The death of a mafia don, p.22
The Death of a Mafia Don, page 22
part #3 of Michele Ferrara Series
‘What are we celebrating?’ he called out.
‘My present,’ she replied, coming out of the kitchen with a thin envelope in her hand. ‘But first you have to open the bottle.’
As they drank a toast, Ferrara opened the envelope.
It contained five colour photographs. They showed, from various angles, a dilapidated stone building almost choked with brambles. On one of them, you could see the sea, and he immediately recognised the islands: Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto. An awful premonition made Ferrara’s heart skip a beat.
‘I met Duranti’s architect, Cristina. She’s very good. She’s the one who found it. It’s a real bargain!’
‘No, Petra, wait. I don’t want to dash your hopes, but now’s not the time, I don’t think we can afford—’
‘You don’t understand, darling,’ Petra said, adopting her most innocent air. ‘I’ve already signed the preliminary contract. It’s ours. And it’ll be beautiful, I already have the plans she drew up. Come on, let me show them to you.’
‘What about the fish?’ he objected feebly.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve turned off the oven.’
30
On Thursday October 22, Superintendent Francesco Rizzo entered his chief ’s office, triumphantly waving a report.
‘The results of the first DNA tests on the cigarette ends have arrived, chief.’
‘Ah,’ Ferrara replied.
Ignoring the lukewarm welcome - he was getting used to it by now - Rizzo continued, ‘The experts have identified the genotypes of two different men.’
‘So now we have their genetic profile.’
‘Precisely, and we know there were at least two individuals lying in wait, and on two separate occasions, several days apart, a week at the most.’
So Anna Giulietti hadn’t been paranoid after all, there really had been a previous attempt on her life. But why hadn’t she told Rizzo? If they had intervened in time and taken the necessary precautions she might still be alive today, still with them, with him. He suddenly recalled the sacrosanct words of the murdered Sicilian judge Giovanni Falcone: ‘People generally die because they are alone or because they have got involved in something that is too big for them. They often die because they don’t have the necessary allies, because they lack support. In Sicily the Mafia strikes only those servants of the State whom the State has not been able to protect.’
Not only in Sicily, not any more.
That thought increased his despondency, the memory of Anna his sadness.
‘At least two?’ he said.
‘The experts don’t rule out the possibility that there may have been others. Because the material they’ve had to work on was small and in a poor state of preservation, they haven’t been able to run a full analysis of all the cigarette ends.’
‘And we already know the names of those two men: Jan van Gorcum and Marco Laprua. Get the Agrigento people to send you some usable organic samples and pass them to the experts to see if the DNAs match, though it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.’
He sounded weary, as if he were going through the motions.
It was at that point that Rizzo decided that he couldn’t take it any more. He summoned all his courage and openly challenged his chief, whose state of mind was in danger of lowering the morale of the whole squad.
‘Are we allowed to know what’s wrong, chief?’ he burst out.
Ferrara gave him a look of annoyance. ‘You sound just like my wife! Everyone keeps asking me what’s wrong! To cheer me up, she’s put me in debt for the next twenty years, so what bright ideas do you have?’
‘I’m sorry, chief, but aren’t we right? The men are at last starting to see their hard work bearing fruit, at last getting fantastic results, but they never get a single encouraging word from you, not even a “Good work, carry on, you’re doing well.”’
Ferrara had calmed down after his outburst. ‘You’re right, Francesco, forgive me. The men are doing a wonderful job, I must remember to thank them. But don’t you get the feeling we’re going round in circles? That we’re watching the same film over and over again?’
‘What do you mean?’
Ferrara made a vague gesture in the air. Then he looked around for a cigar, which he really needed at that moment. It helped him to think, and right now he was doing a lot of thinking.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s just that we keep gathering evidence, important evidence, I grant you, about things we’ve already known for a while. We know by heart how it happened, we know who carried out the attacks, and we know who helped them, whether willingly or not doesn’t really matter. It’s all as clear as daylight, and yet we’re still groping in the dark!’
As if determined to corroborate his chief ’s words and thoughts, the incomparable Fanti, with his miraculous sense of timing, took the liberty just then of interrupting them to inform them that they had just heard from Sicily that Sandro Caruso was now also missing.
‘Or the victim of a Mafia killing,’ Ferrara said gloomily.
Rizzo had to agree that once again Ferrara was right. He felt genuinely mortified, and did not know what to say.
Ferrara looked at him with a mixture of affection and anxiety, feeling he had gone too far. ‘I’m sorry, Francesco, I don’t want you to lose heart, too! The fact is, you’re the best man I have, and if I can’t tell you these things . . . It’s depressing, I know, but the truth is, we’re gathering evidence about people who are either dead or have just vanished into thin air. We’re still stuck on the second level, that’s the truth, and those on the third level are laughing at us!’
31
Late that afternoon, well past closing time, in the conference room of the Palermo branch of the Banca Popolare di Montepellegrino, a very special meeting was about to take place.
The first man to arrive, before the scheduled time, had been Pippo Catalfano, the organiser of the meeting. As usual, he was very well dressed. Some of his most reliable men, who had come with him, remained outside and at a distance, providing a discreet security cordon. As he waited for the others to arrive, Catalfano talked to the manager, who treated him with particular deference. Quite rightly, given that most of the shares in the bank, although in other names, were in fact held by Catalfano, and that it was Catalfano who had appointed him manager because he trusted him and appreciated his proven experience in the field of stock market operations.
Over the next thirty minutes, the other participants arrived in dribs and drabs.
The first was Salvatore Lume, known as Sasà, head of almost all the Palermo families, an impressive-looking man of about sixty, very tall - especially for a Sicilian - and always modestly dressed. He disapproved of drug trafficking, which was apparently to be the main topic of the meeting. With him was his eldest son, Giuseppe, destined to take over the reins when the moment was right. Giuseppe, too, was very tall.
Pippo Catalfano went up to them as soon as he saw them, embraced Sasà and thanked him for coming. Up until the last moment, there had been some doubt as to whether he or Molina would be there.
‘Don Nino asked us,’ Sasà explained, and Pippo knew then that there wouldn’t be anyone missing.
The manager invited them to drink something, and walked with them to a corner of the room where a buffet had been laid out, including a tray of Sicilian cannoli and finger-sized ‘cannolicchi’, filled with very fresh goat’s cheese ricotta, and dark chocolates decorated with candied orange peel.
Antonio Molina, district boss of Caltanisetta, and Luigi Rosati, head of the Catania families, arrived together. They had come from Catania in the same car. Rosati was relatively young, a high-flier who in a few years had established himself in the Catania Mafia, leaving behind him a long trail of blood and death. Tall and well-built, his hair still completely black, he was an imposing man. He dressed elegantly and with refinement and, like Catalfano, seemed more like a captain of industry than an old-style Mafioso with a cloth cap on his head and a rifle across his shoulders. He was perfectly happy about drug trafficking, which he ran in collusion with some families from the Calabrian Mafia who had been living for some years in Canada and Germany, where they laundered dirty money thorough apparently legitimate businesses. Both men approached the buffet and embraced Catalfano and Sasà.
Next came Don Pietro Uccelli, district boss of Enna, an old Mafiso with strong ties to his own territory, where not even a leaf moved without his say-so. He had just turned seventy and his ambition was to reach the end of his days at peace with all the other families, even though he did not agree with the spread of the drug market: sooner or later, he thought, it could well cause serious problems, even within his own patch. As soon as he saw him come in, Catalfano went up to him and embraced him, moved in part by his memories of the excellent relationship between the old man and his own father when he himself was still a boy.
‘Thank you for being here, Don Pietro.’
‘I only came because of your late father, Pippo,’ he replied, in a friendly, almost affectionate tone.
‘Have something to drink, Don Pietro,’ Pippo said, taking him by the arm and walking with him to the buffet.
All the most important provinces were now present. The only one missing was the representative from Messina, not because he had not been invited but because he did not exist. Messina, although it had had its share of criminal incidents, was still considered a backward province, because of the lack of prominent Mafia personalities and the relative absence of Mafia activity. The Catania Mafia, though, were making inroads into the territory. The farsighted Rosati wanted Messina as one of his conquests, determined to have an organisation in place when the construction of the controversial bridge linking Calabria and Sicily finally got under way.
It was only now that Antonio Caputo made his entrance. He looked around the room and an expression of discontent came over his face. ‘Isn’t someone missing?’
The others looked at each other questioningly. Pippo Catalfano looked at his watch and went up to him. ‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’
‘Let’s sit down, then.’
They all took their places in the comfortable leather armchairs around the solid walnut table, which had been polished until it shone.
Luigi Rosati, the youngest and most irreverent of those present, asked the question the others seemed reluctant to utter. ‘Who are we waiting for?’
‘The Lion,’ Don Nino said.
Again, they all gave each other questioning looks.
‘Zì Turi’s associate. He wants to meet us and give us an explanation.’
At that moment the door opened and the manager, who had previously gone out and left them alone, now showed in a stranger and again made himself scarce.
Antonio Caputo gave a start. Pale and furious, he shot an angry glance at Pippo and cried, ‘Who is this?’
He knew perfectly well who it was: if anyone knew the Basilisk, he did.
Catalfano swallowed and looked at both of them, silent and uncomprehending. ‘The Lion, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ the newcomer said. ‘But it was the Lion who sent me.’
‘You were always a fucking idiot and you still are,’ Caputo spat bitterly at Catalfano.
‘It isn’t his fault, Don Nino,’ the Basilisk said. ‘I know you were expecting the Lion, but he couldn’t make it. He asked me to bring you a message, and it struck me as an important one. You must forgive me, but he only told me today and I wasn’t able to warn you, there was no way to get a message to you by the usual means.’
‘Pippo, this wasn’t what we agreed,’ Caputo said, ignoring him, the blood beating in his temples.
‘Be patient, Don Nino,’ the unexpected guest insisted, gently. ‘And please hear me out. This may be important for everyone, if not, I wouldn’t be here. He’ll come next time, you’ll see.’
‘There won’t be a next time!’
‘Calm down, Don Nino. You’re right, but trust me.’
‘I may be able to trust you, but no one slights Antonio Caputo! No one. So he couldn’t come. Like hell he couldn’t! He didn’t want to come. What is it? Is he scared?’
The newcomer had approached the table, and now sat down between Molina and Rosati.
‘They say Laprua gave him that nickname because he was very brave, but even a brave man may feel a little scared meeting the boss of bosses, so you may not be far wrong, Don Nino. You know who I am. A mediator, that’s why you use me. And I know you. But even I feel a little afraid, to tell the truth.’
The others did not dare ask what their relationship was. There are contacts that everyone has the right to keep secret, especially a boss of bosses. If he had wanted to, he would have introduced him to the others. For now, it was enough for them that they had recognised each other, as long as Caputo trusted them it was fine.
‘You know you have nothing to worry about, Basilisk,’ Caputo said, and the revelation of the name spread like an electric shock. ‘The Lion’s another matter. He should have come and looked us all in the face, and he shouldn’t have planted that fucking bomb in Florence. All the cops and judges in Sicily are up in arms. He got us in this mess, and you know that.’
‘He says he had to do it. For all of you. The image and the international prestige of Cosa Nostra are at risk. That policeman confiscated two hundred and fifty kilos of prime quality heroin intended for the American market. The Americans are furious, they’re threatening to turn to other markets and cut us all out.’
‘Bullshit!’ Don Nino cried. ‘We don’t give a fuck about international prestige, and we don’t give a fuck about those fucking drugs!’
‘One moment, Don Nino,’ Luigi Rosati intervened calmly.
‘Maybe, being outside of Sicily, the man sees things more clearly. The world is changing, we all know that. Why don’t we talk about it?’
Caputo looked at the others, one by one.
No one took sides.
He sighed and again addressed the Basilisk. ‘What does he want?’
‘To go into business with you. He assures us he’s reestablished contact with the Afghans, despite the difficulties of the war. He says he can replace the load that was confiscated and satisfy the needs of our American cousins. But he needs money. A lot of money. He’s already made commitments, and the shipment is going to arrive soon.’
‘How much?’ Antonio Molina asked.
‘Six hundred million dollars.’
They all looked at each other in silence. It was an enormous sum, even to these men who were used to handling fortunes. They would need to think about it carefully.
‘With the prices the stuff is fetching in America now, you’ll double your investment at least. Let’s say a billion and a half, more or less. That’s not being optimistic but realistic. A hundred and fifty per cent interest in ten days, two weeks at the most, as soon as the money is handed over. Less my commission of one per cent if you agree. And you divide the profits: eighty per cent to you, twenty per cent to him.’
Another silence, while they waited for Caputo’s reaction. He had turned grim-faced and thoughtful. The offer was tempting, and when it comes to business even the strongest allies can waver.
After this long pause for thought, the boss of bosses made a sweeping gesture with both arms, meaning that he was leaving it up to each man present to choose.
It was a big risk for them: they were well aware that he was using it as an opportunity to test the loyalty of each family. And the Basilisk was his man, they all knew that now. What if it was a trap? But it could also be a huge opportunity, and open up new paths, such as the most ambitious of them were always searching for. The latent conflict within the Sicilian Mafia, the choice between isolation and globalisation, was about to explode. The consequences could be devastating, as the heavy silence that followed the boss’s gesture demonstrated. They knew that the moment had come, and they each had to take responsibility for their own actions, as men of honour.
Don Sasà whispered something in his son’s ear. Then he shrugged, sullenly, and addressed Caputo.
‘Don Nino, you already know what I think. Drugs don’t interest me. They require a commitment that’s too much for me at my age. I want things to stay as they are, at least for the families I have the honour to represent.’ He paused, took a sip of water, and concluded, ‘That’s what I want for the good of our families and all of Sicily.’
He placed particular emphasis on the word ‘Sicily’, perhaps to underline that life on the island would probably never be the same again if they agreed to this plan.
Caputo turned to Catalfano with a questioning look.
‘I don’t know if that’s the right choice, Don Sasà,’ Catalfano ventured somewhat hesitatantly. ‘When you get down it, the Lion took a risk for us, and made commitments, and if now we turn our backs on him, think of the consequences.’
‘What is that, a threat?’ Don Sasà burst out.
‘What are you talking about? I haven’t decided anything yet, it isn’t an easy choice. We’ve heard from someone who could be the future of Cosa Nostra, and we have to take him into account when we make this decision.’
‘My friend, it’s not just that I’m rejecting this proposal.
You all know me well and you know I’ve always tried to find the best solution, even when I didn’t completely agree. But this whole drugs thing will bring us trouble in the future. It will make us too many enemies, and all our activities could be put at risk. Salvatore Laprua always thought of himself, not of us. Let’s not forget that. The Lion made those financial commitments without talking to us first. That’s not how things are done among men of honour.’
‘Let the others speak!’ Don Nino ordered at this point.
The district heads of Catalanisetta and Enna said only that they associated themselves with the position expressed by Don Sasà. Don Pietro Uccelli regretted the conflict that had been created but said that he would not be able to accept the proposal.
