The Godfather returns

Ultimately, Geraci decided not to risk it. “I can’t give you any details,” he said. “I can only say that Carmine wants to do the job and that he’d be the leader of the other men I send.”

“You tell me this why? What reason? You want my blessing, how can I do that if I don’t know what I bless, eh?”

“If you tell me to take Carmine off this job, I’ll do it. But I can’t be specific about what we’re doing. What we have to do.”

Don Cesare considered this. “I think you are asking me to approve that my godson Carmine, who sends his mother money home every month, that he go do something where you think he will be killed, eh? If not that, you don’t need to ask me nothing.”

Geraci answered this only with silence.

“And you know he’s related to the Bocchicchio clan? I wouldn’t want to be the man who got blamed for anything that happened to him.”

Don Cesare said this with no conviction, clearly grasping at straws. Geraci knew full well who Carmine Marino’s people were.

In silence, Geraci waited Don Cesare out.

“One question, then,” Don Cesare finally said. “Carmine, he knows as much about this as you, the danger and also the reason for it, and still he want to do it, sì?”

“That’s right. Absolutely he still wants to do it.”

The Don bobbed his head back and forth, as if to show he was thinking about the repercussions of anything he might say. “Carmine is a man,” he said. “He does not need me to tell him what brave deeds he can or ca

“Thank you, Don Cesare.” Geraci felt the tremors coming on and excused himself to go to the bathroom, though all he really wanted to do was move around and concentrate on the moving so that the shaking would stop. For some reason, very little worked better in this regard than any action he could make his prick do. Urinating was in general handier than the other.

“For many reasons,” Geraci said as he sat back down at the table, “one of which being that Carmine will be in charge, I think it’s best that all the men we put on this job be Sicilians.” Another of the many reasons was that the Sicilians did not have rules against killing cops or government officials.

“You want people,” Indelicato said, “I’ll get you people.”

“I appreciate that. But I can’t risk bringing men in just for this job. I need men who’ve been in the States awhile. I don’t want to use too many of Carmine’s people either, especially, God forbid, if something should happen to the guy. I’m going to call in the pizza men, the best ones. Any objections?”

“If not for a tough job, then when, huh?”

Nearly all the men stashed in the pizza parlors had been directly or indirectly dispatched to America by Cesare Indelicato.

“A lot of those people I don’t know at all,” Geraci said.

“Of course you don’t. They don’t get in trouble, don’t have problems, what’s to know?”

“Exactly. I’ve got guys who’ve been out there seven years. Guys I’ve never laid eyes on. I need your advice, Don Cesare. If you were to recommend, say, the four best men you’ve sent over-best in terms of toughness, character, smarts-who would that be?”

Geraci had expected him to have to think about this awhile, but Don Cesare answered immediately, complete with brief descriptions of the men’s skills. If they were half the men he said they were, Geraci would have no trouble getting this done without sending Carmine.

“There’s another, unrelated matter,” Geraci said. “It involves a traitor in your midst. A man sent here from America. An inconvenient man to our Commission, or so they ruled.”

Geraci couldn’t do it himself, as of course Don Cesare understood. He was a Boss. Such things must be done by others.

The frail Capuchin monk struggled down the stairs to the convent’s catacombs. He had glaucoma and an arthritic hip, but he was determined not to become a burden to the order. He could still do all the tasks he’d done when he first came to Palermo as a young man-from the sublime of tending the garden, preparing meals for his brothers in Christ, and embalming the dead to be interred in the city cemetery next door, to the ridiculous of selling postcards to tourists and picking up the filth they left behind. Soda cans, wine bottles, spent flashbulbs (photography was explicitly forbidden), and even, once, a used prophylactic.

It was after lunch: almost three, when the catacombs would reopen to the public. A German tour group milled around outside the barred iron doors. As the monk descended farther, their vulgar noise receded. He smiled and thanked almighty God for allowing him to recognize that even diminished hearing can be a gift from on high.

At the base of the stairs was a candy wrapper. The monk’s knees cracked as he stooped to pick it up.

In the tu

He bore left, sca

At the end of the tu

As the monk approached La bambina, his cloudy eyes seemed to be playing tricks on him. Against the wall near the poor babe was a body as well preserved as hers.

He rubbed his eyes. It was a bald man in a raincoat. Diamonds gleamed from the rings on his fingers and the bar across his fat tie. The dead were not interred here wearing jewelry. Then the monk saw the distinct black lines on either side of the man’s mouth and felt a wave of relief.