Chapter 14: The False Route

My father looked at his four men in the hall.

Then he looked at me.

"Out," he said to them.

They went.

He shut the kitchen door behind them and leaned on it.

"You say that in front of my men," he said, "and by morning every table in Palermo knows the Caruso house leaks."

"It does leak."

"Then you bring me proof. Not a feeling. Not an American phone record. Proof I can put in front of the elders."

Dario pulled what was left of his sleeve down over the stitches.

"She'll bring it by breakfast," he said.

My father looked at him for a long moment.

"You're very sure of her."

"I am."

My father pushed off the door.

"Breakfast," he said, and went out.

Dario and I sat at the kitchen table until two in the morning.

The housekeeper left coffee and went to bed.

"He tells his table where you are," Dario said. "So we tell his table something."

"Not the whole table."

"No. One man at a time."

"We'd need a different story for each of them. Twelve stories."

"We only need one." He tapped the table. "You already know who it is. You knew on the plane."

I thought about the marzipan fruit.

About the aftershave that hadn't changed since I was six.

"One story," I said. "Only to him."

At three my father came back down in his robe.

He hadn't slept either.

He listened to the plan without interrupting.

Then he went into his study and picked up the phone.

I stood in the doorway and heard him make the call.

"Don Vitale is flying out at dawn," my father said in dialect. "Quietly. He doesn't trust the airport after tonight."

"He's driving to the old strip at Terrasini by the mountain road. Alone, one car. Six o'clock at the chapel turnout."

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