The Sacco Gang

by Andrea Camilleri

  After the violent death of their boss, the Raffadalese Mafia acted like a punch-drunk boxer who can only stagger and doesn’t know what to do next.

  The Saccos, however, are certain that this disarray won’t last long, and that the boxer will recover quickly to fight more savagely than before.

  This is perhaps why Salvatore decides to go into hiding himself, to lend his brothers a hand.

  The three Saccos, however, no longer feel safe up on the Palombaia mountain. By now everybody knows they’re hiding in some cave out there, assisted by the local peasants.

  They need to go to a place still unknown to both the Mafia and the law.

  They remember having given help and lodging, a few years earlier, to a young man from Aragona by the name of Giovanni, who had escaped from prison.

  He’s certain to repay the favor.

  But they need to discover his whereabouts, because he’s still a fugitive. Salvatore goes out looking for him, ultimately finds him, and brings him back.

  Giovanni listens carefully to the brothers’ request and immediately says he’s willing to help them without reservation, just as they had once done for him.

  But he says that he needs two days, at the very least, to find a place where the Saccos can stay safely.

  “But where are you staying?” Vanni asks him.

  “Nobody else can come where I’m staying. Here’s what we’ll do. If I can’t find a place for you right away, I’ll definitely get back in touch with you in two days’ time.”

  Indeed, two days later, he comes back to the Sacco brothers.

  With him he’s brought a mule mare equipped with two cuffuna, large wicker baskets containing only straw inside.

  He tells them he hasn’t found a place yet, but that in the meantime he can put them up in a country cottage of his, just outside Aragona.

  They head out.

  The young man leads the way on his mule, with the three brothers following behind, though staggered at a distance from one another, guns at the ready.

  At the gates of Aragona, the young man stops, gets down from his mule, and waits for Vanni to come forward ahead of the other two brothers.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re not allowed to pass through Aragona with guns in your hands.”

  “When we get into town we’ll put our revolvers in our pockets and our rifles on our shoulders.”

  “All right. But you should know that there are Carabinieri patrols in town.”

  Running into the Carabinieri would not be a good thing.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “Put your weapons in the cuffuna, and I’ll bury them under the straw. You can take them back out after we’ve passed through the town.”

  It’s a reasonable suggestion.

  But Vanni doesn’t like it. By this point he simply can’t go anywhere unarmed, and so he orders Salvatore and Alfonso to follow his example and keep their handguns and rifles at hand.

  “Suit yourselves,” the young man says with a shrug. Then he adds: “But then we can’t go down the main street of town. The Carabinieri are looking for me, too. We’ll take the first road to the left.”

  They set out again, but the youth has his mule pull out ahead, as if he wanted to put more distance between him and the other three.

  Vanni notices this and becomes suspicious.

  Things are starting to seem fishy to him.

  And so he whispers to his brothers the name of an owner of a farmhouse in the area, whom he knows they can trust. If anything goes wrong, they should all meet back up there.

  They turn onto the street to the left. It’s flanked by stone walls on both sides.

  They barely have time to take a dozen steps when, all of a sudden, a deadly burst of gunfire opens up on the three of them.

  They’ve walked into an ambush.

  How many gunmen are there, anyway? Ten, twenty, thirty? Bullets are raining down from all sides.

  The three brothers are not taken by surprise, however. With their suspicions aroused by the Aragonese youth’s strange manner, they’re able to retreat under their own wild cover of gunfire.

  If they’d taken the young man’s advice and disarmed, they would now be three corpses on a city street.

  They meet back up late that night at the farmhouse. But it’s a little too close to Aragona. The men who ambushed them may still be looking for them.

  Vanni has a cut on his left arm where a bullet grazed him, but he doesn’t want to waste any time dressing the wound. They have to get away from that accursed place as quickly as possible and return to their prior hideouts. There, at least, everyone was on their side.

  *

  One week later, the Aragonese youth who betrayed them is found dead from a rifle shot.

  For the Carabinieri, there’s no doubt whatsoever. The culprit is Vanni, taking revenge for the young man’s betrayal.

  But how—the Saccos wonder—did the Carabinieri find out that there’d been an arrangement between them and the victim, and that the youth had used the arrangement to set them up?

  At first, they have no answer.

  They’re convinced the kid sold them to the Mafia.

  And this was, in fact, the case, except that the Mafia had also invited the Carabinieri to the hunting party. So behind one wall, shooting at the Saccos, was the Mafia, and behind the other wall were the guardians of the law.

  The Saccos’ version of the murder is that the youth was killed by the Mafia because he’d failed in his task of persuading the brothers to put their weapons in the baskets.

  *

  One morning, a few days after the abortive ambush, Salvatore goes to talk to a friend, who’s working in a field outside a town nearby.

  On his way there, the ring linking the strap on the rifle he’s holding, barrel-down, on his shoulder, suddenly breaks free, and the weapon risks falling to the ground. Without thinking, he hooks the strap’s buckle onto the metal trigger guard and keeps on walking.

  A short while later, as the trail becomes harder to negotiate, he stumbles on a rock, and the abrupt movement of his body causes the strap buckle to catch on the trigger.

  A shot goes off and hits Salvatore squarely in the foot.

  This would have been enough of a disaster in itself, in that they had to amputate one of his toes in a Palermo hospital. But Salvatore could never have imagined that the injury would become a piece of evidence against him.

  *

  Less than a month goes by before two of the Saccos’ cousins, Giovanni Plano and Stefano Mangione, both fathers with clean records, truly honest men and considered by all as such, lose their lives in a shoot-out.

  Here’s how it went.

  Giovanni Plano and Stefano Mangione, who’d brought his ten-year-old son along with him, were in a group of people who’d stopped at a drinking trough to rest and have a bite to eat.

  They were on their way back from Ribera, where they’d gone to sell some livestock, and so they had a tidy sum of money in their pockets.

  As they’re getting up to resume their return journey to Raffadali, Mangione’s little boy, who’s walked ahead a bit, comes running back, saying that he’s seen some armed men a short distance away.

  They’d signaled to him to go on and keep walking, but the boy got scared, turned tail, and ran back towards his father.

  The whole group immediately think that it must be people who want to steal the proceeds from the sale of their animals, and so they begin to proceed with extreme caution, rifles in hand.

  All at once Vincenzo Mangione, Stefano’s brother, who’s quite scared and nervous, sees some shadows appear and opens fire.

  The others immediately return fire.

  The two cousins also start shooting, but get the worst of the exchange.

  Later it wi
ll be Vincenzo Mangione himself, crying his eyes out, who tells the Saccos what happened.

  The Carabinieri, however, have meanwhile found all the money gained from the livestock sale, untouched, in the dead men’s pockets. Therefore it was not a robbery.

  Want to bet, they tell themselves, that the Saccos had something to do with this?

  Maybe Plano and Mangiano didn’t want to help the Saccos, and so the fugitives killed them.

  This triggers a search of the Sacco home, and the authorities find Salvatore there, still limping from the injury to his foot.

  “How did that happen?”

  Salvatore can’t very well tell them his rifle went off by accident, since his gun permit had been taken away some time before.

  One look, however, is enough for the Carabinieri to realize that the injury was caused by a firearm.

  “You got this injury when Plano and Mangione were trying in vain to defend themselves against you.”

  Conclusion: the double murder will end up falling on the shoulders of Salvatore, Alfonso, and Vanni.

  The Saccos are unable to use Vincenzo Mangione’s confession in their own defense.

  On top of everything else, another of Vincenzo’s brothers, Francesco, is married to Filomena, the Saccos’ sister.

  Despite this lack of defense, one year later, the Palermo Court for the Prosecution of Indictments sets them free.

  IX

  THE UNFORTUNATE HEIRS

  The Mafia, meanwhile, needs to find a new boss.

  By rights the position ought to fall to Salvatore Terrazzino, a butcher by trade—of both animals and men—second in ferocity only to Cuffaro, who considered him his ward.

  But Salvatore Terrazzino has, for some time now, been behind bars in Girgenti, awaiting a murder trial that never seems to get under way.

  And so a compromise is reached.

  The person to take Cuffaro’s place will be Terrazzino’s brother, Giovanni, former overseer of the Milone domain and a man whose capacity for murder is unquestioned, as he has already proved several times.

  For the big decisions, Giovanni will act in accordance with the instructions he receives from his brother Salvatore in prison.

  As soon as he assumes his new position, Terrazzino makes it known far and wide that his first task will be to kill the Saccos, who are guilty of having killed that fine, venerable gentleman, Giuseppe Cuffaro.

  Giovanni Terrazzino, however, is fated to enjoy his new power for only a few months.

  On the morning of January 10, 1925, the new Mafia boss is on his way back to Raffadali, in the company of his brother Domenico, after spending the night at his country house.

  It is cold outside, but the sky is clear.

  The two brothers are riding side by side along a trail empty of people at that hour of the morning, the peasants having already come out in the opposite direction on their way to work.

  The two brothers are armed. Seeing a large bird on a tree branch, Domenico, who’s an avid hunter, takes the rifle off his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to shoot that bird.”

  “No. Don’t make any noise.”

  He’s a cautious man, Giovanni Terrazzino. With the Saccos, who are doggedly determined and capable of anything, the less noise one makes, the better.

  Domenico, rifle still in his hands, looks again at the bird, which then flies away.

  Then he hears a crisp report. Just one. And he sees his brother, Giovanni, shot in the middle of his forehead, fall from his horse.

  He turns his mount and rides off, yelling in fear.

  A second shot hits him from behind in the left shoulder.

  But Domenico manages to remain in the saddle and ride desperately away.

  *

  To the marshal of the Carabinieri of Raffadali, Domenico swears up and down that he did not recognize who was doing the shooting.

  “Was there only one man?”

  “No, sir, there were two or three of them. Or maybe four.”

  “Very far away?”

  “No, just a few yards.”

  “But if they were so close, how could you not have recognized them?”

  “They had shawls over their heads.”

  Shawls hiding their faces, to avoid recognition.

  One week later, after receiving the order from his brother Salvatore in Girgenti Prison, Domenico completely changes his story, and even starts naming names to the investigating magistrate.

  “They fired at us around Portella Rognosa, and my brother Giovanni fell from his horse.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Four.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “Yessir.”

  “But didn’t you tell the Carabinieri they were wearing shawls?”

  “Yes, but they had the shawls wrapped around their heads, not their faces.”

  Then what was the point of wearing the shawls? the judge should have fired back at this point. To protect themselves from the cold?

  But the magistrate said nothing about the oddity of this, and moved on to the next question.

  “Can you name them?”

  “Yessir. Vanni Sacco, Alfonso Sacco, Filippo Marzullo, and Pietro La Porta.”

  Marzullo and La Porta are two peasants who had very good reasons for becoming friends and supporters of the Saccos. Marzullo’s father was murdered by the Mafia, and, as for La Porta, Salvatore Terrazzino personally killed two of his brothers, Luigi and Emmanuele.

  It’s a good opportunity to throw all four in jail.

  “And what did you do next?”

  “I raced away, with them shooting at my back. After I’d gone about six hundred yards, a shot hit me in the shoulder.”

  “Can you tell me why they let you get so far away before they started shooting?”

  “Maybe they didn’t mean to kill me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the Carabinieri you’d been wounded?”

  “It was light stuff. Bird shot.”

  Another witness for the prosecution is a peasant lad by the name of Vincenzo Galvano (the same name as the other witness to the killing of Cuffaro), who was in the company of Mariano Mangione, a man well on in years.

  The boy claims that right after the shoot-out, he saw Vanni and Alfonso Sacco ride by, while Mangione says that the lad is making it all up, since nobody rode past them.

  Right after making his declarations to the judge, someone gives young Vincenzo Galvano, as a token of thanks, a ticket for a ship to America.

  Mariano Mangione, after contradicting Galvano, ends up in Girgenti Prison, charged with being an accessory after the fact.

  Incidentally: having firmly maintained his denial all the while, he is ultimately released.

  In the minutes of the trial, we read that “Mangione died on August 22, 1925, as we learn from his death certificate.”

  Now, if we go and look at this death certificate, we discover that Mangione did not die of natural causes, as the trial papers would have us think, but was shot and killed.

  While Mangione was in jail, Salvatore Terrazzino threatened to kill him if he didn’t back up the Galvano boy’s story. But Mangione stood firm. Therefore there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that he was murdered on orders from Salva­tore Terrazzino.

  At any rate, the Carabinieri, the judges, and the people of Raffadali also had no doubt that the elimination of the second Mafia boss was the work of Vanni and Alfonso Sacco.

  *

  In one way or another, however, the Saccos’ message—or what is thought to be the Saccos’ message—is duly received by the right persons.

  In fact, the guy who is third in the hierarchical order of the Mafia in Raffadali, and who therefore should have replaced Giovanni Terrazzino, disappears from town,
literally from one day to the next: he was there the evening before and is gone the next morning.

  Where did he go?

  At first everyone thinks his body must be lying somewhere at the bottom of a well or at the foot of a cliff, almost surely murdered by the Sacco brothers.

  Some ten days later, however, it becomes known that he went off to hide in Palermo, and that from there he took ship for the United States along with another mafioso.

  They saw the way the wind was blowing and preferred the path of exile to the task of confronting the Saccos in battle. Such is the widespread belief.

  And the honest people of Raffadali rejoice upon feeling the Mafia’s grip on the town relax.

  *

  Meanwhile, however, the position of chief mafioso of Raffadali is still vacant, and there are some who covet it. But it requires great courage.

  There’s a guy from Santa Elisabetta, a town not far from Raffadali, by the name of Stefano Catalano, who begins speaking discreetly with low-ranking mafiosi of Raffadali, in the hopes of advancing his candidature.

  But he’s not even granted time to get moving.

  On the evening of March 9, 1926, he’s shot outside the door to his house and dies at once from the single shot.

  When his wife asks him who it was, he, with his last breath, barely has time to reply:

  “You know who it was.”

  “And do you know who it was?” the Carabinieri ask the wife.

  “Vincenzo Ariosto and Giuseppe Infantino,” the woman replies.

  The medical examiner rules out, however, that Catalano could have had enough strength left to talk.

  It’s very hard to talk when one is shot between the eyes with a bullet from a ’91 Carcano.

  At this point Catalano’s brother, Girolamo, intervenes, claiming he saw, on the same morning of the killing, at none other than Ariosto’s house, Vincenzo and Girolamo Sacco, who were behaving in guarded fashion and speaking softly with him. Without wasting a minute, the Carabinieri go and arrest Ariosto and Infantino as the material executors of the crime, and Vincenzo and Girolamo Sacco as the instigators.