Ponti’s ready smile returned as he retrieved Simon’s passport and handed it to him.
“I’m sorry we have kept you so long,” he said. “It must be already past your accustomed lunch hour. I hope it will only improve your appetite for our Sicilian cooking.”
“Where would you recommend me to try it?” Simon asked.
“The Caprice is near by, and they have the first eggplant of the season. You should not leave Palermo without trying their caponata di melanzane. And a bottle of Ciclope dell’Etna.”
“I can taste it already,” Simon said. They shook hands again, and one of the stoical carabinieri opened the door for him.
After the suffocating atmosphere of the police station the fresh air was revivifying, even as redolent as it was of the rich effluvia of Palermo. The Caprice, which Simon found without much difficulty, was a cool cavern of refuge from the cascade of glare and heat outside, and he entered its depths gratefully, selecting a strategically located table with a wall behind and an unobstructed vista in front.
“The signore would like an aperitivo?” queried the nonagenarian waiter.
“Campari-soda. With plenty of ice and a twist of lemon.”
“And afterwards?”
“I will order presently. I am waiting for a friend.”
The Saint was as sure of this as he could be of anything. He could not imagine for a moment that Investigator Marco Ponti had taken the trouble to recommend this restaurant for no reason but pure gastronomic enthusiasm. And as he sipped the astringent coolness of his drink, he hoped that this private meeting would throw some light on the knife attack and the peculiar antipathy of the maresciallo.
Very shortly the street door opened again, but it was not the expected form of the detective that stepped in. This, however, proved to be no disappointment to the Saint at all.
It was a girl…if the writer may perpetrate one of the most inadequate statements in contemporary literature.
There seems to be a balance of nature in Italy which compensates in advance with extraordinary youthful beauty for the excessive deterioration which awaits most of her women in later years. Long before middle age, most of them have succumbed to superabundant flesh expanded in the dropsical mould that follows uncontrolled motherhood, and for which their tent-like black dresses are perhaps the only decent covering, and their faces tend to develop hirsute adornments which would be envied by many a junior Guards officer. But the perfection of face and form which a compassionate fate may grant them before that has been observed by most modern movie-goers. And this specimen was astounding proof that the nets of pandering producers had by no means scooped all the cream of the crop.
Her hair was stygian midnight, a shining metallic-black that wreathed a delicate oval face with the texture of magnolias, full-lipped and kohl-eyed. The simple silk confection that she wore offered more emphasis than concealment to the form it covered but could scarcely contain. It was obvious that no trickery of supporting garments was needed or was used to exploit the burgeoning figure, rounded almost to excess in the breasts above and the flanks below, yet bisected by a waist of wasp-like delicacy. To complete the entrancing inventory, Simon allowed his gaze to slide down the sweet length of leg to the small sandalled feet and drift appreciatively back up again.
Whereupon he received a glance of withering disdain of the kind that had obviously had much practice in shrivelling the presumptuous and freezing the extremities of the lecherous, and which made it depressingly apparent that like many other beautiful Italian girls she was also impregnably respectable. Only the Saint’s unjustified faith in the purity of his admiration enabled him to meet the snub with a smile of seraphic impenitence until it was she who looked away.
The cashier nodded to her in beaming recognition, and after a brief exchange of words picked up the telephone. Simon realized with regret that the girl had not come in to eat, but to ask for a taxi to be called—a common enough method in those parts where the quest for a public phone can be a major project.
After another word of thanks she started out again, and an entering customer stood aside and held the door for her. She swept past him, accepting the service as if it were hers by divine right, and he had to content himself for reward with the pleasure of watching her all the way into the cab, which providentially was an old-fashioned one with a high step. It was only after Simon had shared this treat with him, and the man finally let the door close and came towards him, that the Saint noticed who it was.
“Marco Ponti—what a surprise,” he murmured, with no visible sign of that reaction. “Will you join me in a mess of eggplant? Although I can’t compete as an attraction with what you were just leering at.”
Ponti made the classic gesture, hands spread at shoulder level, palms up, with which an Italian can say practically anything—in this case, combined with a slight upward roll of the eyes, it signified “Who wouldn’t leer at something like that? But what a waste of time”—and sat down.
“I fear the Swiss convent where she has been receiving her final polish has chilled her southern blood for a while,” he said. “But one day it will be warmed again. I have been hoping to make her acquaintance since she returned, but Gina Destamio and I do not rotate in the same social circles.”
“What did you call her?” Simon asked with unconcealed astonishment.
“The name means something to you?”
“Only if she is related to a certain Al Destamio, whose dubious hospitality I enjoyed on Capri yesterday.”
The detective’s smile was mask-like again, but behind it Simon could sense a stony grimness.
“She is his niece,” Ponti said.
4
The Saint had received so many shocks lately that he was becoming habituated to absorbing them without expression.
“After all, it’s a small country,” he remarked. He looked down into the rhodamine effervescence of his aperitif, and beckoned the waiter. “Would you like one of these before we eat?”
“With your permission, I will have a brandy. Buton Vecchio, since that is their most expensive—as an underpaid public servant I have few opportunities to enjoy such extravagance.” Ponti waited until the waiter had shuffled off before he said, “What was your business with Destamio?”
The question was asked in the same casual tone, but his eyes bored into the Saint unblinkingly.
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Simon replied coolly. “We met completely by chance the other day, and we seem to have rather quickly developed some differences of opinion. So radical, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was responsible for Tonio’s attack on me this morning.”
The other considered this carefully, before his smile flashed on again.
“I have heard many stories about you, Saint, some undoubtedly false and perhaps some of them true. But in all of them I have heard nothing to suggest that your relations with these people would be likely to be cordial. But it would have been interesting to hear precisely what the differences were that you refer to.”
At this moment the waiter tottered back with the brandy. Before he could escape again, Simon seized the opportunity to order their lunch, or rather to let Ponti order it, for he was quite content to follow the lead of the counsellor who had directed him here.
By the time the waiter had retired again out of earshot, the Saint was conveniently able to forget the last implied question and resume the conversation with one of his own.
“Would you mind telling me just what you meant by ‘these people’?” he asked.
“The Mafia,” Ponti said calmly.
This time, Simon allowed himself to blink.
“You mean Tonio was hired from them?”
“That cretino is one of them, of course. A small one. But I am sure that Al Destamio is a big one, though I cannot prove it.”
“That,” said the Saint, “makes it really interesting.”
Ponti sipped his brandy.
“Do you know anything about th
e Mafia?”
“Only what I’ve read in the papers, like everyone else. And some more fanciful enlargements in paperback novels. But on the factual side, I don’t even know what mafia means.”
“It is a very old word, and no one can be quite sure where it came from. One legend says that it originated here in Palermo in the thirteenth century, when the French ruled the Two Sicilies. The story is that a young man was leaving the church after his wedding, and was separated from his bride for a few minutes while he talked to the priest. In that time she was seized by a drunken French sergeant, who dragged her away and assaulted her—and when she tried to escape, killed her. The bridegroom arrived too late to save her, but he attacked and killed the sergeant, shouting ‘Morte alia Francia!—Death to France!’ Palermo had suffered cruelly during the occupation, and this was all that the people needed to hear. A revolt started, and in a few days all the French in the city had been hunted down and slain. ‘Morte alia Francia. Italia anela!’ was the battle-cry: Italy wishes death to France! Of course, soon after, the French came back and killed most of the rebels, and the survivors fled into the mountains. But they kept the initials of their battle-cry, ‘M-A-F-I-A,’ as their name…At least, that is one explanation.”
“It’s hard to think of the Mafia as a sort of thirteenth-century Resistance movement.”
“It is, now, but that is truly what they were like in the beginning. Right up to the unification of Italy, the Mafia was usually on the side of the oppressed. Only after that it turned to extortion and murder.”
“I seem to have heard that something like that happened to the original Knights Templar,” said the Saint reflectively. “But aside from that, I don’t see why you should connect them with me.”
Ponti waited while the caponata di melanzane was served and the wine poured. Then he answered as if there had been no interruption.
“It is very simple. Whether you knew what you were doing or not, you have become involved with the Mafia. A little while ago I told you that justice would be done to Tonio. But if he was under the orders of Destamio, and not merely defending himself because you caught him picking your pocket, I should not be so optimistic. Witnesses will be found to swear that it was you who attacked him. And nothing will make him confess that he even knows Destamio. That is the omerta, the noble silence. He will die before he speaks. Not for a noble reason, perhaps, but because if he talked there would be no place for him to hide, no place in the world. There are no traitors to the Mafia—live traitors, that is—and the death that comes to them is not an easy one.”
Simon tasted the Ciclope dell’Etna. It was light and faintly acid, but a cool and refreshing accompaniment to the highly seasoned eggplant.
“At the questura,” he said, “Tonio already seemed to be in better standing than I was. Does the Mafia’s long arm reach even into the ranks of the incorruptible police on this island?”
“Such things are possible,” Ponti said with great equanimity. “The Mafia is very strong on this impoverished island. That is why I gave you the hint in the questura that if you had any more to say to me we should talk elsewhere.”
“And I am supposed to know that you are the one member of the police who is above suspicion.”
The detective took no umbrage, but only dispensed with his smile, so that Simon was aware again of what an effective mask it was, behind which anything could be hidden.
“Let me tell you another story, Signor Templar, which is not a legend. It is about a man who came from Bergamo, in the north, to open a shop on this sunny island. It was difficult at first, but after a time he had a business that kept his family in modest comfort. Then the mafia came to demand tribute, and through ignorance or pride he refused to pay. When they sent an enforcer to beat him with a club in his own shop, he took away the club and beat the enforcer. But he was a little too strong and angry, and the enforcer died. There is only one thing that happens then: the vendetta and murder. The man and his wife and daughter were killed, and only the little son escaped because he had been sent to visit his grandparents in Bergamo, and when they heard what had happened they gave him to friends who took him to another town and pretended he was their own. But the boy knew all the story, and he grew up with a hatred strong enough to start a vendetta against all the Mafia. But when he was old enough to do anything he knew that that was not the way.”
“And so he joined the police to try to do something legally?”
“A poorly paid job, as I said before, and a dangerous one if it is done honestly. But do you think a man with such memories could be on the side of those murderers?”
“But if your police station is a nest of mafiosi, how can you get anything done? That two-faced maresciallo almost had me convicted of attempting to murder myself, before you came in. Then everything changed. Do they suspect that you may be investigating them too?”
“Not yet. They think I am a happy fool who bumbles into the wrong places—an honest fool who refuses bribes and reports any offer of one. Men in my job are always being transferred, and so they hide what they can from me and wait patiently for me to be transferred again. But being from the north, it has taken me many years and much pulling of strings to get here, and I have no intention of being moved again before I have achieved some of my purpose.”
If ever the Saint had heard and seen sincerity, he had to feel that he was in the presence of it now.
“So you want to hear what I can tell you,” he said slowly. “But knowing my reputation, would you believe me? And aren’t you a bit interested in the chance that I might incriminate myself?”
“I am not playing a game, signore,” the detective said harshly. “I do not ask for any of your other secrets. You can tell me you have murdered thirteen wives, if you like, and it would mean nothing to me if you helped in the one other thing that matters more to me than life.”
Perhaps the first commandment of any outlaw should be, Thou shall keep thy trap shut at all times, but on the other hand he would not be plying his lonely trade if he were not a breaker of rules, and this sometimes means his own rules as well. Simon knew that this was one time when he had to gamble.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what you make of this…”
He related the events of the past few days with eidetic objectiveness. He left nothing out and drew no conclusions, waiting to see what Ponti would make of it.
“It is as clear as minestrone,” said the detective, at the end of the recital. “You thought the Englishman Euston was killed in Naples because he recognized Destamio as being someone named Dino Cartelli. Yet Destamio showed you proof of his identity, and you learned here in Palermo that Cartelli has been dead for many years. That seems to show that you are—as the Americans say—woofing up the wrong tree.”
“Perhaps.” Simon finished his meal and his wine. “But in that case how do you explain the coincidence of Euston’s murder, Destamio’s sudden interest in me, the money he gave me, and the attempt to kill me?”
“If you assume there is a connection, only two explanations are possible. Either Destamio was Cartelli, or Cartelli is Destamio.”
“Exactly.”
“But an imposter could not take the place of Destamio, one of the chieftains of the Mafia. And if the man who died in the bank was not Cartelli, who was he?”
“Those are the puzzles I have to solve, and I intend to keep digging until I do.”
“Or until someone else digs for you—a grave,” Ponti snorted, then puffed explosively on a cigarette.
Simon smiled, and ordered coffee.
“For me it is very good that you get involved,” Ponti said after a pause. “You stir things up, and in the stirring things may come to the surface which may be valuable to me. In my position, I am forced to be too careful. You are not careful enough. Perhaps you do not believe how powerful and vicious these people are, though I do not think that would make any difference to you. But I will help you as much as I can. In return, I ask you to tell me everything you l
earn that concerns the Mafia.”
“With pleasure,” Simon said.
He did not think it worth while to mention a small mental reservation, that while he would be glad to share any facts he gleaned, he would consider any substantial booty he stumbled upon to be a privateer’s legitimate perquisite.
“You could start by telling me how much you know about Destamio,” he said.
“Not much that is any use. It is all guessing and association. Everyone here is either a member of the Mafia or too frightened of them to talk. But I am forced to deduce, from the people he meets, and where he goes, and the money he can spend, and the awe that he inspires, that he must be in the upper councils of the organization. The rest of his family does not seem to be involved, which is unusual, but I keep an eye on them.”
“After seeing the niece, Gina, I can understand about that eye of yours. What others are there?”
“His sister, Donna Maria, a real faccia tosta. And an ancient uncle well gone into senility. They have a country house outside the town, an old baronial mansion, very grim and run down.”
“You must tell me how to get there.”
“You would like to see Gina again?” Ponti asked, with a knowing Latin grin.
“I might have better luck than you,” said the Saint brazenly. “And that seems the most logical place to start probing into Al’s family background and past life. Besides which, think how excited he’ll be when he hears I have been calling at his ancestral home and getting to know his folks.”
Ponti looked at him long and soberly.
“One of us is mad, or perhaps both,” he said. “But I will draw you a map to show you how to get there.”
Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 6
