Free Honoured Society by Norman Lewis Page B

most of the Mafia chieftains who had escaped the worst effects of the repression having at least judged it better, for the time being, to lie low. From this time on until the coming of the Allies in 1943, the peasants had a better time of it than most of them had ever known before. At least it became possible to argue with a landlord over the terms of a contract without running the risk of being knocked on the head and thrown down some deep fissure in the earth, or into one of those disused mine-shafts favoured by the Mafia for use as a cemetery.
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    Mori had succeeded in landing one huge fish, and thereby unknowingly advancing Calogero Vizzini to the final pinnacle of authority in the Honoured Society. His catch was Don Vito Cascio Ferro, who had been acknowledged head of the Mafia for twenty-five years and was the most spectacular delinquent in Sicilian history.
    Don Vito had emigrated in his youth to the United States, where hehad become one of the most active members of the ‘Black Hand’ – an amalgamation of fugitives from the Mafia, the Camorra of Naples, and a less-known Calabrian criminal society, who had intelligently adapted themselves to the changed social and political conditions of the New World. Quite unlike such roughcast Mafia personalities as Don Ciccio of Piana dei Greci and the slovenly Don Calò Vizzini, Don Vito was always meticulous in his appearance, affecting since his return from the States a dashing anachronism of dress, which included a frock-coat, wide-brimmed fedora, pleated shirt, and flowing cravat. By the time Mori came on the scene, Don Vito had added to the immense dignity of his presence by the possession of a long white beard. He was a favourite of high society who frequented Palermo’s most glittering salons. He was in demand to open exhibitions of the saccharine watercolours of the Neapolitan school, romped with dukes and duchesses in party games of musical chairs, listened with reverence to famous actors giving poetry readings from Leopardi, or to the latest long-playing cylinder of Donauwellen on Mr Edison’s new phonograph, dressed himself fashionably in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket to shoot thrushes in distinguished company, and joined aristocratic parties to pelt the children of the poor with cakes and sweets on All Souls’ Eve. Women of gentle birth spoke of the strange magnetic force with which a room seemed charged when Don Vito was present, and he once administered a severe admonition to his barber for selling the clippings of his hair to a maker of amulets.
    Although he had been acquitted of implication in 69 major crimes, twenty of them homicides, Don Vito only admitted to – and indeed boasted of – having taken one man’s life. ‘My action was a disinterested one,’ he used to say, ‘and in response to a challenge I could not afford to ignore.’ The victim was Jack Petrosino, an American detective engaged on an investigation into the Black Hand. Petrosino’s researches in the Chicago underworld had convinced him of a liaison existing between the American secret society and the Mafia, and this induced him in 1909 to volunteer to go to Sicily to study the methods of the most important of the parent organisations on the spot. Petrosino was accompanied by two American criminals, associates of the Black Hand, who had agreedthrough their Sicilian contacts to assist the detective in his researches, and who probably disclosed his plans to the Mafia in advance.
    On the evening of the day that Petrosino’s ship docked at Palermo, Don Vito was dining as usual with an influential member of Palerman society, this time a member of parliament. At a certain moment he pretended to have remembered a most important matter that he had forgotten to attend to before leaving home, and asked to be excused for a short time. Borrowing his host’s carriage, Don Vito had himself driven to the Piazza Marina, near the port. At about that time Petrosino had left his hotel nearby,