We stayed a couple of hours. We ate well, we drank many bottles of rioja, and when we left we believed that we had been party to a small matter of politics. Even Don Calligaris waved his hand aside when I mentioned it, saying, ‘This is nothing of great consequence . . . I imagine we will hear a few words in the coming weeks, and then it will be gone. The Irish will be Irish and keep the whole thing within their quarter.’
Don Calligaris’s words could not have been further from the truth.
Within a week thirty-seven men had been killed, eleven from within the Chicago family, one young man the son of Don Accardo’s own cousin. Though whatever battles raged on the northside did not directly involve us, we were nevertheless aware that at any moment the telephone could ring and we could be despatched to take care of something.
By the time September arrived Chicago had fallen silent. The call we expected never came. We waited still, but there was no further word of what had happened between the Irish and Feraud’s people, save that Feraud had withdrawn his French and Hispanic soldiers from Chicago and gone home.
Don Calligaris believed the thing was done.
Christmas came and went.
We celebrated the New Year with a trip to Niagara Falls. We went – Angelina, myself, Victor and Lucia – like a real American family. We were not, had never been and never would be, but for all appearances that was what we were.
Again I broached the subject of where we would go when I ceased to work, and once more Angelina changed the subject tactfully. It seemed she did not want to mention this, as if ceasing to be part of what we had in Chicago would signal the end of something else. Perhaps she saw some sense of balance had been attained, and she did not wish to tempt fate by unsettling it. Perhaps she was doing nothing more than working out what she really wanted, because she knew that the decisions we made at this time would determine the rest of our lives. I did not know; Angelina would come to me when she was ready, and when she was ready she would tell me what she wanted to do.
In March of 1991 Don Accardo died. For a brief while the family was in disarray. Don Calligaris spent more and more time away from the house, and it became a rare occasion when I would see him.
On the sixteenth of that month Ten Cent called at my house.
‘Don Calligaris is coming tonight,’ he said. ‘He has been away dealing with family matters, but tonight he is coming back and he wants to take you and your family out for the evening. Get yourselves dressed and ready. He will bring gifts for Angelina and the children. He is very happy. Things have worked very well for him.’
I spoke with Angelina. She seemed excited, the children too, for all the children knew of Don Calligaris was that he spoke to them as if they were grown-ups, but he spoiled them like eight-year-olds.
By the time Don Calligaris came we were dressed as if for church. The children were uncontrollable, and we had to shut them in the kitchen until Don Calligaris was ready to meet them in the front.
We drove together, all of us – Don Calligaris up front with Ten Cent, me and Angelina with the children in the back. It was a warm evening for the time of year, and we went right into the heart of Chicago to the finest restaurant in the city. Out of respect for Angelina and the children Don Calligaris had chosen a place that had no family connections. For this I was grateful; I knew that my children were old enough and wise enough to hear everything that was said around them.
We ate well, we talked of inconsequential things. The children told tales of their trip to Niagara, and Don Calligaris told them a story of a visit he made to Naples when he was a boy.
My children were well-behaved and polite, interested in everything Don Calligaris had to say, and more than once he looked at me and smiled. He knew how special my family was; he understood, above all else, the importance of family, and as he spoke with them, as Angelina leaned forward to refill their glasses I watched all three of them – my wife, my son, my daughter – and I was truly aware of how I had been blessed. They were everything to me, just everything, and I believed in that moment that I had somehow shrugged off the weight of the past, the death of my own mother and father, the things that had taken place in New Orleans and Havana. I was now a man. I controlled my own life. I was someone, if only as a father and a husband, and someone was all I had ever wished to be.
The evening drew on. The children were tiring, and before I knew it we were calling for the check, gathering coats and hats, preparing ourselves to leave.
Don Calligaris gave the keys to his car to Ten Cent. ‘Take Angelina and the children,’ he said. ‘Pull the car out front. Ernesto and I will be no more than a minute.’
‘There will be changes now that Don Accardo has passed away,’ he said once we were alone. ‘We have elected a new boss, a good man, a friend of Don Alessandro’s, a man called Tomas Giovannetti. You will do well with him.’ Don Calligaris leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘For me things will change too. I will be returning to Italy at the end of the month, and I will be staying there.’
I opened my mouth to speak.
Don Calligaris raised his hand. ‘I am an old man now, much older than you. I did not have a wife and children to keep me young . . . such a wife you have, Ernesto, and your children!’ He raised his hands and clenched his fists. He laughed. ‘You have such a special family, and even though they are not mine I am proud of them.’ He lowered his hands and reached out to grip my forearm. ‘The time has come for me to make a move to pasture. You will stay here with Ten Cent, and Don Giovannetti will ensure that things are taken care of for you . . . like I said, he is a good man, believes greatly in the importance of family, and he knows of all the things you have done to assist, both here in Chicago, also in New York and Miami. I spoke well of you, but he knew already of your reputation.’
I shook my head. I did not know what to say.
‘Change is inevitable,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘Everything changes. We take the changes, we change with them, or we lose everything.’
I heard Victor calling for me at the door. I turned and saw him standing beside Ten Cent. They walked across the room towards us.
‘Angelina and Lucia are in the car out front,’ Ten Cent said. ‘We’re ready to go. The children want to go home and play with their toys.’
‘To go to bed more likely,’ I said, and started to rise from my chair.
Victor pulled a face at me, the spoiled-child face he had somehow mastered to perfection.
‘Perhaps ten minutes,’ I said. ‘Ten minutes and then bed for you, young man.’
‘Twenty,’ Victor replied.
Don Calligaris laughed and ruffled Victor’s hair. ‘That attitude I have seen before, eh Ernesto?’
‘We shall see,’ I said. ‘Now we go . . . come on.’ I took his hand and turned away from the table where we had been seated.
‘So we shall stay in touch once I am home,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘and perhaps when you are too old to keep a job in the city you will come out and see me.’
I laughed. It was a pleasant thought. The image of myself and Don Calligaris as old men sitting beneath the olive trees in the warm evening sunshine.
I looked ahead at Victor and Ten Cent. Victor reached no higher than Ten Cent’s elbow, but Ten Cent was leaning down to listen to something Victor was telling him. I could hear the sound of laughter, of people sharing one another’s company, I felt the warmth of the atmosphere, the feeling that things were going to change, but change for the better; the feeling that despite everything that had gone before us we were still alive, we had made it through this far, and we were going to make it all the way. A sense of accomplishment perhaps; a sense of pride; of certainty that somehow all was well with the world.
Later, all I could remember was the light. The way the room seemed suddenly bathed in light. The sound did not come until much later, or at least that was the way it seemed at the time, but when it came it was ferocious, like a tidal wave inside my head, and then there was the glass, and then there were peop
le screaming, and then I felt the slow-dawning realization of what had happened.
The sensation was one of something trying to escape through my ears and eyes, as if everything inside my head had built to such a pressure there was nothing for it to do but burst outwards.
I remember climbing over spread-eagled people as I ran to the door.
I remember shouting at Ten Cent to hold onto Victor.
I remember wondering if the children would be too excited to sleep once we arrived home.
Colors rushed together in a confusion and my eyes could not focus. I fell sideways and felt a sharp pain rushing through the upper part of my leg. Instinctively my hand reached for the gun in back of my waistband, but it was not there. This had been a time for my family. That’s all it had been. Surely something was wrong; surely these things – these sounds and feelings, the awareness of pain and destruction – belonged to someone else’s life?
I remember a man bleeding from the head, a sharp jag of glass jutting from his cheek, screaming for help at the top of his lungs. I remember all these things, but even those things faded when I fell out through the front doorway and saw the burned and obliterated wreck that was once Don Calligaris’s car.
Black and twisted metal, the smell of cordite and seared paint. The wave of disbelief as I realized I had somehow been thrown into someone else’s reality, for this was not happening, this was not how the evening was supposed to end, this was wrong . . . so wrong . . .
The heat was unbearable, and even as I tried to approach what was left of the vehicle I knew there was nothing I could do.
The sense of hopelessness was overwhelming. The sound inside my own head as my life collapsed.
My wife and my daughter.
Angelina and Lucia.
I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, and from my throat came a sound that was inhuman.
That sound went on for ever.
It seemed to be all I could hear for hours.
Even now I cannot recall how I made it away from that place, nor what happened to me that night.
‘I am sorry,’ Don Calligaris was saying. ‘I have pleaded with them. I have told them that I was the intended victim of this terrible thing, but there is nothing I can do.’
My head in my hands, my elbows on my knees, Ten Cent standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder, Don Calligaris ahead of me, his face white and drawn, tears in his eyes, his hands shaking as he reached out towards me.
‘I know that you have been with us all these years, and there is no question of your loyalty, and perhaps if Don Accardo was still alive he would have done something . . . but things have changed. I am no longer in possession of the influence I once had. Don Giovannetti is now in control. He does not feel that he can take an action so soon—’
Don Calligaris leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.
‘I hurt for you, Ernesto. I have done all I can. I have spoken with Don Giovannetti, and though he understands that you have been a loyal part of this family he feels that he cannot violate adherence to tradition. He is the new boss. He also has to earn his reputation and loyalties. Tradition says that we cannot avenge the death of someone who is not blood. You are Cuban, Ernesto, and your wife was the daughter of someone who was not part of this family, and though I have argued your case for hours there is nothing further I can do.’
I raised my head.
‘I have done everything I can, Ernesto . . . everything.’
I looked at Don Calligaris as if he was a stranger. ‘And me? What of me and Victor?’ I asked.
‘I have money . . . we have money, more money than you could need, but it is time for change, Ernesto, and you must make whatever decision you feel is best for yourself and your son.’
I heard his words. They were swallowed into the vast dark silence that was my mind. I said nothing in return, for there was nothing to say.
Some days later I buried my wife and my daughter. Beside me stood my son, so in shock he had not spoken since the explosion. His sister and his mother had been murdered, by whom we did not know, but whoever it was had set their heart on killing Don Fabio Calligaris and had failed. Had Don Calligaris died there would have been retribution. Had Don Accardo still been boss perhaps he would have redressed the balance, because he knew who I was and would have made a case for me before the Council of la Cosa Nostra. But things had changed; there was a new godfather, and he believed that justice would be seen to be done in time. He was not a rash man; he was a strategist and a politician, and so early in his position he believed it would not be right to act on my behalf.
I never saw Don Giovannetti. I believed, and believe to this day, that he would not have been able to look me in the eye and tell me the lives of my wife and daughter meant nothing.
The following day, two days before Don Calligaris – fearing for his life – would leave for Italy, I boarded a family-owned ship bound for Havana. With me I took a suitcase crammed with fifty-dollar bills, how much in all I did not know, and beside me as we slipped away from the harbor was my eight-year-old son Victor.
He asked me only one question as we watched the land disappear behind us.
‘Will we ever come back home?’
I turned to look at him. I reached out my hand and finger-tipped away the tears from his cheeks.
‘Some day, Victor,’ I whispered. ‘Some day we will come home.’
TWENTY-TWO
‘And that,’ Hartmann said, ‘is possibly the best reason for not having been able to find the wife. Now we know that not only is she dead, but the daughter as well.’
‘But the son,’ Woodroffe said. ‘The son is still alive. Well, we can assume that he’s still alive. He would be what, born in June 1982 . . . he would be twenty-one by now?’
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Hartmann asked.
‘That the killing of Gerard McCahill, at least the lifting of the body itself, could not have been done by Perez alone?’ Woodroffe asked.
‘Right,’ Hartmann said. ‘It has always bothered me that this whole thing was arranged and executed by one man . . . now there’s a good possibility that there were two of them.’
‘Speculation,’ Schaeffer interjected. ‘It’s nothing but another guess on our part. We don’t know anything about the son. He could be dead as well for all we know.’
‘I don’t disagree,’ Hartmann said, ‘but right now we have something to follow up on. We can assume from what Criminalistics and Forensics have told us that McCahill’s body could not have been lifted into the back of the car, and then again from the rear seat of the car to the trunk by someone alone.’
‘We can assume that, yes,’ Woodroffe stated.
‘And there was this thing about the scratches on the rear wing of the vehicle. Where’s the report?’
Schaeffer stood up and walked across the main room to a stack of bank boxes against the wall. He opened one, leafed through the pile of papers inside, and returned with Cipliano’s report.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘He says that there were some scratches on the rear wing of the car. He says they could be consistent with the rivets they put on jeans . . . you see Ernesto Perez wearing jeans?’
Woodroffe smiled. ‘Somehow I don’t think so.’
‘And the height?’ Hartmann asked.
‘Says that if the person who carried the body had used the rear wing for support, and if he’d been standing straight at the time, then his height would have been estimated at five-ten or eleven.’
‘How tall is Perez?’ Woodroffe asked.
‘About that height . . . but that tells us that his son could be about the same height as well.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Schaeffer said. ‘I’m five-nine and my son is six-one-and-a-half.’
‘It’s something,’ Hartmann said. ‘It takes me in the direction of the son . . . well, at least someone other than Perez also being involved, and the son seems the most likely possibility.’
‘We ain’t gonna know until w
e know, that’s the real truth,’ Schaeffer said.
‘And we still have the wrong name – or what we can consider to be the wrong name. If the wife and daughter were called Perez then that name would have come up,’ Woodroffe said.
‘I’m having people follow up on the car bombing. Chicago, March of ’91. If it happened, there will be details – names, reports, documents that we can access. I imagine we will have word on it within the hour.’ Schaeffer leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out beside him. He looked exhausted. ‘Don’t know about you guys, but I could manage a steak and whatever else comes with it. Feel like I haven’t had a decent meal in a week.’
‘Sounds good,’ Woodroffe said. He stood up and retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair.
Hartmann rose also. He figured no harm could be done. What else would he do? Head back to the Marriott, watch TV, fall asleep in his clothes thinking about Jess and Carol and wake in the early hours of the morning with a bitch of a headache?
‘Any suggestions?’ Schaeffer asked. ‘This is more your town than ours.’
‘Vieux Carre . . . old New Orleans side of the city. They have some great restaurants.’
‘Good enough,’ Woodroffe said. ‘We’ll leave Ross here. I’ll make sure he has all the numbers and tell him to call as soon as he gets word back on the Chicago bombing.’
The three of them left by the front entrance. Ross was located and briefed on the situation, the information that was expected.
He and three other agents stayed behind in the office to take calls, to inform Schaeffer and Woodroffe if anything came up that would require their attention. Once again, the obvious absence of so many of the field operatives reminded Hartmann of the money and manpower that were being devoted to this. Those teams had been out for days, and not one of them had come back with anything substantial.
‘Bring me a take-out or something, eh?’ Sheldon Ross called after Hartmann, and Hartmann turned and raised his hand.
‘Next time you come with us,’ Hartmann called from the doorway. ‘And we’ll talk about how to find you an FBI girl that looks like Meg Ryan!’
R. J. Ellory Page 44