by Mario Puzo
Portella spread his hands in the air in a helpless gesture. “I have a choice,” he said. “But I want your support. Michael, do you agree?”
Grazziella’s face was impassive. “Yes, I agree,” he said. “But I would worry more about Astorre Viola than Kurt Cilke.”
CHAPTER 11
WHEN ASTORRE RECEIVED the coded message that Heskow wanted a meeting, he took his precautions. There was always the danger that Heskow might turn against him. So instead of answering the message, he suddenly appeared at Heskow’s home in Brightwaters at midnight. He took Aldo Monza with him and an extra car with four more men. He also wore a bulletproof vest. He called Heskow when he was in the driveway so that he would open the door.
Heskow did not seem surprised. He prepared coffee and served Astorre and himself. Then he smiled at Astorre and said, “I have good news and bad news. Which one first?”
“Just tell it,” Astorre said.
“The bad news is that I have to leave the country for good, and that’s because of the good news. And I want to ask you to keep your promise. That nothing will happen to my boy even if I can’t work for you anymore.”
“You have that promise,” Astorre said. “Now, why do you have to leave the country?”
Heskow shook his head in a comical act of sorrow. He said, “Because that dumb prick Portella is going over the top. He is going to knock off Cilke, the FBI guy. And he wants me to be operational chief of the crew.”
“So just refuse,” Astorre said.
“I can’t,” Heskow said. “The hit is ordered by his whole syndicate, and if I refuse, I go down the drain and maybe my son does too. So I’ll organize the hit, but I won’t be in the hit party. I’ll be gone. And then when Cilke goes down the FBI will pour a hundred men into the city to solve it. I told them that, but they don’t give a shit. Cilke doubled-crossed them or something. They think they can smear him enough so that it won’t be such a big deal.”
Astorre tried not to show his satisfaction. It had worked out. Cilke would be dead with no danger to himself. And with a little luck the FBI would get rid of Portella.
He said to Heskow, “You want to leave me an address?”
Heskow smiled at him almost scornfully with distrust. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not that I don’t trust you. But I can always get in touch with you.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Astorre said, “but who really made this decision?”
“Timmona Portella,” Heskow said. “But Inzio Tulippa and the consul general signed off on it. That Corleonesi guy, Grazziella, washed his hands of it. He’s distancing himself from the operation. I think he’s leaving for Sicily. Which is funny because he’s killed practically everybody there.
“They don’t really understand how America works, and Portella is just dumb. He says he thought he and Cilke were really friends.”
“And you are going to lead the hit team,” Astorre said. “That’s not so smart either.”
“No, I told you when they hit the house I’ll be long gone.”
“The house?” Astorre said, and at that moment he felt dread over what he was about to hear.
“Yeah,” Heskow said. “A massive assault team flies back to South America and disappears.”
“Very professional,” Astorre said. “When does this all happen?”
“Night after tomorrow. All you have to do is stand aside and they solve all your problems. That’s the good news.”
“So it is,” Astorre said. He kept his face expressionless, but in his mind was the vision of Georgette Cilke, her beauty and goodness.
“I thought you should know about it so that you’ll have a good alibi,” Heskow said. “So you owe me one, and take care of my kid.”
“Damn right,” Astorre said. “Don’t worry about him.”
He shook hands with Heskow before he left. “I think you’re being very smart leaving the country. All hell will break loose.”
“Yeah,” Heskow said.
For a moment Astorre wondered what he would do about Heskow. The man, after all, had driven the hit car in the killing of the Don. He had to pay for that despite all his help. But Astorre had suffered a certain loss of energy when he learned that Cilke’s wife and child were to be killed with him. Let him go, he thought. He might be useful later. Then it would be time to kill him. And he looked at Heskow’s smiling face and smiled back.
“You’re a very clever man,” he said to Heskow.
Heskow’s face turned pink with pleasure. “I know,” he said. “That’s how I stay alive.”
The next day, at 11:00 A.M., Astorre arrived at FBI headquarters accompanied by Nicole Aprile, who had arranged an appointment.
He had spent a long night pondering his course of action. He had planned all this to have Portella kill Cilke. But he knew that he could not let Georgette or her daughter be killed. He also knew that Don Aprile would never have interfered with fate in this matter. But then he remembered a story about the Don that gave him pause.
One night, when Astorre was twelve years old and in Sicily with the Don on his annual visit, they were served dinner by Caterina in the garden pavilion. Astorre, with his peculiar innocence, said to them abruptly, “How did you two get to know each other? Did you grow up together as children?” The Don and Caterina exchanged a glance and then laughed at the serious intensity of his interest.
The Don had placed his fingers on his lips and whispered mockingly, “Omerta. It’s a secret.”
Caterina rapped Astorre’s hand with the wooden mixing spoon. “That’s none of your business, you little devil,” she said. “And besides, it’s nothing I’m proud of.”
Don Aprile gazed upon Astorre with fondness. “Why should he not know? He’s a Sicilian to the bone. Tell him.”
“No,” Caterina said. “But you can tell him if you like.”
After dinner Don Aprile lit his cigar, filled his glass with anisette, and told Astorre the story.
“Ten years ago the most important man in the town was a certain Father Sigusmundo, a very dangerous man and yet good-humored. When I visited Sicily he often came to my house and played cards with my friends. At that time I had a different housekeeper.”
But Father Sigusmundo was not irreligious. He was a devout and hardworking priest. He scolded people into going to mass and even at one time engaged in fisticuffs with an exasperating atheist. He was most famous for giving last rites to victims of the Mafia as they lay dying; he shrived their souls and cleansed them for their voyage to Heaven. He was revered for this, but it happened too often and some people began to whisper, saying the reason he was always so handy was because he was one of the executioners—that he was betraying the secrets of the confessional box for his own ends.
Caterina’s husband at that time was a strong anti-Mafia policeman. He had even pursued a case of murder after he had been warned off by the provincial Mafia chief, an unheard-of act of defiance at that time. A week after that threat, Caterina’s husband was ambushed and lay dying in a back alley of Palermo. And it so happened that Father Sigusmundo appeared to give him last rites. The crime was never solved.
Caterina, the grief-stricken widow, spent a year in mourning and devotion to the church. Then one Saturday she went to confession with Father Sigusmundo. When the priest came out of the confessional, in full sight of everyone, she stabbed him through the heart with her husband’s dagger.
The police threw her in jail, but that was the least of it. The Mafia chief pronounced a death sentence upon her.
Astorre stared wide-eyed at Caterina. “Did you really do that, Aunt Caterina?”
Caterina looked at him with amusement. He was filled with curiosity and not a bit of fear. “But you must understand why. Not because he killed my husband. Men are always killing each other here in Sicily. But Father Sigusmundo was a false priest, an unshriven murderer. He could not give last rites with legitimacy. Why would God listen? So my husband was not only murdered but denied his entrance to Heaven and
descended into Hell. Well, men don’t know where to stop. There are things you can’t do. That’s why I killed the priest.”
“Then how come you’re here?” Astorre asked.
“Because Don Aprile took an interest in the whole affair,” Caterina said. “So naturally everything was settled.”
The Don said gravely to Astorre, “I had a certain standing in the town, a respect. The authorities were easily satisfied, and the church did not want the public attention of a corrupt priest. The Mafia chief was not so sensitive and refused to cancel his death sentence. He was found in the cemetery where Caterina’s husband was buried, with his throat cut, and his cosca was destroyed and made powerless. By that time I had grown fond of Caterina, and I made her chief of this household. And for the last nine years my summer months in Sicily have been the sweetest of my life.”
To Astorre this was all magic. He ate a handful of olives and spit out the pits. “Caterina’s your girlfriend?” he asked.
“Of course,” Caterina said. “You’re a twelve-year-old boy, you can understand. I live under his protection as if I were his wife, and I perform all my wifely duties.”
Don Aprile seemed a little embarrassed, the only time Astorre had seen him so. Astorre said, “But why don’t you marry?”
Caterina said, “I could never leave Sicily. I live like a queen here, and your uncle is generous. Here I have my friends, my family, my sisters and brothers and cousins. And your uncle could not live in Sicily. So we do the best we can.”
Astorre said to Don Aprile, “Uncle, you can marry Caterina and live here. I’ll live with you. I never want to leave Sicily.” At this they both laughed.
“Listen to me,” the Don said. “It took a great deal of work to put a stop to the vendetta against her. If we married, plots and mischief would be born. They can accept the fact that she is my mistress but not my wife. So with this arrangement we are both happy and both free. Also, I do not want a wife who refuses to accept my decisions, and when she refuses to leave Sicily I am not a husband.”
“And it would be an infamita,” Caterina said. Her head drooped slightly, and then she turned her eyes to the black Sicilian sky and began to weep.
Astorre was bewildered. It made no sense to him as a child. “Really, but why? Why?” he said.
Don Aprile sighed. He puffed on his cigar and took a sip of anisette. “You must understand,” the Don said. “Father Sigusmundo was my brother.”
Astorre remembered now that their explanation hadn’t convinced him. With the willfulness of a romantic child he had believed that two people who loved each other were permitted any license in the world. Only now he understood the terrible decision his uncle and aunt had made. That if he married Caterina, all the Don’s blood relatives would become his enemies. Not that they did not know that Father Sigusmundo was a villain. But he was a brother and that excused all his sins. And a man like the Don could not marry his brother’s murderer. Caterina could not ask such a sacrifice. And then what if Caterina believed that the Don had somehow been implicated in her husband’s murder? What a leap of faith for both of them, and perhaps, what a betrayal of everything they believed in.
But this was America, not Sicily. During the long night Astorre had made up his mind. In the morning he had called Nicole.
“I’m going to pick you up for breakfast,” he had said. “Then you and I are going to visit Cilke at FBI headquarters.”
Nicole had said, “This has to be serious, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you over breakfast.”
“Do you have an appointment with him?” Nicole had asked.
“No, that’s your job.”
An hour later the cousins were having breakfast together at a posh hotel with widely separated tables for privacy because it was an early-hour meeting place for the power brokers of the city.
Nicole believed in a hearty breakfast to fuel her twelve-hour working day. Astorre settled for orange juice and coffee, which with a basket of breakfast rolls would cost him twenty dollars. “What crooks,” he said to Nicole with a grin.
Nicole was impatient with this. “You’re paying for the atmosphere,” she said. “The imported linen, the crockery. What the hell is wrong now?”
“I’m going to do my civic duty,” Astorre said. “I have information from an unimpeachable source that Kurt Cilke and his family will be killed tomorrow night. I want to warn him. I want to get credit for warning him. He’ll want to know my source, and I can’t tell him.”
Nicole pushed away her plate and leaned back. “Who the hell is that stupid?” she said to Astorre. “Christ, I hope you’re not involved.”
“Why do you think that?” Astorre asked.
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “The thought just came. Why not let him know anonymously?”
“I want to get credit for my good deeds. I get the feeling nobody loves me these days.” He smiled.
“I love you,” Nicole said, leaning toward him. “OK, here’s our story. As we came into the hotel a strange man stopped us and whispered the information in your ear. He was wearing a gray striped suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. He was average height, dark-skinned, could be Italian or Hispanic. After that we can vary. I’ll be witness to your story, and he knows he can’t screw around with me.”
Astorre laughed. His laughter was always disarming; it had the unfettered glee of a child. “So he’s more afraid of you than he is of me” he said.
Nicole smiled. “And I know the director of the FBI. He’s a political animal, he has to be. I’ll call Cilke and tell him to expect us.” She took her phone out of her purse and made the call.
“Mr. Cilke,” she said into the phone, “this is Nicole Aprile. I’m with my cousin Astorre Viola, and he has important information he wants to give you.”
After a pause she said, “That’s too late. We’ll be there within the hour.” She hung up before Cilke could say anything.
An hour later Astorre and Nicole were ushered into Cilke’s office. It was a large corner office with Polaroid bulletproof windows that could not be seen out of, so there was no view.
Cilke, standing behind a huge desk, was waiting for them. There were three black leather chairs facing his desk. Behind it, oddly enough, was a schoolroom blackboard. In one of the chairs sat Bill Boxton, who did not offer to shake hands.
“Are you going to tape this?” Nicole asked.
“Of course,” Cilke said.
Boxton said reassuringly, “Hell, we tape everything, even our coffee-and-doughnut orders. We also tape anybody we think we may have to put in jail.”
“You’re a pretty fucking funny guy,” Nicole said, deadpan. “On the best day of your life you couldn’t put me in jail. Think another way. My client Astorre Viola is meeting you voluntarily to give you an important piece of information. I’m here to protect him from any abuse after he does so.”
Kurt Cilke was not quite so charming as he had been in their previous meetings. He waved them into chairs and took his seat behind the desk. “OK,” he said. “Let’s have it.”
Astorre felt the man’s hostility, as if being on his own turf didn’t require his usual businesslike friendliness. How would he react? He looked directly into Cilke’s eyes and said, “I received information that there will be a heavily armed assault on your home tomorrow night. Late. The purpose is to kill you for some reason.”
Cilke did not respond. He was frozen in his chair, but Boxton sprang up and stood behind Astorre. To Cilke he said, “Kurt, keep calm.”
Cilke rose. His entire body seemed to blow up with rage. “This is an old Mafia trick,” he said. “He sets up the operation and then sabotages it. And he thinks I’ll be grateful. Now, how the hell did you get such information?”
Astorre told him the story he and Nicole had prepared. Cilke turned to Nicole and asked, “You witnessed this incident?”
“Yes,” Nicole said, “but I didn’t hear what the man said.”
Cilke said to Astorre, “You are
under arrest now.”
“For what?” Nicole said.
“For threatening a federal officer,” Cilke said.
“I think you better call your director,” Nicole said.
“It’s my decision to make,” Cilke told her.
Nicole looked at her watch.
Cilke said softly, “Under executive order of the president, I’m authorized to hold you and your client for forty-eight hours without legal counsel, as a threat to national security.”
Astorre was startled. In his wide-eyed, childish way, he said, “Is that really true? You can do that?” He was really impressed by such power. He turned back to Nicole and said cheerfully, “Hey, this is getting more and more like Sicily.”
“If you take that step, the FBI will be in court for the next ten years and you’ll be history,” Nicole said to Cilke. “You have time to get your family out and ambush the attackers. They won’t know they’ve been informed on. If you capture any, you can question them. We won’t talk. Or warn them.”
Cilke seemed to consider this. He said to Astorre with contempt, “At least I respected your uncle. He would never have talked.”
Astorre gave an embarrassed smile. “Those were the old days and that was the old country, and besides, you’re not so different, with your secret executive orders.” He wondered what Cilke would say if he told him the real reason. That he had saved the man simply because he had spent an evening in the presence of his wife and had romantically and uselessly fallen in love with his idea of her.
“I don’t believe your bullshit story, but we’ll go into that if there is really an assault tomorrow night. If anything happens, then I lock you up, and maybe you, too, counselor. But why did you tell me?”
Astorre smiled. “Because I like you,” he said.
“Get the hell out of here,” Cilke said. He turned to Boxton. “Get the commander of the special tactical force in here, and tell my secretary to set up a call to the director.”
They were kept another two hours to be interrogated by Cilke’s staff. Meanwhile, Cilke in his office talked to the director in Washington over the scramble phone.