The couple laughed and Trotti raised his head. They were talking with animation and seemed fascinated by the bar. Trotti heard the word “pittoresco” pronounced in an unsubtle accent. The couple were talking about the bar.
Picturesque?
Trotti set down the photocopies and looked around, looked at the boxes of Baci chocolates lined against the mirror, at the plastic tablecloths, at the tinted photographs of earlier palios. For Piero Trotti there was nothing even faintly picturesque about the place; the only memory he would retain was the spremuta, twice as expensive as even the dearest bar in his foggy, northern city.
The woman laughed again and the man produced a minute black box. Trotti realized it was a camera only when the man opened up the front lens.
Trotti resented their cheerfulness, and when the man placed the small camera on the glass shelf, beside the chocolate boxes, to take a photograph of himself and his companion, Trotti brusquely rose to his feet, gathered the documents and hurriedly left, going out into the cold of via di Città.
17: Legalese
A few people huddled on the platform, waiting for the local train to Chianciano, but they stood close to the walls, close to the posters, out of the biting wind, away from the track.
It had started to snow again.
There was blood on Trotti’s hands, and in the fall, he had torn his trouser leg.
Limping slightly, Trotti entered the station bar. It was full and the air was thick with rancid smoke. He found a table beside the postcard stand and sat down to wait the twenty minutes until the train was due.
He ordered another hot spremuta, but this time drank it fast. He was coming down with some infection; his throat was uncomfortable and the skin around his lips had begun to flake from the cold.
The palm of his hand hurt; grit from the paving had worked its way under his skin.
no significant element has emerged from following up the theory of an internal conflict within braman. even if the reticence of signora chiara gracchi appears highly suspect and her version of the events leading to her husband’s murder are simplistic at best, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that either she or verga actually wanted gracchi removed or indeed, killed. likewise, there is not the slightest objective evidence that gracchi’s old friends and ex-companions in lotta continua were concerned by the fact that he had, only a month before his death, been summoned by the judicial authorities in milan to explain a possible involvement in the murder of commissario pugliese of the pubblica sicurezza, for whose slaughter gracchi had already spent a year in jail, and concerning whom new information had been made available to the same judicial authorities in milan.
Trotti looked up, escaping the turgid language of the Sostituto Procuratore who had spent two years investigating Gracchi’s death in Trapani.
(“Stay with Pioppi and the little girls.”)
equally unfruitful were the investigations into a possible mafia involvement. none of the witnesses giving state evidence at any time mentioned a known connection between gracchi’s assassination and the trapani boss, roberto palermeri. although there was undoubtedly a motive for palermeri’s wanting gracchi removed, following a series of popular television programs in which gracchi had openly denounced palermeri and his ties to the politician mario agrate, there is no evidence of a link between palermeri and gracchi.
Trotti had to read the typed page a couple of times in order to penetrate the legal jargon.
(“Beltoni’s back in Italy, Piero.”)
His finger followed the text.
enzo beltoni, upon receiving information from the less-than-hermetic trapani courthouse, to the effect that he had become a favored source in the enquiry, chose to abscond after an initial interrogation. he left trapani without warning and without permission. he is now believed to be living in america.
beltoni had entered braman as an ex-addict in 1985, breaking with his habit of heroin. aged thirty-two, and being of high intellect, he became a close collaborator of signor giovanni verga. although giovanni verga knew of beltoni’s past—beltoni had murdered in america while still an adolescent and had spent several years in a new jersey reformatory—and although signor verga was aware of ties that bound beltoni to the trapanese mafia, neither verga nor indeed gracchi were concerned about the man or worried that he might be a spy for the local crime organization. as a sign of their faith, beltoni was given custodial responsibility at braman. giovanni verga claims beltoni executed his task satisfactorily. in an organization as hierarchic as braman, giovanni verga and enzo beltoni were exceptionally close, enjoying strong ties of friendship.
beltoni always maintained his innocence in gracchi’s murder. he was, he claimed, on duty at braman at the time of the murder.
The train hauled into the station as Trotti stuffed the photocopies back into the file.
He went out onto the freezing platform, pulling at the collar of the Carabinieri coat. His hand hurt.
She was accompanied by a man who helped her onto the train. She laughingly thanked him as he bundled her bag through the carriage window. Wilma was wearing a bright, new anorak and a matching woolen bonnet. Leaning out of the train to receive a farewell kiss on the cheek, Wilma never noticed Commissario Piero Trotti.
She smiled charmingly at her youthful friend.
18: FFSS
The local train was maddeningly slow.
Piero Trotti had not wanted to enter the crowded compartment, preferring to sit on a fold-down seat between the two carriages. Here, without the upholstery and fittings, the smell of burnt diesel, along with the clatter of the wheels and the biting cold, worked its way through the shifting plates beneath his numbed feet.
The pain of his grazed hand had become warm, almost pleasant. His bruised knee was stiff.
It had started to snow again.
Trotti stared at the passing countryside through the narrow windows of the folding doors. Tuscany no longer appeared soft and gentle as it had in the early light of the morning, and he was increasingly unhappy about going south.
He was tempted to get out at the next stop, tempted to take the first train north, back to Bologna or even back to the Po valley. Back to where he would feel at home. To where he would feel safe.
(“You really should try to stay alive. It might give you more time for your girlfriends.”)
He turned his glance away from the window and looked at Wilma. She was sitting with her back towards him. Her head was bowed; he saw the curly hair pushing from beneath the edges of the woolen bonnet. She showed no interest in the people round her. She was probably reading.
The train dutifully ran its tedious course across the Apennine plateau, crossing swollen rivers and wet, winding roads. The villages all seemed the same when seen through the damp panes of the train. Empty stations, platforms deserted except for the awaiting station master, reluctantly plucked from a warm office and now shivering beneath the red cap (and plastic cover) of rank.
The Littorina finally reached Chianciano.
Trotti deliberately avoided Wilma. He yanked at the collar of Spadano’s coat and clambered from the train. Clutching his bag to his chest and limping, he took the underground passage—despite the cold, it smelled strongly of urine—to the far platform where a sleek locomotive was already waiting on the main line.
It must have been an earlier train that had been delayed because when the ticket collector found him, ensconced in a spacious armchair, Trotti had to pay a supplement for a rapido as well as a fine for not having the right ticket.
The fine applied even to retired functionaries of the state, the ticket collector explained apologetically, even to Carabinieri officers. He filled out a yellow coupon and deftly tucked Trotti’s thirty thousand lire note into a leather pouch.
Trotti did not resent the extra cost. At least he had avoided the American girl.
He opened the documents on
his lap and started to read. He coughed. His sore throat was getting worse and his knee was swollen.
19: Falcone
On the night of July 9, 1943, Sicily was invaded from North Africa by American, Canadian and British forces. Thirty-eight days later, the conquest of the island was complete.
The invasion secured the return of Allied troops to Europe. Coming after twenty years of Fascist repression, the invasion, engineered by the American secret services, also secured the triumphant return of the Mafia to Sicily, putting paid to Mussolini’s campaign to destroy the Honored Society.
With Sicily invaded, Italy quit the Axis, changed sides and joined the victorious Allied camp. Two years later, Mussolini was caught, shot dead and suspended by his ankles, along with his mistress, in Milan. The war was over and in a referendum, Italians voted to abolish the monarchy that had allowed the rise of the Duce.
On June 2, 1946, the Italian Republic came into being.
In the hope of thwarting a growing separatist sentiment among Sicilians, the new republic granted the status of autonomous region to Sicily. The Sicilian Region was made responsible for fiscal affairs and accordingly, in 1952, just like the Bourbon monarchs before them, the elected members of the Sicilian Region entrusted tax-raising to private enterprise.
Mario Agrate, heretofore best known to the police for his smuggling activities in Trapani province, had married the daughter of a Palermo tax collector during the last year of the war.
Aided by his cousin Luigi Agrate, Mario Agrate pushed his father-in-law into premature retirement and promptly took over the family business. Rather than the standard cut of three and a half percent on all taxes raised, Mario Agrate now took ten percent.
With a virtual monopoly on tax collection, the cousins grew rich fast. By 1960 they had become landowners, developers and the biggest wine producers in Western Sicily. They also entered politics.
According to a 1977 report of the governmental anti-Mafia agency, the Agrate cousins controlled the ruling Christian Democratic party in Trapani. Mario Agrate owned a yacht, and it was aboard his luxurious boat that the cousins entertained high-ranking politicians from mainland Italy.
The Christian Democratic party, predominantly Roman Catholic, moderate and pro-Western in viewpoint, was held together by its opposition to Communism.
For thirty years, the Agrate cousins were good Catholics and committed anti-Communists; for thirty years the cousins ensured that Trapani voted massively for the Christian Democratic party.
Everybody was happy: the Agrate cousins prospered, their fiscal activity was never threatened by state intervention, while the Christian Democrats in Rome could count on Trapani for its vote.
There were many rumors about Mario Agrate and the Mafia, yet no link was ever shown to exist, even if, in Sicily, no one could be as rich as Mario Agrate without having influential friends. Mario Agrate had many influential friends in government—and the government never changed.
Then, in 1981, a Freemason scandal involving public servants brought down the national government, and for the first time in the thirty-five year history of the Italian Republic, a non-Christian Democratic premier was elected. There was a new balance of power in Rome.
At this time the Corleonese clan was embarking upon its murderous struggle for the control of organized crime in Palermo. The city became more dangerous than Beirut at war and the new government responded by sending the Carabiniere general and national hero Alberto dalla Chiesa to Sicily.
In September 1982, Alberto dalla Chiesa was murdered along with his wife, gunned down in his car as they left the Villa Whitaker. The Italian nation went into a tailspin of shock, angered that the country’s most respected soldier could be eliminated like a common criminal, like a cheap picciotto of a warring Mafia gang.
The government’s response to dalla Chiesa’s murder was astonishingly immediate and understandably, Agrate was dumbfounded when policemen arrived in his offices in Trapani. Like a lot of powerful men in Sicily, Agrate was used to respect from the functionaries of the state.
That he was above the laws of the Republic had heretofore never been questioned.
“Can the Christian Democratic party allow the persecution of its allies in the business community?” Mario Agrate thundered publicly in the columns of the national weekly, L’Italiano.
It was more than a rhetorical question; it was a signal to the Christian Democrats in Rome. A clear signal—and a clear warning.
On the far side of the Atlantic, a retired mafioso living in Argentina had been arrested and extradited first to the USA, then to Italy where he agreed to collaborate with the Palermitan judges. Most of the Mafioso’s close family had been eliminated and in his opinion he was no longer bound by omertà, by any law of silence. The pentito talked non-stop for days on end about the Mafia to the investigating judge, Giovanni Falcone. Though poorly educated, the mafioso was a highly intelligent man who knew and thoroughly understood the workings of the Mafia. The depth of his knowledge was impressive.
Although he never openly mentioned the ‘third level’ of Mafia activity, the pentito mentioned the Agrate cousins and their political immunity—immunity that was, he said, the pay-off for the votes that the cousins had always garnered for the Christian Democratic party.
Dalla Chiesa was murdered in September, 1982. In August 1983, the Socialists came to power, sharing it with the immovable Christian Democrats. Bettino Craxi—a Socialist—became prime minister.
The justice portfolio was passed to a Socialist in Craxi’s coalition government and it was not immediately apparent that a new thief had come to the banquet. In the early years of the Craxi administration, the interlopers were still new to the spoils of power. A party with its roots in the north and center of Italy, the Socialists in 1984 preferred popular support in mainland Italy to the support of the Mafia in Sicily.
As for the Agrates, the writing was on the wall: their easy deal with the Christian Democrats could no longer be taken for granted.
For the first time since Mussolini, the investigating judges in Palermo received political support in their battle against the Mafia.
They prepared their massive Mafia maxi-trial in the knowledge that they had the support of the national government in Rome.
To the surprise of everybody, the Agrates were arrested.
In their late sixties, the cousins were the only politicians among the four hundred mafiosi to be put on trial in the vast, underground bunker of Ucciardone prison.
For the first time ever in Sicily, the question of the third level of Mafia activity was raised in public.
The third level, the court was told, was the political level of the Mafia.
The third level was the level at which the Italian Government and organized crime worked together, to their mutual benefit and to the prejudice of the Republic.
The third level was the level at which the democratically elected government of the sixth wealthiest nation in the world colluded with gangsters and criminals.
Luigi Agrate died of cancer before the end of the trial. Mario Agrate, on the other hand, was sent to prison, condemned to five years for Mafia activity.
Had a new dawn broken in Sicily?
On appeal, Mario Agrate was released after having served just eighteen months.
Bettino Craxi’s Socialists were beginning to have second thoughts about fighting the Mafia.
20: Topolino
“Trying to hide from me?”
Trotti looked up in surprise.
The smile was bright, the white teeth sparkling. “I thought you were joking about being a Carabiniere.”
“I gave up joking years ago, signorina.”
The girl appeared puzzled. “You really are a policeman?”
“That’s nothing to joke about.”
“A real policeman?”
“Don’t I look real?�
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“A uniformed policeman?”
“A real policeman, retired now, thank goodness.” Trotti smiled anew, “Polizia di Stato, not the Carabinieri. Don’t be fooled by the coat. Lent to me by a general of the Carabinieri.”
“It suits you.”
Perhaps the remark was pure courtesy; perhaps the American girl had said it without thinking, but Trotti was both pleased and flattered. It was years since he had last thought about his personal appearances. It seemed even longer since any woman had sought to flatter him.
“Somebody hit you?” she asked, the smile gone. “Your face is bruised.”
“Somebody bumped into me.”
“You’re hurt?”
“Tired and in need of sleep.” Trotti added, “We both did well in Siena. I got a new coat and you got a new jacket.”
She put her head to one side, “You’re not hurt?”
“Your anorak looks warm.”
“A man gave it to me.”
“Lucky girl.” Trotti emitted a mocking whistle, “What sort of man?”
She pointed to the logo of a grinning automobile at her chest and the matching logo on the woolen bonnet, “The sort of man who owns a car rental business and who needs to employ a girl with English and secretarial skills.”
“You’ve got secretarial skills?”
“I work with children,” Wilma replied. “I was waiting in the bar where you left me and he sat down beside me. He even bought me a hot drink before taking me to his house. I got to meet his wife and the two children. It was his wife who insisted on my staying for a meal.”
“Nice people.”
“I fell asleep.” Wilma shrugged, “Not used to spending nights in cold railway stations.”
“Who is?”
“Sorry I missed you in the Piazza.”
Trotti turned to glance out of the window.
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 5