by Jack Higgins
I got to one knee and he shook his head. “You’re wasting your time. I’ve been counting. One in the garden, one on the stairs, three for Piet. That makes five which is all you ever carry in that thing – unless you reloaded on the way up.”
A game – a monstrous game in which we each played our parts. I shook my head and dropped the Smith and Wesson into my pocket. “No, you’re right, it’s empty.”
“This is it, then, Stacey,” he said. “We’ve come a long way since the ‘Lights of Lisbon’.”
I picked up the lupara. “You know what this is?”
“Sure – Hoffer showed it to me. The Mafia favour them – the traditional way of finishing off a vendetta. Not much use beyond six feet. You’d have to get close, Stacey.”
“I’ll get close,” I said, stood up and thumbed back the hammer. “You never amounted to a row of beans without me at your back. Let’s see how good you are on your own.”
He was right, of course. A sawn-off shotgun spreads so quickly that I hadn’t a hope in hell of really hurting him where he stood which was a good twenty paces away.
I started to walk, staring death in the face, and Rosa cried out sharply. Somewhere I heard a car engine and then another, the slam of doors, voices in the night. Mafia arriving too late.
There was only the rain and Burke standing there at the end of a dark tunnel, his face frozen, every line etched deep, the eyes boring into me so that we were caught together in our own timeless moment.
And then a strange thing happened. The Browning wavered. He took a step back and then another. I don’t know what it was that caused it. Perhaps my relentless approach, my apparent contempt for sudden death, the expression on my face! Whatever it was, he cracked – came apart at the seams.
“Stay away from me! Stay away!”
He took three quick paces back, lurched into the low retaining wall and went over with a desperate cry.
I stood there swaying slightly, then dropped the lupara. Rosa was there, holding on to me tightly, crying into my shoulder. I stroked her head absently, then moved to the wall and looked down at him, broken across the steps of the terrace sixty feet below.
When I finally turned, my grandfather was there and Marco together with three hard-looking gentlemen who clutched machine pistols as if thoroughly accustomed to their use.
“You’re too late,” I said. “All over.”
Barbaccia moved towards me. “You’re all right?”
“Me? I’m fine. Just Burke and his boy friend dead and a couple of Hoffer’s thugs chipped up a little. What do you think I’ll get? Ten years? Fifteen? Rome doesn’t like this sort of thing any more. It’s bad for the tourist trade.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Stacey, listen to me. All this is nothing. Burke and his friend go so deep under the earth that no one ever finds them. The others, I fix – I fix everything. They know better than to cross Mafia.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s marvellous because to tell you the truth, I’ve had enough gaols to last me a lifetime and I’ve got other plans like taking the first plane to anywhere out of Sicily tomorrow.”
He looked completely shocked, reached out an uncertain hand. “Stacey, you don’t know what you’re saying. You must stay with me.”
“Stay with you?” I laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t cut you down if you were hanging. I’ve news for you. I made a very interesting discovery tonight. I found out who murdered my mother – you did.”
It was the cruellest thing I could have said, however true, and he wilted, became old before my eyes. I turned and pushed my way past his bully boys, feeling suddenly very, very tired.
I got as far as the door and staggered a little and then there was an arm supporting me. Rosa was there, her face full of pride and she had stopped crying.
“Let me help you, Stacey.”
“Can you cook as well?”
“You’ve never tasted pasta like it.”
“Then you’re the girl for me. Only one stipulation. We do things right at the first opportunity. I’m sick of irregular habits.”
She started to cry again as we descended the stairs and I patted her shoulder. “My clothes will still be in my room, I suppose. Pack a bag for me and whatever you need for yourself, and don’t forget your passport. I’ll see you downstairs. And I’ll have my wallet.”
She gave it to me and went into her room and I made it down to the hall under my own steam. It was raining harder than ever when I went into the garden and moved along the terrace at the front of the villa.
He seemed peaceful enough lying there in the rain, although from the look of him his spine was broken and the back of the skull was crushed.
I thought about a lot of things standing there, but mainly of that first time we’d met at the “Lights of Lisbon.” If only one could hold moments for ever, if only people didn’t change, but that was not possible. Life was not like that.
Now I was tired, now all I wanted to do was shelter from the darkness in some corner of warmth and if I was lucky, luckier than most people ever are, Rosa would provide that. Rosa and the piece of paper worth fifty thousand dollars that reposed in the lining of my wallet and I smiled wryly, remembering him solemnly sealing the manilla envelope containing the blank withdrawal form I’d substituted for the real thing that day at the bank.
Poor Sean – poor Sean Burke. I took out the Smith and Wesson, dropped it on his chest and left him there in the rain. A poor exchange, perhaps – for him, but not for me.
***
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