In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  The driver looked about eighty years old with a face like a walnut and a long white moustache curling up around each cheek. From the moment I spoke he quite obviously took me for a Sicilian.

  In Palermo it is necessary to make a bargain with a horse cab driver for any journey, however short, which can be rough on the tourist, but I had no trouble – no trouble at all. When I told him where I wanted to go, his eyebrows went up, a look of genuine respect settled on his face which was hardly surprising. After all, no one visits a cemetery for fun and to a Sicilian, death is a serious business. Ever-present and always interesting.

  Our destination was an old Benedictine monastery about a mile out of town towards Monte Pellegrino and the cab took its time getting there which suited me perfectly because I wanted to think.

  Did I really wish to go through with this? Was it necessary? To that, there could be no answer for when I considered the matter seriously, I discovered with some surprise that I could do so with a complete lack of any kind of passion, which certainly hadn’t been the case at one time. Once, my mind had been like an open wound, each thought a constant and painful probe, but now…

  The sun had gone down and clouds moved in from the sea, pushed by a cold wind. When we reached the monastery I told him to wait for me and got down.

  “Excuse me, signor,” he said. “You have someone laid to rest here? Someone close?”

  “My mother.”

  Strange, but it was only then, at that moment, that pain moved inside me, rising like floodwater threatening to overwhelm me so that I turned and stumbled away as he crossed himself.

  A side entrance took me through a large cloister with arcades on each side. In a small courtyard, a delightful Arabic fountain sprang into the air like a spray of silver flowers and beyond, through an archway, was the cemetery.

  On a fine day, the view over the valley to the sea was quite spectacular, but now the lines of cypress trees bowed to the wind and a few cold drops of rain splashed on the stonework. The cemetery was large and very well kept, used mainly by the cream of Palermo ’s bourgeois society.

  I followed the path slowly, gravel crunching beneath my feet and for some reason, everything assumed a dream-like quality. Blank marble faces drifted by as I passed through a forest of ornate ornaments.

  I had no difficulty in finding it and it was exactly as I had remembered. A white marble tomb with bronze doors, a life-size statue of Santa Rosalia of Pellegrino on top, the whole surrounded by six-foot iron railings painted black and gold.

  I pressed my face against them and read the inscription. Rosalia Barbaccia Wyatt – mother and daughter – taken cruelly before her time. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.

  I remembered that other morning when I had stood here with everyone who mattered in Palermo society standing behind me as the priest spoke over the coffin, my grandfather at my side, as cold and as dangerously quiet as those marble statues.

  At the right moment, I had turned and walked away through the crowd, broken into a run when he called, had kept on running till that famous meeting at the “Lights of Lisbon” in Mozambique.

  There was a little more rain on the wind now, I could feel it on my face, I took a couple of breaths to steady myself, turned from the railings and found him standing watching me. Marco Gagini, my grandfather’s strong right arm, his bullet-proof waistcoat, his rock. I read somewhere once that Wyatt Earp survived Tombstone only because he had Doc Holliday to cover his back. My grandfather had Marco.

  He had the face of a good middleweight fighter, which was what he had once been, the look of a confident gladiator who has survived the arena. The hair was a little more grizzled, there were a few more lines on the face, but otherwise he looked just the same. He had loved me, this man, taught me to box, to drive, to play poker and win – but he loved my grandfather more.

  He stood there now, hands pushed into the pockets of his blue nylon raincoat, watching me, a slight frown on his face.

  “How goes it, Marco?” I said easily.

  “As always. The capo wants to see you.”

  “How did he know I was back?”

  “Someone in Customs or Immigration told him. Does it matter?” He shrugged. “Sooner or later the capo gets to know everything.”

  “So it’s still the same, Marco?” I said. “He’s still capo. I thought Rome was supposed to be clamping down on Mafia these days?”

  He smiled slightly. “Let’s go, Stacey, it’s going to rain.”

  I shook my head. “Not now – later. I’ll come tonight when I’ve had time to think. You tell him that.”

  It had been obvious to me from the beginning that he had been holding a gun in his right hand pocket. He started to take it out and found himself staring into the muzzle of the Smith and Wesson. He didn’t go white – he wasn’t the sort, but something happened to him. There was a kind of disbelief there, at my speed, I suppose, and at the fact that little Stacey had grown up some.

  “Slowly, Marco, very slowly.”

  He produced a Walther P38 and I told him to lay it down carefully and back off. I picked the Walther up and shook my head.

  “An automatic isn’t much use from the pocket, Marco, I’d have thought you’d have known that. The slide nearly always catches on the lining with your first shot.”

  He didn’t speak, just stood there staring at me as if I were a stranger and I slipped the Walther into my pocket. “Tonight, Marco, about nine. I’ll see him then. Now go.”

  He hesitated and Sean Burke moved out from behind a marble tomb five or six yards behind him, a Browning in one hand.

  “If I were you I’d do as he says,” he told Marco in his own peculiar brand of Italian.

  Marco went without a word and Burke turned and looked at me gravely. “An old friend?”

  “Something like that. Where did you spring from?”

  “ Rosa got another car out quick and I followed the Mercedes into town – no trouble. It got interesting when we discovered you had someone else on your tail. Who was he?”

  “A friend of my grandfather. He wants to see me.”

  “He must have one hell of an information service to know you were here so quickly.”

  “The best.”

  He moved to the railings and read the inscription. “Your mother?” I nodded. “You never did tell me about it.”

  And I found out that I wanted to, which was strange. It was as if we were on the old footing again or perhaps I was in that kind of mood where I would have told it to anyone.

  “I said my mother was Sicilian, that my grandfather still lived here, but I don’t think I ever went into details.”

  “Not that I recall. I believe you mentioned his name, but I’d forgotten it until I saw it again just now on the inscription there.”

  I sat on the edge of a tomb and lit a cigarette. I wondered how much I could tell him, how much he could possibly understand. To the visitor, the tourist, Sicily was Taormina, Catania, Syracuse – golden beaches, laughing peasants. But there was another, darker place in the hinterland. A savage landscape, sterile, barren, where the struggle was not so much for a living, but for survival. A world where the key-word was omerta, which you could call manliness for want of a better translation. Manliness, honour, solve your own problem, never seek official help, all of which led to the concept of personal vendetta and was the breeding group for Mafia.

  “What do you know about Mafia, Sean?”

  “Didn’t it start as some kind of secret society in the old days?”

  “That’s right. It came into being in a period of real oppression. In those days it was the only weapon the peasant had, his only means of any kind of justice. Like all similar movements, it grew steadily more corrupt. It ended up by having the peasant, the whole of Sicily by the throat.” I dropped my cigarette and rubbed it into the gravel. “And still does in spite of what the authorities in Rome have been able to do.”

  “But what has this got to do with you?”

  “My grand
father, Vito Barbaccia, is capo mafia in Palermo, in all Sicily. Number one man. Lord of Life and Death. There are something like three million Sicilians in the States now and Mafia moved over there as well and became one of the main branches of syndicated gangsterism. During the last ten years, quite a few Mafia bosses in the States have been deported. They’ve come back home with new ideas – prostitution, drugs and so on. An old-fashioned mafioso like my grandfather doesn’t mind killing people, but he just doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.”

  “There was trouble?”

  “You could put it that way. They placed a bomb in his car – a favourite way of getting rid of a rival in those circles. Unfortunately, it was my mother who decided to go for a drive.”

  “My God.” There was shock and genuine pain on his face.

  I carried on, “Believe it or not, but I didn’t know a damn thing about it, or maybe I didn’t want to know. I came home on vacation after my first year at Harvard and it happened on the second day. My grandfather told me the facts of life the same evening.”

  “Did he ever manage to settle up with the man responsible?”

  “Oh. I’m sure he did. I think we can take that as read.” I stood up. “I’m beginning to feel rather hungry. Shall we go back?”

  “I’m sorry, Stacey,” he said. “Damned sorry.”

  “Why should you be? Ancient history now.”

  But I believed him for he seemed sincere enough. The wind moaned through the cypress trees, scattering rain across the path and I turned and walked back towards the monastery.

  SIX

  I WENT TO bed for a while after we’d eaten. Sleep came easily to me at that time, simply by closing the eyes and I seldom seemed to dream. When I opened them again it was seven-thirty by the bedside clock and almost dark.

  Somewhere I could hear the murmur of voices and I got to my feet, pulled on a bathrobe and padded across to the glass doors that opened on to the terrace.

  Burke was standing in the courtyard below, one foot on the rim of the ornamental fountain. His companion was a thick-set man with close-cropped white hair who looked in better shape than he probably was, thanks to a tailor who knew how to cut cloth.

  There was nothing ostentatious about him. He’d resisted the impulse to wear more than one ring and displayed only the regulation inch of white cuff as if following someone’s instructions to the letter. I think it was the tie which spoiled things – Guards Brigade, which didn’t seem likely – and when he produced a platinum case and offered Burke a cigarette, he looked about as real as his garden.

  He accepted a light, turned away slightly, running a hand over his hair with a rather feminine gesture and saw me standing there at the edge of the balcony.

  He had obviously cultivated the instant smile. “Hello there,” he called. “I’m Karl Hoffer. How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “You provide excellent beds.”

  His voice was the first surprise. Pure American – no Austrian accent at all as far as I could judge.

  He smiled at Burke. “Heh, I like him,” then looked up at me again. “We’re just going to have a drink. Why don’t you join us? Good chance to talk business.”

  “Five minutes,” I said and went back into the bedroom to dress.

  As I went down to the hall, Rosa Solazzo appeared from the dining room followed by one of the houseboys carrying a tray of drinks. All the best dresses were English that year. Hers must have set Hoffer back two hundred guineas at least, a cloud of red silk like a flame in the night, setting her hair and eyes off to perfection.

  “Please,” she said, reached up and straightened my tie. “There, that is better. I felt very foolish this afternoon. I didn’t know.”

  She’d spoken in Italian and I replied in kind. “Didn’t know what?”

  “Oh, about you. That your mother was Sicilian.”

  “And who told you that?”

  “Colonel Burke.”

  “Life’s just full of surprises, isn’t it?” I said. “Shall we join the others?”

  “As you wish.”

  I think she took it as some kind of dismissal, but she certainly didn’t seem annoyed, although I suppose a woman in her position can seldom afford the luxury of that kind of emotion.

  Hoffer and Burke had moved to a small illuminated patio where another fountain which was an exact duplicate of the first lifted into the night. They were sitting at a wrought iron table and rose to greet me.

  Hoffer had the kind of out-of-season tan that usually argues a lamp or, more rarely, someone rich enough to follow the sun. On closer acquaintance, he was older than I had imagined, his face a network of fine seams and in spite of the ready smile, there was little joy in the china blue eyes.

  We shook hands and he waved me to a seat. “Sorry I wasn’t here when you got in. I’m having to run down to Gela three or four times a week now. You know the oil game.”

  I didn’t, but I remembered Gela, a Greek colony in classic times, mainly as a pleasant little coastal town on the other side of the island with some interesting archaeological remains. I wondered how the derricks and refineries were fitting in and accepted a large vodka and tonic from Rosa.

  She dismissed the houseboy and served us herself, dropping unobtrusively into a chair in the background when she had finished which seemed to indicate that Hoffer trusted her all the way – something I’d been wrong about.

  He certainly didn’t waste any time in getting down to business. “Mr. Wyatt, Colonel Burke recommended you highly for this job which is why we went to so much trouble to get you out.”

  “That was real nice of him,” I said and the irony was in my voice for all to hear.

  Except Hoffer, apparently, who carried on. “In fact I don’t think it’s overdoing it to say that we’re all depending on you, boy.”

  He put a hand on my knee which I didn’t like and there was the sort of edge to his voice that you get with the kind of American wheat-belt politician who’s trying to persuade you he’s just folks after all. Any minute now I expected him to break into a chorus of “I believe in you” and I couldn’t have that.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Hoffer. I’m here for twenty-five thousand dollars plus expenses in advance.”

  He straightened abruptly, the head went back, the eyes hardened into chips of blue glass. I expected him to argue about the terms because Burke actually looked alarmed and moved in fast.

  “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Hoffer. Stacey doesn’t realise…”

  Hoffer cut him off with a motion of one hand that was like a sword falling. “Never mind. I like a man who knows his own mind. So long as we all know where we stand.”

  He was another man – hard, competent with the kind of ruthless edge he would have needed to get where he was. Even his physical movements were different. He snapped his fingers for another drink and Rosa Solazzo came running.

  “Half in advance,” he said. “To you and Burke.”

  “And if we fail to get the girl out?”

  “You’re that much ahead of the game.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Your affair.”

  Burke was frowning, mainly, I suppose, because he felt he was being cut out of things. He nodded slightly, which surprised me – or did it really?

  In any event I shook my head and said to Hoffer, “Not good enough. Jaeger and Legrande get the same terms or we don’t go.”

  He didn’t even argue. “All right. I’ll let you have a cheque you can draw in Palermo tomorrow, but made out to Colonel Burke. He holds the bank until the job is over one way or the other. Some insurance for me against anyone preferring a bird in the hand.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Burke was obviously furiously angry, but I ignored him and emptied my glass. Rosa came over to get me another. Hoffer said, “Can we get down to business now? How do you intend to tackle this thing?”

  “You’re certain Serafino is in the Cammarata?” I said.

  He nodde
d. “That definitely seems to be his home ground. Every enquiry I’ve been able to make confirms it. You know the area, I believe?”

  “I’ve been there. It’s wild country.”

  “You don’t need to tell me. I had to drive up there alone to make the first payment.”

  “And you met him?”

  “Serafino?” He nodded. “Face to face at a bridge on what passes for the main road near a village called Bellona.”

  “What was he like?”

  “I can show you.” He produced a wallet, took out a photo and gave it to me. “I got that through someone I know in the police. Our friend has been through their hands more than once.”

  It was typical of police photography the world over, reducing the subject to a kind of Neanderthal man, capable – from his appearance – of rape or murder and most things in between.

  I shook my head. “This doesn’t tell me a thing. What was he like? Describe him.”

  “Twenty-five or six – medium height. Dark hair – long dark hair.” He didn’t approve of that. “One of those swarthy faces you get round here – they tell me it’s the Arab blood from Saracen days. Typical Sicilian.”

  “Sounds just like me,” I said.

  “If you like.” He wasn’t in the least put out. “He’s lost an eye since the photo was taken and he laughed a lot. Treated the whole thing as if it was one big joke.”

  And he hadn’t liked that either. His right hand clenched into a fist and stayed that way. “I think Bellona sounds like a good place to start,” I said.

  Hoffer seemed surprised. “Is that such a good idea? The impression I get is that most of the villagers in the area work hand in glove with people like Serafino.”

  I looked at Burke. “You play the tourist. I’ll pass myself off as a hire-car driver.”

  He nodded. “Suits me.”

  I turned to Hoffer. “Not the Mercedes. Something that isn’t too ostentatious. Can you manage that?”

  “Certainly. Is there anything else you’d like?”

  “Yes, tell me about the girl.”

  He looked slightly bewildered. “Joanna? But I thought the colonel told you all you needed to know?”