The Marina Corta is peaceful. The late-closing cafés play host to a few escurzionisti parting with the last of their day’s wages.
Sandro is sitting in his usual haunt, Giuliana is absent and her guardian lends Ric another of his menacing stares as he strolls beneath the statue of San Bartolo. The citadel looms over the fishing boats like a monumental night-watchman: the little ships will be safe for as long as San Bartolo can keep his eyes open.
The clothes and knick-knack shops on the Garibaldi are long closed and the Muslim women lean out of their second-floor windows to watch him pass beneath.
He holds back for a moment, thinking he could take the little alley; it is the shortest route home. But having just made the same mistake – a mistake which led him to bump into the Commissario in the Maddalena – he decides the safer route would be less direct, and he knows that once he leaves the brightly lit Garibaldi, he will be consigned to the impenetrable gloom of the vicolos which lead to his room.
The breeze has picked up and the sign above the farmacia tells him the temperature has dropped to the low twenties. Even though the narrow corridor of stars still shine clear and bright high above his head, he knows the storms will have departed their perch above the mountains of the mainland and will be making their way towards the islands.
Ric isn’t certain, but he thinks he can hear someone following him.
Halfway up the rise of the Garibaldi, Ric pauses to glance in through the darkened windows of a trattoria. The awnings are rolled back and the chairs and tables cleared and stacked inside. The sound of footsteps from behind him ceases, so he moves on a few paces and turns the corner into the Maurolico and again immediately left into the confines of the little Vico Selinunte, which lead back down the slope.
But the entrance to the poky little vico is exposed by the light thrown by the neon sign of the pharmacy, so he treads softly ten paces and slips into a doorway.
Making himself as slim as possible so that his profile does not show against the light stuccoed walls, he waits.
Whoever it is that is following him is also waiting and listening before entering the cramped alley.
Eventually the figure begins walking down towards him.
Ric cannot judge the size of his stalker because the lack of light lends the other man a similar advantage. And it strikes him that his stalker might just be Giuliana, coming once more to force her charms on him. He breathes gently and waits; for the second time in an hour a tide of adrenalin surges through his form.
But, it isn’t a girl; it is a man who breathes heavily and, like Ric, pauses to listen now and then.
As he nears Ric, he halts again and looks over his shoulder.
While he is distracted, Ric steps down and as the man turns to face forward again, Ric traps his left hand around the man’s throat, squeezes it hard and lifts the man violently off his feet up against the opposite wall.
“Listen to me, whoever you are,” he hisses, “I don’t like being followed so…” Something about the man’s hair and the way it hangs down around his neck is familiar to Ric.
The man gurgles as he tries to speak through gritted teeth, but he doesn’t resist.
Ric loosens his grip, but keeps the man pinned up against the wall so that his feet do not quite touch the ground.
The man tries again to speak and this time manages to whisper, “Gallese… wait… it is me… Sandro.”
Ric runs his right hand down the man’s shoulder and realises by their slope that the figure he has hold of can only be one man, Sandro. He relaxes his hand around the escurzionista’s throat, eases him back down to his feet and releases him.
“What the bloody hell are doing, following me around like this? You’ll get yourself hurt,” Ric hisses.
Sandro doubles and gags and clutches at his throat. “What are you trying to do, Gallese, kill me?”
“Jesus, Sandro, a simple hello would have done well enough.”
But Sandro is wheezing and spluttering.
Chevrons of light appear on Sandro’s anguished face: the neighbours are awake.
“Come on, you idiot,” Ric murmurs as he pulls his hapless night-stalker down the vico.
Sandro coughs and splutters as they twist and turn through the warren back to Ric’s room.
They pause at the last corner and Ric realises his charge is making so much noise that anyone else hiding in the darkened alley would likely as not have heard them coming and legged it.
He pours a glass of water from the sink. “Sorry to have been so rough on you, my friend.” He passes the dejected figure the only olive branch available to him.
“Gallese… next time,” he gags as he drinks, “I get into a disagreement with my mother,” he drinks again, “make sure you are near me, eh? I think you are a match for her.”
Ric chuckles in admiration at Sandro’s humour.
“Do you have anything stronger?” he asks, blinking and thrusting his glass across the table. Sandro rubs at his neck, as if to remind his assailant of the disrespect he has done him and therefore why he warrants a stronger drink.
“Sure,” Ric replies and gets up to liberate a bottle of wine from the fridge.
When he opens the bottle, the pop of the cork causes the escurzionista to flinch.
“Okay, Sandro, I’ll ask again. What the hell are you doing following me home?”
He looks up from beneath his curtain of curly black hair, his expression way past miserable.
“Did you not refuse to have a beer with me the last time we met because you wanted to talk in private? Well,” he raises his arms in appeal, “this is my idea of private. So I come to your house to talk, rather than talk in the café where we can be seen, and you beat the shit out of me. I say this for you, Gallese; you have a funny way of showing your appreciation.”
“I said I’m sorry, Sandro. But bumping into people in the dark twice in one night is apt to make me a little tense.”
Sandro eyebrows disappear up into his mop of hair, “Twice? Who else have you met this night?”
“Never mind all that. What have you come to tell me that makes you so eager to go stealing about like a thief?”
Sandro sits upright and purses his lips at Ric’s inference. “Not nice,” he says. “If you ask me questions about things I notice, you have to be nice. You have been nice with Sandro so far, why now so insulting?”
Ric understands that the escurzionista wants a little love while he thinks he is being screwed. “You’re right, my friend.” He smiles a patronising but slightly camp smile and reaches across the table to stroke Sandro’s arm lightly, “I’m really sorry. What can I do to make it better?”
Sandro withdraws his arm quickly. “Hey, don’t joke about this kind of stuff. The President of Sicily may be gay, but this is not my way.”
“Okay, okay! Look, I’m sorry I was a little harsh on you. What have you found out?”
Now that Sandro believes he has the upper hand he demonstrates his new-found status by taking his time; he finishes his glass of wine and refills it without asking.
Ric grins, but not so much that his companion might mistake his look for amusement. “Come on, Sandro, enough games. I haven’t got all night.”
Sandro straightens up in his chair, leans forward over the table and whispers, “The policeman, the little man I told you about who orders everyone about after Candela is shot, he is not La Polizia from Milazzo; he is from the north and he is the Chief Commissario of a new taskforce investigating corruption in politics.”
“Investigating Mafia?”
“No, not necessarily Mafia. People are saying he is investigating many politicians in Palermo, Catania, Messina and Bagheria…”
“Please, wait a minute, my friend.” Ric holds up his hand to interrupt Sandro’s inventory of Sicilian towns and cities. Do you mean he was investigating Candela?”
Sandro nods, his expression one of disbelief that Ric can be so stupid, “Of course. Candela began his political career in Bagheria before he bought his ticket to the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo.”
“Bagheria,” Ric repeats, as he stares at the table and tries to remember if he has heard of the town before.
“But,” Sandro carries on, “this policeman is investigating all of them.” He hunches his shoulders even closer to his head and spreads his arm in appeal, “Hey, Gallese, just because they are centre-left and they call themselves Democrats doesn’t mean they are any less corrupt than the centre-right party who call themselves the People of Freedom, eh?” Sandro pauses and scratches his mop of black hair.
“I guess not,” Ric replies. “So, tell me about him. What do you know about Candela?”
“Oh, the usual. He was a young comunista; campaigned for shorter working hours, better working conditions, better pensions. He became a labour man, then a union representative, and finally a socialist councilman. It is the way they climb the tree of politics; and, let me tell you, they don’t mind if they tread on the heads and hands of others on their way up, eh?”
“Sounds like a pleasant enough guy,” Ric adds with requisite sarcasm.
“Sure,” Sandro nods. “Like most. They start out with nothing, like all good communists, eh?” he bridles. “They earn a little bit money for themselves and soon enough they learn it is easier to take the money from another man’s wages rather than have to work for it with their own hands, so they become union men. The next year they learn they don’t want to mix with all these ignorant, dirty people, so they get work with the council and get to wear a suit that hasn’t already seen a hundred funerals. A few years later, they are wearing Armani, sitting in a nice office with a view over the Palazzo Reale. You see how it goes?”
Sandro is pleased with his monologue and deems his efforts worthy of another glass of wine. Once he has drained half of it, he continues, “Then, of course, they put the little woman in a villa out of town, the children go to school in Bologna and the politician has a mistress in a fancy apartment near the Teatro Massimo; all very expensive. They spend much time in Brussels eating and drinking, but one day a man who knew a friend of his brother’s asks this politician to help him get permission to build a small factory in Catania, or perhaps the politician knows how to dispose of certain Carbon Credits from Romania, or set up a ghost company which moves fuel from one country to another to avoid paying duty. It is the only way they can afford such a style of life.
“Pah! They are all the same.” Sandro shrugs as if someone has just thrown a lice-ridden jacket over his shoulders.
“And Candela?” Ric asks, “Is he any different?”
“Why should he be? I told you, they are all the same.” The escurzionista thinks. “Ah, I remember one thing, or maybe it was more than one, I don’t know.”
Ric reaches across the table and pours the rest of the bottle into his companion’s glass.
Sandro smiles appreciatively and sips. “Mmm, you know, I remember talk from some years ago… The current President of Sicily, Rosario Crocetta, is from Gela near Agrigento. When he tried to run for the office of Mayor in 2002, the Mafia fix the election against him. The next year, Tribunali Amministrativi Regionali finds out about this fix and reverses the result. Crocetta is instated and the Mafia, because they don’t like this insult to their authority, bring in a Lithuanian to assassinate him. The Lithuanian fails.” He holds his palms up in surrender. “They try to silence Crocetta again in 2008 and again in 2010, but they are not so good at their work.”
Ric is none the wiser. “So the President leads a charmed life!”
Sandro shakes his head, slowly. “Gallese, you go too fast; this is Sicily we are talking about, not one of those black and white London gangster movies which is over when the eye blinks.” He drains his glass.
“The last time the Mafia try in 2010, La Polizia are suspicious that someone in the Assemblea Regionale is supplying the Mafia with information about Crocetta’s movements.”
“And you think Candela was involved?”
“Mmm, it’s very possible. Candela was elected to the assembly in 2008.”
Ric chuckles, “But that’s a bit like suggesting anyone who joined the U.S. Senate from 1963 onwards was in on John F. Kennedy’s assassination.”
Sandro nods and grins, “Well, most of them were, weren’t they?”
“But you think that’s why Commissario Talaia was shadowing Candela?”
At this, Sandro sits bolt upright, eyebrows raised, “You know this man, the Commissario?”
Ric remains silent. If he has been seen with Talaia, a lie would only make life worse for him.
But Sandro is suspicious, “You know his name?” he asks again.
“Guess I must have heard it in the café.”
But, Sandro isn’t sold. He studies Ric, eyes wide. “So is it true, this Commissario did come to see you yesterday morning?” He pauses, thinking something over. “I tell you this Gallese. Sometimes I think you know much that I don’t, and Sandro likes to know everything.”
“Another glass of wine?” Ric offers, getting to his feet. “I’m really sorry about your neck. I hope the bruise around your throat doesn’t keep you from sleeping.”
Sandro is beginning to look decidedly nervous, glancing about the room as though in mentioning the Commissario Ric has intoned the devil. He stands abruptly, leaves his wine glass unfinished and turns for the door, “Yes, I hope it will not stop me from sleeping.” And, as he is about to shut the door behind him, Sandro hesitates, “Gallese, you ask me to find out if there is any person missing: a man of medium height, weight, short brown hair and brown t-shirt with the island name stitched here.” He indicates his heart.
“I did.”
“This description fits many people and many people come and go on the Aliscafo everyday–”
“But,” Ric interrupts, “I thought you said not many men here have beards–”
“And this t-shirt,” Sandro comes back quickly, “as I have said, is very common. I know of no one like this who is missing right now. Ciao.”
Ric watches the black mop of curls slope off into the darkness of the alley, aware that Sandro may have been about to tell him who was missing, but because of his meeting with the Commissario, he no longer trusts him.