Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  If she were not to quit, go home, walk away, she needed that courage.

  She waited for the woman to clear away the glasses and the plates. She waited for the woman to take the pillowcase to the washing-machine in the kitchen.

  Charley reached for Benny's hand. The hand was limp. She controlled him. She led him to the staircase of cleaned and polished wood. She heard the churning motion of the washing-machine. The door to the bathroom was open. The door to the principal bedroom, the woman's room, was open. She led Benny through the door that had been shut, into his room. It was cool in the room because the shutters were closed and the sunlight came in zebra lines, filtered, onto the single bed, onto the skin rug on the floor, onto the picture above the bed. The picture was from a newspaper. A car was isolated in an empty street. The body of a man was beside the car. A woman stood near to the car and held a small child against her. Giving space to the body and the woman and the child was a crowd of onlookers. Charley fed from the photograph, as she had eaten the cake and drunk the juice. She must draw strength from the woman and the child.

  She took the jacket from his shoulders and he made no move to help her.

  She knelt and slipped the shoes from his feet, and the socks.

  She took the tie from his throat and the shirt from his chest and loosed the trousers at his waist. She stripped the man bare, and she saw the tremble of his knees and the smooth flatness of his stomach, and she saw the heave of his chest below the hair mat.

  She thought he pleaded to her. She heard, from below, the rattle of the plates being rinsed and the clatter of the glasses.

  He lay on the bed. She squatted over him. She kissed the mouth and the throat and the chest and the stomach of Benny, drank the juice of his sweat. She made lines with the nails of her fingers on his skin and tangled his hairs. Only when the moaning was in his throat, as the wind moaned in the cables outside the shuttered window, did he reach for her. He tore at the buttons of the blouse and at the clasp of her bra and at the waist of her skirt. She had control of him. She put the rubber over him, as she had known she would.

  Charley rode the man.

  Not the lecturer from college on the carpet, not the guy from the picket line in the caravan, not the schoolteacher who had lifted her, bruised, bleeding, scarred, from the pavement.

  Charley held his head, and her fingers, frantic, searched for the pony-tail of blond hair that was held tight with an elastic band. Charley pounded her fingers into the pale face with the day of stubble beard on it. Charley pulled the arms around her, muscled and powerful. He drove at her, hard in her, as if he were trying to buck her from him.

  She murmured the name of the man . . . 'Axel . . . Fuck me, Axel . . .'

  He came, he was sagging, he was spent.

  She crawled off him. He tried to kiss her, to hug her, to hold her, but she pushed him back and down onto the bed. She took the rubber off him. She walked, cruel and vicious bitch, from the bedroom to the bathroom and she flushed the rubber down the lavatory.

  She sat on the seat. She wondered where he was and whether he had watched her. Her fingers rested on the nakedness of her arm, on the coldness of the watch on her wrist.

  She came back into the room. He lay on the bed and his arm was across his face so that he should not see her.

  Charley started to dress.

  'Who killed your father?'

  'My father is mine. He is not your business.'

  She was dressing fast, snatching at the crumpled heap of clothes. 'Is it good to be so ineffective that one is unnoticed? Who killed him?'

  'When a man from Catania is to be killed they bring in an assassin from Trapani, when a man from Agrigento is to be killed they find a man in Palermo.' He hissed the explanation. 'It is an exchange of favours, a barter of services. When a man from Cinisi is to be killed—'

  'They bring a killer from Prizzi? Is it good to be only an irritation and ignored?'

  'What is it to you?' His arm was off his face. He pushed himself up on the bed. She thought he had a fear of her.

  'I'll take the bus back,' Charley said. 'I'll go on the bus because your mother won't have had time to dry your washing and iron it. You're safe from Mario Ruggerio, Benny, because he won't even have noticed you.'

  Carmine brought the minister to the apartment.

  The apartment was at Cefalu and the business of the minister was at Milazzo, which was nearly 150 kilometres to the east.

  Carmine had been given, by Mario Ruggerio, responsibility for bringing the politician from the oil refinery at Milazzo to the holiday apartment at Cefalu. It was a serious and important responsibility. The minister was now in charge of the budget for Industry, but Mario Ruggerio had told Carmine that the minister was a rising star and eyed Finance. A half-year before the minister had sent a signal; in a speech in Florence he had spoken of the glory of a united

  Italy and the duty of all Italians to support their fellow citizens of Sicily. Mario Ruggerio had read the code of the signal: government funds should continue, as before, to cascade onto the island, and the supply of government money, trillions of lire, were the lifeblood of La Cosa Nostra. A month before, the minister had sent a second signal; on a late-night television programme broadcast by a private channel, he had warned of the excesses of the judiciary in Palermo in their use of pentiti as trial witnesses. Two signals, two coded messages that the minister was ready to do business with Mario Ruggerio. A contact through an intermediary at a Masonic meeting in Rome, and now Carmine had the responsibility of bringing the minister in secrecy from Milazzo to Cefalu. Not simple, not for an arrogant shit like Tano, not for a fool who had air in his brain like Franco, to bring a minister from Milazzo to Cefalu. The responsibility was entrusted to Carmine because he had the intelligence to arrange the security necessary for the meeting. The minister had toured the oil refinery with his guides and his guards, had worn the hard hat, had walked alongside the kilometres of pipelines, had stood in the control areas with the technical directors and his guards, and had pleaded a headache from the fumes of the refinery. The minister had taken refuge in his hotel room. The guards of the minister of Industry, not a prime target, were relaxed. They had been called, at Carmine's direction, to the end of the hotel corridor for refreshment. In the few moments when the distraction of the guards was total, the minister had been brought from his room, through the door on which the 'Non Disturbare' sign hung, and out onto the fire escape.

  Carmine drove the car from Milazzo to Cefalu. He had given the minister a flat cap to wear, and the minister had a scarf half across his mouth. The beauty of Carmine's plan, the guards in the hotel would never admit to loss of control of their subject, they would never confess that the minister had been given an opportunity to leave his hotel room unseen.

  He took the car into the parking area under the apartment block. He parked beside the Citroen BX, the only other car there. The tourists, they would be Germans, had not yet come to Cefalu to scorch themselves on the beach and to wander in the Piazza del Duomo.

  The minister, at the base of the concrete steps, hesitated, but Carmine smiled reassurance. The stupid bastard was already hooked, the stupid bastard had nowhere to go but up the concrete steps. He led. They climbed. The minister panted. Three raps at the door of the second-floor apartment.

  The door was opened. The damp of the winter had been at the wood of the door, warped it, and it whined as it was opened.

  The small body of Mario Ruggerio was framed in the door, and his head ducked as if in respect to the minister's rank, and the smile on his face was of gratitude that a man of such importance had made the journey to visit him. He wore baggy trousers that were hoisted with a peasant's braces to the fullness of his stomach, and the old grey jacket that was his favourite, and he took the minister's hands and held them in welcome. And the old worn face of the peasant brushed a kiss to each side of the minister's cheeks. He gestured with his hand, humbly, that the minister should come into the apartment.

  Carmi
ne was not a party to the meeting. He closed the door.

  Carmine waited.

  He assumed that by the next morning a bank draft for, perhaps, a million American dollars would have been transferred to an account in Vienna or in Panama or to the Caymans or to Gibraltar. Mario Ruggerio said, always said, that there was a price for every man, and perhaps the price for a minister of the state was a million American dollars. And Mario Ruggerio would know because he had already found out the price for judges and for policemen and for a cardinal and for . . . It was the power of Mario Ruggerio, Carmine was under the protection of that power, that he could own those at the very heart of the state. There was so much that could be bought with a million American dollars - the blocking of investigations, the opening of contract opportunities, recommendations and introductions abroad. He stood outside I he door and basked in the glory of the power of Mario Ruggerio. One day, at some time, when Mario Ruggerio tired of the glory of power, stepped aside, then it would be Carmine who replaced him . . .

  An hour later Carmine led the minister back down the concrete steps. Three hours later, when refreshments were again offered to the guards, the minister climbed the fire escape of the hotel in Milazzo. Four hours later, the minister appeared at his door and called to his guards that the headache from the oil refinery fumes was gone.

  The telephone rang.

  It shrilled through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen the ragazzi of the magistrate had their own telephone and their radio. They pretended an indifference each time the telephone rang, talked louder among themselves, took a greater interest in their card game. They pretended they did not listen, after the telephone call, for the quiet scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen. Pasquale felt the new mood of the protection team. The joke, sad, sick, had been against him, but he recognized now that the joke affected all of them. He had been the sole target of the joke - 'Why a jeweller's shop?' - but it claimed them all. Less talk, raucous, of the last two days of overtime and screwing women and holidays. More talk, sombre, of the last two days of greater speed in the cars, less predictable routes, more weapons training.

  Each time the telephone rang they waited for the scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen, stiffened, pretended, listened. Pasquale suffered each night the dream of a parked car or a parked van or a parked motorcycle exploding in fire as they passed, and he knew the bomb would be reinforced with ballbearings and detonated via the link between a mobile phone and a telephone pager. He knew it, they all knew it, because the maresciallo had told them what he had heard from Forensics. He knew, they all knew, and the maresciallo did not need to tell them, that there was no protection against the bomb in the parked car or van or on the pannier of a motorcycle. They waited, they listened, as they did each time the telephone rang in the apartment.

  He came, scraping his feet, to the kitchen door. There was a greyness to the colour of his cheeks, his fingers moved, fidgeting in a clasp across his stomach. With his eyes he apologized.

  'I have to go out.'

  The maresciallo said breezily, 'Of course, dottore - the Palazzo, the Palace of Poison?'

  'There is a church beside the prison . . .'

  'On the Piazza Ucciardione, dottore? When would you like to go?'

  'Please, I would like to go now.'

  'Then we go, now - no problem.'

  'He took his life. The man I played a game with, made fear for, to help his memory, he hanged himself in his cell.'

  He was gone, shuffling through the hallway for his coat. The maresciallo mapped out a route to the Piazza Ucciardione, a route past the close-packed parked cars and vans and motorcycles with panniers. They lifted their vests off the floor, they took the machine-guns from the table and the draining board beside the sink and the work surface beside the cooker. The radio carried the message, staccato, to the troops in the street below the apartment. They took him out. They hurried him down the staircase, with the two drivers stampeding ahead so that the engines of the cars would have been started before he hit the pavement. They ran across the pavement, into the last light of the afternoon, and the gale scorched grit into their faces. Pasquale was front passenger in the chase car, and the maresciallo was behind him. Sirens on. Lights on. At the end of the street, as the soldier held up the traffic, they swerved onto the main road and past the lines of parked cars and vans and motorcycles. They went faster than usual, as if it were necessary now always for them to go faster than the time taken by a man to react and press the last digit on a mobile telephone linked to a pager.

  'Pasquale. What are you, Pasquale?'

  The voice of the maresciallo whispered in his ear. His eyes were on the traffic ahead, and on the line of parked cars, vans, motorcycles they hurtled past. He held the machine-gun hard against his chest.

  'What are you, Pasquale?'

  'I don't understand.'

  'You want me to tell you what you are, Pasquale? You are .1 stupid and pathetic cretin. You do not have a magazine loaded.'

  His hands were rigid on the stock and trigger guard of the machine-gun. He looked down. He had not loaded a magazine, thirty-two rounds, into it. He bent and laid the machine-gun on the floor between his feet. He took his pistol from the shoulder harness.

  The cars swerved, screamed, cornered.

  The journalist from Berlin was settled comfortably in his chair. The embassy was a little piece of home for him. There was a strong beer from the Rhineland on the table beside him. To be back in Rome again was to have returned to Europe, to have left that Arab world of half-truths, coded statements and conceit. He had telephoned his editor for more cheques to be sent him and they would arrive in the morning at the American Express. He had won a few more days . . . As a veteran of so many wars, he was reluctant to make the last leg home and have it said in the office, by younger, ankle-snapping colleagues, that he had failed. In truth, so far his journey in search of the mafia was a failure, but he believed that a few more days in Rome, distanced from this war that he could not sense or smell, would supply him with the copy for his article.

  There was a counsellor at the embassy who liaised for the Bundeskriminalamt with the Italian agencies. He wrote a sharp shorthand note of what he was told.

  . . We had the opinion, five, six years ago that the collapse of the Christian Democrat machine, and those of the communists and socialists, would remove from the mafia the protection they had enjoyed for forty years. We thought then that for Italy a new era of clean politics was coming. We were wrong. There was the businessman's Government that followed. Far from attacking the mafia this Government took a most dangerous line. Anti-mafia magistrates in Palermo were denounced as self-seekers and opportunists, the pentiti programme was condemned for making bad law. There was a small window of opportunity to strike against the mafia after the killing of Falcone and Borsellino, when the public, in outrage, demonstrated against criminality, but the opportunity was not grasped. I believe it now lost. What I hear, it is increasingly difficult to persuade prosecutors and magistrates to travel to Sicily, there is on-going and debilitating rivalry between the many agencies, there is incompetence and inefficiency. The Italians forever plead with us to make greater efforts against a common enemy, but - hear me - look at the construction of the businessman's Government. There was a neo-Fascist appointed to the Interior Ministry, there are men with proven criminal associations introduced to the peripheries of power. Would we wish for such people to have co-operation given them? Should they be granted access to BKA files? Only because the Sicilian mafia pushes drugs and dirty money into Germany do we have an interest in the matter of organized crime in Italy. The British, the Americans, the French, we are all the same. We are obliged to be interested as long as the Italians demonstrate their unwillingness to tackle their own problem. But Sicily is a sewer of morality, and our interest achieves nothing. Do I disappoint you?'

  There were two women in the church, in black, kneeling, several rows of seats ahead of him.


  He had taken a place near the back of the church on Piazza Ucciardione, and at the far end of the seats from the aisle.

  He knelt. He could hear the traffic outside and he could hear the beat of the wind against the upper windows of the church. In his mind, in silence, his knees cold on the floor tiles, he prayed for the soul of the man who had hanged himself . . .

  It was what he had chosen. It was the fifteenth year since he had chosen to come with his wife and children to Palermo, brought by ambition and the belief of career advancement. It was the fourth year since he had chosen to stay in Palermo, in the comfort of his obsession, after his wife had left with the children. Huddled on his knees, he prayed for the spirit of a wretch. To come to church, to pray, he must have an armed guard at the door to the priest's room, he must have a maresciallo sitting with a machine-gun three rows behind him, he must have a young guard with a sullen and chastised face standing at the door of the church with a pistol in his hand, he must have two armed guards on the outer steps of the church. There was no more ambition. The ambition was dried out, a cloth left on the line in the sun. The ambition had been overwhelmed by the assassination of his character, by the drip of the poison, by the scheming stabs at his back in the Palazzo di Giustizia. He was left only with the obsession of duty ... for what? The obsession hanged a man by the throat until his windpipe was crushed ... for what? The obsession brought the risk of death, high probability, to five wonderful men who were his ragazzi ... for what? The obsession brought him closer, each day, to the flower- covered coffin that would be filled with what they could find of his body ... for what?