She hung the skirt on a wire hanger. She took a blouse from the washing basket.
He closed the door of the cupboard.
'It is finished. From tomorrow you do your own shopping.'
Giancarlo took his pistol from the shoulder holster under his lightweight jacket, and cleared it and took out the magazine. She went on with the ironing. He went to their bedroom to rest. After tomorrow there would be no more lemons for the cardboard box in the kitchen cupboard, and no more potatoes or green vegetables or fruit. He had been too long in the job of surveillance to feel a sense of failure.
Franco drove. It was an old Fiat 127, a model that was no longer in production. The bodywork was rusted, but the engine, beneath a layer of oil and grime left for casual police inspection, was finely tuned and capable of powering the car to a speed of 170 kilometres per hour. It was the right car to bring a humble and elderly priest from a country village to a home in mourning. Nothing was left to chance, everything had been prepared with care, the movement of the humble and elderly priest was the responsibility of Franco. Franco, with a day's stubble on his face and wearing a poorly fitting coat and a tie that was not quite straight against the collar of a shirt that was a centimetre too tight, drove slowly because Mario Ruggerio did not like to be thrown around in a fast car. The radio set in the dash between the knees of Franco and the priest did not play the music and talk of the RAI stations but was tuned to the extremity of the VHF band to receive warnings of military road blocks from the two cars that travelled ahead and warnings, from the car behind, of any possible suspicion of a police tail.
The sun was down now over the mountains to the west. The lights of Catania merged with the dusk.
The responsibility of moving Mario Ruggerio to the home, in mourning, of the man from Catania brought rare pride to Franco. There would be police, not in uniform, on the pavement outside the apartment block. There would be hastily rigged cameras, positioned by men dressed in the overalls of the telephone company or the electricity company, covering the front and the rear of the apartment block. The number of the Fiat 127 and its paint colouring would be noted, of course, but by the morning the car would have been resprayed and the registration plates would have been changed. A humble and elderly priest, from the country, would not be harassed by the police, not questioned or body-searched, in the aftermath of death. The pride of Franco came from his belief that the responsibility given him provided an indication, clear as mountain water, that he was now the favourite of Mario Ruggerio – not Carmine, who was an arrogant idiot, not Tano, who was a toad and blown out with self-importance. He believed that more responsibility would be given him until he stood at the right shoulder of Mario Ruggerio, undisputed as the consigliere to Mario Ruggerio. The radio stayed silent. No military road blocks on the approach to the apartment block and no tail. The bastards would be relying on the surveillance teams on the street and the remote cameras. He drove along the street, and when he started to change down through his gears he nudged Mario Ruggerio, respectfully, and pointed to the ashtray.
The humble and elderly priest stubbed out a cigarillo, coughed hard, spat into a handkerchief. He pulled up smoothly in front of the main entrance to the apartment block, where the street lights were brightest. When he was out of the car, when he would be seen by the surveillance men and by the cameras, Franco seemed to examine a scrap of paper, as if directions had been written on it, as if he were a stranger to the city, as if he merely brought a humble and elderly priest from a village in the country.
Two young men stood in the shadow near to the door, and there would have been two more across the street, and two more down the street, and they would have cameras.
The priest walked with the help of a hospital stick, one that had a reinforcing clamp for the upper arm, and Franco walked with him as if ready to take his other arm should the priest stumble. The priest murmured a greeting, perhaps a blessing, to the policemen as he passed them, and they ignored him. The priest walked hesitantly over the marble floor of the hallway to the block as if such luxury were not a part of his life in the village. They took the elevator. The face of Mario Ruggerio was impassive. Franco could not read his thoughts. The man was magnificent. The man had such authority.
Small, old, and such presence. The empire of the man extended across the width of the island, the length of Europe, the ocean, and Franco was his favourite. It was typical of the magnificence of the man that he came to the front door of the apartment and rang the bell for admittance to the home of a slaughtered rival.
The door was opened.
Franco carried a pistol strapped to his shin. He felt a winnowing of fear.
The apartment was crowded with the supporters of the dead rival and the family. A moment's gesture, Mario Ruggerio's hand on franco's arm, a grip that was steel-hard, the order that he should stay back, and he was passed the hospital stick. Mario Ruggerio, murderer, now capo di tutti capi because a rival had been removed, went forward and the supporters and rivals backed off and made an aisle for him. Franco saw that none dared catch his eye, none had the courage or the stupidity to denounce him.
Franco followed, into the living room, and he waited by the door as Mario Ruggerio approached the widow, black-clothed, sitting, eyes reddened. The widow rose to greet him. He took the widow's hands and held them in his own. He spoke the words of sincere sympathy. He brought respect. He declined the offer of alcohol from the son of the dead man, a juice would be most welcome. He gave dignity. Gravely, Mario Ruggerio, watched by Franco, thanked the son of the dead man for the juice. His presence was accepted because he brought respect, gave dignity, to a dead man. Franco understood. The power of Mario Ruggerio, dressed as a humble and elderly priest, over La Cosa Nostra was absolute.
For more than an hour Mario Ruggerio talked with the widow and the widow's son and the widow's family. When he left, he hobbled on his hospital stick past the policemen on surveillance duty, past the cameras.
With two cars in front and one behind, Franco, who was swollen with pride, drove him back to Palermo through the night's darkness.
She looked the prisoner straight in the eye, and when he dropped his head, she reached forward and lifted his chin so that he must look at her.
She was the daughter of the capo of the Kalsa district of the city. Her brothers followed in the footsteps of her father.
Across the table, in a low voice so that she would not be heard by the guards and by the other prisoners and their families, she spat at him her message.
'I will tell my children, not your children, my children, that they no longer have a father. I will tell them that they should forget their father. To me, to my children, you are dead. You listened to your mother, always to your mother, so now your mother can wipe your arse for you, but not me and not my children. If I am offered protection, then I will refuse it. What you intend will bring shame on you and on me and on your children. It now disgusts me that I lay with you and made children for you. You swore the same oath as my father, the same oath as my brothers, and you betray the oath. I tell you your future, from the time that I leave here, from the time that I meet with my father and my brothers. Wherever they put you, look to see if anyone is behind you when you stand on steep steps. When you approach any group, consider which man carries the knife. When you lie at night and hear a footstep, consider whether the rope is brought for your throat. When you eat, consider whether the poison is in your food. That is your future. Not my future, not the future of my children, who have no father. To me, to them, you do not exist, never existed.'