The Sacco Gang Read online

  He senses that there’s something going on, and this disturbs him.

  In fact, an unnatural silence reigns over the whole prison.

  It’s as if all the other inmates in the same cellblock were made to leave their cells and taken to another place.

  Vanni immediately suspects a ruse, a trap being laid to eliminate him.

  He thinks there must be someone lying in wait behind the door, who, upon seeing him come out of his cell, will shoot him in the back.

  Hiding behind this invitation to escape is surely a murder plot. Having dealt with his father, the Mafia now wants to get rid of him too.

  And all the other inmates were taken somewhere else so they couldn’t become troublesome witnesses.

  After a while, however, he can no longer refrain from taking action. The invitation of that door needing only the slightest of pushes to swing open is impossible to resist.

  He stands up, goes over to the door, opens it ever so slowly, one millimeter at a time, until it’s wide open. He feels himself drenched in sweat.

  There’s nobody in the hallway. The other cells are all empty.

  He proceeds to the end of the hall, where there’s a great barred gate. But this too is ajar!

  And hanging between a couple of bars are his clothes!

  He puts them on, descends one flight of stairs, at the bottom of which there’s another barred gate, which opens as soon as he lays his hand on it.

  A large courtyard beckons before him.

  There’s not a living soul about. Vanni decides to cross the courtyard slowly, one step at a time, as in a dream, waiting to be shot in the back at any moment and fall facedown to the ground, dead.

  At the far end of the courtyard is another barred gate beyond which is an open lobby, where there are usually a couple of prison guards posted.

  This time there’s nobody.

  Vanni now comes to the great main door of the prison, which looks as if it’s carefully bolted.

  His heart sinks. If the main door is locked, it means the whole thing was a dirty trick and that moments later the guards and other inmates will all suddenly appear and laugh at him.

  But at once he notices that from the small door cut into one the great wings of the main door, there’s a thread of light filtering in.

  He pushes the small door just enough to open it, and suddenly finds himself outside the prison.

  Not a guard in sight.

  Vanni puts his hands in his pockets and even finds a few coins in them.

  He’s free!

  He heads on foot for Raffadali.

  *

  This is Vanni’s account of his escape from prison. His brother Alfonso gives a different version of the story. He describes a classic textbook prison break. Perhaps he does so to protect the prison personnel—and there must have been a great many of them—who got together to make his brother’s getaway possible.

  “That morning the jailor, with the help of the Carabinieri, had the stonemasons repair a window in the cell suite where my brother was staying. They were replacing an iron grate. At midday, they took a break from work to go and have lunch, leaving the window unbarred and unguarded, since, according to the Carabinieri’s judgment, the window was too high for anybody to get out. But a bird will do all it can to escape its cage, and somehow a man is supposed to remain inside with an open door in front of him? And so, my brother, along with two other young men, climbed to the height of the window and escaped into the bright light of noon.”

  *

  At dawn on the morning after the getaway, Alfonso and Salvatore, sleeping together in a room above the stable, are awakened by some very faint tapping at the door.

  They think twice before going to open the door.

  It might be a Mafia trick.

  The knocking continues.

  And so they grab their weapons and Salvatore goes to answer, while Alfonso, staying hidden, levels his gun at the door.

  A moment later, dropping their weapons, they run and embrace Vanni.

  Their brother, however, fearing the Carabinieri might be tailing him, stays at the house only long enough to wash himself and eat.

  Then, after equipping himself with provisions, the ’91 Carcano, and a revolver, he hugs his brothers and heads towards the Palombaia mountain, which he knows as well as the insides of his pockets.

  He’s the family’s first fugitive from justice.

  VI

  THE COMPULSORY FUGITIVE

  Alfonso and Salvatore are working in the fields.

  It’s early June, less than a week since Vanni took to the Palombaia mountain to hide out.

  In the intense heat, the two brothers hear a long whistle that breaks off abruptly, followed by two short whistles.

  This is the pre-arranged signal.

  The person whistling is a friend who stands guard atop a small hill from which one can see the trail. He’s signaling that someone is approaching.

  The two brothers run to get their weapons, which they always keep within reach, hidden under a bundle of hay, but find themselves suddenly surrounded by eight carabinieri, four on foot and four on horseback, under the command of the usual marshal.

  Alfonso and Salvatore immediately put the weapons back under the hay.

  The marshal stands idly by, doffing his cap and wiping the sweat from his brow.

  Alfonso and Salvatore pretend to be perplexed to see him, as if wondering why he’s there, whereas they know perfectly well what the marshal is about to ask them.

  Indeed:

  “Do you know where your brother Giovanni is?”

  “Yessir,” Alfonso replies promptly.

  “Then tell me.”

  “He’s in jail, in Aragona,” says Alfonso.

  Which is in fact where he’s supposed to be.

  It’s clearly absurd, but, if one really thinks about it, Alfonso could not have answered any other way.

  There was never any official announcement of the prison break, no orders issued in connection with it. There’s not even any mention of it in the prison documents.

  The marshal, who learned of the escape indirectly, has gone out in search of a fugitive who theoretically cannot be a fugitive because, since he cannot be shown to have escaped, he must still be in jail.

  “Don’t you know he’s at large?”

  “How can he be at large if he’s in prison?”

  The marshal, however, is not pleased.

  “All right, Alfonso, if you don’t convince Vanni to turn himself in within three days’ time, I’ll revoke your gun permit.”

  Alfonso flies off the handle.

  “Oh, no you don’t! You know damn well that we can’t come out to the country unarmed! It’s a death sentence!”

  “Then you’ll have to stop coming out to the country.”

  Alfonso begins to see red.

  “Are you kidding me? We can’t just drop everything out here. And those guys’ll kill us as soon as they find out we’re unarmed! I swear, the day you take away our gun permits, I’m going straight up the mountain to keep my brother company!”

  “Suit yourself,” says the marshal.

  Three days later, punctual as ever, he returns and makes Alfonso return the permit.

  “You’ve been warned. As of this moment, if I find you carrying a weapon, I’m going to arrest you.”

  “Can you tell me at least why you’re revoking my right?” Alfonso asks him.

  “First of all, because you’re the brother of a fugitive, and secondly, because you refuse to cooperate with the law.”

  “Then why haven’t you revoked Peppe Panarisi’s license? His brother is a fugitive from the law after killing a marshal of the Carabinieri, one of your own! He’s not co-operating with you either. And yet he still goes around with a gun and with your approval! Wh
ereas my brother Vanni has never killed anyone!”

  “I have my orders,” the marshal says, by way of justification.

  “From whom?” Alfonso asks.

  The marshal looks at him and says nothing.

  The fact is that Fascism has been in power in Italy for almost a year now. And the Fascists of Raffadali don’t like the idea of Vanni Sacco the Socialist going around the countryside free and armed.

  *

  And that very day, just as he promised, Alfonso grabs his rifle and revolver and goes up the mountain to join Vanni.

  Alfonso pointedly comments in sadness:

  “That was how I became a fugitive: not for armed robbery or murder, but by the will of a guardian of the law.”

  A compulsory fugitive, like a soldier conscripted to serve.

  And so, the two brothers, with no blood whatsoever on their hands, utterly innocent of any crime, now find themselves hunted equally by the Mafia and the Carabinieri.

  *

  One day in mid-June, as the sun is beginning to set, Vanni and Alfonso are heading on horseback for the hut a friend has offered them as a hideout, when they happen to pass by a farmstead that looks deserted.

  The front door is actually broken, hanging from its hinges, the courtyard an expanse of weeds.

  The moment they enter it, however, some ten armed men on horseback burst out of the farmhouse and immediately open fire on them.

  They’ve clearly been set up, by the very man who’d offered them refuge in the hut and who they’d believed was a true friend.

  Alfonso and Vanni wildly take to their heels and under a hail of bullets manage to reach a hilltop with a few small trees, where they jump down from their horses and immediately start returning fire.

  It’s a massive ambush by the mafiosi, who are utterly determined to eliminate the two brothers once and for all.

  At this point, however, it should be added that Vanni is a marksman without peer. If he can squarely hit a coin tossed in the air with one shot of the revolver, imagine what he can do with a Carcano!

  He has never missed a shot.

  And, in fact, a first shot strikes one of the assailants in the shoulder, another hobbles a poor horse, and a third, this one from Alfonso, hits one of the men in the thigh.

  After thinking they’d had the game already won, the attackers, discouraged and worried about Vanni’s frightening aim, withdraw.

  They don’t even know that Vanni and Alfonso were not shooting to kill.

  *

  Now, however, after the ambush, the two brothers have become convinced that simply defending themselves is not enough. They must mount a counterattack.

  There’s no guarantee that luck will remain on their side, as it has been so far, if they continue merely reacting and fighting back defensively.

  Will this consideration eventually translate into concrete actions, or will it remain only a resolution?

  Later on, the legal reality will tell one story, the Sacco brothers’ reality another, completely opposite one.

  But facts are facts.

  Shortly after the failed ambush at the farmstead, the first Mafia boss of Raffadali is murdered.

  VII

  DEATH OF THE FIRST MAFIA BOSS

  On July 7, 1923, shortly before the sun dips below the horizon, Giuseppe Cuffaro, farm overseer for the Baron Pasciuto, decides that it’s time to return to his home in town.

  He gets on his horse, adjusts the rifle he always carries with him, and heads off.

  There’s really no need for him to go around with a weapon, since nobody who knows him would ever try to threaten him; but it’s a habit he’s had since his youth, when he didn’t yet enjoy the respect he has today, at the age of fifty.

  It’s a very hot evening, and every so often Cuffaro raises the cap on his head to run his sleeve across his brow and mop away the sweat.

  A bullet from a ’91 Carcano strikes him right in the middle of the forehead, as he’s raising his cap for the very last time.

  It was as though he himself had indicated the target to the sharpshooter.

  Spooked by the shot, his horse throws him from the saddle and gallops away.

  Then, a minute later, two more shots strike the lifeless body on the ground.

  But they’re merely shots fired in order to be certain, to make sure he’d been snuffed out.

  *

  When the news reaches Raffadali, it makes more noise than a bomb.

  Given the present state of affairs, one killing more or less wouldn’t normally make much difference. But this is another matter. The Mafia’s supreme chief in the area has been snuffed out. Indeed, in the eyes of some people, the act begins to take on the appearance of sacrilege.

  The man who was killed was fierce and ruthless, had a great many murders on his conscience, and kept the entire town under his control. But he could boast of having many friends both in high and low places, as well as dozens of men, just as savage as him, at his command.

  His death is sure to spark cries for vengeance.

  Whoever killed him can rest assured that someone will try to kill him in turn.

  Therefore, to commit such an act requires tremendous courage, not to mention the confidence of knowing how to dodge the inevitable campaign of revenge.

  For this reason, everybody who is anybody in town already thinks that the only man capable of doing such a thing is Vanni Sacco, who, on top of everything else, had plenty of good reasons to do it.

  As soon as the crime occurs, however, Vanni and Alfonso are quick to tell everyone that they had nothing to do with it.

  But when the monumental funeral for Cuffaro (with almost everyone in town attending) passes under the windows of the Saccos’ house, everyone following the casket raises their eyes to look up.

  The windows are all shuttered.

  *

  The Carabinieri share the people’s convictions without the slightest doubt. It never even crosses their minds that anyone else might have been behind the killing.

  And yet a Mafia boss like Cuffaro would certainly have had plenty of enemies. A man like that, who over the course of his life did nothing but visit grief and ruin upon other people.

  The Carabinieri are perfectly aware of this, but they also know that no one in town would ever have had the courage to do such a thing—nobody, that is, but the Sacco brothers.

  And what a shot, the one that killed him! Right between the eyes!

  Therefore, the first thing they do is arrest Salvatore, Vin­cenzo, and Girolamo as accessories to murder, and charge Vanni and Alfonso (the two fake fugitives) as being the material executors of the crime.

  But they need proof.

  Not an easy thing to find.

  The only person who happened to be in the vicinity when the killing occurred is a peasant by the name of Vincenzo Galvano.

  “What did you hear?”

  “First one shot, then two more.”

  “Did you hear any shouts or cries?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Yessir. After the shots, I seen two people runnin’ down the trail.”

  “How far away?”

  “’Bout two hunnert yards.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “No sir. I have trachomatous conjunctivitis.”

  Everybody knows that Vincenzo Galvano has problems seeing, also because he goes periodically to the eye doctor. So it’s not just the typical case of someone lying to the Carabinieri.

  “Can’t you tell us anything more about them?”

  “No sir.”

  Then he adds:

  “But they musta been young fellers, ’cause they was runnin’ fast.”

  The significance of these words is immediately clear to the Carabinieri.

>   Two young men running fast.

  Aren’t Vanni and Alfonso Sacco still young?

  That was enough.

  All five Sacco brothers are brought to justice.

  Alfonso writes about their relations with Cuffaro the overseer:

  “We had good relations with him. Every farmer had an interest in maintaining friendly relations with members of the Mafia, particularly the overseers, because one hoped in this way to avoid trouble. On his way back to town from the baron’s domain, Cuffaro would often pass by our farmstead, and we would provide him with suddra grass for his horse. At the moment of harvesting wheat and other grains at his domain, he would invite many other farmers to help out, and sometimes my brother Giovanni would join their number, bringing along our mules, and help transport the harvest into town. Nobody ever dared refuse the overseer this kind of favor.”

  Unfortunately for Alfonso—who was a highly intelligent man who learned in prison how to read good books (from Plutarch and Dante to Settembrini and Hugo) and how to think about them—this is not a very well-chosen defense.

  His account gives us a picture of an overbearing overseer who not only has them feed his horse for free, but also has Vanni harvest and transport his share of the baron’s grains into town, also for free.

  “We did this to avoid worse problems,” writes Alfonso.

  But when worse problems actually did arise, from the actions of Cuffaro and his friends, might not the memory of these abuses constitute a good further motive for eliminating the overseer?

  The Saccos’ trial was held in Palermo barely six months later.

  But there was no substantial evidence against them.

  And they were all acquitted.

  This acquittal merely increased the respect and admiration the people of Raffadali felt for the Saccos. The common opinion was that they had been so clever and shrewd in their murder of Cuffaro that they had left no trace of the deed, no evidence whatsoever.

  VIII

  AMBUSHES, BETRAYALS, AND TRAGIC MISTAKES