Omerta - Deadly Silence by Eleanor Pari Eckardt

About the book

Boston, October, 1963. Harvard student, EMILIO TONELLA, leads a privileged life until his immigrant, rags-to-riches grandfather, MAURO TONELLA (aka NONNO), is discovered in the Boston Public Garden alongside his estranged compatriot, VINCENZO SCARPI. Both men have been shot. Emilio vows to clear Nonno's name and leaves school to unravel his grandfather's double life shielded by the Italian code of silence (omerta).

At the cemetery, a blackmailer claims Nonno murdered a boy over forty years ago. Scarpi's grandson, FRANK, screams at Emilio to settle a vendetta. A mysterious nun glides in and out of the cemetery before Emilio can talk to her.

Emilio's probing uncovers events at Nantucket that happened decades ago between three people who shared a secret too terrible to tell (Nonno, Vincenzo Scarpi, and the nun -- his grandfather's fiancé). Emilio's family pressures him to leave the truth buried. The blackmailer humiliates Emilio in their initial confrontation. When Emilio questions ARTHUR KELLY, manager of Tonella Shoe Factories, Emilio is nearly burned alive in a suspicious factory fire. Police suspect Emilio of arson.

A harried Emilio returns to the scene of the double deaths to question a reluctant mute who witnessed the crimes. Emilio accuses Arthur of embezzling and directing GUIDO DE YESSO to commit arson for insurance. Too late. Guido has kidnapped Emilio's fiancé from her Radcliffe dorm to force Emilio back into silence.

Desperate, Emilio and Frank are called to the nun's deathbed to hear her confession about the Nantucket affair. She relives the party in Nantucket where her brother and Mauro could not prevent her sadistic multiple rape. On the return ferry, the two immigrants misidentify the rapist and murder an innocent young man. As Emilio had deduced, her confession also leads him to a secret room in Nonno's all-male Italian social club. United, Emilio and Frank rush to Beverly's rescue. In the ensuing battle, Emilio is wounded but captures the kidnapper and recovers Beverly unharmed.

Emilio invites the blackmailer to a gathering for out-of-work employees where Emilio meets privately with his family and shatters its code of silence forever. He retells the nun's tale and the mute's revelations that vindicate Nonno as a murderer and a suicide. After Emilio distributes employee severance checks, and announces Frank Scarpi as the new factory manager, Emilio gets the blackmailer off in a corner. Here, the blackmailer threatens to reveal that Emilio's real father is CARLO, the stepfather Emilio abhors. Emilio laughs at the blackmailer, and the man slinks from the tavern.

A month later, Emilio learns Arthur has skipped the country with Emilio's college fund. Emilio postpones marriage to Beverly and quits Harvard to help Frank run the business. Affected by JFK's tragedy, however, Emilio recognizes plans -- and lives -- can be smashed. He asks Beverly to elope with him ( a "white-collar pauper"). Beverly replies, "The carpenter's daughter accepts." Emilio has lost his inheritance and his innocence, but he has come of age, ready to fill his grandfather's shoes.

About the author

After I graduated from Fisher College for Women, in Boston, I soon married and made my home in California where I raised my son, now an artist. I worked in office administration until 1974 when the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation in Boca Raton, FL, made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

As Vice President, my communications to over six thousand employees fostered the policies that maintained the company's customer pledge to quality products and services. Sprinkled within this executive scenario, I "ghosted" C.E.O. speeches, authored consumer product pamphlets, wrote scripts for in-house training films, leader guides for corporate meetings, manufacturer written warranties, marketing buyer guidelines, correspondence to Better Business Bureaus, Attorneys General, and governmental agencies -- for over twenty years.

But after I retired (read that "downsized") in 1996, nothing was quite as delicious as learning the techniques of fiction -- and writing my first mystery/suspense novel that draws from my background growing up in Boston, my ethnic heritage, and my observations of the Italian male's iron will.