me. I felt a cold rush of fear pass through my body, and for a time I could not move.
He started walking towards the house. I backed away from the window and made my way to the front door. I opened it before he reached the end of the path. He stopped in his tracks. This old man, a man who made me see how far we had come, stood there for a moment and then held his arms wide and smiled.
‘Ernesto!’ he said proudly. ‘Ernesto, my friend!’
I felt tears in my eyes. I stepped out onto the path. I walked towards him. I hugged him. I held him for some small eternity and then I released him and stepped back.
‘Ten Cent,’ I said. ‘Ten Cent… you are here.’
‘That I am,’ he said. ‘And as this is such a special occasion I have brought you your car!’ He turned and indicated the Cruiser. It was the same as it had ever been. Three miles of silken paintwork and burnished chrome. My gift from Don Giancarlo Ceriano after the deaths of Pietro Silvino and Ruben Cienfuegos. I remembered everything, the past, all the things that had brought me here to this point, and I was overcome with emotion.
I started to cry, and then I was laughing, and then the two of us were walking into the house and closing the world out behind us.
We ate together, we drank wine, we spoke of things that had been, a little of things that were to come. Ten Cent asked after Victor; I showed him some of Victor’s work and Ten Cent was pleased and proud like an uncle would be of a talented and bright nephew. Ten Cent was family, had always been, would always be, but at the same time he represented everything that I had so much wanted to leave behind. I realized then that such things could never be left behind. They were always there, and it was simply a matter of time before they found you once again. The present, even the future – these things were always and forever only a mirror held up to the past. The man I once was had now been reflected, and though time had passed, though the mirror was aged and spotted with distortions and discolorations, it was still the same man who looked back at me: Ernesto Cabrera Perez, killer, absentee father, indirectly guilty of the deaths of two of the people whom he had loved most.
Later, three, four hours perhaps, Ten Cent was quiet for a moment. He looked at me seriously and I asked him what was wrong.
‘I came for a reason,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see you. I brought the car also. But there is another reason I came.’
I fell quiet inside. I could feel my heart beating in my chest.
‘Don Calligaris is dead,’ he said. ‘He died three weeks ago.’
I opened my mouth to ask what had happened.
‘He was an old man, and despite everything he survived all the world could throw at him. He died in his own bed, surrounded by the people who cared for him. It has taken me all this time and a great deal of money to track you down, Ernesto, but in his last moments Don Calligaris wished that I find you and tell you the truth.’
‘The truth?’ I asked, fear roiling up inside me like a tornado.
‘The truth,’ Ten Cent said, ‘about Angelina and Lucia… the night they died.’
I felt my eyes widen.
‘The bomb, as you know, was meant for Don Calligaris, and he did not tell you about it for fear of what you might do. But he is dead now, and before he died he wanted to know that you would discover the truth of who was responsible for their deaths.’
Ten Cent shook his head. ‘It all went back to Chicago, the friends we made back then, the people we were involved with. There were disagreements, people in New York who were unhappy with the way things turned out, and the responsibility for resolving the differences was given to Don Calligaris.’
‘Differences?’ I asked. ‘What differences?’
‘The differences between those within the family and those outside who we were involved with.’
‘What people?’ I asked.
‘Don Calligaris was charged with the responsibility of closing down any business agreements we had made with Antoine Feraud and his New Orleans operations.’
I looked at Ten Cent. I was struggling to understand what he was telling me.
‘Don Calligaris, as he died, wanted me to tell you who was responsible for attempting to kill him… who was responsible for the murder of your wife and your daughter.’
‘Feraud?’ I asked. ‘Feraud was responsible for the car bomb?’
Ten Cent nodded and then looked down at his hands. ‘Don Calligaris did not tell you, and made me swear that I would not tell you, because he feared that your vengeance might begin a war between the families that he would be held accountable for. Now he is dead, and he does not care what happens, and he loved you enough to want you to know the truth. He told me to tell you that you should take whatever action you felt was just in order to revenge the deaths of your wife and child.’
I sat back in my chair. I was emotionally and mentally overwhelmed. I could not find any words to describe how I felt, and thus I said nothing. I looked back at Ten Cent. He looked back at me unblinkingly, and then I nodded slowly and lowered my head.
‘You understand I will do what I have to,’ I said quietly.
‘Yes,’ Ten Cent replied.
‘And if I die doing this then it is not on your head.’
‘You will not die, Ernesto Perez. You are invincible.’
I nodded. ‘Perhaps so, but this thing I am going to do will be the undoing of everything. It will mean losing Victor perhaps, and it will mean trouble for the families.’
‘I know.’
‘But even so, you tell me this and you are prepared to let the cards fall where they may?’
‘I am.’
I reached forward and took Ten Cent’s hand. I looked up at him and saw the washed-out pale blue color of his eyes: the eyes of a tired man.
‘You have done what Don Calligaris asked you to do,’ I said, ‘and for this I am grateful. Now I think you should leave, you should forget me and Victor and pay no mind to what happens now. This thing of ours is done.’
Ten Cent nodded. He rose from his chair. ‘Give me your car keys,’ he said. ‘I am leaving the car I brought and I will take yours. You do what you have to do, and do it with the blessing of Don Fabio Calligaris.’
‘I will,’ I said quietly, and my voice was nothing but a broken whisper. ‘I will do this thing, and that will be the end.’
I watched him drive away. With him went everything I had worked to maintain; the falsity of my present situation dissolved beneath the weight of this knowledge.
I felt ageless and indestructible. I felt the years roll away from me and vanish into nothing. I wandered through my house, my thoughts racing in circles, and I found myself challenging everything I had striven to become.
I was Ernesto Cabrera Perez. I was a murderer. I had reached the end of my life but there was now one more thing that had to be done. I would go to my grave knowing that justice had been served.
Like the Sicilians had told me so many years before:
Yes, I would dig two graves – one for Antoine Feraud, and one for myself.
I slept well that night, secure in the knowledge that my life had turned full circle. I would swallow my own tail, and finally, silently, irrevocably, everything I had been, everything I had become, would magically disappear.
I would find Angelina and Lucia once more, and this thing of ours would be done.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When Perez was done talking Hartmann leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
‘What was the saying you used? The one about revenge?’ he asked.
Perez smiled. ‘
Hartmann nodded. ‘But in your case the other grave was not for yourself, right?’
