In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

by Jack Higgins

  I tried to say no, tried to raise an arm, but nothing seemed to function any longer and then there was that darkness again – we were becoming old friends.

  FIFTEEN

  BEYOND, THROUGH THE open French windows, a line of poplars stood like soldiers, waiting for a sign, black against flame, the burned-out fire of day. Long white curtains ballooned in a tiny breeze, ghostlike in the cool darkness of the room. Rebirth is always painful, but my return to life was eased by one of the most beautiful evenings I have ever known.

  I was sane again, calm and relaxed, no pain anywhere until I moved and touched off some spark in my right shoulder. There was a nurse at the end of the bed reading a book by the light of a small table lamp. She turned at my movement, the starched white cap like the halo around the face of a madonna. When she leaned over me, her hand on my forehead was cooler than anything I had ever known.

  She left, closing the door quietly. It reopened almost at once and Greybeard came in.

  “How do you feel?” he asked in Italian.

  “Alive again. A remarkably pleasant sensation. Where am I?”

  “The Barbaccia villa.”

  He switched on the bedside lamp and took my pulse, composed and grave. The inevitable stethoscope was produced and probed around in the area of my chest for a while.

  He nodded, to himself, of course, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Your shoulder – it pains you?”

  “A little – when I move.”

  Behind him the door opened. I could sense his presence even before I became aware of the distinctive aroma of his Havana and then he moved into the light, his face dark and brooding, calm as always, Caesar Borgia sprung to life again, eternal and indestructible.

  “Do you think you’ll ever die?”

  As if following my thought processes perfectly, he smiled. “So, he’s going to live on us, this grandson of mine, eh, Tasca?”

  “Oh, he will survive the bullet although much work will be needed on the shoulder if he is not to suffer some permanent stiffening.” Dr. Tasca looked down at me in a kind of mild reproof. “You should not have used the arm, young man. That was unfortunate.”

  I didn’t bother to argue and he turned back to my grandfather. “No, it is his general condition that worries me. Physically speaking he is balanced on the edge of a precipice. A slight nudge and he goes straight down.”

  “Hear that?” My grandfather just prevented himself from prodding me with his stick. “You want to die young, eh?”

  “Can you make me a better offer?”

  I tried to sound gay and flippant, but Tasca obviously didn’t approve at all. “I understand you have been in prison.”

  I nodded. “Of a kind – Egyptian labour camp variety.”

  “With the chain gang?” His face for the first time registered some kind of concern. “Now we know.” He turned again to my grandfather. “When he is on his feet he must come to me for a thorough examination, capo. He could well have tubercular lesions and there are definite signs of incomplete recovery from blackwater fever which could mean kidney damage. Not only will he need treatment, but careful nursing and rest – several months of complete inactivity.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Kildare,” I said. “You’ve made my day.”

  Tasca looked completely mystified by the remark, but in any event, my grandfather dismissed him. “Back to the girl now. I want to talk to my grandson alone.”

  To my shame, it was only then that I consciously gave her a thought. “You’ve got Joanna Truscott here, too? How is she?”

  He pulled a chair forward and sat down. “She’s doing all right, Stacey. Tasca’s a specialist in brain surgery – the best in Sicily. He brought a portable X-ray unit with him and gave her a thorough examination. She’s lucky – the skull isn’t fractured. She’ll have a bad scar, probably for life, but a good hairdresser can fix that.”

  “Shouldn’t she have gone to hospital?”

  He shook his head. “No need. She couldn’t have better treatment if she did and it’s safer here.”

  I tried to sit up, my stomach hollow. “Hoffer knows then?”

  He pushed me gently back against the pillow. “Only that his stepdaughter is dead. Not officially, of course, so that the world can be told, but he’s spoken to me already on the telephone.”

  “And told you?”

  He shook his head. “He asked for a General Council meeting tonight. He’s due here in half an hour.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What General Council?”

  “Did you think I was Mafia all on my own, Stacey?” He laughed. “Sure, I’m capo – capo in all Sicily – but the big decisions are made by the Council. We have the rules and they have to be obeyed. Even I can’t break them.” He shrugged. “Without the rules we are nothing.”

  The Honoured Society. I shook my head. “All right, maybe I’m not thinking too clearly, but I still don’t see what Hoffer is doing coming here.”

  “First you tell me what happened in the mountains. We go on from there.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you don’t know?”

  “Some only. Now be a good boy and do as I say.”

  So I told him, in detail, including my various suspicions about things from the beginning and he took it all without a sign, even my deliberately graphic description of the massacre.

  When I was finished, he sat there in silence for a moment. “Why did you go, Stacey, that is what I can’t understand? You knew this man Burke was not being honest with you, you distrusted Hoffer, you knew that even I was not telling you the whole truth and yet you still went.”

  “God knows,” I said, and thinking about it in retrospect, I honestly couldn’t explain it even to myself. “Some kind of death wish, I suppose.”

  The words were my own and yet at their saying, every instinct in me rebelled. “No, to hell with it. It was Burke – always Burke. Something between us that I can’t put into words, even for myself. Something I had to prove. I can’t say more than that.”

  “You hate this man, I think? This is the truth of it.”

  I thought about that for a while and said slowly, “No, more than hate – much more. He took me with him into a dark world of his own creating, made me into what I am not, moulded me to his purpose. Up there on the mountain he told me he is a sick man, some kind of oblique explanation for his behaviour. I think he was trying to find in it an excuse for his own conduct, but he lies even to himself. He was in decay long before his lungs started to rot. He needed no excuse.”

  “Ah, now I perceive a glimmer of light,” he said. “You hate him for being something other than you previously thought he was.”

  He was right, of course, but only partially so. “You could have something there. In the early days when I first met him, he seemed the only really substantial thing in a world gone mad. I believed in him completely.”

  “And later?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “I was the one who changed, he didn’t. He was always what he is now, that’s the terrible thing. The Sean Burke I thought I knew in Lourenco Marques and after never actually existed.”

  The silence enveloped us and I lay there thinking about it all. Finally I looked up at him again. “You knew what they intended, didn’t you?”

  “In part only and guessed the rest. Hoffer was deported from the States some years ago after a prison sentence for tax evasion. He worked with Cosa Nostra, then came to us here in Sicily with several of his old American-Sicilian Mafia associates. They brought in new ideas as I told you. Drugs, prostitution, other kinds of vice. I didn’t want them, but they were all Mafia.”

  “Once in, never out?”

  “That’s right. The Council said they were entitled to be in.”

  “So you took them?”

  He nodded. “Mostly they were good administrators, I’ll say that for them. Hoffer, for example, took over the running of our oil interests at Gela. On the face of it, he did a good job, but I never trusted him – or
his associates.”

  “And these were the men who worked against you?”

  “Nothing is as simple as that. Sometimes together, often individually, they would give me trouble. They thought it would be easy, that they could fast-talk the stupid old Sicilian peasant into the ground. Take over. When that failed, they tried other methods.”

  “Including the bomb that killed my mother? You knew they intended to kill you if possible and still you worked with them?” I shook my head. “Sharks – tearing each other to pieces at the smell of blood.”

  “Still you don’t see.” He sighed. “The Council is Mafia, Stacey, not Vito Barbaccia alone. The rules said they were entitled to be in. The other business was personal.”

  “And you killed them all according to the rules, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Any one of them could have been behind the bomb that killed your mother – or all of them.”

  “Then why is Hoffer still around?”

  “Drop by drop is better. I have my own way of doing things,” he said grimly. “Hoffer is a very stupid man, like all men who think they are clever. He married this English widow, this aristocrat, for her money. Unfortunately she was smarter than he realised and soon sized him up for what he really was. She wouldn’t give him a penny.”

  “Why didn’t she leave him?”

  “Who knows with a woman? Love, perhaps? So he eased her out of this world into the next with a carefully contrived accident – he still doesn’t realise that I know about that, by the way – then discovered she had left him nothing.”

  “Everything to Joanna.”

  “Exactly, except that under the terms of the trust he was next in line if the girl died before coming into her inheritance. Once she came of age, he was finished. She could make a will on the spot, leave it to charity or some obscure cousin – anything. No point in even killing her then.”

  He got to his feet and moved to the window and stood there, a dark shadow again. “But he wasn’t simply motivated by greed in his desire to lay hands on his stepdaughter’s fortune. He was afraid. He faced a death sentence. He used our money, Mafia money, in various bullion deals, mainly in Egypt, hoping to make a personal killing. Unfortunately someone tipped off the authorities. On two occasions his boats were caught red-handed.”

  “Someone informed the authorities? Someone called Vito Barbaccia?” I laughed until I started to choke and he hurried to my bedside and poured water into a glass. I gulped some down and handed the glass back to him. At least I’d made him look anxious.

  “It’s really damned ironic, isn’t it?” I told him. “Didn’t you know that I was in one of those boats? That’s how I came to be in an Egyptian prison?”

  For once in his life I’d stopped him cold. A hand stretched out towards me, there was utter dismay on his face. “Stacey,” he stammered. “What can I say? I did this to you?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “It’s too funny to be tragic. Now let me have the next thrilling installment.”

  He sank down into his chair again, obviously still shaken. “All right. Hoffer had to have his chance to recoup so that the Society shouldn’t suffer. The Council met to consider his case. He confessed frankly, but tried to make out that the deals had been intended to benefit the Society. Not that it did him any good. Even if that was the truth, he’d had no authority from the Council to proceed. He admitted his liability and asked for time to get the money together.”

  “And time was given?”

  “There was no reason to refuse. He told the Council that under the terms of his wife’s will, he had been left substantial business interests in America. That he could realise these within two or three months and have more than enough money to put things right.”

  “And the Council believed him?”

  “Why should he lie? If he didn’t come up with the money he would be taken care of, no matter where he tried to run.”

  “But you knew he was lying?”

  He nodded tranquilly. “The true measure of Hoffer’s stupidity lies in the fact that he can’t accept that an old Sicilian peasant is smarter than he is. I’ve always been one step in front of him – always. I saw a photostat of his wife’s will, even before he knew the terms.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the Council?”

  “I was interested. I wanted to see what he would come up with.”

  “And be one step ahead of him as usual? You knew that his solution was to get rid of his stepdaughter before she came of age?”

  “Let us say that after having seen the actual will, it had occurred to me as a likely possibility. Later, I got wind of the business with Serafino, of how it had gone wrong.”

  “And then I turned up and brought you up to date.” I was getting angry again. “If you knew the girl was with Serafino because she wanted to stay out of Hoffer’s way till her birthday, you must have known that the purpose of our little foray into the mountains as outlined to me was a lie. That the only reason there could possibly be for going in there was to destroy her.” My voice had risen slightly. “What in the hell did you think was going to happen when we got there and I found out, or did you think I was lying to you? Did you think I’d become a murderer of young girls?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Stacey,” he said coldly. “You are my flesh – I know you. That kind of deed we leave to the Hoffers and the Burkes of this world. Men without honour.”

  “Honour?” I laughed wildly. “Didn’t you realise that Burke would have to kill me because he knew I’d never stand by and see them murder the girl? That you, by your silence, were sending me to my death as surely as Hoffer?”

  “But I had no choice, don’t you see?” he said patiently. “Listen and try to understand, Stacey. The Council gave Hoffer time – time to recoup their money and how he did that was of no particular concern. They expected either cash on the barrel on the due date or his head – nothing less. But once a member has been given time he is entitled to follow his operation through without interference from within the Society. If I had warned you that he intended to have the girl killed, urged you to prevent it, I would have been guilty of breaking one of the oldest of Mafia laws.”

  “Death at last for Vito Barbaccia, is that what you are saying?”

  “Death?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “You think that frightens me? But I thought I had made it clear to you? The rules are there for all to obey, even the capo. Without them we are nothing. They are the strength of the Society, the reason we have survived. Oh no, Stacey, he who breaks the rules deserves to die – must die.”

  It occurred to me for the briefest of moments that I might be going out of my head. I was moving into an unknown country now with attitudes and rules of behaviour as archaic and formalised as a Court of Chivalry in the Middle Ages.

  Thinking was an effort, but I managed to say, “It still doesn’t hang together. I didn’t know Hoffer was Mafia, but he knew I was your grandson and I made it clear to Burke that I had discussed our mission with you.”

  “But why should that worry him? The story of his stepdaughter’s kidnapping was acceptable enough, including his reasons for handling it quietly and the thought that his story about the money from the trust fund had been accepted by everyone including me. What could this affair of the Truscott girl have to do with that?”

  Which made enough sense to get by. Certainly it was as acceptable an explanation as anything else that had been offered to me in this nightmare world of Mafia politics.

  “Which still leaves us with the fact that you could have warned me,” I said slowly. “You could have given me some kind of an idea of what was going on, told me at least that Hoffer was Mafia on that first night when I discussed things with you.”

  “Only by breaking our law, Stacey, and that I could not do. Hoffer knew that and I had everything to gain by remaining silent. It was Hoffer who brought you into the affair, Hoffer and this man Burke who lied to you. If you turned against them, Hoffer could blame no one but himself.” />
  “This Council of yours might have other ideas,” I said. “They might find it difficult to believe that your grandson wasn’t working under your direct orders.”

  “Which remains to be seen,” he said. “But you must come to the meeting, Stacey, and see for yourself. It should be rather amusing.”

  “Amusing!” If I had been close enough I think I might have struck him at the moment. “I could have been killed up there, don’t you understand? I loved you – I’ve always loved you in spite of everything and you sent me to my death without a word for the sake of a few stupid archaic rules – a game for schoolboys with no sense to it.”

  He frowned. “To your death, Stacey – you really believe that?” He laughed harshly. “Yes, all right. I was going to keep you out that first night when you came to see me, by force if necessary. But then I talked to my grandson – saw him in action, saw him for what he was, mafioso just like his grandfather, only better. And this Burke, this hollow man, this dead thing walking with the grave stench already on him – you think I believe my grandson couldn’t handle him?”

  His voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper and he leaned close to me, one hand on the edge of the bed to support his weight. I stared at him, hypnotised.

  “Don’t you see, Stacey? Hoffer had to have his chance, the rules said so, but I wanted him flat on his belly grovelling because I believed that, of all of them, he was the man most likely to be responsible for the death of my daughter. I wanted his scheme to fail so I allowed the best, the most ruthless mafioso I have ever known to wreck it for me.”

  A wave of greyness scoured my body and I shivered as he sat back and calmly lit another cigar. “It’s just a game to you, isn’t it? The more complicated the better. You could have had Hoffer’s head blown off at any time you wanted. At home, in the street – but that wouldn’t have been good enough. It had to be a classical drama.”

  “They always last longer.” He stood up, his face calm, flicked ash from a lapel and adjusted his tie. “They’ll be here soon. I’ll send Marco with some clothes for you.”