Ravenelli nodded.
“Where are they sleeping?”
“On the second floor. Your son’s room is behind those windows above and a bit to the left of the entrance. The men share the
next bedroom off to the right.”
Vittorio sat staring at the house and grounds. “How many keys do you have?”
“Two,” said the don. “One for the front door and one for the rear. I suggest we use the front.”
“Why?”
“The back door gets warped in summer. It takes some forcing. It could be noisy.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. I don’t really expect any problems. I know these men. They’re like me. They’d much rather live than die.”
“I hope so. For all our sakes.”
Vittorio half swung around and addressed Gianni and Lucia along with Ravenelli.
“Here’s how it’s going to be,” he told them. “I’m taking Don Ravenelli in under the gun. If I’m attacked along the way, or
if I get inside the house and don’t come out within fifteen minutes, Gianni shoots Lucia and drives off alone.”
Vittorio paused. “Any questions?”
No one spoke, and in the following silence Gianni watched Lucia’s face for some reaction to the possibility of her own death
at his hands. He saw none. Either Don Ravenelli was being straight with them, or Lucia was far and away the world’s best and
bravest actress. In Gianni’s own judgment, Ravenelli was telling the truth. The alternative was simply unthinkable.
“All right,” said Vittorio Battaglia.
Leaving Ravenelli sitting alone in front, he went around to the car trunk and began unloading his weapons case. He took two
fragmentation grenades and a pair of automatic pistols for himself and handed what remained, including a rifle and a submachine
gun, to Gianni inside the car.
Pietro Ravenelli watched with clear amusement. “You guys expecting World War III?”
Neither man answered.
Vittorio opened the front passenger door and helped Ravenelli out of the car. The don moved awkwardly with his hands tied
behind him, and he stumbled and almost fell.
“You’ve got two guns on me,” he said. “How about giving me back my hands?”
Vittorio ignored him and spoke to Gianni. “I don’t like this long stretch of open field, so keep us covered with the rifle.
Watch the house windows and the woods on the right for movement. If you see anything, fire once in the air.”
He glanced briefly at the girl. “And before you go all soft on Miss Angel Face here, just remember who she is and where you
found her.”
The two men stood looking at each other.
“I think it’ll be OK,” Gianni said.
“I know that’s what you think. Stay sharp anyway.”
Vittorio took Ravenelli’s arm and started toward the house with him. He felt the flesh of the don’s beefy arm, and
breathed his cologne, and fought the anger that came with his closeness. He didn’t need anger right now. He needed calm and
he needed his senses. This was past thinking.
He kept the pace slow but steady. It took discipline not to rush. His eyes were on the house in front, and on the woods off
to his right. The fragment of moon had vanished behind some clouds and the darkness hung heavy. Vittorio seemed to sense a
new silence in the dark, a dead silence, like some stretch of the void with nothing beneath.
The grass was high, past knee length, and Ravenelli kept tripping without the use of his arms for balance.
“Goddamn grass hasn’t been cut in six weeks,” he complained softly. “And it’s fucking paid for, too.”
“Shut up,” Vittorio whispered and took a firmer grip on his arm.
He felt his own tension and tried to ease it by thinking about his son. He pictured him asleep in that upstairs bedroom, his
thumb inevitably in his mouth, his thin, solemn face pale against the pillow.
So close and getting closer,
he thought, and had to resist a growing need to break into a wild dash toward the house.
There was a sudden burst of light.
Someone with a bullhorn yelled “Freeze!”
Vittorio stared unseeingly at a white blaze. He slammed Ravenelli down into the grass and dived down against him. The muzzle
of his automatic was hard against his throat.
“You sonofabitch!”
Rage took over. It blinded his brain as totally as the floods blinded his eyes. Then it passed and a cold calm turned him
sane again.
Flat out in the high grass, the muzzle of his gun to Ravenelli’s throat, he saw three floodlights coming out of the tree line.
Then the voice on the bullhorn called, “Don Ravenelli! Are you all right?”
“My son isn’t here?” Like a lover, Vittorio whispered the words into Ravenelli’s ear.
“No.”
“Was he ever here?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
The man on the bullhorn repeated his question.
“In another house,” said the don. “Around thirty kilometers from here.”
Vittorio stared at him in disgust. “Answer the damn bullhorn. Tell them you’re all right.”
Ravenelli was silent.
Vittorio hit him in the mouth with his automatic.
Ravenelli spit blood. Then he called out the message.
“You set this up with that call before?” said Vittorio Battaglia.
“Yes.”
“What was the code line?”
“When I said‘No problems with the boy.’ ”
“Cute.” Vittorio stared through the high grass at the lights. “You want to die?”
Ravenelli spit more blood. He swallowed some and gagged. “No.”
“Then tell them I’m walking you out of here with a gun at your head. Tell them if they shoot once, I’ll scatter your brains
like bird shit.”
Ravenelli hesitated.
Vittorio rammed the gun into his ear. “Fucking tell them.”
“Michael?” the don called.
“Yes, Don Ravenelli,” said the voice on the horn.
“He’s taking me out. Don’t do a thing. One shot and I’m done. He’s not fooling.”
There was no answer.
“You hear me, Michael?”
The pause was extended.
Then: “I hear you, Don Ravenelli. You don’t have to worry.”
Vittorio gripped Ravenelli’s arm. “You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“OK. Slow and easy.”
Vittorio strained under the don’s bulk as he struggled him up out of the grass that hid them. It was a careful, hesitant rising,
with the two men tightly joined all the way as they came into the blaze of white light.
We are risen,
thought Vittorio coldly, and tried to shield
his eyes from the blinding glare. It did no good. He could see nothing. And at that moment he could almost have allowed himself
to slip into the beginnings of a dream in which this weighted body he was clinging to so lovingly belonged to someone other
than an enemy.
Then the first shots exploded.
A ragged volley came out of the lights like something meaner than thunder, and kept crackling and groaning until the noise
alone seemed to be pounding them straight back down into the grass. Except that it was a lot more than just the noise.
For even when most of the sound had stopped, they were both still flat out in the grass, with Vittorio huddled as tightly
as ever against Ravenelli, who lay unmoving and would never move again, and Vittorio himself only now beginning to feel the
rush of pain, after the initial shock, of the two hits he had taken. One was above the other. Left side and thigh. He felt,
too, the few scattered hits that continued to impact the don’s body. Which was Vittorio’s only real protection at this moment,
but wouldn’t be protecting him much longer if something didn’t happen fast.
An instant later there was the crack of a rifle from another direction, and something did happen. One of the floodlights exploded
in a shower of sparks and went dark.
Gianni.
Then there were two more shots from the same direction and the two remaining floods blew out as well.
Vittorio peered through the new dark and for the first time was able to make out movement and hear voices in the area of the
trees.
Do something.
Ignoring the pain, Battaglia rolled on his bad side and groped free the two grenades he had taken with him but never really
expected to have to use. He pulled the pins, made his count, and lobbed both grenades within seconds of each other. Blood
sloshed as he moved. His own.
The explosions shook the ground and Ravenelli’s body. They drowned out the first cries from among the trees. When the sound
of the explosions faded, the human cries grew louder.
Come on, Gianni,
thought Vittorio, and started crawling toward his parked car. Then he raised his head and saw that his car was suddenly speeding
toward
him.
It was beside him a moment later, with the doors open and Gianni half lifting, half dragging him into the front passenger
seat. Vittorio glimpsed the girl, both hands lashed to a door handle, staring out to where Ravenelli lay in the grass.
“Your Pietro’s dead,” he told her. “I didn’t kill him. His friends did. Nice friends.”
Lucia just stared out at the dark remains in the grass.
Then Gianni was back behind the wheel and they were tearing through the dark field, away from Don Pietro Ravenelli’s body
and the unseen bodies of those lying dead and wounded among the trees.
“Crazy bastards,” said Vittorio hoarsely. “Paulie was never even here. All this shit and we’re no place.”
“How bad are you?” asked Gianni.
“Bad enough. I took two in that first burst. Upper leg and side.” Holding himself, Vittorio’s hands were sticky with blood
and blood was oozing between his fingers. He felt pain crawling all over him like something that had been crouching there
a long time, waiting for the right moment. “I’ve goddamn learned nothing. What an asshole.”
They rode in silence.
Vittorio Battaglia’s eyes were closed.
“I think he’s passed out,” said Lucia.
They reached the coast highway moments later. Gianni drove west for a few miles, then pulled off the road and parked behind
some brush.
Vittorio opened his eyes. “Why are we stopping?”
“To find out if you’re dead,” said Garetsky.
“I’ve got too much to do to be dead.”
Gianni switched on the dome light and for the first time saw the full extent of the bleeding.
“Jesus. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
“You crazy or what? A hospital’s the first place they’ll be looking.”
“Then at least a doctor.”
“Just as bad. Doctors have to report bullet wounds to the police, and the mob’s got the police in their pocket.”
The girl spoke softly from the back. “My cousin is a doctor. You can trust her. She hates all police and gangsters.”
Gianni looked at her. “Where is she?”
“In Monreale.”
“Why would you help us?”
Lucia shrugged. “You didn’t shoot me. And those pigs murdered Pietro. They’ve just been waiting for the chance. Especially
that Michael. And if he gets me, I’ll be next because I saw it happen.”
“No doctors,” said Vittorio. “I don’t trust any of them. Just bandage me up for now. Tight. That’ll cut the bleeding.”
“Please listen to me,” said Lucia. Her hands were still tied to the door handle and the two men seemed to have forgotten about
her. “I know where the boy is.”
Vittorio was unable to turn to see her, but his body stiffened where he sat. “Where is he?”
“In a house near Lercara Friddi. We can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You knew this all the time?” said Gianni.
“Yes.”
“And you let that useless bloody mess back there happen?”
The girl’s curiously virginal face showed nothing. “How could I stop it? I couldn’t betray Pietro. Now it’s different. Now
I’ve got only myself to think about. And you gave me back my life when even Pietro was willing to put it at risk.”
“What about the two men with my son?” said Vittorio. “Was your Pietro telling the truth about that?”
“Yes. Tony and Domenico are the only ones with him.”
Vittorio closed his eyes and seemed to diminish where he sat. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try
this
house.”
Gianni cut Lucia’s hands free and together they laid Vittorio across the backseat. The girl sat in front with Gianni. Five
minutes later, when Lucia turned to check on Vittorio, his eyes were still closed and he appeared to be asleep.
Vittorio Battaglia opened his eyes only after the forward motion of the car had stopped.
They were parked in a field at the edge of a wood. The lights of a house showed through the trees at a distance of
about two hundred yards. The moon remained clouded over and the rest of the night was dark.
Vittorio half raised himself on the backseat. His groan was involuntary. “Is that the house ahead there?” he asked Lucia.
“Yes.”
“Why would the lights be on at four in the morning? Are they always kept that way?”
“I don’t know.”
“This Tony and Domenico,” said Vittorio. “How well do you know them?”
“Very well.”
“Well enough for you to knock on the door and have them let you in without being suspicious?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Unless they’ve gotten a call from someone since Pietro was killed.”
Vittorio lay back once more and thought about it. He was in pain, sweating, and breathing heavily just from the effort of
raising himself. He felt his bandages and knew he was bleeding again. Still, he said, “Let’s go,” fought his way to a sitting
position, and promptly passed out.
When he opened his eyes moments later, Gianni and Lucia didn’t appear to have moved an inch.
“I guess I’d better wait for you here,” he said thickly. “Just goddamn bring me back my boy.”
They circled through the trees and crouched behind some brush about thirty yards to the left of the house. It was a small,
one-story stone villa, and the lights were on in two rooms. High bushes made it difficult to see inside.
“Have you ever been in the house?” Gianni Garetsky asked the girl.
“Yes.”
“What are the lighted rooms?”
“The one in the front is the living room. The other is a bedroom.”
“And the rest?”
“Another bedroom and a bath in back, and a kitchen and an eating place in front. On the far side of the entrance.”