“What did you say your name was?” asked the voice on the other side of the door.
“Montalbano.”
“And what is your profession?”
If he said he was a police inspector, the lady might have a stroke.
“I work at the Ministry.”
“Have you got an ID?”
“Yes.”
“Slide it under the door.”
With the patience of a saint, the inspector obeyed.
Five minutes of absolute silence passed.
“I’m going to open now,” said the old lady.
Only then, to his horror, did the inspector notice that the door had four locks. And certainly inside there must be a padlock and chain. After some ten minutes of various noises, the door opened and Montalbano was able to make his entrance into the Baeri household. He was led into a large sitting room with dark, heavy furniture.
“My name is Assunta Baeri,” the old lady began, “and your ID says that you’re with the police.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Mrs. (Miss?) Baeri said sarcastically.
Montalbano didn’t breathe.
“The thieves and killers do whatever they please, and the police go off to soccer games with the excuse that they need to maintain order! Or they serve as escorts to Senator Ar dolì, who doesn’t need any escort, ‘cause all he’s gotta do is look at somebody and they die of fright.”
“Mrs. Baeri, I—”
“Miss Baeri.”
“Miss Baeri, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I came to talk to you about Giuliana Di Stefano. This used to be her apartment, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you buy it from the deceased?” What a question! “... Before she died, of course.”
“I didn’t buy anything! The ‘deceased,’ as you call her, left it to me, loud and clear, in her will! Thirty-two years, I lived with her. I even paid rent. Not much, but I paid it.”
“Did she leave you anything else?”
“Ah, so you’re not with the police after all, but with the tax bureau! Yes, sir, she left me another apartment, too, but a teeny-weeny one. I rent it out.”
“Anyone else? Did she leave anything to anybody else?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know, some relative ...”
“There was her sister, who she made up with after they hadn’t spoken for years; she left her some little thing.”
“Do you know what this little thing might be?”
“Of course I know! She drew up her will right in front of me, and I’ve even got a copy of it. To her sister she left her stable and hide. Not much, just something to remember her by.”
Montalbano was flummoxed. Could one bequeath one’s hide to somebody? Miss Baeri’s next words cleared up the misunderstanding.
“No, not much at all. Do you know how much land is in a hide?”
“I couldn’t honestly say,” the inspector replied, recovering himself.
“Giuliana, when she left Vigàta to come live here, wasn’t able to sell the stable and the land around it, which apparently was out in the middle of nowhere. So, when she made her will, she decided to leave them to her sister. They’re not worth much.”
“Do you know exactly where this stable is?”
“No.”
“But it must be specified in the will. You said you have a copy of it.”
“Oh, Madunnuzza santa! What, you want me to start looking for it?”
“If you’d be so kind ...”
The old lady stood up, mumbling to herself, went out of the room, and returned less than a minute later. She knew perfectly well where the copy of the will was. She handed it rudely to Montalbano, who skimmed through it and finally found what he was looking for.
The stable was termed a “one-room rural construction”; as for the measurements, a four-by-four-meter box. Around it was a thousand square meters of land. Not much, as Miss Baeri had said. The building was in a district called “The Moor.”
“Thank you very much, and please excuse the disturbance,” the inspector said politely, getting up.
“Why are you interested in that stable?” asked the woman, also standing up.
Montalbano hesitated. He had to think up a good excuse. But Miss Baeri continued:
“I ask you because you’re the second person who’s inquired about it.”
The inspector sat back down, and Miss Baeri did likewise.
“When was that?”
“The day after poor Giuliana’s funeral, when her sister and her husband were still here. They were sleeping in the room in back.”
“Explain to me what happened.”
“I’d completely forgotten about it; I only remembered it now because we were talking about it. Anyway, the day after the funeral, it was almost time to eat. The phone rang and I went and answered it. It was a man who said he was interested in the stable and the land. I asked him if he knew that Giuliana had died and he said no. He asked me who he could talk to about it. So I put Margherita’s husband on, since it was his wife who’d inherited it.”
“Did you hear what was said?”
“No, I left the room.”
“Did the man who called say what his name was?”
“He might have, but I can’t remember anymore.”
“Afterward, did Mr. Griffo talk about the phone call in your presence?”
“When he went into the kitchen, Margherita asked him who was on the phone, and he said it was somebody from Vigàta who lived in the same building as them. But that was all he said.”
Bull‘s-eye! Montalbano leapt up.
“I have to go now, thank you very much, please excuse me,” he said, making for the door.
“Just tell me one thing, I’m curious,” said Miss Baeri, following hard on his heels. “Why don’t you simply ask Alfonso these things?”
“Alfonso who?” asked Montalbano, having already opened the door.
“What do you mean, Alfonso who? Margherita’s husband.”
Jesus! The lady knew nothing about the murders! She obviously had no television and didn’t read the newspapers.
“I’ll ask him,” the inspector assured her, already on his way down the stairs.
At the first phone booth he saw, he stopped, got out of the car, went in, and immediately noticed a small red light flashing. The telephone was out of order. He spotted another. Also broken.
He cursed the saints, realizing that the smooth run he’d been on until that moment was beginning to be broken up by small obstacles, harbingers of bigger ones ahead. At the third booth, he was finally able to call headquarters.
“Oh Chief! Chief! Where you been hidin’ out? All mornin’ I been—”
“Tell me about it another time, Cat. Can you tell me where ‘The Moor’ is?”
First there was silence, then a little giggle of what was supposed to be derision.
“How’m I sposta know, Chief? You know what it’s like in Vigàta these days. There’s Smallies everywhere.”
“Put Fazio on at once.”
Smallies? Were there so many Pygmies among the immigrant population?
“What can I do for you, Chief?”
“Fazio, can you tell me where the district called ‘The Moor’ is located?”
“Just a sec, Chief.”
Fazio had activated his computer brain. Inside his head he had, among other things, a detailed map of the municipal area of Vigàta.
“It’s over by Monteserrato, Chief.”
“Explain to me how you get there.”
Fazio explained. Then he said:
“Sorry, but Catarella insists on talking to you. Where are you calling from?”
“From Trapani.”
“What are you doing in Trapani?”
“I’ll tell you later. Pass me Catarella.”
“Hallo, Chief? I just wanted to say that this morning—”
“Cat, what is a Smallie?”
�
��Somebody from Smallia, Chief, in Africa. Inn’t that what they’re called? Or is it Smallians?”
He hung up, sped off in his car, then stopped in front of a large hardware store. Self-service. He bought himself a crowbar, a big pair of pliers, a hammer, and a small hacksaw. When he went to pay, the cashier, a dark, pretty girl, smiled at him.
“Have a good robbery,” she said.
He didn’t feel like answering. He went out and got back in his car. Shortly afterward, he happened to look at his watch. It was almost two, and a wolflike hunger came over him. He saw a trattoria called, according to its sign, DAL BOR-BONE, with two tractor-trailers parked in front. Therefore the food must be good. A brief but ferocious battle ensued between the angel and the devil inside him. The angel won, and he continued on to Vigàta.
“Not even a sandwich?” the devil whined.
“No.”
Monteserrato was the name of a line of hills, of considerable height, separating Montelusa from Vigàta. They practically began at the sea and continued on for five or six kilometers inland. Atop the last ridge stood a large, old farming estate. It was an isolated spot. And so it had remained, despite the fact that at the time of the public-works construction craze, in their desperate search for a place that might justify the building of a highway, bridge, overpass, or tunnel, the authorities had linked it to the Vigàta-Montelusa provincial road with a ribbon of asphalt. Old Headmaster Burgio had once spoken to him of Monteserrato a few years back. He told him of how, in 1944, he’d made an excursion to Monteserrato with an American friend, a journalist to whom he’d taken an immediate liking. They walked for hours across the countryside, then began climbing, stopping occasionally to rest. When they came within view of the estate, and its high enclosure of walls, they were stopped by two dogs of a sort that neither the headmaster nor the American had ever seen before. With a greyhound’s body but a very short, curled, piglike tail, long ears as on a hunting dog, and a ferocious look in the eye. The dogs literally immobilized them, snarling whenever they made the slightest move. Finally somebody from the estate came by on horseback and accompanied them. The head of the family took them to see the remains of an ancient monastery, where Burgis and the American saw an extraordinary fresco, a Nativity, on a damp, deteriorating wall. One could still read the date: 1410. Also portrayed in the painting were three dogs, in every way identical to the ones that had cornered them on their arrival. Many years later, after the asphalt road was built, Burgio had decided to go back there. The vestiges of the monastery no longer existed; in their place now stood a vast garage. Even the wall with the fresco had been knocked down. Around the garage one could still find little pieces of colored plaster on the ground.
The inspector found the little chapel that Fazio had told him to look for; ten yards beyond began a dirt road that descended down the hillside.
“Be careful, it’s very steep,” Fazio had said.
Talk about steep! It was practically vertical. When he was halfway down, he stopped, got out, and looked out from the edge of the road. The panorama that unfolded before him could be seen as either hideous or beautiful, depending on the observer’s tastes. There were no trees, no other houses than the one whose roof was visible about a hundred yards down. The land was not cultivated. Left to itself, it had produced an extraordinary variety of wild plants. Indeed, the tiny house was utterly buried under the tall grass, except, of course, for the roof, which clearly had been redone a short while before, its tiles intact. With a sense of dismay, Montalbano saw electrical and telephone wires, originating at some distant, invisible point, leading into the former stable. They were incongruous in that landscape, which appeared to have looked this way since the beginning of time.
15
At a certain point along the dirt road, on the left-hand side, the repeated comings and goings of a car had opened a kind of trail through the tall grass. It led straight up to the door of the former stable, a door recently remade in solid wood and fitted with two locks. In addition, a chain of the sort used to protect motorbikes from theft was looped through two screw eyes and secured by a big padlock. Beside the door was a tiny window, too small for even a five-year-old child to pass through, blocked by iron bars. Beyond the bars, one could see that the pane was painted black, either to prevent one from seeing in or to keep the light from filtering out at night.
Montalbano had two possible courses of action: either return to Vigàta and ask for reinforcements or set about breaking and entering, even though he was convinced this would be a long and arduous task. Naturally, he opted for the latter. Removing his jacket, he picked up the little hacksaw he’d been lucky enough to buy in Trapani and got down to work on the chain. After fifteen minutes, his arm began to ache. After half an hour, the pain had spread halfway across his chest. After an hour, the chain broke, with the help of the crowbar, which he used for leverage, and the pliers. Drenched in sweat, he removed his shirt and spread it out on the grass, hoping it would dry a little. He sat down in the car and rested. He didn’t even feel like smoking a cigarette. When he felt sufficiently rested, he attacked the first of the two locks with the set of picklocks he now carried with him at all times. He tinkered for about half an hour before deciding it was useless. He got nowhere with the second lock either. Then he had an idea that at first seemed ingenious to him. He opened up the glove compartment of the car, grabbed his pistol, loaded it, aimed, and fired at the higher of the two locks. The bullet hit its target, ricocheted off the metal, and lightly grazed his side, the same one he’d injured a few years before. The only result he achieved was to have deformed the keyhole. Cursing, he put the pistol back in its place. Why was it that the policemen in American movies always succeed in opening doors with this method? The fright brought on another round of sweating. He took off his undershirt and spread it out next to his shirt. Armed with hammer and chisel, he started working on the wood of the door, all around the lock he had shot at. After an hour or so, he thought he’d done enough digging. A good shoulder-thrust should definitely open the door now. He took three steps back, got a running start, and crashed his shoulder into the door. But the door didn’t budge. The pain shooting through his entire shoulder and chest was so great that tears came to his eyes. Why hadn’t the goddamn thing opened? Easy: he’d forgotten that, before putting his shoulder into the door, he had to reduce the second lock to the same state as the first. Now his trousers, damp with sweat, were bothering him. He took them off, too, laying them next to the shirt and undershirt. After yet another hour, the second lock also began to feel shaky. His shoulder had swollen and started throbbing. He worked with the hammer and crowbar. The door resisted, inexplicably. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable rage: like Donald Duck in certain cartoons, he began kicking and punching the door, screaming like a madman. Limping, he returned to the car. His left foot ached, he took off his shoes. And at that moment, he heard a noise: by itself, and exactly like in a cartoon, the door decided to give in, collapsing into the room. Montalbano ran back to the house. The former stable, plastered and whitewashed, was completely empty. Not a single piece of furniture, not even a piece of paper. Nothing whatsoever, as if it had never been used. Except, at the base of the walls, a number of electrical outlets and telephone jacks. The inspector stood there staring at that emptiness, unable to believe his eyes. Then, when it got dark, he made up his mind. He picked up the door, leaned it against the jamb, gathered up his undershirt, shirt, and trousers, tossing them into the backseat, put on only his jacket and, after turning the headlights on, headed home to Marinella, hoping that nobody would stop him along the way. Nuttata persa e figlia fìmmina.
He took a much longer route home, but it spared him the trouble of passing through Vigata. He had to drive slowly because of the shooting pains in his right shoulder, which was puffy as a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven. He pulled up in the parking area in front of his house, groaning as he gathered up his shirt, undershirt, trousers, and shoes, then turned off the headlights and
got out of the car. The lamp outside the front door wasn’t on. He took two steps forward and froze. Right next to the door there was a shadow. Somebody was waiting for him.
“Who are you?” he asked angrily.
The shadow didn’t answer. The inspector took another two steps and recognized Ingrid. She was gawking at him, unable to speak.
“I’ll explain later,” Montalbano felt compelled to say as he searched for his keys in the trousers he was carrying on his arm. Ingrid, having slightly recovered, took the shoes from his hand. The door opened at last. In the light, Ingrid examined him with curiosity and asked:
“Have you been performing with the California Dream Men?”
“Who are they?”
“Male strippers.”
The inspector said nothing and took off his jacket. Upon seeing his swollen shoulder, Ingrid didn’t scream or ask for any explanation. She merely said:
“Have you got any liniment in the house?”
“No.”
“Give me the keys to your car and get in bed.”
“Where are you going?”
“There must be an open pharmacy somewhere, don’t you think?” said Ingrid, picking up the house keys as well.
Montalbano undressed—he needed only to remove his socks and underpants—and got into the shower. The big toe on his left foot was now as big as a medium-sized pear. Once out of the shower, he went and looked at his watch, which he’d put on his bedside table. It was already nine-thirty; he’d had no idea. He dialed the number of headquarters, and as soon as he heard Catarella, he transformed his voice.
“Allô? Zis is Monsieur Hulot. Je cherche Monsieur Augelleau.”
“Are you Frinch, sir? From Frince?”
“Oui. Je cherche Monsieur Augelleau, or, as you say, Augello.”
“He ain’t here, Mr. Frinch.”
IM5 Excursion to Tindari (2005) Page 18
