Boss of Bosses (13 page)

But any advantage the Mafia gained in the elections was lost when the maxi-trial verdicts were announced in December 1987. After a record-breaking five weeks’ seclusion, eating and sleeping in their Spartan quarters in the concrete bunker, the jury finally returned its verdicts.

On a December evening the prisoners listened in silence to the verdicts being read in the judge’s high, tremulous voice, for well over an hour. They inflicted heavy blows on Cosa Nostra, with guilty verdicts
for 344 defendants and a total of 2,665 years in prison. Liggio was acquitted of running the organization from prison, but life sentences were pronounced for nineteen mafiosi, including Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. It was an unprecedented defeat for the Mafia – previous trials had almost all resulted in acquittals for lack of evidence. Riina had failed to fix the verdict.

Provenzano maintained that Riina’s decision to support the PSI was a disaster. Giuffré remembers that election as the beginning of a major dispute between the two leaders. ‘I’d have to say that at this precise moment the rift between Riina and Provenzano got wider, a rift that most people had not really noticed before this point. But Provenzano didn’t agree with this experiment in supporting the Socialists and the Radical Party, and I think I’d have to say that events have proved him right.

‘Unfortunately the strategy misfired and the rift opened up between the Mafia and politics, because there was an inevitable reaction from both the Christian Democrats and the Socialist party, so that by the ’90s we had both [justice Minister Claudio] Martelli and [Giulio] Andreotti against us.’ Instead of heeding their ‘warning’ and making concessions to the Mafia, the Christian Democrats supported a raft of anti-Mafia measures.

The division between the two men became more marked; although they maintained the peace in public, the façade was becoming increasingly thin. The two men who had hatched so many clever plots against their enemies were getting close to hatching similar plots against each other.

The next few years were some of the most turbulent in Cosa Nostra’s history. Sensitive to any threat to his charismatic leadership, Riina turned on the star players in his own ranks. Even better: he would get the man’s closest allies to do it – convinced, by Riina’s skilful manipulation, that their lives depended on it. The hit man Pino ‘the Shoe’ Greco had been the Corleonesi’s most reliable killer and Riina’s host at his elegant villa until his brilliant career went to his head, and Riina had him murdered by his own men. Another reliable hit man for the Corleonesi, Agostino Marino Mannoia, who had been part of
so many of Riina’s execution squads, suddenly vanished. Filippo Marchese, the enthusiastic strangler of Palermo’s notorious chamber of death, disappeared in a vat of acid, just as he had dispatched so many of Riina’s enemies. While Riina was reinventing the savagery of organized crime, his killers buried the bodies on a rubbish dump.

During this time Riina allegedly hatched a plot to murder Provenzano. With the full knowledge that his words would be taken as a threat, he inquired: ‘Does Binnu go out in the morning or the evening?’ Anyone hearing that innocent-sounding question would know that he would be doing Uncle Totò a favour by dispatching his irksome joint leader. Provenzano began to see less of his friends and made plans to tighten his security.

Falcone and Borsellino gained the confidence of men of honour who were appalled by the way the organization was going and wanted to take their revenge against the Corleonesi by revealing the secrets of Cosa Nostra. Nino Calderone, whose brother Pippo, capo of Catania, had been murdered, agreed to collaborate with Falcone in the spring of 1987. He revealed a great deal about the Mafia’s political patronage and its protection rackets. He also trespassed on the holy ground of Provenzano’s contracts, giving investigators a detailed picture of the relationship between Cosa Nostra, captains of industry and politicians. When Francesco Marino Mannoia revealed the Corleonesi’s
modus operandi
, Riina killed his mother, his aunt and his sister. And there were more.

Falcone’s tremendous progress in his investigations irked many of his colleagues, who were jealous of his success and hostile to his methods. Cosa Nostra took advantage of confusion and infighting in the Palermo prosecutors’ office (known as the Poison Palace) and unleashed a new round of violence and intimidation. Two senior judges, who were due to hear the appeals against the maxi-trial verdicts, were murdered.

While the prosecutors argued, sinister forces were at work, threatening Falcone’s use of ‘penitent’ mafiosi. In May 1989 Salvatore Contorno, who had been in hiding in the USA after giving important testimony in the maxi-trial, suddenly turned up in Sicily. Police arrested him in a hideout stacked with guns of every size and calibre.
He had apparently returned to wreak his revenge on the Corleonesi. As conspiracy theories abounded, Falcone was accused of letting Contorno come back to kill off the mafiosi he couldn’t catch.

A rebellion began to foment against Riina’s leadership among capos and soldiers who felt his iron rule too harsh. Even his brother-in-law Leoluca Bagarella was angry enough to talk about a rebellion: he had been told he couldn’t marry his fiancée because her uncle (the strangler) had been murdered, which would have lowered his status.

By 1991 the situation had got so bad that finally government ministers realized they could not turn a blind eye to organized crime any longer. After a government reshuffle Claudio Martelli, the justice minister, saw an opportunity to make his mark. Never mind that just a few years earlier, he had been campaigning against the magistrature. He invited Falcone to become director of penal affairs in the Ministry of Justice, and Falcone, exhausted by the jostling and backbiting, the poison and rumour-mongering in Palermo, accepted. Against all the odds it was the beginning of a serious fightback against Cosa Nostra.

Falcone initiated a review of organized crime cases across the whole country, which resulted in the rearrest of bosses just released from prison, including Michele Greco. Magistrates suspected of leniency towards Mafia defendants were scratched off any lists for new positions. A super-prosecutor’s office was planned, to co-ordinate organized crime investigations across the country, while specialist local anti-Mafia pools were created. Finally the government accepted the importance of a co-ordinated anti-Mafia strategy.

Corrupt councils were dissolved in towns, including Bagheria, across the south, wherever the Mafia had infiltrated local government and drained funds. As the maxi-trial sentences came up for review, the judge who had overturned several sentences against mafiosi, Corrado ‘sentence killer’ Carnevale, was transferred.
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After years of complacency the anti-Mafia crusade finally became a vote-winner, and political parties came under pressure to root out Mafia candidates in Sicily and elsewhere. Riina’s violent regime had provoked a devastating response. The capos, weary and disoriented by so much violence, were disaffected.

The difference in approach between Riina and his joint leader had become more marked than ever. The capos closest to the highest echelons of Cosa Nostra gravitated to one side or the other as they tended towards the policy of violence or of industry.

‘Ordinary people supported him [Provenzano]’, said one mafioso, not knowing the police were listening to his every word. ‘They didn’t support that other one [Riina], who was serving the interests of a handful of crazy maniacs. I gave these people my life. I am honest enough to admit it, Riina is a complete madman. The other one is more moderate, let’s face it. I’ve talked to the old man [Provenzano], I’ve eaten meals with him. He is a completely different proposition. Wise.’
¹⁴

Brusca, ‘the Executioner’, remained loyal to his godfather, Riina, who was a man after his own heart. He admired him, and he feared him. He liked the fact that he could joke around with Riina in a way he never could with his own father, but he retained a healthy respect for his anger. ‘If anyone needed money, Riina would be the first to put his hand in his pocket. But if any of us tried to trick or shortchange him, he went berserk. He’s generous in his own way. In general, if there was a problem that needed sorting out, he would give his answer, yes or no. You knew where you stood. But with Provenzano – never.’

Some felt judged by Provenzano’s clean-living, pious style. Matteo Messina Denaro, an ambitious, womanizing young blood from the west coast, Playstation junkie and chain smoker, was no great fan of Uncle Binnu either; according to Brusca, ‘he was Riina’s man, and never got on with Provenzano.’

Provenzano gathered around him a loyal band of moderates: the developer Pino Lipari, who had been convicted of Mafia association in the maxi-trial but continued to serve; his great friend Piddu Madonia, scion of a Mafia dynasty and loyal deputy; and the young, charismatic boss of Santa Maria di Gesù, Pietro Aglieri. Nino Giuffré, coolly detached, quietly building up his own empire around Caccamo, remained on the sidelines for now.

Onofrio Morreale was a trusted member of the upcoming generation, particularly favoured by Provenzano. If he was known at all
to the Bagheria Mafia, it was as a common armed robber. But Provenzano chose him personally as his ‘pupil’, according to Giuffré: Provenzano presented him for initiation to Cosa Nostra in a ceremony kept secret from all but a handful of insiders. While the situation in Bagheria was somewhat volatile, Morreale’s privileged position was kept quiet. Later he was engaged to Nicolò Eucaliptus’s daughter and considered the natural heir to Provenzano in Bagheria.

In the organization at large there was a motion to split from the Corleonesi, but you didn’t divorce a violent abusive boss like Riina with impunity. The only way out seemed to be to annihilate Cosa Nostra itself. A group of bosses held a meeting to discuss dissolving the organization, laying down their arms and splitting up the families. ‘We were talking about breaking up the whole thing, before 1990’, said Nino Giuffré. ‘In the ’60s Cosa Nostra had been dissolved and gone underground, so there was a line of thought, particularly amongst the older members, that we could close the whole thing down and start up again once things had calmed down. If we had, we would have avoided so much evil. But the Corleonesi wouldn’t do it.’

Provenzano, for all that he disagreed with Riina’s methods, was one of those Corleonesi. Throughout this phase of mounting disaffection within Cosa Nostra he bided his time, plotting his own strategy. Plotting, perhaps, how to remove Riina and take his place.

In the meantime Provenzano and Riina met regularly on Saturday afternoons, to discuss business and settle up payments. Provenzano would be dropped off by his regular driver, Ciccio Pastoia, at the Città Mercato, the biggest shopping centre on the outskirts of Palermo, and picked up by Riina’s driver. He’d be taken to the nearby house of a trusted intermediary, where Riina would be waiting. These meetings were almost always in private, just the two of them. They would never talk on the telephone, so these meetings were the forum for all their planning and accounting. If they were at times explosive, their hosts were too discreet to hear it.

While the storm gathered about them, towards the end of summer 1991 many of the most powerful Corleonesi were living in hiding in
and around Trapani, on the western tip of the island. They lived as though the apocalypse they had created was far away, in a dream. Trapani is an ancient port, with a picturesque historic centre within ancient stone walls. The cobbled streets twist and turn around the fixed point of the cathedral. The modern city spreads out from the city walls, its traffic-choked streets sprawling along the coast and up the hills behind.

Along these streets the fugitive boss Bernardo Provenzano buzzed on his moped, hopping between Trapani and the Mafia fiefdom of Mazara del Vallo. Provenzano lived like a normal citizen during this turbulent period. And not just him but the other Corleonesi as well: Riina, Bagarella and Brusca. It was quite an undertaking for the boss of the local Mafia family responsible for their safety and hospitality. Each one had a villa for himself and his family to live in, a bodyguard and driver assigned to him, and a trusted messenger.

The mafiosi had money, and they had style: Armani and Rolex watches. Provenzano favoured cashmere suits and silk shirts. One young mafioso was most impressed when he met ‘the Accountant’ (he would never dare to call him Uncle Binnu, and certainly never heard him called ‘the Tractor’). He described ‘a very distinguished gentleman, about sixty, very well kept. He was wearing a yellow polo shirt, buttoned up to the neck, and a checked jacket. What made the greatest impression on me were his shoes: they were beautifully made, in brown leather, with an oval painted on, and a flying duck.’
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Provenzano would receive such extravagant items as gifts, but he wore them as curiosities: they meant very little to him. What gave him the most pleasure was a set of clothes that would help him blend into the background – wherever he found himself.

Life among the fugitive bosses was congenial; they were like a big happy family, as Giovanni Brusca describes it, ‘before the poison set in, before the betrayals, the confessions’.

Banquets had always been an important part of the Corleonesi’s style: after a major victory, a summit or a ceremony to initiate new members they would have a great feast. They were important bonding occasions, to consolidate a feeling that the men were all working
and fighting together, on the same side. They were ostentatious occasions: everyone would bring something – everyone
had to
bring something, and the arrival at the banquet would look like the journey of the magi, as twenty or thirty gangsters arrived bearing gift-wrapped boxes.