The Pyramid of Mud

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Thank you,” said the young man.

  He gave a half bow and left.

  Jannaccone showed up at the Vigàta police station first thing that afternoon.

  “Since we’d finished up and were passing through on our way back to Montelusa, I thought . . .”

  He wasn’t required to report to Montalbano, but was doing him a courtesy.

  The inspector thanked him and summoned Fazio.

  “It took us all this time,” Jannaccone began, “because we kept stubbornly looking for something that absolutely had to be there but which we were unable to find. Only at the end did we have our explanation.”

  “I’m sorry, Jannaccone,” said Montalbano, who hadn’t understood a word. “What were you unable to find?”

  “The old man’s fingerprints.”

  It was as if he’d fired a gun. Montalbano’s and Fazio’s jaws dropped.

  “It seems to make no sense, but it’s true,” Jannaccone continued. “I’ll give you just one example. The man kept a small phial of heart medicine on his bedside table. Well, there were no fingerprints on it, not even on the glass he kept beside it.”

  “Do you think the assailants wiped them away?”

  “I was immediately convinced it wasn’t them. It would have been practically impossible to erase all the fingerprints of a man who’d been living for months in the same house, and to do so in such a hurry. And to erase the fingerprints of only that man, mind you, leaving those of the Nicotras all over the place.”

  “And so?”

  “Well, we solved the mystery almost by chance, when I had the idea to go and search through their garbage can. We found two pairs of very dirty cotton gloves. Apparently the old man wore them at all times and never took them off, for any reason, not even when he went to bed and fell asleep.”

  “Did you find any gloves for later use?”

  “No. Possibly the stock ran out and they were about to buy a new supply, maybe that same day.”

  “Which means,” Montalbano observed, “that if that man was so concerned about leaving fingerprints, it’s surely because they’re on file.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Jannaccone. “And I want to tell you about another strange thing. In the drawer of the old man’s nightstand we found a 9-millimeter caliber Russian-manufactured revolver.”

  “Which confirms that the man was no angel.”

  “But the best part,” Jannaccone continued, “is that another, identical revolver was found in the drawer of Nicotra’s nightstand.”

  “Russian guns?” inquired the inspector, wanting further confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  “They may have come through the same conduits as all the Kalashnikovs,” Fazio concluded.

  “As if they were standard-issue weapons, in short,” said Montalbano.

  “Exactly,” Jannaccone agreed.

  “Especially since I don’t recall Nicotra having any license to bear arms.”

  “As for the others, we’ve got a tremendous amount of fingerprints. It’ll be a long, tedious job trying to compare and contrast them. We’ll see if we’re any luckier with the blood that was on the pillow.”

  “One last question. The shell that was recovered outside the front door, what make was it, do you know?”

  Jannaccone smiled.

  “No, Inspector, they shot Nicotra with the most Italian of Berettas. Our love of our country is safe.”

  “What do you make of it?” asked Fazio.

  “The most obvious thing: that the people who put the old man in the Nicotras’ custody were worried about the possibility of an attack and so armed them both. But they didn’t give them time to react. So the question goes back to being what it always was: Who was the old man? With the follow-up question being: And why was he such a high-value target?”

  “And how do we find the answer?”

  “By trying, first of all, to put our thoughts in order. By tomorrow morning, I want you to tell me the first and last names and ages of all the Mafia fugitives in the province.”

  “But you yourself said he couldn’t be a fugitive.”

  “That was just conjecture. Of which I’m still convinced, moreover. But now we need confirmation.”

  “Am I interrupting?” Augello asked from the doorway.

  “No, Mimì, come in. What did the prosecutor tell you?”

  “The asshole made me wait three hours in the waiting room this morning and then didn’t call me in.”

  “That’s a nasty little habit of Jacono’s.”

  “Later, in the afternoon he finally deigned to grant me half an hour, but there was no persuading him to put an officer on guard for Piscopo at the hospital.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the bastard just dug in his heels, that’s why. But, speaking of the hospital, I dropped in there while I was in town. The operation was a success, and Piscopo’s going to recover. I heard this from a doctor who was speaking to the newspapermen and TV journalists.”

  “So they’ll try to kill him again. And they’ll try as soon as possible, to catch us by surprise. Maybe even tonight, which would make the biggest impression and shut up anyone who might be thinking about talking.”

  “I think you can bank on that.”

  He’d said something to Piscopo’s nephew that was rather like a promise. He now had to keep it.

  “Okay, then, here’s what we’ll do. You choose first. Either from eleven to two, or from two to five.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The two of us are going to stand guard for Piscopo. We’re not authorized to do so, but nobody can prevent us. Anyway, since we’re volunteers, they won’t have to pay us overtime.”

  “What about me?” asked Fazio.

  “We’ll need you for tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll take the first shift,” said Mimì.

  “Then find out what ward he’s—”

  “I already know everything. Intensive care. Second floor on the left. He’s in a single room, number eighteen.”

  He went home early, ate only the eggplant Parmesan to keep things light, quickly said good night to Livia, who seemed rather relieved by the puppy’s company, and then went to bed.

  He got three good hours of sleep, and the alarm clock used up all its juice before he could open his eyes.

  He washed himself hastily, didn’t shave, and to make up for it drank two mugs of espresso and headed off to Montelusa. There was nobody on the road.

  At five minutes to two he pulled up in the nearly deserted hospital parking lot, took his pistol out of the glove compartment, put it in his jacket pocket, got out of the car, and went into the hospital.

  “Where are you going?”

  In the lobby was a night watchman sitting behind a desk with four telephones and other gadgets.

  “I’m Inspector Montalbano.”

  “Ah, yes. Your colleague told us you’d be coming. You can go on upstairs.”

  Naturally, as always happened to him in hospitals, he got into the wrong elevator. In the end, he gave up and took the stairs. The hallway was illuminated with the sort of night-light that seems to make more darkness than light. The door to room 18 was closed. He knocked lightly.

  “Who is it?”

  “Montalbano.”

  The door opened, and Augello appeared.

  “Come on in.”

  The room was divided into two parts by a glass wall with a door in it.

  On the other side, which was more spacious, lay the man who must have been Piscopo, with his face bandaged and a great many wires leading from his body and into some mysterious machines that buzzed like flies.

  On this side of the glass there was barely enough room for a small table and two chairs. Mimì had set them up so that he could sit in one and put
his feet up on the other.

  “How’d it go?”

  “A fucking bore.”

  “So much the better.”

  They said good-bye and Augello left.

  The first thing that occurred to the inspector was that he hadn’t brought anything to read. Big mistake. Three hours spent doing nothing would take a whole lifetime to pass.

  The second thing was that if he sat there for even as little as an hour watching Piscopo, who was so rigged up that he looked like something out of a ’Murcan movie on hospitals, he would surely go insane and start bashing his head against the wall.

  He did note, however, that it would have been impossible for anyone to come through the main entrance without being stopped by the guard. Maybe it would be easier trying to enter through the emergency room.

  Still, to stay holed up in that space the way Mimì did was out of the question. Sitting there bottled up with the target of a possible assassination meant having little room to move.

  And so he grabbed the chair, put it out in the hall, went out of the room, closed the door, and sat down.

  After a while his eyelids started to droop. Matre santa! He was falling asleep!

  He heard some footsteps approaching and sat up in his chair. It was a nurse on her way to a nearby room, which she entered, staying inside for some ten minutes. Then she came back out, walked away down the corridor, and silently disappeared.

  A sudden, overwhelming desire to smoke a cigarette came over him. Three rooms down to the right, at the end of the hallway, was a French door. If he could manage to open it, he could smoke outside and comfortably keep an eye on room 18.

  He got up, went over to the French door, and turned the doorknob. It opened.

  He then maneuvered so that he had room enough to keep his body half inside and half outside.

  As he was reaching for his pack of cigarettes he noticed that the little terrace outside served as a landing for an outdoor fire-escape staircase.

  He stopped and thought about this.

  Good thing he’d got the urge to smoke! Because the fire escape, which was something that hadn’t occurred to him, would have been the best way for someone to enter the hospital without being seen.

  But neither did he want to be seen from outside, even if there was little chance of this, given the pitch-darkness.

  He went and got the chair and put it in front of the French door. He could sit in it without being seen from outside.

  He could finally light his cigarette.

  He’d almost finished it when he distinctly heard, in the total silence of the night, a metallic sound coming from the iron staircase. It lasted a second, then vanished.

  What could it have been?

  Then he realized. It was the sound made when one pulled out the bottom part of the staircase, to bring it down to the ground.

  His hearing was fine, excellent! No problem there!

  So someone was coming up the stairs.

  What should he do now? Go outside and arrest him at once, or wait for him to come up to the French door?

  He chose the second course of action.

  Ever so softly he closed the door, pulled the chair away, cocked his revolver, and flattened himself against the wall in the wan glow of a distant night-light.

  He waited.

  Then a man appeared outside on the little terrace, and slowly, carefully, opened the French door.

  He barely had time to take a step into the hallway before Montalbano appeared before him, gun in hand.

  “Police! Stop right where you are!”

  For a fraction of a second, the man froze.

  Then he reacted, silently and lightning-fast, landing a solid punch in Montalbano’s face. The blow was so hard that the inspector staggered backwards a few steps as the blood began to flow out of his crushed nose.

  Meanwhile the man had gone back out onto the terrace and was racing down the fire escape.

  Still dazed, the inspector ran outside likewise and yelled:

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  But the man ignored the warning and continued rushing down the stairs, skipping two steps at a time.

  Montalbano began to do the same.

  The man reached the bottom and started running towards the parking lot.

  Montalbano also reached the bottom, and at that moment an accomplice he hadn’t spotted dealt him a powerful blow to the back of the head with the butt of his pistol.

  Montalbano fell to the ground, cut down like a calf at the slaughterhouse.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there unconscious.

  When he came to, he had a terrible headache. His shirt and jacket were covered with blood, which must have come from his head.

  There was absolute silence all around. Nobody’d witnessed what had just happened.

  Managing to stand up, he staggered towards the emergency room.

  He was fit to be tied.

  He calmed down a little when no fracture was found. He got off lightly, with three stitches in the back of his head.

  “Matre santa! Madunnuzza beddra! Wha’ happen, Chief? Didja get inna car crash? Wit’ all doo rispeck, ya gotta nose ’at looks like a eggplant! ’Dja hoit it?”

  “Yeah, it was a crash, but nothing serious. Send Augello and Fazio to my office and then get me Prosecutor Jacono on the line.”

  Fazio and Augello came in and gasped.

  “What on earth happened?” asked Mimì.

  “What happened is that you’re one lucky son of a bitch.”

  “What have I got to do with it?”

  “If you’d taken the second shift on guard you would be the one now with an eggplant nose and three stitches in the back of your head.”

  “What are you saying? It was pure chance!” Augello protested.

  The telephone rang. It was Jacono. Montalbano turned on the speakerphone.

  “I’m calling you, sir, to inform you that last night an individual broke into Montelusa Hospital to try and assassinate Piscopo.”

  Jacono must have been taken aback by this, because there was a moment of silence before he spoke.

  “What are you talking about? Who told you that?”

  “Nobody told me. It was I who chased the man away.”

  “But what were you doing at the hospital?”

  “I was guarding Piscopo’s room. And before I got there, my second-in-command, Mimì Augello, had done the same. You know, he’s the one who came to you to ask for protection for Piscopo. Which you obstinately refused. If we hadn’t been there, you would now have to answer for a very serious mistake.”

  “Well, I didn’t think—”

  “And now you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Well, I guess circumstances—”

  “Then let me give you some advice. Have Piscopo transferred to another hospital, and keep the news of the transfer secret. If you leave him where he is, those guys will try again, whether we post a guard or not. Have a good day.”

  He hung up, relieved.

  “Now tell us how it happened,” said Mimì.

  Montalbano told them everything.

  “But when the guy came in, was he carrying a weapon?” asked Fazio.

  “No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t very well walk down the hallway openly carrying a gun. If a doctor or a nurse suddenly came out of a room . . . But you can be sure he was armed, as was his accomplice at the bottom of the fire escape.”

  “But why didn’t you fire at him as you were chasing him down the stairs?” Augello asked.

  “Because I realized they had no intention of shooting at me or making any kind of noise. Their assignment was to quietly liquidate Piscopo and finish the job they’d started.”

  8

  Montalbano then turned to Fazio and opened his mouth, but his right-hand man di
dn’t give him the time to utter so much as a syllable.

  “Already taken care of,” said Fazio.

  The blood rushed to Montalbano’s head and he saw red.

  Whenever Fazio said those four accursed words, he could barely control himself. This time, however, the dam broke.

  “What the goddamn motherfuck!” he exploded, slamming his fist down on the desk.

  Fazio and Augello first looked at each other in shock and then turned their questioning faces to the inspector.

  Montalbano realized he had to give some kind of an explanation, but of course not the real one. As often happened in these situations, however, nothing came to mind.

  He started stammering.

  “I . . . just suddenly remembered . . . I suddenly forgot that . . . Just never mind, guys, okay? It’s a private matter . . . I apologize. Let’s carry on. What was I saying?”

  “You were asking me if I’d made a list—”

  “—of the Mafia fugitives, yes, now I remember. So you did?”

  “I did,” Fazio replied.

  And he pulled a small sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket. Before beginning to read it, however, he wanted to reassure the inspector, who was already giving him a dirty look.

  “No personal particulars other than first and last names and age,” he said.

  “Wait a second,” Augello cut in. “Care to fill me in on what you guys are talking about?”

  The inspector explained everything in fine detail, after which Fazio was finally able to read his piece of paper.

  It turned out that there were six fugitive mafiosi in the region: three around thirty years old, two around forty, and only one elderly man, Pasquale Villano, who was sixty-five.

  “To judge from the clothes in the armoire, the only likely candidate is this Pasquale Villano,” Fazio concluded.

  “That name rings a bell,” said Augello. “Excuse me just a minute, while I go and check.”

  He got up, went out, and returned a minute later with a photograph in his hand.

  “It was pinned up in the hallway with the other wanted notices,” he said, putting the photo down in front of Montalbano, who looked at him and said:

  “It can’t be him.”