R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

We ate well, we talked of inconsequential things. The children told tales of their trip to Niagara, and Don Calligaris told them a story of a visit he made to Naples when he was a boy.

My children were well-behaved and polite, interested in everything Don Calligaris had to say, and more than once he looked at me and smiled. He knew how special my family was; he understood, above all else, the importance of family, and as he spoke with them, as Angelina leaned forward to refill their glasses I watched all three of them – my wife, my son, my daughter – and I was truly aware of how I had been blessed. They were everything to me, just everything , and I believed in that moment that I had somehow shrugged off the weight of the past, the death of my own mother and father, the things that had taken place in New Orleans and Havana. I was now a man. I controlled my own life. I was someone, if only as a father and a husband, and someone was all I had ever wished to be.

The evening drew on. The children were tiring, and before I knew it we were calling for the check, gathering coats and hats, preparing ourselves to leave.

Don Calligaris gave the keys to his car to Ten Cent. ‘Take Angelina and the children,’ he said. ‘Pull the car out front. Ernesto and I will be no more than a minute.’

‘There will be changes now that Don Accardo has passed away,’ he said once we were alone. ‘We have elected a new boss, a good man, a friend of Don Alessandro’s, a man called Tomas Giovannetti. You will do well with him.’ Don Calligaris leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘For me things will change too. I will be returning to Italy at the end of the month, and I will be staying there.’

I opened my mouth to speak.

Don Calligaris raised his hand. ‘I am an old man now, much older than you. I did not have a wife and children to keep me young… such a wife you have, Ernesto, and your children!’ He raised his hands and clenched his fists. He laughed. ‘You have such a special family, and even though they are not mine I am proud of them.’ He lowered his hands and reached out to grip my forearm. ‘The time has come for me to make a move to pasture. You will stay here with Ten Cent, and Don Giovannetti will ensure that things are taken care of for you… like I said, he is a good man, believes greatly in the importance of family, and he knows of all the things you have done to assist, both here in Chicago, also in New York and Miami. I spoke well of you, but he knew already of your reputation.’

I shook my head. I did not know what to say.

‘Change is inevitable,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘Everything changes. We take the changes, we change with them, or we lose everything.’

I heard Victor calling for me at the door. I turned and saw him standing beside Ten Cent. They walked across the room towards us.

‘Angelina and Lucia are in the car out front,’ Ten Cent said. ‘We’re ready to go. The children want to go home and play with their toys.’

‘To go to bed more likely,’ I said, and started to rise from my chair.

Victor pulled a face at me, the spoiled-child face he had somehow mastered to perfection.

‘Perhaps ten minutes,’ I said. ‘Ten minutes and then bed for you, young man.’

‘Twenty,’ Victor replied.

Don Calligaris laughed and ruffled Victor’s hair. ‘That attitude I have seen before, eh Ernesto?’

‘We shall see,’ I said. ‘Now we go… come on.’ I took his hand and turned away from the table where we had been seated.

‘So we shall stay in touch once I am home,’ Don Calligaris said, ‘and perhaps when you are too old to keep a job in the city you will come out and see me.’

I laughed. It was a pleasant thought. The image of myself and Don Calligaris as old men sitting beneath the olive trees in the warm evening sunshine.

I looked ahead at Victor and Ten Cent. Victor reached no higher than Ten Cent’s elbow, but Ten Cent was leaning down to listen to something Victor was telling him. I could hear the sound of laughter, of people sharing one another’s company, I felt the warmth of the atmosphere, the feeling that things were going to change, but change for the better; the feeling that despite everything that had gone before us we were still alive, we had made it through this far, and we were going to make it all the way. A sense of accomplishment perhaps; a sense of pride; of certainty that somehow all was well with the world.

Later, all I could remember was the light. The way the room seemed suddenly bathed in light. The sound did not come until much later, or at least that was the way it seemed at the time, but when it came it was ferocious, like a tidal wave inside my head, and then there was the glass, and then there were people screaming, and then I felt the slow-dawning realization of what had happened.

The sensation was one of something trying to escape through my ears and eyes, as if everything inside my head had built to such a pressure there was nothing for it to do but burst outwards.

I remember climbing over spread-eagled people as I ran to the door.

I remember shouting at Ten Cent to hold onto Victor.

I remember wondering if the children would be too excited to sleep once we arrived home.

Colors rushed together in a confusion and my eyes could not focus. I fell sideways and felt a sharp pain rushing through the upper part of my leg. Instinctively my hand reached for the gun in back of my waistband, but it was not there. This had been a time for my family. That’s all it had been. Surely something was wrong; surely these things – these sounds and feelings, the awareness of pain and destruction – belonged to someone else’s life?

I remember a man bleeding from the head, a sharp jag of glass jutting from his cheek, screaming for help at the top of his lungs. I remember all these things, but even those things faded when I fell out through the front doorway and saw the burned and obliterated wreck that was once Don Calligaris’s car.

Black and twisted metal, the smell of cordite and seared paint. The wave of disbelief as I realized I had somehow been thrown into someone else’s reality, for this was not happening, this was not how the evening was supposed to end, this was wrong… so wrong…

The heat was unbearable, and even as I tried to approach what was left of the vehicle I knew there was nothing I could do.

The sense of hopelessness was overwhelming. The sound inside my own head as my life collapsed.

My wife and my daughter.

Angelina and Lucia.

I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, and from my throat came a sound that was inhuman.

That sound went on for ever.

It seemed to be all I could hear for hours.

Even now I cannot recall how I made it away from that place, nor what happened to me that night.

‘I am sorry,’ Don Calligaris was saying. ‘I have pleaded with them. I have told them that I was the intended victim of this terrible thing, but there is nothing I can do.’

My head in my hands, my elbows on my knees, Ten Cent standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder, Don Calligaris ahead of me, his face white and drawn, tears in his eyes, his hands shaking as he reached out towards me.

‘I know that you have been with us all these years, and there is no question of your loyalty, and perhaps if Don Accardo was still alive he would have done something… but things have changed. I am no longer in possession of the influence I once had. Don Giovannetti is now in control. He does not feel that he can take an action so soon-’

Don Calligaris leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

‘I hurt for you, Ernesto. I have done all I can. I have spoken with Don Giovannetti, and though he understands that you have been a loyal part of this family he feels that he cannot violate adherence to tradition. He is the new boss. He also has to earn his reputation and loyalties. Tradition says that we cannot avenge the death of someone who is not blood. You are Cuban, Ernesto, and your wife was the daughter of someone who was not part of this family, and though I have argued your case for hours there is nothing further I can do.’