“I’ll try to find out.”
“Second, I want you to go to Palermo right away—tomorrow, in fact—and talk to the handwriting expert that Olcese consulted. You need to ask him only one question. Be sure to write this down: Is it possible for someone to successfully write something so that it appears falsified? That’s all for today.”
Nicolò Zito was a highly intelligent man, and it took him about ten seconds to grasp the meaning of the question he was supposed to ask the expert.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed.
The monster was plastered, as they say, all over the front pages. Most of the newspapers—since the story by now had gone nationwide—dwelt on the personality of Giacomo Larussa, an impeccable teacher, according to the school’s headmaster, fellow teachers, and pupils, and at the same time a ruthless killer who like a snake had insinuated himself back into his brother’s life at a moment of weakness and regained his trust only to murder him in hideous fashion, motivated by the most squalid self-interest. The mass media had already reached their verdict—at this point a trial would seem like a pointless ritual.
The inspector could feel his liver gnawing away at him as he read these articles of conviction without appeal, but he still had nothing in hand that might enable him to affirm the incredible truth that he had intuited the night before.
Late that evening, Nicolò Zito finally called.
“I just got back. But I’ve got a bombshell.”
“Let’s have it.”
“I’ll go one step at a time. Palillo knows the reason for the hatred between the two brothers—because that’s what it was. His client, as he likes to call him, told him all about it. It goes like this: Alberto Larussa never fell from a horse thirty-one years ago, as everyone in town thinks. That’s just a rumor that their father, Angelo, put into circulation to hide the truth. Apparently the brothers had a terrible argument and came to blows, and Alberto fell down a flight of stairs, injuring his spine. He said Giacomo pushed him. Giacomo for his part said that Alberto had slipped. The father tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug with the story of the horse, but he punished Giacomo in his will by subordinating him, in a sense, to Alberto. To me the story rings true.”
“To me too. And what did the handwriting expert say?”
“The handwriting expert, whom I had trouble approaching, was baffled, mystified by my question and actually started stammering. But to make a long story short, he said that one could, in fact, answer the question in the affirmative. And he added something very interesting. He said that no matter how much one tried to falsify one’s own handwriting, a very careful examination would, in the end, expose the deception. And so I asked him whether he’d conducted such a careful examination, and he answered, quite frankly, no. And do you know why? Because the question put to him by the assistant prosecutor was whether Alberto Larussa’s handwriting had been falsified, and not whether Alberto Larussa had falsified his own handwriting. Do you see the subtle difference?”
Montalbano didn’t answer. He was thinking of another task to assign his friend.
“Listen, you absolutely have to find out the exact date when Alberto fell down the stairs.”
“Why, is it important?”
“Yes, or at least I think so.”
“Well, I already know it. It happened on the thirteenth of April . . .”
He suddenly fell silent. Montalbano could hear Nicolò breathing heavily.
“Oh, Christ!” Nicolò muttered.
“So, have you done the math?” Montalbano asked. “The incident occurred on the thirteenth of April thirty-one years ago. Alberto Larussa died—whether by his own hand or another’s—on the thirteenth of April thirty-one years later. And the number thirty-one is simply the number thirteen backwards.”
“Larussa left the book by Potocki next to the electric chair as a challenge—challenging people to understand,” said Montalbano.
He was at the Trattoria San Calogero with Nicolò, savoring superfresh mullets in tomato sauce.
“To understand what?” asked Nicolò.
“You see, when Potocki first started filing the ball from his teapot, he was calculating time: I will go on living until the ball is small enough to fit into the pistol’s barrel, he said to himself. Alberto Larussa wanted to have his revenge exactly thirty-one years later, on the same day, April the thirteenth. A calculation of time, just like Potocki. An allotment. You look perplexed. What is it?”
“Well, I’m just wondering,” said Nicolò. “Why didn’t Alberto Larussa take revenge thirteen years after his fall?”
“I was wondering the same thing. Maybe something made this impossible, maybe their father was still alive and would have known the truth. We can investigate it, if you like. But the fact remains that he had to wait all these years.”
“So how do we proceed now?”
“In what sense?”
“What do you mean, ‘In what sense?’ Are we just going to tell each other all these stories and let Giacomo Larussa rot in jail?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Bah, I dunno . . . Go and tell Lieutenant Olcese everything. He seems like a good person.”
“He would laugh in your face.”
“Why?”
“Because what we say are just words—wind, hot air. What’s needed is evidence to bring to court, and we don’t have any. Get that through your head.”
“And so?”
“Let me think it over tonight.”
Wearing his usual television-viewing outfit—that is, Guinea tee, underpants, and barefoot—he slipped the cassette Nicolò had made for him the previous day into the VCR, fired up a cigarette, got comfortable in the armchair, and turned the tape on. When he’d reached the end, he rewound the whole thing and ran it again. He repeated the procedure three times, carefully studying the objects that had been used to turn the wheelchair into an electric chair.
When his eyelids started drooping from fatigue, he turned off the set, got up and went into the bedroom, opened the top drawer of the dresser, grabbed a box, and went and sat back down in the armchair. In the box was a splendid tiepin poor Alberto Larussa had given him. He looked at it a long time, holding it in his hand all the while, then turned the videotape back on. Then suddenly he turned the VCR off, put the box back in the drawer, and looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. It took him twenty seconds to overcome his reluctance. He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Ciao, amore. Salvo here.”
“Oh my god, Salvo, what is it?” a worried Livia asked in a voice thick with sleep.
“I need you to do me a favor. I’m sorry, but it’s very important. What do you have of Alberto Larussa’s?”
“A ring, two brooches, a bracelet, and two pairs of earrings. They’re magnificent. I took them out a little while ago, when I learned that he’d died. My God, how terrible! To be killed in that gruesome way by your own brother!”
“Things may not be what they seem, Livia.”
“What do you mean?!”
“I’ll explain later. What I want you to do is describe to me the objects you have—not so much their form, but the materials used. Got that?”
“No.”
“Come on, Livia, it’s perfectly clear! For example, how thick is the iron or copper wire or whatever it is?”
It wasn’t even seven in the morning when Montalbano’s phone rang.
“So, Salvo, what did you decide to do?”
“Look, Nicolò, we can only move in one direction, but it’ll be like walking a tightrope.”
“Which means we’re in deep shit.”
“Yes, but only up to our chests. We have at least one move we can make before we’re completely submerged in it. The only person who can tell us anything new concerning what we suspect is Giacomo Larussa. You should phone his lawy
er and tell him to have Giacomo tell him in minute detail what happened during his three visits with Alberto. Everything that happened. Even if a fly flew past. What rooms they went into, what they ate, what they talked about. Even the minutiae, even stuff that seems irrelevant. I mean it. Let him get a brain hernia from the effort.”
“Dear Mr. Zito,” began the letter from Palillo the lawyer to Nicolò, “I am sending you an exact transcription of my client’s account of his three visits to his brother, which took place on the 2nd, the 8th, and the 13th of April of the current year.”
The lawyer was an orderly, precise man, despite an appearance that made him one of Disney’s three little pigs.
On the first visit, on the second of April, Alberto had done nothing but apologize and express regret for having so stubbornly kept his brother away for so long. There was no point anymore in going over the mishap, no point in trying to determine calmly whether he had slipped or Giacomo had pushed him. Let’s bury the hatchet, he said. On top of everything else, he said he was as lonely as a dog and had no one to love, and he was getting sick and tired of the situation. And he suffered from bouts of depression—which had never happened before—where he would sit in his wheelchair for entire days without doing a thing. Sometimes he would close the shutters and just sit there thinking. Thinking of what? Giacomo asked him. That my life is a failure, Alberto replied. And then he took him into his workshop for a visit, showing him the things he was working on and giving him a magnificent watch chain. The visit had lasted three hours, from three to six p.m.
The second meeting, on the eighth of the month, was almost a carbon copy of the first. This time, the present was a tiepin. But Alberto’s depression had clearly worsened, and at moments Giacomo had the impression that he was struggling to hold back his tears. Duration of the visit: two and a half hours, from four p.m. to six-thirty. They parted with the agreement that Giacomo would return on the thirteenth at lunchtime and stay at least until eight o’clock.
The account of the last visit, which took place on the thirteenth, contained some differences. Giacomo arrived a bit early and found his brother in a terrible mood and quite agitated. He’d taken it out on the maid in the kitchen and had even thrown a frying pan on the floor in rage. He was muttering to himself the whole time and hardly said a word to Giacomo. Just before noon, somebody came to the door and Alberto chewed out the maid for not going to see who it was. Giacomo went to the door instead: It was a deliveryman for a private courier with a very large parcel. Giacomo signed for his brother and managed to read the printed address of the sender on the form glued to the package. Alberto practically tore the parcel out of his hands and then clutched it to his chest as if it were some cherished living thing. When Giacomo asked him what it was that could be so important, Alberto didn’t answer, saying only that he’d given up hope that it would arrive in time. In time for what? “In time for something I have to do before the day is over,” was the reply. Then he’d gone down to his workshop to put the package away, but didn’t invite his brother to join him. Giacomo was keen to underscore the fact that that time he didn’t go into the workshop. From the moment the parcel arrived, Alberto’s attitude had changed completely. Now in a more normal mood, he apologized profusely to his brother and even the housekeeper—who, after serving them lunch, had cleared the table, cleaned up the kitchen, and left around three p.m. During lunch neither brother drank even so much as a drop of wine—a point that Giacomo was keen to emphasize, as they were both teetotalers. Alberto invited his brother to lie down for about an hour and had had a bed prepared for him in the guest room. He would do the same and have a nap. Giacomo got up around four-thirty, went into the kitchen, and found Alberto already there, having made coffee for him. Giacomo found him quite affectionate but almost melancholy, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He never once made any reference to the misfortune of thirty-one years earlier, as Giacomo had feared. They spent a nice afternoon together, talking about the past, their parents, their relatives. Whereas Alberto had distanced himself from everyone, Giacomo had maintained relations with all, especially their mother’s very elderly sister, Zia Ernestina. Alberto suddenly took a keen interest in this aunt, whom he’d literally forgotten about, asking how things were going, how her health was, and going so far as to offer to give her substantial financial assistance through Giacomo himself. And so they’d gone on until eight p.m., when Giacomo got back in his car to return to Palermo. When saying good-bye they’d agreed to meet again later that month, on the twenty-fifth. As for the name and address of the parcel’s sender, Giacomo had tried hard to recall it, but wasn’t able. It might have been something like Roberti (or maybe Goberti, or Foberti or Romerti, or maybe even Roserti) Inc., Seveso. That it was sent from Seveso, Giacomo was absolutely certain. In his early years as a teacher he’d had a brief relationship with a colleague from that town.
Worried that news of his parallel investigation might leak out, the inspector went in person to the post office, which, as a public telephoning center, had phone books for the entire country. So . . . in Seveso, there was a Fausto Roberti, dentist; Giovanni Roberti, a dermatologist; and there was a certain Ruberti Inc., which looked promising. He gave it a try. A woman answered in a singsong voice.
“Ruberti’s. What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling from Vigàta, Sicily. I’m Inspector Montalbano, police, and I need some information. What line of business is Ruberti, Inc. in?”
The woman had a moment of hesitation.
“Do you mean what do we produce?”
“Yes.”
“Electrical conductors.”
Montalbano pricked up his ears. Maybe he’d guessed right.
“Could I speak with the director of your sales department?”
“Ruberti is a small company, Inspector. I’ll put you through to Engineer Tani, who also handles sales.”
“Hello, Inspector? Tani here. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to know whether there’s been any recent purchases of materials of yours on the part of a certain Signor—”
“Just a second,” Tani interrupted him. “Are you talking about a private individual?”
“Yes.”
“Inspector, we don’t sell to individuals. Our products aren’t sent to electricity stores because they’re not intended for domestic use. What did you say this man’s name was?”
“Larussa. Alberto Larussa, from Ragona.”
“Oh!” said Engineer Tani.
Montalbano said nothing, waiting for the other to recover from his surprise.
“I heard about it on TV and in the newspapers,” said Tani. “What a terrible, insane way to go! Yes, Signor Larussa did call us to buy some Xeron 50, which he had read about in a magazine.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What is Xeron 50?”
“It’s a hyperconductor, our very own patent. In a few words, it’s a sort of energy multiplier. And very expensive. Larussa was so insistent, he was an artist and all, and so I sent him the fifty meters he’d asked for—which, you realize, is a derisory amount. But it never reached its destination.”
Montalbano gave a start.
“It never arrived?”
“Not the first time, no. He called us a few times asking about it. He even went so far as to send me a wonderful pair of earrings for my wife. So I had another fifty meters sent via Pony Express. And they, unfortunately, did reach their destination.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because on TV I saw all the macabre images of how he’d set up his electric chair. I’m referring specifically to the bracelets for the ankles and wrists, and the chest strap. One look was all I needed. He’d used our Xeron 50.”
He went into his office and had his second-in-command, Mimì Augello, take over for him. Then he went home, got undressed, put on his TV-viewing clothes, slipped in the cassette he’d already seen again a
nd again, sat down in the armchair equipped with a pen and a few sheets of graph paper, and set the tape going. It took him two hours to finish his task, either because it was objectively so hard to calculate or because he’d never been too good with numbers. He managed however to figure out how many loops of Xeron Larussa had needed to make the ankle braces, wrist bracelets, chest strap, and headset. By dint of cursing, sweating, crossing out, adding again, and rewriting, he convinced himself that Alberto Larussa had used about thirty meters of Xeron 50. Then he got up and summoned Nicolò Zito.
“You see, Nicolò, he absolutely needed that special wire for two reasons. The first was that it was very broad in circumference—for his art objects he used wire that was almost as fine as spiderwebs, and so anyone who knew him would say that the makeshift electric chair could not have been made by Alberto because it was too crude in design and the materials too thick. I fell for it, too. The second reason is that Alberto wanted to be absolutely certain he would be killed, and not just burned, by the electric chair. So he had to cover himself, and Xeron 50 was exactly what he needed. That was why his brother Giacomo found him in such a nervous state when he went there on the morning of the thirteenth: The package hadn’t arrived yet. Because he didn’t want to sit down in his electric chair without the Xeron 50. When Giacomo finally left around eight p.m., he worked like mad to set the whole scene up. And I’m convinced that he succeeded in killing himself before midnight.”
“So what should I do? Go to Lieutenant Olcese and tell him the whole story?”
“At this point, yes. Tell him everything. And tell him also that according to your calculations—your calculations, mind you—Alberto Larussa must have used about thirty meters of Xeron 50. Therefore there must still be another twenty or so meters of the same cable—probably charred from the fire, but still there. And I mean it: My name must not be mentioned. I have nothing to do with this; I don’t exist.”
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 21