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“I can’t tell you that, either.”
“I hope he wasn’t a friend. You don’t have enough friends to start doing them in.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You meanhewasn’t. You killed a human being.”
Franco had thought he’d put the deed behind him, but Roberto wasn’t helping.
“Did Baron Zito have something to do with it?”
“No,” Franco lied.
“So your trip to Bagheria was coincidental? And the horse?”
“Yes.”
Roberto lifted an eyebrow. “But when I woke up that morning, no one knew where you were.”
“I don’t report to my men, they report to me.”
“Why did you go to Bagheria?”
“I report to the Baron routinely. He expects to hear about hisgiardinoface-to-face. You haven’t been here long enough to know.”
Roberto fell silent a minute. “The man you killed looked young.”
“He was. He had no family.”
“Does that make it better or worse?” Roberto shook his head. “Now he’ll never know life’s pleasures, like finding out your twin is a murderer.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
Roberto scoffed. “If you murder someone, you’re a murderer.”
“A murderer is someone who does it routinely.”
“No, that’s a monster.”
Franco swallowed hard.
Roberto sighed. “I’m leaving Palermo.”
“Why?” Franco asked, dismayed. “Because of this? Please, don’t. I need you here, I want you here, and it’s good for you, too.”
“Is it good for me? With you keeping secrets?” Roberto looked directly at Franco. “There are only two possibilities. The first is that you killed a man for your own reasons. The second is that you killed a man for the Baron and he gave you a horse for your trouble.”
“If I tell you, I’m afraid you’ll go.”
“I’ll go if you don’t. Telling me is the only chance I stay.”
“What if it’s worse than you know?” Franco was thinking of the boy in the madhouse.
“Then I’ll make the decision.”
So Franco began the story, and by the time he had finished, they had almost reached the village. “Well, what’s your decision? Will you stay or go back to Bronte?”
Roberto looked flinty-eyed and impassive. “I don’t know. I have to think it over.”
