It was a good place for a meeting with Peppino. It was where Peppino had, for the last year, brought his car for servicing. He lit a cigar. He assumed that Peppino, though he denied it, was under sporadic surveillance.
When Peppino came, they embraced.
'You are well?'
'Fine.'
'A good journey?'
'London was for me, for us, very good.'
They talked the business. Peppino told his brother, close detail, down to each contractor's percentage, of the deal for the leisure complex at Orlando in Florida.
Peppino spoke of the money that would be moved from Vienna to the account of Giles Blake in London and then invested with a merchant banker and a broker and a building contractor who needed the funds to complete seven storeys of a Manchester office block. He said what arrangements were made for the visit of the Colombian from Medellfn who managed onward shipments into Europe. And there were the Russians he would meet the week after in Zagreb.
And Mario thought his brother spoke well. Only rarely did he interrupt. What was the commission for the clients of Giles Blake?
Where would the meeting be with the Colombian? What percentage, down to a quarter of a point, would the Russians pay? He loved the younger man, so different from himself, and every phase of the differential had been planned by him, as though he had made and fashioned each stage of Peppino's life. He could smell the talc on Peppino's body, and the lotion on his face. The suit was the best, the shirt was the best, the tie was the best, and the shoes of his brother. The irony was not lost on Mario Ruggerio.
Wealth and success clung to Peppino. Their parents lived in the old terraced house in Prizzi with Carmelo. Salvatore rotted in a cell in the prison at Asinara. Cristoforo was dead. Maria was cut off from them because the alcohol made her dangerous. His own wife, Michela, and his own children, Salvo and Domenica, were in Prizzi, where she looked after her mother. Only Peppino lived the good life.
Nothing was written, everything was in their heads. He told Peppino of what the accountant had said, recited the figures of declining income and increasing outgoings.
'You should not listen to him. If you were a small man, if you were concerned only with investments and product on the island, then this would be perhaps important. Your portfolio is international. You are better without him.'
'There are some who say that I do not interest myself enough in the opportunities given by Sicily.'
'I think in Catania they say that, where there is a small man – as the man in Agrigento was a small man…'
It was, for Giuseppe Ruggerio, the confirmation of a death sentence. 'It is possible for a small man, as from Catania, to obstruct progress. If a tree falls in the wind and blocks a road, it is necessary to bring the saw, and to cut the tree, and to burn it.'
'Burn it with fire.'
They laughed, the chuckle of Peppino merging with the growled snigger of Mario Ruggerio. They laughed as the sentence of death was confirmed.
And the smile stayed on the old and lined face. 'And how is my little angel?'
'Piccolo Mario is the same as his uncle, a rascal.'
'Francesca and the baby?'
'Wonderful.'
'I hope very much soon to see them. I have their photograph. I carry their photograph. I do not carry a photograph of my wife, nor of Salvo and Domenica, but I have with me the picture of Francesca and the birichino. The day you went to London, I was near to the Giardino Inglese, I saw the rascal. I have few enough pleasures. And Angela, how is your wife, how is the Roman lady?'
'She survives.'
He noted the coolness of the response. He shook his head. 'Not good, Peppino.
Sometimes there is a problem if the wife of someone like yourself is not happy, sometimes there is an unnecessary problem.'
Peppino said, 'In Rome we had a girl to help Angela with the children, an English girl. Angela became fond of her. I have brought her back, to the villa in Mondello, to make Angela happier.'
The eyebrows of the old man lifted sharply, questioning. 'That is sensible?'
'She is just a girl from the country. A simple girl, but she is company for Angela.'
'You are sure of her?'
'I think so.'
'You should be certain. If she has the freedom of your home, there should not be doubt.'
When Mario Ruggerio left, he walked from the garage to the corner of Via Giuglielmo il Buono and Via Normanini. He had the time to go into the tabaccaio and buy three packets of his cigars, and then the time, while he waited on the corner, to think of the small man from Catania, a tree that blocked the road and should be cut and burned, and more time to think of the family that he loved and the rascal boy who was named in respect of him. The Citroen BX came to the corner. The driver leaned across to push open the passenger door. He was driven away. A dentist had moved from Palermo to Turin and the apartment on Via Crociferi that was now vacated would be the safe house, for a week, used by Mario Ruggerio. At least he would sleep there, be free of the shit noise of the Capo district.
He could not sleep. He stood at the window. Behind him was the bed and the sound of his wife's rhythmic snoring – he had not told her. In front of him were the lights of Catania, and out at sea were the lights of the approaching car ferry from Reggio. He could not talk about such matters with his wife. Never in thirty-two years of marriage had he talked of such matters, so she did not know of his fear, and she slept and snored.
Alone, unshared, was the fear. Because of the fear, the loaded pistol was on the table beside his bed and the assault rifle was on the rug under the bed. Because of the fear, his son had come from his own home and now slept in the adjoining room. The fear had held him since he had come away from the meeting in the Madonie mountains with Mario Ruggerio. Other than his son, he did not know now in whom he could place his faith. It would come to war, war to the death, between his family and the family of Mario Ruggerio, and each man of his family, in his home and his bed, would now be making the decision as to which side he would fight on. He knew the way of Mario Ruggerio. It was the way that Mario Ruggerio had climbed. From among his own family of men there would be one who was targeted by the bastards of Mario Ruggerio, targeted and twisted and turned and bent to compliance. One of his own family of men would lead him to death, and he did not know which one. The fear, in the night, ate at him.
'I don't want Pietro Aglieri, I don't want Provenzano or Salvatore Minore, I don't want Mariano Troia. You see them, you light a cigarette for them, and you offer them gum, but you don't show out.'
A weak and nervous ripple of laughter played in his office. Rocco Tardelli believed that each man on a surveillance team should be in at the briefing. He reeled off the names of the super-latitanti and grinned humbly. They would have thought him an idiot. They stood in front of his desk, seven and not nine of them because one was on holiday and one claimed illness. He turned over the photograph on his desk, showed it them.
'I want him. I want Mario Ruggerio. Aglieri, Provenzano, Minore, Troia are men of yesterday, gone, spent. Ruggerio is the man of tomorrow. There are insufficient of you.
We have no more cameras than before. We do not know where to put audio devices.
The photograph is twenty years old, but it has been through the computer. I do not know now if Ruggerio has a moustache, I do not know whether he routinely wears spectacles, I do not know whether he has dyed his hair. You are going into the Capo district, which is the most criminally aware sector of Palermo, I believe, more so than Brancaccio or Ciaculli. The prospect of your maintaining a cover for ten days is minimal, and you know that better than me. The information I have is that Ruggerio took an almond cake in the bar in the street between the Via Sant'Agostino and the Piazza Beati Paoli which caused him to shit, but that was a year ago.'