Blood Alone (11 page)
“I doubt he ever went to high school,” I said. “They call him Legs because that’s his trademark. A pair of broken legs for the first offense, whether that’s a late loan-shark payment or shorting the numbers receipts.”
“What’s the penalty for the second offense?” Kaz asked.
“Two bullets in the brain.”
“There will be no more talk of these things,” Genovese said, in that calm and grave voice, as he drew his .45 from his shoulder holster and laid it on the table. It gave off a solid
clunk
as it hit the wood and drew my attention, especially since the barrel was pointed straight at me.
I stared at the muzzle. I wanted to tell Kaz I remembered Daphne, to tell him I was sorry, but we’d been through all that. I’d already made good on my promise to avenge her death. It didn’t matter now. I needed to drive those thoughts out of my head.
“What do you want?” I asked, folding my shaking hands in my lap. Genovese stared at me as he slurped coffee. I met his eyes but was drawn back to the gun barrel. Anguish rose in my throat and I choked it down, understanding for the first time the allure of a quick end and a journey to a place without burned bodies in blackened cars, where no flowers, plucked by bullets, fell on the dead and dying. Everything in the room narrowed to the small circle of steel pointed in my direction, as if every step I’d taken in the past days, weeks, maybe even years had led me here. I was amazed to be calm. I forced myself to look at Genovese and caught a glimpse of feral surprise. He’d expected to see fear, and instead saw something else. I was beyond a Mafia bully and his pistol. I’d watched a Tiger tank crest a rise in front of me, seen planeloads of paratroopers flame out into the sea, killed men close up and far away, some of whom I knew, most of whom were unknown, and except for one, I was sure they had all been better men than Vito Genovese.
“We want to know why you are here. We want to know who you are looking for,” Genovese said as he picked up the .45 and holstered it. He knew its threat wasn’t working.
Except for one.
Who was that? Why had I thought that? Images and words swam through my mind. I saw Harry Dickinson and recognized him instantly, even though hours ago he’d been a stranger. Harry, who’d taken me to Norway under forged orders on my first assignment for Uncle Ike. Click. Another memory fell neatly into place. Click. Harry at the MTB base in Algeria, swinging his fist and threatening to kill me. That had been on my next assignment. Not every memory was a happy one.
Except for one.
Who was that one?
“I am speaking to you!” Genovese shouted, a white gob of spittle hanging from his lip. He wiped it and slammed his hand, palm down, on the table.
“We are deserters,” Kaz said, with a quick glance at me. “The
dottore
was going to hide us in the mountains. We thought we could sell cigarettes on the black market. We have connections.”
“What, are you going to sell Limey smokes?” Legs thought he was a comic.
“No, we have someone in the American supply services. He has access to everything—cigarettes, penicillin, liquor.”
“What about this one?” Genovese asked, pointing to me.
“He is shell-shocked. He’s been in the fighting. The man in supply is his cousin, so I need to keep him safe. That’s why we’re hiding out here.”
I had to admire Kaz—it was a good story. A little truth, a little lie, and told with no hesitation. Liars usually hesitate, even for a fraction of a second, but the truth comes out smoothly, since people don’t have to think about it. It just is.
“How did you choose this farm?” Genovese asked.
“I have access to reconnaissance photos. I picked it out because there are no main roads, no intersections, nothing of military value. The track turns to a trail and winds up into the hills. No one, German or American, should be very interested. So I offered the Ciccolos payment for a few days’ shelter.”
“How did you get here?” Legs asked.
“We had a jeep, but a Messerschmitt came out of the sun and strafed us. We jumped out, but he got the jeep. We left it burning in a field a few miles from here.”
Legs looked at Genovese, reluctantly conceding that they’d seen the wreck.
Except for one.
My mind raced, and I felt the woman of my dreams close by.
Except for one.
“How much penicillin can you get?” Legs asked. He’d bought the whole line and was ready to cash in. He was a solid enforcer, but that didn’t make him the brightest guy in the room.
“Stop,” Genovese said. “They are lying. Don’t be stupid.” He caught Muschetto’s eye and pointed at Sciafani and the door. The big Sicilian grabbed Sciafani and led him outside.
“No,” Kaz said, “don’t . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Genovese said, his voice calm again. “We need doctors in Sicily. It is time for us to talk, just among soldiers.”
“What do you want?” I asked. My hands were still in my lap, but they weren’t shaking. When Legs said penicillin, there’d been another click. The hospital in Algiers. Kaz had been shot in the arm while rescuing Harding and me from the Vichy jail. Click. I was somewhere else, watching a newsreel of my life play out in my mind, each new episode a revelation.
“I respect a man who can focus on the business at hand,” Genovese said, the smile playing across his face a mask, broad and false. “So I will tell you what I want. I want the man who was put ashore before the invasion to meet with Don Calo Vizzini. I want to help him to complete his mission. Do you know such a man?”
“He sounds like a failure,” I said. I tried to concentrate on Genovese, but I was seeing a woman raise a pistol to her head—who was she?— echoing the thoughts I’d had earlier. An end to all this, an end to suffering and pain. I understood what she’d wanted. To go to that other place, where the suffering had not yet reached, and never would.
“Not yet. He still can complete his mission, and I can help him.” Genovese sounded like a pal. “Even though he has done ‘many bad things’.”
I laughed. “Many bad things? We’re in the middle of a fucking war, and you talk about ‘many bad things’?”
“Billy,” Kaz began.
I cut him off. “‘Many bad things’. You don’t know, Vito. Even in your blood-soaked dreams, you have no idea.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Where is the handkerchief? Search them,” Genovese said to Legs. “Find it and we will all bring it to Don Calo.”
Legs lifted Kaz up by the armpits and started to pat him down. It was just the four of us in the kitchen now, and while Legs was searching Kaz, Genovese drew his .45 again, but this time held it cradled close to his chest.
“Do you know who Don Calo is?” he asked me.
“Somebody who needs to blow his nose?”
He snapped his hand holding the .45 at me, slamming the barrel against my temple. He was fast, so fast that before I noticed the blood dripping from my head he had brought the pistol back, a satisfied smile on his face.
“I believe you are the man we have been looking for,” Genovese said. “I believe that you know where the handkerchief is. And I believe you will give it to us, and we will all be heroes.”
“He’s clean,” Legs said after thoroughly searching Kaz, who was lacing up his boots.
Genovese, gestured at me with the pistol. “Search him, then the house, if he doesn’t have it.”
I thought about going for the gun, and then there was another click. Harry, going for a woman’s gun, coming up from behind her, and snatching it away.
Diana. The woman had been Diana, Daphne’s sister.
She
was the woman of my dreams. Diana, who’d been kidnapped, drugged, and raped by a Vichy rat, Luc Villard. Except for him, I was sure every man I’d killed was a better man than Vito Genovese. Diana, who wondered if I still loved her, if I’d be man enough to stand by her.
I’d killed Luc Villard in Algeria with a knife slid between his ribs. He wasn’t resisting or shooting at me. But I’d deliberately pulled a knife and ended his life. For a brief time, he had been the enemy, officially. But when I’d killed him, he was technically an ally. I’d had murdered him. I’d had to murder him. It was impossible to let him go on living after what he’d done. It was my decision, and all the blood in his veins couldn’t wash away the fear and shame I’d felt, not knowing for certain if I would be man enough to take Diana into my arms and love her after what had happened.
Harry had saved Diana, stopped her from ending her life, and as certain as pulling the hammer back on a revolver, the next click fell into place. Harry Dickinson. I owed him for that, but I’d repaid the debt by killing him. Here in Sicily, in the Valley of the Temples, the night before the invasion. Click. I felt Legs lay his hands on my shoulders. My head was pounding, I was dizzy, and it felt like there was a weight pressing down on my chest. I didn’t know if I could stand, but Genovese had his .45 leveled at me.
“Up,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I told him. I had nothing left but a curse.
Vito’s mouth curled into a sneer. He was about to speak when the door flew open and Muschetto stepped into the room. “
Molti tedeschi
,” he spat out. “
Andiamo
.”
“Germans?” Genovese said in disbelief, his eyes wide. Muschetto vanished outside and we heard the sound of the Fiat motor starting. I jumped up, the dizziness gone, grabbed Legs by the arms and threw him at Genovese. The two of them collapsed to the floor as Genovese’s chair tipped back. I knew Kaz was following me as I ran out the rear door, but I didn’t look back. I ran—past the grape arbor, around the house, trampling beans and daisies as I went, diving for cover behind a jumble of rocks.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see Harry, coming around the stone column of an ancient temple, not knowing that I’d just rolled a grenade in his direction. I’d hesitated a fraction of a second, but that was all the time it had taken for the blast. That was the last thing I remembered, except for fleeting glimpses of Roberto helping me.
I’d killed Harry.
THE SUN WAS RISING at my back, lighting the far hillside, illuminating figures in tan desert uniforms and rimless helmets scurrying down the stony slopes. German paratroopers. I didn’t care. The burden of memories weighed me down, and I wished I’d never recalled a thing. Remembering what Sciafani had said about my being fortunate to be able to examine my life, I spit in the dust.
“Billy,” Kaz whispered, “what should we do?”
“Good question.”
I eased my head around the boulder we’d hidden behind and looked at the house. The Fiat was puttering toward the road, weighed down by Muschetto and his men. Not far behind was the jeep with Legs at the wheel and Genovese hanging on, fleeing from an encounter with a gang far tougher than theirs. Dust roiled up from the vehicles, leaving a swirling marker showing the direction in which they were headed. I heard soft thumps in the distance and a short whistling sound, then a pair of small explosions near the main road, followed by another salvo. Mortar fire, hurrying the enemy convoy on their way. The Fiat, with the jeep close behind, made it to the road between rounds and faded from view.
“The truck?” Kaz asked.
“We’d never make it to the barn. Besides, the Krauts have zeroed in on the road now.”
“Where do you think Banville is?” Kaz asked, squeezing himself small behind the boulders.
“Unless he got out of the barn in the confusion,” I said, “he’s trapped.”
I tried to think it through, figure out what to do next, but everything was mixed up—Genovese and Villard, Harry saving Diana, then Harry at the temple. There were too many memories, too soon, too terrible. I wanted someplace to rest and think, to sit out again under the grape arbor in the cool night air and let the memories come again and again until I could absorb them, until they were no longer razors slicing through my mind. I rested my cheek on the warm, rough, chalky rock and wished the Germans would keep on going, simply march down the road and let us be.
I heard the muffled sound of an engine.
“Look!” Kaz shook my arm. The barn doors had swung open. The truck emerged at top speed and careened toward the road, tires spinning and gravel flying. Banville. He fishtailed, regained control, and flew by the rows of purple cauliflower, heading for the main road. As he slowed to turn, the explosions started again, the mortars leading him and concentrating their fire on the road. Banville couldn’t stop in time. He hit the brakes, sending up clouds of dust, but he slid directly into the next rounds, the small truck lifting up and toppling over, the gas tank exploding as it rolled into the ditch at the side of the road. He should’ve stayed in the barn, he shouldn’t have braked, he should have sneaked out on foot. What did it matter? In this war there were enough shoulds and should nots to get any man killed sooner or later.
A scuffling sound, shoes stumbling over stones, came from our rear. I was glad of a reason to look away from the burning wreck. It was Sciafani, peering at us from behind a prickly cactus. I pressed my finger to my lips, then waved him over to us, motioning him to stay low, my palm down to the ground. He’d been at war long enough to understand, and to know that those mortar crews were watching the terrain for any other movement, covering the advance of their pals.
“They let me go,” he said. “They gave me this.” He handed me a revolver.
“You don’t want it?” I asked.
“No, I am done with war.”
“Those Germans are not,” Kaz said, keeping an eye out at the edge of the boulder.
“No, but one revolver will not do much good against them,” Sciafani said sensibly.
“Why did they give it to you?” I asked, wondering at the generosity of the thugs who had held us at gunpoint.
“Muschetto said I might need it to get home. They did not seem to have any argument with me.”
“No, they wouldn’t, I guess. Listen, I’ll help you get home, but I want you to help me too.”
“Help you with what?” Sciafani asked.
“Help me find happiness.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, grinning. “But first we must twice pass through purgatory. Happiness is not too far off my path so, yes, I will show you the way.” A burst of machine-gun fire interrupted us. We all ducked, but it wasn’t aimed in our direction. Bullets struck the stone house, then played over the barn, then returned to the house. They were making sure there were no more surprises.
Shouts from the orange grove rose up as the machine gun stopped, and Germans slowly advanced from the foot of the hill toward the house. I could pick out German commands and pleading words in Italian as I watched Signor and Signora Ciccolo come into view, prodded by rifles out of their hiding place in the trees. A German officer, waving his pistol, was yelling at the old man, who was shaking his head in denial, clutching at his shirt, then extending his arm in a Fascist salute as he kept moving ahead of soldiers behind him. The officer stopped, turned on Ciccolo, and pointed to the open barn.
Oh Jesus, no, I thought. No, don’t let it be true. Was the old man so greedy as to betray us to the Mafia, then betray the Mafia to the Germans, all while trying to keep the truck in the barn secret from both? Ciccolo extended his arms toward the barn and shrugged, as if to say the appearance of the truck was a total surprise to him too; how could he have known?
The officer didn’t buy it. He raised his pistol and shot him twice in the chest. Ciccolo collapsed as if his legs had turned to jelly, sprawled with his knees up in the air, the rest of him laid out slackly in a way that said dead, dead, dead. His wife shrieked and fell to the ground, her hands lifting his head to her bosom, as the officer holstered his pistol and walked by her. The other soldiers ignored her, and soon she was left alone with her dead husband, his blood soaking into the ground at the edge of his peaceful orange grove.
Many bad things, Vito, many bad
things.
“You weren’t the only one who picked out this secluded spot, Kaz,” I said as I watched the officer walk into the farmhouse. Other Krauts checked out the barn, and one squad walked up the track to check on the still-burning truck. “It looks like they’re settling in.”
“They’ll be setting up a perimeter soon,” he said. “We have to leave.”
“Head back to our lines,” I said, handing him the revolver. “Someone has to take back word of this position. There’s at least a full company of Germans here, and who knows how many others getting into place in these hills. You’re elected.” I saw Kaz about to protest, but then he nodded, accepting the logic of it.
“You’re right.” He looked at me a moment, then spoke again. “You remember now, don’t you?”
“Everything. Daphne, Diana, and Harry,” I said, hesitating over the last name.
“What about Harry?”
“He’s dead. I killed him. In the Valley of the Temples.”
“Agrigento,” Sciafani put in. “It is a large field of temples, all kinds of ruins, right outside the city.”
“Are you certain?” Kaz asked me. “How?”
“A grenade. He walked into the explosion. There was a fight with some Italians there, we got separated, and when I tossed a grenade behind a column, Harry stepped right into it. I didn’t know he was there. Then—well, I guess I don’t remember everything yet—then I blacked out.”
Kaz held up his hand. German voices grew louder, in that relaxed, joking tone of soldiers who feel they’re on safe ground. I could smell their cigarette smoke. They were headed our way. We eased back, staying low, entering a stand of small, thin trees that bordered the cauliflower field.
“Dottore,” I said. “Before we split up, tell us both what the message means.” I took out the worn slip of paper. To find happiness, you must twice pass through purgatory.
“It is silly really, not even a joke, but something one tells the
turisti
in Agrigento. You see, there is a small plaza, the Piazza del Purgatorio, and on that plaza is a church, the Chiesa Purgatorio.”
“So you pass through the plaza, and then the church?” Kaz asked.
“Yes. If you take the side door out of the church, it leads you up a flight of steep steps to the Duomo
—
the cathedral—and within is a small chapel to San Felice, where he is buried. Saint Felice de Nicosia was a Sicilian, made a saint in the last century.”
“Where does happiness come in?” I asked.
“Felice means to be happy,” Kaz said, the dedicated student of language.
“OK. So our contact is in the cathedral, or the chapel of the cathedral.” Seemed logical to me.
“Perhaps,” said Sciafani. “Or perhaps that person was there, and is now gone.”
“Either way, it’s all we’ve got. I need to finish this mission, if only to find out what happened, and why Harry died. I owe him that much.”
“Remember, Billy,” Kaz said, with a nervous glance at Sciafani, “the mission is still important. We must have the cooperation of Don Calo and the Sicilian Mafia, especially as we advance into the mountains.”
“Yeah, just make sure those American mobsters don’t get in the way. When you get back, check around and find out who the hell in AMGOT hired those two goons. And be careful. JAG runs Civil Affairs and Civil Affairs runs AMGOT.”
“Do you think there is a link between the charges against you and these mobsters?”
“I don’t know what to think, but don’t take any chances. And look into a Lieutenant Andrews in the Signals Company that’s set up near Capo Soprano. I think he’s on Vito’s payroll too, just like Rocko was. And see if the name Charlotte comes up. Whoever she is, she’s heavily involved.”
Kaz nodded his agreement, then spoke to Sciafani.
“Dottore, we are depending upon you to lead Billy where he needs to go. You must not abandon him. If you leave or betray him, I will find you, in Palermo or in your village. Now, or after the war. And I will kill you, do you understand?”
“Certainly. A man would be honored to have such a friend avenge him. To say this does you credit. I will guide your friend, and not because of your threat. I am not a Fascist, and I do not care to watch the
tedeschi
shoot any more old men.” Sciafani appeared proud to have been threatened with death.
Kaz extended his hand, and Sciafani shook it. Then I did, and held on to Kaz for an extra heartbeat, grasping him by the arm. “Stay safe,” I said.
“Good advice,” he said. “I will follow you with the cavalry, like in your Western movies. I have already gone through purgatory, so perhaps it will be easy for me to find where happiness hides.”
He let go of my hand, locked eyes with me for a moment, and left us at a slow trot through the trees until he disappeared in the leafy green.