The Sicilian (17 page)

Don Croce reflected that it was time to take him very seriously indeed. He said to the Duke, “If I recovered your jewelry would you pay a quarter of their value?”

The Duke was furious. “First I pay you the rent to keep me and my possessions safe. Then, when you fail in your duty, you ask me to pay ransom. How can you hope to keep the respect of your clients if you do business in this way?”

Don Croce nodded. “I must admit you speak with reason. But think of Salvatore Guiliano as a force of nature, as a scourge of God. Surely you cannot expect the Friends of the Friends to guard you against earthquakes, volcanoes, floods? In time Guiliano will be controlled, I guarantee. But think: You pay the ransom I will arrange. You will have your protection without paying my usual rent for the next five years, and under the agreement Guiliano will not strike again. And why should he, since I and he presume you will have the good sense to keep these valuables in the bank vaults of Palermo? Women are too innocent—they do not know the lust and greed with which men pursue the material goods of this world.” He paused for a moment to allow the slight smile that had appeared on the Duke’s face to disappear. Then he said, “If you calculate the rent to pay for the protection of your whole estate for five years in the troubled times ahead, you will see that you have lost very little by this misfortune.”

The Duke did think it over. Don Croce was quite right about the hard times that lay ahead. He would lose more than a little by ransoming the jewels, despite the remission of five years’ “rent”; who was to say that Don Croce would be alive for another five years or that he could contain Guiliano? But still it was the best bargain to be made. It would prevent the Duchess from wheedling more jewelry out of him in the years to come and that would be an enormous savings. He would have to sell another piece of land, but his ancestors had been doing that for generations to pay for their follies, and he still had thousands of acres left. The Duke agreed.

Don Croce summoned Hector Adonis. The next day Adonis made a trip to visit his godson. He explained his mission. He was absolutely straightforward. “You won’t get a better price even if you sell the jewelry to thieves in Palermo,” he said. “And even then it will take time and you certainly won’t get the money before Christmas, which I know is your wish. And beyond that you will earn the good will of Don Croce which it is important for you to have. You have, after all, caused him a loss of respect, which he will forgive if you do him this favor.”

Guiliano smiled at his godfather. He cared nothing for Don Croce’s good will; after all, one of his dreams was to slay the dragon of the Mafia in Sicily. But he had already sent emissaries to Palermo to find buyers for the stolen jewelry, and it was clear that it would be a long and torturous process. So he agreed to the bargain. But he refused to give up the emerald ring.

Before Adonis left he abandoned finally his role as a teacher of romances to Guiliano. For the first time he spoke to him of the realities of Sicilian life. “My dear godson,” he said, “no one admires your qualities more than I do. I love your high-mindedness, which I hope I helped instill in you. But now we must speak of survival. You can never hope to win against the Friends of the Friends. For the last thousand years, like a million spiders, they have spun a gigantic web over all of life in Sicily. Don Croce now stands in the center of that web. He admires you, he wants your friendship, he wants you to grow rich with him. But you must bend sometimes to his will. You can have your empire, but it must exist within his web. One thing is certain—you cannot directly oppose him. If you do so, history itself will help Don Croce destroy you.”

And so the jewelry was returned to the Duke. Guiliano kept half the money from the jewelry to be distributed among Pisciotta, Passatempo and Terranova. They eyed the emerald ring on Guiliano’s finger but said nothing, for Guiliano refused to take any of the money from the sale of the jewels.

The other half of the money Guiliano was determined to distribute among the poor shepherds who guarded the flocks of sheep and cattle that belonged to the rich, the old widows and orphan children, all the poor around him.

He gave out most of the money through intermediaries, but one fine day he filled the pockets of his sheepskin jacket with packets of lire notes. He also filled a canvas sack with money and decided to walk through the villages between Montelepre and Piani dei Greci with Terranova at his side.

In one village there were three old women who were almost starving. He gave each of them a packet of lire. They wept and kissed his hands. In another village was a man who was about to lose his farm and land because he could not make the mortgage payments. Guiliano left him enough to pay off the mortgage in full.

In another village he took over the local bakery and grocery store, paying the owner for the goods, and distributed bread and cheese and pasta to all the village people.

In the next town he gave money to the parents of a sick child so they could take him to the hospital in Palermo and pay for the visits of the local doctor. He also attended the wedding of a young couple and gave them a generous dowry.

But what he loved most was to give money to the ragged young children who thronged the streets of all the little towns in Sicily. Many of them knew Guiliano. They gathered around him as he distributed the packets of money telling them to bring it to their parents. Guiliano watched them as they joyfully ran to their homes.

He only had a few packets of money left when he decided to visit his mother before nightfall. Crossing a field behind his home he encountered a little boy and a little girl who were crying. They had lost money entrusted to them by their parents and said the
carabinieri
had taken it from them. Guiliano was amused by this little tragedy and gave them one of the two packets of money he had left. And then, because the little girl was so pretty and he couldn’t bear to think of her being punished, he gave her a note for her parents.

The little girl’s parents were not the only ones who were grateful. The people in the towns of Borgetto, Corleone, Partinico, Monreale, and Piani dei Greci began to call him the “King of Montelepre” to show their loyalty.

Don Croce was happy despite the loss of the five years’ “rent” from the Duke. For though Don Croce had told Adonis that the Duke would pay only twenty percent of the value of the jewels, he had collected twenty-five percent from the Duke, and put five percent in his pocket.

What delighted him even more was his satisfaction that he had spotted Guiliano so early and judged him so accurately. What a fine upstanding lad. Who could believe that one so young could see so clearly, act so wisely, listen so temperately to older and wiser heads? And yet all this with a cool intelligence that guarded his own interests, which of course the Don admired, for who would wish to associate himself with a fool? Yes, the Don thought Turi Guiliano would be his strong right arm. And with time, a beloved titular son.

Turi Guiliano saw clearly through all these machinations around him. He knew his godfather was sincerely concerned about his welfare. But that did not mean he trusted the older man’s judgment. Guiliano knew he was not yet strong enough to fight the Friends of the Friends; indeed he needed their help. But he was under no illusions about the long run. Eventually, if he listened to his godfather, he would have to become a vassal to Don Croce. This he was determined he would never do. For now, he must bide his time.

CHAPTER 11

G
UILIANO’S BAND NOW
numbered thirty men. Some of these were former members of the Passatempo and Terranova bands. Some were citizens of Montelepre who had been freed from prison by Guiliano’s raid. They had found there was to be no forgiveness by the authorities despite their innocence; they were still being hunted. They decided to be hunted with Guiliano rather than be tracked down alone and friendless.

One fine April morning Guiliano’s informants in Montelepre sent word that a dangerous-looking man, perhaps a police spy, was making inquiries about joining the band. He was waiting in the central square. Guiliano sent Terranova and four men into Montelepre to investigate. If the man was a spy they would kill him; if he was someone of use, they would recruit him.

Early in the afternoon, Terranova returned and told Guiliano, “We have the fellow and before we shoot him, we thought you might like to make his acquaintance.”

Guiliano laughed when he saw the burly figure dressed in the traditional peasant Sicilian working garb. “Well, old friend, did you think I could ever forget your face. Have you come with better bullets this time?”

It was the Corporal of the
carabinieri
, Canio Silvestro, who had fired his pistol at Guiliano’s head during the famous jailbreak.

Silvestro’s strong scarred face was intent. The face appealed to Guiliano for some reason. He had a soft spot in his heart for this man who had helped him prove his immortality.

Silvestro said, “I’ve come to join up. I can be invaluable to you.” He said this proudly as one who is about to make a gift. This also pleased Guiliano. He let Silvestro tell his story.

After the raid on the jail, Corporal Silvestro had been sent to Palermo to face a court-martial for dereliction of duty. His Maresciallo had been furious with him and had interrogated him closely before recommending prosecution. Oddly enough the one circumstance that inflamed the Maresciallo’s suspicions was the Corporal’s attempted shooting of Guiliano. The cause of the misfire had been found to be defective ammunition. The Maresciallo claimed that the Corporal had loaded his gun with that one harmless bullet knowing it was defective. That the whole attempted resistance had been a charade and that Corporal Silvestro had helped Guiliano plan the jailbreak and stationed his guards to help the raid succeed.

Guiliano interrupted. “How did they think you could have known the bullets were defective?”

Silvestro looked sheepish. “I should have known. I was the armorer in the infantry, an expert.” His face became grim and he shrugged. “I had a lapse, true. They made me a desk man and I didn’t pay too much attention to my real business. But I can be valuable to you. I can be your armorer. I can check all your weapons and repair them. I can make sure your ammunition is properly handled so that your supply dumps don’t blow up. I can modify your weapons so that they will suit the use you put them to, here in the mountains.”

“Tell me the rest of your story,” Guiliano said. He was studying the man closely. This could be a plan to infiltrate his band with an informer. He could see that Pisciotta, Passatempo and Terranova were full of distrust.

Silvestro went on. “They were all fools and they were all frightened women. The Maresciallo knew that it was stupid of him to take most of the men into the mountains when we had a barracks full of prisoners. The
carabinieri
regard Sicily as some foreign occupied country. I used to protest against that attitude, and that got me into their bad books. And the authorities in Palermo wanted to protect their Maresciallo—they were responsible for him after all. It would look better if the Bellampo Barracks had been betrayed from within instead of taken over by men who were braver and more clever. They didn’t courtmartial me. They told me to resign. They said it would be without prejudice, but I know them better than that. I’ll never get a government job again. I’m fitted for nothing else and I’m a Sicilian patriot. So I thought to myself—what can I do with my life? And I said to myself—I will go to Guiliano.”

Guiliano sent to the cooking site for food and drink and then conferred with his chiefs.

Passatempo was gruff and positive. “What kind of fools do they think we are? Shoot him and throw his body off the cliff. We don’t need
carabinieri
in our band.”

Pisciotta saw that Guiliano was once again taken by the Corporal. He knew his friend’s impulsive emotions, so he said carefully, “It’s most likely a trick. But even if it’s not, why take the chance? We’ll have to worry all the time. There will always be doubt. Why not just send him back?”

Terranova said, “He knows our camp. He’s seen some of our men and he knows their number. That is valuable information.”

Guiliano said, “He’s a true Sicilian. He acts out of a sense of honor. I can’t believe he would act the part of a spy.” He saw that they all smiled at his innocence.

Pisciotta said, “Remember, he tried to kill you. He had a concealed weapon and he was a prisoner and he tried to kill you out of sheer temper and with no hope of escape.”

Guiliano thought, And that’s what makes him valuable to me. Aloud he said, “Doesn’t that prove he is a man of honor? He was defeated but felt that he had to die avenging himself. And what harm can he do? He’ll be a member of the common band—we won’t take him into our confidence. And we’ll keep a close eye on him. I’ll give him my personal attention. When the time is ripe we’ll put him to a test that he must refuse if he is a spy for the
carabinieri
. Leave him to me.”

Later that evening when he told Silvestro that he was now a member of the band, the man simply said, “You can count on me for anything.” He understood that Guiliano had again saved him from death.

At Eastertime Guiliano visited his family. Pisciotta had argued against this, saying the police might set a trap. Easter in Sicily had always been a traditional death day for bandits. The police counted on the deep ties of family to bring outlaws sneaking down from the mountains to visit their loved ones. But Guiliano’s spies brought word that the Maresciallo himself would be visiting his family on the mainland and that half the garrison at the Bellampo Barracks had been given leave to celebrate the holiday in Palermo. Guiliano decided that he would bring enough men with him to make it safe. He slipped into Montelepre on Holy Saturday.

He had sent word of his visit a few days before and his mother had prepared a feast. That night he slept in his childhood bed, and the next day, when his mother went to morning Mass, Guiliano accompanied her to church. He had a bodyguard of six men who were also visiting their families in the town but had orders to accompany Guiliano wherever he went.

As he came out of the church with his mother, his six bodyguards were waiting for him with Pisciotta. Aspanu’s face was white with fury as he said, “You have been betrayed, Turi. The Maresciallo has returned from Palermo with twenty extra men to arrest you. They have your mother’s house surrounded. They think you’re inside.”

Guiliano felt for one moment a kind of anger at his own rashness and stupidity and resolved he would never be so careless again. Not that the Maresciallo with his twenty men could have captured him even in his mother’s house. His bodyguards would have ambushed them, and there would have been a bloody battle. But that would have spoiled the spirit of his Easter homecoming. The day Christ had risen was not the day to break the peace.

He kissed his mother goodbye and told her to return home and freely admit to the police that she had left him at the church. In that way she could not be charged with any conspiracy. He told her not to worry, that he and his men were heavily armed and would easily escape; there would not even be any fighting. The
carabinieri
would not dare to follow them into the mountains.

Guiliano and his men left without even being sighted by the police. That night in the mountain camp, Guiliano questioned Pisciotta. How could the Maresciallo have known about the visit? Who was the informer? Everything must be done to find out. “That will be your special task, Aspanu,” he said. “And if there is one, there may be others. I don’t care how long it takes or how much money we spend, you must find out.”

Even as a child, Pisciotta had never liked the buffoonish barber of Montelepre. Frisella was one of those barbers who cut hair to suit his mood of the day, one time modishly, another time puckishly, another time with the extreme conservativeness of a peasant farmer. By varying his style he put forward his claim to being an artist. He was also too familiar with his superiors and too patronizing to his equals. With children he was playful in that particularly spiteful Sicilian style which is one of the less pleasant sides of the island character; he would nip their ears with his scissors and sometimes cut their hair so short that their heads looked like billiard balls. So it was with grim satisfaction that Pisciotta reported to Guiliano that Frisella the barber was the police spy and had broken the sacred code of
omerta
. It was obvious that the Maresciallo was not making a random strike that Easter day. He must have received information that Turi would be there. And how could he have gotten that information since Turi had sent word to his family only twenty-four hours before?

Pisciotta used his own informers in the village to check on every step the Maresciallo had taken during that twenty-four hours. And since only Guiliano’s mother and father had known about the visit, he questioned them casually to see if they might have accidentally given anything away.

Maria Lombardo soon smelled out his intention. She said to him, “I spoke to no one, not even my neighbors. I stayed in the house and cooked so that Turi would have an Easter feast.”

But Guiliano’s father had gone to the barber Frisella on the morning of his son’s visit. The old man was a little vain, and he wanted to look his best on the rare occasions when his son Turi came to visit at the house in Montelepre. Frisella had shaved and barbered the old man and made his usual jokes. “Was Signor perhaps going into Palermo to visit certain young ladies there? Was he receiving important visitors from Rome?” He, Frisella, would make Signor Guiliano look handsome enough to receive a “king.” And Pisciotta visualized the setting. Guiliano’s father with a little secretive smile on his face as he grumbled that a man could look like a gentleman for no reason except his own satisfaction. And yet the swelling of importance at knowing his son was famous enough to be called the “King of Montelepre.” Perhaps the old man had come in on other occasions and the barber had learned that Guiliano visited the same day and so put two and two together.

Maresciallo Roccofino dropped into the barbershop every morning for his daily shave. There did not seem to be any conversation that could convey information from the barber to the policeman. But Pisciotta was certain. He sent spies to the barbershop to lounge around all day and play cards with Frisella at the little table he kept out on the street. They drank wine, talked politics and shouted insults at friends who passed by.

Over the weeks Pisciotta’s spies gathered more information. Frisella always whistled the tune of one of his favorite opera arias when he shaved and cut hair; sometimes the large oval-shaped radio would play with recordings from Rome. This would always be the case when he attended the Maresciallo. And there would always be a time when he leaned over the police officer and whispered something. If you were not suspicious it was only a barber being deferential to the wishes of his customer’s pleasure. But then one of Pisciotta’s spies got a look at the lire note the Maresciallo used to pay for his service. They noticed it was folded, and the barber put it in a special watch fob pocket in his vest, underneath his white coat. When the spy and one of his helpers confronted Frisella and forced him to show the note, it was of ten thousand lire denomination. The barber swore it was for his services over the past few months, and the spies pretended to believe him.

Pisciotta gave his evidence to Guiliano in the presence of Terranova, Passatempo and Corporal Silvestro. They were in their camp in the mountains, and Guiliano went to the edge of one of the cliffs that overlooked Montelepre and stared down at the town.

Master Frisella, the barber, had been a part of that town ever since Guiliano could remember. As a little boy he had gone to Frisella to have his hair cut for Holy Confirmation, and Frisella had given him a small silver coin as a gift. He knew Frisella’s wife and son. Frisella had shouted jokes to him in the street and always asked after his mother and father.

But now Frisella had broken the sacred law of
omerta
. He had sold secrets to the enemy; he was a paid informant of the police. How could he have been so foolish? And what was he, Guiliano, to do with him now? It was one thing to kill the field police in hot combat, it was another thing to execute, in cold blood, an avuncular older man. Turi Guiliano was only twenty-one years of age and this was the first time he had to use the cold cruelty so necessary in great endeavors.

He turned back to the others. “Frisella has known me all my life. He gave me lemon ices when I was a child, do you remember, Aspanu? And maybe he just gossips with the Maresciallo, doesn’t really give him information. It’s not as if we told him I was coming to town and then he told the police. Maybe he just gives theories and accepts the money because it is offered. Who would refuse?”