story of his stepdaughter’s kidnapping was acceptable enough, including his reasons for handling it quietly and the thought that his story about the money from the trust fund had been accepted by everyone including me. What could this affair of the Truscott girl have to do with that?”

Which made enough sense to get by. Certainly it was as acceptable an explanation as anything else that had been offered to me in this nightmare world of Mafia politics.

“Which still leaves us with the fact that you could have warned me,” I said slowly. “You could have given me some kind of an idea of what was going on, told me at least that Hoffer was Mafia on that first night when I discussed things with you.”

“Only by breaking our law, Stacey, and that I could not do. Hoffer knew that and I had everything to gain by remaining silent. It was Hoffer who brought you into the affair, Hoffer and this man Burke who lied to you. If you turned against them, Hoffer could blame no one but himself.”

“This Council of yours might have other ideas,” I said. “They might find it difficult to believe that your grandson wasn’t working under your direct orders.”

“Which remains to be seen,” he said. “But you must come to the meeting, Stacey, and see for yourself. It should be rather amusing.”

“Amusing!” If I had been close enough I think I might have struck him at the moment. “I could have been killed up there, don’t you understand? I loved you – I’ve always loved you in spite of everything and you sent me to my death without a word for the sake of a few stupid archaic rules – a game for schoolboys with no sense to it.”

He frowned. “To your death, Stacey – you really believe that?” He laughed harshly. “Yes, all right. I was going to keep you out that first night when you came to see me, by force if necessary. But then I talked to my grandson – saw him in action, saw him for what he was, mafioso just like his grandfather, only better. And this Burke, this hollow man, this dead thing walking with the grave stench already on him – you think I believe my grandson couldn’t handle him?”

His voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper and he leaned close to me, one hand on the edge of the bed to support his weight. I stared at him, hypnotised.

“Don’t you see, Stacey? Hoffer had to have his chance, the rules said so, but I wanted him flat on his belly grovelling because I believed that, of all of them, he was the man most likely to be responsible for the death of my daughter. I wanted his scheme to fail so I allowed the best, the most ruthless mafioso I have ever known to wreck it for me.”

A wave of greyness scoured my body and I shivered as he sat back and calmly lit another cigar. “It’s just a game to you, isn’t it? The more complicated the better. You could have had Hoffer’s head blown off at any time you wanted. At home, in the street – but that wouldn’t have been good enough. It had to be a classical drama.”

“They always last longer.” He stood up, his face calm, flicked ash from a lapel and adjusted his tie. “They’ll be here soon. I’ll send Marco with some clothes for you.”

The door closed behind him, I stared up at the ceiling blankly for a moment, then swung my legs to the floor, stood up and tried to walk.

I made it to the French windows, turned and went back. I was more than a little light-headed and my shoulder hurt like hell when I moved it, but at least I could get around which was all I needed.

I was rummaging through the drawers of the dressing table when Marco came in. He dropped a sue`de jacket, whipcord pants and a white nylon shirt on the bed and produced the Smith and Wesson.

“Is this what you are looking for?”

He tossed it across. I pulled it from its holster, hefted it for a moment in my left hand, then swung the cylinder to one side and spilled the cartridges on to the coverlet.

I reloaded it carefully, snapped the cylinder home and pushed it back into its holster. “There was a wallet.”

“That also.”

He produced it from his pocket and gave it to me, making no comment when I checked the contents.

“Are they here?”

“Most of them.”

“And Hoffer?”

“Not yet.”

I discovered that my hands were trembling slightly. “Help me get dressed. We mustn’t keep them waiting.”

SIXTEEN

THEY MET IN the salon and I sat in a wicker chair on the terrace behind a vine-covered trellis, Marco at my shoulder, and watched.

I had a perfect view and the acoustics were excellent. There were eight of them, including my grandfather, and in appearance they were a pretty assorted bunch. Three of them were real old-style capos, carefully dressed in deliberately shabby clothes. A fourth had taken off his coat, exposing cheap and gaudy braces. The others were all wearing expensive lightweight suits, although no one could approach my grandfather’s magnificence, sitting there at the head of the table in the cream lightweight suit he had worn on that first evening.

Hoffer wore dark glasses, presumably an affectation, and nodded soberly at what was said to him by the man on his right. He looked composed enough and I wondered what was going on in his mind.

My grandfather lifted a small silver bell and at its ring the low buzz of conversation was instantly stilled. Every head turned towards him and he let the silence hang for a moment before saying, “Karl Hoffer asked for this meeting specially. I don’t know what he’s going to say any more than you do, but I guess we all know what it’s about, so let’s listen.”

Hoffer didn’t get up. He seemed calm, but when he removed his dark glasses for a moment he looked tired, and when he started to talk the voice was grave and subdued. Altogether a most convincing performance.

“When I faced the Council some months back in order to explain my conduct in certain unfortunate business transactions, I promised to repay the Society every penny of the money lost owing to my imprudence. I asked for six months, time enough for me to realise certain assets in the States left to me by my late wife. I know some of you here thought I was still buying time, that the Society would never see its money. Others, thank God, were willing to trust me.”

That remark, on any other occasion, would have been enough to make me laugh out loud. There wasn’t a man at that table who would have trusted his neighbour for more than five minutes at any one time outside the rigid framework of Mafia law.

They knew it and Hoffer knew it, unless – and this seemed incredible – he really was so stupid as to think them a bunch of unwashed Sicilian peasants he could walk over whenever he pleased.

“Have you come to tell us you can’t pay, Karl?”

There was an edge of malice in my grandfather’s voice and he spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. Even Hoffer’s performance paled by comparison with this one.