Blood Alone (25 page)

“Sai Carmela?”
he asked the guard, who didn’t accept the drink.

The guard rose and pointed his shotgun at Carlo, motioning him to move on. Carlo cringed, offering abject apologies, holding one hand palm out. The guard nodded and went back to his seat. He never made it. Carlo tossed the bottle to one of the women and had his knife out as soon as the guard turned his back. Before he took a full step Carlo had one hand under his chin as the other cut across his neck. Blood sprayed against stone, and Carlo let go of the guard’s chin so he could catch the shotgun before it clattered to the ground.

As he kneeled over the body, looking like a feral child, Carlo’s eyes darted up and down the street and back to the door of the house. Gaetano and Nick vaulted over the wall and ran to the door. Carlo blew a kiss to the woman holding the bottle and joined them at the door, shotgun at the ready. Gaetano put his hand on the latch, wrapping his fingers around it. As he looked to the other two men, the line of women silently parted, smartly leaving empty space between them in case gunfire erupted when the door opened.

I heard a faint creak, a hinge in need of oil, as Gaetano opened the door slowly. He froze as a voice from inside the house called out a name. He flung the door wide open and Carlo charged inside. Two explosive sounds followed as Carlo let go with both barrels. Light flashed bright in the hallway. Nick charged in with his Sten, then Gaetano with a pistol.

Harry and I ran to the house, taking up positions with our backs to each side of the wall, in case a surprise showed up from the back or the street. A murmur arose among the women, the first sound I’d heard from them. They looked at us as if we were from another planet. They’d taken a drunken kid slitting the guard’s throat in stride, but my American uniform was a shock.

Another shotgun blast came from the rear of the house, followed by shouts, pistol shots, and a scream. Glass broke somewhere, then another shot, then silence. Harry and I looked at each other. Then a sound erupted at the side of the house. I swung my Sten around and waited, not sure if it was one of ours, theirs, or a neighborhood cat. A face showed itself, blood dripping down a cheek. He’d probably jumped out of a window, preferring jagged glass to shotgun slugs. He pulled back, then stepped forward again, a revolver aiming straight at my chest, but I was ready with the Sten. I fired a long burst, shell casings spitting out and pinging against the stone wall as bullets hit him. He collapsed onto his knees, the pistol firing once into the dirt as a spasm gripped his hand. I kicked the pistol away, but he wasn’t going to be firing it again anyway.

A yell, sounding like a warning, echoed in the hallway, and caught me by surprise. I heard one shotgun blast and then saw a broad back retreating through the front door, a
lupara
aimed into the house. It was Muschetto, bleeding from one shoulder. He fired again, emptying the second barrel, then stumbled as he turned to run. Harry and I both had our Stens on him, but trying to escape down the street he careened into the clutch of women. He swung the short
lupara
like a club, trying to clear a path through them, but they closed in around him and he fell, roaring his anger as the silent women kicked at him, striking his face and wounded shoulder. He howled in pain and then in fear as kitchen knives appeared from within the folds of their skirts. They slashed at him as he curled up, hands protecting his neck. The women kept at him, knife blades turning red. A last gurgling howl rose up from the ground as one of them found his throat. The frenzy ended and they stepped back from the widening pool of blood, watching Muschetto twitch one last time.

“Jesus,” Harry said quietly. Nick appeared in the doorway, lowering his Sten as he took in the scene in the street.

“He was hiding in a closet,” Nick said. “Got the jump on us.”

“But not on them,” I said, watching the women clean their knives. They did not seem to have a problem with revenge.

CHAPTER • TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WAS QUITE A party. Muschetto stiffened out on the street as Nick’s relatives kissed us on both cheeks. They hadn’t known why their menfolk had been held hostage and seemed to care less about that than being visited by an American relative and his pals. Bottles of wine were opened as glass was swept and blood mopped up from the kitchen floor. Carlo was a favorite of the women, who pinched his cheek after they kissed him. He blushed: a shy killer. One of Gaetano’s men had brought Sciafani in, and he sat across from me, polite to the family but subdued. Family reunions were probably not high on his list right now.

“Ask if they’ve seen Legs or Vito,” I said to Nick, as one of the gray-haired women put bread and olives in front of us.

From his seat of honor at the head of the table, Nick said, “That’s my great-aunt Lucia! And this is my great-uncle Andrea!” He slapped the shoulder of the man sitting to his right.

“That’s great, Nick. I’m glad to meet him. Now ask about Legs and Vito.”

He leaned over to Andrea and started talking, gesturing with his hands, pointing to us, his relatives, Carlo and Gaetano, and everyone else. Between the gestures and the names sprinkled throughout the conversation, I could almost understand him. We had been sent by Don Calo to rescue them. Muschetto was a bandit, recruited by Vito Genovese to do something Don Calo had no part of. There was arguing back and forth between the men, disagreement about some detail or other. Great-Aunt Lucia cut in on that exchange and everyone nodded. “This is Lucia and Andrea’s home. Vito came here once,” Nick said. “Vito told them Don Calo had a favor to ask of the family, and he needed to speak with all the men. When they gathered here, Legs and Muschetto showed up and took them prisoner: Andrea, his two brothers, and four nephews. They kicked Lucia out. She went and got the other women and they stood in the street for three days, watching the house.”

“They underestimated the women,” Harry said. “I have made the same mistake.”

Nick translated and the men laughed while the women nodded knowingly.

“So Vito hasn’t been here since? What about Legs?” I asked.

“Right,”Nick said. “Legs came by every day except today. Yesterday, actually.”

“That could mean they’re making their move on the payroll.”

“But remember Vito needs me, to crack the safes,” Nick said. “That can’t be it, unless he was planning to pick us up at Don Calo’s today.”

“You may not be needed yet,” I said. “If they’re pulling the safes up from the bottom of the bay, the occupation scrip will be soaking wet. The paymaster might have to open up the safes and dry the paper first.”

“Right,” Harry said. “There will be guards everywhere with the money loose like that. Vito would want to wait until it was locked up again so the paymaster would relax his guard.”

“Do you think they would have let my family go?” Nick asked.

Sciafani said. “The threat to your family would keep you from informing on them after the robbery as well.”

Nick looked into his wineglass, lost in his thoughts again.

“We’ve got to get back to Gela,” I said. “And stop them.”

“That’s not all I want to do to them,” Nick said.

He spoke some more with his uncle and the other relatives gathered in the kitchen. He slammed his fist into his palm twice as he named Vito and Legs. He outlined a plan, and everyone seemed to approve.

It was after two in the morning. We were to wait until first light, not wanting to take a chance on dark roads with fully armed Germans, Italians, and Americans between us and our destination. Lucia gave us blankets and we tried to sleep in the other room as Nick’s relatives kept up the celebration in the kitchen. But the sound of laughter and the clink of glasses and plates carried through the house. I liked it. It filled my mind with thoughts of home, Dad and Uncle Dan and a few buddies in the kitchen, Mom fussing over everyone, while my kid brother Danny and I tried to behave ourselves so no one would kick us out when the men started telling their stories. Funny stories about comic crooks and crooked politicians, sad stories about men they knew who had died—cops, soldiers, IRA men. It was all the same, I thought at first. When I was too young to understand, I thought we Irish were always at war with someone. The English landlords, the Protestants up north, the Kaiser and his soldiers, the criminals in Boston—in my child’s mind they were all ranked against us, but I wasn’t scared because between Dad and Uncle Dan, they’d fought them all and came home every day to sit at the kitchen table, Mom laughing with them or frowning at their curses.

And here I was, at war with Fascists and bandits. What kind of stories would I have to tell?

I tried to settle in and get some shut-eye. I should have felt satisfied with myself. Hell, I had regained my memory, completed my mission, found Harry and Nick, and now we were about to head back to the American lines. Something felt wrong, though. When I finally slept, I dreamed I was in Algiers, searching for Diana in the Hotel St. George. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. The girl of my dreams was gone.

The floor was hard, the morning cold, but the espresso was hot and the warm kitchen cozy as Great-Aunt Lucia wrapped fresh bread in a cloth for us. She looked about eighty, but no worse for wear after knifing a bandit and staying up all night drinking wine and baking bread. I willingly kissed her goodbye and submitted to Andrea’s whiskered double-cheek pecks. Nick, Harry, and I loaded what gear we had into the Fiat. Gaetano had told Nick we could have the car. He’d take his men back to Villalba in the truck.

Someone had removed Muschetto during the night, but his bloodstains were dark beneath my feet as I opened the door to the Fiat. Sciafani stood between the two vehicles, unsure where to go. I hadn’t thought about it, but he was close to home now, and it was time for us to part.

“Enrico,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“I am not sure,” he said. “I cannot go with them to Villalba.”

He looked at the ground, then up and down the narrow street. He was silent for a while, and I waited for him to speak.

“I do not think I can stay in Sicily anymore. There is too much pain here. I don’t want to live the life Don Calo has charted out for me. It is not the way to honor my father.”

“Do you think he meant it, about killing you if he ever saw you again?” I asked.

“Yes. It was only the romantic notion of my father as a worthy adversary that kept him from killing me. If he held back again, it would be seen as a sign of weakness, and that is one thing he cannot afford.” “Come with us then.”

“Where?”

“Away from here.”

Sciafani looked at the rust-colored stain on the street and nodded, his fingers rubbing his chin as he came to his decision. Without a word, he got into the Fiat. Evidently, we were going in the right direction.

“
Un minuto
,” Gaetano said, beckoning Nick and me with his finger. He huddled with Nick, speaking low and fast, gesturing with open hands, glancing at me several times.

“He says that we must leave Vito Genovese alone,” Nick said. “Don Calo instructed Gaetano to bring Vito to him if he found him here. Vito is an honored member of the society, and he must not be turned over to the authorities. If we find him, we are to let him go. Gaetano is instructed to make Don Calo’s apology, but that is the way it must be.”

“Or else?”

Nick consulted with Gaetano.

“Don Calo considers this part of his agreement with you. If you break it, it will be on your head.”

“We’re only talking about Vito?”

“Yes. Joey Laspada is not an honored member of the society here.”

“Do we have any choice?” I asked Nick.

“Don Calo is used to getting his way. If he doesn’t, he’ll back out of the deal.”

Let Vito go? I knew I would find him sniffing around the two million in occupation scrip, and I hated the idea of watching him go free. But maybe he wouldn’t be so free if Don Calo was angry with him. Especially since I had told Don Calo there was three million involved, not two.

Maybe. Maybe not. We didn’t have a choice, so what did it matter?

“OK,” I said, nodding to Gaetano. I got into the car.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked from the backseat.

“Sciafani’s coming with us,” I said, knowing that’s wasn’t what he meant.

“I can see that, he’s bloody well sitting next to me. I mean all that with Gaetano. You two don’t look happy.”

I started the car, wondering how to tell Harry that the guy responsible for Banville’s death, among others, was going to walk. Yet I had no real evidence against Vito to bring to the army. I realized that I hadn’t been thinking about evidence, I’d been thinking about vengeance. Finding Vito, shooting him. Another Villard, my own retribution for a killer the law couldn’t, or wouldn’t, touch.

I backed the car into the street and put it into gear. I felt the tension in my gut ease as I understood that, for whatever reason, the responsibility for bringing Vito Genovese to justice, for his punishment, now lay with others. The army or Don Calo. Not me. I still had Legs to worry about, but Vito was off the books.

“I am happy,” I said. “I don’t have to dig two graves.”

Nick explained what Gaetano had said and gave directions to the road south. Harry fumed, swearing a blue streak. Sciafani looked out the window, a smile turning up his lips, watching the landscape of his home disappear. I drove and whistled a happy tune. About ten minutes later, I laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Nick asked.

“Never mind. Too hard to explain.”

It was. I’d been thinking about my father’s advice about Al.

Remember who you are.

I’d thought about that a dozen times in the last few days without realizing that was exactly, literally, what I needed to do. Whatever I had done about Villard, it didn’t mean I had to keep going down that path. Right or wrong, that had had to be done. It was personal. But it didn’t define who I was. I did that. It was the very thing I had been worried about when I’d awakened with my memory gone. Was I a killer? An assassin?

The answer was no. All I had to do was remember. Remember who I was, even if I didn’t recall everything that had happened to me.

But now I did remember everything, including who I was. I knew which of the three kinds of people in the world I was. I knew the world could throw a mean curve ball at me and at the ones I loved, but that wouldn’t change me unless I let it.

Thanks, Dad, I whispered to myself, as I put the rising sun to my left and headed back to our lines.