BELLA MAFIA (29 page)

L
uka sat in the departure lounge with twenty minutes to go before his flight. The flight attendant took up her position to check the passengers through to the plane. He joined the line.

What was there for him in New York? Where would he go? He didn't even know if the old apartment was still available. He still had a few traveler's checks, plus the money Dante had given him, but that wouldn't last long.

There was his father's safety-deposit box, but he discounted that as too difficult. Remembering that safe started him thinking about the one in Dante's office. It had been stuffed with money, most of it, he was sure, belonging to his father. Yet Dante had given him only a paltry few hundred dollars. What if his father meant to cut him off, never see him again?

He turned to check if the goon Dante had sent with him was still there. He had gone.

"Your ticket please," said the attendant. Reacting automatically, Luka almost handed it to her. Then he hesitated, turned, and walked away.

He picked up a cab outside the terminal. On his way back into Palermo he stopped at a drugstore, then had the cab drop him at a cheap garage, where he rented a beat-up Fiat. He drove into the seedier part of Palermo and booked into a cheap motel. He was still wearing his straw hat and mirrored sunglasses. He picked up the pen to sign his name in the register, then changed his mind and wrote "Johnny Moreno."

The room stank of stale body odor, the sheets were wrinkled, and the floorboards were only partially covered by a threadbare, stained carpet.

He hung his clothes on the bent wire hangers and laid the monk's robe in a drawer. Then he turned to the cracked washbasin. There was no shower or toilet in the room. From the drugstore bag he took two packages of hair dye, read the instructions carefully, and mixed the dye in the plastic tooth mug. Stripped to the waist, he put on the rubber gloves and, with care, applied the dye. Then he sat on the bed to wait the twenty minutes for it to take.

Johnny Moreno had been a driver for his father and a few years older than Luka. He had been killed in a bar brawl. But he was one of the few men who worked for Carolla whom Luka had liked. Johnny had shown Luka how to fire a gun and had taken him to shooting galleries and gunsmiths. Guns had become Luka's obsession, and he bought every firearms magazine he could lay his hands on. Then he started buying guns and built up a veritable arsenal. He also bought a dentist's drill to customize his own bullets.

He had been set on the idea of becoming one of the bodyguards who surrounded his father day and night. Carolla's reaction was to laugh, until he found Luka's hoard of weapons. Then he hit the roof. Luka held no license, and all his guns could be traced. Carolla ordered one of his men to get rid of them.

Luka had begun to haunt the martial arts shops. One of his purchases was a thin-bladed butterfly knife, and he spent hours practicing with it. He sewed a small piece of material into the sleeve of his shirt on which to rest the knife handle. If he jerked his arm up and down quickly, the knife slid out of his jacket sleeve and into his palm. Carolla kept catching him standing in front of the mirror, practicing.

Luka used a human anatomy chart to locate the more vulnerable parts of the body. He pinned it up on his bedroom wall and created little dramas in which he attacked the life-size poster. This sent Carolla into a fury, and he threatened to take the knife away. It caused the first of their terrible arguments.

The rows had become a regular occurrence as Carolla tried, without success, to understand his son. The boy had no friends, was apparently not interested in making any, and showed no natural inclination toward the opposite sex. Women to him were an alien species. But Carolla had neither the time nor the patience to decipher his son's complexes. At this point in his life he was a very worried man, albeit a very rich and successful one.

Both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency were putting the pressure on. The new district attorney was out to get him, and he knew the evidence against him was mounting. To aggravate the situation further, Lenny Cavataio had been traced and taken to Sicily.

Luka had persuaded his father to let him go along when, six months later, Carolla went into hiding. Together they had gone, by way of London and Amsterdam on a roundabout route, to Sicily, traveling on forged documents and fake passports. By the time they arrived in Sicily, warrants were out for Carolla's arrest in the States on narcotics charges.

Lenny Cavataio was being held under armed guard in Palermo. Carolla, arriving in Sicily with the express purpose of silencing him, walked straight into the biggest Mafia roundup in history.

With Luka and his two bodyguards he went on the run as the net began closing in. They fled to the mountains, relying on Carolla's contacts to keep him one jump ahead of the police, and started to make their preparations for a trip to Brazil.

Carolla's attitude to his son changed radically. The boy was calm, thoughtful, and constantly at his side. Carolla was impressed that Luka showed no sign of nerves; on the contrary, he throve on the pressure.

Never before had Luka felt so important, as if he had stepped into a role created for him, that of the professional. Nothing escaped his attention; he watched and listened and, above all, remembered names and faces, especially when he met high-ranking organization men. It was imperative that he never slip up, never overstep the role he played as the son of the most wanted man in Sicily. He had been in training for years, secret, guarded sessions, so had been ready to make his first kill without a single flicker of emotion. He had to prove his worth and expertise to his father.

Unconsciously Luka began to rock backward and forward in tiny, stiff movements as he remembered just how much proof he had given. He had shown how professional he was and had left no clue to his identity. He had learned faster than his father had given him credit for and had made fools of the punks who sneered at him. They, not he, had been caught. They were.the amateurs. Now his father would be forced to see just how hard it was going to be to get rid of him.

Luka had been so engrossed in his own thoughts that he had forgotten the time. The hair dye was dripping down his neck. He checked his watch: five minutes to go. He sat staring at himself in the cracked mirror and slowly wiped the trickles of dye from his neck, then looked at the dark brown bloodlike stains on the towel and on his fingers. He ran the cold water and watched the dye run in rivulets in the washbasin. After all he had done, a few hundred dollars was his only payment. His face tightened; his whole body tensed.

Frantically he began to wash his hair, ducking his head under the water, shaking out the shampoo and sending the frothing red dye swirling around the basin.

The shampoo stung his eyes, dripped down his chest. Like a blind man, he fumbled for a towel and covered his head as if he were afraid to see himself. Then he stumbled to the bed, and slowly, as he rubbed his head, he calmed down. Finally he let the soaking wet towel slip away and flopped back onto his pillow. He tentatively lifted first one hand, then the other, holding them in front of his face. They were clean. He inched off the bed and edged around the room until he was close to the mirror, then took a surreptitious look at himself. He turned to the right, to the left, bent his head a fraction. The dye had taken well, and he congratulated himself. He felt cleansed, and Luka Carolla was now, to all intents and purposes, Johnny Moreno.

The day's court session had just finished, but there was still no word on whether or not the charges would be dropped. Carolla's team of lawyers had their hands full as Giuliano

Emanuel's case against their client mounted daily with evidence of tax evasion, misappropriation of bank funds, blackmail, extortion. And now the accusations of the murders of Michael Luciano and Antonio Robello. The defense counsel fought for one statement after another to be stricken from the records, but the judge consistently overruled them.

But Carolla's spirits were still in good shape, though he seemed tired when he was led into the visitor's booth that evening.

Dante asked how he was, and he gave a shrug. "I got the best guys on my side; they could make Mussolini look like the pope. The package get off all right? You get it out of Sicily?"

Dante nodded and told Carolla that it had left on the four o'clock plane for New York. His hand, on the communicating phone, was sweating. "You heard anything yet?"

Carolla shook his head. "It'll take a few days. It's legal, I gotta be released. . . . Careful what you say. That new guy, Pirelli, says they're taping these messages." He asked Dante if there was any news on the Lucianos.

"Nothing yet. I heard the prosecution's got three more witnesses, lifers willin' to give evidence in exchange for their sentences being cut, but I got no names. It was just a rumor."

Carolla knew his cell had been searched; personal items were missing. He shouted for the guard, but no one came. He stumbled around in the semidark and reached for his lamp, another privilege, but the bulb and batteries had been removed. He hurled it across the cell. The batteries from his radio had gone; the television set had disappeared. Notepaper, pens, and clothes were missing. He shouted himself hoarse, but all he could hear was the distant echo of the other prisoners and the clanging of their tin mugs.

For the first time since his arrest Paul Carolla began to admit to himself that he might never be released.

Graziella knew Paul Carolla could legally be held for only one month longer, and she fully expected him to be released. She had spent the entire day watching him in court, and her rage was now full-blown.

Her body tingled, felt alien to her, but her mind was clear.

She had already dealt with the possibility of being searched. Her daily presence meant that she knew the guards by sight, and they now gave her polite nods of recognition. For the first few weeks she had proffered her bag for inspection, but for the last two sessions they had simply waved her through.

The Luger was in a small velvet bag right at the back of the safe. She felt for it, carefully removed it, and placed it gingerly on top of the wills, stacked on Don Roberto's desk.

Opening the third desk drawer, she took out the cartridges. She knew exactly how to load the gun, even how to fire it. She calculated that she had only one possible chance: the moment they brought out the prisoners. Paul Carolla, handcuffed, was always last in line. He occupied a cage on his own, close to the defense counsel's bench. The procedure was always the same: Before the lawyers took their seats, Carolla would be put in his cage and his leg shackles locked on. Her seat was directly opposite him. She dared not miss.

The kitchen garden had run wild, even though Adina had done her best to keep it cultivated. The strawberry runners caught at the hem of Graziella's skirt as she walked the fifteen paces back from the tree. She held the gun as her husband had taught her, both arms outstretched. He had laughed to see her wince, blinking at the sound, but now she kept her eyes steadily focused on the bark of the tree.

She practiced for fifteen minutes. The greenhouse suffered badly, the fence and the gate were letting the daylight through, but the tree remained unmarked. Tight-lipped with anger, she paced the distance, once more took aim. . . .

"Keep your arm steady. Remember the muzzle of the gun is where the bullet will come from. Hold it steady on the target. Your eyes are the gun." Luciano's voice was like a whispered encouragement in her head. . . . Another fifteen minutes passed, shells littering the ground, before she heard a dull thwack as the bullet found its mark. Elated, she delved into her pocket for the next cartridge.

Enrico Dante turned the shower on and started to strip off his clothes. His trousers were halfway down his legs when he became aware that someone was in his bedroom. He froze, listening, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

The curtains moved. He yanked them apart so hard they almost came off the rail. The window was open; he slammed it shut, trying to remember if he had left it like thit. He heard something, listened again, then relaxed; it was the water running. Hissing with relief, he took off his trousers, which he held underneath his chin by the cuffs while he straightened the creases. He opened the wardrobe door and started to scream. . . .

Luka's hand shot out and gripped Dante by the throat, forcing him backward at arm's length. Dante didn't recognize him. His throttled scream gurgled in his throat as he backed helplessly toward his bed. The backs of his knees struck the mattress, and he fell as Luka released his hold.

Luka jerked his arm, and the knife slid into his palm. With one flick he had it open, revealing the razor-sharp blade. He knelt over Dante, held the knife to his throat, and saw Dante's eyes register recognition.

"I guess I missed the plane." He sprang back, clicked the knife closed, and smiled. "I could have slit your throat."

Dante eased himself up onto his elbows. "If Carolla knew you were here . . . You crazy son of a bitch."

Luka opened the knife again. "You gonna tell him?"

Dante shook his head, staring at Luka. With the dyed hair the boy looked crazier than ever. "What do you want?"