Man on Fire Page 3

  The Americans liberated the city and they liberated crime. Under the Fascists, first Italian and then German, the criminals had lean pickings. Without the protection of fair, democratic, and therefore pliable justice, they lost their power. Even the biggest and most highly organized criminals had been shot or thrown into jail, and many innocents as well. The Americans released the innocents, and the criminals with them. Justice and crime returned to Italy hand in hand.

  By the early 1950's the organization had clicked back into place. Prostitutes, many of them coerced by hunger, were brought under control. The bosses assigned districts, designated pimps, and took their percentages. The wartime damage was repaired. Marshall Aid funded the reconstruction, and the bosses took their cut. Restaurants and shops and taxis and landlords began making profits again and the bosses protected them against criminals and were naturally paid for the service.

  Guido fitted neatly into this pattern. With his well-organized gang of adolescents he operated as an instrument in the reborn structure. He was recognized and rewarded as a coming young man. His particular asset was his violence-calculated, but seemingly mindless in execution. He had learned the lesson early that unexpected pain is the quickest way to get someone's attention. He used to tell his followers:

  "Always retaliate first."

  He was assigned an area behind the docks and his main job was to emphasize to the local small businessmen that protection was necessary. Having provided the proof, he then provided the protection. So he had prospered, and as an additional reward was allowed to operate on the docks themselves. He and his gang practiced larceny on a grand scale. As supplies and equipment for the postwar reconstruction poured through the docks, a gratifying amount was diverted and usually resold to its original consignees. With accumulated profits, he bought the building that housed the present pensione.

  It had been the house of a moderately wealthy merchant and was spacious and well-built, with a fine large terrace overlooking the bay. The merchant had died, and his two sons had been Fascists, and in the confused situation at the end of the war, they too had died. The house passed to a nephew who had also been a Fascist-but not confused. He decided to go to America, and with the money he got for the house was able to arrange the necessary papers.

  Guido bought the place in his mother's name, since he was still a minor. Then he partitioned the large rooms and turned it into a brothel for the exclusive use of American officers. It did well and was known familiarly as the Splendide. Guido's mother, unknowingly but happily, banked the profits and lit candles in the church.

  By 1954 Guido had put himself in a position to move up within the structure and foresaw a long and rising career ahead of him. But as the bosses above him prospered, so they argued, and finally they fought. The structure, nationwide, had not yet become as solidified and disciplined as in pre-Fascist days. The old bosses from the south had not yet been able to impose their authority. They had just begun to do so in Rome and in the industrial north, but they had left Naples until last. It was traditionally the least tractable city in Italy, and its criminals were no exception.

  Two factions struggled for power in Naples. Guido had had to choose, and so made the first mistake of his budding career. He aligned himself with a boss called Vagnino, and this was perhaps natural, as Vagnino's strength lay in prostitution and the docks. But Vagnino was old, and had spent too long in prison, and lacked the will. Consequently, the war went badly for Guido and his gang. Being low in the scale of things, they were in the forefront of the battle. Within a month, half his gang were dead or had deserted, and Guido himself was in the hospital, his back and buttocks pitted with lead from the blast of a shotgun. He was lucky-he could have been facing the other way.

  While he lay on his stomach, his mentor Vagnino, tired and careless, ate dinner in the wrong restaurant and was shot to death before he finished the fritto misto.

  At this point, the police made a belated show of their authority. Newspapers and politicians demanded action. Deals were struck between the victors, led by one Floriano Conti, and the public prosecutor. Evidence was provided and an assorted dozen low-echelon operators were tried and sent to prison. Guido was among them. Sitting stiff and sore in the caged box in the courtroom, he heard the judge sentence him to two years in prison. He was eighteen years old.

  Prison had been a terrible shock. Not the hardships or the indignity-his upbringing had prepared him for that. He discovered that he suffered from mild but positive claustrophobia, which manifested itself in acute depression. The Italian penal system of the time took no cognizance of such problems and he suffered badly.

  For two months after his release he stayed in Positano. Not in his mother's home, but on the hills above the town, sleeping in the open, high above the cliffs and with the space of the ocean in front of him and the hills ranging far behind. He slowly readjusted and he resolved never to allow it to happen again. The experience had not reformed him, but in the future getting caught was not an option. Out there in the open, he also thought about his future. The Splendide brothel in Naples had been closed down by the police; the building was unoccupied and producing no income. In the past two years, Conti had tightened his grip on the city and cemented working alliances with influential officials, both in the police and the local government.

  Guido knew that to put the Splendide back into business he would need Conti's tacit approval, so his first act on arriving in Naples was to seek a meeting.

  Conti was still a young man, in his middle thirties, and he was of the new breed of bosses. Having established his territory by violence, he now adopted the posture of the practical businessman. He realized that to take full advantage of his power it was necessary to come to arrangements with other nationwide bosses. Cooperation was the theme, and when emissaries had arrived from Palermo he had agreed to a series of meetings to establish spheres of influence and a pecking order of power.

  These meetings during 1953-54 were curiously similar to the election of a Pope-held in great secrecy, and the result announced by something less than a puff of smoke. A great deal of jockeying for position went on. The hard traditionalists from Calabria did not want the more sophisticated bosses from Milan and Turin to have too much power. Similarly, those in the center from Rome and Naples wanted more of a say than had been normal before the war. Everybody accepted that there had to be order and structure and that someone had to be an arbitrator-which, in effect, meant the man of most influence.

  The bosses of the north wouldn't accept the Calabrians and vice versa. Moretti in Rome was considered too weak and Conti himself too young.

  As usual under such circumstances, a compromise was reached. The meetings had been instigated and organized from Palermo. The boss there was Cantarella.

  Small, dapper, and a diplomat. He was quietly determined to reestablish Palermo as the fountainhead and he had read the signs properly. The compromise installed him as interim arbitrator. None of those present fully appreciated his cunning and political genius and were not to realize that over the next twenty years those gifts would sustain and strengthen his position.

  The scene was set for a long period of relative peace-and great profit for all concerned.

  Guido had been surprised and gratified by the warmth of Conti's greeting and also impressed by the businesslike appearance of the offices. The savagery of two years ago truly was a thing of the past. Bygones were bygones, Conti assured him. Things were different now. Certainly he should reopen the Splendide. They would cooperate. Financial arrangements would be made.

  Guido had left the office feeling confident. His confidence was misplaced. Conti had not forgiven. Guido and his gang had been the most lethal arm of the opposition and Conti would not allow him to reestablish himself.

  But one of the first edicts from Palermo had been that internal fratricide was to be kept to a minimum. Conti did not yet feel strong enough to defy the new arbitrator. He had an obvious solution. Let Guido reopen his brothel, and at an app
ropriate time Conti would withdraw his protection. The police would do his job for him and his connections in the judiciary would ensure that Guido was put away for a long time. It was a modern, progressive solution.

  Guido did not explain all this to Pietro. He started his story at the point when he received a tip-off that his protection had been lifted and that the police were coming for him. He never knew who it was who called him that night, but obviously Conti had his own enemies. It had been a terrible moment. He realized that Conti had not forgiven and he reviewed his options. They were bleak: He could hide, but not for long. Either the police or Conti's people would eventually find him.

  He could fight, but he couldn't win. Finally, he could leave the country. He never considered trusting himself to the courts. Prison was not an option.

  He had written a letter to his mother, giving her the name of an honest lawyer in Naples and instructing her to have that lawyer rent out the property and ensure that the proceeds were used for her support and Elio's continued education. He finished by telling her that he would be away, perhaps for a long time. Then he went down to the docks where he still had friends who could hide him, if only for a few days.

  His mother received the letter the next day and went to the church and prayed. The same night Guido was smuggled aboard an old freighter and two nights later was smuggled off in Marseilles. He was twenty years old, with little money and no prospects. The next day he signed on with the Legion and within a week was in Algeria at the training camp at Sidibel Abbes.

  "Were you frightened?" asked Pietro. "Did you know what to expect?"

  Guido shook his head and smiled briefly at the memory. "I had heard the usual stories and I thought it would be terrible, but I had no choice. I didn't have papers. I couldn't speak anything but Italian, and I had very little money. Besides, I figured after a year or two I could desert and come back to Naples."

  It hadn't been like the stories at all. Certainly it was tough, especially the first weeks; and the discipline was implacable. But he was tough himself, and the training interested him and developed latent talents. The discipline he accepted, for again he had no choice. Punishment for disobeying orders was either a spell in the punishment battalion, which was hell on earth, or, for minor offenses, the stockade, which in his case would have been worse. He was careful, therefore, to obey all orders, and was a model recruit, which would have surprised a lot of people in Naples.

  He too had surprises. The first was the food-varied and excellent, with good wine from the Legion's own vineyards. His mistaken concept of the Legion as an old-fashioned romantic desert army was quickly dispelled.

  It was highly modern, with the most up-to-date equipment and techniques. Its officers were the cream of the French army and its noncommissioned officers, promoted from the ranks, were veterans of Europe's armies and had been battle-hardened all over the world. There was a large German contingent, whose collective memory went back only to 1945. East Europeans, who didn't want to or couldn't go back behind the Iron Curtain. Spaniards, who might have been debris from the Civil War. A few Dutchmen and Scandinavians, and several Belgians, some of whom were probably French, as French citizens were not accepted in the Legion except as officers. There were very few Englishmen, and only one American.

  The Legion was reconstituting itself after the shambles of Vietnam and Dien Bien Phu. Several thousand Legionnaires had been captured at that battle and over fifteen hundred killed. By its nature and composition, it was a corps invariably used as a last resort. Its history was a history of lost, last, futile battles. For a government losing an empire with poor grace, it was gratifyingly expendable.

  Such an army under such a sentence could be excused for a lack of purpose or morale, but to Guido this was another surprise, for the Legion generated its own purpose. It fed off its lack of nationalism to create its own entity. A Legionnaire was a mental orphan-the Legion itself the orphanage. Guido discovered that it was the only army in the world that never retired its soldiers. When too old to fight, a Legionnaire could, if he wished, stay on in the Legion home, or work in its vineyards or its handicraft center. He was never forced to go out into a world he had rejected.

  The French people took pride in the Legion. They believed it fought for France, thought of itself as French. This was a misconception. It fought for itself. That it was an instrument of French Government policy was incidental. Even the French officers found their loyalties pulled more to the Legion than to their country.

  The training lasted for six months. During that time Guido's short, thickset body filled out. The hard work and the good food brought him to a peak of fitness. He found himself taking pride in this, for like many young men he had never realized his physical capabilities.

  The Legion had a traditional pride in being able to outmarch any other army on earth, and within a month Guido had completed his first twenty-mile route march, carrying fifty pounds of equipment. He took pride also in his handling of weapons, especially the light machine gun. Its power and mobility pleased him and he found an affinity with it. This was noted by the instructors.

  It was a period of mental adjustment. He had always been taciturn and self-contained, and this aspect of his character deepened. He didn't make friends among the other recruits. He was the only Italian among his intake, and as he struggled to learn French he felt out of place. Early on he had been tested as to whether he could be pushed around. His reaction had been savage and uncompromising. A big Dutchman, mean and hard, had needled him a point too far. Guido got his retaliation in first and the Dutchman took a painful beating.

  He had not broken discipline. The training NCO's allowed this kind of thing to happen. They wanted to know who could take it.

  After that, Guido had been left alone, and the instructors guessed that the Italian might develop into a good Legionnaire. After training, he volunteered for the elite First Paratroop Regiment based at Zeralda, twenty miles west of Algiers. The Algerian war was building into a major confrontation, and naturally the Legion was at the forefront. The 1st R.E.P. was to be the most successful and feared unit in the French army. Guido was assigned to "B" Company. The company sergeant had just returned to active service after nine months at a Viet Minh prisoner-of-war camp. He had been captured at Dien Bien Phu. He was the American, Creasy.

  It had been several months before the two men recognized the empathy between them. There was a gap at first-Guido, an untried Legionnaire and Creasy, a decorated veteran of Vietnam and a top sergeant. But there were similarities of character: both taciturn and introspective, shunning normal contact, and intensely private, in an environment where privacy was hard to find.

  The first time that Creasy talked to him, apart from issuing orders, was after an action near a town called Palestro. A patrol of French conscripts had been ambushed by the Front Liberation Nationale and many killed. The Legion went after them, and it was the 1st R.E.P. that caught up. "B" Company was dropped to cut off the escape route, and Guido saw action for the first time. He was confused by the noise and movement, but quickly settled down and used his light machine gun to good effect. The FLN unit was wiped out.

  That night the company camped in the hills above Palestro, and as Guido ate his field rations Creasy came over and sat beside him and talked a little. It was only the gesture of a company sergeant letting one of his new men know that he had done well in his first action, but Guido had felt good with the contact. He already had a deep respect for Creasy, but this was universal in the Legion. He was known as the complete Legionnaire, an expert with all weapons, and a natural tactician.

  Guido knew that he had fought for six years in Vietnam and before that had been in the U.S. Marines, for how long nobody knew. His favorite weapons were the grenade and the submachine gun, and he always seemed to carry more grenades and spare magazines than anyone else.

  Shortly after Palestro, the company had again been dropped behind a retreating FLN unit. This time the FLN had got away, and again at the evening me
al Creasy had brought his rations over to sit with Guido. They talked about small arms and their effectiveness. Guido always carried a pistol and four spare clips. Creasy told him that it was a waste of weight. A pistol was useful only if it had to be concealed. In combat, concealment was unnecessary. The submachine gun, on the other hand, was the perfect weapon for close combat. Creasy told him to forget the pistol and carry more spare magazines for his SMG.

  Guido was a willing pupil. Having decided he liked the life, he was determined to succeed, and in Creasy he recognized the perfect teacher. He had been told of the remark made by the legendary Colonel Bigeard after watching Creasy retake a position at Dien Bien Phu: "The most effective soldier I have ever seen."

  So Guido took the advice to heart and modeled himself on his sergeant, and by the time the battle of Algiers started in January '57 he had made his mark and had been promoted to Legionnaire first class. A year later he too was an NCO and the friendship between the two men had grown into a recognizable pact. It had been a slow process, for both had long emotional antennae and these probed carefully. They were at first unaware of the process. Few words were exchanged, and these related almost entirely to military subjects, but as Guido's knowledge increased, the conversations became less teacher-to-pupil dialogues and more discussions between equals. Both noticed also that the silences between them were never oppressive or strained, and it was this that brought the surprising realization to each that he had found a friend.