The Patience of the Spider

by Andrea Camilleri

  The trill of the telephone shattered the silence of the villa and the surrounding countryside like a burst of Kalashnikov fire. The doctor sprang to his feet and went over to the console the phone was on.

  “Hello?…Yes, what is it?…When?…Yes, I’ll be right over…Inspector Montalbano’s here with me; would you like to speak with him?”

  He was pale. He turned around and, without a word, handed the receiver to the inspector. It was Fazio.

  “Chief? I tried you at the office and at home, but nobody could tell me where…Listen, the kidnappers just called, not ten minutes ago…I think it’s better if you come here yourself.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Just a minute,” said Carlo Mistretta. “I need to go get some medication for Salvatore. He’s very distraught.”

  He went out. They’d phoned sooner than they’d said. Why? Perhaps something had gone wrong for them and they no longer had much time? Or was it simply a tactic to confuse everyone? The doctor returned with a small handbag.

  “I’ll go out first, and you can follow me in your car. There’s a shortcut to my brother’s house from here.”

  9

  They arrived in less than half an hour. A uniformed policeman from Montelusa who didn’t know the inspector opened the gate. He let the doctor pass and then blocked Montalbano’s car.

  “Who are you?”

  “What I wouldn’t give to know! Let’s just say that, conventionally speaking, I’m Inspector Montalbano.”

  The policeman gave him a puzzled look, but let him drive through. In the living room they found only Minutolo and Fazio.

  “Where is my brother?” the doctor asked.

  “Listen,” said Minutolo, “when listening to the phone call he nearly passed out. So I went upstairs to call the nurse, who roused him and persuaded him to go lie down.”

  “I’m going upstairs,” said the doctor.

  And he left, bag in hand. Fazio, meanwhile, had set up the equipment near the telephone.

  “This one’s also a recorded message,” Minutolo began. “And this time they get to the point. Listen, and we’ll talk afterwards.”

  Pay close attention. Susanna’s health is fine, but she’s feeling desperate because she wishes she could be at her mother’s side. Get six billion lire ready. I repeat, six billion lire. The Mistrettas know where to find it. Goodbye.

  The same disguised male voice that was in the first recording.

  “Did you manage to trace the call?” Montalbano asked.

  “You ask such useless questions!” Minutolo retorted.

  “This time they didn’t let us hear Susanna’s voice.”

  “Right.”

  “And they talk in lire.”

  “How did you expect them to talk?” Minutolo asked sarcastically.

  “In euros.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

  “No, it’s not. Unless you belong to that class of shopkeepers who think a thousand lire’s the same as a euro.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Nothing, just an impression.”

  “Say it.”

  “The person sending the message still thinks the old way. It’s comes more naturally to him to count in lire instead of euros. He didn’t say ‘three million euros,’ he said six billion lire. In short, it seems to me that the man on the phone is of a certain age.”

  “Or he’s clever enough to have us thinking that way,” said Minutolo. “He’s taking us for a ride the way he did when he scattered the helmet and backpack at the opposite ends of town.”

  “Can I go outside for a bit? I need some air,” said Fazio. “I’ll be back in five minutes. In any case, if the phone rings, you’re here to pick up.”

  Not that he really needed to go out. He just didn’t feel right, listening to a conversation between his superiors.

  “Go ahead, go ahead,” Minutolo and Montalbano said in unison.

  “But there is something new, and rather serious, in my opinion, in that phone call,” Minutolo resumed.

  “Right,” said Montalbano. “The kidnapper is certain that the Mistrettas know where to find six billion lire.”

  “Whereas we haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “But we could.”

  “How?”

  “By putting ourselves in the kidnappers’ shoes.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Not in the least. What I mean is that we, too, could force the Mistrettas to take the necessary steps in the right direction, the one that leads to the possible ransom money. And those steps might clear up a whole lot of things for us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me sum it up for you. The kidnappers knew right from the start that the Mistrettas were not in any position to pay a ransom, and yet they kidnapped the girl anyway. Why? Because they also knew that the Mistrettas could, if necessary, get their hands on a large sum of money. Do you agree so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind you, the kidnappers are not the only ones who know that the Mistrettas can do this.”

  “They’re not?”

  “No.”

  “And how do you know?”

  “Fazio reported two strange phone calls to me. Have him repeat them to you.”

  “And why didn’t he report them to me?”

  “It must have slipped his mind,” Montalbano lied.

  “Concretely speaking, what should I do?”

  “Have you informed the judge of this last message?”

  “Not yet. I’ll do it right now.”

  He made as if to lift the receiver.

  “Wait. You should suggest to him that, since the kidnappers have now made a specific request, he should put a restraining order on the assets of Mr. and Mrs. Mistretta, and then report this measure to the press.”

  “What would we gain from that? The Mistrettas don’t have a cent, and everybody knows it. It would be a pure formality.”

  “Of course. It would be a pure formality if it remained between you, me, the judge, and the Mistrettas. But I said the measure should be made known to the public. Public opinion may be full of shit, as some maintain, but it matters. And the public will begin to wonder if it’s true that the Mistrettas know where to find the money, and if so, they’ll ask themselves why they don’t do what they need to do to get their hand son it. It’s possible the kidnappers themselves will have to tell the Mistrettas what they need to do. And something will finally come out in the open. Because, on the face of it, my friend, this doesn’t look to me like a simple kidnapping.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I don’t know. It gives me the impression of a billiards game, where one banks a shot off the cushion in front so that the ball will end up on the opposite side.”

  “You know what I say? As soon as he recovers a little, I’m going to put the squeeze on Susanna’s father.”

  “Go ahead. But keep one thing in mind. Even if, five minutes from now, we learn the truth from the Mistrettas, the judge must still proceed the way we said. With your permission, I’ll speak with the doctor as soon as he comes downstairs. I was at his house when Fazio called. He was telling me some interesting things, and I think the conversation is worth continuing.”

  At that moment Carlo Mistretta entered the room.

  “Is it true they asked for six billion lire?”

  “Yes,” said Minutolo.

  “My poor niece!” the doctor exclaimed.

  “Come, let’s go have a breath of air,” Montalbano invited him.

  The doctor followed him outside as though sleepwalking. They sat down on a bench. Montalbano saw Fazio hurry back into the living room. He was about to open his mouth when the doctor again beat him to it.

  “The phone call my brother just described to me relates directly to what I was telling you at my place.”

  “I’m sure it does,” said the inspector. “I think, therefore, that if you feel up to it, you need to—”

  “
I feel up to it. Where were we?”

  “Your brother and his wife had just moved to Uruguay.”

  “Oh, yes. Less than a year later, Giulia wrote a long letter to Antonio, suggesting he come join them in Uruguay. The work prospects were excellent, the country was growing fast, and Salvatore had won the esteem of many important people and was in a position to help him…I forgot to mention that Antonio had got a degree in civil engineering—you know, bridges, viaducts, roads…Well, he accepted and came. In the early going, my sister-in-law supported him unstintingly. He remained in Uruguay for five years. Just think, they’d bought two apartments in the same building in Montevideo so they could be close to one another. Among other things, Salvatore sometimes had to leave home for months at a time for work, and he felt reassured to know that he wasn’t leaving his young wife alone. Anyway, to make a long story short, during those five years, Antonio made a fortune. Not so much as an engineer, the way my brother tells it, but through his skill in manipulating the various ‘free zones’ that were so numerous over there…which was a more or less legal way of evading taxes.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “He said he was terribly homesick for Sicily. And he couldn’t stand being away any longer. And that, with all the money he now had, he could start up his own business over here. My brother later suspected, though not at the time, that there was a more serious reason.”

  “What was that?”

  “That maybe he’d made a wrong move and feared for his life. In the two months prior to his departure, his moods had become impossible, though Giulia and Salvatore attributed this to the fact that he was leaving soon. They were like a single family. And Giulia, in fact, suffered a great deal when her brother left. So much, in fact, that Salvatore accepted an offer to go work in Brazil just so that she could live in a new and different environment.”

  “And they didn’t see each other again until—”

  “Are you kidding? Aside from the fact that they continually called and wrote to each other, Giulia and Salvatore came to Italy at least once every two years and spent their vacations with Antonio. Just think, when Susanna was born…” At the mention of her name, the doctor’s voice cracked. “…When Susanna was born rather late in their marriage—they’d given up hope of having children—they brought the baby here so she could be baptized by Antonio, who was too busy to travel. Eight years ago, my brother and Giulia finally moved back. They were tired. They’d been all over South America and they wanted Susanna to grow up in Italy. On top of this, Salvatore had managed to put aside a good deal of money.”

  “Could you say he was a rich man?”

  “Frankly, yes. And it was I who took care of everything. I invested his savings in stocks, land, real estate…As soon as they arrived, Antonio announced that he was engaged and would soon be married. The news took Giulia entirely by surprise. Why hadn’t her brother ever mentioned having a girlfriend he intended to marry? She had her answer when Antonio introduced Valeria, his future wife, to her. A beautiful child, barely twenty years old. Antonio, by this point, was pushing fifty, and he went head over heels for the girl.”

  “Are they still married?” Montalbano asked with involuntary malice.

  “Yes. But Antonio quickly discovered that to hold on to her, he had to cover her in gifts and fulfill her every desire.”

  “Did he ruin himself?”

  “No, that’s not what happened. ‘Operation Clean Hands’ happened.”

  “Wait a minute,” Montalbano interrupted. “Operation Clean Hands started in Milan over ten years ago, when your brother and his wife were still abroad. And before Antonio got married.”

  “True. But you know how things go in Italy, don’t you? Everything that happens up north—Fascism, liberation, industrialization—takes a long time to reach us. Like a long, lazy wave. Anyway, a few magistrates finally woke up down here as well. And Antonio had won quite a few government contracts. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know and I don’t want to know, though it’s not hard to imagine.”

  “Was he investigated?”

  “He made the first move himself. He’s a very clever man. To save himself from an eventual investigation that would surely have led to his arrest and conviction, he needed to make some papers disappear. He confessed this, in tears, to his sister, one evening six years ago. And he added that the operation would cost him two billion lire, which he needed to find in a month’s time, because he didn’t have the cash at that moment and didn’t want to borrow from the banks. Those were days when anything he did could be interpreted the wrong way. He said the whole thing almost made him laugh—or cry—because two billion lire was a trifle compared to the huge sums that often passed through his hands. And yet those two billion lire represented his salvation. And they would, of course, be only a loan. He pledged to repay the entire sum within three months, supplemented by any losses incurred by the hasty sell-off. Giulia and my brother stayed up an entire night discussing this. Salvatore would have given the shirt off his back to keep his wife from despairing. The following morning they phoned me and told me of Antonio’s request.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I must confess that I reacted badly at first. Then I had an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I said the request seemed senseless, insane, to me. All he needed was to have Valeria sell her Ferrari, her boat, and some jewelry, and they would have their two million quite easily. Or, if he had trouble reaching that figure, Giulia and Salvatore could make up the difference. But only the difference. In short, I was trying to limit the damage.”

  “Did you succeed?”

  “No. That same day, Giulia and Salvatore spoke with Antonio and told him about my offer. But Antonio started crying. During that period tears came easily to him. He said that if he accepted, not only would he lose Valeria, but word would get around and he would lose his good standing in the community. People would start saying he was on the verge of bankruptcy. And so my brother decided to sell everything.”

  “How much did they get for it, out of curiosity?”

  “One billion seven hundred and fifty million lire. By the end of the month they no longer had anything, just Salvatore’s pension.”

  “Another thing, also out of curiosity, sorry. Do you know how Antonio reacted, when he was given less than the sum he’d asked for?”

  “But he got the two million he’d asked for!”

  “Who made up the difference?”

  “Do I really have to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did,” the doctor said reluctantly.

  “And what happened next?”

  “After the three months had gone by, Giulia asked her brother if he could pay back the loan, at least in part. Antonio asked her if they could delay it a week. Mind you, they had nothing in writing: no agreements, no promissory notes, nothing. The only document was a receipt for the two hundred fifty million lire my brother had insisted on giving me. Four days later, Antonio was indicted for a variety of things, including corruption of a public official, fraudulent balance sheets, and so on. After five months had passed, Giulia, who’d been wanting to send Susanna to an exclusive boarding school in Florence, asked again for some of the money back, only to have Antonio reply rudely that this was not the right time for it. And so Susanna stayed here to study. Well, in short, the right time never came.”

  “Are you telling me those two billion lire were never repaid?”

  “Precisely. Antonio beat the rap at his trial, quite probably because he’d managed to get rid of the incriminating documents, but one of his businesses mysteriously went bankrupt. Then, by some sort of domino effect, his other businesses all met the same end. Everybody got screwed: creditors, suppliers, employees, everyone. What’s more, his wife caught the gambling bug and lost incredible sums of cash. Then, three years ago, Giulia and Antonio had a terrible row, after which they stopped speaking to one another. That was when Giulia first got sick. She no longer wanted to li
ve. And, as I’m sure you understand, it wasn’t simply a matter of money.”

  “How’s Antonio’s business doing now?”

  “Splendidly. Two years ago he got his hands on some new capital. Personally, I think the bankruptcies were all staged, and in reality he illegally transferred his money abroad. Then, with the new law, he brought it back in, paid his percentage, and put his affairs in order—like all the other crooks who did the same thing, once the law legalized what had once been illegal. Now, because of the earlier bankruptcies, all his businesses are in his wife’s name. As for us, I repeat: We haven’t seen a cent.”

  “What’s Antonio’s surname?”

  “Peruzzo. Antonio Peruzzo.”

  Montalbano knew that name. Fazio had mentioned it when reporting the phone call from a former “administrative employee at Peruzzo’s” who’d wanted to remind Susanna’s father that too much pride was a bad thing. It was all starting to make sense.

  “You do realize,” the doctor went on, “that Giulia’s illness complicates the present situation.”

  “In what way?”

  “A mother is always a mother.”