Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

Sicilian Tragedee (32 page)

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee

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SS Really Exists, Nobody Knows About It, Even Though Everybody Knows

SS really exists, nobody knows about it, even though everybody knows. Swim Shoot, it’s called in the business. Once upon a time they specialized in swimming pool deaths.

It’s something nobody is supposed to know about.

And in fact nobody does.

Even though everybody knows.

The swimming pool deaths were an invention of Don Vincenzino in New York, when the Cosa Nostra, between the sixties and the seventies, decided to take advantage of the crisis the studios were in and invest in the movies in order to launder some money—those were the days when indie film was born.

The stars, the directors, and the producers all went around with bodyguards, everybody knew everybody, everybody was sleeping with everybody, and if you had something to do you couldn’t do it in the old-fashioned way because the FBI would get you immediately.
It’s not like you could send a killer into a pool party full of movie stars. How would he even get in without an invitation?

So Don Vincenzino began to get bit parts for his assistants, or he made them the dummy heads of the independent film companies, officially the producers, or sometimes he made them directors—in those days so much bullshit was being made that one more, one less, nobody noticed.

The best of them all was——(redacted), his brain so wormeaten that he became really famous as a director of super-violent movies. (Not a fucking bad idea, he knew how certain details worked.)

Anyway, if you have ever asked yourself how it is that there are so many pool deaths in Hollywood, now you know why and who.

Ottone and Ernst are part of this tradition.

Twin brothers, they are independent film producers with offices in New York, London, and Berlin. They make police procedurals that they sell to cable TV, and every year they rescue tons of ex-models who have hit age thirty (nobody wants models who have hit age thirty) and as a side business they’ve opened a plastic surgery clinic in Hamburg, and like so many businesses born as fronts, this has become a big moneymaker.

Ottone and Ernst have just arrived in Catania.

They’ve taken a suite at the Una Palace.

They’re getting ready to immerse themselves in the Sicilian Baroque.

They have an appointment with the film commissioner.

It seems you can make movies cheap in Catania.

They also have an appointment with a local handler, Rattalina. A guy who knows how to deal with the bureaucracy.

“And fireworks, no?” the mayor of Noto asks the city council.

The culture commissioner, Chartered Accountant Intelisano, gets to his feet. “Your Honor, my fellow commissioners, I think it’s a bad idea.”

The mayor looks at the council.

The councillors are looking at Intelisano the way they always look at him, as if he’s a total moron.

“And why do you think it’s a bad idea?” asks the mayor.

“Let’s not forget that this tragedy has been stalked by tragedy. There will be newspapers, TV, this is Noto, capital of the Sicilian Baroque. It doesn’t seem serious.”

“No, we must have fireworks,” says the mayor.

Intelisano sits down, looks around, and says, “No. Yes, I agree.”

The commissioners and the mayor stand up. Average length of a special city council meeting in August, five minutes.

The commissioner for city planning—highly respected in Noto because in the middle of the capital of the Baroque they have built two skycrapers and the commissioner still hasn’t had them demolished—approaches the mayor. “While they’re putting in the air-conditioning in the theater, couldn’t we get them to put air-conditioning in here too? The old system doesn’t work very well.”

“I’ll ask, Commissioner, I’ll ask, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

The bell is ringing in the Villa Wanda living room.

“Mister ring?”

“Bring me a glass of whiskey, a double gin, a vodka, and a Campari. And bring me a bucket of ice.”

“Are you crazy?” yells Wanda.

“Shhh, it’s not for me to drink. I’ll explain.”

“Explain what? You’re driving me nuts!”

“Listen, woman, I told you to zip it up!”

“But—”

“Zip it!”

Oh, Holy Mary, when he says “zip it.” Sure, sure, I’ll zip it, I’ll shut up. Oh, Riddu! Oh, God.

“Wanda.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Me?”

The maid comes in with the tray full of drinks. She puts it down carefully in front of Pirrotta.

“Wait,” says Pirrotta.

He takes the glass of whiskey and pours it in the bucket of ice. He does the same with the vodka and the Campari.

The double gin, first he looks at Wanda, then he downs it as if it were tap water.

Zipped up, yes, I’m zipped up.

“Wanda.”

“Yes?”

Pirrotta holds out the fingers of his right hand and waves them up and down, up and down. “Okay, now get out of here.”

Wanda gets up and smooths her skirt. “I’ll wait for you … in the bedroom?”

“Wanda, what’s the matter with you, the menopause? Get out of here and go wherever you want. Leave me alone because your daughter is on the way.”

Betty is coming in the huge front door.

She looks at the door.

She puts her mini-bag on the floor and takes off the thong sandals with the heels.

She grabs the door handle and slams it as hard as she can.

Pirrotta hears the bang and nods.

He takes off his jacket, loosens the knot of his tie, unbuttons his top shirt button, and lies back in the chair trying to look troubled.

It isn’t that hard.

Holy Mary, how sweet it was in the days of the cement-mixer. No worries, no responsibilities, once in a while a little poke with Wanda, and all was well.

Betty puts her sandals back on because the nervous walk doesn’t work when she’s barefoot, picks up her mini-bag, and moves toward the living room.

She stops when she sees her father.

Her father is slumped in the chair with all those glasses lined up in front of him like he’s drowned himself in drink.

He’s looking at her with lifeless eyes.

“Asshole.”

Her father doesn’t react.

“I’m not a virgin anymore.”

Nothing.

Pirrotta mumbles, his voice blurred, “He’s a monster looking for blood and revenge.”

What the fuck is her father trying to say?

“What?”

“A man of untold violence.”

“What, your diabetes is acting up?”

“A ruthless assassin capable of unbelievable cruelty.”

“Papa, what the fuck is wrong?”

“Your Turrisi.”

“
Your
Turrisi.” Betty tosses her mini-bag against a chair.

“I saw him …”

“What the fuck did you do?”

“He asked to see me. And he threatened me.”

“Who?”

“Turrisi.”

“And why the fuck are you telling me?”

“He’s … he’s … I don’t even know
what
he is. A kind of Orlando Furioso who’s lost touch with reality. He swore revenge against me and all my descendants down the centuries.”

“Fine. Do what the fuck you want but don’t bust my balls.”

Pirrotta, flailing around in the chair, sits up on the edge. “Okay, you really don’t get it, do you? You drove that guy
insane
. You got him to where he’s capable of who knows what shit.”

“And what the fuck do I have to do with it?”

“He’s out of his mind in love with you, he says he’s going to start blowing people away left and right.” Pirrotta begins to make agitated gestures with his hands. “His eyes were hanging out, his tongue was yellow, his hair was standing straight up, his ears were red, and his nose was enormous. He says he’s going to start a bloodbath.”

“That’s your problem, I don’t have fuck-all to do with it.”

“Oh, no. Yes, you do. Because I told him I was getting out of this business in Ispica. I said I could see he was merciless, that he didn’t even give a fuck about the
cupola
… about our friends the big bosses in Palermo.”

“You told him you were getting out?”

“I’m too old for this stuff. These young people are hotheads. I’ve got a family, I’ve got you, I’ve got Wanda, that guy is single and he’s crazy.”

Betty crosses her arms. “And what did he say?”

“He said he’s going to start a bloodbath anyway.”

“Sure. I bet.” Betty twirls on her sandals and goes off toward her room.

Pirrotta follows her with his gaze.

He picks up the bell.

Now he’s going to sit down with another nice big double gin, and let’s see if he can get two birds with one stone.

Pirrotta smiles.

“Mister ring?”

Vaccalluzzo, in a nightclub at Acicastello that’s open all afternoon, a pair of mirror sunglasses on his face, is wiggling around the pole with a Romanian lap dancer while the boys keep time with their hands.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Giacomo Smiles, Looking Curiously at the Mortars

Giacomo smiles, looking curiously at the mortars.

He’s wearing the uniform of the firm that installs air-conditioning.

The workers from Imposimato Brothers, the most famous fireworks artists in all of Sicily, are unloading their van.

A worker comes over, says hello to Giacomo, opens the rear doors of the Fiat Ducato van, and asks, “Got a wheelbarrow?”

Giacomo nods
yes
, pointing with his chin toward a brand-new wheelbarrow.

“Fuck, it’s heavy. We made it like you said. Where you got to put this fucking mortar?”

“Huh?”

The worker is pulling out a cardboard box. “If you don’t help me, I can’t do this by myself. Hey, if it wasn’t for this van, fuck if there was a way to get explosives into Noto today. They have the town surrounded and they’re checking every car.”

Giacomo nods. “Where do you live?”

“Catania.”

“Which part?”

“Via Messina, luckily, with this heat at least I’m right next to the sea,” says the worker, smiling.

“Via Messina,” says Giacomo, who doesn’t like people who talk too much, especially when they talk too much about his business. And he doesn’t like people who call him
tu
.

The Baroque historic center of Noto is behind police lines.

Beyond the lines the crowd is piling up worse than if they were at the World Cup final.

Carabinieri, police, commanders, prefects, park rangers—all the available agents are spread out along the Corso and the cross streets. Nobody gets in unless they have been patted down and have gone through the metal detector under Porta Reale where the Corso begins.

Giacomo, with his wheelbarrow, heads toward the van of the company that’s installing the air-conditioning, opens the doors, puts the mortar inside, gets up inside himself, puts the mortar inside an empty air conditioner, puts the air conditioner in a box marked POLAR BEAR AIR CONDITIONERS, gets down from the van, puts the box in the wheelbarrow, turns on his iPod, and makes for the theater, keeping time with the music.

“That club was fucking awful,” says Vaccalluzzo, getting out of the car. They had to park in the lot in front of the villa.

Fine, that way he would walk all the way down the Corso and everyone would see that he had arrived in Noto.

“Tonight we’ll try a different one, Don Melo.”

Vaccalluzzo’s wearing torn Dolce & Gabbana jeans, gold sneakers with Velcro straps, a lacy shirt, and the jacket of a tux.

As he walks down the street, the metallized fuchsia-pink sunset flashes off him, sparkling on the KISS ME spelled out in rhinestones on his rear end.

Maybe she was right, Signora Saretta, when she said that Viagra was having a strange effect on her husband. (“When he had that crisis at fifty, he had a thing for German girls, but it never got this bad.”)

Giacomo has finished fiddling with a screwdriver on the underside of a red velvet seat in the front row.

He gets up, looks around.

Nice, this theater in Noto.

“Hey, you, what are you doing?”

Giacomo doesn’t reply.

The security guards hasten over, alarmed. “What are you doing here?”

Giacomo looks at them, blinking.

He takes off the earphones of the iPod.

He sighs deeply and says, “What do you think? Cool enough?”

The security guards look at each other and begin to laugh. “Shit, we’re freezing to death.”

“That’s because the people haven’t come in yet, when they do, the temperature will be fine.”

“Fuck, let’s hope so, it feels like a freezer.”

Giacomo puts on his earphones, picks up the wheelbarrow, and walks off.

Ottone and Ernst, seated at a bar on the Corso, are watching society arrive. Ottone is eating an almond granita, Ernst a huge strawberry
ice cream. They’re wearing lightweight tailored blue suits over blue shirts, and the only thing that distinguishes them are the ties, one blue and one red.

Ernst looks at his watch.

He returns to his ice cream.

Timpanaro’s rented limousine parks in the center of the piazza in front of the theater.

Cagnotto is happy.

The doctor has fine-tuned his medication and with this sunset, Baroque Noto looks psychedelic. Maybe it’s the lights that illuminate the downtown, maybe it’s the vans in the colors of Sicilian carts selling ice cream and brioches, maybe it’s the sidewalk salesmen hawking balloons, maybe it’s the flourescent necklaces that begin to glow as the sun goes down in a haze of metallized fuchsia-pink.

Cagnotto gets out of the limousine and is hit by a breeze smelling of salt and lemon, of hair spray and shoe polish, of deodorant and shampoo, the smell of a small-town street festival.

A group of security agents surrounds the limousine to check them out.

Cagnotto spreads his arms while a cop pats his hips.

He takes a deep breath.

Then they escort them into the dressing rooms.

Turrisi and Pietro appear at the bar in the piazza.

Commissioner Intelisano, sitting in the bar, gets up and begins to leap around, making signs with his hands.

Turrisi looks at Pietro.

Pietro nods.

They hurry over to sit down with the commissioner.

“Mister Turrisi! What an honor. Sit down, sit down. I got box seats for you, are you happy? Yeah? Happy?”

Intelisano pulls the tickets and the invitation out of his bag.

Pirrotta and Wanda arrive at the same bar.

Pirrotta takes a look at the tables.

There’s Turrisi and Pietro with that sad-sack Commissioner Intelisano.

And there’s Rattalina, bending over the newspaper, not talking to anyone.

“Rattalina!” shouts Pirrotta.

From a van with megaphones on top comes an announcement. “Guests with invitations can begin to go in. Guests with invitations can begin to go in. Guests with tickets will be able to enter the theater in twenty minutes. Please wait your turn. We repeat, please wait your turn.”

Pirrotta gives Turrisi a reproachful look as if to say,
See what a mess you made?

Turrisi pretends not to see him.

The ambulance parked in front of the theater is under siege. There’s a long line of commissioners, consultants, mayors, MPs, and a couple of senators with low blood pressure and panic attacks.

They’re all trying to be ill enough to be hospitalized.

Despite all the security forces deployed, word has gone around that Pirrotta’s men and Turrisi’s men are at risk, all of them.

And Pirrotta’s men and Turrisi’s men in Noto—just over ten miles from Ispica—are numerous.

Pirrotta and Turrisi have let it be known that not to show up for the performance would be considered an insult and a slight, considering the protection the family is capable of providing. And if Falsaperla and Paino ended up the way they ended up, people shouldn’t worry because it was none of their business.

But as they say, “He who looks out, lives long.”

The commissioner for education for Ispica, planted in the job by Turrisi although he had barely finished elementary school, broke his little toe, dropping a crystal vase given to him by the best man at his wedding.

Turrisi had sent someone to get him at the Avola hospital and brought him over to Noto with his foot in plaster.

One of them tries to fake a heart attack, another pretends to talk strange as if he’s had a stroke.

The nurses in the ambulance don’t fall for it.

They have been hired at the Noto hospital thanks, needless to say, to Pirrotta and Turrisi.

Vaccalluzzo, invitation in hand, turns out to be the first to be securitychecked at the entrance to the theater.

They’ve put him in the box next to the Royal Box.

He’s also the first to be photographed by the paparazzi.

Then it’s Turrisi’s turn, arm in arm with Intelisano.

Then comes Pirrotta with Rattalina.

Cagnotto, behind the curtain, peers out.

It can’t be that something strange will happen again tonight.

They’re indoors, everyone who comes in is checked, there are plainclothes police all over the place, there’s no way anybody can do anything.

Tonight will be the night of his success.

Finally, the attention will turn to his production, his rereading of Shakespeare, to theatrical neorealism using actors from the dialect stage, the “street actors” of the theater.

He looks around.

The empty stage.

Juliet’s balcony, the exact reproduction of a Baroque balcony of the eighteenth century, gargoyles and all. The mayor of Noto had insisted on having the Baroque onstage.

Cagnotto looks around again.

He wants to savor this moment.

He alone, in his solitude.

He and himself, the author of all this.

The eyes of all Sicily on his art.

He, who has combined classical Shakespeare with a bold new interpretation of the text.

He, who as
La Voce della Sicilia
says, combines Greek theater, Pirandello, and Shakespeare!

He’s about to cry.

God, how he misses Bobo.

Obviously the kid had been traumatized by the death of Falsaperla.

Of course he had wanted to run away with a ceramic tile exporter from Caltagirone, someone who could promise him a normal provincial life far from murder’s violence.

Of course that’s why Bobo did it.

Bobo just wanted a normal life.

Bobo, so sensitive and so enthusiastic about life!

Bobo, who had put him on Art’s right path. Bobo … Bobo …

Cagnotto looks for his cell phone.

He calls him.

Ciao, you’ve reached Bobo’s voice mail, if you want to, you can leave a message after the beep, but even if you don’t want to, hey, leave one anyway, because I’m curious. Beep.

Cagnotto bites his lip.

Bobo, in that very moment, is passing through the metal detector.

Caporeale, bowlegged on account of the codpiece, walks across the stage.

He sees Cagnotto.

“I was looking for you.”

“What’s up?”

“Look at this.” Caporeale turns around. “I’ve got a run in my tights.”

“Oh, God, come on, let’s get Lambertini to loan us some nail polish.”

“Nail polish?”

“Yeah, we’ll put nail polish on it so it won’t run more.”

“Okay, nail polish.”

Cagnotto looks at Caporeale. “Hey, Caporeale, this codpiece is bigger than the one you had before.”

Caporeale looks down. “Is it obvious?”

The prefects of Catania and Siracusa appear. “Okay, let’s get going, they’re almost all seated. Everybody’s nervous inside.”

The first call sounds.

Little knots of people break up and sit down.

The police are muttering into their walkie-talkies.

Ottone and Ernst knock at box number two, last row, open the door, and go in. Rattalina, who is already sitting down, jumps to his feet. “Thompson brothers?”

“Signor Rattalina?”

“Pleased to meet you!”

“The pleasure is ours! You were right, Noto is magnificent!”

Rattalina’s face lights up and he spreads his arms as if to say,
And what did I tell you?

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee

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