‘Bracchi had a gun on me, but I played along with him until he got careless and I saw my chance. The guy is big but he was out of shape. We rolled around on the stinking floor of that hut fighting for the gun and it went off. Put two slugs through that fat fucker and he was finished.’
‘Where’s the body?’ Mancini asked.
‘I put it in the boot of his car, and that took some doing, lemme tell you. Then I drove it to the coast, you know, the cliffs out towards Mondello, that place we’ve used before. I just pointed the car towards the edge and let it roll over. The sea is good and deep there, but I stayed until I saw it sink down out of sight.’
‘Why haven’t you called?’ Mandretta asked, still moving the knife around in his hands.
Gianluca took his smashed mobile from his pocket and displayed it. ‘First thing that bastard did was stamp on it so I thought it better to come straight here, boss, to tell you in person.’
‘Leo is always with that Carpanini guy, he’s like his shadow.’
‘He was acting on his own this time. Said he wanted to go up in the world.’
‘Huh . . .’ Mandretta turned to Mancini. ‘How did you get on at the Cervi place? Mancini had to do your job see, GL – checking out that villa while you were taking care of Leo.’
Gianluca was trying to gauge how long it would take to get hold of his gun and use it. Should he turn and shoot Mancini first or concentrate on Mandretta? Because, any second, Mancini was going to say he had seen Bracchi at the same time as he was ‘getting killed’ ten miles away.
‘It’s nice and private there, boss,’ Mancini said. ‘Should be an easy hit. I saw Carpanini there but now I know why I didn’t see his fat sergeant. GL was busy offing him.’
Mancini laughed and Mandretta joined in. Gianluca added his own sounds of amusement and hoped they didn’t sound more like nervous clucking. Mandretta’s face was smiling but his eyes remained cold and unchanging. The room reeked of testosterone and treachery, each man thinking his own thoughts and hoping the others could not read them.
It was getting hotter in Palermo as spring began to give way to early summer. The skies above the Cervi villa were a deepening blue, the clouds fleecy, and the wind brought up an increasing heat from the North African coast. It was the time when Leo Bracchi began to feel his bulk as he went into summer sweat mode. He was in it now as he watched the road from his vantage point in the raised garden behind the villa.
Carlo was at police headquarters in downtown Palermo. He was trying to smooth things over and gain time. Leo felt guilty that his early environment had caused this problem. It had drawn Mandretta to him and then involved Carlo. They could both go down over this, in more ways than one. Then he thought that if a bunch of women hadn’t decided to go wild, none of this would have happened in the first place.
Leo liked his peaceful lookout spot. ‘Peaceful’ had not played much of a part in his police life so he was enjoying a brief snatch of it now. What was the phrase, ‘the calm before the storm’? Leo blinked tiredness out of his eyes a few times and thought of sleep, glorious uninterrupted sleep, which he had not had in days. Then he thought of food as his stomach rumbled, a low growl that accused him of ill treatment.
So much depended on that lowlife Gianluca now. In any other part of the world that might be crazy, but here in Sicily it was almost normal. I’ve had illicit contact with an infamous Don, Leo thought. We are about to have a small war, completely off the record, aided and abetted and maybe even led by a bunch of man-hating women, and most of them with police connections, one way or another. What could possibly go wrong?
Leo was watching the approach road and Marianna was watching him, from the rooftop of the villa. She used the field glasses Adelina had issued to her. They made the bulky figure of Leo seem as if he were right next to her. She could see every fold of his creased clothing, and the way the bulge of his stomach fought against his shirt. Fat people fascinated her because they were so foreign to her existence. Her background still equated fat with wealth and not poverty.
Leo and Marianna saw Carlo returning at the same time. He had been gone for four hours, just time enough to check on Maria and the kids and leave a trail of excuses at headquarters. That had been tricky, but the game Carlo was playing was even trickier. If Leo hadn’t gone to Mandretta they would not be in this fix, but his sergeant had saved his life at least once, maybe twice, in the past. His wife might not understand and his superiors certainly wouldn’t, but this really was a matter of honour and debt now. Carlo was caught in the same trap as Leo. Palermo had been casting its spell on him for years and now it had ensnared him.
Marianna was being called by one of the other women.
‘Mari, Adelina wants you,’ Adriana shouted. ‘Come down.’
Mari shouted that she’d come soon to Adriana, who was putting out washing to dry, a strangely normal act considering the situation. This was unfortunate timing. If Marianna had stayed watching her post for another minute she would have seen the movement in the hills behind Leo. A line of men were carefully making their way down the slope, using the scattered clumps of low vegetation as cover. Leo shifted his position every few minutes, but always kept his eyes on the single approach road, so he too saw nothing. The sunshine was making him sleepy, and he began to doze, thinking of Sylvia and feeling glad that nothing was going to happen this day.
Salim Mandretta had never thought much about ageing but he was thinking about it now, as he crouched down behind a thorny bush, cursing the number of times he’d been snagged coming down this hell of a hillside. He was glad that he’d dressed for the occasion in a green canvas camouflage jacket that he had sent Mancini out to buy. Most of his boys could not bear to part with their expensive gear and looked stupidly out of place now, their suits showing all the signs of nature’s attack.
Mandretta’s mind was on full alert. Was Gianluca trying to shaft him? It was hard to believe that the man would dare try to double-cross him and he didn’t believe it – but even so, something gnawed at his guts. He had watched Leo Bracchi grow up in a place where life was tough and dangerous. Leo wouldn’t have been so easy to kill, but he had disappeared. There was nothing to contradict Gianluca’s story, and yet he still had this feeling, like some bastard had his hands around his guts and was slowly twisting them into knots.
Then Mandretta began to think about Mancini and what he might do, as he watched his black-suited troopers crouch down in the undergrowth in front of him like sly crows. But if Mandretta’s mind was working on all options, Gianluca’s was hurtling along in overdrive. He was playing a game that was way past dangerous, double-crossing the Don and Carpanini. Did that make it a double-double-cross? He hoped so.
Gianluca hoped this was the chance he’d been waiting for all his life. Wiping out the most effective policeman in Palermo, taking revenge on these crazy women for the Families and, best of all, taking control of the Mandretta organisation. To do that in one afternoon would give him immortality in Mafia history, and it was so close he could almost touch it, feel it, smell it.
‘Right, you all know what to do,’ Mandretta said. ‘Mancini, GL and me will be near the front of the villa – the rest of you take the back and get inside. They should all be dead before they know what the fuck is happening, but if you flush any out alive we’ll be waiting for them.’
Mandretta shook off his unease, because the thrill of the hunt was taking over. He was armed with an old Berretta automatic, his weapon of choice from his early days, and his favourite stiletto would also be close to his left hand. He forgot what the word was but he could use each hand equally well, which had saved him a few times in the past.
Within ten minutes, Mandretta’s men were at the edge of the grounds of Adelina’s villa. Her wilderness of a garden suited them well and they began to creep through it with deadly intent.
As Leo walked back to the villa he saw Carlo approaching, and opened his car door for him as he pulled up on the Cervi forecourt.
; ‘All quiet?’ Carlo asked.
‘Sure. We’ve got a whole day to prepare for this, boss. GL will bring them when he said, walking into a trap like the rats they are. Don’t worry, he’s not gonna fuck this up. He’s just a donkey and we’ve dangled him a nice juicy carrot. Trust me on this, I know these people.’ The words were barely out of Leo’s mouth when the first shots rang out from the rear of the house.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ Carlo yelled. ‘Get the shotgun from the boot. C’mon, Leo, move your arse! Something’s gone badly wrong here.’
At least Leo didn’t have time to be shocked. He took the shotgun from Carlo’s car. It was a five-cartridge pump action but was not loaded. Leo lost valuable time ramming rounds into the gun before he could follow Carlo as he darted towards the house.
Carlo almost collided with Adelina as he burst through the villa’s front door.
‘So much for your stupid plan,’ Adelina shouted. ‘That scumbag Gianluca has betrayed us. Mandretta’s men are all around the house, I think. They’re certainly out back.’
Leo joined them, his face florid after a rare burst of speed. The window next to the front door shattered as it was hit by gunfire.
‘We managed to lock the back doors before they could get in,’ Adelina said. ‘One of my girls is down, but so are two of their men. Marianna is still on the roof and she took two of them out with that rifle she’s so fond of, thank God.’
‘How many?’ Leo gasped.
‘At least six,’ Marianna said. ‘Well, four now . . .’
‘What do you think GL is working here, Leo?’ Carlo said.
‘Fuck knows, boss. I just didn’t think he had it in him. I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no time for that now. Get to one of the back windows.’ Carlo nodded at the pump action. ‘Do you know how to use that thing?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Leo joined Gabriella in a rear room just as two men were about to crash through the French doors. She had already been hit in the shoulder but was still alert and holding her pistol. It was perfect timing for Leo, but deadly for Mandretta’s men. As they burst in – dressed in ridiculous scuffed-up suits – Leo opened up with the shotgun, loosing off three shells and moving the gun from side to side so that there was no escape. The force of the rounds threw them back out into the garden, where their blasted bodies fell and were still.
‘That should make the others think twice,’ Leo murmured, and it must have, because everything went quiet as Leo turned to Gabriella and gently pulled her down behind a sofa. It looked like a round had gone through the top of her shoulder without breaking any bones. ‘You’ll live,’ Leo said. ‘Just press down hard on it with your hand to stem the bleeding. Stay down now, and stay quiet. No one’s gonna risk coming through those doors again.’ There was a noise and Leo whirled and almost fired, but he recognised Marianna just in time – and she him.
‘Oh, it’s you, fat man,’ Marianna said. ‘I thought it better to come down off the roof. There’s a few more out back but they’re melting away, back into the hills like the cowards they are. I took a few more shots at them but they had too much cover. Killed two of the bastards though –the ones that forgot to look up.’
Marianna’s face was ablaze with excitement, her small frame shaking. ‘They killed Adriana, shot her down in the garden before she even knew what was happening, I ran back up to the rooftop with this.’ Marianna held up Adelina’s father’s old hunting rifle with pride. ‘Gabriella here covered downstairs. If those stupid fools hadn’t shot Adriana they would have surprised us totally. Adelina took the front of the house.’
‘Yeah, Carlo’s with her.’
The silence didn’t last long. Firing was coming from the front of the villa. A burst of bullets that Leo knew could only come from a rapid-fire automatic, which meant they were outgunned. His shotgun was a beast, but only good for short-range killing.
‘C’mon,’ Leo yelled. ‘We’re needed. This isn’t over yet.’
Gianluca loved the quick spurt of fire from his Beretta Storm. It was a short-barrelled killing machine that dispatched multiple rounds in the blink of an eye. He raked the front of the villa and felt the barrel of the gun vibrate and jump in his hand, as if it were alive. He hoped no one had killed Bracchi yet; he wanted that pleasure for himself. He badly needed to let that fat bastard know that he had been outfoxed, just before he put holes in that overfed belly of his.
Gianluca was leaning behind the thick trunk of a stunted olive tree, Mandretta on his right and Mancini a bit further back.
‘GL!’ Mandretta shouted. ‘You’re shooting at nothing. Wait till you have a target.’
There had been a lot of firing coming from the back of the villa, which Mandretta thought was good news, but when he phoned his main man there and got no reply he began to worry. This hit should have been easy. They’d have no idea, GL had said, and even less of a chance. Mandretta felt for his stiletto, as its cold touch was always a comfort, and he was going to make sure that Gianluca fucking Vitale was in front of him the whole time.
Carlo saw movement at the edge of the trees and bushes that fringed the front garden. That was where the firing was coming from, but they were out of range. Suddenly, Leo was alongside him.
‘I hope you haven’t left the back unguarded?’
‘Nah, all’s cool there, boss – for us, anyway. ‘Marianna got two of them from the roof. She’s pretty deadly, that girl. Two more just walked on to the shotgun. They thought they would surprise us and they almost did, if it wasn’t for Marianna. I think there were a few more but they’ve faded away, back into the hills. I don’t blame them, because it’s been raining bodies out back.’
‘Who hasn’t made it?’ Adelina asked.
‘Adriana. Looks like they surprised her in the garden, and Gabriella has a flesh wound but it’s not too bad.’
Adelina leaned against the wall and shut her eyes for a moment. To Carlo, she looked like she had aged ten years in a few days; her handsome features now had a kind of sunken look, and her eyes were dulled.
Leo crouched down besides Carlo and scanned the scene outside.
‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘I said I’m sorry for getting Gianluca so wrong.’
‘You’ve already said that. This is Palermo, home of the double-cross. You’ve told me that often enough.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you think Mandretta is out front?’
‘Has to be. Salim would always want be part of this, he’s still a savage at heart. And he has to try to finish it now. It’s a matter of honour.’
‘We could make this official and get help. There’d be twenty cops here pretty quick if I told them what was going on. Maybe some public Joe has already phoned it in anyway, the noise that’s been made.’
‘Nah. This place is miles from anywhere, boss, and people mind their business out here. What’s the sound of shooting to some peasant in the hills?’
They were interrupted by another burst of automatic fire, some of the rounds entering the villa through shattered windows, and whining as they ricocheted off walls and furniture.
‘The others will try to get close now that idiot is cutting loose, and I bet it’s that fucking Gianluca with the rifle.’
‘He thought sticking with Salim was a better bet, eh?’
‘Looks like it.’ But Leo wasn’t as sure as he sounded.
Gianluca rammed another magazine into the Storm. Each one held thirty rounds. It was too quiet out back. Far too quiet. By now, those boys should have done their work by getting inside the villa and blowing most in there away, leaving him to open up on whoever tried to get out the front way. Then he could turn his attention to Mister Salim Mandretta, the great man himself.
Gianluca would use his handgun on him as soon as Mandretta presented his back to him, and say a stray round from the house had caught the Don. Tragic, but one of those things. He knew Mancini would accept it as long as he ma
de him first soldier.
Right on cue, Mandretta appeared alongside him, as if conjured up by Gianluca’s treacherous thoughts.
‘So, this was going to be easy, was it, GL?’ Mandretta said. ‘Tell me what the fuck is happening here, and you’d better tell it good.’
Gianluca felt for the reassuring presence of the handgun in the pocket of his jacket, but slyly, hiding his questing hand with the rifle.
‘They got lucky, that’s all, boss,’ Gianluca said. ‘Those cretins out back must have broken cover too soon, and they had someone watching on the roof too. These things can happen.’
‘Not to me they fucking don’t.’
Gianluca could feel the sweat pouring from him, but it was a cold sweat. Mandretta was so close to him he felt his nerve begin to falter. The first part of his plan lay in ruins, and Mandretta was thinking he had double-crossed him with the raid. The Don had the right feeling all right, but the wrong reasons.
Gianluca closed his eyes for a second, and saw all Mandretta had. The money, power, properties, women, and that new yacht the size of three houses moored in the harbour, lording it over all the other boats like a gleaming white giant. And just scraps were left over for the likes of him.
From his spot in the bushes Mancini started firing at one of the villa’s windows, which was the distraction Gianluca needed. It was an instant decision, but one that he had been working towards all his life. He began to bring the handgun out of his pocket to bear down on Mandretta, but he was not quick enough and the Don was on him immediately.
‘I thought so, you bastard snake!’ Mandretta shouted. ‘You’ve sold us out.’
Mandretta grabbed Gianluca’s gun hand with a vice-like grip and stabbed him in the shoulder with his stiletto. Gianluca felt it slide in and graze the bone, a searing pain that enraged him. His finger worked the trigger of the pistol but Mandretta made sure all the rounds were aimed at the sky. Slowly but surely he began to wrestle Gianluca to the ground. He was almost twenty years older but still stronger than his once-trusted foot soldier. They were nose to nose now, locked together like lovers as Gianluca struggled desperately.
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