“But we still don’t know who ordered the break-in or why. Total darkness.”
“Right.”
“And the agreement we’ve discovered is of no use to us outside these four walls, because we have no proof whatsoever.”
“Right.”
The telephone rang.
“Chief, ’at’d be Prossecator Giacono onna line an’ ’e wants a talk—”
“Put him through,” said Montalbano, turning on the speakerphone.
“Jacono here. I wanted to inform you that one of the inmates who took part in the brawl this morning has sung. The whole scuffle was started by a certain Renato Pusateri, who was the one that killed Pennisi.”
“Do you know why Pusateri’s in jail?”
“Blackmail and attempted murder.”
The inspector thanked the prosecutor and hung up.
“Why did you make a face when you heard Pusateri’s name?” he asked Fazio.
“Because I know who he is.”
“And who is he?”
“One of the Sinagras’ hirelings.”
“So it all adds up. The proof is in the pudding. The Cuffaros find the scapegoat and the Sinagras kill him.”
“So, what’s our next move?”
“In my opinion, something has to happen before the day is out. Something that would fundamentally confirm what I’m thinking.”
“O matre santa! Another murder?”
“No, on the contrary. It’ll be good news. Shall we make a bet?”
“Nah, Chief, I never bet against you.”
“Well, I’ll tell you anyway. Before this evening, we’ll get news that the regional administration has lifted the work stoppage at the construction sites.”
“And what will that mean?”
“It’ll mean they’ve recovered their balance and that, with Pennisi dead, they have nothing more to fear.”
“But there’s still Inge who—”
“Inge and the uncle they killed off some time ago—that, I’m sure of. Too dangerous to let live. They’d seen and heard too much. And, whatever the case, as far as Ingrid’s concerned, they’ve covered themselves by making us think she’s alive in Germany.”
“Okay, fine, but can you explain to me what good the reopening of the worksites will do for the investigation?”
“None at all, at least not directly. But indirectly, it will do some good. I’ll explain. Do you also know that Rosales has been sick for months, is under house arrest, and refuses to see anyone?”
“Yeah, I knew that.”
“We know, however, that Rosales hasn’t stopped conducting his little business deals, right?”
“Right.”
“Therefore, we know he hasn’t had any direct contact with people. Are you with me?”
“I’m with you.”
“So how does he communicate with the six companies?”
“By telephone.”
“Right you are.”
“Do you want to have it tapped?”
“Right again.”
Fazio made his usual negative grimace.
“You don’t agree?”
“I do.”
“What is it, then?”
“No prosecutor will ever give you authorization.”
“Who ever mentioned asking for authorization?”
Fazio opened his eyes wide.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Chief, do you want to end up in jail?”
Augello came in, but seeing Fazio and the inspector deeply involved in their discussion, he said nothing and sat down.
“If you think you can just tap Rosales—”
“Holy motherfucking shit!” Augello suddenly shouted, springing to his feet.
17
“What’s with you?” Montalbano asked in shock.
Fazio meanwhile just stared at him in astonishment.
Augello didn’t answer, but only beamed a smile midway between imbecilic and beatific.
Outside, the storm went wild at that exact moment, the lightning flashing continuously. Amidst the pandemonium, Mimì started dancing around the room as though snakebitten, muttering:
“I’m free! I’m free! I was going crazy!”
Montalbano shot to his feet, grabbed him by the shoulders, and forced him to sit back down.
“Free of what?” he asked.
“I’m free of my obsession with the name of the tattooed man I couldn’t remember. It’s Rosales!”
Fazio made some sort of exclamation that remained incomprehensible.
“Are you sure?” the inspector asked loudly, grabbing him forcefully by the lapels with both hands and practically shaking him. “Are you really, positively, absolutely sure? Eh?”
“Absolutely certain! And take your hands off me!”
“Oh. Sorry,” said the inspector, letting him go and sitting back down behind his desk.
Then he asked:
“Do you remember where you saw him?”
Augello answered decisively.
“At the Fiacca Sailing Club. It was summertime, and he’d just gone for a swim. The girl I was with introduced us. Rosales was the club’s vice president.”
A flash brighter than the rest burst into the dark room with a light as powerful as the sun.
But neither Fazio nor Augello saw it, because the flash had occurred only inside the inspector’s head.
“Thanks to you, Mimì,” he said after a pause, “the investigation can now proceed down the right path. We finally know that the man Inge said was her uncle was in fact Rosales. And this discovery partly confirms what I’d been starting to think, and partly sheds a new light on things. Pennisi was lying as usual when he said he heard the guy speaking German. The only one who told us the truth about Rosales was the miserable Pitrineddru.”
“But why did he always wear gloves?” Augello asked. “I can’t figure it out.”
“Because his fingerprints were taken, as is the rule, when he was jailed for fraud with Primavera. And so he was wearing gloves as a precaution. At Nicotra’s he was supposed to keep out of sight. And it was supposed to look as if he’d never even been there.”
“From what I was able to find out, Rosales was under house arrest. Which means daily checks. So how was he able to move in with the Nicotras?” Fazio asked.
“He hadn’t been under house arrest for a while. Gambardella said it was only up until six months ago. And so, once out from under his surveillance and a free citizen again, he moved into Nicotra’s house—still on the sly, of course, and still pretending he was deathly ill at his own home in Sicudiana.”
“But why would he do that?” asked Augello.
“Here we enter the realm of conjecture. And I’ll tell you my hunch. Actually, my conviction. It’s not a certainty, but a conviction. Clear?”
“Clear,” said the other two.
“Fazio, write this all down, would you? I’ll need it when I go and talk to Jacono. Now listen up. The origin of the whole affair is to be found when Rosales wins the contract for the water main for the Primavera firm.”
“Which is in fact a sort of declaration of war on the Mafia families here,” Fazio observed.
“And indeed one wonders how he managed to win such a contract on turf that the Cuffaro and Sinagra families control right down to the sale of chicory. There can only be one answer: Rosales has very important political friends in the regional administration.”
“Starting with the Public Works Council,” said Fazio, “which by all appearances always falls in line.”
“But the Cuffaros and Sinagras,” Montalbano resumed, “cannot tolerate this loss of money and, more importantly, of prestige, and they do and say everything in their power so that charges are brought against Primavera, who is f
orced to shut things down. There’s a trial and Rosales is convicted for the first time in his life, though he gets off with a light sentence. Everything clear, so far?”
“Perfectly,” the two responded in unison.
“Prison brings counsel, however, and inside his cell—”
“No, Chief, because of his heart condition he was staying in the infirmary,” Fazio pointed out.
“Well, let’s just say that while in jail, Rosales has time to think about what has transpired and, like the intelligent man he is, realizes that instead of always making war on the Cuffaros and Sinagras, it would be better to have them as allies. But how can he do this? Turning the thought over in his mind, he gets a brilliant idea. And as soon as he’s back home in Sicudiana, where he’s still under house arrest, he finds a way to establish contact with his enemies and tells them about his plan. Which is so ingenious that the Cuffaros and Sinagras not only find themselves sharing the same thoughts without shooting at each other, but in the end they embrace it.”
“Well, tell the rest of us what it is!” Augello said impatiently.
“Rosales’s brilliant idea has three critical points. The first is to create six companies that pretend to be in competition with one another but in reality are not, because they are secretly all connected. And they win all the public works contracts for Montelusa, Trapani, and respective provinces, eliminating any possibility for other companies to have a shot at these contracts.”
“Just a minute,” Augello interrupted him. “It doesn’t seem to make much sense for the Sinagras and—”
“Just hold your horses for a minute, Mimì. Now to the second critical point. The lack of any actual competition automatically enables the six firms to influence greatly the rules of the different competitions. Not only that, but Rosales can count on superficial inspections from the regional administration, with the result that the six firms can use materials inferior to those stipulated in the contracts. Take the case of Albachiara and the school complex that started falling apart just a few months after it was inaugurated. Convinced so far?”
“Fairly,” said Augello. “But it seems to me that, whatever the case, the Cuffaros and Sinagras still end up losing a little of their autonomy, even though they gain a lot.”
“And you can be sure they made this same argument to themselves,” the inspector admitted. “But the third critical point of Rosales’s plan overcomes any doubt. It is totally new but without any of the risks of novelty. Do you remember what Fort Knox was?”
“Wasn’t that the fortress where all the gold reserves of the United States were kept?” said Fazio.
“That’s right,” Montalbano resumed. “As everybody knows, the problem with money earned illegally is that it has to be laundered. It starts out dirty and has to be cleaned. Some people take it out of the country, at great risk, some chop it up into very small chunks and turn it over to loan sharks and ‘lenders’ who hang out outside casinos, and so on. Rosales, on the other hand, suggests that they keep everyone’s money on the ‘premisses,’ as Catarella would say, to avoid all danger of transporting it, and then launder it, still locally, in the form of cash payments to the construction workers. And this turns out to be the winning idea.”
“And in fact . . .” Fazio said thoughtfully. “It’s my understanding that the workers are paid in cash.”
“Mine, too,” said Montalbano. And he continued: “Rosales, as the brains behind the whole setup, can lay claim to two and a half companies—namely all of Albachiara and Soledoro, and half of Rosaspina, the other half of which goes in equal parts to the Cuffaros and the Sinagras, who also own three firms: that is, Spampinato, Lo Schiavo, and Farullo. Everything clear to you guys?”
“Perfectly,” said Fazio.
“To continue. Once the agreement is approved, the Cuffaros and Sinagras see to the construction—by men whom they trust absolutely—of the basement with the safe under the garage beside the house inhabited by Nicotra, another trusted man of theirs. That safe will become the depository of all the cash taken in by the three gangs and in need of laundering. Now you have to consider the fact that this safe had to be opened at least one day a week, to remove the money owed to the employees of the six different firms.”
“Do you have any idea who the cashier could have been?” Mimì asked, with interest, at this point.
“Of course,” Montalbano replied. “That, in fact, was Rosales’s job, and that’s why he moved in with the Nicotras. And, to avoid any unpleasant surprises, he brought along, with his gloves and heart medicine, two nasty revolvers, one for him, and the other for the man of the house. All the accountants of the six firms are Rosales’s men, and they know how to proceed. Business was going swimmingly until something happened that sent the whole system’s balance up in smoke.”
“You mean the break-in?”
“Exactly.”
“And who was it, in your opinion?”
“Nicotra himself gave me a lead.”
“What?” Augello asked in amazement.
“By going and dying inside the Rosaspina tunnel. He was sending us a message: This is where you must look for the motive. Right here. And in fact Rosaspina is the only one of those firms where Rosales had no representative on the board of directors, aside from Nicotra himself, who was the chief accountant. I am more than convinced that the only people who could have taken the money and kidnapped Rosales are either the Cuffaros or the Sinagras. There’s just no getting around it.”
“But why do you say that?” asked Augello.
“Because, in my opinion, there was some sort of dispute over the sharing of the profits of Rosaspina. There is no other explanation. Putting the Cuffaros and Sinagras together is like putting the devil and holy water together. The stupidest little thing would suffice to set the demons loose. Then, during the kidnapping—which was supposed to happen under wraps, unbeknownst to anyone, with no bloodshed, and only to strengthen their position—somebody gets killed. And this puts the whole operation at risk. As a first step, the regional politicians with a stake in the affair, after much hand-wringing, impose a work stoppage on all six sites. The Cuffaros, or the Sinagras, are then forced to free Rosales, who goes back to his home in Sicudiana, to return the money, and to clear up the murder. So they send us Pennisi. That way the whole incident is over, and everyone can go back to work.”
“And what about Inge?” Augello asked.
“Inge, as I’ve already told Fazio, had to be eliminated out of necessity. You can’t let someone who knows everything live. One word from her would have been enough to send the whole operation to the dogs.”
He got up, went and drank some water, then sat back down.
The storm outside was moving away.
“Take my notes,” said Fazio, handing them to him.
Montalbano put them in his jacket pocket.
“What do you think you’ll do?” asked Augello.
“Right now I’m going to call Jacono and find out whether he’ll see me this afternoon.”
Mimì twisted up his mouth.
“I don’t think you’ll succeed.”
“You don’t?”
“The story you just told is straight out of a good Mafia novel. You have no proof of anything.”
“You’re right. We’ll have to start looking for proof.”
“How?”
“If Rosales has gone back to Sicudiana, and I’m convinced he has, how does he get in touch with the others? I want authorization to tap his phones and put him under video and audio surveillance.”
“Best of luck,” said Augello, getting up and leaving the room.
Fazio was pensive.
“Tell me what’s going through your head, Fazio.”
“I was thinking that there’s a carabinieri station at Sicudiana where a friend of mine works, Lance Corporal Giammarco. I want to call him.”
&n
bsp; “To ask him something?”
“You can be sure they keep an eye on Rosales, right?”
“Right.”
“So I want to know if anything concerning Rosales has happened in the past few days.”
“Okay, you try and talk to him while I call Jacono.”
The prosecutor gave him an appointment for three o’clock. Fazio came back fifteen minutes later.
“Giammarco told me that about a week ago—he can’t remember exactly when—the doctor in charge of Rosales was summoned at night for an emergency, and for three days didn’t budge from his bedside.”
“It tallies,” said Montalbano. “He must have been unwell after the kidnapping and needed urgent care as soon as he got back home. With the heart condition he’s got . . .”
It was raining lightly when he went out to eat. Entering the trattoria, he sat down at his usual place, and the television was on. Enzo, knowing that it bothered the inspector, turned it off.
“Any interesting news on the tube?” Montalbano asked.
“They said the regional administration has lifted the restraining order from all six construction sites, so work can resume. At least I don’t have to worry about my brother-in-law anymore.”
As we were saying . . .
This was the latest confirmation of the inspector’s hypothesis.
A mighty hunger came over him. He would stuff his belly to the max. But then the thought that he wouldn’t be able to take a digestive walk out to the lighthouse, because he had to meet with Jacono, held him back.
It was going to be a difficult meeting.
Wouldn’t it be best to go there fortified?
No, the way of wisdom is always the middle path.
“Shall I bring you some antipasti?”
“No. Have you got spaghetti in squid ink today?”
“Yes.”
“Bring me a hefty serving.”
“As a second course I’ve got maiger à la ’Sposito.”
“Who’s this ’Sposito?”
“A Neapolitan cook who taught me how to make the sauce.”
The Pyramid of Mud Page 18
