It was as he was leaving one of those “salutary” sessions that he was seized by Aldo Martini and another of Bontade’s hounds. They pushed him into a Cadillac and, holding him firmly under their feet, brought him to Tom Bontade’s bunker in Beechhurst.
When he stood in front of the boss, Bontade told him that he had nothing to fear and handed him a glass of whiskey. Saro sank onto the sofa and drank. His head was still woozy, and he hoped the alcohol’s kick would jolt him back to reality. He focused on Bontade, who now stood in front of him holding a sheet of paper.
“Read this. It concerns you personally.”
Saro grabbed the paper and glanced at it absently. It took some time to recover a sufficient degree of attention. All he saw was a list of names, and he declined to read them.
“What is it?”
“It’s a list of undesirables: people who will sooner or later be sent back to their country of origin and who will no longer be able to set foot in America. Go ahead, read the names,” Bontade urged.
“I don’t feel like reading all those fucking names.” Saro tossed away the sheets, which landed at Aldo Martini’s feet.
Martini was quick to pick it up and hand it to him again.
Meanwhile, Tom Bontade lost his patience and shouted, “It’s got your name on it too! Read it!”
This time Saro did as he was told and quickly scanned the list of names until he came to his own: Saro Ragusa.
Bontade jumped in before he could ask.
“That’s a copy. The original is in the Prosecutor’s Office. I can’t tell you how I got it because the document is confidential. Top secret.” Bontade was already relishing the moment when he would make his disclosure. “Aren’t you going to ask me who drew up the list?” he asked after a while.
Saro looked up. “Who is the bastard?”
“Your dear friend Ferdinando Licata,” Bontade replied.
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s the absolute truth. I know it’s difficult to swallow, but it’s true. Those who know him realize that such duplicity is nothing new for him. He gets people to help him, and then after using them he throws them in the trash.”
“That’s bullshit, I’m telling you!” Saro yelled firmly.
“Then tell me: Does the Blue Lemon mean anything to you?” Bontade asked cruelly.
Saro felt lost. What did Bontade know about the Blue Lemon? He tried to appear casual. “It’s a club in Chelsea. I went there a few times.”
“How come you don’t go there anymore?”
“I never said that.”
Bontade knew everything, it seemed to Saro. Would he blackmail him now?
“I’ll tell you why: because you supposedly beat up a beautiful girl named Marta there, along with a poor, innocent john. That’s how come.”
Now he had Saro’s back against the wall.
“There’s a ‘but,’ however,” Bontade added cryptically.
“I said you ‘supposedly’ beat up, not ‘beat up,’ and you know why? Because in reality, you didn’t kill anyone that night; you were too drunk to even lift your little finger.”
What was Bontade trying to say? What did he actually know? Saro was silent.
Bontade’s face was close enough to nearly touch noses. “It wasn’t you who attacked those two. They let you believe that. I have a witness who saw it all. He was present at the scene. I’m telling you: it wasn’t you who beat up that bitch and her client.”
The revelation inched its way into his brain like a tapeworm. The idea became more and more unbearable. Saro resisted it with every ounce of strength in him, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
“Think about it. Think back to that night: you were drunk. Do you have so much as a shred of recollection of having killed the man or the woman?” Bontade pressed him, seeing that Saro was about to give in. “You can’t remember because you didn’t do it. Your memory only goes back to when you passed out on the bed. Then a burly guy came in, his face disfigured by scars. My informant got a good look at him. You know him. He’s buddy-buddy with your boss, Prince Licata. Jack Mastrangelo came in after you, clobbered the woman first, then the man, with his bare hands. Then he smeared blood on your hands. He skinned your knuckles by scraping them against the wall. Finally, in the dead of night, when no one was around, he hoisted you on his back and took you away from there, to a dark alley.”
“That’s all bullshit!” Saro kept protesting, but he was about to cave.
“That’s exactly how it happened, and don’t ask me why your boss and his henchman staged that lovely performance. The fact is, they implicated you and made you seem like a murderer. I don’t know why, maybe to be able to blackmail you one day. Who knows?”
Saro was a bomb ready to explode. The effects of the opium and whiskey, coupled with Bontade’s words, were making his temples pound with the rhythm of a jackhammer. Those words summoned up the most heinous memory of his life, an event that had shaped his recent years and plunged him into despair with no way out. He sprang from the couch, enraged.
Bontade twisted the knife. “I understand, it’s terrible to feel betrayed by one’s friends. Those who tell us they want to help us, who give us a chance to become who knows what. To them we give our all—even our life if need be. And then we find out that the first chance he got, that benefactor of ours became our destroyer. This paper says it clearly: ‘Saro Ragusa.’ ” He waved the list of undesirables at the young man. “Ferdinando Licata—u patri, as you call him—compiled this list to get rid of all the little men he no longer needs. Licata has to die!” So saying, he rose from the couch and handed Saro a short-barrel .38.
Saro grabbed the pistol and asked, “Is that it?”
Bontade nodded.
* * *
The prince’s niece had never gotten over little Ginevra’s death. Every day, Betty went to the cemetery and spent hours in front of her daughter’s resting place. She planted little flowers around the grave, shifted the rag dolls from one side of the stone marker to the other. Ever since the day of the attack, she hadn’t wanted to see her uncle, whom she viewed as responsible for what had happened to the little girl. Her daughter’s tiny body had cushioned the blast and saved her uncle’s life, whereas he should have been the one to protect the child. The woman was unable to come to terms with what had happened.
Ferdinando Licata felt that it was time for him to reach out to his beloved niece again. He spoke with her husband, who’d been trying to drown his sorrow over the loss of his daughter by working nonstop.
That morning, Nico took him to Brooklyn, to Green-Wood Cemetery, where Ginevra was buried. He spotted Betty on one of the steep little hills of the cemetery, busy wiping off the gravestone with a cloth.
Licata remembered how moved he had been, that day at the Port of New York, when he first saw her again after so many years. As on that day, he felt a lump in his throat. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain his niece had suffered over the loss of her child.
The prince was holding a bouquet of daisies. He crossed the lawn, heading toward Betty. Nico let him go ahead. The woman looked up from the grave and saw him standing in front of her, nervously clutching the flowers. She didn’t say a word and went back to wiping the marble more fervently.
“Elisabetta . . .” Licata whispered.
The young woman couldn’t hold out any longer. Turning to him, she grabbed his shoulders and clung to him desperately. Ferdinando’s strong arms encircled her as he buried his face in her hair, choking back tears. Betty burst into uncontrollable sobs of release. They embraced like that for several long minutes as Nico stood watching them, moved as well.
Then Betty collected herself. She slipped out of her uncle’s arms and wiped her tears with a small handkerchief. “Zio, Ginevra is looking down on us from heaven.”
“Now she’s happy. And she’s scolding me because I called you Elisabetta and not Betty.” Licata smiled sadly.
His niece smiled too. Then s
he noticed her husband and went over to hug him too.
Suddenly a voice behind them shouted, “What a performance! Crocodile tears from Prince Licata!” Saro, distraught and beside himself with rage, was gripping Tom Bontade’s .38.
“Saro, are you drunk? Why did you follow me?” Licata cried.
“To tell everyone what a bastard you are! You have a black hole where your conscience should be. Look at him, people! This is u patri. A father without children, because he devours them!”
“Saro, that’s enough! Calm down!” Licata tried to impose his authority.
“Now that I know what you’re capable of, I despise you!” Then he turned to Betty and Nico, who were completely stunned by the verbal attack. “As long as you’re useful to him, this gentleman places you on a pedestal. Then when he no longer needs you, he throws you away with the trash. That’s what he does to everyone, and that’s what he did to me too.”
“Have you lost your mind? Whatever they may have told you, it’s a lie!” Licata insisted.
“A lie? What about this?” He pulled the list of undesirables out of his jacket pocket and waved it in the air. “This list was written by you!” Then he spoke to Betty and Nico again: “This is a list of people who will be expelled from America permanently because he so decided. And my name is on it too! That way, Prince Licata will be rid of his closest collaborators!” He pointed the gun at him, determined to shoot.
“No!” Betty’s scream drew his attention. “Your destiny follows you relentlessly, Zio. You can’t run from yourself! And the loved ones closest to you have to pay for your decisions! Enough is enough now! Stay away from me! Stay away from us!”
She grabbed Nico’s arm and forced him to leave. Licata watched her storm off; then he turned angrily to Saro.
“Do you mind telling me what’s got into you? Is it that shit you smoke, clouding your brain so you suddenly get these crazy impulses?”
“I know all about it. You lied to me—you and Jack Mastrangelo. The two of you manipulated me like a puppet! You treated me like the world’s biggest idiot. I won’t stand for it. Not even from you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“About the Blue Lemon! Go on, tell me about the Blue Lemon! Tell me how Mastrangelo beat up two people, and then you let me think it was me. Do you deny it?”
Someone must have seen Mastrangelo and leaked the truth to Saro, Licata thought. “Who told you that bullshit?” the prince asked uncertainly.
“Your pal Bontade. He described the scene in complete detail. You lied to me. You’ve always lied to me, even when you lay dying in a hospital bed. You made me think I had been the one who murdered those two people. And you betrayed me. You betrayed me when you wrote up this list. A person like you only deserves to die.” He pointed the pistol firmly at Licata.
“Wait, Saro. I didn’t betray you. I swear to you. I never betrayed you.”
“Too bad.” Saro fingered the trigger.
For the first time in his life Ferdinando Licata felt he was done for. “I’ve always protected you! You’re the person I care most about in this world! I swear!”
“Too late.” He stiffened his wrist, as Mastrangelo had taught him, to be ready for the gun’s recoil.
Licata understood the young man’s desperation. “Saro, don’t shoot! I swear I never betrayed you. I could never betray my own son!”
“You’ll try anything, right?”
“It’s the truth. You’re my son, Saro. My son! I’m your real father.” Licata’s sorrowful tone left no room for doubt.
Saro lowered the pistol. “Don’t screw around with me! Don’t fuck with me!”
Licata went to him. “You’ve always known that the Ragusas aren’t your natural parents, haven’t you? That you were adopted by them, right?”
“They’re my only parents.”
“And they’ve been exemplary with you, but your real mother’s name was Carole.” Licata was moved as never before. “She was a beautiful English girl: adventurous, cheerful, free, and easy. We met in Sicily. She loved to travel. We fell in love at first sight. I spent the happiest days of my life with her. Unforgettable days. They are imprinted in my mind, and I will carry them with me to the grave.”
Saro was stunned. That revelation only confused his thinking even more.
“You are the fruit of our love.”
“I’m your son?”
“Yes,” the prince replied quietly.
“Then why did you give me up for adoption?”
“It is the greatest regret of my life,” Ferdinando Licata finally confessed, releasing a weight that he had carried for well over twenty years. “I’m to blame. I’m solely to blame . . .
“Forgive me, Saro, forgive me.” He took the hand that still clutched the pistol and kissed it. Saro drew back his hand, frightened at seeing the prince in that state. He had never seen him so vulnerable and weak. “It was my fault. I was almost forty years old, and I was afraid to marry a woman, to have a child. The work I was doing would not allow me to have enduring bonds. I could be blackmailed. I gave you and Carole up in exchange for power.”
“You abandoned me.”
“Carole died two days after giving birth. They couldn’t stop the hemorrhaging. I refused to see you for fear of becoming attached to you. I was insane. Only a madman acts like that, but at the time, things were tough. There was no room for family ties,” he said, resuming his usual irrefutable tone. “I chose the most decent people in Salemi, and I gave you up to be adopted by them. Dr. Ragusa was a decent man and an educated one. He was an excellent father to you. I always kept track of you, thinking one day I would be able to tell you everything and be reunited with you. I never wanted for you to learn the truth in circumstances such as these. Unfortunately, fate often arranges things differently from what we have planned.”
“Very touching. But why saddle me with a murder that I didn’t commit?”
“You must believe me. Given your respectful ways, you would never have gotten far in this world of wolves. I had to bring out whatever evil there was in you. Believing that you had committed that murder would give you enough self-assurance in crime to be able to move confidently among killers and thieves.”
“Yeah, that incident changed my life.”
“That’s what I wanted. And as for that list—well, it’s a red herring. Haffenden, the commander of naval intelligence, and I decided to put your name on the list to allow you to come and go in Sicily without suspicion. In fact, you’ll have to leave for the island with the first contingent of OSS secret agents who will prepare for the landing of the American troops.”
“Sounds like a very complex scheme.”
“Yes. It’s a brilliant scheme. But I haven’t told you everything yet. I have great plans for you. The landing will play in our favor. You will manage the subsequent normalization period. You and Don Calò will put friends of friends in strategic posts essential to our future dealings, and you will be their boss. I’ll remain in New York and see to maintaining a direct line with you. You and I will control the Cosa Nostra’s main areas of trade. Do you realize what that means?”
Saro was struck by Licata’s words. Then he embraced him, as he had never done with anyone. And for the first time in his life, he murmured, “Papa.”
Chapter 54
Jack Mastrangelo hadn’t heard any word about his niece for several weeks now.
Bontade had told him not to worry. As long as he was alive, the girl had nothing to fear.
Mastrangelo’s investigations had petered out. He didn’t believe Bontade; on the contrary, he was afraid his niece may have already been killed, and the thought of it drove him mad.
But Aurora wasn’t dead. Indeed, the enforced wait, the fear of those men who took turns around her, the violent acts of one who, unseen by the others, stroked her private parts, awakening unfamiliar sensations—all these things had dispelled the constant fog that clouded her brain.
With each passing d
ay, images and people popped up in her mind, impressions that her psyche had hidden away in a corner so as not to upset her. She saw and recognized the face of her mother. She remembered her name, Elena. She remembered her screaming desperately. And she remembered those big hands around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, until the woman fell on top of her.
Her thoughts were distinct, and the scene, which she went over every day in her mind, invariably made her cry. But it was the kind of crying that made her feel better.
She remembered the faces of the ladies dressed in black, their heads wrapped in white cloth strips. She could remember some kind ones among them and some less so.
Aurora also remembered the little garden behind the house. One day it occurred to her that if she could remember, she could also speak like she had at one time. She tried to say “Hello, Aurora.” But only an incoherent croak came from her mouth. She had to exercise her vocal cords. She was sure she would be able to talk. She looked around. She spent the hours of the day waiting for meals, admiring the objects that had been stored up in that room, unable to imagine what fate had in store for her.
* * *
By mutual accord, Licata and Mastrangelo decided it was time to take action.
Every year in late spring, Bontade’s Beechhurst estate had its final cord of firewood delivered. The pickup truck stopped on the side of the main building. Besides Aldo Martini, Bontade had insisted on having three trusted bodyguards with him: Vincenzo Sanfilippo, Antonio Vella, and Peter Alaimo, illegal immigrants who had recently arrived from Italy and had been given to him by a cousin in Sicily.
Vincenzo and Peter thoroughly checked both the truck and the two men who had brought the load. Everything seemed okay, so they ordered the two men to unload the wood and stack it in a corner of the garden.
The bodyguards kept an eye on them until the pickup disappeared down the road.
A few days later, in the early morning, Antonio Vella went to get an armload of wood for the fireplace in the living room, where Bontade had lately started having his breakfast. As he lit the wood, Antonio Vella had no idea that the last load had been sprayed with a deadly, highly toxic substance. Prolonged exposure to fumes resulting from the burning of the toxin would, in the long run, fatally poison anyone who inhaled the vapors.
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