“So, now can you tell me what it is we’re supposed to do tonight?” Augello asked.
“Tonight? Nothing. We’re going to pick up Balduccio Sinagra’s beloved grandson, Japichinu.”
“The fugitive?” asked Mimi, leaping to his feet.
“Yup, that’s the one.”
“And you know where he’s hiding?”
“Not yet. But a priest’s gonna tell us.”
“A priest? What the fuck is going on? All right, you’re going to tell me the whole story from the beginning, leaving nothing out.”
Montalbano told him the whole story from the beginning, leaving nothing out.
“Beddra Matre santissima!” Augello commented when it was over, grabbing his head between his clenched fists. He looked like an illustration from a nineteenth-century acting manual, under the heading “Dismay.”
12
Catarella first studied the photo the way the nearsighted do, sticking it right in front of his eyes, then the way the farsighted do, holding it at arm’s length. Finally, he frowned.
“Chief, definitely no way, the scanner I got can’t do it. I gotta take it to my trusty friend.”
“How long will that take?”
“Two hours max, Chief.”
“Get back here as soon as you can. Who’s going to man the switchboard?”
“Galluzzo. Uh, and Chief, I wanted to tell you, that orphan guy’s been waitin’ a talk t‘you since early this morning.”
“Who’s this orphan?”
“Griffo’s his name, the guy whose mom and dad was killed, who says he can’t unnastanna way I talk.”
Davide Griffo was dressed all in black, in deep mourning. Disheveled, clothes full of wrinkles, looking spent. Montalbano held out his hand to him, inviting him to sit down.
“Did they make you come for the official identification?”
“Yes, unfortunately. I arrived in Montelusa yesterday, late afternoon. They took me to see them. After ... afterwards, I went back to the hotel and threw myself down on the bed, clothes and all. I felt so bad.”
“I understand.”
“Is there any news, Inspector?”
“None so far.”
They looked each other in the eye, both dejected.
“You know something?” said Davide Griffo. “It’s not out of any desire for revenge that I’m so anxious for the killers to be caught. I just want to know why they did it.”
He was sincere. Not even he knew about what Montalbano called his parents’ “secret illness.”
“Why did they do it?” Davide Griffo asked. “To steal Papa’s wallet and Mama’s purse?”
“Oh?” said the inspector.
“You didn’t know?”
“That they took their wallet and purse? No. I was sure they would find the purse under your mother’s body. And I didn’t check your father’s pockets. Anyway, neither the purse nor the wallet would have made any difference.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Absolutely. The people who killed your parents would eventually have let the wallet and purse turn up, duly cleaned of anything that might lead us to them.”
Davide Griffo looked lost in a memory.
“Mama never went anywhere without that little purse. I used to tease her about it sometimes. I would ask her what treasures she kept hidden in there.”
He was swept away in a surge of emotion, a kind of sob rising up from deep inside his chest.
“I’m sorry. Since I was given back their things, the clothes, the coins Papa had in his pocket, their wedding rings, the house keys ... Well, I came here to ask your permission ... in short, if I can go into the apartment and start to take inventory ...”
“What do you intend to do with the apartment? They owned it, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they made a lot of sacrifices to buy it. When the time is right, I’ll sell it. I don’t have much reason to come back to Vigata anymore.”
Another stifled sob.
“Did your parents own any other property?”
“None whatsoever, as far as I know. They lived on their retirement pensions. Papa had a little passbook with the post office, where he would deposit his and Mama’s pension checks ... But there was very little left to set aside at the end of each month.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen this passbook.”
“It wasn’t there? Did you have a good look where Papa kept his papers?”
“It wasn’t there. I went through all his papers very carefully. Maybe the killers took it along with the wallet and handbag.”
“Why? What are they going to do with a postal passbook they can’t use? It’s a useless piece of paper!”
The inspector stood up. Davide Griffo did the same.
“I have no objection to you going into your parents’ apartment. On the contrary. If you should find anything among those papers that—”
He stopped short. Davide Griffo gave him a questioning glance.
“Please excuse me a minute,” the inspector said, and he left the room.
Cursing under his breath, he had realized that the Griffos’ papers were still at the station, where he’d brought them from his house. In fact, the plastic garbage bag was in the storeroom. It seemed like bad form to return those family mementos to the son in that package. He rifled through the closet, found nothing he could use, no cardboard boxes or even a more decent bag. He resigned himself.
Davide Griffo gave Montalbano a confused look as the inspector set the garbage bag down at his feet.
“I took it from your parents’ place, to put the papers inside. If you want, I could have them brought to you by one of my—”
“No, thanks. I’ve got my car here,” the other said stiffly.
He hadn’t wanted to tell the orphan, as Catarella called him (speaking of whom, how long had he been away now?), but there was a reason one might want to remove the postal passbook. A very plausible reason: to prevent others from knowing the amount on deposit. Indeed the amount in the passbook might even be the symptom of the secret illness that had caused the conscientious doctor to intervene. Just an hypothesis, of course, but one that needed to be verified. He called up Assistant Prosecutor Tommaseo and spent half an hour beating back the bureaucratic resistance the judge kept putting up. Finally Tommaseo promised he would see to the matter at once.
The post office was a stone’s throw from police headquarters. A horrendous building. Begun in the 1940s, when Fascist architecture was rampant, it hadn’t been finished until after the war, when tastes had changed. The office of the director was on the second floor, at the end of a corridor utterly devoid of human beings or objects, frightening in its desolation and loneliness. The inspector knocked on a door on which hung a plastic rectangle with the word: “Director.” Under the plastic rectangle was a sheet of paper with an image of a cigarette struck out by two intersecting red lines. Under this were the words: “Smoking is strictly forbidden.”
“Come in!”
Montalbano went in and the first thing he saw was an actual banner on the wall, repeating the admonition: “Smoking is strictly forbidden.”
Or you’ll have to answer to me, the president of the Republic seemed to be saying, staring sullenly from his portrait under the banner.
Under this was a high-backed armchair in which the director, Cavaliere Attilio Morasco, was sitting. In front of Cavaliere Morasco sprawled an enormous desk, entirely covered with papers. The director himself was a midget who looked like the late King Vittorio Emanuele III, with a crew-cut hairdo that gave him a head like Umberto I, and a handlebar mustache in the manner of the so-called “Gentleman King.” The inspector felt absolutely certain he must be in the presence of a descendant of the House of Savoy, a bastard, one of the many sired by the Gentleman King.
“Are you Piedmontese?” Montalbano blurted out, staring at him.
The other looked flabbergasted.
“No, why? I’m from Comitini.”
He might be from Comitini
, Paternò, or Raffadali, it made no difference to Montalbano.
“You’re Inspector Montalbano, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Did Prosecutor Tommaseo phone you?”
“Yes,” the director admitted reluctantly. “But a phone call is a phone call. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, of course I know what you mean. For me, for example, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”
Cavaliere Morasco was unimpressed by the inspector’s learned quotation of Gertrude Stein.
“I see that we agree,” he said.
“In what sense, may I ask?”
“In the sense that verba volant and scripta manent.”
“Could you explain?”
“Certainly. Prosecutor Tommaseo phoned me to tell me that you have authorization to conduct investigations concerning a postal passbook belonging to the late Alfonso Griffo. That’s fine, though I consider this, how shall I say, an advance notice. Until I receive a request and written authorization, I cannot allow you to violate the postal code of secrecy.”
These words so steamed the inspector that for a moment he was in danger of taking off through the ceiling.
“I’ll come back later.”
He started to rise. The director stopped him with a gesture.
“Wait. There may be a solution. Could I see some identification?”
The danger of takeoff increased. With one hand, Montalbano anchored himself to the chair he was sitting in, and with the other he held out his ID card.
The Savoy bastard examined it at great length.
“After the prosecutor’s call, I imagined you’d come running here. So I drafted a declaration, which you will sign, and which says that you relieve me of all responsibility in the matter.”
“I’m happy to relieve you,” said the inspector.
He signed the declaration without reading it and put his ID card back in his pocket. Cavaliere Morasco stood up.
“Wait for me here. This will take about ten minutes.”
Before going out, he turned around and pointed to the photo of the president of the Republic.
“Did you see?”
“Yes,” said Montalbano, confused. “It’s Ciampi.”
“I wasn’t referring to the president, but to what’s written above him. Smo-king is strict-ly for-bid-den. I mean it. Don’t take advantage of my absence.”
As soon as the man closed the door, Montalbano felt a violent need to smoke. But it was forbidden, and rightly so, since, as everyone knows, passive cigarette smoke kills millions, whereas smog, dioxin, and lead in gasoline do not. He got up, went downstairs to the ground floor, happened to see three employees smoking, went outside, plunked himself on the sidewalk, smoked three cigarettes in a row, went back inside—now there were four employees smoking—climbed the stairs, walked down the deserted corridor, opened the door to the director’s office without knocking, and entered. Cavaliere Morasco, sitting at his desk, looked at him disapprovingly, shaking his head. Montalbano regained his chair with the same guilty look he used to have when he arrived late to school.
“We have the printout,” the director solemnly declared.
“Could I see it?”
Before giving it to him, the cavaliere checked to make sure the inspector’s liberating signature was still there on his desk.
But the inspector didn’t understand a single thing on the printout, especially because the figure at the bottom seemed excessive.
“Could you explain this for me?” he asked, again with the tone he used to use in school.
The director leaned forward, practically stretching his entire body across the desk, and snatched the paper out of the inspector’s hands in irritation.
“Everything is perfectly clear!” he said. “From the printout one can see that the monthly pension of Mr. and Mrs. Griffo came to three million lire or, broken down individually, one million eight hundred thousand for him, and one million two hundred thousand for her. At the time of collection, Mr. Griffo would withdraw his own pension, in cash, for their monthly needs, and leave his wife’s pension on deposit. This was their standard procedure. With a few rare exceptions, naturally.”
“But even assuming they were extremely tight and thrifty,” the inspector said, thinking aloud, “it still doesn’t add up. I believe I saw that there were almost a hundred million in that passbook!”
“You saw correctly. To be precise, ninety-eight million three hundred thousand lire. But there’s nothing so unusual about that.”
“There isn’t?”
“No, because, without fail, on the first of each month for the last two years, Alfonso Griffo would deposit two million lire. Which makes a total of forty-eight million, added to their usual savings.”
“And where was he getting these two million per month?”
“Don’t ask me,” the director said, offended.
“Thank you,” said Montalbano, standing up. And he held out his hand.
The director stood up, walked around his desk, looked the inspector up and down, and shook his hand.
“Could I have the printout?” Montalbano asked.
“No,” the Savoy bastard replied drily.
The inspector left the office and, once out on the sidewalk, fired up a cigarette. He’d guessed right. They’d made off with the passbook because those forty-eight million lire were the symptom of the Griffos’ fatal illness.
After he’d been back at headquarters ten minutes, Catarella returned wearing the desolate expression of an earthquake victim. He had the photo in his hand and set it down on the desk.
“Even my trusty friend’s scanner couldn’t do it. If you want, I’ll take it to Cicco de Cicco, ‘cause that crimololog ical thing’s not happenin’ till tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Cat, but I’ll take it there myself.”
“Salvo, why on earth don’t you learn how to use a computer?” Livia had asked him one day, adding: “You have no idea how many problems you could solve with it!”
Well, here was one little problem the computer hadn’t been able to solve. It had only made him waste his time. He reminded himself to tell this to Livia, just to keep the polemic going.
He put the photo in his jacket pocket, left the station, and got in his car. He decided, however, to pass by Via Cavour before going to Montelusa.
“Mr. Griffo’s upstairs,” the concierge informed him.
When he opened the door, Davide Griffo was in shirtsleeves, scrub brush in hand. He was cleaning the apartment.
“It was getting too dusty.”
He showed the inspector into the dining room. On the table, in little piles, were the papers Montalbano had given him shortly before. Griffo intercepted his gaze.
“You were right, Inspector. The passbook’s not here. Did you want to tell me something?”
“Yes. I went to the post office and found out how much your parents had in that passbook account.”
Griffo made a gesture as if to say that there wasn’t any point in discussing this.
“Not much, I’m sure.”
“Ninety-eight million three hundred thousand lire, to be exact.”
Davide Griffo turned pale.
“There must be a mistake!” he stammered.
“No mistake, I assure you.”
Davide Griffo, his knees turning to jelly, collapsed in a chair.
“But how can that be?”
“Over the last two years, your father deposited two million lire in the account every month. Do you have any idea who might have been giving him that money?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea! They never mentioned any extra earnings to me. I can’t understand it. Two thousand a month is a respectable stipend. What could my father have done, at his age, to earn it?”
“It wasn’t necessarily a stipend.”
Davide Griffo turned even paler, and went from being confused to looking downright scared.
“Do you think there could be a connection?”
“Between the two million a
month and the murder of your parents? It’s a possibility that must be taken into serious consideration. That’s exactly why the killers took the passbook: so we wouldn’t think there was any cause-and-effect relationship.”
“But if it wasn’t a stipend, what was it?”
“Bah,” said the inspector. “I’ll make a conjecture. But first I have to ask you something, and I want you to be truthful. Would your father have ever done anything dishonest for money?”
Davide Griffo didn’t answer right away.
“It’s hard to judge, right offhand... I don’t think so, I don’t think he would. But he was, well, vulnerable.”
“How?”
“He and Mama were very attached to money. So, what’s your conjecture?”
“Your father might, for example, have served as a front man for someone involved in some illegal business.”
“Papa wouldn’t have agreed to anything like that.”
“Even if the business had been presented to him as legal?”
This time Griffo didn’t answer. The inspector stood up.
“Well, if you can think of any explanation ...”
“Yes, of course,” said Griffo, looking distracted. He walked Montalbano to the door.
“I was just remembering something Mama said to me last year. I had come to see them, and at one point, when Papa wasn’t around, Mama said to me in a low voice: ‘When we’re no longer here, you’re going to have a pleasant surprise.’ Of course, sometimes Mama wasn’t really all there, poor thing. She never brought it up again. And I forgot all about it.”
At Montelusa Central Police, he had the receptionist call Cicco de Cicco. He had no desire to run into Vanni Arquà, the chief of forensics who had replaced Jacomuzzi. They shared a mutual antipathy De Cicco arrived in a hurry and took the photo from him.
“I was expecting worse,” he said, looking at it. “Catarella said they tried scanning it onto the computer, but—”
“Think you can tell me the number on that license plate?”
“I think so, Inspector. I’ll give you a ring this evening, in any case.”
IM5 Excursion to Tindari (2005) Page 15
