“So what do they do?”
“They shoot, Inspector, they shoot. And we’re all really good at shooting, even the dumbest of the bunch. Right now, for instance, if you pull your gun out of your pocket—”
“I haven’t got one, I don’t carry a gun.”
“Really?” Don Balduccio’s astonishment was sincere. “But that’s very careless, Inspector! With all the criminals running around these days—”
“I know. But I don’t like weapons.”
“I didn’t like ‘em either. But as I was saying, if you point a gun at me and say, ’Balduccio, get down on your knees,‘ I got no choice. Since I’m unarmed, I gotta get down on my knees. That’s logical, no? But it doesn’t mean you’re a man of honor, it only means—pardon my language—that you’re a piece of shit with a gun in your hand.”
“And how does a man of honor act?”
“Not how does he act, Inspector, but how did he use to act.You come to my place unarmed and you talk to me, you explain the problem to me, you give me the pros and cons, and if at first I don’t agree with you, next day you come back and we reason, we talk it out until I’m convinced that the only solution is for me to get down on my knees like you asked, for my own good and everyone else’s.”
Suddenly, a passage from Manzoni’s Colonna Infame flashed through the inspector’s brain, the one where some poor wretch is driven to the point where he can only utter: “Tell me what you want me to say,” or something along those lines. But Montalbano didn’t feel like getting into a discussion of Manzoni with Don Balduccio.
“But I’m under the impression that even in the happy times you mention, the custom was to kill people who wouldn’t get down on their knees.”
“Of course!” the old man said with gusto. “Of course! But killing a man for refusing to obey, you know what that used to mean?”
“No.”
“It meant you lost the battle, because that man’s courage left you no other choice. You get my point?”
“Yeah, I get it. But, you see, Mr. Sinagra, I didn’t come here to listen to you tell me the history of the Mafia from your point of view.”
“But you already know the history from the point of view of the law!”
“Of course. But you’re a loser, Mr. Sinagra, or almost. And history is never written by the losers. For the moment, it’s the people who won’t reason and just shoot who’re more likely to write it. The winners of the moment. And now, if you don’t mind ...”
He made as if to rise, but the old man stopped him with a gesture.
“Excuse me. Us old folks, along with all our other ailments, we run at the mouth. In two words, Inspector: it’s possible we made some big mistakes. Really big mistakes. And I say ‘we’ ’cause I’m also talking on behalf of the late Sisino Cuffaro and his people. He was my enemy for as long as he was alive.”
“What, are you starting to repent?”
“No sir, Inspector, I’ll never repent before the law. Before the Good Lord in Heaven, yes, when the moment comes. What I wanted to say is this: we made some really big mistakes, but we always knew there was a line that should never be crossed. Never. Because, you cross that line, and there ain’t no difference between a man and a beast.”
He closed his eyes, exhausted.
“I understand,” said Montalbano.
“But do you really understand?”
“Really.”
“Both things?”
“Yes.”
“Then I said what I wanted to say to you,” the old man continued, opening his eyes. “If you wanna go, you’re free to go. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” the inspector replied, getting up. He retraced his steps through the courtyard and down the lane and didn’t encounter anybody When passing the two playhouses under the monkey puzzles, he heard children’s voices. In one of the houses was a little boy with a water pistol in hand, in the opposite playhouse another little boy was holding an intergalactic machine gun. Apparently Guttadauro had turned out the bearded watchman and promptly replaced him with Don Balduccio’s great-grandsons so the inspector wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
“Bang! Bang!” said the boy with the pistol.
“Ratatatatatat!” answered the boy with the machine gun.
They were training for when they became adults. But maybe they didn’t even need to grow up. The previous day, in fact, at Fela, the police had arrested someone the papers called the “killer baby,” a boy barely eleven years old. One of those people who’d decided to squeal (Montalbano couldn’t bring himself to call them “repenters,” much less state’s witnesses) had revealed that a kind of public school existed where children were taught how to shoot and kill. Of course, Don Balduccio’s great-grandsons had no need to attend such a school. They could get all the education they wanted at home.
No sign of Guttadauro anywhere. At the gate was a man with a beret, who tipped his cap as the inspector drove past, then immediately closed the gate behind him. Descending the hill, Montalbano couldn’t help but notice how perfect the road surface was. Not a single pebble, not the tiniest crack in the asphalt. The maintenance must have cost the Marchese Lauricella his estate. In the rest areas, the situation hadn’t changed, even though more than an hour had passed. One man kept watching crows in the sky, a second was smoking inside his car, the third was still trying to fix his motorbike. Seeing the latter, Montalbano felt tempted to fuck with the guy’s head. When he was in front of him, he stopped.
“Won’t start?” he asked.
“No,” replied the man, dumbfounded.
“Want me to have a look at it?”
“No thanks.”
“I could give you a lift.”
“No!” the man yelled, exasperated.
The inspector continued on his way. In the cottage at the end of the road, the man with the cell phone was back at the window, obviously relaying the message that Montalbano was about to leave the confines of the kingdom of Don Balduccio.
It was getting dark. Back in town, the inspector headed to Via Cavour. He pulled up in front of number 44, opened the glove compartment, grabbed the keys, and got out. The concierge wasn’t in, and he didn’t see anybody on his way to the elevator. He opened the door to the Griffos’ apartment and, once inside, closed it. The place smelled stuffy. He turned on the light and got down to work. It took him an hour to gather all the papers he could find, which he then put in a garbage bag he took from the kitchen. He also found a tin box of Lazzaroni biscotti, stuffed full of cashier’s receipts. Looking at the Griffos’ papers was something he should have done at the very start of the investigation, but he’d neglected to do so. Too distracted by other concerns. Those papers might just contain the secret of the Griffos’ illness, the one that had made their conscientious doctor follow them in his car.
He was turning off the light in the entranceway when he remembered Fazio’s concern about his meeting with Don Balduccio. The telephone was in the dining room.
“Hallo! Hallo! Whoozzat onna line? Dis is Vigata police!”