other hand, Riina liked people to know that he didn’t care how many he had to kill as long as he got his way. When he met the woman he loved, a teacher from Corleone, he told a friend, ‘If they won’t let me marry her, I’m going to have to kill some people.’
The man they called
u curtu
(‘Shorty’) spread fear. He had no problem condemning his allies to death. On the least suspicion of betrayal, or a notion that someone else had more charisma and might outshine him, he would order an execution. Riina had inherited from Liggio a small private army of killers, who were not all based in Corleone, or even Palermo, but planted in the different families in other parts of Italy. The secretive manner of his infiltration made him greatly feared.
We assume that Riina had taken the commanding role. ‘Put simply’, says assistant prosecutor Alfonso Sabella, ‘in Cosa Nostra, whoever has military force has the power. Provenzano had political contacts, but that never held sway in the Mafia.’
But the balance of power between them was very complex. There is some disagreement about whether the two men’s mentor and boss, Luciano Liggio, favoured Riina or Provenzano. He reportedly stoodup in court and said, pointing to Riina, ‘He is close to my heart.’ When asked about Provenzano, he said: ‘I know he’s from my home town, but I don’t know him.’
Buscetta suggested that this was deliberately misleading: that Provenzano was keeping out of the limelight, operating as Liggio’s deputy while allowing Riina to attract all the attention. He portrayed Provenzano as an inscrutable loner who increased his power and charisma by being elusive. ‘Provenzano would give people the run-around’, he recalled. ‘He was quite capable of giving someone an appointment at the top of a mountain. After walking for a whole day, the man would get to the appointed place – and find no one there. While he was walking back down, the fellow would meet one of Provenzano’s men coming the other way, who informed him that the appointment would be postponed for a few weeks. And he’d tell him where to meet – somewhere completely different, maybe even a different province. The man would get there at last – and again no Provenzano. This would happen three or four times. Months would pass in which no one would see Provenzano, then suddenly he’d pop up when people were least expecting it. He has always liked to keep people guessing.’
In their judgement in 1992 on the murder of senior police investigator Emanuele Basile, who was shot in the back while he carried his four-year-old daughter in his arms, magistrates had already identified Riina’s role as the executioner, the man of action, as distinct from Provenzano, the business brain.
‘Cosa Nostra has a financial empire run by extremely competent individuals’, said judge Antonino Caponetto. ‘It’s unthinkable that Riina could be running the whole thing. Riina is in charge of the armed wing of Cosa Nostra, while the organization, the powerful economic side, is run most successfully by others, with profits running into millions of billions of lire.’
Provenzano was acquitted of Basile’s murder on the grounds that he would have been too busy running Cosa Nostra’s financial affairs to have been bothered with messy matters like this. ‘We only have to consider’, reads the sentence, ‘all the acquisitions made by various companies owned by the Corleonesi to understand how, in aconvenient division of labour, it’s Provenzano who represents the reference point for all the clans’ investments.’
Provenzano had an important part to play, the judges concluded, but Riina was the ‘true architect of the new bloody terror strategy’. While Provenzano looked after contacts with politicians and industrialists, Riina took care of territorial control.
‘There’s no reason he shouldn’t have done it without my knowing,’ Brusca later told investigators, ‘but as far as
The man they called
u curtu
(‘Shorty’) spread fear. He had no problem condemning his allies to death. On the least suspicion of betrayal, or a notion that someone else had more charisma and might outshine him, he would order an execution. Riina had inherited from Liggio a small private army of killers, who were not all based in Corleone, or even Palermo, but planted in the different families in other parts of Italy. The secretive manner of his infiltration made him greatly feared.
We assume that Riina had taken the commanding role. ‘Put simply’, says assistant prosecutor Alfonso Sabella, ‘in Cosa Nostra, whoever has military force has the power. Provenzano had political contacts, but that never held sway in the Mafia.’
But the balance of power between them was very complex. There is some disagreement about whether the two men’s mentor and boss, Luciano Liggio, favoured Riina or Provenzano. He reportedly stoodup in court and said, pointing to Riina, ‘He is close to my heart.’ When asked about Provenzano, he said: ‘I know he’s from my home town, but I don’t know him.’
Buscetta suggested that this was deliberately misleading: that Provenzano was keeping out of the limelight, operating as Liggio’s deputy while allowing Riina to attract all the attention. He portrayed Provenzano as an inscrutable loner who increased his power and charisma by being elusive. ‘Provenzano would give people the run-around’, he recalled. ‘He was quite capable of giving someone an appointment at the top of a mountain. After walking for a whole day, the man would get to the appointed place – and find no one there. While he was walking back down, the fellow would meet one of Provenzano’s men coming the other way, who informed him that the appointment would be postponed for a few weeks. And he’d tell him where to meet – somewhere completely different, maybe even a different province. The man would get there at last – and again no Provenzano. This would happen three or four times. Months would pass in which no one would see Provenzano, then suddenly he’d pop up when people were least expecting it. He has always liked to keep people guessing.’
In their judgement in 1992 on the murder of senior police investigator Emanuele Basile, who was shot in the back while he carried his four-year-old daughter in his arms, magistrates had already identified Riina’s role as the executioner, the man of action, as distinct from Provenzano, the business brain.
‘Cosa Nostra has a financial empire run by extremely competent individuals’, said judge Antonino Caponetto. ‘It’s unthinkable that Riina could be running the whole thing. Riina is in charge of the armed wing of Cosa Nostra, while the organization, the powerful economic side, is run most successfully by others, with profits running into millions of billions of lire.’
Provenzano was acquitted of Basile’s murder on the grounds that he would have been too busy running Cosa Nostra’s financial affairs to have been bothered with messy matters like this. ‘We only have to consider’, reads the sentence, ‘all the acquisitions made by various companies owned by the Corleonesi to understand how, in aconvenient division of labour, it’s Provenzano who represents the reference point for all the clans’ investments.’
Provenzano had an important part to play, the judges concluded, but Riina was the ‘true architect of the new bloody terror strategy’. While Provenzano looked after contacts with politicians and industrialists, Riina took care of territorial control.
‘There’s no reason he shouldn’t have done it without my knowing,’ Brusca later told investigators, ‘but as far as
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