“What was that? I didn’t hear.”
“I said I was wondering something. As you know, I’m still convalescing, and was called back into service only because—”
“I know, I know. And so?”
“So could I be exempted from attending the press conference? I’m a bit tired out.”
Lattes couldn’t hide how happy the inspector’s request made him. Montalbano was always considered a loose cannon at these official functions.
“But of course! Of course! Take good care of yourself, dear friend. But consider yourself on duty until further notice.”
Surely someone had already thought of writing The Perfect Investigator’s Handbook. It had to exist, since there was, after all, a Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook. And it was certainly written by Americans, who were capable of publishing handbooks on how to put buttons in buttonholes. Montalbano, however, had never seen such a handbook. Nevertheless, somewhere in such a book the writer must surely recommend that the sooner the investigator inspects a crime scene, the better. That is, before the elements—rain, wind, sun, man, animals—so alter the scene that the telltale signs, already barely perceptible, become indecipherable.
Based on what Mr. Luna had told him, Montalbano—alone among the investigators—knew where Peruzzo had left the ransom money. It was his duty, he reasoned, to inform Minutolo of this fact at once. Surely the kidnappers had spent a long time hiding in the area around the overpass on the road to Brancato, first making sure there were no policemen lying in ambush, then waiting for Peruzzo’s car to arrive, and finally letting a bit more time pass to ensure that all was calm before coming out in the open and picking up the suitcase. And surely they had left some trace of their presence. It was therefore imperative to examine the site before the crime scene was altered (as per aforementioned Handbook).
Wait a second, he said to himself as his hand was picking up the telephone. What if Minutolo couldn’t go there immediately? Wasn’t it better to get in his car and have a first look himself? Just an initial, superficial inspection? If, then, he discovered anything important, he would alert Minutolo so a more thorough examination could be conducted.
Such was how he tried to quiet his conscience, which had been muttering to itself for some time. His consience, however, was stubborn. Not only would it not be silenced, but made its own feelings known.
No point in making excuses, Montalbà. You just want to screw Minutolo, now that the girl’s no longer in danger.
“Catarella!”
“Your orders, Chief!”
“Do you know the quickest way to Brancato?”
“Which Brancato, Chief? Upper Brancato or Lower Brancato?”
“Is it so big?”
“No sir. There’s just five hunnert nabitants till yesterday. Fact is, tho, that seeing as how Upper Brancato’s been falling down the mountainside below—”
“What do you mean? Are there landslides?”
“Yessir, so, seeing as how there’s what you just said there is, they hadda build a new town unner the mountin. But there’s fifty old folks din’t wanna leave their homes and so now the nabitants been nabitting all apart from nother wuther, wit four hunnert forty-nine b’low ’n’ fifty up top.”
“Wait a second. We’re missing one inhabitant.”
“Din’t I jes say there’s five hunnert till yesterday? Yesterday one of ’em died, Chief. My cussin Michele tol’ me. He lives out Lower Brancato way.”
Of course! How could Catarella not have a relative in that godforsaken village?
“Listen, Cat. If you’re driving from Palermo, which comes first, Upper or Lower Brancato?”
“Lower, Chief.”
“And how do you get there?”
The explanation was long and convoluted.
“Listen, Cat. If Inspector Minutolo rings, tell him to call me on the cell phone.”
He took the scorrimento veloce, the “expressway,” for Palermo, which was clogged with traffic. This was a perfectly ordinary two-lane road, slightly broader than normal, but, for no apparent reason, everyone considered it a kind of autostrada and therefore drove as though they were on an autostrada. Trucks passing trucks, cars racing at ninety miles an hour (since such was the speed limit a cabinet minister, the one ostensibly “in charge” of such matters, had set for the autostrade), tractors, motor scooters, rattletrap little pickups lost in a tide of mopeds. On both sides, right and left, the road was dotted with little slabs of stone adorned with bouquets of flowers—not for beauty’s sake, but to mark the exact spots where dozens of luckless wretches, in cars or on motorbikes, had lost their lives. A continuous commemoration—which nobody, however, gave a damn about.
He turned left at the third intersection. The road was paved but had no markings or signs. He would have to trust in Catarella’s directions. By now the landscape had changed. Low, rolling hills, a few vineyards. And not a trace of any villages. He hadn’t even crossed another car. He began to get worried. Most importantly, he didn’t see another living soul he might ask for directions. All at once he didn’t feel like proceeding any farther. But just as he was about to make a U-turn and head back to Vigàta, he saw a cart and horse coming towards him. He decided to ask the driver for help. He drove on a little, and when he was in front of the horse, he stopped, opened the car door, and got out.
“Good day,” he said to the driver.
The driver seemed not to have noticed the inspector. He merely looked straight ahead, reins in hand.
“Likewise,” he replied. Sixtyish and sunburnt, gaunt and dressed in fustian, he was wearing an absurd Borsalino on his head that must have dated back to the fifties.
But he made no motion to stop.
“I wanted to ask you for some information,” said Montalbano, walking beside him.
“Me?” asked the man, half surprised, half worried.
Who else, if not? The horse?
“Yes.”
“Ehhhhh,” said the man, pulling on the reins. The animal stopped.
The man said nothing and kept looking straight ahead. He was waiting to be asked the question.
“Listen, could you tell me how to get to Lower Brancato?”
Reluctantly, as though it cost him great effort, the man on the cart said:
“Keep going straight. Third road on the right. Good day. Ahhh!”
That ahhh was directed at the horse, which resumed walking.
Half an hour later, Montalbano saw something that looked like a cross between an overpass and a bridge appear in the distance. Unlike a bridge, it had no parapet, but large protective metal screens instead; and unlike an overpass, it was arched like a bridge. In the background loomed a hill on which a group of small, dicelike white houses sat impossibly balanced halfway down the slope. That had to be Upper Brancato, whereas nary a roof of the lower village was visible yet. Whatever the case, he must be close. Montalbano stopped the car about twenty yards from the overpass, got out, and started looking around. The road was distressingly empty. The only other vehicle he’d encountered since the junction was the cart. He’d also noticed a peasant hoeing. That was all. Once the sun went down and darkness fell, one probably couldn’t see anything along that road. There was no sort of lighting whatsoever, no houses that might give off a faint glow at night. So where had the kidnappers taken up position while waiting for Peruzzo’s car? And most importantly, how could they have known for certain that the car they saw was indeed Peruzzo’s and not another vehicle that by some miracle happened to be passing that way?
Around the overpass—the need for which remained unclear, as well as how or why it had occurred to anyone to build it—there were no bushes or walls to hide behind. Even in the dead of night, the site provided no cover that might prevent one from being seen in the headlights of a passing car. And so?
A dog barked. Spurred by the need to see another living being, Montalbano’s eyes scanned the surroundings, searching for it. He found it. It was at the start of the overpass on the right, and
he could only see its head. Maybe they’d built it just so dogs and cats could cross the road. Why not, since when it came to public works in Italy, the impossible often became possible? All at once the inspector realized that the kidnappers had hidden in the very spot where the dog was now.
He trudged through the brush, crossed a dirt road, and came to the point where the overpass began. It was hog-backed; that is, sharply curved. Someone who placed himself right at the start of the overpass could not be seen from the road below. He looked carefully down at the ground as the dog backed away, growling, but found nothing of interest, not even a cigarette butt. Then again, why would you find a cigarette butt lying about, now that everyone’s been scared to death of smoking by those warnings on packs that say things like “Smoking makes you die of cancer”? Even criminals have been giving up the vice, depriving poor policemen of essential clues. Maybe he should write a complaint to the minister of health.
He searched the opposite side of the viaduct as well. Nothing. He went back to the starting point and lay down on his stomach. He looked down below, pressing his head against the metal screen, and saw, almost vertically beneath him, a stone slab covering the opening to a small well. Seeing Peruzzo’s car approach, the kidnappers must certainly have climbed up the viaduct and done as he had done—that is, lain down on the ground. And from there, in the glare of the headlamps, they had watched Peruzzo lift the stone lid, place the suitcase in the well, and leave. That must surely be how it went. But he had not accomplished what he had set out to do in coming all the way out here. The kidnappers had left no trace.
He came down from the overpass and went underneath. He studied the slab covering the well. It looked too small for a suitcase to fit inside. He did some quick math: six billion lire equaled three million one hundred euros, more or less. If each wad contained one hundred bills of five hundred euros, that would make a total of sixty-two wads. Therefore they didn’t need a large suitcase. On the contrary. The slab was easy to lift, since it had a sort of iron ring attached to it. He stuck a finger inside the ring and pulled. The slab came off. Montalbano looked inside the well and gasped. There was a duffel bag inside, and it did not look empty. Was Peruzzo’s money still in it? Was it possible the kidnappers hadn’t picked it up? Then why had they freed the girl?
He knelt, reached down, and grabbed the bag, which was heavy, pulled it out, and set it down on the ground. Taking a deep breath, he opened it. It was filled with wads not of bills, but of glossy old magazine clippings.
14
The shock sort of pushed him backwards, knocking him down on his ass. Mouth open in astonishment, he began asking himself some questions. What did this discovery mean? That Engineer Peruzzo himself had filled the bag with scrap paper instead of euros? Was Peruzzo, as far as he knew, a man capable of taking the extreme sort of gamble that would endanger the life of his niece? After thinking about this a moment, he concluded that the engineer was indeed capable of this and more. In that case, however, the kidnappers’ actions became inexplicable. Because there were only two possibilities, there was no getting around it: either the kidnappers had opened the bag on the spot, realized they’d been hoodwinked, and decided nevertheless to release the girl, or else they had fallen into the trap—that is, they’d seen Peruzzo put the bag in the well, had no chance to check it immediately and, trusting in appearances, had given the order to free Susanna.
Or had Peruzzo somehow known that the kidnappers wouldn’t be able to open the bag at once and check its contents, and had gambled against time? Wait. Wrong line of reasoning. No one could have prevented the kidnappers from opening the well whenever they saw fit. Since delivery of the ransom did not necessarily mean the immediate release of the girl, against what “time” could Peruzzo have gambled? None whatsoever. No matter which way one looked at it, the engineer’s trick seemed insane.
As he sat there, stunned, questions riddling his brain like machine-gun fire, he heard a strange sort of ringing and couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He decided it must be an approaching flock of sheep. But the sound didn’t come any closer, even though it was very close already. Then he realized it must be his cell phone, which he never used and had only put in his pocket on this occasion.
“Chief, is that you? Fazio here.”
“What is it?”
“Chief, Inspector Minutolo wants me to inform you of something that just happened about forty-five minutes ago. I tried you at the station, at home, and finally Catarella remembered that—”
“Okay, fine, tell me what it is.”
“Well, Inspector Minutolo called Luna to find out if he’d heard from Peruzzo. The lawyer said Peruzzo paid the ransom last night and had even explained to him where he’d left the money. And so Inspector Minutolo rushed to the place, which is along the road to Brancato, to conduct a preliminary search. Unfortunately, the newsmen followed right behind him.”
“In short, what did Minutolo want?”
“He says he’d like you to meet him there. I’ll tell you what’s the quickest way to get—”
But Montalbano had already hung up. Minutolo, his men, and a swarm of journalists, photographers, and cameramen might arrive at any moment. And if they saw him, how would he explain what he was doing there?
Gee, what a surprise! I was just out tilling the fields…
He hastily lowered the duffel bag into the well, closed it with the stone slab, ran to the car, started up the engine, began turning the car around, then stopped. If he went back the same way he’d come, he would surely run into Minutolo and the festive caravan of cars behind him. No, he had best continue on to Lower Brancato.
It took him barely ten minutes to get there. A clean little town, with a tiny piazza, church, town hall, café, bank, trattoria, and shoe store. All around the piazza were granite benches, with some ten men sitting on them, all aging, old, or decrepit. They weren’t talking, weren’t moving at all. For a fraction of a second, Montalbano thought they were statues, splendid examples of hyperrealist art. But then one of them, apparently belonging to the decrepit category, suddenly threw his head backwards and laid it against the back of the bench. He was either dead, as seemed quite likely, or had been overcome by a sudden desire to sleep.
The country air had whetted the inspector’s appetite. He looked at his watch. Just short of one o’clock. He headed towards the trattoria, then stopped short. What if some journalist got the brilliant idea to make his phone calls from Lower Brancato? No question, of course, that there would be any restaurants in Upper Brancato. But he didn’t feel like letting his stomach go empty for too long. The only solution was to run the risk and enter the trattoria in front of him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone come out from behind the counter and stop to stare at him. The man, fat and forty, approached him with a big smile.
“But…aren’t you Inspector Montalbano?”
“Yes, but…”
“Iss a real plisure. I’m Michele Zarco.”
He declaimed his first and last names in the tone of someone known to one and all. But since the inspector kept staring at him without a word, he clarified:
“I’m Catarella’s cussin.”
Michele Zarco, land surveyor and vice mayor of Brancato, was his salvation. First, he brought him to his house for an informal meal—that is, to eat whatever was available. Nuttin spicial, as he put it. Signora Angila Zarco, a woman of few words, blonde to the point of looking washed out, served them cavatuna in tomato sauce that were eminently respectable, followed by coniglo all’agrodolce—sweet-and-sour rabbit—from the day before. Now, preparing coniglo all’agrodolce is a complicated matter, because everything depends on the right proportion of vinegar to honey and on making the pieces of rabbit blend properly with the caponata in which it must cook. Signora Zarco clearly knew how to go about this, and for good measure had thrown in a sprinkling of toasted ground almonds over the whole thing. On top of this, it is well-known that the coniglo all’agrodolce you eat the d
ay it is made is one thing, but when eaten the next day it is something else entirely, because it gains considerably in flavor and aroma. In short, Montalbano had a feast.
Then Vice Mayor Zarco suggested they visit Upper Brancato, just to aid digestion. Naturally they went in Zarco’s car. After taking a road that consisted of one sharp turn after another and looked like the X-ray of an intestine, they stopped in the middle of a cluster of houses that would have made an Expressionist set-designer’s day. Not a single house stood up straight. They all leaned to the left or the right at angles so extreme that the Tower of Pisa would have looked perfectly perpendicular by comparison. Three or four houses were actually attached to the hillside and jutted out horizontally, as if they had suction cups holding them in place, hidden in the foundations. Two old men walked by talking to each other, but rather loudly, because one was listing sharply to the right, the other to the left. Perhaps they’d been conditioned by the inclinations of the houses in which they lived.
“Shall we go back home for coffee? The missus makes a good cup,” said Zarco, when he saw that Montalbano, under the influence of the surroundings, had started walking askew himself.
When Signora Angila opened the door for them, to Montalbano she looked like a child’s drawing: almost albino, her hair braided, her cheeks red. She seemed agitated.
“What’s wrong?” her husband asked.
“The TV just said the girl was released but the ransom wasn’t paid!”
“Really?!” asked the land surveyor, looking over at Montalbano.
The inspector shrugged and threw his hands up, as if to say he didn’t know the first thing about the whole affair.
“Oh, yes,” the woman went on. “They said the police found Mr. Peruzzo’s duffel bag, right near here, in fact, and it was filled with newspaper. The newsman wondered how and why the girl was freed. What’s clear is that piece of slime uncle of hers risked getting her killed!”
The Patience of the Spider Page 15