"How's the leg?" I asked Harry, glancing into the rearview mirror.
"It hurts. Maybe your doctor friend should look at it," Harry said in a low angry voice. He hadn't spoken a word since we'd left Cammarata, unhappy with the Mafia edict that left Vito Genovese safe beyond our reach.
"I would be glad to," said Sciafani.
"Bugger off," Harry said. "I've had enough of you Mafia bastards. Your pals kill my first mate, and now we can't touch Genovese because he's such an honored man on this bloody island. Get me back to civilization."
"I am not mafiusu, and they are not my friends," Sciafani said, holding a hand over his heart as if he were swearing a holy oath.
"Who the bloody hell are you then?" Harry demanded, echoing my own thoughts. "Don Calo killed your father, you killed his man, he protects the killer of my friend, and you embrace like blood brothers. Who are you people anyway?"
"It is complicated to be Sicilian," Sciafani said, his hand dropping to his lap. "Let me know if you wish me to look at your wound, but I cannot answer your questions." He turned to stare out the window again, his eyes focusing on distant hills.
Silence filled the car as dust, hot air, and recriminations swirled between us. Time passed, and we descended through dry fields of harvested wheat, the yellowing stalks arrayed like soldiers cut down in ranks. Switchbacks snaked up and down the mountain roads that slowly took us south toward the American lines. Toward Vito and Legs, Charlotte, and all their plots and schemes. I had to protect the promise I'd gotten from Don Calo to intervene with the Sicilian troops, and at the same time do what I could to obtain justice for Roberto, Banville, and even Rocko. Glancing again at Harry, still grim faced, I made a note to keep him away from Vito Genovese. I couldn't let him take his own private revenge.
Damn, I sounded like Harding: complete the mission, and the hell with your personal feelings. I was sure Harding had them, but they weren't on display for all to see. I considered myself his complete opposite, but now I was thinking like him. I couldn't help it. I'd lost myself in Sicily, and as I discovered my own identity the grit and heat and passion of the island had worked their way under my skin. God help me, but I understood Sciafani and Don Calo, their brutal and honorable ways. Sometimes you had to stand and fight, bloody your knuckles, take a life. And sometimes you had to make peace with the past, even when harm had been done. I understood Don Calo, turning the brutal events of his earlier life into a romantic tale of bandits in the hills, Robin Hood reluctantly taking the life of his great rival, sending away his child and then waiting a generation for his return, to remind him of the man he had once been.
And Sciafani? What did he take from the embrace? If his father was defined in death by his enemy, then Sciafani would be forever defined by the man who had let him live. His father gave him life, but so did Don Calo. The old man with blood on his hands had washed a bit of it away. It must have made the old man feel good, but what about Sciafani?
Vito, he was easy to understand. The Mob was all about money and power, and Vito generated enough of both. Don Calo wanted to protect his cut, so Vito was safe. I didn't like it, but at least it made sense. No different than an insurance company or a car dealer rewarding their top salesmen. In the same way, giving up Legs was no different than laying off your most unproductive man. Good business.
I didn't necessarily like understanding this, but there you were. A cop gets pretty close to the criminal, close enough that the lines can get blurred. Like with me and Al. Trick was to remember who you were while understanding who the other guy was. I figured that would have been the next lesson from Dad if the war hadn't interrupted things. I wished I hadn't had to learn that one the hard way.
"Look," Nick said, pointing ahead.
"What?" asked Harry, craning his head forward.
"Town up ahead," I said. "Looks like a bunker covering the road."
"They wouldn't shoot at a car, would they?" Harry asked.
"Only if they're trigger-happy or Germans or Fascist militia," I said, considering the possibilities.
I decided the best thing to do was keep going. The town was gathered under a church steeple on the highest point of a small hilltop. Brown stone buildings, faded orange roof tiles, cisterns on nearly every roof. It looked like every other Sicilian village we'd driven through, even down to the concrete bunker at the edge of town. I downshifted, keeping my eye on the bunker's long narrow slit, imagining a gunner tracking us with his machine gun, sweaty finger on trigger, waiting for the perfect shot, a burst to the engine and one through the windshield. That's how I'd do it.
I drove faster. I couldn't help myself.
Nobody shot at us. I stopped even with the bunker. No gunner, no machine gun, no Fascists, no Sicilian soldiers.
"Could it be?" Nick asked.
"Maybe they were ordered elsewhere," Harry said.
"Or perhaps Don Calo has already kept his word," said Sciafani.
"We'll see," Harry said, sarcasm weighing down his voice.
We did see. Over the next few hours, we drove through towns with deserted entrenchments, empty bunkers and machine-gun nests with weapons idly pointed toward the sky, as if in surrender. Or indifference. Rifles and shovels lay strewn across the ground. Antitank guns sat alone, crates of ammunition stacked around them, abandoned like kids' toys at the beach.
"Well, I'll be damned," Harry said as we crossed a narrow bridge, the snouts of two antitank guns pointed harmlessly at our backs.
"Who won't be?" I asked. Nobody answered.
The road erupted in front of us, a blast of fire, smoke, and dirt that I drove through before I could hit the brakes. The smoke blinded me and I struggled to keep the car on the road, but it hit the crater, swerved to the left and rolled over. I coughed and gasped for air. I heard shouts and grunts, crunching metal, and smelled the sharp odor of gasoline, all in the split second before I passed out, with barely enough time to hope I wouldn't burn alive.
I heard someone calling my name. The smell of burned rubber coated my nostrils and throat as the sound of my name mingled with the crackling of flames. I panicked, not wanting to be toasted to a crisp inside a tiny Fiat. I fought to raise my eyelids, to get my body to move, but part of me wanted to lie there a few moments more, fire be damned.
"Billy!"
I recognized the voice and opened my eyes. I was on the ground at the side of the road.
"Billy, are you all right?" It was Kaz. His face was scorched black, his sandy-colored hair singed and smoking. His eyes were wide and desperate, and I knew how I had gotten out of the car.
"Think so. Good to see you, buddy." My voice came out a choked, harsh whisper.
I coughed some more as Kaz pulled me up by the shoulders. I hacked and spit black soot.
"What happened? The others?" I looked around and saw the car in flames, churning thick black smoke into the sky.
"They are all fine. Fine," said Kaz. "We got everyone out before the car's gas tank went up."
"You look like it was a close shave," I said.
"This little fella saved your butt," a sergeant in tanker's overalls said, chewing on an unlit cigar as he stood in back of Kaz. "You were on the bottom, with the car on its side. My crew got the other three out, then the gas tank went up. He climbed in and pulled you out, just in goddamn time too."
I got up on my knees and waited to see if I could stay there. That worked out well, so I tested my memory. Name, hometown, rank, it was all there. Time to stand. I took Kaz's hand, and he winced.
"Just a little burn, Billy. It is nothing," Kaz said, gracing me with a bashful smile.
I let go of his hand, startled by the sight of the angry red skin beneath his blackened shirt cuff. I took in the scene around me, awareness edging the fogginess out of my brain. Nick, Harry, and Sciafani leaned against a jeep, talking with some GIs and drinking from canteens. A couple of Sherman tanks were pulled off the road behind them, guarding our flanks, while a half-track sat in the road, a GI manning the. 30 caliber machine gun, scanning the sky for German planes.
"You were looking for us," I concluded, as Kaz's presence with the patrol dawned on me.
"Major Harding sent out patrols toward Villalba, but the defenses were too strong," Kaz said, the words spinning out as he rapidly explained. "Then yesterday a patrol reported no resistance on the main road to Mussomeli and Villalba, so I asked him for permission to look for you on the back roads. I thought you would come in that way, rather than the main road."
"Smart thinking, Kaz. But what was the explosion?"
"That was me, Lieutenant," the tanker sergeant said, without much in the way of apology. "We heard a vehicle coming, and it looked like an Italian staff car, so I told my gunner to fire. Lucky for you he has a hard time with moving targets."
"Yeah, well, if I was really lucky you wouldn't have fired on us in the first place."
He spat, and turned away, yelling to his crew to mount up. That was my dad's response anytime he was told he'd been lucky not to get hurt any worse than he was. Now I understood why he said it. It was damn irritating to hear about my luck from a guy who had fired on me from inside a Sherman tank.
"Nice guy," I said.
"Well, he didn't like being ordered to drive straight up these roads, past other Shermans that were not so lucky. We all saw the bunkers and antitank guns. But now they're deserted, except for a few stray Germans. General Patton is halfway to Palermo already. You did it, Billy, you did it. Didn't you?"
"Yes. I spoke to Don Calo and he saw reason, once he laid eyes on Luciano's handkerchief. It was strange, but I'll tell you about that later. It looks like he actually managed to get the Sicilians to vanish."
I don't know if I was surprised. But it was a shock to see how complete the desertions had been. Driving north, Italian troops had been digging in everywhere. Now, at the snap of Don Calo's fingers, they had disappeared.
"All right, let's get back to Major Harding," Kaz said. He gave a hand signal to the tanker sergeant and pointed down the road.
"Are you in command here?" I asked.
"Yes, Billy, I am," Kaz said, raising his singed eyebrow. "It is quite exciting."
A few months ago, Kaz had been translating documents at a desk in London. The quiet Polish academic with a bad heart was the last guy you would expect to see leading an armored combat patrol in the hills of Sicily. But here he was, ordering Sherman tanks around and rescuing me from the flames. It just showed that you never knew who was going to step up and put himself in harm's way for you, and who was going to turn and run.
Harry handed me a canteen, and I washed the soot out of my mouth, spitting onto the dusty road. Harry and I piled into the jeep with Kaz and his driver, while Sciafani and Nick climbed aboard the half-track. The vehicles roared to life, the tracks grinding up the roadside as they reversed and turned. The little Fiat burned away, the ferocity of the fire fading as the flames consumed the gasoline. Kaz had not been able to save Daphne from another burning car not too long ago. I was glad for his sake, as well as my own, that he had been able to pull me out, and did not have to witness another awful immolation.
Kaz had given no indication that he was thinking about the past, and perhaps the time had come when he could experience something like this without his first thought being of her death. Right now he seemed to be focused on the mission. Memory is such a strange thing. I had spent the past few days struggling to remember, glad of every little recollection and image that popped into my mind. Kaz probably prayed every night to forget most of the things he remembered.
"It's good to see you, Kaz," I said, speaking loudly over the sound of the jeep racing down the road. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
"You are remembering?" he asked me, looking over his shoulder. His voice was low, with a slight quaver to it. Then I knew I'd been wrong. He was in control, but he hadn't forgotten a thing. His eyes were moist, maybe from the dust, maybe from the pain of recollection. That charred frame of the little Riley Imp was burned into his brain, never to be forgotten. He needed to know that I remembered it all too.
"Yes, Kaz. I remember everything," I said. As I did, I thought of my father leaning close to me to say something important, his words a whisper brushing against my cheek. The dust got in my eyes too.