A Death In Calabria

by Michele Giuttari

  ‘Times have changed, Angela.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, Alfredo. Times change, yes, but Don Ciccio and people like him don’t. They never change. They can’t change. Not in a hundred years. You should know that. You grew up here. Like me. I can never change either, even though I live a long way away, I am and will always be a Fedeli. You should know that! Or maybe you don’t?’ There was a touch of scorn in her voice as she uttered these last words.

  Unprepared for this reaction, he was silent for a moment or two, merely nodding his head slightly. Then he said, very calmly, ‘I know, Angela, I know, but please don’t lose your temper. If you do, something may happen to you. You’re damaging your health.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, damn it. They killed my three brothers, don’t you understand? And besides, if you’re so worried about my health, then tell me the truth! I’m sure you know it.’

  Alfredo looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Tell me once and for all what Don Ciccio wanted with you.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes, with you. You did go to his house on Saturday on the way back from the cemetery, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what did he want? And don’t give me any bullshit, Alfredo. From you, of all people, I don’t want to hear bullshit, do you understand?’ Angela rose from her chair, went to her husband, and looked him straight in the eyes. Her own eyes were as sharp as knives. She hadn’t been content with the answer Alfredo had given her when he got home on the day of the funeral itself. She had asked him then what Don Ciccio had wanted. Nothing, just to talk to me, he had replied. She had not insisted at the time, but she had not believed him, and by now she was really losing patience. She had to hear the truth from her husband’s mouth, whatever it was. But he said nothing, just looked down at the table, as if he wanted to hide or even disappear.

  ‘Look at me when I speak to you . . . Look at me! Look at me! Tonight I want to hear the truth!’

  ‘He just wanted to talk to me!’

  ‘But about what, Alfredo? What did he want to talk to you about? The mushroom harvest? Don’t bullshit me, Alfredo!’

  Her husband felt very small, like a midge about to be squashed. He had never seen her so angry or so determined. He had never heard her swear so much. No. This wasn’t the woman he had married, the woman who had given him a daughter.

  He summoned up his courage. ‘Nothing, Angela,’ he replied, barely raising his head. ‘The usual things. “How are you, how’s life in America?” Believe me. Don Ciccio’s just upset about what happened.’

  ‘About Rocco?’

  ‘About everyone. All your brothers and your cousin. They were all part of the family.’

  ‘That’s it, Alfredo. Carry on talking crap. Carry on telling me lies. This is serious, don’t you understand? I can’t stand it! Tonight I want the truth. Only the truth . . .’

  He shook his head, as if trying to dismiss the matter. He didn’t like to talk about his encounters with Don Ciccio. Not even to his own wife.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ he replied, and for the first time there was resentment in his voice. ‘I’ve always been honest with you. And with all your family. It’s my family, too.’

  ‘So tell me what Don Ciccio wanted with you,’ she demanded.

  Alfredo seemed to reflect for a few moments, with Angela’s eyes still fixed on him. He realised he would have to tell her something. His mind was a whirl of dark thoughts, thoughts that might never leave him in peace.

  ‘All right, Angela. As you wish . . .’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘He asked after my aunt, my uncle, my cousin. How they are, what they’re doing, things like that. He hasn’t seen them in ages and he was very close to my aunt’s husband. They grew up together . . .’

  ‘Is that it, Alfredo? How your relatives are? Is that what you’re telling me? . . . If he asked you about your relatives, about your cousin, he must have said something important . . . I know these people . . .’

  ‘You have to believe me. It may be he wants to tell me something else before we leave, because he asked me to come back and see him again . . . He has something to give me for them . . .’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He didn’t say, and you know you can’t ask questions of Don Ciccio.’

  ‘You’re still not telling me the truth!’ She went and sat down on the same chair as before, leaned her elbows on the table, and put her head in her hands. ‘I’m going to say one thing, Alfredo, and this is the last time I’ll say it. Think about it tonight and tomorrow. I want to know everything, otherwise it’s better that you leave. I don’t want to see you again.’

  Her voice had become almost normal again. They stopped arguing. Alfredo stood up, went to her, and touched first her neck, then her cheek. She raised her head, looked at him in surprise, and got to her feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He tried to pull her to him.

  ‘Leave me alone. This isn’t the time. You haven’t understood a damn thing! You’re an idiot. My brother Rocco was right when he told me that, but I didn’t want to believe him.’

  With an almost violent movement, she wriggled out of his grasp. Alfredo walked away from her, towards the bedroom.

  ‘You don’t understand a thing, Alfredo!’ she screamed, following him. ‘You have to tell me everything. I’m your wife, and you mustn’t forget it. I’ve lost my brothers, and you know what they meant to all of us, not only to me. Believe me, I don’t want to lose you, too, I don’t want to be a widow so young, like all the widows in this village, alive on the outside but dead inside.’

  He stopped and turned. ‘You’re wrong,’ he replied, in a resolute tone. ‘You won’t be a widow, oh, no.’ And he closed the door.

  Angela Fedeli’s last thought before falling asleep was: Before I leave, I want to go to the shrine of the Madonna of Aspromonte and pray to her that she protect me from harm and that those who killed my brothers come to a bad end.

  In New York it was 6 p.m.

  Lieutenant Reynolds had had an unusually busy day, with more than the usual number of robberies and muggings in his precinct. There had even been a grandmother who had come in with her eleven-year-old granddaughter to report that the latter had been sexually assaulted. It was the latest in a series of such assaults which had taken place recently. The assaults had become so frequent that many people believed there was more than one assailant. Reynolds, though, was sure there was only one man involved. The descriptions supplied by the victims matched perfectly: the same age, same physique, same height, above all the same completely bald, egg-shaped head. But in spite of his heavy caseload, Reynolds had continued to follow developments in the Madison homicide case: the interviews with Rocco Fedeli’s closest associates, the continuing examinations of the confiscated documents, the investigation of Fedeli’s business activities, the phone taps . . .

  The file was getting thicker by the hour, but the investigation had hardly progressed. Nor had anything emerged from re-examination of the Susan George case. And the public was becoming increasingly impatient for answers.

  Reynolds was just about to leave the office and go home, with all these thoughts buzzing around in his head, when he received a phone call from Rusty Sheridan.

  ‘Can you come over?’ Rusty asked, without preamble.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Usual place. This is important, John. It’d be best if you could come this evening.’

  There was more than a touch of nervousness in his voice.

  20

  Thursday, 13 November

  ‘There he is!’ the officer said, looking through the infra-red binoculars.

  His colleague grabbed the binoculars and took a look.

  It was almost two o’clock in the morning when the darkness that lay over the farmhouse was pierced by the headlights of a car.

  The two officers exchanged whispers, convinced it was him. After hours and hours of pointless waiting
in the cold, their patience was about to be rewarded. The car stopped outside the front door of the farmhouse. From the seat next to the driver, a man got out and entered the house. The car lights stayed on.

  ‘He’s coming out again, look!’ one of the two officers whispered. ‘He has something in his hand . . . It could be a briefcase.’

  ‘Yes,’ the other said, ‘he’s getting back in the car.’

  The car set off again, taking a secondary road that climbed up into the mountains. In the dark, they could not make out how many people were in the car. The officer who had first spotted it immediately got out his mobile phone and called Captain Foti. The other officer radioed his colleagues in the off-road vehicle, but they decided not to follow the car: given the late hour and the deserted roads, there was too great a risk that they’d be spotted.

  After less than half an hour, the Mercedes came to a secluded spot, a kind of clearing. Here, the driver switched off the engine. In the valley below, the lights of several villages in the plain of Gioia Tauro could be seen. A few moments later, two men emerged from the woods and stopped a few yards away. Antonio Russo opened his case and asked Diego for his brother Pedro’s telephone number. The Colombian supplied it immediately. He had been told that all he had to do was obey. Antonio Russo followed the usual procedure. When the phone was picked up at the other end, he said, ‘Pedro, I’m passing you Diego. Do what he tells you. You’ll be seeing him soon.’ The phone call was brief and in Spanish. Then Diego was blindfolded by the man sitting next to him and made to get out of the car.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.

  No one answered.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ he cried.

  Silence again.

  He took a long, deep breath and let it out in a resigned sigh. The two men, who had hunting rifles over their shoulders, now approached, gestured to Russo and took delivery of Diego. They placed him between them, took him by the arms and set off into the woods along a climbing path, a tratturu, used by shepherds leading their flocks to pasture.

  With a sneer on his face, Russo watched them go.

  ‘There it is again!’ the DIA officer whispered, seeing the car coming back.

  Three people got out. The passenger who had been in the back seat and the driver shook hands with Antonio Russo, who entered the house. The two men got on a motorbike and drove off.

  Russo did not leave the house again that night.

  The officers noted everything down. The car had been away from the farmhouse for almost an hour and a half.

  He felt exhausted, all his strength gone. As if he had walked all day without stopping.

  But he hadn’t.

  He had only walked for a few hours, but over rough terrain, full of folds and stones and dips and climbs. Unable to see anything, but hearing the sounds of nature: the singing of the night birds, the shrilling of the cicadas, the chirping of the crickets . . . Supported by his two captors, he had gone round and round in circles without realising it, always coming back to the point of departure. It was a tried and tested method for disorienting kidnap victims and making them believe they were in a far more remote place than they really were. Then, at the end of a hard climb, followed by a brief descent, they had finally arrived at their destination.

  ‘On the ground!’ one of the two men ordered. It was the first time he had opened his mouth. The voice sounded fake to Diego, but he put his impression down to tiredness. He obeyed. They took his blindfold off. He looked around for a moment. He saw that he was in a kind of hut. The walls were of logs, the ceiling of corrugated iron. It was about six and a half feet by six and a half feet, and no higher than five feet. The outside was covered with a tarpaulin, like those used to cover trucks.

  His whole body was shaking.

  ‘Sit on that board!’ the first man said, indicating a wooden plank on the left-hand side, with an iron chain next to it.

  Diego did as he was told.

  ‘Good. Now don’t move.’ The man wrapped the chain around his ankles, put on a padlock, then wound it round his neck, fixed it to one of the logs, and put on another padlock.

  The second guard had appeared in the doorway. ‘This is for your needs,’ he said, throwing down a metal bucket. ‘I’ll come and empty it later. And this is drinking water.’ He placed a five-litre plastic can on the floor.

  Diego looked at both objects. They turned his stomach.

  This second voice, too, sounded fake. He took a good look at the two men. He saw that, as well as dark ski masks, they were wearing knee-length rubber boots. They were both short, but well built. He reached out his hand, picked up first the bucket and then the can, and put them on his left, in a corner.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to manage with the blanket.’

  He had not noticed that there was an old blanket in another corner. He reached out, grabbed it and threw it over his shoulders. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ he asked. The two men went out without replying. After a few minutes, one of them came back in. ‘Take this,’ he said, handing him a chunk of hard bread, a piece of pecorino cheese and a half-full bottle of red wine. ‘The wine’ll warm you up a bit.’ Then he threw a windbreaker over him, accompanying the gesture with the words, ‘You can use this as a pillow.’ Diego said nothing. He felt drained. He shook his head and bit his lips, lost in thought.

  He made an effort to keep calm. Panicking wouldn’t help, he knew that. He took heart at the fact that his guards were wearing ski masks. That had to be a good sign. They’re not planning to kill me. ’Ntoni may be a bastard, but he’s also a man of honour. As he started thinking more rationally, his features grew less tense, and a little colour returned to his face.

  The man stopped in the doorway. He looked at Diego and, with a rapid gesture, threw him a few cigarettes. ‘You can smoke these. But only these. Don’t ask for any more.’

  ‘Thanks! How am I supposed to light them?’

  ‘With these.’ The guard threw him some matches, then reached out his hand and gave him a stone. Then he lowered the tarpaulin and left.

  With a trembling hand, Diego picked up a cigarette. He rubbed it between his fingers several times, as if petting it, before putting it in his mouth. He rubbed a match on the stone and lit it. The first drag made him cough violently. The second made his eyes water and gave him a strange sense of both exhaustion and dizziness. He took it out of his mouth and stubbed it out on the ground with what little strength he still had left.

  He curled up in a ball on the wooden plank and closed his eyes.

  ‘He’s coming out, Demetrio. Look!’

  The DIA officer was peering through the telephoto lens of the camera at the front door of the farmhouse. Antonio Russo had appeared and was now standing there, looking around.

  ‘You’re right, Ciccio. It’s him. He’s waiting for something. Ah, there it is, a car’s coming, and a motorbike with two people on it.’

  They both began clicking away on their Nikons, taking one photograph after the other. The car and the motorcycle were parked on one side of the yard. Three men - the driver of the car and the two motorcyclists - walked up to Antonio Russo, shook hands with him and starting talking.

  ‘If only we could hear what the sons of bitches were saying, Ciccio!’

  ‘God knows what we’re missing!’

  The four men were now walking in the garden side by side. The man who had come by car was on Antonio Russo’s right-hand side, and seemed to be nodding constantly in agreement. In the meantime, the two officers kept taking photographs.

  ‘They’re talking outside. In this cold!’

  ‘Obviously. They’re afraid of bugs in the house. They’re always suspicious. They never change.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s in their nature . . . Look, they’re saying goodbye.’

  ‘I see them, I see them . . . All three of them are getting in the car.’

  ‘It looks like a BMW to me, what do you think?’

 
‘Could be . . . or a Mercedes . . . It’s a four-door car . . . black . . . or dark blue . . .’

  ‘Dark, anyway. God knows where the fuck they’re going.’

  ‘Ciccio, you tell the others, I’ll call the captain. They may be able to get the licence number.’

  In the meantime, the car was heading towards the gate. Antonio Russo had already gone back inside the farmhouse and closed the front door.

  Ciccio immediately radioed his colleagues in the off-road vehicle. Then he wrote it all down in his notebook.

  ‘Want some coffee, Demetrio?’

  ‘I could really do with one. I can’t seem to shake off this headache.’

  Demetrio was not yet thirty, but ever since he was a child he had suffered from frequent terrible migraines. He had been all over Italy, seeing specialists and undergoing tests. But nothing had worked.

  New York

  It was 8.30 a.m. and John Reynolds was in his office, looking like someone who had not slept. And it was true: he hadn’t managed a wink of sleep, unable to stop thinking about what his men were doing that night. When, at seven, he had finally received the call he had been waiting for, he had got up and rushed to the 17th precinct. The operation was over. His detectives had swooped on the members of a Brooklyn gang, all of them with priors including grand theft auto. Their names had been supplied by Rusty Sheridan the previous evening.

  ‘It’s possible they know something about the burned-out cab,’ his friend had said, giving him the names, a whole page of them. ‘They’re on good terms with the Italians, and they do favours for each other. They’ve become the most dangerous gang in the whole fucking borough.’ He sounded as if he’d had enough of living there, an impression confirmed by his next words. ‘If I didn’t have the gym, I’d be out of here tomorrow.’