“Which one?”
“Pasquale.”
Adelina’s two sons, Giuseppe and Pasquale, were two incorrigible hoodlums forever going in and out of prison.
Pasquale, whom Montalbano had even arrested a few times, was particularly fond of the inspector and had asked him, to Livia’s great shock and dismay, to be his son’s godfather and baptize him.
“Yeh, fadda moment ’e’s free. Bu’ no’ Giuseppe. ’E’s in jail in Palermo.”
“Could you ask Pasquale if he could come down to the station this afternoon, say around four?”
“Wha’ fah? You wanna ’rrest ’im?” Adelina became alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Adelì. You have my word of honor. I just want to talk to him.”
“Okay, whativva you say.”
He went home to pick up Livia, whom he found on the veranda, reading a book, surly and silent.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I dunno.”
“Shall we go to Enzo’s?”
“I dunno.”
“How about Carlo’s?”
There was no restaurant in the area by that name, but seeing the welcome Livia was giving him, he’d decided to go on the offensive.
And whatever happened, happened.
“I dunno,” Livia said for the third time, indifferent.
She hadn’t even blinked at the sound of that name.
“Well, I say we go to Enzo’s and end the discussion.”
Livia kept reading her book for another five minutes, purely out of spite, leaving Montalbano standing beside her.
As they entered the trattoria, Enzo, the owner, came running up to Livia to pay his respects.
“What a lovely surprise! It’s so good to see you again!”
“Thank you.”
“You’re a sight for sore eyes! A true delight! Can you explain to me how it is that, every time you honor me by coming here, you’re always more beautiful than the last?”
Like a ray of sunshine, a sudden smile swept the clouds away from Livia’s face.
But how was it that the Sicilian dialect was suddenly no longer African and now quite comprehensible to Livia? Montalbano wondered.
“What would you like to eat?” Enzo asked.
“I do feel a little hungry,” said Livia.
And if Enzo’s compliments ended up whetting her appetite, just imagine the effect Carlo’s compliments must have!
Montalbano’s irritation doubled.
“I’ve got spaghetti in a sauce of sea urchin, fresh as can be, fished just this morning, a real treat,” said Enzo.
“Then let’s go with the sea urchin,” Livia consented, batting her eyelashes like Minnie Mouse to Mickey.
“And what do you feel like having, Inspector?” Enzo asked.
I feel like taking this fork and gouging out both of my girlfriend’s eyes, Montalbano thought to himself.
Instead he said:
“I’m not very hungry myself. Just bring me some appetizers.”
After scarfing down her spaghetti, Livia smiled at her boyfriend and put her hand on top of his, caressing it.
“I apologize for last night.”
“For last night?” said Montalbano, as phony as a three-dollar bill, pretending not to remember anything.
“Yes, for last night. I really acted stupidly.”
Oh, no you don’t! That shouldn’t count!
It wasn’t fair!
Montalbano felt outmaneuvered.
He made a gesture with his other hand that meant nothing and everything, then muttered something.
Livia took it to mean they had made peace.
When they came out of the trattoria, Livia said she wanted to go to Montelusa, where she hadn’t set foot for a long time.
“Go ahead and take the car,” said Montalbano.
“What about you?”
“I don’t need it.”
He had no need to take his customary digestive and meditative stroll along the jetty to the lighthouse because he’d hardly eaten anything.
The fact that Livia had put him in a situation in which he couldn’t bring up Carlo had closed off his stomach.
But he took the stroll anyway, in the hopes of working off his irritation.
When he sat down on the flat rock under the lighthouse, however, his eye fell on the great tower dominating the landscape.
It had been built by Carlo V.
How many Carlos were there in the world, anyway?
Seeing him walk in, Catarella started gesticulating wildly.
“Ahh Chief! There’d be ’at son o’ yer cleanin’ lady waitin’ f’yiz! Says ya summonsed ’im!”
“Send him to me.”
The inspector went into his office, sat down at his desk, and Pasquale appeared.
“How’s the little boy?”
“’E’s beautiful and growing.”
“And your wife?”
“Good. An’ Miss Livia?”
“Fine, thanks.”
The ritual over, Pasquale got down to business.
“My mama tol’ me—”
“Right, I need to ask you something. Have a seat.”
Pasquale sat down.
“What is it?”
“Have you by any chance heard anything about these recent burglaries that were pulled off with such skill?”
Pasquale put on a distracted air, then twisted up his mouth, as if to minimize what he was about to say.
“Yessir. I’ve heard a couple o’ li’l things.”
“What kinds of ‘little things’?”
“Well, you know, the kinds of things people say . . . an’ you just happen to hear . . . in passing . . .”
“And what did you just happen to hear in passing?”
“Inspector, if I tell you, iss gotta remain between us, okay?”
“Of course.”
“I heard that it wasn’t none of our people.”
That is, it didn’t involve any thieves from Vigàta.
“I’d figured that out myself.”
“These guys are real artists.”
“Right. Foreigners?”
“No, sir.”
“Northerners?”
“No, sir.”
“Who, then?”
“Sicilians, just like me an’ you.”
“From the province?”
“Yessir.”
He was going to have to force it out of him. Pasquale obviously didn’t like discussing the subject with him.
Being friends was one thing, playing informer was another.
Anyway, with cops, the less said the better.
“And why, in your opinion, did they suddenly decide to come and work in Vigàta?”
Before answering, Pasquale stared at his shoe tops, then looked up at the ceiling, then finally decided to open his mouth.
“They were called.”
Called? Pasquale had said it so softly that Montalbano didn’t understand.
“Speak louder.”
“They were called.”
“Explain what you mean.”
Pasquale threw his hands up.
“Inspector, alls I heard is they were called directly by someone from here, from Vigàta. An’ he’s their coordinator.”
“So this gentleman is both their mastermind and manager?”
“It looks that way.”
It wasn’t that unusual for a band of thieves to go somewhere on assignment, but he’d never heard of a crew being specifically enlisted for a job.
“Is he a thief himself?”
“I don’ think so.”
Alas. If he wasn’t a professional thief, that complicated matters considerably.
Wh
o could he be?
And why did he do it?
3
“So, what do you make of it, Pasquà?”
“In what sense, Inspector?”
“Let’s say, from your perspective.”
As a thief, that is.
Pasquale smiled.
“You seen that pole, Inspector?”
“What pole?”
“The one with a magnet at the end, the one they used in the first robbery.”
“No, I haven’t seen it. Have you?”
Pasquale’s smile became even more amused.
“C’mon, Inspector, you still settin’ up these li’l traps for me? If I seen the pole, it means I’m one of the band of thieves.”
“Sorry, Pasquà, it just escaped me.”
“Well, I din’t see it either, but somebody tol’ me about it.”
“What’s it like?”
“Iss made out of some special kind of wood, light and strong, like bamboo, but it telescopes. You know what I mean? Iss a tool made just for that purpose, so I think you’d wanna keep it to use again.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Can you explain to me why they left it there, after the burglary? I woulda taken it with me. If iss like a telescope, iss not even hard to carry.”
“Did you know they even left behind the keys used in this morning’s burglary?”
“No, I din’t know. An’ that don’ make no sense to me, neither. A set o’ keys is always useful.”
“Listen, Pasquà, one last question. These burglars also stole three cars. Did you know?”
“Yeah.”
“What did they do with them?”
“In my opinion, Inspector, they got rid of them and even made some money on them.”
“How?”
“If they’re luxury cars, there’s people that buy them to take them abroad.”
“And if they’re not?”
“There’s always car wreckers who pay good money for spare parts.”
“Do you know any?”
“Any what?”
“Car wreckers.”
“That’s not my line.”
“Okay. Have anything else to tell me?”
“Nah.”
“All right, you can go. Thanks, Pasquà.”
“My respects, Inspector.”
The inspector had realized immediately that the burglaries were the work of outsiders, skilled professionals. Vigàta’s burglars were less sophisticated; they just broke down the door and went inside, but never when there were people at home, and never in a million years would they have thought to make a pole like the one used in the first burglary.
The band must have consisted of four people: three outsiders working in the field and a fourth who was the brains of the outfit. And who was perhaps the only one living in Vigàta. Once the job was done, the others quite probably went back to where they came from.
Montalbano’s nose and experience told him this was going to be a difficult case.
His eye fell on the sheet of paper Fazio had left with him, with the list of the Peritores’ friends’ names. There were eighteen in all.
He started skimming it distractedly until the fourth name made him jump in his chair.
Emilio Lojacono, attorney-at-law.
The guy who was at his country house with his mistress when his place in town was robbed in the first burglary.
Montalbano kept reading, paying closer attention.
At the seventeenth name, he gave another start.
Dr. Ersilia Vaccaro.
Lawyer Lojacono’s mistress.
A lightning bolt shot across his brain.
An illogical intuition that the next burglary would surely involve one of the remaining sixteen names on the list.
And therefore what Fazio reported to him on the Peritores’ friends would prove extremely important.
At that exact moment, Fazio rang.
“Chief, I wanted to tell you—”
“Just listen to me first. On that list of the Peritores’ friends, did you notice—”
“—the names of Lojacono the lawyer and Dr. Vaccaro? Absolutely! It was the first thing I saw!”
“And what do you think?”
“That the name of the next person to be burgled is on that list.”
Oh, well.
He’d wanted to look brilliant, but it hadn’t worked.
It was one of those days where he was destined to be wrong-footed by everybody.
On the other hand, Fazio often arrived at the same conclusions as him.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“Well, I found out that Livia is here with you.”
“Yes.”
“My wife would love it if you came to dinner at our place tomorrow night. If that’s all right with you.”
Why wouldn’t it be all right with him?
On top of everything else, Signora Fazio was an excellent cook, a hardly negligible fact.
“Thanks, I’ll tell Livia. We’d love to come. See you in the morning.”
“Catarella!”
“Yessir, Chief!”
“Come to my office, on the double.”
He hadn’t even set the receiver down before Catarella materialized before him, bolt upright, at attention.
“Cat, I need to ask you to do something that shouldn’t take you more than five minutes at the computer.”
“Chief, I’d sit in fronna’a’ ka-pewter f’r a hunnert years f’yiz, sir!”
“I want you to make me a list of all the car wreckers in our province who’ve been charged with receiving.”
Catarella looked flummoxed.
“I don’ unnastan’, Chief.”
“All of it or part of it?”
“Part of it.”
“Which one?”
“The ting about risseevin’.”
“Receiving?”
“Yeah. Wha’ss it mean?”
“It means buying or receiving stolen goods.”
“Okay, Chief, bu’ if iss bad, why’s it goods?”
“Never mind,” said Montalbano, handing him a piece of paper with the word Receivers written at the top. “Listen, get Fazio for me, would you?”
The telephone rang.
“What is it, Chief?”
“Do you remember the models and license plates of the three stolen cars?”
“No. But if you go into my office, there’s a sheet of paper on the desk with everything written down on it.”
Fazio was very orderly, almost to a fault, and Montalbano found the page without effort.
He copied down the information and returned to his office.
Daewoo CZ 566 RT Dr. Vaccaro.
Volvo AC 641 RT Lojacono.
Fiat Panda AV 872 RT Peritore.
When it came to cars, Montalbano understood about as much as he did about astrophysics, but he was certain that none of these was a luxury model.
Not five minutes later, Catarella came in and set a sheet of paper down on his desk.
1) Gemellaro, Angelo, Via Garibaldi 32, Montereale, tel. 0922 4343217.
Garage: Via Martiri di Belfiore 82. One conviction.
2) Butticè, Carlo, Via Etna 38, Sicudiana, tel. 0922 469521.
Garage: Via Gioberti 79. One conviction.
3) Macaluso, Carlo, Viale Milizie 92, Montelusa, tel. 0922 2376594.
Garage: Via Saracino (no number). Two convictions.
There you go: out of three crooks, two were named Carlo. This surely must mean something. Statistics never lied.
Of course, sometimes statisticians came up with findings fit for the loony bin, but in general . . .
There wasn’t a minute to lose. The thieves probably hadn
’t placed the Peritores’ car anywhere yet.
“Catarella, get me Prosecutor Tommaseo on the line.”
He had enough time to review the multiplication table for seven.
“What can I do for you, Montalbano?”
“Could I come and talk to you in about twenty minutes?”
“Sure, come right over.”
He put the list of the three wreckers in his jacket pocket, called Gallo, and headed for Montelusa in a squad car.
It took him a good hour to persuade Tommaseo to put a tap on the three telephones.
Normally whenever anyone brought up phone tapping, the prosecutor would shut down like a hedgehog.
What if it turned out that a given thief, drug dealer, or pimp was a close friend of a member of parliament? There would be hell to pay for the poor prosecutor.
The government was therefore trying to push through a law that would make all wiretapping illegal, but luckily they hadn’t succeeded yet.
Montalbano returned to headquarters satisfied.
Less than five minutes after he’d sat down at his desk, the telephone rang.
“Ah, Chief, ’at be yer lady frenn ’at tol’ me as how she’s waitin’ f’yiz inna parkin’ latt, but I quickly sez straightaways ’at you wasn’t here an’ so she—she meanin’ yer lady frenn—sez to me as how she’s gonna wait f’yiz anyways. So whaddouwe do now?”
“But why’d you tell her I wasn’t here?”
“’Cuz this mornin’ ’ass whatcha tol’ me ta say.”
“But it’s not this morning anymore!”
“’Ass true, Chief. But ya nivver cunnermannit the order. ’N’ so I din’t know if yer diff’rinces wit’ the lady was a timprary or poimanent state o’ fairs.”
“Listen, go and see where she’s parked.”
Catarella returned immediately to the phone.
“She’s right ousside th’intrince gate.”
The only hope was to attempt an escape under siege.
“Is the back door of the building unlocked?”
“Nossir, iss always lacked.”
“What a fucking pain in the ass! And who has the key?”
“I do, Chief.”
“Go and open it.”
Montalbano got up, traveled all the way across the building, and came to the door, which Catarella was holding open for him.
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