IM5 Excursion to Tindari (2005)

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Why didn’t they kill the doctor too?”

  “Because he can still be useful to them. His name is a guarantee for the customers. Like in advertising. So they decide to wait and see how things work out. If they work out well, they’ll let him start practicing again. If not, they’ll kill him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? Nothing, for now. Go on home, Mimi. And thanks. Is Fazio still in Santoli?”

  “Yes. He’s waiting for my phone call.”

  “Call him, then. Tell him he can go home to bed. Tomorrow morning we’ll decide how to continue our surveillance.”

  Augello spoke with Fazio. Then he said:

  “He’s going home. There are no new developments. The doctor is alone. He’s watching television.”

  At three in the morning, after putting on a heavy jacket because it was cool outside, the inspector got in his car and drove off. Pretending it was simply for curiosity’s sake, he’d had Augello describe the exact location of Ingrò’s villa to him. On the way there, he thought again of Mimi’s expression after hearing his account of the transplant story. He himself had reacted the way he did, nearly suffering a stroke. Whereas Mimi had turned pale, yes, but didn’t really seem too upset. Self-control? Lack of sensitivity? No, the reason was clearly much simpler: the difference in age. He was fifty and Mimi was thirty. Augello was already prepared for the year 2000, whereas he would never be. Nothing more. Augello naturally knew that he was entering an era of pitiless crimes committed by anonymous people, who had Internet addresses or sites or whatever they’re called, but never a face, a pair of eyes, an expression. No, he was too old by now.

  He stopped about twenty yards from the villa and, turning off the headlights, stayed there without moving. He carefully studied the place through binoculars. Not a single ray of light could be seen in the windows. Dr. Ingrò must have gone to bed. He got out of the car and, treading lightly, approached the gate. He stayed there some ten minutes without moving. Nobody came forward, nobody called from the darkness to ask what he wanted. With a tiny pocket lamp, he examined the lock on the gate. There was no alarm. Was it possible? Then he realized that Dr. Ingrò didn’t need any security systems. With the friends he had, only a fool would be crazy enough to rob his villa. It took him a moment to open it. There was a broad lane, lined with trees. The garden must have been kept in perfect order. There were no dogs, since at this hour they would have already attacked him. With the picklock he opened the front door as well. A large foyer led into an entirely glass-walled salon and to other rooms as well. The bedrooms were upstairs. He climbed a luxurious staircase covered with thick, soft carpeting. In the first room there wasn’t anybody. In the second room, however, there was. Someone was breathing heavily. With his left hand, the inspector felt around for the light switch; in his right, he held a pistol. He wasn’t fast enough. The lamp on one of the nightstands came on.

  Dr. Ingrò was lying on the bed, fully dressed, shoes included. He showed not the least bit of surprise at seeing an unknown man, with a gun, no less, in his room. He’d clearly been expecting as much. The room smelled stuffy, sweaty, rancid. Dr. Ingrò was no longer the man the inspector remembered seeing two or three times on television. He was unshaven, his eyes red, his hair sticking straight up.

  “Have you decided to kill me?” he asked in a soft voice.

  Montalbano didn’t answer. He was still standing in the doorway, motionless, the hand clutching the pistol at his side, but with the weapon in full view.

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Ingrò.

  He reached out towards the nightstand—Montalbano recognized it from the tape of the naked Vanya—picked up the glass that was there, and took a long drink of water, spilling some of it on himself. His hands were trembling. He set the glass down and spoke again.

  “I could still be of use to you.”

  He put his feet on the ground.

  “Where are you going to find someone as skilled as me?”

  As skilled, maybe not, but more honest, yes, thought the inspector. But he said nothing. He let the man stew in his juices. But maybe it was better to give him a little push. The doctor was now standing up, and Montalbano ever so slowly raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

  Then it happened. As if someone had cut the invisible rope holding him up, the man fell to his knees. He folded his hands in prayer.

  “Have pity! Have pity!”

  Pity? The kind of pity he’d shown for those who were slaughtered, literally slaughtered, for his sake?

  The doctor was crying. Tears and spittle made the beard on his chin sparkle. Was this the Conradian character he’d imagined?

  “I can pay you, if you let me go,” he whispered.

  He thrust a hand in his pocket, extracted a set of keys, and held them out to Montalbano, who didn’t move.

  “These keys ... you can help yourself to all my paintings ... a vast fortune ... you’ll be rich ...”

  Montalbano could no longer restrain himself. He took two steps forward, raised his foot, and shot it straight at the doctor’s face. The man fell backwards, managing to scream this time.

  “No! No! Not that!”

  He held his face in his hands, the blood from his broken nose running between his fingers. Montalbano raised his foot again.

  “That’s enough!” said a voice behind him.

  He turned around abruptly. In the doorway stood Augello and Fazio, both with guns drawn. They all looked one another in the eye and understood. And the performance began.

  “Police,” said Mimì.

  “We saw you break in, punk!” said Fazio.

  “You were going to kill him, weren’t you?” Mimì recited.

  “Drop the gun,” ordered Fazio.

  “No!” the inspector shouted and, grabbing Ingrò by the hair, he yanked him to his feet and pointed the gun at his head.

  “If you don’t get out of here, I’ll kill him!”

  Okay, they’d all seen that scene a thousand times in any number of American movies, but, all things considered, they had to be pleased with the way they were improvising it. Now, as if on cue, it was Ingrò’s turn to speak.

  “Don’t go!” he begged. “I’ll tell you everything! I’ll confess ! Save me!”

  Fazio leapt forward and seized Montalbano while Augello held down Ingrò. Fazio and the inspector pretended to struggle, then the former gained the upper hand. Augello took control of the situation.

  “Handcuff him!” he ordered.

  But the inspector still needed to give some instructions. It was absolutely imperative that they all act in concert and follow the same script. He grabbed Fazio’s wrist and, as if caught by surprise, Fazio let him take the gun away. Montalbano fired a shot that deafened them all and ran out. Augello freed himself from the doctor, who had been clutching his shoulders, weeping, and raced off in pursuit. At the bottom of the stairs, Montalbano tripped on the last step and fell facedown, firing another shot. Mimi, still shouting “Stop or I’ll shoot,” helped him up. They went out of the house.

  “He shit his pants,” Mimì said. “He’s cooked.”

  “Good,” said Montalbano. “Take him to Montelusa Central. On your way there, pull over at some point and look around, as if you’re fearing an ambush. When he’s in front of the commissioner, he has to tell us everything.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I escaped,” said the inspector, firing a shot in the air for good measure.

  On the drive back to Marinella, he changed his mind. Turning the car around, he headed towards Montelusa. He took the outer belt and finally pulled up at 38 Via De Gasperi, home of his journalist friend, Nicolò Zito. Before buzzing the intercom, he checked his watch. Almost five in the morning. He had to buzz three long times before he heard Nicolò’s voice, sounding half-asleep and half-enraged.

  “Montalbano here. I need to talk to you.”

  “Wait for me downstairs, otherwise you’ll wake up the whole
house.”

  A few minutes later, sitting on a stair, Montalbano told him the whole story, with Zito interrupting him from time to time with comments like “Wait!” and “Oh, Christ!”

  He needed an occasional pause. The story took his breath away.

  “What do you want me to do?” Zito asked when the inspector had finally finished.

  “This very morning, do a special report. Keep it vague. Say that Dr. Ingrò apparently turned himself in because of an alleged involvement in illegal organs trafficking ... You have to trumpet the news, make sure it reaches the national papers and networks.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “That they’ll hush the whole thing up. Ingrò has some very important friends. Too important. And one more favor. On the one o‘clock edition, pull out another story. Keeping it still vague, say that the fugitive Jacopo Sinagra, known as ’Japichinu,‘ has reportedly been murdered, and that he apparently belonged to the same organization that Dr. Ingrò was working for.”

  “But is it true?”

  “I think so. I’m almost certain this is why his grandfather, Balduccio Sinagra, had him killed. Not because of any moral qualms, mind you. But because his grandson, fortified by his alliance with the new Mafia, could have had him liquidated whenever he wanted.”

  It was seven in the morning when he finally managed to get to bed. He decided to sleep the whole morning. In the afternoon he would drive to Palermo to pick up Livia, on her way down from Genoa. He was able to sleep for two hours before the telephone woke him up. It was Mimi. But the inspector spoke first.

  “Why did you guys follow me last night when I explicitly—”

  “—when you explicitly tried to pull the wool over our eyes?” Augello finished his sentence. “But, Salvo, how can you possibly imagine that Fazio and I don’t know what you’re thinking? I ordered Fazio not to leave the area of the villa, even if I countermanded the order. We knew you’d be there sooner or later. And when you went out of your house, I followed behind you. I’d say we did the right thing.”

  Montalbano accepted this and changed the subject.

  “So, how’d it go?”

  “What a fucking circus, Salvo. They all came running: the commissioner, the chief prosecutor ... And the doctor kept talking and talking ...They couldn’t make him stop ... I’ll see you later at the office and tell you the whole story.”

  “My name never came up, right?”

  “No, don’t worry. We explained that we happened to be passing by the villa when we noticed the gate and front door were wide open, which aroused our suspicion. But unfortunately the hitman escaped. See you later.”

  “I won’t be in today.”

  “The fact is,” said Mimi, embarrassed, “I won’t be in to morrow.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Tindari. Since Beba has to go there, as usual, for work ...”

  And maybe, on the way, he’d buy himself a set of kitchenware.

  What Montalbano remembered of Tindari was the small, mysterious Greek theater and the beach shaped like a pink-fingered hand ... If Livia stayed a few days, an excursion to Tindari might not be a bad idea.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This entire book—names, surnames (especially surnames), situations—is invented out of whole cloth. Any coincidence whatsoever is due to the fact that my imagination is limited.

  This book is dedicated to Orazio Costa, my teacher and friend.

  NOTES

  2 Charles Martel: Mayor of the Palace of the Kingdom of the Franks and unifier, with his son Pépin the Short and grandson Charle magne, of the Frankish realm. A fierce warrior and field general (Martel means “hammer”), Charles stemmed the Arab advance into France at the Battle of Tours (more accurately the Battle of Poitiers) in 732.

  2 the state monopoly: In Italy, all tobacco products, domestic and foreign, are controlled by government monopoly.

  3 defending the police against the students at Valle Giulia: On March 1, 1968, at the University of Rome at Valle Giulia, protesting students reacted to heavy-handed tactics by riot police by hurling stones and setting fire to automobiles, resulting in injuries to both sides. In a now-famous poem written in response to this event, the radical poet, author, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), while acknowledging the reasons behind the demonstration, declared his sympathies for the policemen, whom he called “children of the poor,” against the students, who for him were “spoiled rich kids.”

  3 with the exception of one who ... had been putting up with trials and incarceration ... and another who’d died in obscure circumstances: The author is alluding to the celebrated cases of Adriano Sofri (born 1942) and Mauro Rostagno (1942-1988). Sofri—founder and ex-leader of the now-defunct extreme left-wing group Lotta Continua—is currently serving a twenty-two-year sentence for having allegedly ordered the murder, in 1972, of police inspector Luigi Calabresi, himself widely believed responsible for the “suicide” of an anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who supposedly threw himself out the window of a police interrogation room when being questioned by the same Calabresi. (This latter event was immortalized by Nobel laureate Dario Fo in the play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.) Sofri’s ultimate conviction in 1996, after no less than eight trials—one of which came on a prior prosecutor’s appeal of an acquittal, a judicial option that still exists in contemporary Italy—rested only on the much-belated confession (in 1988) and inconsistent testimony of one of Calabresi’s killers, Leonardo Marino. There was no material evidence. The procedures and results of the case have been widely decried by both Italian and international legal experts. Sofri, a distinguished author and journalist, has always steadfastly maintained his innocence and even refuses to ask for a pardon—which would probably be granted if requested—since this would imply guilt.

  Mauro Rostagno, another former member of Lotta Continua, was murdered in 1988, in a case that has never been officially solved despite the fact that several Mafia turncoats have testified that the mob was behind the killing. Originally from the north of Italy, Rostagno had moved to Sicily in the 1980s, working as a journalist and commentator for an independent left-wing television station he had helped to found. His nearly nightly critiques of the local power alliances between the Mafia, business interests, and government quickly won him the enmity of local chieftains. Curiously, there was a blackout on the night of his murder. Eight years later, it was discovered that Vincenzo Mastrantonio, technician and manager of the local chapter of the national power-grid company Enel at the time of the murder, had been the most trusted driver of Mafia boss Vincenzo Virga. Mastrantonio himself was murdered eight months after Rostagno.

  4 burglars of Boccadasse ... Genoa’s thieves: Boccadasse, where Livia resides, is a district of Genoa.

  5 a tray full of ten-thousand-lire notes: In 1968, ten thousand lire was worth about sixteen U.S. dollars.

  5 “lupara”: A sawed-off shotgun, traditionally the weapon of choice among mafiosi and bandits in Sicily. Modern times have witnessed the advent of more sophisticated weaponry.

  11 Paolo Villaggio’s immortal Fantozzi: Ugo Fantozzi is an obsequious, tough-luck character created for television and films by comic actor Paolo Villagio (born 1932).

  15 “Eight hundred thousand lire a month”: About four hundred U.S. dollars. At the time of the novel’s writing (1999), one dollar equaled approximately two thousand lire.

  16 “Duetto”: A classic model of the Alfa Romeo Spider of the early 1970s, popularized by Dustin Hoffinan in the film The Graduate.

  19 “Madunnuzza santa!”: Blessed little Madonna (Sicilian dialect).

  33 Via Crucis: The path traveled by Christ on his way up to Mount Calvary, while carrying the cross.

  45 “three million ... two million”: About fifteen hundred and a thousand dollars, respectively, at the time of the novel’s writing.

  46 Quasimodo: Poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959, was a native Sicilian.


  59 everyone ... was repenting about something: Montalbano has his own ongoing polemic against the phenomenon of Mafia turncoats and other criminals who turn state’s witness (called pentiti, or “repenters”) and are thereafter coddled and protected by the government. See, in particular, A. Camilleri, The Snack Thief.

  73 “sfincione”: Also called sfinciuni in dialect, this is a thick-crust sort of pizza or focaccia originally from the Palermo area. It was traditionally served during the Christmas season among the poor folk as a way of presenting bread in a festive manner, with a variety of toppings. Versions differ all over Sicily, but typical toppings include chopped onions, tomatoes, black olives, anchovies, eggplant, caciocavallo cheese.

  83 “vù cumprà”: Term used for African street peddlers in Italy, in whose accent the question Vuoi comprare (“Do you want to buy?”) comes out as vù cumprà.

  88 four to five billion lire: Two to two and a half million dollars.