Boss of Bosses

by Clare Longrigg

  Provenzano had left school at just seven years old, barely literate, but with his manual typewriter he could slowly bash out these closely typed letters, full of schoolboy errors, which his correspondents politely repeated. If anyone sent a scribbled note, he begged them to get hold of a typewriter, as he struggled to read handwriting. He showed great attention to detail, answering correspondents punctiliously, point by point.

  The letters demonstrate how Provenzano brought about a change in leadership style. The following extract from a letter to Ilardo shows his emphasis on patience, negotiation and forbearance. A problem had arisen with an industrial plant in Catania: the manager was asking the Mafia for protection (from criminal damage and trade unionists), claiming he had already paid out. Various Catania mafiosi were accusing each other of appropriating the plant’s money, and Ilardo was trying to sort out the mess. Provenzano writes:

  Mio carissimo G. I received your letter with great joy, I am so pleased to hear you are in Good Health. I can assure you the same of myself. I know you were supposed to meet with MM [code for Mimmo Vaccaro, acting boss of Caltanissetta] and now I need you to confirm that you have indeed seen him, to sort out your situation. I hope you have an honest and straight collaboration. Even if we have a great deal against us, inside as well as outside ourselves, do try to salvage what you can from the present situation.

  I hear what you say about someone trying to portray you in a bad light, telling lies about you, but I know nothing about this. I can’t give you an exact response. I will try to help you in any way I can.

  You ask me about the other question: the Riesani appropriating large sums, without asking permission. But listen these are things you must sort out between you, you know all about it and it’s your business, besides I know nothing at all . . .

  For the rest, it looks to me as though you’re doing the right thing, just keep an eye on the situation.

  The tone of the letter shows what a profound cultural change Provenzano was demanding. In contrast to his hectoring, dictatorial predecessor, he comes across as avuncular, pious, forbearing. He requires his men to resolve disputes and refuses to get drawn into their conflicts, but demands that parties sit down in a civilized manner to resolve their differences and find a peaceful solution.

  He wrote to Ilardo, who had refused to attend a ‘sit-down’ with a Catania capo in the well-founded belief that he would be in danger:

  Listen I have been informed about the appointment, and that you don’t want to go. I can see your point, but since my aim is to restore peace wherever I can, and clear up any problems so we can continue to respect each other, this conflict is an absolute disaster.

  Go and meet him, take 15 million with you and establish whether you have any genuine points of difference. Sort out the conflict between you, make peace with each other, and drink on it – but do it now. Send me your confirmation that this has been done, because they’re expecting an answer from me.

  I would love to see you before Christmas but I don’t know how you’re fixed, if we can, we’ll see each other, if not, we should definitely be in touch, but in case you don’t hear from me, Happy Christmas to everyone.

  Provenzano used his fugitive status to great advantage: the letters carried his authority, and it was difficult to dispute his rulings by post. He could also claim (as in the Catania situation) to know nothing, when in fact he knew the whole story and was secretly working on behalf of one of the complainants. He finally confesses to Ilardo: ‘It’s true, I do know all about it, but I wasn’t behind it, I kept him [the Catania mafioso in dispute with Ilardo] informed the whole way through. The fact is, that when I sent him my final solution, he didn’t read it. His brother sent it back to me unopened, and you can check that with him.’

  The art of tragedie could be most effectively practised in writing. For reasons of security Provenzano didn’t hold big meetings and banquets, and was only ever seen in person by a few of his closest advisers. His elusiveness added to his reputation among mafiosi, who received his carefully worded instructions but never saw the Phantom.

  Ilardo thought he could entrap the old man, but there were mysteries surrounding Provenzano that Ilardo could not have dreamed of. When Provenzano summoned him to a meeting, in the autumn of 1995, to expound his new directive, the carabinieri had an extraordinary opportunity to arrest one of Italy’s most wanted criminals. A series of failures meant that the Boss of Bosses would remain beyond the grasp of the law for another decade.

  Ilardo received his instructions from Provenzano’s messenger, Catania mafioso and eye doctor Salvatore Ferro, to meet at the Mezzojuso junction in the early morning of 31 October. He called his handler, Colonel Riccio, telling him to come and meet him straight away, as this could potentially be a meeting with Provenzano himself.

  Riccio took a plane from Rome and arrived in Catania the following evening. When they met, Ilardo was agitated by the magnitude of what he was about to do: to bring a company of carabinieri to the door of a meeting with the Boss of Bosses. He was risking his own life if the raid went wrong and his cover was blown. They agreed that Riccio’s men would observe the other men of honour arriving at the junction and follow them to the meeting, but they would hold back if there was any sense that they knew they were being watched.

  The following morning, early, Ilardo drove along the Palermo–Agrigento road, to the Mezzojuso turn-off. He pulled off the main road into the broad junction where two country roads joined the main drag, and parked behind another car. An old farm building loomed above the road, its windows dark. There were already two other cars in the lay-by, and two figures sitting in one of them to keep warm. The mountains lowered on either side, the shadows shortening as the sun climbed. Far away a village perched on its rocky slope, guardian of the valley. In the deep countryside there was no sound but the wind in the grass, and the occasional roar of a farm truck.

  One of the men came over and introduced himself, and signalled to Ilardo to get in his car. Ilardo shuffled in behind Lorenzo Vaccaro, brother of the Mimmo in the letter and one of Provenzano’s most assiduous attendants. The two men shook hands wordlessly. They drove towards Agrigento in silence for a few miles, then turned off a sharp right-hand bend onto a dirt road. A flock of sheep was grazing near by, their bells making the familiar tinkling sound as they trotted along, as much part of the ancient landscape as the stones themselves. The car bumped over a winding farm track, which dipped downwards before climbing towards the mountains. The driver pulled up outside a farmhouse that stood on the crest of a hill, with a sweeping view of the countryside all around: across the fields down to the main road, and over the rocky outcrops to the village above. No one could come anywhere near this place without being spotted. Ilardo wondered, would Riccio’s men make it on foot?

  Ilardo was shown into the farm building. In an upstairs office, sparsely furnished with a table and plastic chairs, an elderly man was waiting for them, dressed in simple country clothes: a polo shirt and V-neck sweater, working trousers and a heavy jacket. Ilardo realized with a shock that it was Uncle Binnu. He hadn’t seen him face to face for years; he had grown old and thin, with sunken eyes and temples. His light brown hair was going grey and receding. The men joked about his excellent farmer’s disguise, and the Boss agreed that he made such a convincing peasant that he could go pretty much anywhere without being spotted. In fact, he boasted, just a couple of days earlier, getting treatment for his prostate, he had had his catheter removed, and had driven 25 km for an important meeting without getting stopped. He did not say where he was living, but other shreds of information convinced Ilardo he was staying in Bagheria, his long-time centre of operations.

  Salvatore Ferro, who had originally contacted Ilardo to make the arrangements, arrived at 10 a.m., apologizing for his lateness, having stashed his Mercedes in a barn down the road and picked up an old banger to make the last part of the journey. All morning the four men shut themselves in that small office and discussed some urgent issues; t
he principal of these was the apparently unstoppable ambition of Giovanni Brusca. The stocky scion of the San Giuseppe Iato clan was throwing his weight around. Since Bagarella was arrested, he had lost his brother in arms, his battering ram, who intimidated everyone into submission – but he was not going to be left out in the cold. Brusca was making moves to take over Agrigento, a strategically vital Mafia stronghold. While they talked, Ilardo tried not to look at the door.

  Provenzano was calling for the restoration of relations with Bagarella’s contacts in business, as a matter of urgency. Since Bagarella’s arrest a lucrative source of income had been lost, and it was vital to get these onstream.

  During the morning shepherds and farmworkers turned up from time to time, some of them on foot, bringing food and drink. They were all involved in organizing Provenzano’s summit, and by lunchtime there were three or four of them in the next room preparing pasta, lightly cooked greens and cheese. Provenzano always relied on shepherds, a tight-knit community closed to the outside world, for support. They were completely trustworthy and held it as part of their tradition to help a Mafia boss in need. The shepherds were Provenzano’s hidden army.

  Whenever someone new arrived, the host locked the office door. A local farmer with white curly hair arrived at about eleven in a Fiat Panda with the meat and proceeded to cook it, just how Provenzano liked it: very rare, without salt. He was Cola La Barbera, who owned the farm on the other side of the Palermo–Agrigento road. La Barbera was Provenzano’s personal chef, providing for his particular needs and tastes.

  They ate lunch sitting at the table, waited on by the shepherds, who brought dishes of fresh ricotta, pecorino and strong local bread, steamed vegetables and a vast platter of grilled steaks. There was local red wine, but Binnu drank only water.

  After lunch Provenzano held one-to-one meetings to discuss his strategy for the organization, while the others waited discreetly in another room. Alone with Ilardo, he told him that whatever his grievances, and however much Brusca’s behaviour warranted it, he must make every attempt to avoid going to war: the delicate political situation demanded stability for now. Ilardo was disillusioned to find his old friend less proactive than before, pressing for peace and preferring to wait for the other side to slip up instead of going on the attack. He said they had to wait for the political situation to improve. If necessary, Provenzano claimed, it would take between five and seven years for the organization to recover sufficiently to be able to do business again and overcome the current precarious economic situation.

  On a more personal note, Provenzano asked Ilardo if he had ever heard anyone refer to him as il ragioniere, ‘the Accountant’. His own accountant had started calling him that, and he had found it particularly irritating. Never, said Ilardo, politely. Provenzano, he knew, had been called ‘the Accountant’ for years.

  At the end of the day, as it was getting dark, the driver came in and announced that now the men knew this place, when it came to the next meeting, they would be able to find it themselves. Ilardo nodded. He had taken in every detail of the place. But where was Riccio?

  Riccio’s men, it turned out, had spent the morning photographing the cars parked at the rendezvous, watched them out of sight and then gone back to base. When Ilardo got home at about ten that evening and phoned angrily demanding an explanation, Riccio explained he had been waiting for the order from Rome but claimed that he had been instructed not to move in. A week later, after dark, Riccio’s men drove back along the Palermo–Agrigento road and tried to find the dirt track but, after driving up and down the road three times, were unable to find the turning.

  A further breakdown in communications meant that investigators in Palermo were not to learn of these events for an entire year. As a result, the meeting place in Mezzojuso, although known to the carabinieri, was used repeatedly by Provenzano, with no surveillance in place. It was to be another year before the authorities received a request to put a bug in the chef La Barbera’s car.

  When it emerged that the carabinieri had had the opportunity to arrest the Boss of Bosses, the failure became a massive scandal. Riccio maintained he had orders from Rome not to raid the farmhouse.

  ‘Ilardo was to meet Provenzano in the Mezzojuso area. I communicated this information to the ROS, proposing to carry out surveillance myself and conduct the whole operation [to arrest Provenzano]. But my boss had a different view and told me it was not my job. The day of the appointment at the Mezzojuso junction I was there but the means at my disposal (men and vehicles) were insufficient, and the only thing we could do was take a few photos.’

  The response from Rome was swift. Riccio’s superior officer, General Mario Mori, sued him for slander, saying there had never been any question of making arrests: ‘Riccio told us specifically that if they’d raided the farmhouse, he had no way of protecting the source.’

  The complaints and counter-suits have since been shelved, but the controversy still churns on. ‘They didn’t want to get Provenzano’, Riccio, now white-haired, insists. ‘It may have been incompetence, or they may have had another reason. Perhaps Provenzano had some task to perform.’23

  Meanwhile, Ilardo’s cover was still intact, and he continued to report to Riccio, providing a detailed picture of the daily administrative concerns of the organization and the changes being implemented as a result of Provenzano’s directive.

  The Boss’s priority, in all correspondence, was to get problems sorted out quickly and peacefully, in order to let everyone get on with the real business at hand: making money. In one letter to Ilardo he wrote: ‘You must do this quickly, so we don’t lose the business . . . I beg you, don’t make me look like an idiot, I am trying, with the will of God, to sort out everything I can, for you, for everyone.’

  No problem was too small: ‘Thank you for sorting out that firm I spoke to you about, but unfortunately, while I was looking into it, they had a jackhammer stolen, and two soldering irons, which you need to track down, and get them back. Once you’ve done that, let me know, everything should go through me.’

  Provenzano was concerned that the firms they were squeezing for protection money should not feel aggrieved. Ilardo reported that one firm had refused to pay what he felt was a reasonable sum, £20,000. The Boss replied: ‘We must be sure to ask the right amount, otherwise we get into a situation where we’re putting ourselves in the wrong, pursuing them for an exaggerated figure, so ask for the right amount and we’ll make sure they pay.’

  While trying to impress on his cousin in prison that he was to be trusted to take over Caltanissetta, Ilardo fanned the flames of conflict with Brusca and the Agrigento clan, at considerable risk to himself, to try to force Provenzano to call another meeting and bring his collaboration to a speedy conclusion.

  While Ilardo was still scheming how to force Provenzano out of hiding, word began to slip out that he was working for the police. At first it was just a rumour, odd snatches of hearsay, but in Cosa Nostra gossip can be lethal. Ilardo, now a marked man, blindly pursued his plan.

  Brusca wrote to Provenzano saying he had had a request from the Catania clan to get rid of Ilardo, but he wanted the Boss’s permission. Provenzano’s response was typically measured: ‘We must be extremely careful to avoid any unfortunate occurrence.’

  Brusca’s irritation turned to slow-burning anger. ‘I wrote to Bernardo Provenzano for guidance, to see if he could shed some light on why the request had come from Catania, and not from him. I took a pen and paper and I wrote to Bernardo Provenzano that there was this problem we needed to resolve. His response to my question, was that he didn’t understand what was going on. He said: “Let’s see about this, as soon as we can.” So he played for time.’

  But Provenzano did not always prevaricate for the sake of it. While Brusca fumed, he was arranging for Ilardo to be swiftly dispatched. Such profound treachery was deeply wounding, and damaging for the organization. He had revealed his plan to Gino Ilardo. The authorities would have his letters, would know mor
e about him than they ever had in thirty years. He instructed Giuffré to find a secure, remote location. Giuffré, suspecting the purpose, found the perfect spot, out of sight of prying eyes, and told Provenzano it was ready.

  In early May, Ilardo decided to put his collaboration on a formal footing. He asked to meet magistrates from Palermo and Caltanissetta to talk about his situation, and spent some hours with them at the ROS barracks in Rome, going over the details of his conviction, his protection and the information he could offer. He left that afternoon, with an agreement to reconvene in ten days’ time, to finalize the arrangements for his, and his family’s, protection. He took a plane straight back to Catania, hoping to get home before his absence had been noted. But the news was already out. The next day two gunmen accosted him outside his house in Catania and shot him several times from close range before making their escape.

  Word of Ilardo’s death spread rapidly through Mafia circles. Police recorded a conversation picked up by a bug in a mafioso’s car:

  ‘I saw Lucio yesterday evening . . . and he said to me: have you heard the latest about Gino? No, I haven’t, I said. . . He said it seems he was an informer.’

  ‘Who? Gino?’

  ‘Apparently he was in direct contact with someone from the police. Looks like he was the one who got Mimì arrested . . . and Aiello . . . If they hadn’t killed him he’d have let them have me, you and all our sons to the seventh generation . . . We don’t know what they know. I feel like a complete idiot – my whole world’s collapsed.’

  Piddu Madonia was going wild with rage in his prison cell, betrayed by his own cousin, in whom he had placed his trust. The man described as the ‘worm within our midst’ had caused untold damage.