“What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you feel bad?”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong? Would you like to see a doctor?”
“No, it’s nothing for a doctor. It’s just that . . . I haven’t been able to sleep since I found out I killed that poor guy . . . An’ . . . An’ I wish I could go home.”
“Don’t you like it here?”
“I do, but home is home.”
“Aren’t you afraid to go and live there alone?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Just a few more days—three, at the most—and you’ll be able to go home. But I came to ask you something that could be extremely useful to us in investigating your uncle’s murder.”
Grazia, alarmed, opened her eyes wide.
“Why, is the investigation still going on? Didn’t Dindò do it?”
“Of course Dindò did it. But haven’t you ever wondered how Dindò got inside the house that night? Either someone opened the door for him or he had a duplicate key. In either case it means that the kid had an accomplice. And the accomplice was someone who was free to go in and out of the house whenever he liked. So my question for you is this: Was there anyone your uncle saw often? Someone he also spent a lot of time talking to? Whom he would sometimes invite to stay for lunch?”
The girl’s face lit up.
“There certainly was! A guy called Fonzio. An’ sometimes ’u zu Giurlanno would ask me to bring them coffee when they were talking in the office.”
“Do you know his surname?”
“No.”
At that moment they heard the front door open. It was Galluzzo’s wife, returning with the groceries.
“Signora Amelia, Grazia’s coming with me to the station. Your husband’ll bring her back with him later. And you, Grazia, will you need to change before coming out?”
“Yessir, it won’t take more than five minutes.”
Montalbano sat Grazia down beside Catarella, who showed her, on the computer monitor, mug shots of every convicted criminal in Vigàta and environs. He barely had time to sit down at his desk before Catarella streaked into the room, halted in his mad dash by Fazio, who grabbed him on the fly. He was panting.
“Chief! The goil idinnified ’im!”
They went into Catarella’s closet. Grazia was sitting in one corner, face buried in her hands and crying.
“Galluzzo! Take the girl back home, would you?”
The file said that Alfonso Aricò, born forty years earlier in Vigàta, was the kind of person you wouldn’t want to break bread with. He was a gambler. And when he wasn’t gambling, stuff like burglary, extortion, assault, rape, vandalism, and battery was his daily fare. The photo showed a good-looking man with the face of a born criminal.
“Fazio, spread the word around. I want this asshole in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”
6
He ate listlessly, with no appetite, sitting at the table and looking at the album of comics he’d taken from Dindò’s hovel. There had been a good ten or so such albums scattered across the floor, but this one the half-wit had given special importance, keeping it in the drawer of the little table so that he could read and reread it, as was visible from the sullied and worn-out pages. Then at a certain point Dindò had started writing that single word, justice, in the margins. A word that, in itself, did not explain whether Dindò intended to administer justice himself or to demand it. The inspector started reading the comic book’s story with saintly forbearance. It was about a dirty old man of the upper classes who plots to kidnap a beautiful young girl and make her yield to his desires. After a number of vicissitudes, the kidnapping is pulled off successfully, and the dirty old squire can finally contemplate Alba (that was the girl’s name) naked and imploring, in his very own bedroom. Her teary entreaties and laments only serve to inflame the old man’s passions, and he grabs her and possesses her in every manner possible. Then he has her thrown into a cell, promising himself a repeat of the whole business after a restorative sleep. But Zorno, having managed to enter the nobleman’s house on the sly, kills him after a series of intense duels with his henchmen. He frees the girl, and in her happiness and gratitude she sets about doing even nastier things with the masked avenger than were done to her by the old man. An idiotic pretext for making pornographic drawings. But why had Dindò felt the obsessive need to keep writing that comment: justice? Maybe he was like one of those common moviegoers who get so engrossed in the plot that they shout out comments, advice, and suggestions to the unhearing shadows on the screen who irremediably follow the path marked for them by fate and the screenwriter. The inspector became almost convinced of this explanation. He went and sat down in his usual armchair and turned on the TV. On-screen appeared a political debate, already in progress, on the question: Is it legitimate for an undersecretary still in office to start making paid advertisements on television? About halfway through he turned it off, feeling depressed. He rang Livia and talked about Dindò, describing to her the filthy cell the kid had lived in. And he asked her:
“But can you tell me why a poor wretch like that would suddenly start singing, amidst all that squalor?”
Livia gave a simple answer that, in its very simplicity—indeed, in its very obviousness—had the force of absolute truth.
“Why, Salvo? He was in love.”
There was a flash. He staggered, barely managing to remain standing, and grabbed the table with one hand. In dizzying fashion, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, forming a logical, perfect picture.
“Salvo? Salvo! Why don’t you answer?”
He was unable to open his mouth and tell her he was still on the line. He hung up.
Over the course of the morning, his men came into the station one by one, dejected and empty-handed. They hadn’t succeeded in tracking down Fonzio Aricò, the ex-con who worked as Gerlando Piccolo’s enforcer. His neighbors hadn’t seen him for a week, saying he often did that, staying away for many days at a time without coming home. And each of them, expecting a scene of furious rage when reporting the negative results of his search, was shocked at the inspector’s placid, courteous reply.
“Okay, thanks.”
Indeed they were so astonished that they asked each other whether their superior hadn’t perhaps grown stigmata on his hands and feet in the meantime.
That same morning, Montalbano made two phone calls, the first to Prosecutor Tommaseo, which turned out to be quite long, as the prosecutor demanded a great many explanations. The second call was to the captain of the Flying Squad, who didn’t ask for any explanations at all. But he said there was just one problem. For how long would the inspector need the equipment? Montalbano replied that the whole matter would be settled within forty-eight hours. And so they came to an agreement.
At four o’clock that afternoon, an officer of the Flying Squad came and brought him the keys to Gerlando Piccolo’s house. Half an hour later, Montalbano summoned Galluzzo and told him, as he gave him the keys, that Grazia could go back home if she wanted.
“Actually, call her right now, from here.”
After hanging up, Galluzzo told him the girl wanted to go home straightaway, while there was still light. Not that she was afraid or anything, but she would be less impressionable this way.
“If you’ll allow me, I’ll take her home in my car. I should be able to get there and back in an hour, max.”
“Listen, there’s no need for you to come back to the station. After helping Grazia get settled, go straight home. At the most you can give me a ring and tell me how she reacted, and whether there were any problems. And tell her she can call me for any reason at all if she starts to get worried.”
Galluzzo smiled.
“Inspector, that girl never worries about anything. She’s got courage to burn. What is there for her to get worried about a
nyway?”
“There’s Fonzio Aricò, for one. We’ve been unable to track him down, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t waiting around for the right moment to reappear.”
Galluzzo’s smile vanished.
“And what could Fonzio want from Grazia?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Gerlando Piccolo’s papers. If he knows how to play them right, he could make some serious money.”
“You’re right. Do you want me to stay with her tonight?”
“Who’s to say Fonzio’s going to come tonight? Listen, you can tell Grazia that tomorrow I’ll get authorization to confiscate all of Piccolo’s papers, so she can rest easy. So, no, just do as I said.”
Galluzzo rang at seven-thirty. He had just got home after dropping off Grazia, who was happy to be back in her own world. The other phone call that Montalbano was waiting for, the one that he hoped would confirm that his castle of conjectures was made not of sand but of stone and mortar, came barely an hour later.
“Inspector Montalbano? She called. As soon as a man’s voice answered, she said she was finally back home and there was no surveillance. She added that she had two things to give him. And the man answered that he would come to her place shortly after midnight. So what do we do now?”
“That’s all, thanks.”
After this phone call confirming that he’d been right on the mark, he should have felt something other than the wave of nausea that gripped his stomach.
“Fazio! Gallo!”
“Yessir.”
“I want you both to go home and eat and then come back here. Inform your families that you’re going to be busy tonight.”
The two looked at each other in consternation, then looked at the inspector as if asking a question.
“I’ll explain everything when you get back. There’s no hurry. But don’t say anything to anyone. I mean it.”
“How can we say anything if we don’t know anything?” asked Fazio.
Montalbano also left the station. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe. When he reached the Trattoria San Calogero, he had a moment of hesitation. Should he go in or not? Then the nausea returned, stronger than before. And so he headed for the port, stopping to watch the tourists boarding the ferryboat for the islands. They were almost all young foreigners wearing backpacks. They certainly weren’t going to enrich the islands with their money—but with the beauty of their youth, yes. He sighed and began his customary walk to the end of the jetty.
“These are all just conjectures of mine, mind you, but they’re starting to be confirmed. At the Piccolos’ house, where she was taken in at age five after both parents died, Grazia was always treated like a slave. She told me this herself, and I don’t think she was exaggerating. And I’m also convinced that Zio Gerlando, who was who he was, took advantage of his niece when she was still a little girl. Then, as soon as the aunt dies, Grazia becomes her uncle’s steady mistress when he can’t find anything better. For years—first in confused fashion, but then more and more clearly and strongly—the girl develops a hatred for the man, but can’t rebel. She has no way out. Until the day when an understanding, a passion, or whatever you want to call it, is born between her and Fonzio Aricò, the enforcer. The uncle doesn’t notice anything. He stays in his office upstairs, sucking people’s blood, while Grazia and Fonzio do what they please downstairs. One day Grazia and Fonzio get an idea, and we’ll clarify this later: They decide to free themselves of Gerlando Piccolo and start out on their own, while carrying on his practice. Piccolo’s inheritance was certainly going to go to Grazia anyway, since he didn’t have any other relatives. But how would they pull the thing off without arousing suspicion? The ideal scenario would be for some third person to kill Gerlando. And this is where Grazia—and I’m sure she was the one to come up with the idea—remembers Dindò, the supermarket delivery boy who’s about twenty with the brain of a four-year-old. She starts being nice to him, tries to win his trust, and every time she sees him she shows him more and more affection. And Dindò falls for it. He falls in love, in fact. And so Grazia confesses to him that she can never be his, because she’s imprisoned by her uncle, who sates his base desires on her and forces her to do repugnant things. Dindò gets all worked up, feels like a knight of yore, and promises to free the girl and kill the man keeping her prisoner. He vows up and down to do right by her. At first Grazia pretends to try and talk him out of it, but then finally says that if he’s really so determined, she could slip him one of the firearms that are in the house. But after he uses it, he’ll have to take it away with him.”
“But we’ve recovered all the firearms that were in the house,” Fazio cut in, “and none of them fired the shot that killed Piccolo.”
“Because in fact that weapon belongs to Fonzio Aricò. But let me continue. On the appointed night, Grazia, once she’s finished her work in the kitchen, quietly opens the front door and leaves the revolver Aricò gave her on the first step of the staircase.”
“Can I interrupt? Where’s Fonzio in the meantime?” Fazio asked.
“He’s working on an ironclad alibi. Undoubtedly in a gambling den, with fifty other people who can testify for him. Grazia wants to be certain that Dindò will fire the gun. So the ideal situation would be for him to come in just as her uncle is forcing her to do those things she finds so repugnant, as she’s already told the kid. And in fact that’s exactly what happens.”
“Wait a second,” said Gallo. “The position of the corpse—”
“I know what you’re thinking. But you, Gallo, are enough of a grown-up to know that to make love you don’t always have to do it in the traditional position.”
Gallo blushed and said nothing.
“Dindò is late in arriving, and so Grazia remains glued to Piccolo, even afterwards. When Dindò finally gets there, Grazia screams and breaks away, the kid fires, sets the gun down and starts turning the room upside down to make it look like a burglary. But at this point Dindò’s rage suddenly subsides and he looks over at Piccolo’s dead body and realizes what he’s done. He goes completely berserk, smashing the paintings and the little statue of the Madonna, then races out of the room. Grazia realizes she’s screwed. She thinks, or probably guesses, that sooner or later Dindò will cave and spill all the beans. So she opens the drawer to the nightstand, grabs her uncle’s gun, runs after the kid and fires, mortally wounding him.”
“And that’s something I don’t understand,” said Fazio. “If he was really planning to spill the beans and turn himself in, and if he had the strength to get to the spot where he finally died, why didn’t he just go to any house whatsoever, say the one closest to Piccolo’s, and ask for help?”
“Because the moment he’s wounded by Grazia’s bullet, Dindò becomes an adult.”
“I don’t understand,” Fazio muttered.
“Before that he was a little boy in love who didn’t know what he was doing. One second later he realized he was a murderer who’d been manipulated like a puppet. The bullet didn’t mortally wound just his body, but also, and above all, his soul, because it meant that Grazia had betrayed him. He wanted to let himself die.”
“But even if the girl hadn’t shot him, Grazia and Fonzio must already have made plans for Dindò,” said Fazio.
“Of course. They would have got rid of him quickly, maybe making it look like an accident. But let me continue. When she sees Dindò is still running away, Grazia chases after him, turns on the light in front of the house—a witness already reported this detail, though the prosecutor had a different interpretation for it—but the kid has already started up his scooter and is gone. Grazia sees the blood on the ground, but doesn’t know how serious the wound is. And this worries her, it makes her nervous, and so she makes a mistake. Her only one, in an otherwise perfect plan. She goes back up to her uncle’s room—to see if there’s anything that can still be done for him, or so she tells us later—she drops the revolver
she shot Dindò with, grabs the keys to the safe, goes into the office, takes the money she finds in it—and there must’ve been a lot—leaves two hundred thousand lire behind, closes and locks it, puts the keys back, and at this point she realizes that the gun that Dindò used, the one given him by Fonzio, is on the bed, or somewhere else in the room. She doesn’t know what to do. According to the plan, Dindò was supposed to take it away with him and Fonzio would get it back later and dispose of it. Grazia, fearing that the gun could lead back to Aricò, hides it in the house together with the money. The house that we never searched, since, aside from the bedroom and office, there wasn’t any reason to.”
“But how do you know all this about the weapon?” asked Gallo.
“I don’t; I’m just assuming it. To be honest with you, it’s the weakest point of my reconstruction. But if Dindò had a crisis when still at the Piccolo house, the first thing he would have done was to throw the gun as far away from him as possible. At any rate, after hiding the money and the gun, Grazia calls us, saying that her uncle’s been murdered. And she’s scared to death because she doesn’t know anything about Dindò, whether or not he’s strong enough to report the crime and turn her in, but she manages to control herself quite well. I was the one who gave her the news of the kid’s dead body being found, and she played her part well.”
“Chief, you said that this reconstruction of yours was starting to be confirmed,” said Fazio. “How?”
“The minute Grazia was left alone in the house, she called Fonzio.”
“How do you know?”
“I had her phone tapped. She told him to come to her place because she had two things to give him. If you ask me, she’s talking about the gun and the money. Fonzio replied that he’d come by to see her after midnight.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’ll take up position in the vicinity. We’ll steel our nerves for a few hours in the cool night air. Because there’s going to be a lot of kisses, hugs, a little fuck in celebration, and then some mutual storytelling. Then, when Aricò comes back out, we’ll arrest him. If we find the money and the gun on him, he’s screwed. He can probably defend himself about the money, saying it’s his, that he won it in some gambling den, but the gun will hang him, ’cause there’s nothing he can say about that. It won’t take much to prove that it’s the weapon that fired the shot that killed Piccolo. How’s he ever going to explain how we found it in his pocket?”
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 30
