Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  'I am doing my best.'

  'If your best isn't better, then you should go home.'

  'I am sorry.'

  'Goddam should be. Why didn't you send Stand Down?'

  She heaved the breath into her lungs. The wind whipped her hair. She said, small voice, 'I thought he might come. It was a little family party for Giuseppe's father's birthday. I wasn't included. I was told it would be "tedious" for me. I tried to stay awake in my room, I tried. I went to sleep.'

  'That is pathetic.'

  'I did my damn best . . .'

  'Did he come?'

  'Does he smoke cigarillos?'

  'How the hell should I know?'

  'Then I don't know if he came.'

  'Think about going home if you can't do the job.'

  She turned. She broke the rule he had made. She faced Axel Moen. She saw the coldness in the eyes of Axel Moen, and the contempt lined at the mouth of Axel Moen, and the anger cut in the frown of Axel Moen. She wanted to touch him, and she wanted him to hold her . . . She turned away from him. There would be a storm because the wind was rising.

  He said, hacking the words, 'If you can't handle it, then you should walk out.'

  She was watching the fishing fleet, diminishing, riding the wave crests. She went to buy the fresh fruit.

  Back at the villa, Charley found that Angela had finished washing the plates and cutlery from the previous night, and they had been put away in the cupboards, and the upholstered chair in the dining room had been brushed with the other chairs, and she could not see whether it had been sat on.

  'The conclusion?'

  Giancarlo stood with the others of the team, all of them except for those who had done the last night shift. It was not routine for the squadra mobile surveillance unit to meet with an investigating magistrate who tasked them at the beginning of an operation and at the end of an operation, but it was the requirement of this small and sad man. The small and sad man sat on his desk, his legs a little too short for his feet to reach the floor, and his arms were hunched across his chest. Giancarlo thought, a ridiculous thought and inappropriate, that the magistrate had in his eyes the dull tiredness of death, that the dimmed room had the gloom of a cella dei condannati a morte. They had nothing to say and nothing to report, but he had insisted on seeing them.

  There was no conclusion. No sighting of Ruggerio, no trace of Ruggerio. But it had been three teams of only three men, and a labyrinth such as the Capo would swallow a hundred men. It had been a gesture, but the gesture was a token.

  'Thank you for your endeavour.' The endeavour was to walk and to stand and to look at faces and to try to match the faces of old men to a photograph. The photograph was twenty years old. Some computer-enhancements of photographs were good, some were useless. They might have seen him, might have stood beside him.'Thank you for your commitment.'

  'For nothing . . .' The leader of the unit gazed, embarrassed, at the floor.

  And Giancarlo held the present behind his buttocks. That moment he wondered how often there was laughter in this room. Like a mortuary, this room, like a place of black weeds and hushed voices. A place for a man who was condemned . . . Did the poor bastard, small and sad, condemned, it was said, ever get to laugh? The men on the door outside, condemned with him, it was said, they didn't seem fun creatures who would make the poor bastard laugh. Giancarlo was the oldest on the team, the most experienced, the one who gave no respect to any man, and he had been chosen to offer the gift to the small and sad man, to make him laugh.

  'As an appreciation of working for you, dottore . . .'

  Giancarlo handed the parcel, wrapped in shiny paper and bound with gift tape, to the magistrate. They watched as his nervous fingers unbound the tape and unwrapped the paper.

  Lemons cascaded on the desk, lemons bounced, lemons fell to the floor, lemons rolled on the carpet.

  He understood. A quick smile slipped to his mouth. He knew their work, knew the difficulty of going into the Capo district day after day and finding a process that enabled them to blend with the crowds in the alleyways. He slipped off the desk and came to Giancarlo and pecked a kiss on each of the man's cheeks, and Giancarlo thought it was the kiss of a condemned man.

  When it was the time for exercise, when the bells clamoured and the keys scraped in the doors' locks, the prisoner stayed on the bunk bed.

  The men with whom he shared the cell went on their way for exercise in the yard below. A carceriere saw him sitting hunched on the lower bunk and asked the prisoner why he was not going to exercise and was told that he had a headcold.

  When the landing of the block was quiet, as it would be for thirty minutes, the prisoner stood. It surprised him that his hands did not shake as he unbuckled his belt.

  Holding his belt, he scrambled up onto the upper bunk. He could see now, through the squat window, through the bars, the panorama of Palermo. The window of the cell was open. A hard wind came on his face. Through the bars he could see the mountains above Palermo. In the mountains was the home of his mother, in the city was the home of his wife and his children. As he hooked the buckle of his belt around a bar at the window he heard only the howl of the wind.

  His wife had told him that he was dead. The magistrate had told him he would die by the push, or by the knife thrust, or by poison.

  He pulled the belt hard and tested that it was held strong by the bar.

  Suicidio was a crime against the oath he had taken many years before. When a man took his own life he lost his dignity and his respect, and that was a crime against the oath.

  The prisoner wound the end of the belt around his throat and knotted it. There was not an adequate drop from the top bunk bed, nor was the belt long enough, for him to break his neck when he slid his weight clear. He would strangle himself to death.

  He had nothing more to tell the magistrate, nothing more to tell of Mario Ruggerio.

  He mouthed a prayer, and he tried to find in his mind the faces of his children.

  He was suspended, kicking, choking, writhing, and below the cell window men walked the monotonous circles of exercise.

  'So this is home?'

  'This is Cinisi, and it is my home.'

  'Quite a nice-looking little place, a lot of character,' Charley said brightly.

  She looked up the main street, the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. At the end of the street was a granite mountain face, and above the rim of the mountain there was a clear azure sky in which cloud puffs raced in the wind. Against the grey rock face, dominating the street below, was the church that had been built with sharp and angular lines.

  'My father, before they killed him, called Cinisi a mafiopoli,' Benny said.

  He held the door of his car open for her. She thought it a nice- looking place, and the character was in the smart terraces of houses that flanked the main street. The windows of most of the houses were masked with shutters, but there were potted plants on the balconies and the paint was fresh on the houses' walls, white and ochre, and the main street was swept clean in front of the houses. Set in the paving between the houses and the street were flowering cherry trees, and under the trees was a scattering of pink blossom.

  'I can't see anything, Benny, can't feel it. Maybe I could not see much in Corleone, maybe I could feel something in Prizzi, but not here. There doesn't seem to be anything to touch.'

  'Look to the mountain,' Benny said.

  Charley wore her best skirt, which she had bought with Peppino's money, and her best blouse. She stood with the sun and the wind on her thighs and shins. The force of the wind tunnelled down the main street. She stood boldly with her feet a little apart, as if to brace herself. There was scrub on the lower slope of the mountain, where the fall was less severe, but higher on the rock wall nothing grew. The mountain was a harsh presence above the main street.

  'It's a mountain, it's rock, it's useless.'

  He touched her arm, a small gesture as if to direct her attention, and there was a softness in his voice. 'You are wrong,
Charley. Of course you are wrong, because you do not live here, you do not know. They own the mountain, they own the rock, they own the quarries. Did you not come on the plane to Palermo?'

  'Came by train,' Charley said. Axel Moen had told her that the vulnerable time for an agent was the sea change between overt and covert, the journey from safety to danger, told her it was good to take time on the journey to reflect on the sea change. Charley lied. 'I thought it was wonderful to come by train, sort of romantic, on a train through the night and crossing a continent.'

  'Because they own the mountain and the rock and the quarries, they wanted the airport for Palermo built here. The runways are two kilometres from here. There is too much wind and the mountain is too close, but that was not important because they owned the mountain, the rock, the quarry. Cinisi was a place of farms and vines and olive trees, but they turned the contadini off their land, and the stone made the base for the runways, the stone could be a base for the concrete, and they came to own the airport. They own everything that you see, Charley, every person.'

  They were outside a smart house. There were recently fitted hardwood surrounds to the windows and a heavy hardwood door with a polished brass knocker.

  'Is your mother inside?'

  'Yes.'

  She said with mischief, 'And waiting for your washing?'

  'Yes.'

  'Can she wait a little longer for your washing?'

  'Of course - what do you want?'

  'I want to see where they killed your father, where you were in the car when they killed him.'

  Perhaps she had startled him. His lips narrowed and his eyes glinted and his cheeks were taut. He walked away from her. She followed him. Benny went past small groups of old men who stood in the sun and let the wind grab at their jackets, and they did not meet his eyes, and he did not look at them. A woman with shopping stopped as he came close to her, and then in ostentation she turned her back on him to stare into the window of an alimentari. As he went by them, three boys who gossiped and sat astride their scooters revved their engines so that the black exhaust fumes carpeted his face. Charley followed. He stopped, as if challenging her, pointed to a gelateria, every sort of ice-cream, every flavour, and she shook her head. At the top of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele was the piazza of Cinisi. A priest came from the church and saw Benny and looked away and hurried on, his robe driven by the wind against the width of his hips.

  There were more men in the piazza, more boys idle and squatting on their motorcycles.

  She was making him live the moment again, and she wondered if he hated her. He talked her through the chronology of a death, as if he were a tourist guide in the duomo or at the Quattro Canti or at the Palazzo Sclafani. He pointed to the street beside the church.

  'It was done there. I had been late at the school for instruction in the violin. My father had collected me on his way back from I errasini. He came for me because it was raining, and they would have known which afternoon I stayed at the school for music, and they would have known that if it were raining he would collect me. It was not important to them that I was in the car, that I was ten years old. That afternoon it was convenient for them to kill my father . . .'

  There was a bar on the corner of the piazza. The wind gusted the wrapping of a cigarette packet past the closed door to the bar. It had been seventeen, eighteen years before - of course, there was nothing to see. A narrow street leading into a pretty piazza under the shadow of the church of San Silvestro, a killing zone.

  'What had he done? What had your father done?' She knew that she would take him to bed, that day or that night.

  'He told the contadini that they should not give up their land. He said that they would be robbed if they agreed to sell their land. He said that they were farmers and they should continue to harvest the olives and the oranges and to grow maize. He said that if they sold their land and the airport was built, they would never work again because the jobs made by the airport would go to people from Palermo, who were not contadini. He said to the people that the success of the airport would be a triumph for the mafiosi, and a disaster for the contadini. He was only a shopkeeper, but he was an honest man, his honesty was respected. There was a time when people began to listen to him. My father called a meeting of all the people in the town and the peasants who had the olives and the oranges and the maize. The meeting was to be here, where we stand. My father was going to tell the people that they should oppose the building of the airport. The meeting was for that evening.'

  'So they killed him, to silence him.' She would lie with him on a bed, that day or that night.

  'Because he obstructed them, and because he made fun of them. The night before, I had heard my father in the bedroom practise the speech he would make. He had many jokes to tell about them. The family in Cinisi at that time, destroyed now, replaced, was the family of Badalamenti. He spoke of the "Corso Badalamenti" where they lived and of the leader of the family as "Geronimo Badalamenti". He had jokes to tell about the wealth that would come from the airport when they had stolen the land from the contadini, about the Badalamenti family eating from silver plates and taking baths with hot water from gold taps. He was a threat to them because he would laugh at them, and have the people laugh with him.'

  'What happened? Tell me what happened?' On a bed she would take the clothes from his body, that day or that night.

  'How is it important to you? Why do you wish to know?'

  'Please, tell me.'

  The sneer was at his face, and the wind caught at the fineness of his hair. 'You are a nanny for a rich family. You take your money for minding small children, for doing the work of their mother. Why—?'

  'See, touch, feel, so that I can understand.'

  'Am I an amusement to you?'

  'No, I promise. Help me to understand.' She would take the clothes from his body and kneel over his body and kiss his body, that day or that night.

  'A car crossed the piazza and it stopped in front of my father's car. He did not recognize the people in the car because he shouted at them. Did they not know where they were going? Did they not look where they were going? It was late in the afternoon, the light was going because of the rain. Already in the piazza the preparations had been made, there was the sound equipment for my father, there was a place for him to speak from. He shouted at the people in the car because he thought he would be late for the meeting. There was another car that came behind us, it drove into us. I saw one man only. The man had a small machine-gun and he came from the front towards us and he threw a small cigar from his mouth and he raised his machine-gun. There were more men, with guns, but I did not see them because my father pushed me down in the seat.

  He tried to protect me. If he had been alone, I think he would have attempted to run, but I was with him and he would not have left me. There were eighteen shots fired, thirteen of the shots hit my father. The priest who came, who was there first, before the carabineri and the ambulance, the priest said that il was a miracolo that the child was not hit. I think credit was given to the killers of my father because I was not hit. I can remember still the weight of his body on me, and I can remember still the warmth of his blood on me. Someone brought my mother. She came, and the body of my father was lifted off me. My mother took me home.'

  'It happened here?'

  'Where you stand is where the car stopped to block my father. Do you wish to learn more?'

  'So that I may understand . . .' She would kiss his body and put his hands on her body and find his love, that day or that night.

  'Two days later there was the funeral for my father. Where we stand now I walked then with my mother, and the whole length of the Corso and the width of the piazza was lined with the people of Cinisi, and the church was filled. There were eight thousand people then living in Cinisi and around the town, and three thousand came to my father's funeral, and the priest denounced the barbarity of the mafiosi. It was a fraud, it meant nothing. It was a spectacle, like a travelling theatre on
a festival day. The airport was built on the land stolen from the contadini. The people who had filled the church, stood on the Corso and in the piazza, were bent to the will of the Badalamenti family.

  There was a short investigation, but the carabineri told my mother that guilt could not be proved. They own the town, they own the airport, they own the lives of everybody here.'

  'Why, Benny, do they not kill you?'

  His head hung. She thought she had slashed at his pride. He looked away from her and he murmured in bitterness, 'When opposition is ineffective, they do not notice it.

  When opposition is only an irritation, they ignore it. When opposition is threatening, they kill it. Do you seek to humiliate me because I am alive, because my father is dead?'

  'Let's get your washing home,' Charley said.

  They walked back down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She took his hand and led him, set the pace for him. It was useful for her to be able to touch warm blood and feel the weight of a father's body and to see the shock in a child's face . . . She should think about going home, Axel Moen had said. She should think about going home if she could not do the job, Axel Moen had said . . . He did not speak, they reached the car, he lifted a filled pillowcase from the floor at the back of the car. The gale, funnelled down the main street, beat on them. He rang the bell at the door.

  She was introduced.

  She played the part of the innocent.

  She was offered juice and a slice of rich cake.

  She was the nanny to a rich family from Palermo, and she was ignorant.

  She talked, innocent and ignorant, with Benny's mother. The mother had darting sparrow's movements and bright cobra's eyes. Charley thought the woman must have quite extraordinary courage. She had trained, since her loss, as an accountant. She could live anywhere on the island, work anywhere in Sicily or on the mainland, but she had chosen to stay. She wore a bright scarlet skirt and a grass-green blouse, as if it would have been a defeat to take to widow's black. The courage of the woman, Charley thought, would come from facing each day the people of the town who had stood aside when her man was butchered, and from facing each day the people who had filled the church and lined the Corso for her man's burial. Charley ate her cake and drank her juice, sucked in the strength of the woman. The courage of the woman was in walking, each day, up the Corso, past the home of the people who had ordered her man's killing, and seeing their families in the bars, and standing with them in the shops, and knowing that they slept well at night.