Luciano’s Luck

He opened the judas gate and Carter stepped inside. ‘A damn near-run thing, Vito, just like Waterloo,’ he said and fainted.

Carter surfaced slowly and found himself looking up at a cracked plaster ceiling. It was very cold and there was a heavy, medicinal smell to everything that he soon recognized as formaldehyde. He was lying on one of the tables in the mortuary preparation room, his neck pillowed on a wooden block, his stomach and chest expertly bandaged.

He turned his head and found Barbera, wearing a long rubber apron, working on the corpse of an old man at the next table. Carter pushed himself up.

Barbera said cheerfully, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. He shot you twice. The one in the side went straight through, but the second is somewhere in the left lung. You’ll need a top surgeon.’

‘Thanks a million,’ Carter said. ‘That really does make me feel a whole lot better.’

On the trolley beside Barbera were the tools of the embalmer’s trade laid out neatly on a white cloth: forceps, scalpels, surgical needles, artery tubes and a glass jar containing a couple of gallons of embalming fluid.

There was a look of faint surprise on the corpse’s face that many people show in death, jaw dropped, mouth gaping as if in astonishment that this could be happening. Barbera took a long curved needle and passed it from behind the lower lip, up through the nasal septum and down again so that when he tightened the thread and tied it off, the jaw was lifted.

‘So you raise people from the dead, too?’ Carter eased himself off the table. ‘I always knew you were a man of parts.’

Barbera smiled, a small, intense-looking man of fifty whose tangled iron-grey beard appeared strangely at odds with the Bronx accent.

‘You fucking English, Harry! I mean, when are you going to learn? The days of Empire are over. What were you trying to do up there, win the war on your own?’

‘Something like that.’

The door opened and a young girl entered. Sixteen or seventeen, no more. Small, dark-haired with a ripe, full body that strained at the seams of the old cotton dress. She had a wide mouth, dark brown eyes in a face of considerable character and yet there was the impression of one who had seen too much of life at its worst too early.

She carried a tray containing an old brass coffee pot, brown sugar and glasses. There was also a bottle of cognac – Courvoisier.

Barbera carried on working. ‘Rosa, this is Major Carter. My niece, arrived from Palermo since you were last here.’

‘Rosa,’ Carter said.

She poured coffee and handed it to him without a word.

Barbera said, ‘Good girl. Now go back to the gate and watch the square. Anything – anything at all, you let me know.’

She went out and Carter poured himself a brandy, sipping it slowly for the pain in his lung was so intense that he could hardly breathe. ‘I never knew you had a niece. How old is she?’

‘Oh, a hundred and fifty, or sixteen. Take your pick. Her father was my youngest brother. Killed in an auto accident in ’thirty-seven in Naples. I lost sight of his wife. She died of consumption in Palermo three years ago.’

‘And Rosa?’

‘I only heard about her two months ago through Mafia friends in Palermo. She’s been a street whore since she was thirteen. I figured it was time she came home.’

‘You still think of this place as home after Tenth Avenue?’

‘Oh, sure, no regrets. Something Rosa can’t understand. New York is still the promised land to her, whereas to me, it was somewhere to leave.’

He was working cream into the old man’s face now, touching the cheeks with rouge.

Carter said, ‘What about the Contessa?’

‘The Gestapo took her to Palermo.’

‘Bad for you if they break her.’

‘Not possible.’ Barbera shook his head. ‘A friend passed her a cyanide capsule in the women’s prison yesterday afternoon.’

Carter took a long, shuddering breath to steady his nerves. ‘I was hoping she’d have news for me of Luca.’

Barbera paused and glanced at him in some surprise. ‘You waste your time. No one has news of Luca because that is the way he wants it.’

‘Mafia again?’

‘Yes, my friend, Mafia again and you would do well to remember that. What are your plans?’

‘I was supposed to go to Agrigento tonight. I’m due to put to sea with a tuna boat out of Porto Stefano at midnight.’

‘Submarine pick-up?’

‘That’s it.’

Barbera frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t see how, Harry, not tonight. The roads will be crawling with Krauts. Maybe tomorrow.’ He gestured to the corpse. ‘I’ve got to take the old boy here down to Agrigento anyway.’

Before Carter could reply, the door burst open and Rosa looked in. They are here in the square. Many Germans.’ Barbera moved to the window and parted the curtain slightly. Carter struggled up with difficulty and limped to join him. Several vehicles had pulled up in the square, kubelwagens and troop carriers and two armoured cars. Soldiers had gathered in a semi-circle and were being addressed from the back of a field car by an officer.

Carter said, ‘SS paratroopers. Where in the hell did they come from?’

‘The mainland last month. Specially selected by Kesselring to clear the mountains of partisans. The one doing the talking is their commanding officer, Major Koenig. He’s good. They call him the Hunter in the Cammarata.’

As they watched, the SS broke away to commence searching the village. Koenig sat down and his kubelwagen started across the square, followed by another.

Barbera closed the curtain. ‘Looks as if he’s coming this way.’ He turned to Carter. ‘Did you leave anybody dead up there at the villa, by any chance?’

‘Probably.’ Carter caught him by the sleeve. ‘He’ll take it out on the village if I don’t turn up.’

Barbera smiled sadly. ‘Not his style. Very definitely a man of honour. Makes it difficult to stick a knife in his back. Now you stay here with Rosa and keep quiet.’

He took the lamp and went out, leaving them in darkness.

They were already knocking at the outer gate as he crossed the courtyard. He eased back the massive bolt and the gate swung open to reveal the first kubelwagen, Koenig seated beside the driver. He got out and moved forward.

‘Ah, there you are, Signor Barbera. I’ve brought some custom for you, I’m afraid,’ he said in fair Italian.

The two kubelwagens drove into the courtyard. Barbera saw that there was a body strapped to a stretcher on one of them and covered with a blanket.

Two SS ran round to lift it down and Barbera said, ‘If you’d follow me, Major.’

He crossed the courtyard and led the way in through a short passage. When he opened the door at the end, there was the taint of death on the air.

The room which he entered was quiet, a single oil lamp on a table in the centre the only light. It was a waiting mortuary of a type common in Sicily. There were at least a dozen coffins, each one open and containing a corpse, fingers entwined in a pulley arrangement that stretched overhead to an old brass bell by the door.