The Potter's Field

by Andrea Camilleri

  They had agreed that Macannuco would phone him at four o’clock. The inspector didn’t want to be called at the office; there were too many people constantly going in and out of his room. At four on the dot, the telephone rang.

  “Montalbano? This is Macannuco.”

  “What do you say?”

  “You were right on the money. The stains on the bottom of the garbage bin are definitely blood. Forensics’s got the bin now and are checking to see if the blood’s the same as in the sink.”

  “How long’s that going to take?”

  “I asked them to be as quick as possible. They assured me they’ll have an answer for me by tomorrow morning. What’ve you done in the meanwhile?”

  “I sent you a letter that I want you to mail back here to Vigàta. Do it as soon as you get it, it’s very important. Did you talk to your prosecutor?”

  “Yes, he granted me authorization to tap the phone. They’re working on it now.”

  “Did you ask him not to say anything to Tommaseo?”

  If the public prosecutor for Reggio Calabria mentioned anything to his counterpart in Vigàta, the latter was sure to talk about it with Mimì. And they could make a great big omelet with all the broken eggs.

  “Yes. He put up some resistance, but in the end he agreed.”

  “Look, I mustn’t have any part in any of this, not now, not later, understood?”

  “Not to worry. I never once mentioned your name.”

  “How’d it go with Esterina Trippodo?”

  “She promised to cooperate. She said she’s doing it for you.”

  “Did you tell her ‘Long live the king’?”

  “Would you please go fuck yourselves, you and Esterina Trippodo!”

  18

  When the inspector got back to the station around five, Mimì was beside himself.

  “It certainly helps the Mafia around here when you’ve got people like Musante fighting them! Incompetent fucking idiot!”

  “Would you please calm down and tell me what happened?”

  “I had an appointment with him at nine o’clock. He made me wait till eleven-thirty. We’d barely started talking when he’s called away. He comes back five minutes later, saying he’s very sorry but has to postpone our meeting until one o’clock. So I go out for a stroll in Montelusa and come back at one. He’s waiting for me in his office. I bring him up to date on the investigation and tell him that all the evidence points to Balduccio Sinagra . . . So what does he do? He laughs. And he tells me that this is old news. He says that some time ago they’d received an anonymous letter accusing Balduccio of having had one of his couriers murdered for selling drugs on his own, and they’d investigated this and come to the conclusion that Balduccio had nothing to do with it. He says it was a trick to throw them off the trail. Fucking idiots! On top of everything else, he says the courier’s body was never found. But now it has been found, I tell him, and it even has a name: Giovanni Alfano. And you know what he said to me?”

  “Mimì, if you don’t tell me, how can I—”

  “He said that it couldn’t have been Balduccio because it was entirely in Balduccio’s interest to keep the man alive. And he mentioned some business about a letter that Alfano was supposed to deliver to someone in Villa San Giovanni...”

  “Did he tell you how they found out about this letter?”

  “Yes, it was actually a trap set by Narcotics. They had set things up so that Balduccio would have to get in touch with this person. They were waiting for the letter to be delivered so they could screw Balduccio. But since it never arrived, they decided that Balduccio had nothing to do with Alfano’s murder. I don’t really get it, to be honest with you.”

  “I don’t either. What do you intend to do?”

  “I’m not giving up, Salvo. I am certain, you realize, absolutely one hundred percent certain, that Balduccio did it!” Mimì replied wildly.

  Poor guy! What a state Dolores had reduced him to! She was contributing to the delinquency of a minor police inspector . . . She must have been stirring his pot without respite, not giving him a moment’s peace.

  “When you questioned Signora Alfano, did you ask her if her husband had ever told her how his father, Filippo, was killed?”

  “Yes. She told me that Balduccio had him offed with a pistol shot at the base of the skull.”

  “And that’s all?”

  Mimì looked a bit puzzled.

  “Yes. One pistol shot, and that’s all. Why do you ask?”

  Montalbano chose not to answer the question straight off.

  “But why didn’t Giovanni ever try to get back at Balduccio, if he knew he was behind his father’s murder?”

  “Dol—Signora Alfano said that Balduccio wanted so badly to be forgiven by Giovanni, and did so much for him, that in the end he succeeded.”

  “Want some advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ask the lady if she remembers the name of a Colombian newspaper of the time. Then look up this newspaper’s archive on the Internet and ask for any articles dealing with the killing. Something useful might turn up.”

  “You know, that’s a good idea! First I’ll talk to Dol—Signora Alfano, and then I’ll put Catarella to work.”

  “Better not bring Catarella into this,” Montalbano said quickly. “Everyone who comes into headquarters passes by his workstation. We should be more careful. Why don’t you do the research at home, on your own computer?”

  “You’re right, Salvo.”

  And he was off like a rocket. Dolores was sure to waste some of his time before pretending to remember the name of a newspaper from twenty or thirty years before. And then Mimì would be completely taken up with his research. It was essential that he didn’t get any brilliant ideas about moving in on Balduccio in the three or four days ahead.

  Adelina had prepared him a special dish. Four slices of freshgrilled tuna, not overly done, with a side dish of tiny shelled shrimp, all of it topped with a salmoriglio sauce. With his belly satisfied, and his spirit, too, he sat down at the table and began to write:

  Dear Macannuco,

  As I feel that the situation is about to tip in our favor, I am writing to explain to you what I think actually happened in the critaru case. I’ve already told you, over the phone, about Giovanni Alfano and his father Filippo, who is said to have been bumped off by orders of the Vigatese boss Balduccio Sinagra. After Giovanni and his wife, a Colombian by the name of Dolores, had been living for a while in Vigàta, a local butcher, Arturo Pecorini—a violent man previously suspected of homicide—got sweet on the Latina girl and began to woo her. To make a long story short, the two became lovers when the husband was away at sea. At this point Don Balduccio intervened to defend the absent Giovanni’s honor. Balduccio was very fond of Giovanni. Word around town has it that he had his father killed because he thought he had betrayed him, only to realize afterward that he had made a terrible mistake. But these are all rumors, of course. There is no proof that Balduccio ordered Filippo Alfano’s murder. At any rate, Balduccio orders Dolores to return to Colombia for a while and forces Pecorini, by means of threats, to move to Catania. Pecorini opens another butcher shop there, while keeping the one in Vigàta, which he put in his brother’s care. Some time later, Dolores returns to Vigàta, and Pecorini too is allowed to come back on Saturdays and Sundays. The love affair between the two appears, to all observers, to be over. In reality, however, this is not the case. The two lovers continue to meet, in spite of the danger. Bear in mind that Pecorini’s house in Vigàta is less than fifty yards away from the Alfanos’. When Giovanni comes home for long stays, Dolores becomes exasperated. Giovanni is very much in love with her, and when he is with her he makes up for his compulsory absences, sexually above all. The woman can no longer stand it. And so Dolores and her lover decide to do away with Giovanni, and to have the blame fall on Balduccio Sinagra. It must have been the butcher’s idea, a way to have his revenge. Bear in mind that Giovanni knows nothing of the affair be
tween Pecorini and his wife, since Balduccio, at the time, not wanting him to suffer, warned Giovanni’s friends not to mention it to him. And so on the morning of Friday, September 3 of this year, Giovanni and his wife leave for Gioia Tauro in her car. Dolores tells her husband that the day before, a friend from Catania, having found out they were on their way to Gioia Tauro, has invited them to lunch. This last point, incidentally, is all conjecture on my part—it’s possible Dolores found a different excuse. The important thing is that she convinced her husband to stop in Catania and go to the butcher’s place. Don’t forget that Giovanni doesn’t know that Pecorini was and still is his wife’s lover. And so, Pecorini takes them to his house and, after lunch, kills Giovanni with a pistol shot to the base of the skull. What you need to do now is ascertain whether Pecorini has a garage. I think that’s where the murder took place. And have Forensics check it very carefully. I am convinced they will find traces of Giovanni’s blood there. Because that is where Pecorini chopped the victim into thirty pieces, with Dolores’s help. Why? Because Dolores has told him the story of Giovanni’s father, who was killed with a shot to the base of the skull and then cut up into thirty pieces—which in Mafia ritual correspond to the thirty silver pieces of Judas, the betrayer. And so they do the same, so that everyone will see this as the signature, the cipher, of Don Balduccio, who has had his disloyal courier, Giovanni, executed in exactly the same fashion as his father. After dismembering the corpse, Pecorini stuffs the body parts into a large garbage bag and heads to Vigàta. He then buries the remains at ’u critaru—in other words, the potter’s field, the place where Judas hanged himself. Which is another stroke of genius in the effort to make it look like a Mafia ritual. Dolores, feeling rather exhausted by the whole ordeal, rests for a few hours at her lover’s house and then continues on to Gioia Tauro, where she arrives that night. For proof of this, ask Signora Esterina to tell you about the bouquet of roses. Then, on Saturday morning, Dolores pretends to leave for Vigàta. I say “pretends” because she decides that it’s better to do what she needs to do in the afternoon, when the concierge’s desk is closed and there’s no risk of any bothersome visits by the concierge. At the bypass for Lido di Palmi she runs her car off the road and, while waiting for it to be repaired, checks into a motel (I’ll give you all the details later). In the afternoon she tells the hotel’s owner she’s going down to the sea, when in fact she returns to Gioia Tauro on one of the many buses that run during the summer months. When she gets to the Via Gerace apartment, she soils the toilet bowl, opens a bottle of wine and a can of beer, empties these into the sink, then leaves them in full view on the counter. From Catania she’s brought along her husband’s trousers, a syringe full of his blood, and a little cocaine. She leaves the trousers in full view on the bed, sprinkles a few drops of blood around the bathroom sink and then covers them (as you yourself told me) with the movable soap dish. Lastly, she opens the trapdoor to the crawl space over the bathroom, where she knows there is an empty shoebox; she takes this and dusts it with cocaine inside, puts it back overhead, shuts the trap, and then heads back to Lido di Palmi, taking the bouquet of flowers, which she gets rid of as soon as she can. In her haste, however, she makes three mistakes.

  1) She throws the syringe, which still contains a great deal of blood, into the garbage bin;

  2) She forgets to clean the dust off the little table in the entranceway (she said she had left the place clean and in perfect order before leaving);

  3) She fails to pick up an electric bill, and actually pushes it under the little table.

  When she gets back to the motel, she goes to sleep, then leaves for Vigàta the following morning. A few days later, the butcher sends an anonymous letter to the Antimafia office accusing Balduccio Sinagra of the murder of a courier who supposedly betrayed him. In this way he hopes to prompt an investigation. But Antimafia and Narcotics know this can’t be true, because of the business of the letter Balduccio himself gave to Giovanni, which the two killers know nothing about and destroy along with Giovanni’s other things. I realize you may have trouble understanding all this; I promise to explain it all to you when it’s over. Two months after the murder, heavy rains (aided also, in my opinion, by Pecorini) bring the remains of an unknown murder victim to the surface. Dolores then comes into Vigàta police headquarters to cast the first doubt on whether her husband ever actually boarded his ship. And, indeed, the representative of the shipping company informs us that he never did take ship. I succeed in identifying the corpse by means of a dental bridge that Giovanni swallowed as he was being killed. Incidentally, in my opinion they disfigured him so that he could only be identified through DNA testing, thus giving temporal plausibility to Dolores’s phony concerns over her husband’s likely disappearance. In short, as of that moment, it is Dolores herself directing our investigation, adroitly steering it (especially after I turned it over to my deputy) towards Balduccio Sinagra.

  It was the Antimafia’s Musante (whom you know) who convinced me that this was the wrong track. And so I went to Gioia Tauro to inspect the scene myself (I didn’t have much time, and didn’t come to see you, sorry), which gave rise to some doubts and suspicions.

  I think what I’ve told you so far should be enough for now. If Dolores reacts the way we hope, the game is over. You’ll have everything you need to interrogate her. And let me repeat again, my friend, that you must never mention my name, for any reason whatsoever, even if you are subjected to torture.

  This is what I ask of you in exchange for having given you the solution to a complex case. You can take all the credit yourself, but you must repay me with your silence. I shall fax you this letter to the private number you gave me.

  Please call me at home, not at headquarters. The best time would be after ten p.m.

  Affectionately,

  Salvo

  Is it an honest letter? he wondered, rereading it.

  Is it a dishonest letter? he wondered, rereading it a second time.

  It is useful to the purpose for which it is intended, and no more, he concluded as he started getting undressed to go to bed.

  The following evening, around ten o’clock, came Macannuco’s first phone call.

  “Montalbano? This morning I got a phone call from Forensics.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “You hit the nail on the head. The blood at the bottom of the garbage bin was the same as what was found in the sink.”

  “You mean you hit the nail on the head, Macannù. Congratulations.”

  The next evening, Macannuco called again.

  “I got your anonymous letter and forwarded it to youknow-who,” he said.

  The third night after the inspector had made the decisive move, he was so nervous he didn’t sleep a wink. He was getting too old to put up with this level of tension. When the sun finally appeared, Montalbano found himself looking out on a beautiful December morning, cold and bright, without a cloud in the sky. He realized he had no desire either to go to the office or to stay at home. Cosimo Lauricella, the local fisherman, was busying himself with his boat on the beach.

  “Cosimo!” the inspector called from the window. “Could I come out with you in the boat?”

  “But I’ll be out till the afternoon!”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  He himself didn’t catch a single fish, but the effect on his nerves was better than a month in a specialized clinic.

  The long-awaited phone call from Macannuco came two days later, by which time the inspector was seriously unshaven, hadn’t changed his shirt, its collar ringed with grease, and his eyes were so bloodshot he looked like a monster out of a science-fiction movie. Mimì, too, was no joke: also unshaven and red-eyed, hair standing straight up so that he looked like the advertisement for Presbítero pencils. A terrified Catarella was afraid to say anything to either one of them when they passed in front of his closet, and would only slink down in his chair to the floor.

  “Half an hour ago we intercepted a very brief pho
ne call from Dolores Alfano to Signora Trippodo,” said Macannuco.

  “What did she say?”

  “She merely asked if she could come by tomorrow around three in the afternoon. Trippodo answered, ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’ And we’ll be there waiting for her, too.”

  “Give me a call at the station as soon as you arrest her. Oh, and listen, I had an idea about the syringe...”

  Macannuco liked the idea. Montalbano, however, didn’t care what happened to Dolores; his main concern was to keep Mimì completely out of the loop. He had to pull him out and keep him busy for the next twenty-four hours. He called Fazio.

  “Fazio? Sorry to bother you at home, but I need you to come to my place right now, in Marinella.”

  “I’m on my way, Chief.”

  When Fazio got there, he was worried and full of questions. He found Montalbano clean shaven, wearing a crisp new shirt, spic and span. The inspector sat him down and asked him:

  “Would you like a whisky?”

  “To be honest, I’m not in the habit...”

  “Take my advice, I think it’s better if you have one.”

  Fazio obediently poured himself two fingers’ worth.

  “Now I’m going to tell you a story,” Montalbano began, “but you’d better keep the whisky bottle within reach.”

  By the time he’d finished his story, Fazio had drunk a quarter of a brand-new bottle. During the half hour in which Montalbano was talking, Fazio’s only comment, which he said five times, was: