In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  “I’d like to hear about her from you – all about her. In a thing like this it’s important to know as much as you can about people. That way you can have some idea in advance about how they might behave in a given situation.”

  He was full of approval. “That makes sense. All right – where should I begin?”

  “When you first met her would do for a start.”

  Which was when she was twelve years old. Her father had died of leukaemia two years earlier. Hoffer had met her and the mother at St. Moritz one Christmas and the marriage had taken place shortly afterwards and had lasted until four months previously when his wife had been killed in a car crash in France.

  “I understand the girl was rather a handful,” I said. “Presumably her mother’s death didn’t help.”

  He seemed to slump wearily, ran a hand across his face and sighed. “Where do you begin with a thing like this? Look, Wyatt, I’ll put it in a nutshell for you. When Joanna was fourteen her mother found her in bed with the chauffeur and he wasn’t the first. She’s been nothing but trouble ever since – one rotten little scandal after another.”

  “Then why are you bothering?”

  He looked surprised, then frowned as if it hadn’t occurred to him before. “A good question – certainly not because of any great affection. She’s no good, she never has been and I honestly don’t think she ever will be. Maybe it isn’t her fault, but that’s the way it is. No, I suppose when it all comes down to it I owe it to my wife. She was a wonderful woman. The seven years she gave me were the best, Wyatt. Anything else can only be afters.”

  He certainly sounded sincere and the presence of Rosa Solazzo didn’t alter my judgement in the slightest. I was certainly the last man in the world to hold the fact that he needed a woman around against him.

  “One thing puzzles me,” I said. “I can understand you not going near the police. In Sicily they are worse than useless in a case like this, but didn’t it ever occur to you to approach Mafia?”

  “What good would that do?” Burke laughed. “Stacey has this Mafia thing on the brain, Mr. Hoffer. There are reasons.”

  Hoffer waved him down. “Sure I tried Mafia. They’re still behind most things here. Don’t believe all this crap you hear about Rome having stamped it out. That’s just for the tourist trade. They don’t want to scare anyone away.”

  “Did you get anywhere?”

  He shook his head. “It seems Serafino Lentini doesn’t like the Mafia. The impression I got was that they’d like to get their hands on him, too.”

  “Stacey’s grandfather is something to do with this Mafia thing,” Burke said. “Isn’t that so, Stacey? He’s going to see him tonight.”

  Hoffer frowned. “Your grandfather?”

  “Vito Barbaccia,” I said, I think for effect more than anything.

  Rosa Solazzo sucked in her breath and dropped her glass. Hoffer stared at me incredulously in the following silence. “You are Vito Barbaccia’s grandson?”

  “You’ve heard of him, I take it?”

  “Heard of him? Who hasn’t? And you are seeing him tonight?”

  I nodded and he shook his head. “I can’t get over it.”

  “You’ve met him?” Burke asked.

  Hoffer smiled. “Twice – at parties, but never to speak to. Only royalty gets that close.”

  Burke looked at me, a frown on his face and I realised that everything I had told him at the cemetery hadn’t really registered, certainly not the fundamental fact of just how important my grandfather was.

  I drained my glass and got to my feet. “Well, I think I’ll take a turn round the garden before dinner.”

  “Why not.” Hoffer nodded to Rosa. “Show him the sights, angel. There’s a fish pond round the back that’s quite a showpiece, Mr. Wyatt.”

  Now he was calling me Mr. again. Strange how the Barbaccia affected people. And Rosa? Rosa had gone very pale and when I smiled at her, she dropped her gaze, fear in those dark eyes.

  Barbaccia – mafioso. I suppose that to her, the two were interchangeable. When I tucked her arm in mine, she was trembling.

  Hoffer obviously used a first-rate local chef. We had narbe di San Paolo which is a kind of ravioli filled with sugar and ricotta cheese and fried and cannolo, probably the most famous sweet in Sicily, consisting of a tube of flour and egg filled with cream. The others drank Marsala which is too sweet for me and I had a bottle of Zibibbo from the island of Pantellaria, a wine which is flavoured with anis. The sort of thing you either like at once or not at all.

  We dined on the terrace, a rather conventional little group with Piet and Legrande very much on their best behaviour. Later – the wine having taken effect – things livened up a little. Piet gave all his attention to Rosa though strictly at a superficial level, and even Legrande unwound enough to smile once or twice.

  The coffee was Yemeni mocha, probably the best in the world. I took mine to the edge of the terrace to drink. The laughter was louder now and no one appeared to notice as I faded away.

  I went up to my room, got the Smith and Wesson in its spring holster from the drawer and snapped it to my belt. I pulled it clear a couple of times to make sure things were working all right and Burke came in. He closed the door and leaned against it.

  “Expecting trouble?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I replaced the Smith and Wesson, buttoned my jacket and slipped half a dozen spare rounds into my left-hand pocket and Marco’s Walther in the right.

  “I’d like to come with you,” he said. “It might help.”

  I looked him straight in the eye and he held my gaze, grave and serious. I nodded. “If you like.”

  He smiled in a kind of relief – he was doing a lot of smiling these days – and slapped me on the shoulder. “The old firm, eh, Stacey boy?”

  But it could never be that again, nothing was more certain. Why, as we went down the stairs, I wasn’t too happy about having him at the back of me.

  SEVEN

  MONTI PELIEGRINO, WHICH is about three miles to the north of Palermo, towers into the sky at the western end of the Conco d’Oro. It’s an interesting place, soaked in blood and history like the rest of Sicily. During the Punic Wars, Hamilcar Barca held it against the Romans for three years, but in more modern times it became famous mainly because of the cult of Santa Rosalia after whom my mother had been named. My grandfather’s villa was at the foot of the mountain just outside the village of Valdesi.

  I suppose, when you thought about it, he’d come a long way. He was born in Velba, a village in Western Sicily which was depressingly typical of the region, a dung heap where most children died in their first year and life was roughly equivalent to what it had been in England in mediaeval times.

  His father was a share-cropper and the living that gave was of a kind that barely maintained life. Of his early years I knew little for certain, but by the time he was twenty-three he was a gabellotto, a mixture of tax collector and land agent whose function was to screw the share-croppers down and keep them that way.

  Only a mafioso could have the job so he was on the way up at an early age. God knows what had happened in between – a killing or two – perhaps more, which was the usual method for any youngster to make his way in the Honoured Society.

  He might even have spent some time as a sicario, a hired killer, but I doubted that. It didn’t fit into the code – his own very individual conception of what was honourable and what was not. The idea of making money out of prostitution, for example, filled him with horror because he believed in the sanctity of the family and gave to the Church. On the other hand, the organisation he served had killed so many of its opponents over the years that in many towns murder was a commonplace.

  The lights of the car picked out a couple of old women trudging towards us festooned with baskets.

  “What in the hell was that supposed to be?” Burke demanded.

  “They’re coming in for tomorrow’s market.”

  “At this t
ime of night?”

  “The only way they can secure a good pitch.”

  He shook his head. “What a bloody country.”

  I looked into the night at the lights of the city. “That’s one Sicily, but out there in the darkness is another. A charnel house for generations. The bread-basket of the Roman Empire based completely on slave labour. Ever since then the people have been exploited by someone or other.”

  “I didn’t really take it all in,” he said. “This Mafia stuff. I thought it was all in the past.”

  “I can think of one place that’s had better than a hundred and fifty killings in four years – a town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants. You won’t find me a place in the world of comparable size that can match that.”

  “But why?” he said. “I just don’t get it.”

  “People play games of one sort or another all the time, haven’t you ever noticed that?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  I could have told him that he’d been playing soldiers all his life – even in the Congo – but there would have been no point. He wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about and I’d have offended him needlessly.

  “Let me put it this way. In the suburbs of Los Angeles or London, the struggle to keep abreast of the next man, the cut and thrust of business, or even an affair with someone else’s wife, adds that little touch of drama to life that everyone needs.”

  “And what does that prove?”

  “Nothing in particular. In Sicily, it’s an older game, that’s all, and rather more savage. The ritual of vendetta – an eye for an eye, neither more nor less. And the rules may seem a little barbaric to outsiders. We kiss the wounds of our dead, touch our lips to the blood and say: In this way may I drink the blood of the one who killed you.”

  Even thinking of it touched something inside me – a coldness like a snake uncoiling.

  “You said we,” Burke observed. “You include yourself in?”

  I stared out into the distance where an early cruise ship passed beyond the headland, a blaze of lights, a world of its own. I thought of school in London at St. Paul ’s of Wyatt’s Landing, of Harvard and laughed.

  “In any village in Sicily if I spoke my grandfather’s name and declared my relationship, there would be men who would kiss my hand. You’re in another world here, Sean. Try to get that into your head.”

  But I don’t think he believed me – not then. It all seemed too improbable. Belief would come later.

  There was no resemblance at all between the Barbaccia villa and Hoffer’s place. To start with the walls were at least two thousand years older, for like most country houses it had been built on the Roman site. They were about fifteen feet high and the villa itself was of Moorish origin and stood in the centre of a couple of acres of semi-tropical garden. Ciccio braked to a halt and sounded his horn.

  The gatekeeper wasn’t armed, but then he didn’t need to be. A man appeared from the lodge behind him wrestling with two bull mastiffs of a breed common to the island since Norman times and another came out of the bushes holding a machine pistol.

  The gatekeeper wore a neat khaki uniform and looked more like an insurance clerk with his moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a kind of impasse while he and his friends stared at us and the dogs didn’t bark, which was somehow even more sinister.

  I opened the door, got out and approached. “I’m expected,” I said. “You must have been told.”

  “One man, signor, not three. No car passes through these gates except the capo’s. A rule of the house.”

  I produced the Walther very carefully from my pocket and there was a hollow click as the gentleman with the machine pistol cocked it. I passed the Walther through the bars, butt first.

  “My calling card. Send it to Marco – Marco Gagini. He’ll tell you who I am.”

  He shrugged. “All right, you can come in, but the others stay outside with the car.”

  Marco came round the bend of the drive on the run and slowed to a halt. He stared past me at the Mercedes, at Burke and Ciccio, then nodded. “Open the gates – let them in.”

  The gatekeeper started to protest. “You know the rule – only house cars allowed inside.”

  Marco shook him by the lapel. “Fool, does a man kill his own grandfather? Get out of the way.”

  He wrenched the Walther from the gatekeeper’s hand, dropped it into his pocket and pushed him towards the lodge. The gates, it seemed, were electronically controlled. They swung back with a slight whisper and Marco joined us.

  “I’ll ride up to the house with you.”

  We got into the rear beside Burke and Ciccio drove on slowly. “Things have changed,” I said to Marco. “Getting into Fort Knox would be easier.”

  “An electronic device runs round the top of the walls,” he told me seriously. “So no one can get in that way. Usually, as you just heard, cars other than our own aren’t allowed through. We discovered an explosive device in one a few years back when the capo was giving a party. If it had gone off it would have taken the villa with it.”

  “A nice way to live.”

  Perhaps the irony in my voice escaped him or else he chose to ignore it. “There have been eight attempts on the capo’s life in the last few years. We have to be very careful. Who is this man you have brought with you?” he added in exactly the same tone.

  “A friend of mine – Colonel Burke. He thought I might need some help.”

  “I can feel the gun in his pocket. Most uncomfortable. Tell him it will not be needed.”

  “I know enough Italian to understand that much,” Burke said and transferred his Browning to the other pocket.

  The Mercedes halted at the bottom of a broad flight of steps that lifted to a great oaken door banded with iron which I’d always understood had had an arrow or two in it in its day.

  I think that until that moment nothing had possessed any reality for me. I was home again, which was what it came down to, and it was as if some part of me – some essential part – simply didn’t want to know.

  Burke followed me out and Marco told Ciccio to take the Mercedes round to the courtyard at the rear. It moved away smoothly. I turned and found my grandfather standing at the top of the steps.

  He was as large as Burke and looked smaller only because his shoulders were stooped a little with age. At that time he must have been sixty-seven or eight and yet there was still colour in the long hair and carefully trimmed beard.

  If I say he had the look of a Roman Emperor, I would be referring to the period when it was possible for a restless adventurer with no scruples to rise from the ranks.

  It was a remarkable face. There was ruthlessness there, and arrogance, but also pride and a blazing intelligence. And he was as elegant as ever. Many of the old time capo mafias chose to look as slovenly and as unkempt as possible in society as if to emphasise their power and importance, but not Vito Barbaccia. The share-cropper’s son had left his rags behind him long ago.

  He wore a cream lightweight suit that had London stamped all over it, a pink shirt and dark blue silk tie. The cigar was as large as ever and the ebony walking stick I remembered well, because if it was the same one, it housed a couple of feet of razor-sharp steel.

  He didn’t speak as I went slowly up the steps to meet him. I paused a little below his level and he gazed down at me, still without a word and then his arms opened.

  The strength was still there. He held me close for a long moment, then gave me the ritual kiss on each cheek and pushed me to arm’s length.

  “You’ve grown, Stacey – you’ve grown, boy.”

  I motioned to Burke who came up the steps and I introduced them. My voice seemed to belong to a stranger, to come from far away under water and my eyes were hot. He sensed my distress, squeezed my arm and tucked it into his own.

  “Come, we’ll go in and Marco will give you a drink, colonel, while I have a word or two with this grandson of mine.”

  My throat was dry as we m
oved through the great door. Strange how you can never stop loving those who are really important to you, in spite of what they may have done.

  It was like stepping back into the past when I went into the study. It was as impressive as ever, the walls lined with books, most of which he had read. A log fire crackled cheerfully, loud in the silence, and my mother gazed down at me from the oil painting above that he’d commissioned from some English artist one year, I think when I was fourteen. And I was there, too, in framed photos that documented every stage of growth.

  The piano was in the same place by the window, the Bechstein concert grand he’d imported especially from Germany. Only the best. I stood looking down at the keyboard and picked out a note or two.

  The door clicked open behind and closed again. When I turned he was watching me. We stood there looking at each other across the room and I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single thing to say.

  And again, with that enormous perception of his, he knew and smiled. “Play something, Stacey, it’s in tune. I have a man out from Palermo regularly.”

  “A long time,” I said. “The places I’ve been didn’t have pianos like this.”

  He stayed where he was, waiting, and I sat down, paused for a moment and started to play. Ravel – Pavane on the death of an Infanta. I only realised what it was half-way through, by some trick of memory or association, the last piece I had played in this house on the night before my mother’s funeral – her special favourite.

  I faltered and his voice broke in harshly, “Go on – go on!”

  The music took possession of me then as real music always did, flowing like water over stones, never-ending. I forgot where I was, forgot everything but the music, and carried straight on into a Schubert impromptu.

  I finished, the last note died and when I looked up, he was standing looking up at the portrait. He turned and nodded gravely. “It’s still there, Stacey, after all this time. She would have been pleased.”

  “I’d never have made the concert platform, you know that,” I said. “I think you always knew, but she didn’t.”