Sicilian Slaughter (9 page)

None of the dons cared to look directly at one another. They all knew they'd been had, and each of them felt so helplessly frustrated with anger, none wanted the job of speaking first — of bringing the subject out.

Finally, the Roman, Brinato said, "Well, whadda we gonna do, sit here with our thumbs up our butts all night?"

"The first thing we gotta do," said Vandalo, "is get Naples back under control. I sent some of my boys — "

"You
sent some of
your
boys?" demanded Ricercato. "And where you get off with that shit?
You
sent
your
boys."

"Somebody had to get in there fast, and the rest of you — " Vandalo gestured obscenely. "Sitting around on your asses while the whole organization falls apart."

"Shut up!"
Brinato roared in his gravelly voice. "Knock it to hell
off!"
He glared around the room. "This is just what Bolan wants, us squabbling, fighting amongst ourselves, going to war over Naples." Brinato shot looks of anger at each don around the table; they looked back at him, and shifted uneasily in their chairs. "I say for right now, Naples is open. We got a lot bigger worry on our backs than Naples ... that goddam Bolan!"

Brinato stared at them again. "Now, anybody argue with that?"

No one answered.

"Okay! Now, you, Ruvido," Brinato demanded of the man from Reggio, "what did you find out from that
ragazza,
that girl Alma, right?"

"Nothing. A dumbass farmer. She didn't even know who she was helping, his name or nothing. She was so dumb she still carried one of them marksman medals in her blouse, didn't know any better."

"But you took the farm apart, just to make sure Bolan didn't double back."

"What the hell you take me for?" Ruvido said, insulted.

"Okay, okay, save the ruffled feathers for later."

"He's on the island," Ricercato said, primly.

"And passed right through your fucking town," snapped Vandalo. "Drove right into Catania and filled up with gas and ate breakfast in plain sight, and then …
phutt!
Vanished."

"Tell
me
about it!" snapped Paffuto, the chubby boss of Messina. "Those were
my
soldiers he blew up,
my
truck he stole. That
bastard."
Paffuto's fat hands worked as though he held Bolan's throat in them.

"Let's just cut the crap," Brinato said flatly. "Stop whining about who lost what, and who made this mistake or that fuckup. Okay, goddammit? You guys ready to talk now? You ready to make some
plans,
use your heads, think!" In a rage, Brinato shoved back from the table so hard his heavy chair upset and clattered halfway across the room. He went to a window and stood before it, breathing deeply. Sons of bitches, Brinato thought, pissing their pants over nickles and dimes and a few dead punks, and conniving over what slice of Naples they might or might not get. While we got a
war
on our hands!

Brinato lit a cigar. Well, he thought, they could forget Naples, all of them. Naples is mine. I got my own
boia,
my personal executioner in old Napoli, sorting things out, so Naples don't matter. What matters is that goddam Bolan!

Brinato stared off into the night through the window, eyes going out of focus, trying to envision where Bolan was at that moment, and doing what....

Brinato turned back to the table, picked up his chair, but he did not sit down. He leaned forward on his hands, and once more glared at each of the other men, one by one. "Now! Listen to me. Clear all the cheap penny-ante thoughts out of your minds. All the crap about a slice of Naples, your deads, stolen trucks,
all
that!"

Brinato flicked ashes from his cigar. "First, we
know
why Bolan came over here. We
know
his target." He paused, then growled a grainy coarse laugh. "Does anybody doubt now we
are
dealing with Bolan? Anybody got more smart ideas about taking down one of our
own?
It's Bolan and he raped us blind, so now let's get the son of a bitch."

Then with a deceptive mildness that held a sneer of contempt, Brinato said, "Okay? That okay, boys? Anybody disagree?" He had deliberately taken control of the table because he had been the first to call for a vote at Frode's table. For years Brinato had coveted Naples, especially after his recent probes into the territory verified that Frode's underbosses were stealing him blind and Astio Traditore undercutting him more each day, getting ready to make his move for the takeover. And Brinato had already given his best hardman, his
boia,
the contract on Astio. Bolan, however, had solved that minor problem.

"Okay, who's been in touch with Cafu?" Ricercato asked. "Besides myself, I mean?"

The men from Palermo, Reggio, Messina, Syracuse, and Marsala signified they had been in touch with the boss of Agrigento.

"So what do we know?"

"The truck was found abandoned on the road west of Naro." Ricercato glanced at the truck's owner. "Forget recovering it, unless you're in the junk business."

Paffuto winced, seven thousand U.S. dollars shot to hell.

"What about this crate he was so anxious to move?" Brinato asked.

"His warchest, gotta be."

"Meaning just what?" asked Ruvido. He always was a dumbutt. It took his kind of coarse, heavy-handed, harsh leadership in a sinkhole like Reggio, but that didn't make him any smarter.

"His weapons," Brinato said.

"What the hell," Ruvido said, looking around, "the guy plays cowboy, wears a couple pistols, one with a silencer. What weapons? Was that damned box full of ammo?"

With disgust, Brinato moved away from the table again, puffing furiously at his cigar. "Somebody clue this rural asshole so we can get on with it."

Ricercato began counting off on his fingers. "In the past Bolan has used bazookas, trench mortars, rifle grenades, telescopic rifles, every known land of demolition explosives, automatic and semi-automatic machine-pistols, rifles, submachineguns. He's an
expert
with them all. You dig, all. that's what is in the warchest. Weapons for making war."

"Jesus, then he could stand off, I mean, like way up in the hills somewhere, and rip off Cafu's place."

"What the hell do you think he did in Naples, walk up to the front door and start lobbing those grenades in? Where the hell you been the past four, five years, while this Bolan bastard's been blowing this thing of ours to smithereens from France to Philly?"

"Well, Jesus, I just never figured, you know —
here!
I mean the guy don't even speak the language, does he?"

"The girl said he speaks some. Enough. Wouldn't you say enough? He went through
your
town, sacked out in a hayloft all day, got himself laid, walked down to the beach in
your
town, and swam out to meet the ferryboat coming in. I think he does okay with the goddamn language!"

"That's right," Brinato said with ice-throated anger. "Bicker, snarl and snap at one another, piss away the whole night."

"Okay, okay. Brinato's right Now, what's the plan?"

Brinato pointed his cigar at the various dons who had been in contact with Cafu. "What's the man want?"

Each of them shrugged, mouths turning down at the corners, palms up and open. "Nothing?" Brinato said, startled. "Nothing at all? No soldiers, no weapons, ammunition, a goddam helicopter, bloodhounds,
nothing?"

"That's what the man said," Ricercato said, and looked to the other Sicilian bosses for confirmation.

"That can mean only one thing," Brinato said.

"We think so, too."

"He's got something going over there on his own, something he's not sharing, holding out for himself."

"Well, he's got that soldier thing, training soldiers and sending them over to the other side, for a grand a day per man."

"I know about that, and it was never cleared through the
commissione.
They voted it down cold. Too much chance returning to the old days, Families blowing each other to pieces. We don't never want another blood-thirsty son of a bitch like Anastasia in charge of
anything
again. Murder, Incorporated,
keyrist!

"Dope," said the man from Milan. He was nearest France, dealt more than any of the others with the Corsicans. "He's in dope, if he don't want any help, don't want any of us sniffing around. Dope."

Without exception the men around the table agreed, with a nod, a grunt, a word. Brinato laid it out. "Sure. Why not? Some way, Cafu's got a lock on getting his soldiers into the States, right? I mean seventy-five guys he already had in Philly, right? Only makes sense he would send dope with some of them. That's too good a chance to pass up."

Brinato looked around at the faces, saw the grim lines, thin-lipped mouths, stony eyes. "I'm calling a table for Cafu ... with your agreement, naturally."

Again, without dissent, all the dons agreed.

Brinato went to the door and opened it. He spoke briefly to the man on guard just outside. The soldier nodded and walked away fast. Brinato called out and another man came to the door. A few minutes after Brinato resumed his seat, the door opened and white-jacketed men rolled in tables laden with food and drink.

Even as they dug in, eating and drinking with relish, small-talking and making gross jokes, each man at the table was thinking the same thing. "Officially" their thing had outlawed dealing in dope; dope was too hot now, much, much too heavy. Dope had brought down Don Vito Genovese, for Christ's sake,
the boss
of all bosses. Each man at the table also knew he had at one time or other violated this "ruling" against dope. It was the fastest and easiest way to make a big score if a guy suffered losses and reverses in some other thing he had going. The morality of dealing in dope had nothing whatever to do with laying off dope. Dope was just too goddam heavy if a guy got taken down. And when one guy went down, everyone in the organization suffered, guilt by association, and heat all over the place, cops running out your ears. So, dope was "officially" outlawed in the Mafia, but it was okay so long as you did not get caught.

And the men at the table were also thinking one other thing, everyone of them: how to get the big slice, maybe all, of Agrigento when they called the table on Cafu and took him down.

Brinato's soldier came fast into the room without knocking, leaned over and whispered in his boss' ear. Brinato spluttered a mouthful of food down his chest, slapped at it angrily with his napkin, swallowed heavily, and shoved back from the table. "What did you say? I mean repeat it for all of us."

"Now, boss, don't get sore at me, okay?" Brinato shook his head violently.

The soldier stared around the faces, shrugged, then blurted, "Don Cafu said . . . 'Tell those guys to go get fucked. And tell them if they come after me I got better'n a hundred soldiers waiting for them.'" The soldier grabbed an empty glass and poured himself a drink of champagne. "He said, 'Tell those greaseballs to go piss up a rope, and if they think they're calling a table on me they're full of shit. I ain't coming, now or ever, and I'll burn down every son of a bitch comes after me.'"

The soldier did not bother with the glass this time. He up-ended the bottle and swigged. Then: "I'm sorry, boss; but that's what he said, just how he said, and I thought you want to know. I mean, did I do right?"

"Sure, sure," Brinato said absently, nodding his head. He patted the soldier on the arm. "You did just fine, son. Go on now, we got to talk. Tell the waiters to come in and clear away all this crap. I ain't hungry no more."

After the waiters had taken away the remains of the feast, which now tasted like sawdust to the dons, Ruvido snarled viciously. "Okay, so the don don't come to the table, we take the table to the don, huh?" He looked around the table for confirmation.

Brinato looked at the man from Reggio, wondering. How the hell did we ever let him get so high up in this thing of ours? A goddam Calabrian was no different than a garlicky greaseball Sicilian, hot-tempered, fast-draw, shoot from the hip, examine the deads afterwards, and hold a beautiful wake upon learning he'd killed his brother-in-law. Christ. Maybe it was the sun, the harsh, unrelenting heat on the jagged desertlike, worthless land made them that way. All the same, kill, kill, kill, and they'd screw anything from a crocodile to a warm exhaust pipe. Sure, Cafu had to go, no question; but Brinato decided Ruvido also had to go. And then he caught himself. God-DAMN! Here he was doing just exactly what that Bolan bastard wanted. Thinking of killing Family. Brinato took a deep breath and calmly peeled the outer brown wrapper from a Cuban cigar and lit it. After a moment, he leaned forward, cleared his throat loudly to quiet the mutterings around the table. When he had the attention of all the dons, Brinato spoke:

"All right, gentlemen, what do you think of this? Our brother Don Cafu does not want our help. He has, indeed,
refused
our offers of aid. He has likewise refused to come and reason with us. And our only purpose was to offer aid and assistance, correct, gentlemen?"

They nodded, grunted, and most of them began slowly Smiling.

"Then I suggest we let the don have his way. Obviously, he considers himself in no danger. A hundred trained and well-armed soldiers, correct? So what can one man hope to do, even this Bolan?"

Brinato puffed his cigar in the silence, while the others watched him, grinning like sharks. "Of course, there are always the pieces to pick up afterwards." Brinato smiled, a brief lifting of the left corner of his thick lips. "I suggest we adjourn and see what the morrow brings."

Still grinning, the others got to their feet as Brinato rose from his chair. "Now, let's see if we can't find a way to divert ourselves, eh?"

As they filed out of the table room, Brinato signaled to his houseman. The hardguy grinned and nodded and went away. As the dons went into the lavishly furnished private parlor, soft music began issuing from hidden speakers, the lights softened, and the girls came in.