Paulie was no longer cold. Suddenly, he was sweating. From barely breathing, he was sucking in great gulps of air. The air
made him dizzy and things started to spin. He closed his eyes and lay without moving until his head settled. Finally, he was
able to think.
He needed just one thing… the key to the handcuffs that connected the long chain to his ankle. But Tony always carried that
in his pants, and the pants were with him in his bedroom. Paulie had once seen some guy in a movie shoot off a pair of handcuffs
with a gun, but that wouldn’t work here with him. Dom and Tony would just come flying out after him with the first shot. So
the only way was to go in after the key.
It took him five minutes to prepare his head.
The first thing was to release the safety, which he did now because he was afraid he would forget later in all the excitement.
Then he went over the rest that Dom had taught him about using a two-handed grip, and extending his arms, and holding his
breath at the right moment, and squeezing and not jerking the trigger.
All that,
he thought, and wondered how he was ever going to remember everything at the moment of shooting. But he did not really expect
it to come to that. They would see the gun, Tony would give him the key, he would be gone from here, and that would be the
end of it. In his mind, there was no way he could imagine himself actually shooting either one of these two men.
Then moving with care, Paulie approached the bedroom door, quietly turned the knob, and entered the room. He walked in like
an undersize sleepwalker, gun and extended arms leading the way, and every visible part of him aquiver.
Domenico was the first to see the boy. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.
He and Tony lay in their underwear on twin beds, and the boy swung his arms and gun back and forth from one to the other.
His dark eyes were wide, his mouth tightly set. The men stared at the shaking muzzle of the automatic. Neither of them moved.
“Easy, kid,” said Dom. “That fucker’s got a hair trigger. Just stay nice and easy and talk to us. Just tell us what you want.”
“The key. I want the key to these handcuffs.”
“Sure,” said Tony quietly. “No problem. Things can be worked out. We’re all friends here.”
The boy swung the automatic toward Tony and held it there. “I don’t want to be friends. I want the key.”
“Hey, it’s yours, Paulie. It’s right over there in my pants. Draped over that chair. If you’ll let me, I’ll get it for you.”
Paulie licked his lips and tried to swallow. He couldn’t. And the trembling inside him was getting worse, not better. In a
crazy way he found himself glancing at Dom, as if for advice. Would it be safer to go for the key himself, or let Tony get
it and give it to him? Dom’s blue eyes shone in the overhead light. They told him nothing.
“I feel bad about this,” said Tony, and smiled, which he never did. “I thought you were having kind of a good time here with
us. I never thought it was that terrible for you.”
“It was great for me. I love being chained up like a dog. Try it sometime. Maybe you’ll love it as much as I did.”
Domenico laughed. “I told you he’s a tough kid, Tony. He takes no shit. Give him the damn key and let him go.”
“I’m waiting for permission to move. You think I want to get shot by
your
gun? Talk about bright moves. Imagine going to sleep and leaving a loaded piece lying loose out there.”
Dom was silent. His eyes had stopped shining.
The boy spoke to Tony. “OK. Give me the key. But do it real slow. Because I’m very nervous right now.”
Tony nodded and took the two steps needed to reach the chair.
“Tony.” Dom’s voice stopped him before he could pick up his pants, and he turned.
“Yeah?”
“Give Paulie the key.”
“Sure. That’s just what I’m going to do.”
“I’m serious, Tony.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m serious, too. And I know the kid here has got to be serious as all hell. So I guess that means all three
of us are serious, right?”
With all his shaking, the boy stood as still as he was able. He understood that something was going on between the two men,
but he had no idea what. Not that it mattered. Because what he was concentrating on mostly was Tony and Tony’s pants and the
all-important key to freedom that lay somewhere inside them. He saw Tony’s face as he bent over the chair and picked up his
pants. He saw the muscles in his jaw and the way his eyes narrowed as he dug a hand deep into one of the pockets.
Then the hand came out of the pocket, and Paulie saw not a key or a bunch of keys, but the dull, blued steel of a gun barrel.
And it was pointed at him.
Him,
He froze. Everything he had learned was forgotten.
His trigger finger might have been a piece of wood. It would not move. He heard an explosion off to his right, where Dom was,
and Tony cried out and was slammed against a wall.
There was another explosion as Tony pointed his gun barrel at Dom. Then there were more shots, with the explosions
coming one after the other from both sides of the room until they all seemed to roll together like thunder.
Through it all, the boy stood paralyzed, the gun forgotten in his hand, and smoke and sound settling around him.
Finally, it was quiet.
Paulie breathed the bitterness of the gunpowder, which seemed to have a yellow smell, and saw Tony lying on the floor. The
gangster’s legs were bent crookedly under him, he had a small hole in his forehead, and his eyes were staring at nothing.
How? Why?
Turning, Paulie looked at Dom, looked at the small, snub-nosed pistol still in his hand on the bedsheet, and began to understand
some parts of it. He looked, too, at the blood leaking through Dom’s undershirt from two separate places on his chest, and
he understood this as well.
Domenico managed to grin with a clown’s own tragic gloom. “Hey… ” The whisper came out in a froth of red bubbles. “You didn’t
remember… shit about… shooting.”
The boy gazed half blindly through smoke and a sudden fall of mist. “I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
Dom lay there, making pink and red bubbles. “It’s… OK,” he breathed. “Just get… the key and get… out… of here.”
Moments later, his eyes glazed over and he gave a slow look of surprise and died.
Paulie sat with him. He thought about how he’d still be alive if he hadn’t shot Tony. Why had he done it?
Why didn’t he shoot me?
Dummy,
he finally told himself.
Because he’d rather Tony was dead, than you.
After a while the boy rose, got the key from Tony’s pants pocket, and freed himself from his chain. It felt strange being
loose, and he walked around for a few minutes to get used to it.
Then about to call home, it occurred that having been brought here chloroformed, he had no idea where he was. So he reached
the operator and learned he was in the area of Lercara Friddi, in northeastern Sicily. Of course, he thought. Home of the
Mafia.
Paulie looked at a clock, saw it was 2:54
A.M.
and dialed
his house in Positano. Feeling the heat of his excitement, he counted off twenty rings before finally hanging up. Then thinking
he may have gotten a wrong number, he tried again for another fifteen rings with the same results.
He was attacked by a whole new range of worries. If his parents weren’t home at this hour of the night, they weren’t likely
to be home at all. So where were they? Out looking for him, of course. Where else could they be?
Dead. They could be lying dead somewhere, like Dom and Tony. The thought hit him with such force, was so real to him at this
moment, surrounded as he was by death, that he dissolved into tears.
But he cut it off right there.
Don’t be a damn crybaby,
he told himself.
Get your dumb baby self together. Get going from here fast, like Dom told you. Go home. When Mom and Dad can’t find you, that’s
where they’ll go, too. That’s where they’11 be.
Paulie found some maps in a desk. He saw exactly where Lercara Friddi was and tried to figure out his best way home. Sicily
was an island and he would have to take a ferry from either Palermo to Naples, or from Messina to Reggio Calabria. The map
said Palermo to Naples was the better choice. The land part was shorter, and the sea part longer. Which would be safer than
having to spend more time on the roads, where the big
capo
would have his whole gang out checking and looking for him.
Then there was the matter of money. He would have to be traveling for at least a few days and nights and would need to pay
for the ferry, too.
It made him sick but he forced himself back into Dom and Tony’s bedroom and took all the money out of their wallets. There
was a great deal of it, more than he had ever seen at one time. Which was no surprise to him. Since everyone knew that gangsters
were rich. Why else would they be gangsters?
It was only as he was stuffing all the money into his pockets that the true awareness broke through that he had actually witnessed
the killing of two men and almost been killed himself. He felt it should have been enough to shake the earth and
fire up the sky. Yet it did no such things. Everything appeared as before, and somehow this didn’t seem right.
Leaving the house and the two dead men, Paulie suddenly dropped to his knees on a bare patch of earth, as if to steady it
or himself. Or maybe it was just something to make the ground itself take notice of those who had been here for a little while
and then had gone away.
The boy didn’t know or understand any of this. It just felt right to do it.
V
ITTORIO
B
ATTAGLIA DROVE,
with Don Ravenelli sitting beside him, his hands tied behind his back. Gianni and the girl, Lucia, sat together in the rear
of the car. Lucia’s hands, too, were tied, but rested more comfortably in her lap. Gianni held the only visible weapon, an
automatic with the safety released.
There was no real conversation as such. Whatever needed to be said had been said before they left the villa. The only words
spoken now had to do with Ravenelli’s route instructions to Vittorio.
They were driving east on the coast road. A heavy mist came in from the sea and a fragment of moon was visible between drifting
clouds. At this hour, only an occasional car appeared and passed like a ghost, and they might have been riding one of the
darker rims of the earth.
Gianni glanced at the girl sitting quietly beside him. Lucia’s eyes gazed straight ahead, her expression serene and unchanging.
Dressed, her body showed no hint of the carnality her nakedness had projected earlier. Which made her seem another woman entirely.
Were Gianni to paint her, there would be no overimages of lust in the portrait. If anything, he could far more easily see
her as someone whose
life’s goals leaned more toward those of the spirit, rather than the flesh. Even her earlier evidence of fear seemed to be
gone. In its place appeared to be a quiet composure.
Don Pietro Ravenelli’s woman.
Feeling Gianni’s gaze, she turned and managed a hesitant smile.
“I know how crazy this sounds right now,” she said, “but I’d like to thank you while I have the chance.”
Gianni looked at her. “For what?”
“Your paintings. They’ve given me so much pleasure. I look at them and feel and understand things I’ve never known about before.
They move me.”
Gianni felt curiously touched, almost embarrassed.
While I
sit holding a gun on her. “
That’s very kind.”
“Do I sound childish and stupid?”
“You sound like every artist’s dream of what he’d love to have happen to him. To be able to reach someone. It’s
I
who thank
you.”
It was like a random moment of grace in the midst of chaos. Then Lucia looked straight ahead once more, and Gianni heard Ravenelli
give Vittorio instructions to watch for a narrow road that would be coming up soon on the left, and the moment was gone.
They reached the turn and Vittorio shifted into lower gear as the car’s engine strained up a long, steep grade. The new road
was winding, with a lot of sharp turns and the branches of trees swooping low in places and forming a series of arches where
the opposing sides met.
The mist grew heavier, cutting visibility further, and not even the fog lights could break through for more than about twenty
or thirty meters.
“How much more of this soup?” Vittorio asked.
“Not much,” said Ravenelli. “Maybe two kilometers. It starts clearing as you get higher.”
Gianni could feel himself growing tense. It was a perfect area for an ambush. Slow movement, a fallen branch to suddenly stop
the car as it comes around a curve, and finally a few submachine guns pressing against the windows.
So what would you do? Shoot Ravenelli and the girl and
die right there? Or drop your gun, put up your hands, and probably die later? Great choices.
But Gianni was certain Vittorio knew all this better than he, and Vittorio was the one in charge. Besides, there didn’t appear
to be anything in Ravenelli’s style or manner that gave a hint of a death wish. The man was no fanatic. Quite the reverse.
If the don had impressed Garetsky with anything, it was with his air of philosophical reason. Don Pietro was a deal maker,
a confirmed survivor. And he obviously cared about his girl. He wasn’t likely to risk both their lives just to carry out a
contract.
Then they rounded a turn, the ground fog cleared, and a house came into view about a hundred meters off to the left.
“This is it,” said Ravenelli.
Vittorio parked just off the road.
They were at the beginning of a long, dirt driveway that crossed about an acre of open field with the house at the far end
and dark stands of trees on both sides. The house itself was two stories high, and had shuttered windows and a porti-coed
center entrance. A light burned in the downstairs foyer, but the rest of the house was dark.
“You mentioned two men being with my boy?” said Battaglia.