The Dance of the Seagull im-15

by Andrea Camilleri

  Montalbano knew that chiarchiari were cemeteries of nameless bones, the favorite burial sites of the Mafia. When they wanted to make someone disappear, they would take him to the edge of a hole, shoot him, and let him fall inside. Or else they would spare themselves the bullets, and just shove him into the chasm still alive, and the victim would die during the fall, crashing against the rocks, or if he reached the bottom, he could cry and yell all he wanted, and nobody would ever hear him. He would die slowly, of hunger and, above all, thirst.

  To the right, about ten yards from the dirt road, was a tumbledown little one-room house, a white cube that looked merely like a rock a bit larger than the rest. Tumbledown, perhaps, but with the door closed. Maybe Nicolò was inside, talking with the fugitive.

  Montalbano decided to stay in the car. He searched his pockets. There were only three cigarettes left in the pack. He lit one and rolled down the window. He didn’t hear any birds singing.

  Then, when he’d nearly finished the cigarette, the door of the cube opened and Zito appeared, motioning to him to come out and approach.

  “He’s ready to tell you everything, but there’s one problem.”

  “What?”

  “He doesn’t want you to see his face.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “I have to blindfold you.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No. If you’re not blindfolded, he won’t talk.”

  “I’ll make him talk.”

  “Cut the crap, Salvo. You and I are unarmed, and he’s got a gun. Come on, don’t be an asshole.”

  And Nicolò pulled an enormous handkerchief out of his pocket, red and green, like a peasant’s.

  Despite the circumstances, Montalbano started laughing.

  “Is that really your normal handkerchief?”

  “Yes. I’ve been using this kind for a while. Sinusitis.”

  The inspector let himself be blindfolded and led into the cottage.

  “Good morning, Inspector Montalbano,” said a middle-aged voice, rather deep and well mannered.

  “Good morning to you.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve made you come all this way, and I’m sorry I’ve made you wear a blindfold, but it’s better if you don’t know who I am.”

  “Let’s drop the politeness bullshit,” the inspector said. “And just tell me what you have to tell me.”

  “A few mornings ago, probably around six o’clock, I was in the vicinity of Monte Scibetta. Do you know the area of the dry wells?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in a car and was passing by the drinking trough, which used to have water in it. There were three people there, and one of them was sitting on the edge of the trough. The other two were on his right. The seated man had a bandage over his forehead, and his shirt was all stained with blood. Then one of the two punched him in the face, and he fell into the trough. But I’d already recognized him. Or at least I think I did. He looked to me like Signor Fazio.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Then what?”

  “I kept on driving, and in the mirror I saw them pulling him back out.”

  “And what did you do after that?”

  “I had to get away from Monte Scibetta, and fast, because I’d found out that the carabinieri were coming after me. So I figured the best place to hide was here. But before I got here, I called Signor Zito.”

  “How do you know each other?”

  “Never mind about that,” Nicolò’s voice said behind him.

  “All right, go on.”

  “First of all, I wanted confirmation that it was actually Fazio.”

  “And when you knew for certain, why did you want Zito to tell me about your phone call?”

  “Because once, with my son, Fazio showed he was an honorable man.”

  “Why, in your opinion, did they take Fazio all the way out to Monte Scibetta?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why or where they grabbed him.”

  “They almost certainly wounded and captured him at the port of Vigàta.”

  “Ah,” said the stranger.

  But he didn’t speak.

  “And so?” Montalbano asked, feeling agitated.

  “Inspector, if they took him all the way out there, it was to throw him into one of those dry wells. They want to make him disappear. It would have taken them too long to bring him all the way out here to the chiarchiaro.”

  It was the very answer he’d feared.

  Now there was no more time to waste.

  “Good luck, Signor Nicotra, and thanks,” said the inspector.

  “But . . . how did you know it was me?”

  “For one thing, I first heard your story a long time ago from Zito himself, who’s been your friend since your schooldays together. And then, when you said Fazio had treated your son honorably . . . well, I just put two and two together. Thanks again.”

  5

  Once outside the cube, he removed the handkerchief covering his eyes and started running towards the car, with Zito following behind.

  “Come on, hurry up!”

  “Where are we going?” the newsman asked.

  “To Monte Scibetta. We haven’t got a minute to lose!”

  “Stop and think for a second, Salvo. Many hours have passed since he saw him there—”

  “Oh, I’m thinking all right, don’t you worry about that.”

  “By now whatever they were going to do to Fazio, they’ve already done.”

  “Yes, but he may still be alive. Maybe gravely wounded, but still alive. Do you know where the dry wells are?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “About two hours.”

  “Let’s go, and in the meantime give me your cell phone.”

  He called Augello, who was still asleep. But as soon as Montalbano told him what he’d found out, he woke up in a hurry.

  “And you, Nicolò, should tell your friend Nicotra to turn himself in,” the inspector said to Zito when he’d finished.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve told him that? It’s hopeless. The idea of ending up in jail drives him crazy. If there’s such a thing as incompatibility with prison life, he’s got it. And double murder is still double murder.”

  “Okay, but he would have every extenuating circumstance in the book. For us, a cheating wife is the best extenuating circumstance there is. If you’re being cheated on, you can even commit a massacre if you want, and still get off easy. What? You mean you caught your wife in bed with your brother and you didn’t shoot ’em down on the spot? What kind of a fucking man are you? Don’t you know that with a jury made up of people with a sense of Honor, Family, Duty, and Womanly Virtue, Nicotra would surely be exonerated?”

  They’d arranged to meet Mimì at the dried-up drinking trough. But when they got there, Augello and his men were nowhere to be seen.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” Montalbano asked out loud, upset.

  “Well,” Zito said, trying to calm him down, “it’s going to take a little time for him to do what you asked him to do.”

  The inspector fired up a cigarette. Luckily he’d found a café with a tobacco license open in Rivera and had bought three packs, just to be safe.

  The first to show up were four firemen with a great big truck equipped with a crane. Apparently Augello had clearly explained to them the work they would have to do, which was to go down into some wells that had long run dry but were very deep.

  “We’re ready,” said the head fireman. “Shall we go in?”

  His name was Mallia and he’d listened almost distractedly while the inspector reviewed the situation for him.

  “We have to wait until my deputy gets here,” said Montalbano.

  “Well, we’re going to go ahead anyway and check things out. That’ll save us a little time. We’ll meet back up at the first well.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

/>   “Of course, just over a quarter mile from here. A couple of years ago I pulled a corpse out of one,” said Mallia.

  A good start is the best of guides, as the poet said. Without anyone noticing, Montalbano superstitiously touched his cojones to ward off bad luck.

  At last Mimì pulled up in his car. A squad car came up behind him, with Gallo at the wheel, accompanied by Galluzzo and a young new officer, Lamarca, who seemed like a bright, alert kid.

  The three wells had been dug some thirty years ago, about a hundred yards apart from one another, and were linked by a sort of narrow goat track. The land, about thirty hectares in all, had belonged for generations to the Fradella family, who, though good farmers, had never been able to grow a single tree there, or plant a square yard of any kind of plant whatsoever. It was useless land, all of it. Since legend had it that long ago some brigands had raped and killed a poor peasant girl there, everyone believed that the land yielded nothing because it was cursed. And so the Fradellas summoned a hermit priest from Trapani province who knew how to fight the devil. Not even he was able to make so much as a blade of grass grow. The ground was sterile because it was arid, but perhaps only a little water would suffice to change everything. Then, about thirty years ago, Joe Fradella returned from America, where he owned a ranch, and he explained to his relatives that he knew an extraordinary diviner who could find water even in the middle of the Sahara desert. And he brought the rhabdomancer from America, at his own expense. The moment the diviner took a little walk around the area, he said:

  “There’s a whole sea of water under the ground here!”

  And so the Fradellas dug the first well, and about a hundred feet down the water started coming up nice and fresh. They dug another two, and within about two years’ time, the land, irrigated by a round-the-clock system of pipes and canals, started to turn green. And whatever they planted there grew. In short, those thirty hectares became a sort of paradise on earth. Then the regional government decided to build a new high-speed road between Montelusa and Trapani. A public works project of great importance, the politicians said. The road was to pass straight through Monte Scibetta, and so they dug a tunnel that pierced the mountain from one end to the other. But once the tunnel was finished, everything else came to an end, too. That is, the high-speed road was never made, because the only thing that moved at high speed in the whole affair was the money allocated for it, which raced straight into the pockets of the contractors and local Mafia. And the kicker was that, from one day to the next, the water under the Fradellas’ land, which was right up against the mountain, disappeared. The hole created by the tunnel had shifted the aquifer. And so the land went back to being what it had always been: arid and unproductive.

  Since that time, the dry wells had started being used as convenient, anonymous tombs.

  After the fireman had been lowered into the first well, duly strapped and attached to a windlass, and found nothing, all the men and equipment moved on to the second well. There, the fireman had descended about twenty yards down when he signaled that he wanted to be pulled back out.

  “But he didn’t go down to the bottom,” the inspector observed.

  “Apparently there’s a problem,” said Mallia.

  When he’d returned to the top, the fireman said:

  “I need a mask.”

  “Is there not enough air down there?”

  “There’s enough air, but there’s a terrible smell of rotting flesh.”

  Montalbano felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He turned pale and didn’t even have the strength to speak. He felt like throwing up. Augello spoke in his stead:

  “Did you see . . . whether . . .”

  “I didn’t see anything. I only smelled.”

  Having noticed the change in Montalbano, the fire chief Mallia cut in.

  “It’s not necessarily a human body, you know. It could easily be a sheep or a dog . . .”

  The fireman put on a mask and went back down. Mimì took Montalbano by the arm and pulled him aside.

  “What’s wrong with you? That can’t be Fazio.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because his body wouldn’t have had the time to . . . to be in that condition.”

  Augello was right, but that didn’t prevent Montalbano from continuing to feel a sort of inner trembling.

  “Why don’t you go sit in the car and rest a little? If there’s any new development, I’ll come and get you.”

  “No.”

  He would never have managed to sit still. He needed to walk, maybe even around the well like a donkey attached to a millstone, as the others looked on with concern.

  The fireman came back up.

  “There’s a dead body.”

  Despite Augello’s words, Montalbano felt a wave of nausea overwhelm him. As he leaned against a car, vomiting up his soul, he heard the fireman add:

  “From the look of it, I’d say it’s been there for at least four or five days.”

  “We have to pull it out,” said the chief.

  “That’s not going to be easy,” the fireman commented.

  Montalbano meanwhile had recovered somewhat from the malaise that had come over him. He’d felt a sort of electrical current run through his body from his brain down to the tips of his toes, and a bitter, acidic taste like regurgitation in his mouth. But if the body had been dead for four or five days, then Augello was right, it couldn’t be Fazio. Except that this logical, reassuring consideration had only come afterwards, after the fright had already done its damage. All the same, Fazio’s disappearance was eating him alive. He would have given anything, his money and his health, to find him.

  “Have you got the right equipment for pulling him up?” he asked Mallia.

  “Of course.”

  “Then, Mimì, inform the prosecutor, Forensics, and Dr. Pasquano.”

  “Can we start right away, or do we have to wait for those gentlemen to get here?” the fire chief asked.

  “It’s better to wait. Meanwhile we can go and have a look at the third well.”

  “Are you thinking the person we’re looking for is not the one we found?”

  “At this point I’m absolutely certain.”

  “But—”

  “You have a problem with that?” the inspector asked, immediately turning defensive.

  He wasn’t in the mood for any disagreement at that moment.

  “No,” said Mallia. “I didn’t mean in any way to . . . Listen, we can go and check the third well, just not right now, but as soon as we’re done pulling out the body in this one. Moving the equipment and setting it back up is tiring and complicated, you see. Do you understand?”

  He understood. With a tugging heart, and against his will, he understood.

  “Okay, all right.”

  Zito, who’d been standing aside the whole time, came up to him. He realized the situation his friend was in. He knew what kind of relationship Montalbano and Fazio had.

  “Salvo, do you think I can call the studio?”

  “Why?”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to have someone come and cover this. It’s important for us.”

  He did owe Nicolò a good turn, by way of thanks. If not for him, he would still be searching for Fazio around the port.

  “Go ahead.”

  He started walking alone down the footpath that led to the third well. It went uphill, and after barely ten steps he was out of breath. He was too tired, and his concern for Fazio raged in his mind like a furious wind, preventing him from putting his thoughts in order, from thinking with the least bit of logic. He wasn’t just exhausted; he still felt scared.

  He was waiting, at any moment, to hear some bad news or to see, with his own eyes, what he could never put into words. At last he came to the third well. On the ground beside the opening there were still some rusted remains of what must have once been a large suction pump.

  He sat down on the crumbling wall of the well to rest. The sun beat down hard,
and the day had turned hot, but he was in a cold sweat. The ground all around the well was a sort of fine dust like sand, and he noticed some shoeprints on the surface. But since it seldom rained, and there wasn’t much wind in that dead land, he was unable to determine whether they were recent or old. Then he rolled over onto his belly and started gazing down into the well. Total darkness. No, they needed the fireman to go down there. And, at any rate, if Fazio had ended up in there, there wasn’t the slightest chance he might still be alive.

  As the inspector walked back towards the firemen and his own men, he had an idea, and it seemed like a good one to him. He pulled Mimì aside.

  “Listen, Mimì, the fire chief and I agreed that after they pull the body out, we’ll go and check the third well.”

  “Yeah, he told me.”

  “If, as I’m hoping, Fazio’s not in there, I want us to stay behind after everybody else leaves.”

  “To do what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘to do what?’ To look for Fazio. I’m positive he’s around here somewhere.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Fazio was wounded at the port, right? Then they put him in a car and brought him here, right? Once he was here, it’s not like they treated him so well, you know, they kept on punching him, right? Therefore, if they didn’t kill him and get rid of the body, then Fazio is somewhere around here, still wounded, because it would make no sense for them to put him back in the car and take him back to the port.”

  “But what can we do, in your opinion?”

  “As soon as we’ve taken care of this cadaver, I want you to get in the car, go straight to the commissioner, and tell him everything. We have to organize a large search party.”

  “All right. And what about you?”

  “Me and Gallo, together with Galluzzo and Lamarca, are going to start looking around.”

  “Okay.”

  The traveling circus that normally came together whenever there was a killing took two hours to arrive on the scene from Montelusa. The first to straggle in were the Forensics team, who began taking a few of the thousands of photographs, most of them useless, that they usually took on these occasions. This time they concentrated on the rim of the well and environs. Since Vanni Arquà, the chief of Forensics whom Montalbano didn’t like one bit, wasn’t present, the inspector went up to the guy who was giving orders and told him that it might be a good idea to inspect the drinking trough very carefully, as there could be blood stains on it.