Authors: Michael Dibdin
In other words, if a message doesn’t exist, someone will invent one.
Exactly. So you have to make sure that some message comes through loud and clear. Otherwise the communications can get fouled up. And when that happens
…
Yes?
When the messages start going astray, there’s no rhyme or reason
any more. No one knows what’s going on, so everyone’s extra edgy. Mistakes happen, and those mistakes breed others. Before you know where you are, you have another clan war on your hands
.
So these executions have to be correctly performed. It’s a sort of ritual theatre, in other words, like the priest consecrating the host. What’s the matter?
Look, I’m trying to cooperate, all right? We’re different men with different objectives, but I respect you just as you respect me
.
Of course.
So no more jokes about the holy mass, please
.
I apologize. To go back to what we were discussing, can you give me an example of such a message?
There are so many. But I’ll mention a recent one
.
Just to show that, even though for your own protection you’re in solitary confinement down at the Ucciardone prison, you’re still in touch.
Why would you take me seriously if you thought you were dealing with someone whose clock stopped when he got picked up? Anyway, the thing I’m thinking of is that body they found in a train near Catania
.
The Limina case.
Only it wasn’t the Limina kid at all, is what I’ve heard
.
Who, then?
Some sneak thief who was picked up operating on protected turf. He’d been warned before, but he had more balls than brains. They were going to waste him in an alley somewhere, but then someone had a brighter idea. The thief looked quite a bit like Tonino Limina. Same age, same height and build, same colour hair. The Limina clan have been making themselves a bit of a nuisance on this side of
the island, so a warning seemed in order. They shut the thief up in a freight car on a train bound from Palermo to Catania, with a label with ‘Limina’ scrawled on it. One message delivered and one undesirable disposed of. A perfect solution
.
But the Liminas explicitly denied that the murdered man was their son. Obviously they knew that Tonino was still alive. So the message was pointless.
No message is pointless. Maybe in this case it wasn’t the young Limina. Next time, who knows?
It was as she was reading these words that the phone rang. At once she felt a panicky guilt, as when her mother had burst into the room when she was reading a letter from her current boyfriend. Desperately she groped for the keyboard, killed the document on screen and got safely out of the DIA data files. Only then did she answer the phone.
‘Signorina Arduini?’
‘Speaking.’
‘We’d like to see you today to ascertain what progress is being made with regard to the computer installation for which you’re responsible. As you probably know, the handover date has already been put back twice. Through no fault of yours, I’m sure, but we’re naturally anxious to get the system up and running as soon as possible. I’ve therefore made a booking for lunch at the Hotel Zagarella in Santa Flavia, just east of the city. We’ll expect you at one o’clock.’
The caller hung up. Carla dug out her map, but failed to find any village named Santa Flavia. And how could it be ‘just east of the city’? East of Catania, there was nothing but water. She tried ringing her father, first at the Questura, then at home, and finally on his cellphone, without success. Finally, in timid desperation, she had called Corinna Nunziatella. Rather to Carla’s surprise, the judge seemed delighted to help, and informed her that the city east of which Santa Flavia was situated was Palermo.
‘Take the Casteldáccia exit off the motorway and follow the signs,’ the magistrate told her. ‘Who are these people, anyway?’
‘He didn’t say, but it seems to be about my work.’
‘Where are you meeting?’
‘A hotel called the Zagarella.’
The only reply was a low whistle.
‘Do you know it?’ Carla asked.
There was a long silence.
‘It’s a well-known venue,’ Corinna Nunziatella finally replied. ‘For all sorts of events. Listen,
cara
, make it clear to the people you’re meeting that you have an appointment with me back here in Catania this evening.’
‘But I don’t.’
Corinna’s response was unusually brusque.
‘Never mind that! Make sure they know that you’ve told me you’re meeting them at the Zagarella for lunch, and that I’m expecting you back by six o’clock this evening. I’ll call you then to make sure you’re safely back.’
Carla laughed.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘I’ll explain tomorrow,’ Corinna replied. ‘Just do what I say. Make very sure that these people know what the situation is, all right? It could be important.’
‘Very well.’
‘And listen, don’t…’
Corinna’s voice broke off.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Oh, nothing. I’m just being silly. I’ll call you this evening at six.’
At length the constipated press of traffic in which Carla’s Fiat Uno was embedded passed through the succession of tunnels where so much expensive and urgent repair work was not being done, and she completed the drive down to the north coast of the island and then westwards to her destination. The Hotel Zagarella turned out to be a modern monstrosity on what must at one time have been a stunning peninsula, with extensive views along the neighbouring bay and out to sea. Next to the hotel was yet another construction site, one of those timeless projects which look like a nuclear power station being built by two old men with buckets, spades and a rope hoist.
Of the grand villas belonging to the Palermitan nobility which had once stood here, there was almost no sign. Those that did remain were imprisoned in a perspectiveless absurdity, a concrete Gulag constructed by the ‘state within the state’, where the memory of what might have been was perhaps the bitterest punishment in this society of latter-day zeks, where even the winners were losers.
When Carla pulled up outside the hotel, a flunkey rushed over and opened the door.
‘Signorina Arduini! You’re expected inside. I’ll see to the car.’
So whoever ‘they’ were, they knew the number of her
telefonino
and the make and registration of her car. But the most disturbing aspect of the situation was that they were evidently making no effort to hide the fact that they knew. Carla handed over the keys and walked up the plush red-carpeted steps. At the top, another functionary opened the door for her with a respectful bow. Once inside, a small rotund man in a suit and tie came bustling over to her.
‘Welcome to the Zagarella, Signorina Arduini! I trust your journey was not too arduous. Your friends are waiting for you in a private room at the rear of the premises. If you permit, I shall be happy to accompany you there myself. This way, please!’
She had visualized the ‘private room’ as an intimate space to one side of the hotel’s dining area, sectioned off perhaps by a slatted wooden partition. It turned out to be the size of a football field. Rows of metal tables and chairs stretched away in ranks towards a series of narrow windows reaching up to the ceiling. Despite the massive concrete columns supporting the latter, everything looked cheap, vulgar and temporary.
At the middle of the room stood a table heaped with food and centred by a vase roughly the size of an average sink, from which protruded a huge bouquet of flowers. Three men were seated around the table. All three stared blatantly at Carla as she made her way across the scuffed industrial flooring towards them.
Having reached the corner of the table, Carla stopped. After a significant pause, the middle of the three men jumped to his feet as though noticing her presence for the first time. He was dressed in the standard uniform of the professional classes: tweed jacket, blue shirt and red tie beneath a yellow pullover, brown trousers and highly polished shoes.
‘Good day,
signorina,’
he said coolly. ‘So glad you could join us. May I introduce my assistant Carmelo. And this is Gaetano, an esteemed colleague visiting from Rome.’
He waved alternately at the two men. Carla nodded briefly to each, then turned back to the speaker.
‘And you are?’
The man frowned.
‘But surely that was …’
He tapped his forehead lightly with the heel of one hand.
‘But I forgot, of course you didn’t get our message!’
He turned to the other two.
‘Apparently she didn’t get our message,’ he said.
The two men sat impassively, with the air of people who had better things to do.
‘My name is Vito Alagna,’ the man announced, turning back to Carla with a ceremonial bow.
‘How did you know my cellphone number?’ asked Carla, wondering at her own temerity. These people had power the way some had muscles.
‘I left a message late yesterday with the porter at the Palace of Justice. When you didn’t return it, I called again and was told you were working at home, so I called you there this morning. Please, take a seat!’
He waved towards the enormous buffet table, on which stood a huge variety of cold foods. Carla took a chair at random, the nearest one. No one at the
Palazzo di Giustizia
except Corinna Nunziatella knew her cellphone numbers, private or professional. She had been very careful not to give them out, to avoid endless harassment.
‘Forgive the seeming mystification,’ Vito Alagna went on. ‘It’s really quite simple and straightforward. I work for the autonomous parliament here in Palermo which oversees the internal affairs of this little island of ours. We have naturally collaborated with our colleagues in Rome on the creation and development of the various specialized bodies set up to investigate so-called “criminal activities of the Mafia variety” within our political and administrative jurisdiction.’
He glanced at the other men, as though for corroboration. If so, none was forthcoming. As though embarrassed by his colleagues’ lack of response, Alagna gestured to the food.
‘But please! Help yourself!’
Carla looked at him, then at the other two, and lastly at the food itself. Although superficially attractive, even luxurious, there was something rather odd about the selection on offer. It included both smoked and poached salmon, a block of smooth meat pate in its wrapper of congealed butter and gelatin, a haunch of cold roast beef, and a selection of cheeses including Stilton, Brie and some sort of cream cheese smothered in nuts. A moment later, Carla had worked out why it seemed so odd: every single item was imported.
‘Aren’t you eating?’ she asked Vito, who smiled and shrugged.
‘We’re not hungry yet,’ he said.
Carla nodded.
‘Neither am I.’
The man at the end of the table, whom Vito had named Gaetano, suddenly spoke.
‘Perhaps later,’ he said. ‘We have all day.’
Carla recalled what Corinna had said.
‘Unfortunately I haven’t. I have to be back in Catania by six this evening. A friend of mine is expecting me for dinner.’
‘Who’s that?’
The question came from Gaetano.
‘Dottoressa Nunziatella,’ Carla replied succinctly. ‘She is a judge for the AntiMafia pool, where I work.’
‘You two must be very close.’
Gaetano again.
‘We’re friends, yes,’ Carla retorted.
Gaetano looked up at the ceiling, where a glass lamp like a melting zeppelin gathered dust at the end of its black cord.
‘And you’re having dinner with her again tonight? Two evenings in a row. Now that’s true friendship!’
The men all sniggered quietly.
‘How do you know about all this?’ Carla snapped.
The three men exchanged a glance, then resumed their purposefully purposeless gaze.
‘Eh, it’s a small place, Sicily!’ the one called Carmelo said at last.
Vito Alagna’s suave tones were almost a relief.
‘Be assured that we won’t detain you for long,
signorina
. We just need a brief update on the current situation with regard to the system you are working on. A sort of progress report, as it were.’
‘I’ve provided the director of the DIA in Catania with a series of progress reports,’ Carla replied.
Vito Alagna shrugged wearily.
‘Yes, I’m sure you have, but you know how it is! What with bad communications and the usual rivalry and backbiting, these reports are not always passed on as quickly as they should be, if at all. Now I’m sure that all you want to do is finish this assignment and get back to your home up in the north, right?’
Carla Arduini could not resist a decisive nod. Alagna laughed.
‘Excellent! In that case, our interests coincide. So let’s just run over the status of the project at this time, and touch briefly on any problems that may have arisen and your personal prognosis for a completion date.’
Which is exactly what she had done, Carla reflected in the car on the way back. She’d given the three men a succinct and professional overview of the situation to date, omitting all reference to ‘Count Dracula’, and provided them with her estimated best-case scenario for a handover to the AntiMafia authorities. Vito Alagna had listened quietly and intently, taking no notes but giving the impression of absorbing every detail Carla mentioned. The other two sat looking at their nails, saying nothing. It was around three o’clock when the one called Gaetano leaned heavily over on to his right buttock and emitted a loud fart.
‘Time we were going,’ he said to no one in particular.
‘Of course, of course!’ Vito Alagna exclaimed, rising to his feet. ‘Thank you so much for coming,
signorina
. It’s been extremely helpful. The valet will fetch your car. Thank you once again. Goodbye, goodbye!’
Her return journey was easier, since the westbound tunnels on the A19 were not affected by the notional repair work. The only problem was a motorcyclist stuck just in front of her, riding some sort of powerful red machine no doubt capable of over 200 kmph. Carla’s little Fiat didn’t have enough power to overtake him, and since he seemed content to cruise along at a steady 90 kmph the whole way, she had no choice but to stare at his stubborn, leather-clad form all the way to Catania.