Boss of Bosses (29 page)

In the world of Cosa Nostra, particularly where several of the most senior members are in hiding, information is power. Between the Boss and his various
capi mandamenti
there was a constant manoeuvring to get information by any possible means. Provenzano wrote to Giuffré: ‘Listen, I’ve received word from a friend who had made some recommendations to BN [Spera] and he wants me to take care of it but I don’t know anything about it. Could you do me the courtesy, if you had some business with BN, to let me know what it was, and if possible tell me the name of the firms and what agreements you’ve made? Let me know your response as soon as you can.’

Giuffré, re-reading the letter years later, laughed. There was no ‘friend’. It was a fishing exercise, he recalled, a subtle trap to get Giuffré to tell him about Spera’s business and pass the information on to him. In the end Giuffré was outmanoeuvred, and his candidate was, as he put it, ‘cut off at the legs’.

Provenzano had rolled out a successful strategy for the organization, while Giuffré was busy setting up his own power base. He may not have been preparing a challenge; it may have been mere contingency
planning, should anything (God forbid) happen to the Boss of Bosses. But the exchange of letters between Provenzano and Giuffré reveals just how much continual intricate plotting went on between the various factions, even within each group of supposed allies.

Uncle Binnu ruled with an open hand, giving as much leeway as he could and encouraging families to settle their own disputes where possible. He tried to make sure that profits were shared, that prisoners were taken care of. He cultivated the image of a strong but benevolent leader who inspired trust. So when he suspected treachery in his ranks, he was devastated.

When the key position of Cosa Nostra’s regional representative in Agrigento became vacant, the scene was set for some frenzied plotting. Agrigento was one of the most important areas for Provenzano’s faction to conquer. The Valley of the Temples, with its magnificent ancient Greek ruins bestriding the hills, has been in Mafia control for years. The evidence is plain to see: what should be a protected site has been built up, with sprawling developments crowding over the landscape.

Provenzano’s candidate in Agrigento was Giuseppe Falsone. Giuffré, for his part, had been cultivating Maurizio DiGati, sending him information about Palermo companies doing business in Agrigento from which he could demand protection money. While Giuffré was quietly building up his man for the regional job, another Agrigento family, the Capizi, made a serious challenge for the leadership. At this point there were three different factions, all squaring up for the fight.

DiGati was determined to face down the challenge. He wrote to Giuffré threatening that, if the Capizi family did not back him, he would execute every last one of them. In the frantic negotiation that followed, capos from different areas tried to settle the matter in their candidate’s favour and avoid another war, without involving Provenzano.

Two of Giuffré’s allies from Palermo, who supported DiGati, came up with an audacious plot. They called a meeting with the Capizi family, claiming to be emissaries from Provenzano, and announced that
the Boss had a message: he was supporting DiGati. Knowing that they would be going head to head with the Boss, the upstarts stepped down.

‘When Provenzano found out,’ said Giuffré, ‘all hell broke loose.’

The next letter Giuffré received from the Boss was entirely unlike his usual cordial formality. He was furious:

‘There is a topic I have to raise, which is painful and suspect, but I can’t say I’m surprised.’ He quoted an intermediary who gave him the whole sorry tale of the two Palermo capos passing themselves off as his ambassadors and concluded: ‘There is much to reflect on and analyse here. But I pray to God to let me know how much more slander and lies these troublemakers want to spread about me.’ Provenzano, as the king of
tragediatori
, was practised in the art of deception. Finding his own techniques used against him was devastating.

Giuffré was unrepentant. ‘The Agrigento question was settled, because there were three or four of us who decided what was going to happen in Agrigento, and that was the end of the matter. There was nothing Provenzano could do about it. He had to fall in step with us, and everything had to go through me.’

Eventually, and inevitably, Provenzano discovered the extent of the betrayal: that his own right-hand man had been among those plotting against his candidate. Years later the two men confronted each other (via video conference) in court. While Giuffré was talking, Provenzano seemed to be having trouble following the notes in front of him. His lawyer, seeing he was in difficulty, phoned him from the courtroom.

‘I can’t hear very well. They seem to have missed a bit’, he said.

‘Is there something specific?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got all the papers there.’

‘I think you’re missing one of the papers, one that was taken from my house’, said her client.

After the call the lawyer figured out what Provenzano was referring to. On a newspaper article found in his hideout he had written a single word over Giuffré’s picture: ‘Traitor’. It was a message he wanted to relay to his former friend. When the court reconvened, she asked Giuffré how he would describe his conduct.

‘I’d call it betrayal’, she announced. Provenzano’s message was delivered. It had the desired effect on Giuffré.

‘He was supposed to stay in Corleone,
e basta
’, he replied curtly.

The Agrigento episode showed up some deep cracks within the new, peaceful and prosperous Cosa Nostra and demonstrated how, skilled moderator though he was, and mild-mannered though he seemed, Provenzano was not prepared to see his orders countermanded.

‘I don’t want to be the axe man
at the moment
,’ he had written, as his frustration over the Agrigento situation mounted, ‘but we’ll see how it goes.’

Giuffré knew the Boss’s true colours, and he wasn’t fooled: ‘It’s all there, in those three little words. He didn’t want to be the axe man for now. He didn’t want to go after these people for the time being, he would wait until the time was right.’

L
ETTERS FROM PROVENZANO’S
family members, confiscated by the police, revealed a disjointed family life in which his wife and sons maintained the premiss that he was the head of their family and continued to make decisions that mattered. And yet the reality was that ordinary life had to go on, and he was not there to oversee it. The older son, Angelo, was under a lot of pressure and clearly struggling to find his place in the world. Meanwhile Saveria sent letters full of touchingly domestic detail, as though their life were quite normal:

‘My life, the holidays are past and I received a short visit on new year’s day everything’s fine here, work is going ahead, Paolo is starting his studies, I will go to Catania on Friday with Angelo, and we’ll see if they can do anything my Love you know five hundred is here, we went to visit, she’s done up her house it’s lovely she invited us for a meal but we had to go to Tina’s and so we couldn’t go this time now angelo’s going to go because my brother wants to talk to him but we don’t know when. My Life I will close with the Holy Blessing that the light of the Lord shine on you and assist you and may give us the strength we need and give us faith.’

Saveria’s letters followed a rudimentary code (‘five hundred’ is presumably a relative or an associate) and express the same religious fervour as her husband’s, invoking God’s blessing in times of unjust persecution. They allowed a glimpse into the couple’s domestic arrangements and the family’s reduced circumstances. She wrote about the clothes she had found for him, particularly suitable for life on the run and for someone suffering from incontinence, whose clothes would need frequent washing. He was obviously troubled by the cold and was apparently living in Spartan conditions.

Saveria led a strange, isolated life, sustained by her love of Bernardo. Despite being forced to live apart, the couple still had a passionate relationship. Her letters to her husband began ‘
Carissimo amore mio
’ (‘My dearest love’) and ended with ‘I love you always’.

‘They have a very tender relationship’, said police chief Giuseppe Gualtieri. ‘We’ve got letters between husband and wife that we haven’t made public, because they’re too personal, and they reveal a great love, a great respect for each other.’

In a letter dated 15 January 2001 she wrote: ‘My life, I have sent you socks and I wanted to send you another pair of those thick ones but I couldn’t find any. You’ll need to wash them by hand in warm water. I’m sending you 2 pairs of knee socks which are good to keep out the cold and you can wash them in cold water . . . you wanted a pair of trousers that you can wear in the snow, I found some with a bib so I got you those, there’s a fleece as well if you want it. . . . My life I’ll sign off with the Holy Blessing that the light of the Lord shine upon you and help you, and give us faith and strength to carry on. My life I send you a big hug and if I’ve forgotten anything, let me know.’

Angelo’s difficulties were not only existential but also practical in nature: he wrote to his father complaining of money worries. ‘You asked me about the launderette, papà, for the moment we’re just about managing to cover our outgoings, but only just, and some months we have to balance the books using money out of our own pockets.’

Investigators who had long suspected that the launderette in Corleone was a front for a money-laundering operation tried to decipher any hidden code. But what these letters revealed was the strain under which Angelo, now twenty-six, was living. As the elder son of a Mafia boss, raised outside Cosa Nostra but denied the freedom to operate as a normal citizen, Angelo had been trying to sort out his prospects. It was proving difficult, as his father’s advisers had warned, to get a business off the ground, and he was trying to circumvent the anti-Mafia laws. His close relationship to the Mafia boss, which would have guaranteed him success in any illegal venture, ruined his chances in the straight world.

And although his father was still around, he was not actually there, and Angelo needed to assert his identity as the man of the household. He wanted to invest in property and had found some land (albeit of poor quality) for sale. He and his father had evidently had a disagreement about this before, and Angelo, with some trepidation, had decided to go ahead. It was a rare moment of rebellion. As in other letters, Angelo uses a numerical code to conceal names.

‘I’ve been a bit disobedient, just before Christmas I met the interested party 512151522 191212154 and we left it that after the holidays we would meet to talk it through. I don’t want to have to justify myself, but if I don’t start looking after our needs, you might as well stop me having access to our family funds. This is incredibly serious for me, I’m looking at my reflection and I’m worse off than when we last met and I can’t bear it much longer so I’m asking you, if I can’t manage this by myself I beg you at least to help me not to do any damage because maybe there’s some truth in the proverb, you can’t put a square peg in a round hole. That said, I would like your view on something I’ve done on my own initiative.

‘You remember that bit of land I spoke to you about at Scorciavacche which you advised me against as you said the land was no good. Well I kept track of the deal and they’ve just let me know that the owner will sell all 38 hectares for 400ml. Of course I know I haven’t got the money and that the land isn’t particularly good, but I know there are people who have done deals over similar plots of land for more money, so I’ve asked around to find out how to go ahead, and I’ve been told I could do it if I had a political contact . . . also through Agenda 2000 [the European Union funding initative].

‘This is where my doubts start, as I could go to the person I spoke to you about, since he has done this before and he could make it happen – that’s one route. In the meantime, I’ve told uncle Paolo [Palazzolo] about it, and he’s got a possible contact.

‘I’ve never been able to do anything that was my own idea before now.’

This last, politely assertive but plaintive sentence gives an idea of how difficult Angelo’s position is: he needs to assert his individuality, prove his worth to his father the Mafia boss, but without using the
Mafia’s clout – in fact, handicapped by his infamous surname. The anti-Mafia law makes it difficult for him to obtain finance, and he can’t put his name to the transaction.

The unfortunate Angelo’s efforts to earn some respect in his father’s eyes and get a business venture of his own off the ground were stymied once again when his tremulous letter to his father fell into police hands. There would be no chance of a deal after that.

His younger brother, Francesco Paolo, now aged eighteen, wrote to his father about how he had been contacted by a young woman who claimed that, in a dream, she had received a message for him from the Madonna. The whole family was in a ferment over this personal contact from the Virgin. Knowing Provenzano’s tendency to use the same religious phrases in his letters, cryptologists searched for a hidden meaning. Angelo wrote soon afterwards, to report their disappointment that the young woman had not shown up to a meeting. The brothers’ letters displayed varying degrees of curiosity and scepticism about this holy message. Eventually they suspected a set-up.

‘I wanted to find out more about this business. I mean, is there anyone here in town who would hold a grudge against us?’ asks Angelo, with startling ingenuousness. This episode shows how vulnerable the family was, hidden away from the world but exposed to anyone who wanted to exploit their weaknesses. Judging by Angelo’s tone, his father’s letters were full of reproach. He apologized for the slow delivery of his messages and for troubling his father with his investment worries.