Honoured Society

by Norman Lewis

  AVVOCATO CRISAFULLI: I ask the court’s permission to read a statement by Gaspare Pisciotta. It is addressed to the Public Minister.

  (The Public Minister has a species of watching brief for the State in Italian court procedure, and is supposed to hold the balance between prosecution and defence.)

  THE PRESIDENT: Send it to him by post.

  AVVOCATO CRISAFULLI: I will read it.

  THE PRESIDENT: No you will not!

  AVVOCATO CRISAFULLI: Article 444 of the Code of General Procedure –

  THE PRESIDENT [interrupting]: Leave the Code of Penal Procedure out of this.

  The Public Minister joined forces with the President at this point to insist that the declaration should not be read. Avvocato Crisafulli then went to the President and handed him the document, while a colleague gave a copy to the Public Minister. Finally, the statement went the rounds of the court. It said:

  Dear Avvocato Crisafulli – Observing in you a man of conscience and of honesty, and reposing in you my most complete confidence, I feel that the moment has come to inform you of the following: by a personal agreement reached with the Minister of the Interior, Mario Scelba, Giuliano was killed by me. I reserve my explanation for this killing for the Court at Viterbo.

  Gaspare Pisciotta

  Now the veil had been torn away, and the ugly truths were to be displayed like the sores on a beggar’s limbs. It was to be Pisciotta’s tactic to waste no opportunity to demonstrate that the band had acted with the connivance, the complicity – and even the urging – of high authorities, and to show that the massacre was a political crime for which its instigators should be compelled to accept the responsibility. One after another the high officials of the Italian police came before the court to depose, and to run the gauntlet of Pisciotta’s sardonic comments. They were old men with the grave burdened faces of the senators and bankers of Venice painted by Giovanni Bellini in the late quattrocento; the prisoners of a habit of subterfuge, the inheritors of minds assembled in the secret-agent factories of the petty Italian states. Shifty and hesitant in their evidence, nervously on their guard against the escape of some new disreputable fact, the police chiefs contradicted one another and often contradicted themselves, while that monumental liar Perenze was finally committed for perjury. By contrast, Pisciotta was a model of spontaneity in all his utterances. If Pisciotta told lies he made them sound like truth, but whatever truth lay buried in the policemen’s account of these events seemed obscured by a general dingy patina of falsehood.

  Inspector-General Ettore Messana was sixty-seven years of age when he appeared before the court, a man who spoke very slowly and in an absent, unconcerned manner of the recent tragedies, as if they had happened a long way back in history. In 1919 Messana had gained some notoriety and a good promotion for the bloody competence with which he had extinguished a small peasant revolt. After the Second World War he had commanded the first anti-bandit force formed in Sicily, and, working in collaboration with his old friend, Don Calò Vizzini, and the Mafia, it had taken him eighteen months to destroy some thirty bands, leaving only that of Giuliano intact. Now the Italian public was to know why. ‘We were a single body,’ Pisciotta said, ‘bandits, police and Mafia, like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ In this, perhaps the most celebrated of his utterances, he was supported by Frank Mannino, who said: ‘Messana himself informed Giuliano when a police drive was in preparation. The same people who gave us our orders, gave the police theirs.’

  Luca’s rival Force for the Repression of Banditry got an equally rough handling. Pisciotta accused Luca’s second-in-command of supplying the bandits with five machine-guns which were used at the massacre of Portella della Ginestra, and then of betraying Luca’s operational plan to Giuliano.

  THE PRESIDENT [sarcastically]: Perhaps you’d like to cross-examine the Colonel.

  PISCIOTTA [with enthusiasm]: Yes, your lordship – if possible. Colonel Paolantonio calls himself a hero and says he’s destroyed banditry. In reality, banditry could have been wiped out in 1946. It was Colonel Paolantonio who handed over to Giuliano the CFRB’s operational plan. It was Colonel Paolantonio who advised Giuliano to move to Castelvetrano outside General Luca’s zone … Ask him what rake-off he got.

  ATTORNEY-GENERAL: This is absurd.

  PISCIOTTA: Gentlemen, it was they who created banditry in Sicily.

  They did everything they could to ensure that banditry should not be wiped out. From 1947 on I acted constantly as the link between the Inspectorate of Public Security and Giuliano.

  It turned out not only that Giuliano, Pisciotta and Fra Diavolo had managed to establish a cosy modus vivendi with high police officials, but that most of the other leading lights of the band possessed their own protectors as well.

  TERRANOVA [a leader of one of the bandit squads]: Signor President, Colonel Paolantonio once did me a service. He warned me at Monreale to go into hiding, otherwise I should have been arrested. I was at Monreale to kidnap somebody. Ask him how many times Provenzano was arrested, and released … I can tell you that when Colonel Paolantonio arrested Provenzano, a letter of extortion was found in his pocket and the Colonel himself tore it up.

  PISCIOTTA gave his reason for killing Giuliano: As soon as he had written this statement accepting responsibility for the massacre and denying the existence of instigators, Inspector Verdiani promised to send his own son with the documents necessary for Giuliano to escape overseas. Giuliano told him that he would give the statement either to Scelba or Mattarella alone. I realised it was yet another betrayal, and I said to him, ‘You’re not only risking your own skin, but mine, and the others’ too.’ Then they got at him behind my back, and he handed over the document. That’s why I made the approach to Luca. I realised that the Christian Democrats had fixed up everything for Giuliano to get away, and leave us to face the music. So I killed him.

  This was the statement already referred to by Avvocato Sotgiù when he said that in sending it to the court, Giuliano had signed his death warrant. Up till then his immunity had been guaranteed by his famous memorial, a copy of which had been smuggled away to America by Giuliano’s brother-in-law, Sciortino. It was described by Pisciotta: ‘In that memorial was all Giuliano’s life. It was written in pen and ink on twenty sheets of foolscap; the whole truth was there, even the names of the instigators.’ Pisciotta said that he had had a copy himself. He asked Giuliano to give it to him ‘because I knew what his end would be, and I wanted to have a document to defend myself and the others.’ Sciortino had been arrested in the US and his copy was presumed to be in safe hands, but there was no way of deciding whether or not Pisciotta too had possessed a copy of the memorial, and, if so, whether it was still in existence. The court seemed obsessed with the fear that the highly incriminating document might still be produced. There was some suggestion that De Maria might have quietly abstracted it from Giuliano’s papers in the hubbub that followed the killing. Evidence was given that he had promised to hand it over to the carabinieri for the payment of three million lire, but had taken the money and said that he had burned the memorial. There was nothing either conclusive or comforting in this.

  * * *

  Pisciotta was the most complex and the most interesting of the bandits – far more so than Giuliano himself. He boldly admitted to having killed by treachery the leader whom most of the bandits would have followed to their death, and yet he had been able, without the slightest difficulty, to replace Giuliano in their affections. More than that, he had established the legend of an untarnished personal honour. Those who dared to attack him in court, whatever their rank or position, inevitably came off worse, and as they beat a retreat the guilty secrets exploded like firecrackers round their ears. There were hard facts in writing, and the stamps, seals and signatures of men in high government office to prove most of Pisciotta’s allegations. He produced in court permits and safe-conducts provided by every police authority in the country, plus a certificate of meritorious service issued by the Mi
nistry of the Interior – a document that the most respectable citizen would have been proud to possess. Pisciotta had also come by a long and affectionate letter written by Inspector Verdiani to Giuliano, and this was exhibited in court. ‘Dearest,’ it began, and after some desultory intimacies, came to the point: ‘As I wrote to our friend, in view of the loftiness of the ends we aim at, in the ultimate interests of Italy, I tell you that I can even settle the monetary questions on which your urgent decisions depend. In the national interest my word had been enough to procure adequate funds for you wherever you go. Just let me know what your requirements in cash are likely to be.’ Speechless after the perusal of this, the judge passed on to shake his head sadly over a permit to carry firearms. ‘Were automatic weapons included?’ he asked. ‘Even a cannon,’ Pisciotta replied, with his sardonic grin.

  Meanwhile, the earlier antagonism of public opinion towards the bandit was calming, and eventually gave place to something like a bewildered respect. Pisciotta could even attempt with some success to represent himself as a devoted servant of the State – the instrument for the destruction of the banditry of which he had been a principal exponent. ‘It is I, not Paolantonio, who put an end to banditry!’ he cried from the cage, and the claim did not seem extraordinary. And again: ‘I have done nothing but good in Sicily. The Giuliano band was the shame of the island, but it was not even the fault of Giuliano, but of the men of politics.’

  Pisciotta was listened to in attentive silence, but when the police officers, those sad-eyed men of managed passions and the long years of distinguished service, gave their testimony, it was only too often greeted by ironic laughter from the body of the court. The public had been made the dupes of a foolish lie, and the lie had been abetted by a Minister of State. The police had lost face with Italians, and as a result the most improbable of Pisciotta’s charges carried weight.

  A DEFENCE COUNSEL FOR THE BANDITS’ MINOR ASSOCIATES, THE picciotti: Did the accused men in the small cage form part of the Giuliano band?

  PISCIOTTA [earnestly]: Some of them were only sixteen in those days. They were minors. The real culprits are already in the United States, or Venezuela, or the Argentine. All those boys are innocent. The men who fired at Portella left by plane from the airport of Palermo, supplied with regular passports issued by the Ministry of the Interior. At the airport the police saluted them with respect. Afterwards Giuliano received a letter from Inspector Verdiani, which said, ‘Dear Salvatore, Two or three have already left. The others will go later.’

  Pisciotta’s testimony had frequently provoked excited comment and cries of indignation, but this new allegation, which was accepted at its face value by the public, caused a pandemonium. There were many attempts to silence him, but few succeeded.

  AVVOCATO SOTGIÙ: Did Pisciotta go to Rome while he was a fugitive from justice?

  THE PRESIDENT: The accused must not reply to the question.

  PISCIOTTA [shouting from the cage]: I went to Rome, and I spoke to Minister Scelba.

  AVVOCATO SOTGIÙ: Was it Inspector Verdiani who put Giuliano in contact with the various journalists who interviewed him?

  [The President signs to Pisciotta to be silent.]

  PISCIOTTA: Yes, he did it to damage the carabinieri. [A few moments later Pisciotta said that he had warned General Luca of a plot by Inspector Verdiani to kill him. By this time the court seemed to have lost all power to be surprised at such allegations.]

  AVVOCATO CRISAFULLI: I call upon Pisciotta either to confirm or deny that he was charged with the responsibility of guarding the life of the Archbishop of Monreale.

  THE PRESIDENT: It doesn’t interest us.

  PISCIOTTA [from the cage]: Certainly it interests us – and in connection with the massacre of Portella, as it happens. Padre Biondi, Padre Giovanni and the Archbishop of Monreale owe their lives to me, and General Luca can confirm it.

  THE PRESIDENT: Be quiet, Pisciotta, or I will send you back to prison.

  PISCIOTTA: Do so by all means, but don’t think I’ll come back here again.

  This exchange produced a happy bellow of laughter from Cucinella, one of the bandits in the main cage. (Cucinella was a handsome, pink-faced boy in his early twenties, who smiled continually and could not prevent himself from bursting out laughing at the slightest excuse. He was the most ferocious and the bravest of the bandits, and faced eighteen separate charges of homicide. He was the only member of the band who had been given the chance to put up a fight, and he had held off two hundred carabinieri, throwing hand-grenades, until one grenade had burst prematurely and mangled his leg.)

  * * *

  All the bandits obstinately denied taking part in the massacre. Most of them, schooled in the old Mafia tradition, simply denied everything, or invented some story by which they were miles from Portella at the time of the shooting, and then stuck to it through thick and thin, however infeasible it turned out to be. The technique was outstandingly demonstrated by Genovese, who answered almost every question put to him with the two words, ‘Absolutely not.’ Finally, the cross-examining counsel asked him ironically if he had ever seen Giuliano. Genovese’s reply became famous. ‘We passed in the street once or twice and greeted each other in the usual way, no more that that: “Good morning!” – “Good morning!”’ It was known that Giuliano had lived in Genovese’s house for three years.

  Pisciotta, on the other hand, produced a complex and ingenious alibi. He had been suffering off and on from a tubercular condition of one lung, and now eleven doctors, among them the four most celebrated chest specialists in Italy, foregathered to examine radiographs produced by the bandit and to argue learnedly – and to the court incomprehensibly – over what they revealed. The date of the radiographs was stated by the medical evidence called for the defence to be May 1st, 1947 – precisely the fateful day of the massacre – and the two medical experts appointed by the court agreed that this might have been the case. The defence argued, too, that no one in the condition revealed by these radiographs could have expended the effort called for in a gruelling night march across the mountains to Portella. At this point the Sicilian peasants who had been injured or who had lost relations in the massacre applied for permission to employ their own experts. This being granted, two more distinguished doctors came on the scene, scrutinised the radiographs, examined Pisciotta, and declared themselves at variance on every point with the previous medical opinions.

  The original radiographs had been made by a Dr Grado, a war-cripple and something of a hero, who was universally respected in Sicily. He entered the witness-box with difficulty, assisted by his nurse and leaning upon a stick, and immediately showed himself the possessor of a remarkable memory. Four years had gone by, and thousands of patients had passed through the doctor’s consulting room, yet he remembered all the circumstances of Pisciotta’s visit, although of course not having had the slightest suspicion of his patient’s identity. Dr Grado’s testimony seemed conclusive. Pisciotta could not have been at Portella on May 1st 1947 because that was the very day when the doctor had first seen him. Pisciotta had been brought in by his mother, coughing and very emaciated, and clinging to the woman for support. Dr Grado knew that it was May 1st because, being a public holiday, the electric current was unusually feeble – so much so, in fact, that he was unable to X-ray the patient and had to tell him to come back the next day. In so far as the doctor’s testimony needed strengthening, this was taken care of by General Luca, who still seemed to regard Pisciotta as his protégé. The General said: ‘I have been able to ascertain from my personal investigations that Pisciotta did not take part in the massacre at Portella because on that day he was extremely ill.’

  CAPTAIN PERENZE: Colonel Angrisani also told me that he had definite information to the effect that Pisciotta did not participate in the massacre.

  COLONEL ANGRISANI [angrily]: I have never said anything of the kind to Captain Perenze.

  But the memory of the highly respected Dr Grado turned out to be fallible after all,
when the court decided to call the chief technician on duty at Monreale power station on the day of the massacre. To forestall any possibility of a slackening power output, the technician said, two extra transformers had been put into service on that day, and from his records, the electrical supply had been a little better than normal. There could have been nothing, therefore, to prevent a radiograph from being made on May 1st. The distinguished doctor might still have been acquitted of any suspicion of wishing to deflect the course of justice had a journalist, Jacopo Rizza, not entered the witness-box immediately afterwards. Rizza said that he had been telephoned by Pisciotta’s counsel asking him to appear as a witness for the defence, and that he had refused, adding that if he appeared in court at all, it would be for the prosecution.

  RIZZA: When Giuliano and I were together on the afternoon of December 11th, I asked him what he proposed to do for the bandits already under arrest, charged with participation in the massacre, and Giuliano said: ‘I’ve told the boys to deny everything. I will accept the full responsibility.’ I then asked Giuliano: ‘How are you going to fix it so that your second-in-command, Pisciotta, is in the clear?’ Giuliano replied: ‘I’ve thought of everything. A doctor will produce an X-ray at the trial, say that he made it on May 1st, and confirm the identity of Pisciotta in court as the patient who visited him on that day.’

  And yet how reliable was even this testimony? It seems extraordinary that Giuliano should have revealed his secret intentions so casually to a visiting journalist. Moreover, Rizza proved shortly after to be a not entirely satisfactory witness. That same day, the fashionable Romans who drove down to Viterbo for a picnic and a few hours of the excitements provided by the trial of the century were to see for the first time a real live mafioso in the flesh.