In the Hour Before Midnight (18 page)

She didn't attempt to pretend. Her head went back and there was still pride there. “He has my marks on him also.”

I turned and at the sight of my face Ciccio went back quickly, still clutching his bloody hand. “Please, signore.” He forced a fake man-to-man smile. “This woman is a whore from the back streets of Palermo. Everyone knows what she was before Signore Hoffer took her in.”

He smiled again eagerly, his back to the stairs, and rage boiled like lava inside me. “You find it funny? You like a joke? Then laugh this off.”

I kicked him in the crotch with all my strength.
He screamed as he doubled over and my right knee lifted into his face sending him back down the stairs. He rolled over twice and crashed to the floor below. He lay there for a moment and then incredibly, got to his feet and lurched out of sight dangling what looked like a broken arm.

I turned to Rosa. “The day you start feeling shamed about your past just let me know. I'll let you have a few choice items from my own that should make you feel about as soiled as a Vestal Virgin by comparison. I'm going to leave you now. Burke's waiting for me upstairs in the roof garden.”

“No, Stacey, there are two of them. They will kill you.”

“I don't think so. On the other hand anything's possible in this life.” I took out my wallet and handed it to her. “If it goes wrong, whatever you find in there should help you along the way more than a little. Now get dressed and wait for me downstairs in one of the cars.”

I started to turn and she caught me, held me to her yet did not kiss me. She said nothing, but her face was eloquent enough. When I pulled gently away she did not try to stop me.

T
HE DOOR AT
the top of the stairs stood open, the garden was floodlit again, a place of wonder and delight, sweetly perfumed in the rain.

I paused to one side of the door and considered the situation for a while, then moved along the landing, tried another door and found myself in a study of sorts.

The room was in darkness, the inevitable glass doors that formed the other side standing open.
Which way would he expect me to come, that was the thing
. I stood there in the darkness, drained of all emotion, suddenly tired, caught by some strange fatalism that seemed to say it didn't really matter—nothing mattered. We were on our predestined course, Burke and I. What would be, must be.

I went out through the glass doors in three quick strides and dropped into the green jungle of the garden.

His voice sounded clearly. “Over here, Stacey, I know you're there.”

“You and me, Sean?” I called. “No one else?”

“As ever was, Stacey boy.” The more Irish he sounded the less I trusted him. “Piet isn't here. He went up to the airstrip with our baggage. We're getting out tonight.”

Which was a lie. Had to be because whatever else Hoffer had paid him, there was the bearer bond for fifty thousand dollars in that bank vault in Palermo and as today was Sunday he couldn't possibly have collected it on his return. He wasn't going to leave that.

But trapped by that strange fatalism, I decided to play his game and stepped out through the ferns into a narrow path between vines. He stood at the end on the terrace beyond a wrought iron table, his hands behind his back.

“What are you holding there, Sean?” I called.

“Nothing, Stacey, don't you believe me?”

“After the mountain—after Cammarata?”

Both hands came into view empty. “I'm sorry about that, but I knew you'd never stand still for killing the girl.” He shook his head and there was
a kind of admiration in his voice. “But you, Stacey—you. Christ, you are indestructible. I thought you in pieces.”

“You're losing your touch, Sean—old age,” I said. “If you're interested, you didn't do much of a job on the girl either. She's doing fine. Hoffer's the one who's in trouble. Explaining himself to the devil about now, I should think.”

That got through to him and the slight smile left his face. “You're a bloody swine, Sean,” I said. “You always were only I never saw it before. Nothing on earth could excuse what you did up there on the mountain. You and Hoffer should get on fine when you next meet.”

“You wouldn't kill me in cold blood, Stacey, after all we've been through together.”

He spread his arms wide. “That's just the way I intend to do it,” I told him and Rosa screamed from the doorway behind me.

I swung, dropped on my face, pain tearing at my right shoulder as Piet Jaeger jumped from the vines no more than seven or eight feet away.

For some odd reason the weapon he clutched in both hands was a
lupara
which had presumably belonged to one of Hoffer's men; just the thing for assassination at close-quarters.

I shot him three times, two bullets catching him
in the heart, the third in the throat as he went down, dropping the
lupara
. I turned, the Smith and Wesson ready, and looked into the Browning, rigid in Burke's hand.

“Stuck it in my belt at the rear,” he explained. “Who's slipping now?”

“Aren't you going to shed a tear for lover boy?” I asked.

His face went very still. “You bastard, I've wanted you like this for a long time.”

“But you needed me, didn't you?” I said. “I only discovered that tonight. You only had them carry me out when I was wounded on the Lagona job because I was essential to you. Without me you were nothing.” I laughed harshly. “The great Sean Burke. That's a joke. Every move you ever made, every plan, originated in my head. Without me you were nothing and I thought you were some kind of god. You wouldn't even have got into the Cammarata without me or come within ten miles of Serafino and the girl.”

“You poor bloody fool,” he said. “You think I needed you for the Cammarata job? You think that's why I brought you out of Egypt instead of leaving you to rot?”

“You've got a better story?”

“Try this.” He savoured every word as he spoke.
“Hoffer wanted Vito Barbaccia's head, but getting at him was impossible until he hired me and I remembered my old friend Stacey Wyatt in the Hole at Fuad. The problem was getting into the Barbaccia villa—all visitors' cars left outside the gate, but would that apply to Barbaccia's grandson? It was worth a try.”

I stared up at him and he laughed out loud, the only time I'd known him to do it. “The two gunmen at the villa that night—they were in the boot of the car. That's how they got in. My idea, Stacey, just like Troy and the wooden horse. Worth bringing you out of Fuad for and it nearly worked.”

How true it all was I had no means of knowing, but it seemed unlikely that it would have been the only reason for bringing me out of Fuad. No, he had needed me for Cammarata, however much he tried to deny it to himself now. On the other hand I had certainly mentioned my grandfather to him in the distant past and a name which meant nothing to him then would have assumed a new importance when first heard from Hoffer.

So, he had used me again. Ironic that in this case I was also the one who had foiled him, but I now understood why he had been so quick to shoot the boy with the
lupara
that night in the garden. The only way of guaranteeing a still tongue.

I got to one knee and he shook his head. “You're wasting your time. I've been counting. One in the garden, one on the stairs, three for Piet. That makes five which is all you ever carry in that thing—unless you reloaded on the way up.”

A game—a monstrous game in which we each played our parts
. I shook my head and dropped the Smith and Wesson into my pocket. “No, you're right, it's empty.”

“This is it, then, Stacey,” he said. “We've come a long way since the ‘Lights of Lisbon'.”

I picked up the
lupara
. “You know what this is?”

“Sure—Hoffer showed it to me. The Mafia favour them—the traditional way of finishing off a
vendetta
. Not much use beyond six feet. You'd have to get close, Stacey.”

“I'll get close,” I said, stood up and thumbed back the hammer. “You never amounted to a row of beans without me at your back. Let's see how good you are on your own.”

He was right, of course. A sawn-off shotgun spreads so quickly that I hadn't a hope in hell of really hurting him where he stood which was a good twenty paces away.

I started to walk, staring death in the face, and Rosa cried out sharply. Somewhere I heard a car
engine and then another, the slam of doors, voices in the night. Mafia arriving too late.

There was only the rain and Burke standing there at the end of a dark tunnel, his face frozen, every line etched deep, the eyes boring into me so that we were caught together in our own timeless moment.

And then a strange thing happened. The Browning wavered. He took a step back and then another. I don't know what it was that caused it. Perhaps my relentless approach, my apparent contempt for sudden death, the expression on my face! Whatever it was, he cracked—came apart at the seams.

“Stay away from me! Stay away!”

He took three quick paces back, lurched into the low retaining wall and went over with a desperate cry.

I stood there swaying slightly, then dropped the
lupara
. Rosa was there, holding on to me tightly, crying into my shoulder. I stroked her head absently, then moved to the wall and looked down at him, broken across the steps of the terrace sixty feet below.

When I finally turned, my grandfather was there and Marco together with three hard-looking gentlemen who clutched machine pistols as if thoroughly accustomed to their use.

“You're too late,” I said. “All over.”

Barbaccia moved towards me. “You're all right?”

“Me? I'm fine. Just Burke and his boy friend dead and a couple of Hoffer's thugs chipped up a little. What do you think I'll get? Ten years? Fifteen? Rome doesn't like this sort of thing any more. It's bad for the tourist trade.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Stacey, listen to me. All this is nothing. Burke and his friend go so deep under the earth that no one ever finds them. The others, I fix—I fix everything. They know better than to cross Mafia.”

“That's good,” I said. “That's marvellous because to tell you the truth, I've had enough gaols to last me a lifetime and I've got other plans like taking the first plane to anywhere out of Sicily tomorrow.”

He looked completely shocked, reached out an uncertain hand. “Stacey, you don't know what you're saying. You must stay with me.”

“Stay with you?” I laughed out loud. “I wouldn't cut you down if you were hanging. I've news for you. I made a very interesting discovery tonight. I found out who murdered my mother—you did.”

It was the cruellest thing I could have said, however true, and he wilted, became old before my
eyes. I turned and pushed my way past his bully boys, feeling suddenly very, very tired.

I got as far as the door and staggered a little and then there was an arm supporting me. Rosa was there, her face full of pride and she had stopped crying.

“Let me help you, Stacey.”

“Can you cook as well?”

“You've never tasted pasta like it.”

“Then you're the girl for me. Only one stipulation. We do things right at the first opportunity. I'm sick of irregular habits.”

She started to cry again as we descended the stairs and I patted her shoulder. “My clothes will still be in my room, I suppose. Pack a bag for me and whatever you need for yourself, and don't forget your passport. I'll see you downstairs. And I'll have my wallet.”

She gave it to me and went into her room and I made it down to the hall under my own steam. It was raining harder than ever when I went into the garden and moved along the terrace at the front of the villa.

He seemed peaceful enough lying there in the rain, although from the look of him his spine was broken and the back of the skull was crushed.

I thought about a lot of things standing there,
but mainly of that first time we'd met at the “Lights of Lisbon.” If only one could hold moments for ever, if only people didn't change, but that was not possible. Life was not like that.

Now I was tired, now all I wanted to do was shelter from the darkness in some corner of warmth and if I was lucky, luckier than most people ever are, Rosa would provide that. Rosa and the piece of paper worth fifty thousand dollars that reposed in the lining of my wallet and I smiled wryly, remembering him solemnly sealing the manilla envelope containing the blank withdrawal form I'd substituted for the real thing that day at the bank.

Poor Sean—poor Sean Burke. I took out the Smith and Wesson, dropped it on his chest and left him there in the rain. A poor exchange, perhaps—for him, but not for me.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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