New York, summer 1936

History books don’t account for what happened during the summer of 1936 on one of the most important construction sites in Manhattan. But building work on a tower was interrupted for several months. It all started in the spring, when one of the workers fell from the top. There was nothing unusual about this — dozens of similar accidents occurred every year — but it turned out that the victim was a Mohawk, forced to work on the construction site against his will. Out of solidarity, the other men laid down their tools for several days.

The morning they were due to return to work, the men had discovered mysterious inscriptions on the walls as well as up the service stairs. Incomprehensible graffiti had been painted in red letters, as tall as a fully grown man. It was a sinister sight.

ERAT AUTEM TERRA . . .

University linguists were summoned to the premises by the police. An elderly Latin specialist set to work.

He was able to decipher passages from the Bible. First of all, there were nine verses about the Tower of Babel, taken from Genesis. They spoke of mankind’s desire to build a tower that would reach to the heavens. And of how God had managed to stop them. There was also a line in Greek taken from Revelation, in which an angel sounded his trumpet, “And there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast down upon the earth.”

In the wake of the Mohawk’s death, the workers were frightened by all these signs. On the top floor, in the middle of one of the rooms, they had found the name RAFAELLO spelled out using eight of the nine letters intended for the illuminated sign above the tower.

Some of the men had recognized the name of the archangel Raphael, one of the soldiers of God: perhaps he was the angel referred to in the line from Revelation painted in bloodred letters. The workers revolted again.

Access to the work site was forbidden, pending further orders. Above all, the architects wanted to avoid anyone ransacking the building. So the workers were kept at a distance.

One morning, the owner of the tower paid a visit.

He took the freight elevator up to the top floors, with his female assistant and the architects following at his heels. Everybody called him the Irishman. In less than a quarter of a century, he had established a sprawling bank with business interests on both sides of the Atlantic. The rumor was that he had even ended up buying the small hotel where he had arrived as a young migrant.

Now, aged fifty, here he was walking along the scaffolding of his own tower. His many rings glinted as he held on to the girders. There were still at least another three months to go before the great tower would be finished. Staring out through a window frame with no glass in it, the Irishman ate a banana. Opposite, rising up as if to taunt him, was the Empire State Building, which he had vowed in all the newspapers that his new tower would outstrip. The Irishman gave his banana skin to his assistant. He started laughing loudly when the architect promised to bring all the problems to a speedy resolution. He walked over to him and pretended to push the architect over the edge.

As he was about to leave, the Irishman noticed a pile of damp ashes in a corner.

“Do you have fires here?”

“Never,” replied the foreman.

The Irishman bent down to dip his finger in the damp charcoal.

“So what’s this?”

He drew a black cross on the foreman’s forehead.

“Finish the tower on time.”

Then he headed back down again.

His visit did nothing to change the workers’ minds.

The first stage of Zefiro’s plan could be heralded as a success. His theatrical flourishes had produced the desired results.

That August, Zefiro and Vango were able to set up their equipment at the top of the tower. They had positioned a high-precision telescope on a tripod, pointing at Voloy Viktor’s windows. They were equipped with three typewriters, new clothes, and a makeshift office at altitude that was well stocked with rubber stamps, seals, and paper of all kinds. They had sold a ruby to pay for everything.

Tom Jackson, a young beggar from Thirty-Fourth Street, had been recruited for ground missions.

From their observatory, they followed every event in Viktor’s daily routine. They noted the comings and goings in minute detail. Their aerial view of the different rooms of the eighty-fifth floor enabled them to keep a log of the times at which the guards were replaced, the regular visitors to the fortified tower, and the frequency of their visits.

Every evening, for example, most of the curtains were drawn, and the last visitor was always an elegant man whom Zefiro referred to as the lawyer. He appeared to address everyone as if he were master of the household. He would settle in the study. The closed curtains prevented them from seeing Voloy Viktor, who must have been dictating his last correspondences of the day to him from his bed. Then the lawyer would leave. But he was the first to return the following morning, at dawn, in time for Madame Victoria getting up. He would not be seen for the rest of the day.

At the end of the month, the first letter left Zefiro’s scaffolding and crossed the road, care of Tom Jackson, who was unrecognizable in his attire as a young gentleman. The secret operation had begun.

So as not to be recognized, Tom kept his left hand (on which were tattooed the words “God Bless You”) hidden in his pocket: the tattoo contributed to his notoriety across a patch of five streets and three avenues. He crossed the lobby of the Plaza Hotel as if he were thoroughly at home. He had never set foot on the marble floor before, but had spent his life staring at it through the glass.

Tom Jackson was the only person on Zefiro’s payroll. Aged nine, he earned fifty cents per week plus a clothing allowance: a fortune.

Tom drank a glass of seltzer water at the bar, then moved off again, discreetly dropping the letter close to the reception desk. The security guards hadn’t recognized him.

A Plaza employee picked up the letter and handed it over to the receptionist. Stamped with a European postmark, it was addressed to the occupant of the suite on the eighty-fifth floor. That same evening, it was presented to Dorgeles, who in turn gave it to Madame Victoria.

From their observatory, Zefiro and Vango watched the reaction to their letter. A meeting was instantly convened. That night, a dozen men in dark suits gathered in the main reception room of Voloy Viktor’s suite. These men got out of their cars, posted vigilantes in the streets, and disappeared behind the Plaza’s doors to reappear a few minutes later, three hundred meters up in the guest apartments. Zefiro had spotted several of them before in Viktor’s entourage.

None of them looked like gangsters. Zefiro recognized a tailor from Brooklyn, a senator, and some businessmen. They were wreathed in cigar smoke.

“Let the show begin!” said Zefiro, with one eye glued to the telescope.

It would take months, but this time he was going to destroy Voloy Viktor. He was convinced of it.

Vango was getting ready to go out.

“See you later, Padre.”

“Where are you going?”

The padre didn’t like it when Vango ran away like this.

“Don’t forget they’re watching out for you in town.”

“Look at me! Who would recognize me now?”

And sure enough, in the midst of all the rubble, by the light of the oil lamps, Vango was transformed.

Dressed in a brown suit, his hair slicked back and hat in hand, he swiveled on one foot and grinned. He’d had a pair of small tinted glasses made for him: they were all the rage on Wall Street that summer. Vango didn’t even recognize himself.

Ten minutes later, he was heading down Fifth Avenue toward Madison Square.

For the past few weeks, he had spent his nights in the Italian districts of New York. Vango had started with the cafés in the Bronx, combing one after another. Now he had moved on to southern Manhattan, where he had found a few restaurants that rose up like Sicilian islands in the middle of America.

On this particular night, he walked through the door of La Rocca. One of those islands in Little Italy that smelled of capers and bird’s-eye chili, La Rocca was tucked behind brightly lit windows on the corner of Grand Street. It was Vango’s first visit.

Toward midnight, the restaurant turned into a dive bar. The card players took over, and the lights were dimmed. But there wasn’t the usual hushed concentration you might expect to find in a gaming room. The chef did the rounds of the tables serving parcels of delicious pastry, stuffed with pungent sausage meat, that oozed cheese when he sliced them on the board. The restaurant was noisy, and the backyard was filling up with empty bottles.

Vango settled over by the bar. He put his hat down beside him. There were only men in the room, apart from a young woman who stayed behind the stronghold of her bar.

She was permanently on the move, going from the serving hatch to the storeroom door. One moment she was on tiptoes trying to reach the bottles, the next she had disappeared, crouched down by the ramparts. It was as if she were performing a dance.

Vango thought of Ethel, whose eyes also landed on things deeply but fleetingly, like tiny daggers that were immediately withdrawn.

Recalling Ethel’s gaze made him brush his fingers against the note in his pocket, which he had received from her a few days earlier. Three cold lines telling him to bide his time, not to return to Scotland without warning her, and making it clear that she was busy. Little daggers.

Vango didn’t need to beckon the waitress. She shouted something he couldn’t understand.

“What d’you want?” she repeated, moving in closer.

“I’m waiting for someone.”

She had called him Lupacchiotto, which means little wolf. And Vango did look like one of the young wolves that roamed New York, hoping to seize their chance.

He was sitting near the sink. He knew that she would be back, sooner or later, to rinse the piled-up glasses. For now, she was filling five glasses from a bottle with no label. It was once again legal for bars to sell alcohol, after the bootleggers had thrived on fifteen years of Prohibition.

The waitress put one of the glasses in front of Vango. He hadn’t ordered anything, but she slid it toward him. The manager came for the tray that was loaded up with the four other glasses. There were cheers on the other side for a win at briscola or poker.

“I’m looking for someone called Giovanni,” Vango announced.

The waitress, who had started washing the glasses, glanced up to take a good look at him.

“Giovanni? Half my suitors are called Giovanni. So is my father, and my grandfather too.”

“Giovanni Cafarello.”

With her forearm, she pushed away a lock of hair from her eyes and stared at him.

“Cafarello?”

“Yes.”

“Cafarello . . .”

She stopped and dried her hands. Her black eye makeup gave her a slightly older appearance, but she couldn’t be more than eighteen. She shook her head slowly.

“Is that who you’re waiting for? Cafarello?”

Vango felt his fingers tightening around his glass. He had asked about this man a thousand times. It wasn’t the first time in two months that this name had gotten a reaction out of somebody. But this evening, there seemed to be an extra glimmer of hope.

“Yes, I thought I might find him here. I’d like to speak with him.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got something for him.”

She signaled to the owner, Otello, who came over.

“What’s going on, Alma?”

The noise was swelling in the restaurant. Alma had to speak into her boss’s ear.

“D’you remember Cafarello? This one’s looking for him.”

The man turned his gaze on Vango.

“Cafarello? Why?”

“I’ve got something to give him.”

“What?”

“From his father, who stayed in the home country.”

“Money?”

Vango didn’t answer. The proprietor wiped a copper tap with a cloth.

“Haven’t seen him for at least a year. Ask Di Marzo.”

“Who’s Di Marzo?” Vango wanted to know.

“The fat one sitting over there, at the back.”

Vango left his glass at the bar and went over to Di Marzo, who seemed to be wedged between tables strewn with glasses, like a boat trapped in ice.

“Signor Di Marzo?”

In the man’s enormous hands, his cards looked tiny.

“I’m looking for Giovanni Cafarello.”

“Who?”

“Cafarello.”

Di Marzo started laughing, and this made the ice crack around him. He leaned toward his neighbor, a small man with slicked-back hair.

“He’s looking for Giovanni Cafarello.”

The other man rolled his eyes and smiled.

“Cafarello . . .”

Vango politely pressed his point.

“Signor Di Marzo, I’ve heard that you can tell me where to find Giovanni Cafarello.”

“Sing Sing,” declared Di Marzo, slamming his cards down on the table.

Vango pricked up his ears.

“Sing Sing?”

“Sing Sing,” the big man repeated.

Next to him, the small man with the brilliantine in his hair explained, “He’s been at Sing Sing for months.”

“But not for much longer,” added Di Marzo.

They laughed again.

“Sing Sing,” Vango echoed, feeling dazed. “Thank you, signore.”

With a knot in his stomach, he made his way back toward the bar.

“Have you found him, Lupo?” the waitress called out.

“Maybe. Sing Sing. . . . What does that mean?”

She nearly knocked over the pyramid of glasses on the draining board.

“It means he won’t be eating here tonight.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve got to travel up the Hudson. Two hours by boat. It’s easier to get there than it is to come back.”

“Because of the current?”

“No. It’s the penitentiary for the north of New York. The prison for men on death row.”

She no longer held his gaze. He suddenly seemed very far away.

Vango was trying to picture his parents’ boat. The sound of footsteps on the bridge. The first shots fired at the sailors . . . a night of terror. He was thinking about Cafarello, the next day killing Bartolomeo Viaggi in cold blood, to steal his share of the plunder. Viaggi had a wife and three little girls in Salina. Had he sensed that he was out of his depth given what had taken place? Had he perhaps even felt remorse? In any event, Cafarello had killed him. Vango knew that only one of Viaggi’s three daughters was still alive. Poor girl. He recalled Mazzetta’s death as well, and pondered all these people’s engulfed secrets. So many ravaged lives.

Finally, his mind turned to Cafarello in his cell at Sing Sing. The haunting racket of loud knocking on doors. Shouting in the corridors.

Several minutes went by.

“Lupacchiotto!”

Vango looked up.

“Leave the bandits alone,” the waitress was telling him, with both hands on the counter. “Little wolves shouldn’t go hunting in the thick of it. Go back home; forget about Cafarello and Sing Sing.”

Vango stood up. He took a large bill from his pocket and slid it clumsily under the waitress’s fingers. He knew that she was right about everything.

“Keep it!” she said, pushing the money away.

She turned her back on him. Alma had had enough of the banknotes that circulated from night until morning, leaving her fingers as black as her eyes. She wanted something else: hands that touched without any transaction taking place.

“Alma! Did he pay, the little one?” the proprietor asked behind her.

“Who?”

She turned toward the door.

“The one that just left.”

“Yes,” she said. “He paid.”

Vango found himself at the port at three o’clock in the morning. The first boat would leave two hours later. The dockside was deserted. He knocked on the window of one of the huts there.

A man pushed the door ajar. They exchanged a few words. He seemed hesitant at first, but when Vango emptied his pockets, the ferryman grabbed his cap and stepped outside.

They went over to the boat. Vango helped the ferryman push it out from the dock and then jumped on board just in time. The engine took a while to start up. Vango was huddled in the stern, eyes closed.

How was this going to play out?

All he knew was that when he got to Sing Sing, he would request a meeting with Cafarello in the visiting room. I’ve come on his father’s behalf, he would say. At Salina, in the Aeolian Islands, people talked about Cafarello abandoning his father in cowardly fashion, leaving him behind in his small house between two volcanoes while the son set out for America with the treasure. But who turns away his father’s messenger when he’s behind bars?

Vango didn’t have a plan. What would he do when Giovanni Cafarello appeared behind the grille? He had no idea. But he was sure that on returning to the New York dockside in the evening, he would possess the knowledge he was after: the great mystery of his life.

The only thing he promised himself was that he would know.

At that very moment, in the small hours of the twenty-eighth of August 1936, in a corridor of Sing Sing prison, a man was waiting, flanked by four guards. They had woken him in the middle of the night.

“It’s today; it’s now.”

He had stood up. The chaplain had spoken into his ear for a few minutes. The man had rested his head on the priest’s shoulder. He wasn’t even able to cry.

The voice of Lewis Lawes, the prison warden, had cut short that final humane moment.

“Giovanni Valente Cafarello, it is time.”

He was in the corridor now. Even if he started shouting, the other prisoners might not wake up. It was all part of the ordinary prison routine at Sing Sing. Never, in the history of America, had there been so many death sentences as this decade. A few months earlier, four criminals had been executed in a single night at Sing Sing.

The warden led the condemned man and his guards into the room at the end of the corridor.

It didn’t take long.

Fifteen minutes later, it was all over.

Lewis Lawes returned to his office and collapsed into his leather armchair. Despite running this prison for fifteen years, he was still openly opposed to the death penalty. He was always careful to note the final words of each condemned man in a white notebook. What he had heard in the early hours of that morning was something he had never heard before at the point of execution.

And yet it was what Cafarello had always maintained.

Spoken from the electric chair, however, these words had a new impact. Lewis Lawes grabbed the small white notebook from the shelf behind him.

He leafed through his most recent notes. There were prayers, cries of hatred or love, pleadings. Some condemned prisoners had begged for forgiveness. Others had proclaimed their innocence. And some had called out for their mothers with all the strength they could muster.

On the last page, he noted the name of Giovanni Cafarello in capital letters, and just below it he wrote:

Lewis Lawes closed his notebook again. Outside the window, day was breaking over the Hudson River. There was the sound of a boat approaching.