R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

Don Calligaris himself was close to sixty-five, and though Chicago had served him well I could see his thoughts also turning to where he might go and what he might become when working was no longer an option.

‘Time has closed up on us,’ he said one time. ‘It comes and goes in an instant, it seems. I can remember running down the street as a child, thinking that a day lasted for ever. Now most of the day has gone by the time I have eaten my breakfast.’

We sat in the kitchen of his house. Ten Cent was in front watching TV.

‘My children keep me thinking like a teenager,’ I said.

‘How old are they now?’

‘Eight last June.’

Calligaris shook his head. ‘Eight years old… I remember when Ten Cent used to carry both of them in one arm.’

I laughed. ‘Now my son Victor, he could probably wrestle Ten Cent to the ground. He is a tough little man, the head of the house as far as he is concerned.’

‘But his sister, she is smart like most girls,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘The men are the head of the house, but the girls, they are the neck, and they can turn the head any which way they please.’

I heard the phone then, and with it came a sense of foreboding. Business had been without trouble for some time, and there had been no calls for the better part of a month.

I heard Ten Cent shut down the TV and walk out into the front hall.

‘ Si ,’ I heard him say, and then he set down the receiver on the table and he walked to the kitchen.

‘Don Calligaris, it is for you, from upstairs.’

‘Upstairs’ was the word we used for the boss and his people; ‘upstairs’ meant that something was going to happen, something that would require us.

I listened for words I could understand in Don Calligaris’s conversation, brief though it was, but despite all my years with these people I had never taken the time to learn Italian. I tried to speak Spanish as often as I could, even to myself, but Italian, though similar in many ways, just seemed too difficult to manage.

Don Calligaris was no more than a minute, and then he returned to the kitchen and looked at me.

‘We have a sit-down,’ he said.

‘Now?’ I asked.

‘Tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Three hours from now at Don Accardo’s restaurant. He wants all three of us, and there will be a good few more, I think.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘I don’t know, Ernesto, so don’t ask me. We do not discuss details on the telephone. All I know is that we meet at seven at the trattoria.’

I went home to dress. I spoke with Angel, told her not to wait up for me. The children were away with some friends and would return later. I told her to say goodnight to them for me, to tell them I would see them in the morning.

I looked at her, a woman of forty-four, but still in her eyes that difficult and awkward young woman I had first met in New York.

‘You have made my life something of which to be proud,’ I told her.

She frowned. ‘What is this? Why are you talking like that?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I have been thinking the past few days that I am becoming an old man-’

She laughed. ‘There are few old men who have as much energy as you, Ernesto Perez.’

I raised my hand. ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking that soon it will be time to make some changes, to find somewhere to live where the children will be away from all this.’

Angelina looked at me then. There was an expression in her eyes that told me she had been waiting to hear these words for as long as she had known me. She shook her head, perhaps with an element of disbelief. ‘Go to your meeting, Ernesto. We will talk about such things another time.’

I leaned forward, I held her face in my hands and I kissed her.

‘I love you, Angelina.’

‘And I you, Ernesto. Now be gone with you-’

Then I saw tears in her eyes, welling up in the corners. I brushed the hair back from her cheeks and frowned. ‘What?’ I asked.

She shook her head. She closed her eyes and looked down at the floor.

I lowered my hand and raised her chin. She opened her eyes and looked back at me.

‘What?’ I asked again. ‘What is it?’

For a second there was a flash of anger in her expression, and then it softened. She shook her head once more and said, ‘Go Ernesto, go now. I have things to do before the children come home.’

I did not move. I waited until she looked at me once again and I opened my mouth to ask her what was happening.

She shifted to the left and rose to her feet. I stepped back for a moment, puzzled at first, and then I recognized the fire inside her.

‘You know what it is, Ernesto,’ she said, and in her voice was the edge of defiant independence that had so attracted me when I first knew her. ‘You go to your meeting now. I will not question what you are doing, and when you come back I will not ask what you have done. You are a good man, Ernesto. I know this, and if I did not believe that there was more good in you than evil I would never have stayed. You are who you are, and I am wise enough to know that I will never change that… but I will not have you risk my life or the lives of our children-’

I raised my hand. I was shocked, not at what she said, for these were words I had perhaps been expecting for many years, but the vehemence and anger with which she uttered them.

‘Do not tell me to quieten my voice,’ she said. ‘I want you to say nothing, Ernesto, nothing at all. I don’t want to hear you explain or defend yourself or the people for whom you work. Go and speak with them. Go and do whatever you have to do, and when you are done I will still be here with your children. Whatever madness lies out there, I wish you to keep it from our door, because if anything happens that hurts my family I will kill you myself.’

I could not speak, I dared not say a word.

She crossed the room and took my overcoat from the back of a chair. She held it out for me and I walked towards her. She even lifted it up for me to put my arms into the sleeves.

I turned to face her and she raised her hand and pressed her finger to my lips.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘I have said everything I needed to say. I am empty, Ernesto.’

I started to think of how I should respond and she read my thoughts.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Go finish whatever business you have to finish and then we will talk of the future.’

I left the house and walked back across the street. My mind was like a hollow gourd.

We talked for a little while, Don Calligaris and I; we ventured ideas on what the sit-down could be about, but in truth we knew nothing. I could not concentrate. I could see Angelina’s face, the flash of anger in her eyes, the fear she felt for our children.

At six-thirty we left, and at the end of the street I looked back towards my house, towards where my wife and children would be while I was at Don Accardo’s restaurant, and I wished I could step out of the car and go back.

I had a premonition of something dark walking those sidewalks, pausing in front of my house. I swept such thoughts away. My wife and children were safe. There was nothing to be concerned about. I forced myself to believe that this was the truth.

The restaurant itself was packed to the walls every which way. We maneuvered our way between tables and chairs, waited while waiters performed circus balancing acts with antipasta and steaming plates of carbonara and made it through to the back behind the main room. Here we were greeted by Don Accardo’s men, heavy-set Sicilians with unresponsive faces, and were shown to a table where a good dozen men were seated.

We did not wait long for Don Accardo to appear, and as he entered the room everyone rose and clapped. He quietened them down with a gesture and then he sat also. A few minutes passed while people lit cigarettes, while introductions were made, and then Don Accardo spoke.