The Prince

by Vito Bruschini

  * * *

  Poor Dr. Bizzarri conducted a thorough analysis of the cadaver’s abject remains, but could find nothing that would corroborate the theory that the body had been switched, as the anonymous note had implied.

  The body’s height matched that of Salvatore Turrisi. The bones were intact, meaning that the deceased had not suffered any fractures. This confirmed the fact, maintained by his brother, that Salvatore had never in his life fallen and had never broken so much as a bone in his little finger. The fire had completely obliterated his fingertips, making it impossible to analyze his fingerprints. All in all, the note had all the earmarks of a hoax.

  Jano and Michele Fardella reported the negative results of the autopsy to Mayor Lorenzo Costa. He, however, continued to argue that the anonymous note was telling the truth. Otherwise why would anyone bring up something that had happened almost twenty years ago?

  Through one of those mysterious twists of fate that often, unbidden, give our lives a sudden turn, Marshal Mattia Montalto, a few afternoons later, went to Dr. Bizzarri to bring him Salvatore Turrisi’s file.

  The doctor thanked him for taking the trouble, opened the file, and absently scanned the records concerning the activities of the outlaw Turrisi. Then he took the ID photo and glanced at it briefly. Salvatore Turrisi was smiling, the way people smile in all passport photos.

  Dr. Bizzarri was visibly startled.

  “Doctor, what did you spot?” asked the marshal, noting his surprise.

  The doctor turned the photo toward him and pointed to the mouth.

  “I don’t understand,” the marshal hesitated.

  “Don’t you see here?” He pointed to the teeth. “Turrisi was missing his upper left incisor.”

  The marshal looked at the picture and noticed a small black space between two of Turrisi’s teeth.

  The doctor stood up and went to get the skull of the exhumed corpse. He brought it to the marshal and showed him the teeth. “You see? This cadaver has all his teeth in place. Not a single one is missing.”

  Marshal Montalto studied the photo again. There was no doubt about it. It couldn’t be the same person. “The anonymous note was telling the truth.”

  “One hundred percent,” the doctor concluded. “These are not the remains of Salvatore Turrisi.”

  * * *

  The news shook the town like an earthquake. Word that the body buried almost twenty years ago was not Salvatore Turrisi spread with lightning speed to every corner of Salemi and the Madonie.

  “So then who is the person we found charred in Marquis Bellarato’s palazzo?” Lorenzo Costa shouted to Michele Fardella, Marshal Mattia Montalto, and a stunned Jano, all gathered in town hall. “And what happened to Salvatore Turrisi?”

  “And who is Marquis Bellarato’s killer? Did he die in the fire, or is he still at large? And who is the charred corpse?” the marshal added. “Turrisi at least had a motive. We have to start all over again or else drop the case.”

  “Don’t even consider it. People must not get the idea that we allow crimes to go unpunished or let murderers go unidentified. The command from Rome was clear: order above all,” the mayor barked.

  The marshal dutifully awaited instructions, which were promptly given.

  “Montalto, I want on this table, by noon tomorrow, all reports relative to the period of the fire at Marquis Bellarato’s palazzo. Let’s say, everything that happened in Salemi two months before and two months after the fire. I myself will review the case. It is a categorical imperative that we now give a name to this corpse who for nineteen years has lain in Salvatore Turrisi’s coffin.”

  The marshal nodded slightly and left the room.

  * * *

  In the following weeks, Mayor Lorenzo Costa very carefully pored over all the daily reports compiled by Marshal Montalto nineteen years earlier. By the end of the second week, he had formed a clear picture of the situation. To sum things up, he called for his right-hand man: Michele Fardella.

  “My dear Michele, I now understand what happened nineteen years ago,” he began in a patronizing tone. “You may not recall, but just three days after the fire, the wife of a certain Nicola Geraci reported her husband’s disappearance to the carabinieri. Nicola Geraci was a socialist, a representative of the red leagues of Petralia Sottana, a good-for-nothing. But now I’ll tell you something that will make you fall off your chair,” he went on in a melodramatic whisper.

  “I remember Nicola Geraci: he was a typical politician who never stopped talking,” Michele Fardella said.

  “Geraci had had words with Prince Ferdinando Licata. At a meeting in the town hall, the prince convinced the peasants that being socialists wouldn’t do any of them any good. Nicola Geraci couldn’t stand for that, and in front of the whole assembly he threatened the prince that sooner or later he’d make him pay for it.”

  “You never openly threaten a big shot. He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for,” Fardella said.

  “He was a marked man. And three days later he disappeared from circulation. He never returned home to Petralia Sottana, to his wife, who is still crying over him. The body was never found.” He studied the clerk closely, to detect by any facial movement whether he had reached the same conclusions that he himself had.

  Michele looked at the mayor. “Are you saying that the charred body, the one found in Marquis Bellarato’s palazzo, could be Nicola Geraci?”

  “I’m willing to bet on it.”

  “Nicola Geraci, a socialist . . . but what was he doing at the home of the marquis, who everyone knows hated the reds?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll find that out too.”

  “How?”

  “I’m thinking of Prince Licata, u patri. Maybe we’ve found a way to get rid of him and get our hands on his estates.”

  Those last words made Michele Fardella’s blood run cold. “Prince Licata can’t be touched,” he whispered.

  “The interests of fascism are above the interests of the individual,” the mayor reminded him. “If you think about it, Licata was the only one in town who had a motive for killing Marquis Bellarato and Nicola Geraci. The attorney was a spokesman for the socialist leagues of Petralia Sottana and was supporting the Farm cooperative in its bid to obtain land. Then, in that famous meeting at Salemi town hall, Licata cleared away any socialist pipe dreams the peasants may have had in their heads. Nicola Geraci threatened him and a few days later vanished from sight. The motive against Marquis Bellarato was known to all. The marquis, working on behalf of his cousin’s cooperative, was competing for the award of an estate whose name I no longer even remember . . . Baucina, I think. Licata’s cooperative had to come up with the balance on the option, otherwise it would lose its deposit since Marquis Bellarato had the money to obtain the land. And as coincidence would have it, on the very afternoon before the day the option was to expire, the marquis was killed, and the palazzo went up in flames.”

  “But what does Nicola Geraci have to do with it?”

  “The fire was started in order to hide any traces,” Captain Costa continued. “No one could have recognized the two charred corpses. But Licata’s brilliant idea was to involve Salvatore Turrisi. He certainly had good reason to kill Marquis Bellarato.”

  “And Licata saw to it that the second corpse was identified as Turrisi thanks to the Saint Christopher medal,” Michele Fardella said, completing the mayor’s line of reasoning. “Exactly. Naturally, I’d like to know what happened to Salvatore Turrisi.”

  “The prince must have given him money and made him leave the country, to get him out of the way.”

  “Or else he must have had him killed, to eliminate any witnesses,” the captain concluded. “His accomplice is Rosario Losurdo, his trusty sidekick, the gabellotto for his estate. We’ll have to take care of him too, and then we’ll be free to do what we want with their lands.”

  “But there are legal heirs,” Michele Fardella objected.

  “Fardella, you still haven’t figur
ed out what you can accomplish when there’s a dictatorship willing to protect your ass?” He led him to the window. Through the panes, they could see the few hurried passersby, bundled up in their long, heavy overcoats. “If we play our cards right, we’ll soon be padroni. We’ll own this town and the lands surrounding it.”

  * * *

  Mayor Lorenzo Costa knew that in order to implement his plan, he’d have to gain the support of Jano Vassallo, the operational arm of the fascist action squad. Nothing could be easier. Jano didn’t have to be convinced of the goodwill and legitimacy of a mission, as long as it involved fighting and hell-raising. The mayor explained the strategy he had outlined to Michele Fardella and Jano agreed to the plan with predictable enthusiasm. He even found a way to improve upon it, by suggesting that Dr. Peppino Ragusa might also have been mixed up in the grand conspiracy devised by Prince Licata. Hadn’t the doctor been the one to confirm the identification of the second corpse as that of Salvatore Turrisi?

  “What do you have against Peppino Ragusa?” The mayor, who was no fool and was all too familiar with Jano’s vengeful instincts, wanted to know the real reason behind that proposition, well aware that Jano never acted for the sake of justice.

  “He’s a Jew, and despite that he continues practicing his profession as a doctor.”

  “Jano, don’t talk bullshit. Why do you want to involve Ragusa too?”

  “All right, all right. A person can never lie to you, can he?” he said with a knowing grin. “It’s because of Saro, his son. He’s come between me and Mena. Do you know who I mean?”

  “Rosario Losurdo’s daughter. A beautiful girl. But she won’t want anything to do with you once you go and arrest her father.”

  “Leave it to me, she’ll fall for me, you’ll see.”

  The mayor shook his head. Jano could be even more diabolical than him. “Okay. We’ll arrest the doctor too, as an accomplice of Licata and Losurdo.”

  Jano’s eyes glittered. “Good. What’s our first move?”

  “We’ll wait until Dr. Bizzarri completes the autopsy on the corpse and identifies Nicola Geraci. After that, we’ll go talk to the prosecutor.”

  * * *

  Dr. Bizzarri had never found himself in a bind. He’d asked the mayor for at least three weeks before signing a statement identifying the body. Marshal Montalto had offered his full cooperation, bringing him the files and photographs of people reported missing during that period in Salemi and the Madonie, among them Nicola Geraci. But the doctor was not a forensic specialist and had requested the assistance of a pathologist from the public prosecutor’s office in Palermo. Mayor Costa had denied his request, however. He could very well do it on his own, he told him at a meeting in the town hall. And he had insisted that the doctor look for any resemblance to Nicola Geraci, in short, making it clear without beating around the bush too much that the corpse had to be identified as the representative of the socialist leagues of Petralia Sottana.

  But Dr. Bizzarri was a conscientious physician and did not want to endorse a statement that he was less than certain of, based on his critical findings. That was why he asked his colleague Peppino Ragusa for help.

  Ragusa arrived at the cemetery chapel with his habitual leather bag.

  “Thank you for coming, Doctor.” Bizzarri went to meet him, wiping his hands on a small linen towel. “You may think it odd, to say the least, that here I am having to ask for your assistance.”

  “Well, I’ll admit I had a hard time believing it.”

  “Unfortunately, politics is an ugly thing. They ordered me to come here, and I never thought it was to replace a . . . Jew.”

  “But now you need that Jew.”

  “Dr. Ragusa, for me it’s never been a problem. But these are times we’ve brought upon ourselves. I joined the party only because I needed to work. Is it a sin to work?” He held out his hand, even though the Council of Ministers had prohibited shaking hands as of June of that year, ordering the fascist salute instead. “No hard feelings, okay?” Bizzarri said with a smile.

  Ragusa instinctively shook his hand, beginning to like the man.

  “So then, what is this about?” Ragusa asked, approaching the altar on which the body of the mummified corpse had been laid; Bizzarri had seen to removing the clothing.

  “I’ve never seen a natural mummification like this,” Bizzarri said, touching the parchment-like skin still attached to the cadaver’s bones.

  “The ground here has bacteria that devour the fleshy parts of the body, mummifying it,” Ragusa explained. “The process is also aided by the porosity of the soil, composed of dry, permeable sand, rich in salts, which protects the bodies against the process of decomposition. We’ve found others in the same condition.”

  “We have to try to identify who this body belonged to.”

  Ragusa bent down to look closely at the skull and skin blackened by the fire. Then, with Bizzarri’s help, he turned over the corpse. He picked up his tools and began dissecting.

  Based on the condition of the spinal column he established that it couldn’t possibly belong to a young man of twenty-five, the age that Salvatore Turrisi had been at the time of the fire. The spinal column was that of a man of at least forty. Then there was the head: he found no traces of soot in the throat. This discovery left him taken aback.

  “What did you find?” Bizzarri asked eagerly.

  “It’s what I did not find,” Ragusa replied. “As you of course know, people who are burned in a fire inhale soot that should then be found in the pharynx, the trachea, and the lungs. There are no traces of soot where you would expect to find them.”

  “You mean he was killed before being thrown into the fire?”

  “It’s likely. That’s what we’re going to verify with a spectrochemical analysis of some bloodstains. Have you ever heard of fatty embolism?” he asked as he began scraping the remains of a bloodstain with a scalpel.

  Dr. Bizzarri shook his head.

  “About ten years ago,” Ragusa continued as he inserted the blood traces between two glass slides that he then slipped under the microscope, “surgeons and pathologists realized that, following a trauma, bone fracture, or various injuries, some fat from the adipose tissue penetrates the blood vessels. Carried along by the blood, the fat reaches the right ventricle and from there the lung. As a result, it causes an obstruction of the small pulmonary vessels, which in many cases leads to vascular occlusion and therefore death. Sometimes the fatty embolism develops within a few seconds, always stemming from some form of external violence.”

  In the end, the analysis proved Ragusa’s intuition correct: the man was first killed and then thrown into the flames.

  But who was that corpse? Ragusa studied the photographs of Nicola Geraci at length, comparing them with the charred body. In fact, the size of the skull, the skeletal structure, the shape of the jaw and the height could correspond to those of the man found in the coffin. But Ragusa couldn’t bring himself to endorse the identification.

  “There is a high probability that this is in fact Nicola Geraci,” he told his colleague at the end of the autopsy. “The decisive proof would be dental evidence. But there is no photo in which his teeth are showing.”

  “We also tried to track down his relatives. But the carabinieri haven’t found anyone, not even his wife, who seems to have immigrated to Germany,” Bizzarri explained.

  “Under the circumstances, I don’t feel I can sign a statement identifying him as Nicola Geraci. I’m sorry,” Ragusa said.

  “Still, you’ve managed to assuage my conscience,” Bizzarri said, shaking his hand with gratitude. “And thanks for the lesson.” His ruddy cheeks stretched into a broad smile.

  * * *

  The following morning, Michele Fardella entered Mayor Costa’s town hall office and handed him Dr. Bizzarri’s report.

  Costa carefully read the statement and when he had finished, raised his head, satisfied. “Good, now we have scientific proof that the corpse is Nicola Geraci, and th
at he was killed before being thrown into the fire. The witness?”

  “Jano is coming with our man.”

  “Do I know him?” the mayor asked.

  “It’s Prospero, the son of Corrado Abbate, Baron Adragna’s steward. He’s a smart one.”

  “But isn’t he a member of the fascist combat league?”

  “He’s in the elite unit.”

  “I would have preferred someone outside the military.”

  “We can look for someone else if you want.”

  “It’s too late now. If you’ve already filled him in, we’ll manage to make do with this Prospero. The fewer people who know about this matter, the better it is for everyone,” the mayor concluded. He stood up and went over to the window.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. It was Jano, who came in followed by Prospero.

  The young man froze to attention before the desk, while Jano sat down in a chair.

  Costa went over to him and sized him up. “What’s your name, camerata?” he asked, using the fascist form of address.

  “Prospero Abbate. Son of Corrado and Maria—”

  The mayor cut him off, clapping him on the shoulder. “Fine, fine. Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

  The young man looked at the mayor and sat down in the chair next to Jano’s.

  Costa stood before him. “We are an invincible team,” he began warmly. “We must therefore help each other without any ifs, ands, or buts. There is something you must do for us.”

  Prospero felt grateful for that request. For him, being of help to the mayor was a dream. He would have leapt into the flames if he’d been asked.

  A few mornings later, Jano, Michele Fardella, Prospero Abbate, and Mayor Lorenzo Costa himself left for Marsala in the mayor’s Fiat Balilla, purchased with the town taxpayers’ money, to pay a visit to prosecutor Tommaso Amato, a man of confirmed fascist loyalty.