And indeed Via Vitaliano Brancati consisted of four little cottages with chickens running free outside. Which, in a sense, was a fortunate thing.
Because standing around a woman of about forty dressed all in black and sitting on a chair and holding a wet handkerchief to her forehead were a woman of about seventy and two men. Whereas on most other streets there would have been a huge mob they would have had to disperse with billy clubs.
In front of one of the cottages was a lone dumpster. The dead body could only be in there.
“Has anyone other than the signora opened it?”
The elderly woman and the two men shook their heads. Fazio lifted the lid and Montalbano stood on tiptoe to look inside.
The only thing in there was the body.
“Holy fucking shit!” said the inspector.
Then, turning to Fazio:
“Hold it steady for me.”
He wanted to double-check, so flabbergasted had he been by what he’d seen. Fazio grabbed onto the edge with both hands to act as a counterweight. Montalbano hoisted himself up, holding himself in the air with his hands resting on the rim of the dumpster, then lowered himself halfway inside, bending over with his belly resting on the rim. He touched the body, pulled himself back up, then landed back with both feet on the ground.
Fazio shot him an inquiring glance. The woman who’d been sitting had also stood up and came forward with the other two. Montalbano, however, remained silent, dazed and speechless.
“It’s an inflatable doll,” he said at last.
How many of them could there be, in Vigàta?
“So much the better,” said Fazio. “We can leave it right there.”
“No,” said Montalbano, “pull it out.”
Fazio got Gallo to help, and they laid it down on the ground and just stood there staring at it in silence.
All three policemen turned sullen and grave, because the doll was identical in every way to the one that Gregorio Palmisano had kept in his bed. Some of the hair had fallen out, an eye was missing, one of the tits deflated, and the body was covered with many little round and square rubber patches.
At that exact moment Dr. Pasquano arrived, followed by the ambulance for transporting corpses. Seeing the doctor appear, Montalbano realized he would rather be in a forest at that moment, surrounded by wild animals. And indeed, Pasquano, like the asshole he was, started clowning around.
He squatted down beside the doll and started to examine it.
“The body shows no signs of violence,” he said.
“Iss a doll, Doctor,” said the woman who’d discovered it. She was still standing there, not quite knowing what to do.
“Take her away,” said Pasquano. “I’ve got work to do.”
Then he went on:
“She probably died of natural causes.”
“That’s enough, now, Doctor,” said Montalbano.
Pasquano sprang up like a cricket, red in the face.
“So you’re not going to ask me the hour of death, eh?” he blurted out. “Can’t you see you’re no longer able to distinguish between a corpse and a doll? Next time, before inconveniencing me, make sure the dead body’s really a body and not a mannequin! Of all the lamebrained crap . . .”
He got back in his car, cursing, and drove off.
The two stretcher bearers came slowly forward, looking doubtful. They cast a glance at the doll, and one of them scratched his head. The other asked:
“Are we supposed to take this away with us?”
“No, no, you can leave too, thanks,” said the inspector, feeling annihilated.
Naturally, as soon as Pasquano was gone, Forensics arrived with the entire team, a small van and two cars. Out of the first vehicle stepped Vanni Arquà, chief of Forensics, whom the inspector found truly insufferable. And the feeling was quite mutual.
“Don’t unload anything, there’s no need,” Montalbano said to the Forensics crew, who were starting to take boxes, trunks, and cameras out of the van.
“Why?” asked Arquà.
“There’s been a mistake.”
Arquà went and looked at the body, then returned with a dark expression on his face.
“It’s just some stupid joke!”
“It’s not a joke, Arquà! What happened was that—”
“I’m going to report this at once to the commissioner!”
“Do whatever the fuck you like.”
And they left, too.
Then, moments later, the last to arrive, as usual, was Prosecutor Tommaseo, who drove like a drunken dog. He stepped out of the car, seeming short of breath.
“Sorry, sorry, I had a little accident . . .”
Seeing the doll stretched out on the ground, his eyes lit up.
“But it’s a woman!” he said, rushing up.
Like a vampire on the wagon. Whenever there was a woman involved, Tommaseo would lose his head. He went crazy for crimes of passion, for pretty girls who met a bad end, for any sort of killing that had anything to do with sex.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked the inspector in a disappointed tone of voice upon realizing what he was looking at.
“This lady here saw it in the trash bin and thought it was a woman’s body. Unfortunately, sir, I wasn’t able to alert you in time of the mistake.”
“Please excuse me,” Tommaseo said to all present. He didn’t seem the least bit angry, like the others. Then he took Montalbano by the arm and pulled him aside.
“Listen,” he said in a soft voice, “just for my information, do you have any idea where they sell these kinds of dolls?”
Finally, after the others were all gone, they loaded the doll into the trunk and drove back to the station without exchanging a word.
He cleared his desk of the several thousand sheets of paper on it and laid the doll down across it lengthwise.
“I need the other one,” he said to Fazio, who was staring at him in silence, unable to comprehend what the inspector had in mind.
“What other one?”
“Palmisano’s doll.”
Fazio gawked at him, open-mouthed.
“Why, isn’t this it?”
“No.”
“What! Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. At the most it’s a twin.”
“How about that! I was thinking that the guys from TeleVigàta had taken it away to get some better shots of it and then, since they couldn’t take it back, had thrown it into the dumpster.”
“How much you want to bet there are two?”
“How many inflatable dolls can there be around Vigàta?”
“I was wondering the same thing. Now go.”
But Fazio didn’t move. He seemed doubtful.
“How on earth am I going to get it here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Chief, how am I going to come down the stairs with that thing in my arms? What if some neighbor comes out and sees me?”
“What can I say? You’re a policeman in the service of—”
“But I’m embarrassed!”
“Don’t make me laugh!”
“Please, just send someone else.”
“Tell me the truth, Fazio. This isn’t just some kind of excuse, is it? You wouldn’t be afraid of going back into that place, would you?”
“Well, yes, a little.”
Montalbano understood him well.
“Then send Gallo and Galluzzo. Oh, and listen: I’m pretty sure there’s a chest somewhere here at the station. I believe I saw one in the garage. Tell them to bring it along and put the doll in it.”
It had been a mistake to lay the doll down on his desk. Now he couldn’t write anything, and to answer the phone, he would have to lean on its belly. The whole thing disgusted him a little. On top of everything else, they’d pulled it out of a garbage bin. It was probably best to put her on the floor.
Grabbing the doll by the armpits, he lifted her, stood her up, and at that moment Mimì Augello appeared.
“Ah
, excuse me, I can see you’re busy, I’ll come back later. But take my advice, when you want to do certain things, you should lock the door.”
“Come on, Mimì, don’t be an idiot, just come in and sit down.”
“Why are you so interested in Palmisano’s doll?”
“Jesus, what a pain! This isn’t Palmisano’s doll!”
And he told him the whole story.
“I’ve sent a couple of our men to get the other one,” he said to conclude.
“Why?”
“To compare them. I want to see if they’re exactly alike.”
“And if they’re not, what the hell do you care?”
“Mimì, if you can’t figure it out on your own, I can’t help you. I’ll tell you later.”
When Gallo and Galluzzo brought in Palmisano’s doll, he had them lay her down on the floor beside the other one.
“Jesus, they’re identical!” Gallo exclaimed, looking at them in amazement.
“How can that be?” Galluzzo wondered.
Montalbano had some idea as to how, but since by now it was lunchtime, he said nothing. He wanted to put the papers back on the desk, but became immediately discouraged by how many there were. And so on his way out he asked Catarella to put his office back in order and to have a magnifying glass waiting for him when he got back.
He ate so disaffectedly that Enzo reproached him.
“You didn’t do me justice today, Inspector.”
As there was no need to go for a walk along the jetty, he went straight back to his office. Entering the room, he very nearly had a heart attack.
Catarella had put the two dolls in the two armchairs, and they looked as if they were chatting casually.
Cursing, he laid them back down on the floor, about a foot and a half apart. On his desk, which was now covered again with papers, lay a magnifying glass. He grabbed it and knelt down to examine the empty eye socket of Palmisano’s doll through the lens. Then he studied the eye socket of the other doll, the one from the dumpster. Next he tore a round rubber patch off the latter’s belly, just above the belly button, and then repeated the operation with the other doll.
After he’d been working in this fashion for a spell, he heard Mimì’s voice outside the door.
“Discover anything, Holmes?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. I’ve discovered that you’re an asshole,” the inspector said, then he got up and sat down behind his desk.
“No, seriously, what were you looking at with the magnifying glass?”
“I was checking whether or not there was a plausible answer to the question I had asked myself.”
“Which was?”
“I’ll answer you with another question. In your opinion, can two things manufactured at the same time, but then kept rather far apart and used differently over time—let’s say two bicycles—can they grow old, lose parts, become punctured in exactly the same way and in the exact same places?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me give you an example. Let’s say two women go to the market and buy two identical cooking pots. Thirty years later, we find one of them. It’s beaten up, missing the left handle, dented at the base, and has two holes on the bottom, one three millimeters wide, and the other two and a half millimeters. Got that?”
“Got it.”
“Then, inside a dumpster we find another identical pot, with the exact same characteristics: the missing left handle, the dent, the two holes, and so on. Does it seem possible to you that the two pots, though used by two different women and likely with different frequency, could deteriorate in exactly the same way?”
“Impossible.”
“And yet these two dolls appear to have succeeded at doing just that. And that’s my point. Have a good look at them.”
“I have, and I can’t figure it out.”
“Do you know what the only possible explanation is?”
“You tell me.”
“With the first doll, Palmisano’s doll, the aging process, so to speak, took place naturally, through the wear and tear of use and the passage of time. With the second, the one found in the bin, the damage was created artificially.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not in the least. Someone who owned a doll exactly like Palmisano’s, but much better preserved, saw the images broadcast by TeleVigàta, recorded them, and used them as a guide to reproduce the exact same damage on his doll.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“You can clearly see that the eye of the dumpster doll was removed with a clean cut, from a blade, whereas on Palmisano’s doll the rubber around the missing eye came apart on its own, causing the eyeball to fall out. On top of this, the holes in the dumpster doll were made with an awl, so that if you examine them with a magnifying glass, you can see they’re all the same. Whereas on the other doll, each hole is totally different from the others; one is bigger, another one is slightly smaller . . .”
“But why would anyone waste all that time doing something so pointless?”
“Maybe there is a point to it. Actually, there must be a point to it. We just don’t know what it is.”
4
They went back to studying the dolls. Montalbano then asked:
“Do you know anything about these kinds of dolls?”
“I’ve never had any need of them,” Mimì said, slightly miffed.
“I don’t doubt that for even a millisecond. Your prowess as cock of the walk has never been called into question and never will be, I suspect. I simply wanted to know if you could give me a little information.”
Augello thought about this for a moment.
“I once saw a documentary on some TV station I pick up with the satellite dish. These two dolls here are antiquated, primitive models, really. Nowadays they make them out of different materials, such as foam rubber, so they’re not inflatable anymore, and they look like real women. It’s a little spooky.”
“So what period would you say these two are from?”
“I dunno, maybe about thirty years ago.”
“Tommaseo this morning asked me where they were sold, and I said I had no idea. Do you?”
“Well, over the Internet . . .”
“Forget the Internet. I’m talking about these two. You can tell Tommaseo about the Internet, since it’s clear he wants to buy one. But where could you buy these things thirty years ago?”
“Well, they certainly weren’t making them in Italy. Bear in mind that before they’re inflated they don’t take up much space. I’m sure they were mailed from abroad in parcels so that you couldn’t tell from the outside what was inside, and they probably wrote something like ‘garments’ or suchlike on it. And to order them you only had to know the address.”
“So therefore, about thirty years ago, two different people in Vigàta—Gregorio Palmisano and some unknown—supposedly ordered, at more or less the same time, two identical dolls.”
“So it would seem.”
“Then, thirty years later, the unknown man happens to see Palmisano’s doll on TV and makes it so that his doll looks in every way like Palmisano’s.”
“Fine, Salvo, but we keep coming back to the same question: Why did he do it?”
“And why did he get rid of it by throwing it into the dumpster?” the inspector added.
They sat there in silence.
“Listen,” Mimì said suddenly, looking him straight in the eye. “You’re not becoming a little obsessed, are you?”
“With what?”
“With this business of the dolls. You’re not going to start investigating this the way you did a while back with that horse that was killed?”
“Come on, what do you think this is? I’m just curious, that’s all.”
But he was lying. There was something about this whole affair that disturbed him.
When it came time to call Gallo for a ride home, it occurred to him that he couldn’t very wel
l leave those dolls in his office. Catarella was liable to show someone in when the inspector wasn’t there, and one could only imagine what a fine impression that would make! He could have them put in storage, or just throw them away outright.
But something inside told him that they might at some point prove useful.
And so he had them put in the trunk and took them home with him, where he stored them in the closet in which Adelina kept the things she needed for cleaning the house.
He looked at them again, one beside the other, upright. In fact the doll from the dumpster was not identical to its twin.
Now that they were standing, the difference became clearer. The tit on the second doll was flat and wrinkled, yes, but it had three less wrinkles. That detail had been the hardest one to copy, and hadn’t come out well.
Perhaps that was why the unknown person had thrown it into the trash bin?
And, if so, did this mean he would try to do better? But where would he ever find a third doll?
In taking the cigarettes and lighter from his jacket pocket, he inadvertently touched an envelope. He took it out and looked at it.
It was the one he’d found under the door the previous evening. He’d forgotten all about it.
The treasure hunt.
He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and his heart sank.
A little piece of caciocavallo, four passuluna olives, five sardines in oil, and a sprig of celery. Well, at least Adelina had bought some fresh bread.
He opened the oven. And howled like a wolf with joy. Eggplant parmesan, done up just right, enough for four!
He lit the oven to heat it up, went out on the veranda, and set the table, choosing a special bottle of wine. He then waited for the eggplant to get nice and hot, then brought it to the table directly in the casserole, not bothering to transfer it to a plate.
When he finished it an hour and a half later, there was no need even to wash the casserole. He’d carefully cleaned it out with the bread, and the sauce was a wonder to taste.
Treasure Hunt Page 4
