'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni Crespo said. 'We were so close…'
The tail had watched the car of 'Vanni Crespo, the carabiniere Alfetta, from the barracks at Monreale to the bar on Via Sam- martino. The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo.
' He brought me lemons, 'Vanni. I had fish for my meal on Friday. They are not supposed to do my shopping, my boys, but they prefer to do it than to take me to the market, so they break the rule, they bought fresh mullet for me. He had brought me lemons and made. 1 joke of it. I had one of his lemons with my mullet. He was the I 'est of men.'
'It was shit luck,' 'Vanni growled. 'He was on the bus with his wife. He saw Ruggerio.
He got off the bus. He ran through the traffic. That's the decision. You wait and you lose the target. You run and you alert the target. You've ten seconds, five seconds, to make the decision and you live by it and you die by it.'
The lemon was most sharp in the taste.'
'He would have shown out when he ran. Ruggerio would have had a back marker. He had to go to the bar for communication. The back marker would have followed him.
You need the luck and all you get is the shit.'
'There are six more of his lemons in my kitchen… Do you believe in luck, 'Vanni?'
He saw the tears well at the eyes of the magistrate. He took out his handkerchief. He did not care who saw him. In the crowd in the bar, he wiped the running tears from the magistrate's face. 'I believe in nothing.'
'Do you believe your agent of small importance will be lucky?'
He remembered her, as he had seen her, the last look back from the side of the road before he had dropped down into the car. The last look, across the pavement, and between the trees, and across the sand, and she had stood against the brightness of the sea, and the sun had caught the white of her body skin as her towel had slipped. In the bar, with the corpse, with the soft whimpering of the widow, with the crowd, with the smell of cigarettes and cold coffee, he remembered her.
'I am sorry, dottore, I cannot share with you because it is not in my gift.'
He drove a way through the crowd in the bar, pushed through the crowd on the pavement and the street. A good man had had ten seconds, five seconds, to make a decision and the result of the decision was a mistake, and the result of a mistake was to lie dead on the dirty floor of a bar that was lit by flashlights. He went to his car, walked leaden in the dusk light.
The tail followed the Alfetta driven by 'Vanni Crespo. The tail was delayed by the military cordon around the square of streets after the Alfetta had been waved through, but it was of no consequence. The tail was linked by radio to a second car and to motorcyclists who waited outside the cordon. As if a chain held the tail to the Alfetta .. .
When he had heard the explosion of the car horns, and then heard the insults shouted, Mario Ruggerio had paused in front of a shop window. He had appeared to study the contents of the shop window. An old practice, one that his father would have known, was to use a shop window as a mirror. He had seen a man come at desperate speed through the traffic lanes, then reach the pavement and stop. The man, stopped, had stared up the street towards him. If the man had had a radio he would already have used it, if the man had had a mobile telephone he would not have run through the traffic lanes, if the man had carried a firearm he would not have stopped. In the reflections of the window he had seen the picciotto, a good boy, behind the man. He had known he was recognized and he had known the man panicked. He had realized it was a chance recognition and not a part of a comprehensive surveillance. He had made a small gesture, a single movement of his index finger, a cutting motion. He had walked away.
He had turned the corner…
It was two hours later. Mario Ruggerio sat in the darkened room on the first floor in the Capo district. His feet ached, his lungs heaved, the ashtray was filled with the stubbed ends of his cigarillos. The two picciotti who had been ahead of him on the Via Sammartino had made a brutal pace for him, up to the Piazza Lolli, one pocketing the cap he had been wearing, across the Via Vito la Mancia, one taking his jacket and folding it on his arm so that the material could not be seen, past the Mercato delle Pulci, hurrying him along as if he were an old uncle out with two impatient nephews. He had slipped away from them behind the duomo. Even when he gasped for breath, when exhaustion bled him and he swayed on his feet, he would not have considered allowing picciotti to take him to his safe house. The sweat ran on his face and on his back and on his stomach. He smoked. He held the photograph of the child he loved.
Charley sat on the patio.
The sun had gone down and only a feeble layer of light fell on the seascape ahead of her. The family had gone down to the town. She had lost the loneliness that had hurt her in Palermo. She felt, sitting in the comfortable chair on the patio, a supreme confidence.
The villa was her place. The family would be walking on the esplanade, under the trees, patrolling like the caged bears she had seen in zoos, where they would be seen… It was the time of waiting. She was in control, she felt her power. The power was the watch on her wrist. She sat with her legs apart, and the cool of the evening air made feather strokes on her thighs. She was at the centre of the world of Axel Moen and the people who directed Axel Moen. She had power over Giuseppe Ruggerio and over the brother.
She watched the last of the sunlight flee the smooth surface of the sea. Because of her control and her power it would be her story that would be told, the story of Codename Helen.
In the grey light, on the patio, an arrogance tripped in Charley's mind.
The tail was locked on 'Vanni Crespo. Three bars in Monreale. The tail watched him drink alone in a bar near the duomo, in a second bar near the empty market stands, in a third bar high in the old town. The tail watched and followed where 'Vanni Crespo led.
Through the window of the pizzeria he saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni was going slowly, confused.
He was lit by a street lamp, and his face was flushed, and his hair hung on his forehead in careless strands, and he lurched to a stop beside the window and was struggling to find the cigarette packet in his pocket. Axel turned away. There was nowhere in the pizzeria for him to hide. He turned away and hoped that his face was not seen, but he heard the whip of the door opening and then the slam of it shutting and he heard the shuffle of the feet and then the scrape of the chair opposite him.
'Vanni sat in front of Axel, and he swayed on the chair before his elbows thudded down on the table.
'I find the American hero…'
'You pissed up or something?'
'I find the American hero who comes to Sicily to achieve what we cannot.'
'You're drunk.'
'We Italians are pathetic, we cannot wipe our own arses, but the American hero comes to do it for us.'
'Go fuck yourself.'
'You know what happened today because we had shit luck, what happened…?'
'We don't break procedure,' Axel hissed across the table.
Two young men, carrying their crash helmets, were at the counter of the pizzeria and asking for the list of sauces.
The hand in which Axel held his fork was gripped in ' Vanni's fists. 'We had surveillance people in the Capo, that's a shit place, to target the bastard. The surveillance was called off, nothing seen. One of the team, on a bus, sees the bastard.
Off duty, no communications. We are pathetic Italians, we do not have the money to give out, sweets and chocolates, mobile telephones. Not carrying his personal radio, off duty, no sidearm. He tries to use the telephone in a bar. The bastard would have had a guy behind him, back marker. The message was incomplete, that's the shit luck. No profile and no description, no clothes, before he was stabbed to death. The bastard's gone. It's cold.'